Allied atrocities against the people of Iraq, part 2

by Abu Khalid

Foreword: Section 1 of this article will quote numerous people and organisations on the terrible effects of Depleted Uranium bombs on the innocent people of Iraq (incidentally, DU weapons were first used during the Gulf War), section 2 will deal with sanctions and the effects of it on the Iraqi society and their non-effectiveness against Saddam's regime.

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1. Articles on DU (Depleted Uranium) bombs on Iraq and their effects:

1. International Educational Development/Humanitarian Law Project welcomes the progress made on the issue of toxics and the innovative and necessary work of the Commission's rapporteur Fatma-Zohra Ksentini. We have submitted information to the rapporteur on the use of weapons containing depleted uranium by the United States forces in the Gulf War. We are also continuing to compile information on this subject in light of Sub-Commission resolution 1996/[ ] (U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1996/L.18) which requests that information on the use of weapons of mass destruction, including those containing depleted uranium, is including in a report by the Secretary-General to the Sub- Commission at its forty-ninth session.

2. During the Gulf War up to 800 tons of munitions containing depleted uranium were used by United States forces in military actions in Kuwait and Iraq. This was the first field test of these weapon in actual combat, and they proved to be exceptionally effective anti-tank projectiles due to their superior armour-piercing capacity. It is unclear how much of the discarded shell casings and other radioactive material still remains in Iraq, but several investigators who have traveled to the area reports that shell casings containing depleted uranium are scattered all over the ground in many areas, including in school yards and other similar civilian locales.

3. Depleted uranium contain about 30% less than normal of 235/U, a dangerous radioisotope of uranium used in nuclear bombs and commercial power plants. It is a byproduct of extraction of 235/U form natural uranium. Much of depleted uranium is 238/U with a half life of 4 billion years.

4. Depleted uranium vaporizes when deployed in armour-piercing bullets. Scientific studies indicate if as much as one small particle (<5 microns in diameter) enters the lungs, the lungs and surrounding tissue will be exposed to 270 times the radiation permitted for workers in the radiation industry.

5. We first raised this issue at the fifty-second session of the Commission when, in conjunction with Margarita Papandreou and Women for Mutual Security and the International Commission of Inquiry on Economic Sanctions, we addressed the serious situation of especially children in Iraq. Thousands of children in Iraq suffer from illnesses related to depleted uranium compounded in gravity by the effects of the economic sanctions. Now, children and animals in the area are being born with the serious congenital anomalies and disabilities associated with low grade radiation poisoning. At that session we presented Dr. Horst Gunther who has traveled to Iraq and who has documented, in report and by photograph, the devastating situation in Iraq.

6. Since that time, more evidence of the use of depleted uranium and the Iraqi medical catastrophe has been presented while at the same time the controversy over "Gulf War Syndrome" escalates in the United States. It now appears that key information relating to this situation has been removed from top secret files or destroyed.

7. Evidence compiled in the United States indicates as many as 50,000 veterans of the United States forces in the Gulf War and 4,000 or more from the allied countries have conditions that appear to be clear consequences of military service. There are no available statistics on the number of Iraqis showing similar symptoms, although Dr. Gunther's investigations indicate many thousands.

8. In addition to the serious problems faced by those exposed to DU during the Gulf War, there is a worldwide problem of the disposal of DU. These is an estimated billion pounds of DU tailings in the United States, and the United States Department of Energy is seeking opportunities to dispose of it. There are an estimated 30 million KGs DU tailings stored in Europe at URENCO plants. The United States Army Environmental Policy Institute (USAEPI) reports that the United Kingdom, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Thailand, Israel, France and other unspecified countries have developed or are developing DU weapons.

9. We urge the Special Rapporteur to investigate the situation of the use of DU in the Gulf War and its effect on human rights. We also urge the Rapporteur to monitor the situation of DU storage and transport. [1]

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U.S. DELEGATION FINDS HIGH-RADIOACTIVITY IN IRAQI DESERT

RAMSEY CLARK AND SANCTIONS CHALLENGE HEAD BACK TO EUROPE, U.S. AFTER SOLIDARITY TRIP TO IRAQ/PALESTINIANS CHARGE ISRAELI MILITARY USES DEPLETED URANIUM

FROM THE SANCTIONS CHALLENGE
of the INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER
(Reports from Baghdad, Iraq and Amman, Jordan)

19 Jan 2001-- A investigating team from a U.S. solidarity delegation to Iraq on Jan. 18 found “extremely high levels of radioactivity” in soil samples in the Iraqi desert south of Basra. In that region during the 1991 war against Iraq U.S. forces fired hundreds of thousands of shells reinforced with depleted uranium.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and New Mexican activist and researcher Damacio Lopez had separated from the main body of Clark’s International Action Center’s 50-person “Iraq Sanctions Challenge” to collect the soil samples.  

On Jan. 19, Clark was scheduled to report his team’s findings of high radiation levels at a news conference at the Italian Parliament in Rome. He planned to condemn the Pentagon’s use of DU weapons in Iraq and Yugoslavia and demand that scientists from these countries be included in the investigation of the dangers to humans of DU.

A storm of protest in Europe has brought to international attention the threat to soldiers and civilians from pollution by radioactive and toxic DU shells in Kosovo and Bosnia. There have already been massive protests in Greece, with hundreds of Greek soldiers demanding they leave Kosovo. Other protests are planned in Italy and Portugal and meetings have been held in Belgium, France and Spain.

From Amman, Jordan, IAC co-director Sara Flounders said that “while DU poisoning of European and U.S. soldiers are criminal, the poisoning and pollution of the civilian areas of Kosovo, Bosnia and to an even greater degree Iraq are war crimes. We hold the Pentagon responsible for the damage done to the population and the environment of the Balkans and of the area including parts of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

“A report from Geneva,” said Flounders, “indicates that besides depleted uranium, some of the U.S. shells contained measurable amounts of plutonium and Uranium-236, even more dangerous pollutants than depleted uranium. This only adds to U.S. culpability in this matter.

“Today’s Jordan Times reports on its front page,” continued Flounders, “that Palestinian organizations have charged the Israelis with using DU against the Intifada. Through the Pentagon, which supplies most Israeli weapons, the Israeli military is supplied with DU. We in the IAC had raised last November the possibility that Israeli forces were also using this illegal weapon.”

In the days before the Rome news conference, both the Iraqi and Yugoslav governments had condemned the use of DU on their territories. Belgrade said it would demand that the International War Crimes Court at The Hague include DU use as a war crime to be investigated. [for reports from Iraq and Yugoslavia see the DU page on the IAC web site at www.iacenter.org]

Background to Sanctions Challenge

The U.S. group had arrived in Baghdad by air the night of Jan. 13, acting in defiance of the U.S./UN imposed no-fly zones. At a press conference at the airport Ramsey Clark declared, "The US must end the genocidal sanctions against Iraq. The whole world demands that the sanctions be lifted completely and immediately."

Fifty anti-sanctions activists led by joined a demonstration in downtown Baghdad at 2 a.m. on Jan. 17 to mark the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led war of aggression against Iraq.

It was at 2 a.m. ten years ago that U.S. and British forces unleashed rockets and bombs on sleeping Baghdad.  

The delegation spent the next three days visiting sites that demonstrate the consequences of the 10 years of sanctions or those hit by frequent bombing the past ten years.  

Sites included a bomb shelter, elementary schools, a university, water and sewage treatment plants, and hospitals. The delegation also met with the Iraqi minister of health, visited a pharmaceutical plant, a school for the blind, the Iraqi Women’s Federation and a food distribution center.

They found that sanctions are still making life extremely difficult for the Iraqi population and causing needless deaths. Yet the mood of the Jan. 17 demonstrators was optimistic and combative. In the months leading up to the anniversary, more and more countries had begun individually breaking the ban on flights and other sanctions against Iraq. More than 100 flights have entered Iraq in the last five months.

The delegation delivered over $1.5 million in medical and school supplies, and plans to deliver more supplies to Palestinian hospitals on the West Bank.  

In a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, Ramsey Clark denounced U.S. policy toward Iraq. “This is genocide,” he said. “The progress that Iraq has made must not be lost at 12 noon on Jan. 20 when George Bush is inaugurated. Inspection teams and Oil-for-food program were both frauds from the beginning. There is no justification for the sanctions. They are a war by other means.”

The IAC delegation brings together people from fifteen US states and seven countries, including Canada, Japan, Lebanon, Greece, Britain, Iceland and Palestine. It includes students, teachers, long time activists, social workers, lawyers, and others committed to peace.  

The delegates met with the Iraqi host organization, The Organization of Friendship and Solidarity with Iraq. The head of OFSI, Dr. Hashimi said: "You will see a nation of siege. The siege is from outsiders who say they do it in accordance with law and legality and UN resolutions"

"It is a siege to achieve unjustified objectives. We hold on in spite of the suffering and the pain and we will continue to hold on for as long as necessary. We know that if we give up we will lose Iraq." [2]

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WHAT IS DEPLETED URANIUM? READ METAL OF DISHONOR TO SEE  WHAT IS BEHIND THE HEADLINES

January 9, 2001-- The breaking news in Europe of troops from Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal who served in the Balkans dying of leukemia has reawakened interest in the dangers posed by depleted-uranium weapons.

In April 1999, the International Action Center published the second  edition of a book of essays and lectures on depleted uranium. Its title is Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium. The first edition had been published in 1997.

The Peoples Video Network, in collaboration with the IAC, produced a 50-minute-long video with the same title, Metal of Dishonor, that was favorably reviewed at film festivals in Italy.

Both the book and the video can be ordered online at: http://www.leftbooks.com/online-store/scstore/c-Depleted_Uranium.html

In addition to exposing the deadly duplicity of the Department of  Defense, the book documents the genocide of Native Americans and  Iraqis by military radiation, the connection between depleted uranium and Gulf War Syndrome, the underestimated dangers from low-level radiation, the legal ramifications of DU Production and Use, and the growing movement against DU.  (Table of Contents)

The Pentagon used DU weapons in Iraq in 1991, in Bosnia in 1995 and  in Yugoslavia-especially in Kosovo-in 1999 in large enough amounts to have a significant impact on the environment. Besides endangering occupation troops it of course is a major environmental threat to the population of those regions.

Of the 697,000 US troops who served in the Gulf, some 130,000 have  reported medical problems ranging from respiratory, liver and kidney dysfunction, memory loss, headaches, fever, low blood pressure, and birth defects among their newborn children.  

During the Gulf War, munitions and armor made with Depleted Uranium  were used for the first time in combat history. Over 940,000 30- millimeter uranium tipped bullets and "more than 14,000 large caliber DU rounds were consumed during Operation Desert Storm/Desert Shield." (U.S. AEPI Report 1994) These largely untested weapons were used indiscriminately throughout the siege of Iraq with no concern for the health and environmental consequences of their use. Between 300 and 800 tons of DU bullets are now scattered on the ground in Iraq and Kuwait.  

The Pentagon now admits to having fired over 18,000 DU shells in  Bosnia and over 31,000 such shells in Kosovo.

Up to 70% of the depleted uranium within these weapons aerosolizes  on impact and as radioactive dust it is easily ingested. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people, both victims of war and combat soldiers, have suffered the effects of exposure to these highly toxic, radioactive weapons.  

WHAT IS DU?

DU is a waste product of the process that produces enriched uranium  for use in atomic weapons and nuclear power plants. Much like natural uranium, it is both toxic and radioactive. Over a billion pounds of DU exists in the United States and must be safely stored or disposed of by the Department of Energy. With its half-life of 4.5 billion years, DU's radioactivity effectively lasts forever.  

DU is so abundant the government gives it away to arms  manufacturers. Because it is extremely dense--1.7 times as dense as  lead--when turned into a metal DU can be used to make a shell that  easily penetrates steel. In addition it is pyrophoric--that is, when it strikes steel, heat from the friction causes it to burn.  

When DU burns, it spews tiny particles of poisonous and radioactive  uranium oxide in aerosol form, which can then travel for miles in the wind. Humans can ingest or inhale the small particles. Even one particle, when lodged in a vital organ--which is most likely to happen from inhalation-- can cause illnesses from headaches to cancer.  

The Pentagon tested DU shells at various sites around the U.S. and  used it in combat for the first time against Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. It was very effective in destroying Iraqi tanks, as well as their occupants and anyone in the area. At least 600,000 pounds of DU and uranium dust was left around Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia by U.S. and British forces during that war.  

Although the U.S. government and military continue to minimize the  environmental and health dangers from depleted- uranium weapons,  even they have to admit these dangers exist.  

DU is also considered at least a contributing cause to the 130,000  reported cases of "Gulf War Syndrome." The chronic symptoms of this  ailment range from sharp increases in cancers to memory loss,  chronic pain, fatigue and birth defects in veterans' children.  

Dr. Mona Kammas is a professor of pathology at Baghdad University  and director of a study of the environmental impact of U.S. aggression against Iraq. At the Gijon symposium, she reported on a paper that showed an almost five-fold increase in cancers, a more than three-fold increase in spontaneous abortions, and a nearly three-fold increase in congenital anomalies in a study group of those exposed to combat.  

The paper also reported on environmental damage due to the  Pentagon's destruction of the water-supply and sanitation systems and the destruction of oil refineries and factories that used toxic chemicals in the production process.  

Iraqi researchers believe that the different relative frequency of various types of cancer now as compared with before 1990 in the Basra region was a significant indication of a major change, and that this pattern continuing long after the war indicated that DU's impact was long- lasting.  

Besides the contents listed below, the second edition of Metal of  Dishonor has chapters reporting on a study from Iraq and from Bosnia, and a new chapter by Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a physicist and medical doctor who examined U.S. troops hit by DU "friendly fire."

Both the book and the video can be ordered online at: http://www.leftbooks.com/online-store/scstore/c-Depleted_Uranium.html [3]

Webmaster's note:

Effects of the DU Bombs on people can be seen on this link; http://www.wakefieldcam.freeserve.co.uk/extremedeformities.htm

Further Evidence on Relation between Depleted Uranium, Incidence of Malignancies among Children in Basra, Southern Iraq: http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du_iraq.htm

More articles on DU effects: http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/du.htm

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2. Articles on sanctions:

Iraq Under Siege

Guest Column
Brice Smith

Despite more than nine years of crippling economic sanctions and repeated military attacks, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government remain firmly in power, so who is the West really targeting with its policy of enforced starvation and disease?

As of June 1997, the United Nations had verified that more than 1.2 million people in Iraq, including 750,000 children below the age of five, have died because of the scarcity of food and medicine caused by the economic sanctions that have been in place since August 6, 1990.

Since then, the conditions for the Iraqi people have certainly not improved. In 1998 UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, reported that since the imposition of economic sanctions on Iraq, the mortality rate among children under the age of five has increased by more than 40,000 deaths per year, due primarily to preventable causes such as diarrhea, pneumonia ,and malnutrition.

In addition, chronic malnutrition among children under five had reached 27.5 percent by this time. The report also stated that the mortality rate among children over the age of five has increased by more than 50,000 deaths per year due mainly to causes such as heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, cancer, liver, and kidney disease.

At the time of this report, approximately 250 people were dying every day in Iraq due to the effects of the economic sanctions. The UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs and the World Health Organization report that basic public health services are near total collapse in Iraq due to a desperate shortage of basic medicines, life-saving drugs, and other essential medical supplies. They also stated that up to fifty percent of the rural population has no access to clean water and that the waste water treatment facilities have stopped functioning in most urban areas, dramatically increasing the spread of disease.

From these reports, and many more I have not mentioned, it is clear that the UN sanctions against Iraq are in blatant violation of the Geneva Protocol 1, Article 54, which states that the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is strictly prohibited.

To prevent the appearance that the Western powers, led by the United States and Great Britain, were simply standing by while their policies destroyed an entire generation of Iraqi children, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 986/1111, which is commonly referred to now as the “Oil for Food” program. In 1998, Dennis Haliday, then UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, stated that Iraq would need in the neighborhood of 30 billion US dollars per year to meet its current requirements for food, medicine, and for rebuilding its infrastructure.

Resolution 986 initially allowed Iraq to sell up to 2.14 billion dollars’ worth of oil every six months. After allocations were taken out to pay for Gulf War reparations and UN administrative expenses, the amount of money which actually made it to the average person in central and southern Iraq was less than 25 cents per person per day. The UN did increase the allowed quota to 5.26 billion dollars’ worth of oil every six months, but due to deterioration of oil field equipment under the sanctions, Iraq is only capable of pumping 4 billion dollars’ worth of oil every six months.

Another UNICEF report stated bluntly that there has been no sign of any improvement in the living conditions of the Iraqi people since Resolution 986 was passed.

The clear failure of this policy to have any impact on the stability of Saddam Hussein’s government and its devastating effect on the people of Iraq have generated a large international movement in opposition to the sanctions. France, Russia and China, all permanent members of the UN Security Council, have continually challenged the US position on sanctions and have opposed US military strikes.

The pope, 53 bishops, the World Council of Churches, the Presbyterian Church, and numerous other religious leaders have called for an end to sanctions and vigorously protest military strikes against Iraq. The Arab League has called for an immediate lifting of all sanctions as well as an end to US threats to bomb Iraq.

Hans von Sponeck, UN Humanitarian Relief Coordinator for Iraq, and Jutta Burghardt, World Food Program Chief in Iraq, both recently resigned their posts in protest against the sanctions imposed on Iraq. In his resignation letter, Mr. von Sponeck said that the “Oil for Food” program failed to meet even the minimum requirements of the civilian population, and that, as a UN official, he should not be expected to remain silent to what he saw as a true human tragedy that needs to be ended.

Even within the United States, there is growing opposition to the sanctions. The National Gulf War Resource Center (NGWRC), the largest Gulf War veterans’ organization in the country, has come out against the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. In addition, on January 31, 2000, 70 congresspersons signed the “Campbell-Conyers letter” to President Clinton, urging a lifting of economic sanctions on Iraq while leaving military sanctions in place.

MIT professor Noam Chomsky, along with Edward Herman, Edward Said, and Howard Zinn, summed up the impact of the sanctions best by stating that “this is not foreign policy -- it is sanctioned mass murder that is nearing holocaust proportions. If we remain silent, we are condoning a genocide that is being perpetrated in the name of peace in the Middle East, a mass slaughter that is being perpetrated in our name.”

As citizens of this country, we have the power and the responsibility to stop this wholesale slaughter of children.

Brice Smith is a graduate student in the Department of Physics. [4]

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Collateral damage: Iraq under siege

The memories of my journey to Iraq are almost surreal. Beside the road to Baghdad from Jordan lay two bodies: old men in suits, unmarked, their arms stiffly beside them. A taxi rested upside-down beside them. The men had been walking beside the road, each with his meager belongings, which were now scattered among the thornbushes. The taxi's brakes had apparently failed and it had cut them down. Local people came out of the swirling dust and stood beside the bodies: for them, on this, the only road in and out of Iraq, it was a common event.

The road on the Jordan side of the border is one of the most dangerous on earth. It was never meant as an artery, yet it now carries most of Iraq's permissible trade and traffic to the outside world. Two narrow single lanes are dominated by oil tankers, moving in an endless convoy; cars and overladen buses and vans dart in and out in a kind of danse macabre. The inevitable carnage provides a gruesome roadside tableau of burnt-out tankers, a bus crushed like a tin can, an official United Nations Mercedes on its side, its once-privileged occupants dead.

Of course, brakes fail on rickety taxis everywhere, but the odds against survival here are shortened to zero. Parts for the older models are now nonexistent, and drivers go through the night and day with little sleep. With the Iraqi dinar worth virtually nothing, they must go back and forth, from Baghdad to Amman, Amman to Baghdad, as frequently and as quickly as possible, just to make enough to live. And when they and their passengers are killed or maimed, they, too, become victims of the most ruthless economic embargo of our time.

The inhumanity and criminal vindictiveness of the "sanctions" struck me one afternoon in Baghdad, in the studio of the great Iraqi sculptor Mohamed Ghani. His latest work is a three-meter figure of a woman, her breasts dry of milk, a child pleading with her for food, the small, frail body merged into her legs. Her face is dark and ill-defined, "a nightmare of sadness and confusion," as he describes it.(1) She is waiting in a line at a closed door. The line is recognizable from every hospital I visited; it is always the same, stretching from the dispensary into the heat outside as people wait for the life-giving drugs that are allowed into Iraq only when the UN sanctions committee feels like it: rather, when the Clinton administration and its sidekick, the Blair government, feel like it.

"The longer we can fool around in the [UN Security] council and keep things static, the better," an American official boasted to the Washington's general strategy toward Iraq. (2)

While I was in Iraq, the list of "holds" on humanitarian supplies included eighteen on medical equipment, such as heart and lung machines. Along with water pumps, agricultural supplies, safety and fire-fighting equipment, they were "suspected dual use": Saddam Hussein might also make weapons of mass destruction from wheelbarrows, which were on the list. So was detergent. (3) In hospitals and hotels, there is the inescapable, sickly stench of gasoline, which is used to clean the floors, because detergent is "on hold."

While I was in Iraq, Kofi Annan, normally the most compliant of UN secretary-generals, complained to the Security Council about "holds" amounting to $700 million. These included food, supplies, and equipment that might restore the power grid, the water-treatment plants, and the telephones. (4)

The deliberate bombing of the civilian infrastructure in 1991 returned Iraq, a modern state, to "a pre-industrial age." (5) The strategy was: bomb now, die later. It is the new style of "humanitarian war." The statistics of those who have since died are breathtaking; for this reason, no doubt, they have been consigned to media oblivion.

In May 1996, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked on the CBS program 60 Minutes if the death of more than half a million children was a price worth paying. "[W]e think the price is worth it," she replied. (6)

After returning from Iraq, I flew to Washington and interviewed James Rubin, an undersecretary of state who speaks for Madeleine Albright and US policy. Rubin claimed that Albright's words on 60 Minutes were taken out of context. (7) I had with me the transcript of the program; her statement was clear, and I offered him a copy. "In making policy," he said, "one has to choose between two bad choices … and unfortunately the effect of sanctions has been more than we would have hoped." He referred me to the "real world" where "real choices have to be made." In mitigation, he added, "Our sense is that, prior to sanctions, there was serious poverty and health problems in Iraq." The clear implication was that the children would have died anyway.

The opposite is of course true. As Unicef has reported, Iraq in 1990 had one of the healthiest and best-educated populations in the world; its child mortality rate was one of the lowest. Today, it is among the highest on earth. (8) Unicef has reported that more than 5,000 children under five have died on average every month in Iraq, in part because of "the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of the [Persian Gulf] war" on the population. (9) Today, foreign visitors cannot escape the sight of children dying. Doctor after doctor wrote in my notebook the names of vital drugs and equipment they needed. These arrive only sporadically and after a long journey through the arcane bureaucracy of the sanctions committee in New York. Doctors are denied even blood bags, even drugs as basic as those that defeat preventable dysentery and preventable tuberculosis, even morphine that allows the terminally ill to die with dignity. "It's like torture," said Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, a cancer specialist. "Maybe we can treat patients 20 percent of the time, but I think that's almost worse than no treatment at all, because it gives people hope, and for many, there is none." (10)

The words of the playwright Arthur Miller come to mind. "Few of us," he wrote, "can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied." (11)

At the United Nations in New York, this internal denial is as surreal as anything I saw in Iraq. There is a fine, subsidized buffet restaurant not far from where you can read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with its rights to liberty and, above all, life. I met Kofi Annan and asked him, "As secretary-general of the United Nations, which is imposing the sanctions on Iraq, what do you say to the parents of the children who are dying?" He replied that the Security Council was considering "smart sanctions." These will "target the leaders," rather than act as "a blunt instrument that impacts on children." (12) He had no details, and none have been forthcoming since, apart from a resolution that offered Iraq a partial suspension of sanctions in return for further weapons inspections, which Saddam Hussein turned down, predictably. (13) Meanwhile, the "blunt instrument … impacts on children" at the rate of around 150 deaths every day.

Peter van Walsum is the Netherlands' ambassador to the United Nations and the current chair of the sanctions committee of the Security Council. What struck me about this diplomat with life-and-death powers over millions of people half a world away was that, like James Rubin, he seemed to associate Iraq, the civilized society, with Saddam Hussein, the murderer, as if they were one and the same. He also seemed to believe in holding innocent people hostage to the compliance of a dictator over whom they have no control. Such moral and intellectual contortion is common in United Nations Plaza, the State Department, and the Foreign Office in London, as a justification for the "genocidal destruction of a nation," as Denis Halliday described the effects of sanctions after he resigned in protest as the UN humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad. (14)

I had the following conversation with Ambassador van Walsum:

Why should the civilian population, innocent people, be punished for Saddam's crimes?

It's a difficult problem. You should realize that sanctions are one of the curative measures that the Security Council has at its disposal … and obviously they hurt. They are like a military measure.

But who do they hurt?

Well, this, of course, is the problem … but with military action, too, you have the eternal problem of collateral damage.

So an entire nation is collateral damage? Is that correct?

No, I am saying that sanctions have [similar] effects.… I … you see … you understand, we have to study this further.

Do you believe that people have human rights no matter where they live and under what system?

Yes.

Doesn't that mean that the sanctions you are imposing are violating the human rights of millions of people?

It's also documented the Iraqi regime has committed very serious human rights breaches.…

There is no doubt about that. But what's the difference in principle between human rights violations committed by the regime and those caused by your committee?

It's a very complex issue, Mr. Pilger.

What do you say to those who describe sanctions that have caused so many deaths as a "weapon of mass destruction," as lethal as chemical weapons?

I don't think that's a fair comparison.

Aren't the deaths of half a million children mass destruction?

I don't think you can use that argument to convince me.… It is about the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Let's say the Netherlands was taken over by a Dutch Saddam Hussein, and sanctions were imposed, and the children of Holland started to die like flies. How would you feel about that?

I don't think that's a very fair question.… We are talking about a situation which was caused by a government that overran its neighbor, and has weapons of mass destruction.

Then why aren't there sanctions on Israel [which] occupies much of Palestine and attacks Lebanon almost every day of the week. Why aren't there sanctions on Turkey, which has displaced 3 million Kurds and caused the deaths of 30,000 Kurds?

Well, there are many countries that do things that we are not happy with. We can't be everywhere. I repeat, it's complex.

How much power does the United States exercise over your committee?

We operate by consensus.

And what if the Americans object?

We don't operate. (15)

On my last night in Iraq, I went to the Rabat Hall in the center of Baghdad to watch the Iraqi National Orchestra rehearse. I had wanted to meet Mohammed Amin Ezzat, the conductor, whose personal tragedy epitomizes the punishment of his people. Because the power supply is so intermittent, Iraqis have been forced to use cheap kerosene lamps for lighting, heating, and cooking; and these frequently explode. This is what happened to Mohammed Amin Ezzat's wife, Jenan, who was engulfed in flames. "It was devastating," he said, "because I saw my wife burn completely before my eyes. I threw myself on her in order to extinguish the flames, but it was no use. She died. I sometimes wish I had died with her." (16)

He stood on his conductor's podium, his badly burned left arm unmoving, the fingers stuck together. The orchestra was rehearsing Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, and there was a strange discord. Reeds were missing from clarinets and strings from violins. "We can't get them from abroad," he said. "Someone has decreed they are not allowed." The musical scores are ragged, like ancient parchment. They cannot get paper. Only two members of the original orchestra are left; the rest have gone abroad. "You cannot blame them," he said. "The suffering in our country is too great. But why has it not been stopped? That is the question for all civilized people to ask."

Notes

1. Author interview, Baghdad, October 13, 1999.

2. Barton Gellman, "UNSCOM Losing Role in Iraqi Arms Drama," Washington Post, January 28, 1999, p. A19.

3. UN Office of the Iraq Program, "Status of Humanitarian Contracts Under Phase V as of October 29, 1999." For a current list of holds, see the UN Office of the Iraq Program wesbite: http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/.

4. Kofi Annan, Letter to the President of the Security Council, October 22, 1999 (S/1999/1086), p. 1; and Benon V. Sevan, Annex, Note to the Secretary-General from the Executive Director of the Iraq Program, October 22, 1999 (S/1999/1066), pp. 2-4.

5. Martti Ahtisaari, The Impact of War on Iraq: Report to the Secretary-General on Humanitarian Needs in Iraq in the Immediate Post-Crisis Environment, March 20, 1991 (Westfield, New Jersey: Open Magazine Pamphlet Series 7, 1991), p. 5.

6. Leslie Stahl, "Punishing Saddam," produced by Catherine Olian, CBS, 60 Minutes, May 12, 1996.

7. Author interview, Washington, DC, November 29, 1999.

8. See United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report 1999 (New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999), Table 8, "Progress in Survival," pp. 170-171.

9. Unicef and Government of Iraq Ministry of Health, Child and Maternal Mortality Survey 1999: Preliminary Report (Baghdad: Unicef, 1999); Unicef press release, "Iraq Survey Shows 'Humanitarian Emergency,'" August 12, 1999 (Cf/doc/pr/1999/29), p. 2; and Unicef, "Questions and Answers for the Iraq Child Mortality Surveys" (August 1999). Available online at http://www.unicef.org. Unicef estimates that "if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998" (p. 2), or an average of 5,200 preventable under-five deaths per month during this period.

10. Author interview, Baghdad, October 13, 1999.

11. Arthur Miller, "Why I Wrote 'The Crucible': An Artist's Answer to Politics" New Yorker, October 21-28, 1996, pp. 163-64.

12. Author interview, New York, December 2, 1999.

13. Waiel Faleh, Associated Press, "Iraq Rejects U.N. Weapons Inspection Plan," Washington Post, December 19, 1999, p. A54.

14. Author interview, October 15, 1999.

15. Author interview, New York, December 3, 1999.

16. Author interview, Baghdad, October 24, 1999.

This excerpt is printed with permission from Pluto Press.  [5]

_________________________________________________________

The facts, according to the United Nations

_________________________________________________________

Frequently Asked Questions (about Sanctions and Iraq)

1) Sanctions may have produced temporary hardship for the Iraqi people, but aren’t they an effective, nonviolent method of containing Iraq?

Sanctions target the weakest and most vulnerable members of the Iraqi society-the poor, elderly, newborn, sick, and young. Many equate sanctions with violence. The sanctions, coupled with pain inflicted by US and UK military attacks, have reduced Iraq’s infrastructure to virtual rubble. Oxygen factories, water sanitation plants, and hospitals remain in dilapidated states. Surveys by the United Nation’s Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the World Health Organization (WHO) note a marked decline in health and nutrition throughout Iraq. (1)

While estimates vary, many independent authorities assert that at least 500,000 Iraqi children under five have died since 1990, in part as a result of the sanctions and the effects of the Gulf War. An August 1999 Unicef report found that the under-five mortality rate in Iraq has more than doubled since the imposition of sanctions. (2) Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq Denis Halliday has remarked that the death toll is "probably closer now to 600,000 and that’s over the period of 1990-1998. If you include adults, it’s well over 1 million Iraqi people." (3)

The United Nations recently observed:

The UN sanctions committee, based in New York, continues to deny Iraq, medical equipment, computer equipment, spare parts, and air-conditioned trucks, all necessary elements to sustaining human life and society. (5) Agricultural and environmental studies show great devastation, in many cases indicating permanent and irreversible damage. (6)

Others have argued that, from a North American perspective, sanctions are more economically sustainable than military attacks, since sanctions cost the United States less. In fact, hundreds of millions of US tax dollars are spent each year to sustain economic sanctions. Expenses include monitoring Iraqi import-export practices, patrolling the "no-fly" zones, and maintaining an active military presence in the Gulf region. (7) Sanctions are an insidious form of warfare, and have claimed hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.

2) Iraq possesses, and seeks to build, weapons of mass destruction. If unchecked, and without economic sanctions, isn’t it true that Iraq could, and certainly would, threaten its neighbors?

According to former United Nations Special Commission (Unscom) chief inspector Scott Ritter, "[F]rom a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has been disarmed. Iraq today possesses no meaningful weapons of mass destruction." While it is certainly possible that Iraq has the seed stock to rebuild its purported arsenal, Ritter has said that Iraq does not currently possess the capability to produce or deploy chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. (8)

The United States only became concerned with Iraq’s military potential in 1990, after the invasion of Kuwait. The US supplied Iraq with most of its weapons. Just one day before Iraq invaded Kuwait, then-President George Bush approved and signed a shipment of advanced data transmission equipment to Iraq. The United States and Britain were the major suppliers of chemical and biological weapons to Iraq in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War, in which the United States supported both sides with weapons sales. (9)

Finally, the United States possesses, and keeps on alert, more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined. Many Iraqis and much of the international community feel that it is disingenuous of the United States-sitting atop the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, refusing to comply with international treaties or allow its weapons programs to be inspected by international experts, and being the only nation in the world ever to drop an atomic bomb-to tell Iraq what it can and cannot produce. In 1998 and 1999, the United States bombed four countries-Serbia, Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan-all in violation of international law.

UN Resolution 687, paragraph 14, calls for regional disarmament as the basis for reducing Iraq’s arsenal. By arming Iraq’s neighbors in the Middle East, the US is contravening the same UN resolution with which it maintains arguments for sustaining the sanctions. Israel possesses more than 200 thermonuclear weapons and has violated scores of UN mandates, yet the US remains silent on the UN floor with regard to this violation of international law. (10)

While the United States claims to be encouraging peace in the Middle East by destroying Iraq’s arsenal, it continues to arm Iraq’s neighbors. The list of consumers of American military technology-in the Middle East and elsewhere-reads like a "who’s who" of international terrorists, human rights violators, and dictators. The US supplies Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran with weapons and technology. All are Iraq’s neighbors and could potentially threaten its borders. US contractors also supplied most of the weapons used by the Indonesian military in its invasion and occupation of East Timor. (11)

In fact, Iraqis living under the no-fly zones are anything but protected. Civilians are frequently injured, killed, or rendered homeless by weekly and sometimes daily US-UK bombings.

Acknowledging numerous civilian casualties, the US and British forces in 1999 switched to bombs carrying concrete, instead of explosives for use near populated areas in the North. (12) In the South, bombs continue to carry explosives.

Hans von Sponeck, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq from 1998-2000, conducted an independent investigation of civilian damage from several US-British no-fly zone airstrikes in the north and south in 1999, finding 144 people killed and 446 injured that year. (13)

The bombing also complicates the humanitarian efforts of the United Nations. Aid workers have been forced to cancel trips into Kurdish and Shiite regions, and many civilians have been accidentally wounded, further burdening hospitals that are struggling to cope with daunting incidences of illness and preventable disease.

What’s more, the Kurds in northern Iraq have been subjected to occasional invasions by the Turkish army and air force, as a part of their campaign against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Last year, American and British pilots began to express frustration over the double standard:

[O]n more than one occasion [American and British pilots have] received a radio message that "there was a TSM inbound"--that is, a "Turkish Special Mission" heading into Iraq. Following standard orders, the Americans turned their planes around and flew back to Turkey.

"You'd see Turkish F-14s and F-16s inbound, loaded to the gills with munitions," [American pilot Mike Horn] said. "Then they'd come out half an hour later with their munitions expended."

When the Americans flew back into Iraqi airspace, he recalled, they would see "burning villages, lots of smoke and fire." (14)

We often hear reports that Iraq is stockpiling desperately needed medicines and other humanitarian goods. Hans von Sponeck is very clear on this issue, "It is not—I repeat, is not, and you can check with my colleagues—a premeditated act of withholding medicines from those who should have it." (15)

The problems Iraq faces in distributing medicines, as von Sponeck has laid out, are as follows:

1. There are many steps involved in procurement, causing delays and sometimes over-ordering of the same goods;
2. There’s not enough transportation;
3. The warehouses in the provinces are in bad shape;
4. The Security Council does not allow cash from the oil revenues of the program into the hands of the Iraqi authorities, so there are no funds to pay for distribution infrastructure; and
5. The pay for medical warehouse workers is insufficient, forcing them to look elsewhere to try to cover the needs of their household. (16)

There have been reports of UN approved medicines turning up in Jordan and the Kurdish region of Iran. However, it is not reasonable to judge the priorities of the Iraqi government on the actions of a few enterprising people who choose to profit at the expense of the poor and suffering Iraqi civilians. The vast majority of the humanitarian goods let into the country are not diverted to the black market.

6) Isn’t it true that Saddam Hussein’s regime fills its coffers with revenue from smuggling and then refuses to spend the money on their own people?

Intelligence sources estimate that Saddam Hussein illegally earns between
$500 million and $800 million per year selling oil on the black market (17) Even if that money was being devoted solely to constructive measures, it would not even begin to meet Iraq’s needs. Reconstructing essential infrastructure will cost $50 to $100bn, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, discussing the matter last year. (18)

Moreover, based on what we know about spending in pre-sanctions Iraq, if given complete control of their oil and other revenue, Iraq would again invest large amounts in the education and health of the majority of its people. Of course, Iraq’s pre-sanctions record of upholding essential economic and social rights of its people should be considered alongside, not in place of, its extreme violation of the civil and political rights of minority groups and dissidents and its military priorities. But it should simultaneously be recognized that the sanctions make the United Nations and its member states a party to the repression of the Iraqi people.

The Oil for Food program runs in six-month phases. Gross revenues from oil sales for Phase VIII (June 9 – December 5, 2000) ran to 9.564 billion. After deductions for war reparations and UN expenses 6.4 billion was left for the purchase of humanitarian supplies.

By the January 15^th, 2001 the Program had received only $4.265 billion worth of contracts for humanitarian supplies for Phase VIII and Oil for Food's Executive Director, Benon Sevan, noted that 'the total value of contracts received under the health sector was only $83 million, against the $624 million allocated for that sector under Phase VIII.

He was, he said, "gravely concerned with regard to the unacceptably slow rate of submission of applications" in other sectors. (19)

A Voices in the Wilderness UK delegation raised this issue with Mr. Tun Myat, the current United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, in mid-January 2001, who suggested that:

Confident in their ability to produce drugs domestically, officials had under-ordered medicines. (20)

Mayat explained this phenomenon further in a recent interview with Reuters:

"The real reason is nothing sinister," he said. It all boils down to a new Iraqi law from last October [2000], which eliminates the role of middlemen in supplying contracts to those sectors. "Many ministries here took time to readjust their purchasing procedures, sources of supplies and identification of suppliers," Myat said. "And this is probably the main reason why some of the ministries have fallen very badly behind." (21)

Mainstream press seldom reports that Iraq’s oil revenue is placed in an escrow account controlled by the UN Security Council and that some of the surplus funds in this account are the result of logjams created by Security Council refusal to approve certain contracts.

The volume of blocked items reached $3bn in February 2000 (22)--the highest ever. UN documents from February, 2000 state that The UN Security Council's 661 Sanctions Committee recently placed 32 new contracts valued at $107.8 million on hold, water treatment and electro-mechanical equipment, pipes, valves, a television transmitter, and medical machines. (23)

While the value of holds is greatly exceeded by the value of approved contracts, it is important to note that in many cases, when Iraq must purchase goods from foreign suppliers, items come in pieces. So it is possible (and common) that an item worth $2m could be put on hold, preventing essential infrastructure repairs worth billions.

What’s more, Iraq has no control over the quality of the goods that do make it into the country under the Oil for Food agreement, since the goods are paid for in advance of shipment. It is not uncommon for suppliers to take advantage of Iraq’s peculiar situation and send poor quality food and other goods.

9) How can we expect to make any meaningful change in Iraq policy if Iraq rejects out of hand whatever alternatives come to the table?

The US government characterizes Iraq’s rejection of new proposals as evidence of the Government of Iraq’s refusal to cooperate with measures intended to help their own people. Recent proposals, including the incremental easing of sanctions conditional on Iraq’s compliance with disarmament guidelines, and the more recent "smart sanctions," do not address the most urgent needs of the Iraqi people who have endured massive suffering for more than ten years.

Moreover, none of the recent proposals allow Iraq to control it’s own money. Instead, all profits from oil sales would continue to go directly into an escrow account, controlled by the UN Sanctions Committee, based in New York. This arrangement has only compounded the already monumental difficulties Iraq faces in repairing and maintaining critical infrastructure, such as the much degraded agricultural, electrical, and oil sectors.

If ordinary Iraqi people don’t acquire greatly increased purchasing power, greater availability of supplies and commodities won’t necessarily help them meet their needs. Presently, Iraqi people who are employed are paid low wages in a greatly devalued currency. To provide ordinary families with purchasing power will require refloating the Iraqi economy to generate employment* and to restore the value of the Iraqi Dinar. This requires repair of Iraq’s badly deteriorated infrastructure, especially the oil sector. We’re told repeatedly that such undertakings demand massive investments of public and private monies. It’s hard to imagine that the government of Iraq could manage such investments and repairs if it does not have control over its own oil revenues.

* An estimate given by von Sponeck in 2000 suggested an unemployment rate topping 60%. It is difficult, however, to gage accurately as an increasing number of ordinary Iraqi’s are employed through the black market.

11) What is a realistic alternative to the current policy?

The alternative to economic sanctions is termination. Termination combined with capital investment to enable the Iraqi Government to rebuild the country's capacity for electric power that is essential for the potable water, sanitation and health care, required (as in any modern urbanized country) to keep children and adults alive and well. Likewise capital is needed for all the other sectors of the economy from transportation through agriculture, industry through education and technology. (24)

Any alternative policy would have to take into account the welfare of ordinary Iraqi people, who have suffered dramatically under more than ten years of a failed policy of depravation and violence, and not just the political interests of the United States and its allies.

The isolation and alienation of Iraq, its people and its economy must be ended to restore this international partner, sadly once so cozy to the USA and others when the tragic war against Iran was applauded and actively supported in the "West". Now Iraq must be allowed and facilitated to play a positive part in international affairs. Domestically, Iraq must improve its human rights record and end violations, and institute arrangements for the Kurds to be an integrated and prosperous part of the country's economy. Iraq must rebuild its relationship with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and others in the Region. The Government of Iraq has work to do. It must allow the people of Iraq to make their own choices and in due course, and with restoration of middle class and those with professional capacities we may see political change. (25)

A first step towards such a policy would be the beginning of a "confidence-building process, initially at a low level and behind closed doors, with all protagonists at the table." (26)

An alternative policy should also be concerned not only that Iraq’s acquiring weapons of mass destruction, but with those countries and corporations who seek to arm Iraq for profit.

The United States and other members of the Security Council must also take partial responsibility for the arming of Iraq in the decades leading up to the Gulf War as well as the enormous suffering of the Iraqi people since the Gulf War in the name of Iraq’s disarmament.

1. See Unicef and Government of Iraq Ministry of Health, Child and Maternal Mortality Survey 1999: Preliminary Report (Baghdad: Unicef, 1999). Available online at http://www.unicef.org. See also WHO Resource Center, Health Conditions of the Population in Iraq Since the Gulf Crisis (Geneva: WHO, 1996). Available online at http://www.who.int.

2. See Unicef press release, "Iraq Survey Shows ‘Humanitarian Emergency,’" August 12, 1999 (Cf/doc/pr/1999/29).

3. Matthew Rothschild, interview with Denis Halliday, The Progressive 63: 2 (February 1999): 26.

4. United Nations, "Report of the Second Panel Pursuant to the Note by the President of the Security Council of 30 January 1999 (S/1999/100), Concerning the Current Humanitarian Situation in Iraq," Annex II, S/1999/356, March 30, 1999, p. 6, article 20.

5. For a list of the holds, See UN Office of the Iraq Program wesbite, http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/.

6. See Dr. Peter L. Pellett, "Sanctions, Food, Nutrition, and Health in Iraq" (pp. 151-68) and Dr. Huda S. Ammash, "Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanctions" (pp. 169-178), in Anthony Arnove ed., Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War, (Cambridge: South End Press, 2000) for references to several of these studies.

7. The US spent more than $1 billion just to operate its bombing campaign against Iraq in 1999. See Steven Lee Myers, "In Intense But Little-Noticed Fight, Allies Have Bombed Iraq All Year," New York Times, August 13, 1999.

8. Fellowship of Reconciliation, interview with Scott Ritter, Fellowship 65: 9-10 (September- October 1999): 13.

9. See Noam Chomsky, "‘What We Say Goes’: The Middle East in the New World Order," in Collateral Damage: The ‘New World Order’ at Home and Abroad, ed. Cynthia Peters (Boston: South End Press, 1992), pp. 61-64 and references; Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (New York: Harper- Collins, 1999); Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, updated ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), p. 152; Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Conflict (New York: Routledge, 1991); and Mark Phythian, Arming Iraq: How the U.S. and Britain Secretly Built Saddam’s War Machine (Boston: Northeastern UP, 1996).

10. UN Security Council Resolution 687, paragraph 14. All UN resolutions cited are available online at http://www.un.org. See Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America, and the Bomb (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1993), pp. 198-99, and Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia UP, 1998).

11. See Noam Chomsky, East Timor and the Western Democracies (Nottingham: Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, 1979), p. 2, and Matthew Jardine and Constâncio Pinto, East Timor’s Unfinished Struggle: Inside the Timorese Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1996).

12. Steven Lee Meyers, "Defter Weapon Against Iraqis: Concrete Bomb," New York Times, October 7, 1999, p. A1.

13. FAIR Action Alert, "New York Times on Iraq Airstrikes: Zero Dissent Allowed," February 23, 2001

14. Thomas E. Ricks, "Containing Iraq: A Forgotten War; As U.S. Tactics Are Softened, Questions About Mission Arise," The Washington Post, October 25, 2000.

15. Hans Von Sponeck, "Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility Delegation Report," April 5, 1999

16. Ibid

17. Pamela Hess, "Iraq smuggling oil into Turkey," UPI, February 18, 2000

18. The Economist Intelligence Unit, "Iraq Country Outlook," Country View, July 13, 2000 (http://www.eiu.com/latest/376171.asp).

19. "UN worried by Iraq's failure to spend oil income," Agence France Presse, January

18, 2001

20. See VitW UK’s website

21. "Iraqi oil-for-food no substitute for sanctions end," Reuters, January 30, 2001.

22. Anne Penketh , "Easing of Iraqi Sanctions Will Make Little Difference, Says UN," The Independent, February 21, 2001

23. "Weekly Update 28 April - 4 May, 2001," United Nations Office of the Iraq Programme Website (http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/latest/wu08May01.html).

24. Dennis Halliday, "Iraq Policy – Alternatives to Sanctions and Bombing," Red Pepper, February 2001.

25. Ibid

26. H.C. von Sponeck, "Iraq: International Sanctions and What Next?," Middle East Policy Journal, October 4, 2000.  [7]

_________________________________________________________

Another Tap-Dance If You Please, Mr. Rubin
by Drew Hamre

April 2, 2000

Note from the Editor:  SPECIAL EDITION ON IRAQ  We are privileged to bring to you a highly researched and extensively documented analysis on the economic sanctions against the population of Iraq, by Swans' contributor Drew Hamre. Here is again a solid piece that the main media keep refusing to publish. To support Hamre's analysis, I write about what those sanctions really mean in human, emotional terms, and how they are treated by Officialdom, in From Iraq to Serbia, Burying the News and our Humanness with it.  In this short piece I ask that you take a moment and send Hamre's piece to your local paper and write to your elected representatives. Please, consider doing so. In addition, I review the deafening silence in the main media in regard to Kosovo, in Madeleine Albright: "We Did The Right Thing."  Will the innocents, the powerless, remain voiceless for ever, thrown into misery and oblivion for the very few of us on Earth to enjoy a comfortable day at the Mall? Will we keep remaining oblivious to the suffering we create over and over again? Will we ever begin to resist and to answer the call of our humanness? I ask you.

*****************************************

Last September -- shortly after UNICEF released its bone-chilling survey of child mortality in Iraq -- the U.S. State Department launched a publicity offensive against (can this possibly be right?) Saddam Hussein. [1]

UNICEF had estimated an excess 500,000 Iraqi children had died since economic sanctions began, and evidence was mounting that America's policies were complicit in this epic disaster. The UN's Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq, Denis Halliday, had resigned to protest an embargo he now termed "genocidal". Other disturbing news began to register with the public. The government had, with Dickensian timing, picked the Christmas season to threaten a Catholic relief group with charges of "delivering toys and medicine" to the children of Iraq. No-fly zone bombings - ostensibly to protect the populace from Saddam - began to kill civilians with disturbing frequency. Despite this, the American mind recoiled at the notion of a public relations duel with Saddam, the Hammer of the Ayatollahs, the Beast of Baghdad. How unseemly! But the battle continues. [2]

Last month -- after an additional pair of high-ranking UN officials resigned in disgust (Halliday's successor and the head of the World Food Program), after 70 Representatives protested economic sanctions, after Democratic House Whip David Bonior (MI) termed our Iraq policies "infanticide masquerading as policy" -- the State Department's dashing spokesman, James Rubin, again renewed the PR offensive and tried to re-focus the spotlight on Saddam's brutal regime. Thus turns the spin cycle in Washington, D.C. Another tap-dance if you please, Mr. Rubin. [3]

However, as Secretary General Kofi Annan has since admitted (Star Tribune, March 25), "We are in danger of losing the argument, or the propaganda war -- if we haven’t already lost it -- about who is responsible for this situation." Mr. Annan is too self-serving by half. The argument has been lost, and the propaganda war is collapsing as a consequence.

As evidence, consider the past week or so of mainstream British media, where the BBC has twice led its 9-O’Clock Nightly News with sanctions reports, where ITV aired John Pilger’s gut-wrenching 90-minute indictment of sanctions to 3-million viewers, and where The Guardian, The New Statesman, and The Independent have each delivered a stinging series of articles.

The walls of silence are tumbling in our country, too. Last week, the press-watch group FAIR took the highly unusual step of targeting a single reporter for criticism, documenting a two-year pattern of "journalistic malpractice" by the New York Times’ Barbara Crossette. The single most influential reporter covering Iraq, Ms. Crossette has time and again shaded her reports to obscure the Iraqi tragedy, to deflect the blame, and to dehumanize the victims. In one disgusting report, Ms. Crossette went so far as to imply that the grief of Iraqi mothers was somehow synthetic, played for political effect. [4]

Given the receptivity of such reporters, it’s understandable that the State Department’s briefings have a certain careless arrogance. The most recent contains little news. It gallops into town crying "palace-building" and "oil smuggling", but it rides a gimpy, beaten horse.

The pretext for Mr. Rubin’s presentation is a set of freshly declassified satellite photos of Saddam’s palaces (and this in itself is ludicrous, as you can download your own satellite imagery of Baghdad to 2-meter resolution from the Internet). Mr. Rubin cites a figure of 2-billon dollars for palace construction, forgetting that this too is old news, planted in the press as far back as 1996 (Thomas Friedman’s article in the Times, October 13). Nor is it a particularly impactful sum, reflecting as it does WPA-like local expenditures in a country starved for hard currency and imported items. After all, the palaces are built with Iraqi cement (which they used to export), and Iraqi labor (critical to a collapsed economy where unemployment can exceed 75%). And more to the point, they were not built with oil-for-food funds, to which Saddam has absolutely no access. [5]

Contrast this with the more than 7-billion dollars that have been siphoned from oil-for-food to pay compensation and administrative costs. Our State Department feigns outrage over mid-90’s "news" of Iraqi government buildings, yet it resists all attempts to adjust the compensation payments to large oil companies and the Kuwaiti royals: last summer’s disbursements included $2.2 billion to Kuwait Oil Co. and $506 million to Saudi Arabian Texaco). The Anglo-Dutch draft of the most recent Security Council resolution sought to allow humanitarian loans from this Compensation Fund; however, even this miserly gesture was withdrawn at the insistence of the U.S. and isn’t in Resolution 1284. [6]

Wealth flows unevenly, sometimes justly, sometimes not. In this, there is no surprise and certainly no indictment particular to Baghdad.

Smuggling? For years, Iraqi tanker trucks have openly waited in 18-mile queues for entry into the Turkish frontier. For years, non-OFF traffic has flowed unchecked between Iraq and Jordan through Trebil. That Iraqi oil is smuggled and that Saddam benefits is hardly secret and hardly news. These particular smuggling routes are, in fact, tacitly supported by the U.S. because they benefit our allies (and Iraq’s historical trading partners), Jordan and Turkey. This is a cynical exercise: Mr. Rubin stirs old, ersatz mud, intending to blind us to the new protests, resignations, and disclosures. [7]

What is Mr. Rubin arguing? Is he arguing that Saddam is vile? The world knows this. Is he arguing that Saddam could do more to improve the conditions in Iraq? The world knows this. Mr. Rubin labors to state that to which Warren Zevon danced: in times of desperation, it's connections, guns, and money that hold the whip hand. We embargoed Iraq and the Ba'athists consolidated power as a matter of course. What did we expect? [8]

Absurdly, we expected revolution. From inception, the sanctions have been pitched with deliberate harshness with the intent containing Iraq and provoking regime change. 'Make the Iraqi people sufficiently miserable', our government thought, 'and we will contain Iraq without political risk and end the reign of Saddam Hussein.' Evidence of our intent abounds, in the meager oil-for-food revenue caps, the roadblocks placed before international aid workers, the constant low-density bombing, and the disruptive import holds. The latter are especially damaging; for example, it was reported this past winter that Iraq's electrical supply would leap 50% if import holds were released. [9]

We held a civilian population hostage to pressure a dictator to leave office. We punished 23-million for the crimes of 4000. And once this course was set, our hands were bloody.

Despite this, Mr. Rubin argues that Saddam is to blame for the disaster in Iraq. Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S.-negotiated wording of the latest Security Council Resolution flatly states the "fundamental objective" of sanction's proposed suspension is "improving the humanitarian situation in Iraq". The resolution itself therefore admits to the causative link between the sanctions and Iraq's humanitarian disaster.

Consider this: Iraq in 1990 had endured a decade of Saddam Hussein and was just emerging from a bloody war with Iran, yet it had a standard of living approaching that of Greece. Today, after nearly 10-years of sanctions, Iraq has collapsed into sub-Saharan poverty. [10]

Does no one in the State Department remember the consequences of Versailles? Sensible policy would end the economic embargo, extend the military sanctions while encouraging regional disarmament, all the while engaging and re-developing Iraq. But when questioned on de-linking economic and military sanctions, Mr. Rubin could only note, as he did last August, that conditions in UN-controlled Iraqi Kurdistan are better than in the UN-monitored, Saddam-controlled south. He argues causality: that Saddam has manipulated conditions, causing depredation to force an end to sanctions.

But the true story is not this simple, nor as comforting to the American conscience. UNICEF's executive director, Carol Bellamy, explained the differences in Iraqi mortality rates as follows: the Kurdish north has been receiving humanitarian assistance for longer than the remainder of Iraq, agriculture in the north is better, and evading sanctions is easier. In addition, the north receives 22% more per capita from the Oil for Food program, and gets about 10% of all UN-controlled assistance in currency, while the rest of the country receives only commodities. The north also benefits from the aid of 34 Non-Government Organizations, while in the whole rest of the country there are only 11. [11]

Moreover, Mr. Rubin's focus on regional differences obscures a larger truth: the situation in northern Iraq remains dire. Today's under-five mortality rate for northern Iraq is roughly equivalent to the rate observed in the whole of Iraq 20-years ago. The current under-five mortality rate for northern Iraq -- 72 -- remains more than double the rate for most neighboring countries. For example, the rate for Saudi Arabia is only 30; for Iran, 37; for Syria, 34; and for Jordan, 25. [12]

These are bloodless statistics, but they mask a vast human tragedy. A single point's increase in these rates represents an annual toll of hundreds of children who would be hale but became ill; who visited the hospital instead of their friends; who were buried rather than returning home. Mr. Rubin implies these results are the intention of our policies ... that the figures for Northern Iraq illustrate how sanctions should "work".

These words should haunt Mr. Rubin as he retires from government service, still young and fleet of wit, a handsome man with a glamorous wife (CNN’s Christiana Amanpour), a corrupt man who used his celebrity to quell the press and charm them from an ugly truth.

So again, Mr. Rubin, another pirouette if you please. But you are dancing on the bodies of children.

===

[1] UNICEF's massive survey of 40,000 Iraqi households was released August 12, 1999; (see http://www.unicef.org/reseval/iraqr.htm.) The State Department responded almost immediately in a press conference with Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Jones' (see http://www.usia.gov/regional/nea/gulfsec/jones813.htm). The major response, though, came on September 13, in a report and briefing by State Department Spokesman James Rubin and Assistant Secretary Martin Indyk (report: http://www.usia.gov/regional/nea/iraq/iraq99.htm; transcript: http://www.state.gov/www/policy_remarks/1999/990913_indyk_rubin.html). The characterization - "publicity offensive" -- was actually used by the Washington Post: "U.S. Says Saddam Diverts Aid" by John Lancaster, September 14, 1999; Page A19.

[2] UNICEF's 'excess death' estimate is detailed in the report section, "A note on the estimation of under-five deaths" (see above link). Also see Ms. Bellamy's prepared statement at http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm. Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday - a man of immense dignity and integrity -- ended a 34-year diplomatic career to protest sanctions. Transcripts of his speeches are available here http://www.scn.org/ccpi/, here http://welcome.to/casi/, and here http://www.leb.net/iac/denis.html. Voices in the Wilderness has organized repeated trips to Iraq; they were threatened with fines totaling well into six-figures on December 27, 1998 http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/hearthevoices.html. AFP estimates the no-fly zone bombing have claimed 156 lives since the end of Desert Fox... roughly equivalent to the toll for the Oklahoma City Bombing (168).

[3] The Campbell/Conyers protest letter and the signatories are available at http://www.adc.org. The UN resignations were of Count Hans Von Sponeck (the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq) and Jutta Burghardt (head of the World Food Program in Iraq). Count Von Sponeck’s resignation ended a 32-year diplomatic career. Bonior's quote was reported by both the BBC and the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/25/097l-022500-idx.html. Rubin's briefing occurred February 29, and is available here (transcript: http://secretary.state.gov/www/briefings/0002/000229db.html) and here, as an update to the earlier report, "Saddam Hussein's Iraq" http://www.usia.gov/regional/nea/iraq/iraq99.htm.

[4] FAIR’s report is here: http://www.fair.org/extra/0003/crossette-iraq.html. Ms. Crossette’s imputation of synthetic grief came in her summary of the UNICEF report (“"Children's Death Rates Rising in Iraqi Lands, Unicef Reports" by Barbara Crossette, August 13, 1999).

[5] The satellite photos are available from http://www.terraserver.com/ (just plug Baghdad into the 'Find' box). The 2-billion figure appeared in a Thomas Friedman article in the New York Times on October 13, 1996, Page E-13 (see Footnote 90 here: http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/inss/books/sanctions/chapter1.html).

[6] The latest oil-for-food financials are available on the UN’s ‘Office of the Iraq Programme’ site (http://www.un/org/depts/oip/). The disbursements were listed in an AP story dated July 13, 1999: “UN Awards $2.8 Billion to Oil Cos.” The Anglo-Dutch draft and an analysis of SCR1284 are available on CASI’s site: http://www.welcome.to/casi/.

[7] The 18-mile traffic jams at the Turkish border were reported by The Economist (February 12th-18th, 2000) in the article, "One man's joy in Iraq". The unchecked crossing at Trebil was recounted in an interview with Hans Von Sponeck (http://www.scn.org/ccpi/vonsponeck.html).

[8] It is, of course, actually "Lawyers, Guns, and Money" by Zevon.

[9] Contract holds on imported goods have been a repeated source of friction between UN officials and the U.S. Refer to the numerous reports of the Office of the Iraq Programme, online at http://www.un.org/depts/oip/. The remark about Iraq's electrical supply was made by the head of the program, Benon Sevan, in the '180 Day Report' released in November, 1999.

[10] SCR-1284 appears here: http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/scrs/scr1284-99.htm. The statement of causality occures in Section D, Paragraph 33. The Security Council commissioned a special panel to report on the humanitarian effect of sanctions, and their report (published March 30, 1999) contains exhaustive comparisons of Iraq prior to the Gulf War versus today. See http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/panelrep.htm)

[11] Ms. Bellamy's comments were reported by the Associated Press, August 12, 1999. The remaining information is per personal communication with Professor Richard Garfield of Coumbia University. Garfield is an epidemiologist who studies the health effects of sanctions; he can be reached at [garfier@cuson-sph.cpmc.columbia.edu]; his office phone is 212-305-3248.

[12] Mr.Rubin's briefing for August 12, 1999 (http://secretary.state.gov/www/briefings/9908/990812db.html): "It is our view that the fact that in Northern Iraq, the infant morality rate is improving with the same sanctions regime under the rest of Iraq shows that in places where Saddam Hussein isn't manipulating the medicines and the supplies, that this works." Data for Iraq's north and center/south are from UNICEF's recent surveys, available online at http://www.unicef.org/reseval/iraqr.htm. From each region's respective report, data are pulled from "Table 3" on page 10. Under-five mortality rates are as follows:

   Iraq's Center/South        Northern Iraq
1994-99       131                     72
1989-94        92                      90
1984-89        56                      80
1979-84        67                     104

Non-Iraq statistics are from http://www.unicef.org/statis/index.html. As a further frame of reference, the USA's U5 mortality rate is 8; the UK's, 7.

Drew Hamre is a peace activist from Minnesota. He can be reached at drew.hamre@rainier.com.  [8]

_________________________________________________________

From: Ali Abunimah
To: morning@npr.org
Subject: Lies about Iraq

March 7, 2000

Dear NPR News,

Bob Edward's interview on Morning Edition today, with Patrick Clawson of the AIPAC offshoot Washington Institute for Near East Policy, presented a pack of lies and propaganda to the public. Edwards enabled this and did nothing to challenge outright falsehoods.

It must be said that NPR can no longer pretend to have any commitment to honest reporting about Iraq. With this kind of performance you discredit yourselves completely.

I will take the lies, falsehoods and deceptive omissions in order of appearance.

Edwards introduced the segment:

"The United Nations economic sanctions on Iraq are in their ninth year. They require the United Nations to approve all of Iraq's imports and exports, including oil. Some critics say the sanctions have caused widespread food shortages among Iraqi citizens and should be lifted. But Patrick Clawson research director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy says the sanctions should remain in place. He blames Iraq's president Saddam Hussein for suffering by Iraq's people."

This disingenuous introduction omits to mention that the criticism of the sanctions comes from senior UN officials who administer programs on the ground in Iraq, and 70 members of Congress, such as House Minority Whip David Bonior, who recently called the sanctions "infanticide masquerading as policy." And what about the many UN reports over the years who have confirmed and provided the hard data for what these people are saying? Is it fair to equate this body of opinion with the--as we shall see--baseless assertions of Mr. Clawson? Is this what you call "balance"?

Clawson begins: "The tragedy is that Iraq is actually a relatively well to do country. Even under current sanctions, Iraq's income is quite a bit higher for instance than that of its neighbor Syria. Iraq's income is much higher than most countries in Africa, and yet the suffering in Iraq is quite intense because Saddam Hussein's government doesn't really care about the suffering of ordinary Iraqis."

Let us unpack this pack of.... By all accounts, Iraq has descended from being a highly developed country to being at a level of poverty near that of subharan Africa. Mr. Clawson's argument that all the suffering is due to the evil Saddam doesn't hold much water. Prior to the sanctions Iraq was at a very high level of social and economic development. Its health system was the best in the region, and its universities produced graduates and professionals who were sought all over the Middle East. But all along Iraq had exactly the same government headed by exactly the same Saddam Hussein. Mr. Hussein was not better, he did not respect human rights more, and he was not more peace-loving. He was the same. The only difference was at that time, he was a US ally, fighting dreaded Iran, and receiving American support.

Clawson admits "There's clearly quite a lot of malnutrition in Iraq. The Iraqi government exaggerates the extent but there's no question that people are indeed starving to death."

Now supposing the Iraqi government exaggerates the extent, are the UN findings that one in five Iraqi children go to bed hungry also too high? How much malnutrition would be enough for Mr. Clawson?

Clawson continues: "The United Nations' oil for food program allows Iraq to bring in more than enough food. In fact 2300 hundred calories a day which is more than the US government says is a healthy diet for people. But the Iraqi government does not distribute the food well and the Iraqi government withholds the food from some parts of the country where it doesn't like the people."

Mr. Clawson cannot and did not cite any evidence for this claim, nor was he asked for any. Because the facts are totally opposite to what he says. The UN officials who administer the UN program in Iraq, agree that the reason Iraqis are starving is because the program itself is insufficient. Hans von Sponeck, the humanitarian aid coordinator who just resigned, said that the program has not met the Iraqi people's "minimum requirements" and could not provide more than an average of 49 cents per day of needed food and medicine to Iraqis. Jutta Burghardt, a World Food Program official who resigned soon after Sponeck, agreed with this and said "I fully support what Mr. von Sponeck was saying." (AFP, February 16, 2000)

This goes right to the heart of the frequently repeated but evidenceless State Department charges that the oil for food program is enough, but is not working because Iraq's government withholds supplies. In July last year, von Sponeck responded to these charges, saying "We have no evidence there is a conscious withholding of medicines ordered by the government." (Reuters, July 22, 1999) There are reported problems distributing food as one would expect when Iraq's transport facilities are so degraded.

Latching on to Clawson's tone, Edwards asks: "What is Saddam Hussein doing with his oil profits if he's not feeding his people?" This is a crucial question which Clawson doesn't answer. Instead, he says, "Saddam uses his $6 billion in personal wealth and he uses the money from smuggling oil out of Iraq outside of UN control to bring in luxury goods. For instance he's had $2 billion in construction on new palaces for himself since the gulf war. And to bring in military related items that are banned by the UN imports."

If Clawson had answered the question, he would have had to say that all of the revenue from Iraq's oil sales under the UN resolutions goes into UN escrow accounts. It is this revenue that accounts for the vast bulk of Iraq's nominal income, but none of it goes to the Iraqi government. From the UN accounts, approximately thirty percent is immediately deducted to pay UN costs and reparations. The rest is disbursed by the UN with the approval of the sanctions committee. The US, rather than trying to facilitatie the operation of this program, as Clawson claims, uses its position on the sanctions committee to block billions of dollars in contracts for supplies and equipment to Iraq.

As for Clawson's assertions about the palaces, this is stuff and nonsense that comes from the State Department. When Edwards asks how it is known that Iraq has spent $2 billion on palaces, the best Clawson can come up with is to say:

"Well we can look at these very impressive buildings that he's built and make an estimate how much it would cost to build them and that estimate is particularly informed by the inspections of these palaces which took place by the UN after a long charade about whether or not Saddam was hiding some of his weapons of mass dfestruction in those palaces."

First of all, the US government routinely calls any government building in Iraq a "palace," in an attempt to make us imagine a Disney-like Arabian wonderland of harems and veils, and its claims about new construction dubious. Secondly, the US estimates are ludicrous. They are obviously based on what it would cost to build equivalent government buildings at United States prices and they take no account of the fact that salaries and wages in Iraq have collapsed to the point where a doctor or a teacher earns two dollars a month. How much do you think a construction worker makes? Iraq's current GDP is estimated to be a fraction of its pre-sanctions level of about $60 billion. Let us generously put it at $20 billion today. How large would these "palaces" have to be to absorb an amount equivalent to 10% of GDP? They would, I suppose have to be visible from space with the naked eye. The estimates about Saddam Hussein's personal wealth are similarly suspicious and have no credibility whatsoever.

Edwards asks: "And he [Saddam] continues to make weapons and bring in equipment to do that?" Clawson replies, "It's not so clear if he's making the weapons or just stockpiling the stuff so that he could make the weapons once the world's attention is not so carefully focussed on him."

It would have been useful for Mr. Edwards to recall the words of Assistant US Secretary of State Martin Indyk, who in a no doubt inadvertent moment of honesty declared at a September 13, 1999 press conference, "You know, we do not at this point have evidence of any kind of action to reconstitute those weapons of mass destruction." Where does Mr. Clawson get his superior intelligence from?

As for the military materials being smuggled in, how are they getting there? The US patrols all the seaways, and all cargos to the Jordanian port of Aqaba are inspected by Lloyds of London, and nothing has been found. Mr. Clawson is right that Iraq smuggles oil, and Iraq does this in open defiance of the sanctions. I expect any country subjected to such an embargo would do the same. But what is clear is that the United States turns a blind eye to smuggling when it is done to the benefit of its allies, such as Turkey, or by the Kurdish groups whom Washington has tried to coopt.

Clawson also states: "And Saddam's got this program we turned a blind eye to, selling about $300 million of oil each year to Jordan."

This is outrageous. Iraq's oil sales to Jordan occur under the full view and consent of the United Nations, because Jordan has no other source of oil. Jordan officially informs the United Nations sanctions committee of the arrangments every year. Should Jordan's people also be subject to the sanctions? And of the 4.8 million tonnes of oil Iraq will supply to Jordan in 2000, under the terms of an agreement signed by the two countries in January, half is being given free of charge, and the other half at a heavily discounted price of $19 per barrel.

Finally Edward asks: "What can the United States or the United Nations do about all this?"

Then comes the biggest lie of all. Clawson: "The United States' focus has been on trying to get the oil for food program to work better and emphasising more access to Iraq by humanitarian organizations and trying to shame Saddam's government by exposing just how much he has put impediments in the way of the effective functioning of this oil for food program."

How exactly does the United States achieve these ends? By blocking billions of dollars of "oil for food" contracts? By personally villifying UN humanitarian officials who have the honesty and integrity to state what they see? By making it illegal for US citizens to travel to Iraq and take medicine and supplies with them?

A dimension of the sanctions you have refused to cover, ever, is that they violate human rights. Under their present government, Iraqis enjoy no political or civil rights. But the UN sanctions add to that by stripping them of the economic and social rights they did enjoy, and which are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

It really is all too much. It is beyond comprehension that you air this kind of garbage over the testimony and scientific evidence of the UN, of international agencies, of countless experts on nutrition and health who have been to Iraq since 1990, and to the testimony even of some of your journalistic colleagues who unlike NPR make an effort to seek out the truth.

I have heard many appalling reports on NPR over the years, but this segment was really as low as you have gone in a long time.

Sincerely,

Ali Abunimah
ahabunim@midway.uchicago.edu  [9]

_________________________________________________________

How the Sanctions Hurt Iraq

Colin Rowat

(Colin Rowat is a lecturer in economics at the University of Birmingham, UK.)

August 2, 2001

PIN 65

Over May and June 2001, the US, British, French and Russian governments all proposed alterations to the eleven-year old UN sanctions on Iraq. Consensus was not reached, and the Security Council extended, unmodified, the Oil for Food program that allows Iraq to sell its oil to import civilian goods. As the extension expires in December, the proposals for reforming the sanctions are likely to resurface later this year. Since concerns about the sanctions often center on their harm to Iraqi civilians, the economic and humanitarian implications of the new proposals must be considered. The US-UK proposal -- officially promoted as "smart sanctions" -- may have some positive effects on civilian life, but it fails to address the current sanctions' major sources of harm. Sanctions, of course, intentionally harm to obtain political gains; what those gains might be is not considered here.

TWENTY YEARS OF TRAUMA

The past 20 years have been economically traumatic for Iraq. Almost the entire Iraqi gross domestic product in the 1980s was consumed by the 1980-88 war with Iran . War's end fueled Iraqis' expectations of rising prosperity, but left the government deeply in debt, pursued by creditors and trying to absorb a large conscript army into a diminished and distorted civilian economy, dependent upon migrant labor and imports. The government's austerity program, undertaken to reduce its debt, exacerbated serious economic difficulties. Kuwait's violation of its OPEC quotas helped lower oil prices significantly throughout 1990, worsening the crisis. Iraq's subsequent invasion of Kuwait seems at least partly a desperate bid to stave off economic collapse, by boosting oil prices, securing new sources of revenue and signaling a tough bargaining stance to other regional creditors.

The gamble failed. Oil prices jumped 50 percent in August 1990 alone, but sanctions kept the windfall out of Iraq's coffers. The ensuing Gulf war destroyed more of Iraq's civilian infrastructure than had years of war with Iran. A decade of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council has prevented any real economic recovery, both directly and by politicizing economic and humanitarian issues.

At first, the sanctions were nearly total. The Security Council granted exemptions only to import "supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs" . The Iraqi government rejected a prototype "oil for food" program later that year, in part because the proposed amounts of oil sales were insufficient to restore Iraqi social services to pre-war levels . The Security Council consciously overrode then Secretary-General Javier Prez de Cullar's recommendation to permit larger sales. For the next five years, Iraq traded on a largely ad hoc basis, under a variety of arrangements approved by the UN Sanctions Committee. In 1996, unable to stop the worsening humanitarian crisis, the Iraqi government accepted a slightly larger Oil for Food program. The Security Council has extended the program since then, raising and then removing the cap on permitted oil sales, extending permissible imports to include oil industry spare parts and streamlining its procedures.

TODAY'S CONSTRAINTS

The sanctions directly reduce Iraq's potential exports and, hence, income. Non-oil exports are forbidden. As such exports accounted for a small share of Iraq's pre-sanctions exports, this prohibition may have a small effect. Nevertheless, it reduces income and employment, speeding the loss of skills among Iraq's workers and encouraging their emigration.

In theory, Oil for Food now permits unlimited oil exports. But in practice, the Iraqi oil industry has decayed under sanctions. Peak production under Oil for Food remains below the pre-sanctions peak (2.765 million barrels per day instead of 3.5 million) and cannot be sustained without large investments in equipment and skilled labor. Since 1998, Iraq's oil industry has ordered $2.3 billion of the $3 billion in spare parts allowed it, and received $793 million of them . Given these limited inputs to date, UN oil experts report that the industry "continues to face significant technical and infrastructural problems, which unless addressed will inevitably result in the reduction of crude oil production from the current levels" .

The sanctions also cripple Iraq's once large public sector. Revenues from Iraq's nationalized oil industry once paid public sector salaries, something now forbidden. Increased smuggling and domestic taxes cannot fully offset this loss, in part because Iraq's domestic tax base remains small. As Iraq's military and security apparatus almost certainly are paid first from these funds, the rest of the public sector suffers the most from today's smaller budgets.

The UN Secretary-General's Oil for Food reports hint at the effects. The most recent warned of "pronounced disincentives to the academic cadres," and noted that oil spare parts were piling up . Poorly paid teachers and oil workers must supplement their small incomes, often at the expense of full attention to their formal jobs. Similar problems affect nurses, doctors, engineers, warehouse managers and other civil servants. Working without proper equipment, often part-time, their expensive skills decline. Some observers worry that the breakdown in formal employment is breeding a culture of opportunism and corruption.

CIVILIAN INFRASTRUCTURE

Civilian infrastructure has suffered disproportionately from lack of maintenance and investment. For example, Iraq's electrical sector is barely holding production steady at one third its 1990 capacity even though government expenditure in this sector consistently exceeds plans . Electrical shortages, worst during the hot summers, spoil food and medicine and stop water purification, sewage treatment and irrigated agriculture, interfering with all aspects of life. Last summer, a power plant accident threatened a catastrophic failure of the national grid .

In 1991, the UN estimated that Iraq's electrical sector needed $12 billion ($16 billion in 2001 dollars ) to return to pre-war levels. With depreciation and population growth, electrical repairs alone could consume much of the $27 billion that Oil for Food has generated for Iraq to date. While the Iraqi government has occasionally curtailed its UN-approved oil sales and does have smuggling revenue, the point remains: Iraq's productive capacity is such that restoring its civilian infrastructure to pre-war levels will take a long time.

Foreign investment, which could speed reconstruction, is forbidden by sanctions. Even were it allowed, debt reduction would be necessary to attract investors. Iraq's pre-sanctions debts may now be $120 billion . A further $23 billion in damages for invading Kuwait has been assessed; if the remaining $204 billion in claims are as successful as past claims were, they will add another $70 billion . Even without the remaining claims, Iraq's debt is 450 percent of its GDP , beating Mozambique, which tops the World Bank's list (which excludes Iraq).

SANCTIONS BUSTED

Perhaps surprisingly, the sanctions do not seem to obstruct Iraq's import of civilian goods. Jordan, Turkey, Iran and Syria bypass UN controls. In Jordan's case, this dates to 1991, when independent economists found little price difference between Jordan and Iraq for wheat flour and other staple foods, meaning that it was not costly to import goods across their border . Iraqi hardship is not a function of externally sealed borders, but of the factors raised above, such as poverty and destruction of civilian infrastructure. To impoverished Iraqis, the goods in Baghdad's shops may be as unattainable as if they were on display in Amman.

Smuggling is attractive to the extent that UN-permitted trade is not. For security and political reasons, the Sanctions Committee often places contracts for items that could be used to rebuild infrastructure on hold. Potential suppliers may face inexplicable delays of uncertain duration, interfering with their production plans. To ensure UN control of Iraq's oil funds, the Committee also removes commercial protection clauses from import contracts, leaving Iraq without recourse if a contract's terms are violated. The Iraqi government could reduce, but not remove, the commercial protection problem by contracting more with reputable, rather than politically expedient, suppliers.

Apart from the material harm done by sanctions, the perception that they are harmful is itself harmful, reducing Iraqis' expectations and therefore the government's incentives to meet them. Equally, the indirect nature of sanctions' harm reduces pressure on Security Council members to acknowledge responsibility for, and perhaps reduce, their harmfulness.

"SMART SANCTIONS"

The US-UK proposal for self-proclaimed "smart sanctions" streamlines import procedures. Potential imports currently fall into one of three categories: goods subject to "fast track" approval, "dual-use" items and other non-military items. The Sanctions Committee handles items in the last two categories; the Office of the Iraq Program processes those in the first. The US-UK proposal abolishes the third category, dividing its domain between the remaining two. This plan would also tighten border controls to reduce smuggling.

Neither measure addresses the sanctions' principal means of harm. Its expansion of the "fast track" is economically beneficial but likely of limited significance: smuggling circumvented the sanctions as early as 1991. Although "fast track" procedures began in March 2000, their effect on the arrival of goods in Iraq is unknown. The effect may be small as the "fast track" has largely applied to goods not previously delayed by the Committee. Also, the expansion of the "dual-use" category may worsen matters, given the US history of using this category to block imports.

The proposed tightened borders could have detrimental effects on Iraqi civilians. As only 72 percent of Iraq's Oil for Food sales are used to meet civilian needs (25 percent going to compensation claims and 2.2 percent to UN expenses), converting smuggling to Oil for Food trade could reduce the money available to meet them. A smuggled dollar is also more flexible than an Oil for Food dollar: it can pay salaries and other cash expenses, and can avoid the UN's potentially costly procedures. These concerns can almost certainly be dismissed: smuggled oil is usually sold at a discount, reducing the money that it generates for Iraq; regime members, rather than the public, receive much of the ensuing revenue; and reputable foreign companies may avoid smuggling.

There is a more likely side effect of reduced smuggling: Iraq's Kurdish regional authorities risk losing revenue gained by smuggling diesel from south-central Iraq to Turkey. However, as the Turkish and Iraqi governments are discussing a direct trade route, this may occur independently of UN proposals.

If, in spite of these drawbacks, the US and UK successfully present their proposal as ending sanctions' harm, the Iraqi government may face heightened expectations to alleviate civilian suffering. Presumably, the US and UK would then face less pressure to lighten sanctions' burden.

The US-UK proposal's economic and humanitarian consequences are highly uncertain, but unlikely to be large. The French proposal goes further in reducing the sanctions' economic constraints: it would give Iraq's oil industry cash to pay salaries and would permit foreign investment; it sidelines tightening of the borders. The Russian proposal suspends all non-military sanctions once weapons inspectors return to Iraq. For better or worse, this proposal goes furthest towards ending the sanctions' restrictions.  [10]

_________________________________________________________

Sources:

[1] http://www.webcom.com/hrin/parker/c97-5w.html

[2] http://www.iacenter.org/iraqchallenge/isc4_du1.htm

[3] http://www.iacenter.org/depleted/metal_leftbooks.htm

[4] http://www-tech.mit.edu/V120/N25/col25smith.25c.html

[5] http://pilger.carlton.com/print/other_art

[6] http://leb.net/IAC/factsandmyths/index.shtml

[7] http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/FAQII.html

[8] http://www.swans.com/library/art6/zig045.html

[9] http://www.abunimah.org/nprletters/000307clawson.html

[10] http://www.merip.org/pins/pin65.html

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