23 years of Al Shifa bombing, the US still not guilty

Twenty three years ago on August 20, "Bill Clinton", the president of the United States at the time, ordered a cruise missile attack on the Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Factory, the largest pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, which supplied 90% of the major pharmaceutical products and all veterinary medicinal needs in this country.

As mentioned, Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical Factory produced 90% of the medicine needed by the Sudanese people, and its bombing led to the death of tens of thousands of Sudanese people due to diseases such as malaria and other treatable diseases.

After the events of September 11th, the question raised in the minds of many international experts that if instead of destroying the Twin Towers, Bin Laden's network destroyed half of the pharmaceutical products in the United States and its replenishment facilities, how would the United States react?

After the American attack, Sudan asked the United Nations to investigate the reasons for the bombing, but Washington prevented even this action, and after that, almost no one tried to investigate this matter.

In the estimation of such crimes, not only the number of people killed in the bombing site should be calculated, but also the people who died indirectly as a result of that incident should also be considered among the casualties of this bombing.

In this bombing, Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory located in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, was targeted by American cruise missiles. One year after the attack, the deaths caused by the bombing came to be known and the casualties continued to increase.

Without the lifesaving medicine it produced, Sudan’s death toll from the bombing has continued, quietly, to rise . . . this factory provided affordable medicine for humans and all the locally available veterinary medicine in Sudan. It produced 90 percent of Sudan’s major pharmaceutical products. Sanctions against Sudan make it impossible to import adequate amounts of medicines required to cover the serious gap left by the plant’s destruction. Thus, tens of thousands of people — many of them children — have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases . . .

What made this situation more difficult for the people of Sudan was the sanctions imposed by the United States against Sudan, which prohibited the entry of medicines needed by the people to compensate for the lack of medicine caused by the bombing of Al-Shifa factory.

Germany’s then ambassador to Sudan, Werner Daum, estimated that the destruction of the Al Shifa plant may have led to thousands of deaths, though there does not actually appear to be reliable data on the public health consequences of the bombing.

Due to the bombardment of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, Sudan has no stocks of chloroquine, a common drug used to treat malaria. This factory was the only specialized producer of the necessary medicine to eliminate the parasites that were transferred from herds to humans, and this became one of the main causes of infant mortality in Sudan.

In a country that is one of the most backward parts of the world, in addition to the unfavorable climate, basic health problems, disintegrated economic infrastructure, limited agricultural land, severe shortage of drinking water, insignificant industry, heavy sanctions, international loans and devastating internal wars, it is not known what irreparable consequences such bombing could have for years. America claimed that this factory produces chemical weapons and tried to link it to "Osama Bin Laden", the founder of "Al-Qaeda" in Afghanistan. However, when it became clear that none of this was true, the United States blocked a UN investigation into the attack.

This is not the first time that the Americans, who present themselves as the leader in the defense of human rights in the world, target pharmaceutical factories and treatment-related departments, including hospitals, under the pretext of fighting terrorism and al-Qaeda, rather in addition to killing hundreds of people, they also endanger the lives of millions of people, without admitting their mistake or paying compensation for it or even apologizing.

The bombing of the obstetrics and gynecology department of a hospital of the International Red Cross in 2003 in Baghdad, during which several civilians were killed and more than 27 others were injured, or the two attacks on the center of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan in 2001, during which dozens of civilians were killed and wounded, and the stores of food, clothing, and other goods and aid were completely destroyed, are among the other cases of violations of American human rights are in the field of medicine and treatment, while the list of these violations is very long and it is not possible to mention them all in one article.