Group Plans to Take Medical Aid to Iraq : Pacifists: The anti-war activists are organizing a relief mission to Baghdad and other cities amid reports of heavy civilian casualties in the bombing.

Reports of widespread civilian casualties inside Iraq have prompted a group of American pacifists and other anti-war activists to organize a relief mission to deliver medical aid to Baghdad and other cities hammered by bombs and missiles in a month of warfare.

The Fellowship of Reconciliation, a New York-based interfaith group, is heading an effort that is trying to assess Iraq’s medical needs amid widely varying reports of civilian dead and wounded.

A delegation hopes to leave for the Mideast in early March. Medical supplies are not prohibited by the U.N. embargo.

“We don’t have any enemies,” said Doug Hostetter, the pacifist group’s executive director. “. . . Ultimately, a lot of the victims are children. Regardless of what people think of Saddam Hussein, I don’t think there are any Americans that would deny medical assistance to the half of (the) Iraqi population that is under 16.”

The mission also intends to deliver relief supplies to Israel, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, he said. “The fellowship has always intended to be very clear that we care for all the victims in all the countries,” said Hostetter, the son of a Mennonite minister.

If the group succeeds in entering Iraq, it would be the fellowship’s fifth medical relief mission since Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait on Aug. 2 touched off the Gulf crisis, and the first since war broke out Jan. 17. The pacifist delegation delivered 16 tons of medicine on its earlier trips and, on one occasion, secured the release of four U.S. hostages.

A wide array of relief efforts began months ago to aid refugees fleeing Kuwait and Iraq. Medical relief for Iraqi civilians has been sparse since the outset of the war. According to news accounts, one shipment of medical supplies recently arrived in Baghdad overland from Iran.

The fellowship-led mission comes amid growing questions about the reliability of reports regarding civilian casualties inside Iraq. Those concerns intensified Wednesday with allegations by the Iraqi government that hundreds of civilians had been killed in the bombing of a shelter.

A doctor affiliated with the Red Crescent Societies, the equivalent of the Red Cross in Islamic countries, has told of medical conditions in Baghdad in which amputations are performed without anesthetics and other horror stories. Meanwhile, censored news footage from Iraq has focused on women and children reportedly injured in air raids.

U.S. and allied military commanders have emphasized that only strategic military sites have been targeted, although they acknowledge that civilian casualties are inevitable. An Iraqi official on Monday said thousands of civilians had been killed, far more than earlier official statements that 650 had been killed and 750 wounded by allied bombing.

In addition, former U.S. Atty. Gen. Ramsey Clark, recently returned from a trip to Baghdad and the hard-hit Iraqi seaport of Basra, said the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent estimated the civilian death toll at between 6,000 and 7,000. At the highest extreme, some anti-war groups have also bandied about estimates reaching into the tens of thousands.

The White House dismissed Clark’s reports as Iraqi propaganda.

Hostetter said an independent assessment of civilian casualties is a primary goal of the relief mission. Many anti-war activists, he said, believe “both governments have actually conspired for very, very different reasons” to minimize the war’s toll on civilians.

The United States and allied nations, he said, recognize that the death of innocents could undermine public support for the war. The Iraqi government, he said, would understate civilian losses to bolster the morale of its citizenry, especially the troops, while also exhibiting toughness to other Arab peoples.

Physicians for Human Rights, which is not part of the fellowship relief effort, is also trying to assess civilian casualties inside Iraq. “It’s not enough for the military to say that we’re doing everything possible” to avoid harming civilians, said Dr. Jonathon Fine, the group’s executive director. “There should to be a proper accounting of civilian casualties and losses.”

The physicians group, which recently issued a report describing grave medical conditions inside Kuwait, has also warned that epidemics could claim many more victims as indirect casualties of the war. In areas subject to intense bombardment, Fine said, it is likely that contaminated drinking water would trigger plagues of infectious diarrhea, cholera and typhoid.

In separate missions to Baghdad before the start of the war, Fine and Hostetter said, they found that many medicines and medical supplies were already in short supply.

The fellowship is working with other anti-war groups in assembling its relief mission, including the New York-based Witness for Peace, the Santa Cruz-based Mideast Witness and United Muslims of America.

Scott Kennedy, a Santa Cruz city councilman who is an organizer of Mideast Witness, acknowledged that some Israelis may not welcome assistance because of the group’s advocacy for a peace settlement linking the liberation of Kuwait to resolution of the Palestinian crisis.

A spokesman for United Muslims of America, a political organization that claims more than 6,000 members, said the group is raising funds for the relief effort. Namir Magen, a naturalized U.S. citizen of Iraqi heritage, said it is possible that the delegation may turn back after reaching Amman if it appears that travel on the highway to Baghdad, reportedly a primary target of allied air raids, is too dangerous.

“We don’t want to have people go and get killed for no reason,” Magen said. “We’re doing something humanitarian. We have to guarantee the safety of our people before we let them go to Iraq.”

If they are refused entry into Iraq or decide not to enter, Hostetter said, the group will give its supplies to Red Crescent officials for delivery to Baghdad.

Although he emphasized that the mission has humanitarian aims, Hostetter predicted that the effort will broaden the base of the domestic anti-war movement.

To Americans, “it’s certain that one American death is probably worth as much as a few hundred or thousand innocent civilian deaths. I know most Americans would be willing to continue more bombing campaigns if they thought they were protecting American lives,” Hostetter said.

“But for most Americans, there is a point where it becomes obscene.”