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The following article has been printed in Canada's new newspaper, the National Post. The paper has positioned itself as very right-wing. Canadians on the list may want to try to respond to the article. Colin Rowat Coordinator, Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/casi *********************************************** * Support the: * * NATIONAL PETITION AGAINST SANCTIONS ON IRAQ * * http://go.to/iraqpetition * * or: 12 Trinity Road, London N2 8JJ * *********************************************** King's College Cambridge CB2 1ST tel: +44 (0)468 056 984 England fax: +44 (0)1223 335 219 ********************************************************************** Thursday, August 19, 1999 Why lifting sanctions won't help Iraqis Alexander Rose National Post Eight years after the imposition of sanctions, Iraq is a rusting, battered hulk whose defenceless population has lost 600,000 children to starvation. Or so we've been led to believe by well-meaning charities, government agencies, and, rather incongruously, the Russians (who, because sanctions prohibit money transfers, are owed billions for arms sales). A UNICEF report released last week paints a haunting picture of the situation: Children under five are dying at more than twice the rate they were 10 years ago. To be exact, the figure is 131 deaths per 1,000 live births, placing Iraq neatly between Haiti (132) and Pakistan (136). This is, of course, a tragically high mortality rate, but even in the boomtime before the Gulf War, when oil dollars bestowed immense riches, Iraq's mortality rate was 56 per 1,000 -- a figure roughly the same as Guyana and Namibia nowadays. Not terrific, in other words. Moreover, the oft-heard "statistic" that sanctions have killed 600,000 children is a myth. It all began in 1995, when two researchers from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), whose report had heavily relied on Iraqi government figures, asserted in The Lancet that 567,000 children had died, a story quickly picked up by The New York Times and CBS's 60 Minutes. Virtually overnight, an FAO extrapolation based on nothing more than a sampling of 36 infant deaths and 245 child deaths (as skeptical Canadian academics revealed), had turned into Gospel truth. Peace groups, as usual, inflated even these inflated figures, and somehow arrived at a total of one million dead. Yet, what is left unmentioned is that the Iraqi population has exploded by 29% (!) over the past seven years, from 17.9 million to 23.1 million, and that the crude death rate per 1,000 has stayed unchanged at nine in both pre-sanctions 1990 and 1996. Undeniably, Iraqis have suffered grievously since 1991 -- mostly from unbalanced diets -- but they are not "starving," as newspapers so heatedly write. According to the latest UN Secretary-General's Report, the oil-for-food program (which includes spare parts, medicine, power facilities, water/sanitation installations and the like) is close to achieving a food basket of 2,200 kilocalories per adult per day. By way of comparison, Health & Welfare Canada (1990) recommends a daily average of 2,500 kilocalories for men between 25 and 74, and 1,850 for women in the same age range. This works out to be an average of 2,175 kilocalories per adult per day. The problem of malnutrition and material privation, therefore, stems from Saddam Hussein's control over its distribution. Sanctions, unfortunately, are blunt instruments that punish the innocent but fall lightly upon the guilty -- Saddam Hussein is estimated by Forbes magazine to be worth $5-billion (US), the source of which is delicately explained as "oil, investments," rather than "bleeding country dry." Nevertheless, so long as he, or his gruesome family and functionaries, remain in charge of Iraq -- without divesting themselves of its illegal chemical/biological stockpiles and desisting from the quest for nuclear weaponry -- it would be foolhardy to lift sanctions for the illusory goal of alleviating the Iraqis' plight. Besides rewarding Saddam for cheating UN weapons inspectors, permitting the Iraqi dictator to export his old daily quota of three million barrels of oil would generate, even at the current depressed price of crude, tens of billions of dollars in revenues. Certainly, if the Iraqi regime was a stable, rational one, the resulting windfall could be turned to good use for the people's benefit. But it isn't, and it won't. It is sometimes forgotten that Iraq, though severely wounded during Desert Storm, is still armed to the teeth, and remains the most menacing state in the Gulf. Traditionally, military spending has occupied prime place in the Iraqi leadership's affections: Even in 1998, 17% of Iraq's gross domestic product was devoted to military expenditures, compared with sanctionless Iran's 1.3%. Moreover, Saddam Hussein's arms imports in the years before the Gulf War were enormous relative to total imports and GDP. Saddam Hussein will blow his petrodollars on buying modern arms from the Russians to replace his ageing stock. In the absence of sanctions, could there be any easier way for Saddam Hussein to acquire the final pieces of technology and material he needs to build the Bomb? Could there be any more obvious way of destabilizing the entire Middle East as allowing Iraq to rearm aggressively? The only way to lift sanctions and help the Iraqi people simultaneously is for the West and its allies in the main democratic opposition organization, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to overthrow Saddam Hussein and destroy his whole apparatus of tyranny. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton, the U.S. president, has lately been toning down his support of the INC to ensure a quiet final year in office. Wish him well, but who's paying for it? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Please do not sent emails with attached files to the list *** Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html ***