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A public note of appreciation to CASI's coordinator, Colin Rowat, for his excellent letter which appears in the latest Economist (below). I've also attached the article to which Colin was responding. --- The Economist (20th November 1999). Letters to the Editor Unsanctioned SIR-Sanctions are the worst-defined of policy instruments ("Unsatisfactory sanctions", November 6th). To cover the expulsion of ambassadors, prohibitions on sporting teams, arms embargoes and economic warfare with the same word is to strip it of its meaning. As a result, I would accept your claim that lifting sanctions unilaterally is unwise if you mean removing the arms embargo on Iraq. However, if you are arguing that we should continue to inflict hardship on the people of a regime that we claim cares not a whit for them, then I would disagree with you. According to Unicef, nine years of economic warfare against Iraq has seen a doubling of child- and infant-mortality rates. At the same time, Forbes reports that Saddam Hussein is the sixth-richest head of state in the world. You seem concerned that this same man, who claimed victory after losing the Gulf war, might continue to do so if we decide that our policy has led to unacceptable costs. Let him claim victory; let us adhere to higher standards. Is this a risk? There are good reasons to believe that deterrence, which has held superpowers at bay, is quite sufficient to hold the leader of this small country in check. COLIN ROWAT Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq Cambridge --- The Economist (November 6 1999, page 47) DON'T TRICK OR TREAT SADDAM Sanctions against Iraq no longer have a clear purpose, the Iraqi opposition is more muddle than threat, Saddam Hussein is sitting quite comfortably (New York) THERE were two costume parties in the Sheraton Manhattan hotel in New York on October 31st. On one side of a corridor, children dressed as skeletons and pirates and witches competed for party favours; on the other, Arab chieftains in flowing robes and baggy-trousered Kurds performed for prizes from the American government. For the first time since 1992, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an umbrella group for the Iraqi opposition, convened a mass assembly to show its strength and make a bid for American patronage. American officials and congressmen duly queued up to pledge support. But the idea that the INC-or for that matter, the continuing negotiations in the UN Security Council-would bring an end to the painful nine-year stand-off with Iraq seemed as fantastical as the children's outfits across the hall. For one thing, American support for the opposition is more bark than bite. Last year, after much congressional prodding, President Bill Clinton signed a law offering $97m-worth of training and equipment to the opposition. But it took the government a year to cough up anything at all, and even then it provided only $5m-worth of office equipment and coaching in "civilian-military relations", rather than the hoped-for arms and military training. American officials insist that certain tasks-such as uniting the multitude of different opposition factions and agreeing on a vision of Iraq's future-must be completed before any practical effort can be made to dislodge President Saddam Hussein. The trouble is that such tasks are virtually impossible. Thomas Pickering, a senior State Department official, did promise further American bombing raids if there were "major" Iraqi offensives against Shia rebels in southern Iraq, but his wording left plenty of wiggle room. Even the INC's allies in Congress seem to view the group less as a future government of Iraq than as a ready-to-hand means of spooking Mr Hussein. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given such tepid American support, the INC has a hard time making itself look serious. The main Shia opposition groups, who mount a more credible resistance operation inside Iraq than any of their rivals, have refused to join. Although the powerful Kurdish militias that run an autonomous zone in northern Iraq showed up in New York, they made no secret of their scepticism. They refused to let the meeting take place in their territory, their representatives said, because America refused to guarantee security. If America is not willing to stick its neck out, they argue, why should they? Many of Mr Hussein's internal and external enemies share their misgivings. Meanwhile, America seems to be making only marginal progress in the Security Council. It is trying to reinstate the UN arms-control regime from which Iraq withdrew in protest at an American and British bombing campaign last December. A recent British and Dutch proposal, supported by the Americans, insists that the Iraqis provide a more thorough account of their nastier weapons programmes, and allow international inspectors to return to Iraq. In return, it envisages a slight loosening of the economic embargo. Until now, Russia, Iraq's closest ally on the council, has been demanding the suspension of sanctions as the price of restarting inspections. Although the Americans and British have won over much of the council, and talk excitedly of putting a new resolution to the vote by late November, the veto-wielding Russians have not yet given in. Even if they eventually do, Iraq has said that it will never allow the inspections to resume on American-British terms-and, indeed, there is no reason to believe that a new inspection scheme would be more successful than its predecessor was in its last controversial years. So, in all likelihood, the impasse will drag on-and so will sanctions. But the sanctions regime, too, is in need of repair. Keeping things as they are is not only cruel to the Iraqi people but also props up their cruel dictator. Since 1996, in an attempt to mitigate the crushing effects of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis, the Security Council has allowed Iraq to sell some oil to pay for humanitarian supplies. But Iraq's debilitated oil industry could not produce enough oil to cover the cost of even basic food and medicine, while its infrastructure is too run-down to allow proper distribution and storage of what little could be bought. So, gradually, oil-for-food's scope has been increased to cover repairs to oil facilities, power and water-treatment plants, and agricultural equipment. Medicine now ranks only fifth on the list of expenditure. As the aims of the oil-for-food programme get more technical, so do the imports needed to meet them. This increasingly conflicts with the determination to prevent Iraq from laying its hands on any technology that could conceivably be put to military use. Under oil-for-food's rules, Security Council members can veto any contract they deem suspect. The Americans and British have put contracts worth more than $600m on hold, to the consternation of UN officials. Technology as inoffensive as a Pentium II processor, an outdated computer chip, is considered too dangerous to allow into Iraqi hands. But, making nonsense of this ultra-caution, there is nothing to prevent an Iraqi driving to Jordan, buying a carful of newer computers and bringing them home with him. The longer that sanctions on Iraqi oil sales continue, the more damaged, and damaging, the system looks. The Security Council brought in oil-for-food in an effort to fix the embargo's manifest shortcomings. Now the repair job itself needs mending. Yet further reforms to oil-for-food are caught up in the broader Security Council impasse.The sad, muddled stand-off could haunt the world for several Halloweens to come. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full archive and list instructions are available from the CASI website: http://welcome.to/casi