Report paints grim picture of Iraqi life

Thursday, May 12, 2005 Posted: 4:56 PM EDT (2056 GMT)

(CNN) -- In the wake of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the country still struggles with high unemployment, inconsistent utility services and widespread poverty, a joint survey from the Iraqi government and United Nations indicates.

Released Thursday, the report from Iraq's Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation and the U.N. Development Program in Iraq surveyed nearly 22,000 households in the country's 18 provinces during 2004.

Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. program's resident representative for Iraq, said Thursday that the "Iraqi people are suffering. They are going through a very difficult time. We knew it, but now it's been proven."

While there has been progress since Saddam Hussein's fall, "these data depict a very tragic picture of the quality of life," Iraqi transitional Planning Minister Barham Salih said.

Salih said the mismanagement of Saddam's government and his regime's internal conflicts and those with its neighbors took a toll that spared no sector of the country's infrastructure.

"Saddam Hussein has left us a wasteland," Salih said. "This country could have been the economic powerhouse of the Middle East."

The survey estimated that the minimum number of war-related deaths ranges from 18,000 to 29,000 and is probably higher.

The report said the survey didn't attempt to count entire families who died and therefore underestimates the total number of people killed.

Children under 18 accounted for 12 percent of the deaths, the report said, while the information on infant mortality and malnutrition shows that "the suffering of children due to war and conflict in Iraq is not limited to those directly wounded or killed by military activities."

The information about deaths was "derived from a question posed to households concerning missing and dead persons during the two years prior to the survey. Although the date was not asked for, it is reasonable to suppose that the vast majority of deaths due to warfare occurred after the beginning of 2003."

Children also are affected by widespread malnutrition. About 43 percent of boys and girls between the ages of 6 months and 5 years suffer from some form of the condition -- chronic, general or acute malnutrition.

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