AS THE gigantic inferno of the Gulf War flickers out, the time for drawing the balance sheets has arrived. It will take some time for the most terrible one, the human toll of the most murderous Desert
Storm in history to become fully known.
However, it is already clear enough that it is numbered in tens of thousands of deaths - perhaps a hundred thousand or more
- and in hundreds of thousands of people physically and materially harmed by being left with no shelter or resources.
And the number of people of all ages who have suffered psychological damage as a result of the dreadful experience, unprecedented in history, of six weeks of intense and uninterrupted bombing (with more than one air sortie per minute) will certainly run into millions.
SALAH JABER — March 1, 1991.
HE cost of the damage wrought T by the war is estimated in hundreds of billions of dollars — a large part of Iraq's economic infrastructure (industry, transport, communications) has been destroyed. To this should be added the hundred billion dollars spent on the coalition's war effort. It is not possible to put a figure on the ecological disaster, but it is sure to be enormous, and is not limited to the one of the worst oil slicks in history and the massive carbonic cloud rising over the Kuwaiti oilfields.
Only in the course of the coming days, months and years, will it be possible to draw the full balance sheet of all these aspects. But there is one area where some conclusions can even now be drawn — subject to correction in the future, since they involve variable elements - that of the political balance sheets of the main protagonists of this spectacular introduc tion to the century's final decade.