|
The Nation
EXCHANGE
| January
21, 2002
Killing
Sanctions in Iraq
New Haven, Conn.
David Cortright's "A Hard Look at Iraq
Sanctions" [Dec. 3] was a slick attempt to defend a ten-year war against
innocent civilians. Cortright charges that the
number of dead is commonly overestimated by critics of sanctions, usually
alleged to be a million. He claims the most reliable studies estimate that
the number of Iraqi children under 5 who died is actually 350,000. Curiously,
he makes no attempt to estimate the number of children over 5 who perished,
or the elderly who died of malnutrition or the sick adults finished off by
lack of medicine. If Cortright is correct and
critics (who base their figures on UN and NGO studies) are wrong, that's
wonderful news indeed. Hundreds of thousands presumed dead are still alive.
But why is he doing The James Rubin, figuring out every which way to blame
the Iraqis for what is being done to them?
He says the sanctions would have ended if Iraq had been more accommodating
to the arms inspectors. Rubbish. Presidents Bush and Clinton both swore the
sanctions would not end until Saddam Hussein was removed from power. Cortright also faults Iraq for not agreeing to "oil
for food" sooner. I'm no defender of the tyrant and war criminal Saddam,
but it was a hard call. Any Iraqi leader would try to protect oil, the
country's only natural resource. Has Iraq been treated fairly in the five
years since "oil for food"? $44 billion in oil has been sold, but
only $13.3 billion worth of goods has been delivered to the Iraqi government.
Quoting a figure of $10 billion in oil revenue for the last half of
2000, Cortright claims that "Baghdad has more
than sufficient money to address continuing humanitarian needs." That's
a downright falsehood. Iraq
doesn't get a dime. All the money for the oil sales goes into a UN-controlled account in New York.
Iraq arranges
contracts for goods, but it gets only the goods that the United
States allows to be imported. The $13.3
billion is for five years, less than $3 billion a year. Compare that to 1989,
before sanctions, when Iraq's
imports were $11 billion for that year alone.
The lowering of the death rate in the Kurdish areas is Cortright's final charge. He admits that northern Iraq
is favored in aid and resources, but omits the fact that oil and other goods
are smuggled back and forth to Turkey
with a knowing wink by the sanctions authorities. He also fails to mention
that the damage to infrastructure by UN bombing in 1991 was far less in the
Kurdish north. In 1999 when Unicef did the study
that showed differing mortality rates north and south, it explicitly refused
to blame Iraqi officials for those differences.
Cortright charges mismanagement
by Iraq while
he is silent about US
policy that uses the very importing of goods to Iraq
to further torture the people. Jesuit priest G. Simon Harak, a frequent
visitor to Iraq,
described how insulin would be allowed in, but syringes would be banned. Iraq
would have to use precious resources to refrigerate the medicine in hopes it
could someday be used. This mismatching has gone on for years. It's
deliberate.
Cortright praises the
"smart sanctions" approach that would allow everything into Iraq
except "dual-use items"--anything that could remotely be of military
value. The "dual-use excuse" has been used all along to deprive Iraq
of a range of items: ambulances, chemicals to purify water, even
nitroglycerine tablets.
In December 2001, when at least 350,000 innocent lives have been
snuffed out, when thousands more will be the "collateral damage" of
the coming "war of liberation," the last thing we need in The Nation is a thinly disguised defense
of US Iraq policy.
STANLEY
HELLER
Middle East Crisis Committee
Cambridge, Mass.
David Cortright is certainly right to argue
that "changing American policy in Iraq
is an urgent priority." Whether the actual number of Iraqi children
under 5 who have died is now 350,000 or 500,000, the numbers are horrifying.
But Cortright's prescription, to improve
the so-called smart sanctions, is misguided. Smart sanctions are about the United
States, Britain
and the United Nations shifting blame, not about ending the effects of the
embargo for ordinary Iraqis. After ten years of hearing from Clinton and
Blair & Co. that they "have no quarrel with the Iraqi people"
and that the sanctions are designed to target the regime, not civilians, we
are supposed to believe that the sanctions will now (does this sound
familiar?) target the regime and not the people. But under the proposed smart
sanctions, the United States
will be able to use its power in the UN to block essential goods by citing
"dual use" concerns. And the economy will continue to suffer.
Tinkering with sanctions isn't the solution. Ending them is.
As for disarming Iraq,
that can be achieved only in the context of regional disarmament and US
disarmament. It's a bit hard to explain why Iraq
must open its doors to weapons inspectors when the Bush Administration just
told the world that US
chemical and biological weapons facilities can't be inspected by
international monitors because it might compromise "industrial
secrets."
ANTHONY ARNOVE
Editor, Iraq
Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War
Northampton, Mass.; Amherst, Mass.
Exactly what is David Cortright trying to
tell us--and why must The Nation
contribute to the horrifying debate about accurate numbers of civilian
deaths? By focusing narrowly on the number of deaths, Cortright
ignores the overall health and nutritional status of children and ordinary
citizens in Iraq.
All surveys since the beginning of the embargo have essentially told the same
story: severe malnutrition in hospitals, malnourished children and
undernourished adults in the towns, ever-changing food prices, increased mortality
and a general breakdown in the whole fabric of society.
Economic sanctions are designed to produce deprivation and poverty.
Poverty is the key cause of malnutrition on a global basis; poverty induced
by sanctions will function no differently. The world community, represented
by the United Nations, has known about the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Iraq
since the early 1990s. Yet the UN has, under US and British pressure,
enforced this sanctions policy despite overwhelming evidence that it is
responsible for the increased level of human suffering in that country.
Speculation that Saddam Hussein could end this crisis does not excuse the UN,
the United States
or Britain
from their international responsibilities for upholding human rights.
Sanctions are purported to be a humane alternative to war. As they function
in Iraq, they
are not humane. They are lethal and they target the already poor and
vulnerable.
CLAUDIA LEFKO
Northampton Committee to Lift the Sanctions and Stop the
Bombing in Iraq
PETER PELLET
Team leader for four UN Food and Nutrition
Missions in Iraq
Minneapolis
David Cortright questions the normally
accepted numbers of deaths attributed to the sanctions, specifically those
derived from the 1995 study by the Food and Agricultural Organization, which
asserted that sanctions were responsible for the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi
children. He then cites the "two most reliable scientific studies on
sanctions in Iraq"
to challenge the FAO study: one by Richard Garfield, and another by Mohamed
Ali and Iqbal Shah in The Lancet. Unfortunately for Cortright,
these two studies contradict each other. The Garfield
study asserts that from 1990 to March 1998, there were 228,000 excess deaths
of children under 5, as opposed to the FAO claim of 567,000. The "Ali
and Shah study," as Cortright titled it--used
as evidence of Iraqi mismanagement--is actually a published account of Unicef's mortality data, which is the basis for the
calculated half-million death toll. (Ali headed a Unicef
team of consultants in Iraq,
Shah reviewed the survey report, and both wrote the Lancet article.) This Unicef report is entirely independent of the 1995 FAO
report.
Cortright is correct in stating
that "as we work to change US
policy and relieve the pain of the Iraqi people, it is important that we use
accurate figures.... The more credible we are, the
more effective we will be." Perhaps Cortright
should take his own advice.
JEFF LINDEMYER
Author of several articles on the Iraqi
sanctions, most recently in the November Z magazine
Washington, D.C.; New
York City
Despite the lack of any serious evidence of Iraqi involvement in the
September 11 attacks, the Bush Administration is continuing to escalate
threats of expanding the "war against terrorism" to Iraq.
So David Cortright's choice of moment to urge the
Administration to impose "smart sanctions" on Iraq
has serious consequences. By opening with references to statements about the
deadly impact of the Iraq
sanctions made by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Cortright
adroitly delegitimizes all other critics of US Iraq
policy by linking them to the two most demonized leaders in the world. Cortright is right that many in Washington
have made their careers arguing that anti-sanctions campaigners have
exaggerated the numbers of deaths; he is wrong in claiming that this argument
is anything more than a pretext for maintaining a failed and deadly sanctions
policy.
The debate over numbers of civilian Iraqis killed by sanctions is a
red herring. If the goal was to discredit the debate over numbers as
horrifyingly irrelevant, Cortright's response
should be simple: "We don't know for sure how many hundreds of thousands
of children have been killed; we do know that even 1,000 is too many. And we
know that the debate is a spurious effort at denial and deflection." But
instead, Cortright contests the most often cited UN
numbers in great detail, attempting to replace them with lower figures
asserted in some other studies. However careful his language, what
implication can be drawn other than the notion that economic sanctions are
somehow more acceptable if "only" 250,000 children, rather than the
half-million whose deaths Madeleine Albright memorably found "worth
it," have been killed?
The other significant fallacy is Cortright's
claim that a few incremental amendments to the existing sanctions regime
would solve the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.
In fact, the billions of dollars required to even begin rehabilitating Iraq's
shattered infrastructure will be available only through massive investment in
the oil sector. That means lifting, not just tinkering with, economic
sanctions. Because even if the prohibition on private-sector oil investment
was lifted, no oil company would risk massive outlays knowing that Washington
and the Security Council might change their minds and prevent the
repatriation of profits. The kind of multibillion-dollar outlays needed to
rebuild Iraq's
water, electrical, telecommunications, health and other bombed-out
infrastructure will be available only when sanctions are lifted.
The only smart thing to do with economic sanctions now is to end
them--not to further discredit those who have been fighting to do just that
(see Bennis and Halliday's
full rebuttal at www.thenation.com).
PHYLLIS BENNIS
Institute for Policy Studies
DENIS HALLIDAY
Former UN assistant secretary-general and
humanitarian coordinator in Iraq
Bennis and Halliday have requested space on our site for
the publication of a longer letter regarding David Cortright's
Dec. 3 article. This
follows Cortright's reply, below.
CORTRIGHT
REPLIES
Goshen, Ind.
I'm glad my article has
stirred debate about sanctions in Iraq. Such a debate is especially critical now, as
Phyllis Bennis and Denis Halliday note, because of
the increasing danger of a new US war against Iraq.
With my critics, I have
long opposed US military attacks and have urged the lifting of
sanctions on civilians. As I said in the article and have written elsewhere,
the United
States is primarily responsible for the catastrophe in Iraq because of its policies of military aggression
and unrelenting sanctions. I have demonstrated and lobbied to change these
policies, and I am actively working now to prevent a new war.
But I also support
nuclear disarmament and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. I
oppose such weapons for the US or any other government--including Iraq, which used chemical weapons in the 1980s and was
and may still be actively developing nuclear weapons. The UN disarmament
mandate, accepted by Iraq in 1991, is a legitimate and important step
toward strengthening international norms against the development and use of
weapons of mass destruction. It has reinforced the trend toward more
intrusive on-site inspections, which are necessary to guarantee disarmament.
To abandon this mandate, especially after so much progress toward Iraqi
disarmament was achieved during the 1990s, would be a setback to global nonproliferation
efforts.
Acknowledging Iraq's obligation to disarm is also important because
the rationale for US military action, if it comes, is likely to be the
threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. That threat is unknown
right now, because of the end of UN inspections three years ago, and no doubt
has been greatly exaggerated by the war lobby to stir up fear. But we cannot
ignore the possibility of that threat, or the tremendous hold it has on
public opinion. We need to espouse an alternative policy that contains Iraq's military ambitions but avoids harm to innocent
civilians.
Smart sanctions point
in that direction. They would lift all restrictions on civilian imports. The
review of dual-use items (which the United States has indeed abused) would be limited to a specific
Goods Review List, which the Security Council is now considering. The only
sanctions remaining would be the embargo on military imports. The continuing
arms embargo should then be broadened, as Anthony Arnove rightly argues, into
a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, as
specified in paragraph 14 of the original Gulf War cease-fire resolution. The
fact that disarmament ultimately must be global is not a reason for
discounting progress in particular countries or regions.
Paragraph 22 of the
cease-fire resolution also requires the Security Council to lift sanctions
once Iraq complies with the UN disarmament mandate. If Iraq permits UN inspectors to complete their work, all
sanctions must be lifted. Reiterating this obligation is necessary to provide
an inducement for Iraqi cooperation. Without such assurance, Iraq faces the prospect of unending sanctions and is
left with no recourse but to resist.
In this regard Stanley
Heller is right to criticize my overstatement that sanctions could have been
lifted long ago if Iraq had accepted UN demands. As George Lopez and I
noted in The Sanctions Decade, Iraq has complied with many of the UN's requirements.
Instead of responding to these partial concessions with an easing of
pressure, however, the United States has hijacked UN policy and asserted that
sanctions will remain until Saddam Hussein goes. This regime-change policy is
the single biggest obstacle to the lifting of sanctions. On the other hand,
if the government of Iraq had cooperated with rather than obstructed UN
weapons inspectors, it would have been more difficult for the United States to justify its policy.
Heller says it is a
falsehood that Iraq has the means to meet its humanitarian needs, but
he ignores the quote from Kofi Annan that Iraq is indeed in a position to address the
nutritional and health conditions of the Iraqi people. More than 70 percent
of Iraq's considerable oil income can be used for the
purchase of humanitarian goods. Total oil revenues in 2000 were approximately
$18 billion, of which more than $13 billion was available for civilian
imports. This compares favorably with the $11 billion in total imports in
1989.
Claudia Lefko and Peter Pellet correctly note that the world
community knew early in the 1990s of the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. This is precisely why the Security Council
proposed the oil-for-food program in 1991. If Iraq had accepted the plan then rather than five years
later, much suffering could have been avoided.
The Garfield and
Ali/Shah studies are complementary, not contradictory as Jeff Lindemyer asserts. Garfield's recent estimate of 350,000 deaths is based
directly on the Ali/Shah study. The latter was indeed commissioned by Unicef, but the authors did not publish an estimate of
500,000 deaths.
Bennis
and Halliday make the most important point: that whatever the numbers, they
are far too high. No level of preventable death among children is acceptable.
My critics and I differ over the best way to end this humanitarian nightmare,
but we share a common commitment to easing civilian suffering and preventing
a war that would compound and intensify Iraq's misery. Let us work together toward these
urgent priorities.
DAVID CORTRIGHT
Washington, D.C.; New York City
The Bush
Administration's rapidly escalating threats of expanding the "war
against terrorism" to Iraq are pushing the eleven-year-long US-Iraq sanctions
and bombing-based conflict to newly dangerous levels. Despite the lack of any
serious evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks, the
exploitation of already wide-spread government and media-created anti-Iraq
sentiment among the American public makes the possibility of a new US assault a serious danger.
The US war against
Iraq, still characterized by crippling economic sanctions imposed in the name
of the United Nations and continual low-level military strikes, has emerged
as the linchpin of the Administration's debate over the future of foreign
policy. That debate pits the ideologues grouped around Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz, against the Secretary of
State Colin Powell-led pragmatists. And while Washington policy-makers and
pundits ruminate, the UN Security Council's December 27 compromise on
extending the "Oil for Food" program in Iraq prolongs the
still-simmering debate over so-called "smart sanctions" to replace
the current "dumb" sanctions regime in place since 1990.
It is in this highly
volatile and dangerous context that David Cortright
took to the pages of The Nation
to argue for a new "smart sanctions" regime. He predicates his
analysis on the hardly novel idea that peace and religious groups opposed to
sanctions must recognize that "the more credible we are, the more
effective we will be." The problem is, Cortright's misleading and sometimes disingenuous
argument ends up agreeing with Administration or other critics that the
anti-sanctions case is not credible, and accepting the legitimacy of
continuing the US effort to strangle the Iraqi people, albeit by
slightly amended methods.
By opening with Osama
bin Laden's statements about the deadly impact of
the Iraq sanctions, and data on loss of life indicated by Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein (and endorsed by the UN and others), Cortright
adroitly delegitimizes all other critics of US Iraq
policy by linking them to the two most US/UK demonized leaders in the world.
He is right in stating that many in Washington have made their careers arguing that
anti-sanctions campaigners have exaggerated the numbers; but he is wrong in
claiming that this argument is anything more than a pretext for maintaining a
failed sanctions policy. If Cortright's goal was to
appropriately discredit the debate over numbers--is it really 567,000 total
children or 227,000 children under five killed by sanctions?--as horrifyingly
irrelevant, his statement should have been simple. "We don't know
precisely how many hundreds of thousands of children have been killed; we do
know that even one thousand, let alone a hundred thousand, and certainly let
alone several hundreds of thousands, are way too many. And the debate is a
spurious effort at denial and deflection." Instead, Cortright
contests the often-cited UN numbers in misleading detail, seeking to
legitimize instead lower figures calculated by private sources. However
careful his language, what implication can be drawn other than that economic
sanctions are somehow acceptable if "only" 250,000 children, rather
than the half a million whose deaths Madeleine Albright memorably deemed
"worth it," have been killed?
He then goes on to
claim that "sanctions could have been suspended years ago if Baghdad had been more cooperative with UN weapons
inspectors." Such a claim negates the success of UNSCOM's
early years, regardless of whether Iraqi compliance was eager or reluctant,
when hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions, and all manufacturing and
production capacity in Iraq (for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons)
were destroyed. And, even more relevant, has Cortright
forgotten the myriad of US commitments to keep sanctions in place regardless
of such Iraqi cooperation and compliance? James Baker said in 1991 "we
are not interested in seeing a relaxation of sanctions as long as Saddam
Hussein is in power." In spring 1997 Madeleine Albright announced "we
do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons
of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted." And President Bill
Clinton, later that same year, said that "the sanctions will be there
until the end of time or as long as he [Saddam Hussein] lasts."
In discussing the
impact of economic sanctions on the Iraqi infrastructure, Cortright
admits that most of the civilian deaths are in fact linked to sanctions,
recognizing that "comprehensive trade sanctions compounded the effects
of the war, making it difficult to rebuild and adding new horrors of hunger
and malnutrition." In doing so he seems tacitly to acknowledge the
linkage between the damage done by US bombing of Iraq's civilian
infrastructure in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, the child death
rates (as reported by UNICEF) from water-borne diseases, and the way that
sanctions prevent the repair and reconstruction of that infrastructure.
But he undermines that
recognition by claiming that the UN Oil for Food program now includes
"broader economic assistance and the rebuilding of infrastructure,"
as if the program was an international aid program. In fact, he even
criticizes Iraq for continuing "to obstruct and
undermine" what Cortright calls "the aid
program." Iraqis know--though many Americans may not--that the oil for
food program is not an aid program at all, but simply a mechanism for
insuring UN control of Iraq's own oil revenues. The program allows the UN to
control the spending of Iraqi oil revenue, first taking off the top some
30--35 percent for overhead and compensation payments, now mainly to the
Kuwaiti royal family, Israel, and US oil companies. There is virtually NO
international aid going into Iraq, with the exception of a few small and under-funded
NGO projects. Calling Oil for Food an "aid" program doesn't make it
so.
Cortright
is right in recognizing that under the program, "oil exports are regulated, not prohibited." But large-scale
investment in the oil sector, the kind of investment required to pay for the
serious rebuilding of the water, electrical, telecommunications and other
bombed-out infrastructures, IS prohibited. And even if the current
prohibition on international private investment in Iraqi oil was lifted, no
oil company worth its stockholders would risk multi-billion investment in an
Iraqi economy subject to the whims of Security Council [read: US and UK]
shut-down.
Cortright
claims the Oil for Food program "was a bona fide effort by the Security
Council to relieve humanitarian suffering. If the government of Iraq had accepted the program when it was first
proposed, much of the suffering that occurred in the intervening years could
have been avoided." While some Council members from Europe and the
global South may indeed have been concerned about the crisis facing Iraqi
civilians, the overriding concern, particularly of the Council's most
powerful members, was one of bad propaganda. Oil for Food was a sophisticated
effort at spin control. And from its origins, it was understood and
explicitly stated that it was never designed to repair Iraq's shredded economic and social fabric, but simply
to prevent even further deterioration and loss of human life. As for Iraq's
initial rejection of the program, the early version offered would have
provided less than $2 billion per year, of which 30 percent would be diverted
to the UN Compensation Committee and another 5 percent designated for UN
overhead costs. Considerations of sovereignty aside, that would not provide
enough to even keep a population of 22 million people alive, let alone
healthy, and it certainly would have denied any possibility of rehabilitating
even part of the civilian infrastructure. Iraq would have remained forbidden
to rebuild its infrastructure or its economy.
Cortright
blithely claims that "oil revenues during the last six months of 2000
reached nearly $10 billion. This is hardly what one would call an oil
embargo." No one ever said it was an oil embargo. It isn't. It's a
trade, investment, intellectual, educational, scientific, social, cultural
and communications embargo. Ten billion dollars in oil revenue translates
into significantly less than half of that in goods and services actually
reaching Iraq. Cortright ignores that much of the total
revenues even within the limits of the oil for food program are unavailable
largely to Iraq because of U.S and UK holds on contracts needing approval by the UN
Contracts (661) Committee in which Washington holds a veto. In the entire six years of the Oil
for Food program, over $44 billion worth of Iraqi oil has been sold. But of
that huge-sounding amount, only about $16 billion has reached the 22 million
Iraqis.
Why? Cortright himself acknowledges that "funds are still
controlled through the UN escrow account, with a nearly 30 percent deduction
for war reparations and UN costs." The official compensation fund
deduction has recently been reduced from 30 to 25 percent, but there is also
5 percent in overhead costs paid to the UN (including the costs of the new
still undeployed arms inspection agency UNMOVIC
approved in December 1999). And as of November 2001, according to the
Secretary-General's report, there are currently $4.2 billion in contracts for
various civilian goods held up by US (occasionally UK) veto, and $3.5 billion
sitting in the UN escrow account in Paris waiting to be disbursed.
But despite that
clearly desperate scenario, Cortright still claims
that "Baghdad
has more than sufficient money to address continuing humanitarian
needs." His source for this assertion is UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan's statement that "the Government of Iraq is indeed in a position
to address the nutritional and health concerns of the Iraqi people." The
Secretary-General's unwillingness to directly contradict Washington may well have led him to speak of
"addressing" such problems rather than actually "solving"
them. But significantly more important is the unassailable fact that
nutrition and health are not the only humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people.
Such a claim would ignore that the basic requirements of education,
employment, housing, repair of the social fabric, rebuilding of electrical
generating capacity, water and sanitation infrastructure, freeing up the
economy, reestablishing normal international commercial and communications links,
etc., are also essential for the recovery and well-being of the people of Iraq.
In a similar vein, Cortright examines the on-going disparity between
conditions in the Kurdish North where the Oil for Food distribution is
UN-administered, and the government-controlled Center-South of Iraq. He does go further than most US officials are
willing to go in acknowledging the real reasons for the comparatively better
living conditions in the North. Northern Iraqis get 22 percent higher per
capita income from the Oil for Food funds, the North has most of Iraq's rain-based agriculture, there is significant
cross-border trading with Turkey in the North, there are numerous private European
relief agencies. Those factors have led to a modest difference between North
and Center-South. Infant/child mortality is only some 5 percent less than in
the Center-South, for example. But then, inexplicably and without any
citation or source, Cortright goes on to claim that
"these differences alone do not explain the stark contrast in the
mortality rates. The tens of thousands of excess deaths in the south-center,
compared to the similarly sanctioned [sic] but UN-administered north, are
also the result of Baghdad's
failure to accept and properly manage the UN humanitarian relief
effort." Given his recognition of the specific differences facing Iraqis
living in the two zones (above), Cortright should
realize that Iraqi Kurds are not, in fact, "similarly
sanctioned"--although like everyone in Iraq they do suffer greatly.
Even more
significantly, he provides no facts to back the claim of "Baghdad's failure to properly manage the program," a
claim that flies in the face of reports of the Secretary-General plus
consistent evidence provided from all former and current directors of the Oil
For Food program. From Denis Halliday (one of the authors of this article)
and his successor, Hans von Sponeck, both of whom resigned their posts in
protest of the continuing impact of sanctions despite the Oil for Food
program, to the current director Tun Miyat, every director has recognized that Iraq's management of the program was perfectly proper.
The problems in the program stem not from Iraq mismanagement, but from its UN-imposed constraints
that prevent restoration of a working economy
Cortright
proposes a number of improvements to the "smart sanctions" proposal
brought to the UN by Washington and London earlier this year. Some of his ideas appear
superficially useful, such as allowing foreign investment, eliminating
restrictions on non-oil exports, or allowing a cash component in
center-south, but in reality not so. The bottom line remains that until Iraq
regains control of its oil reserves and revenues so that it can negotiate
large-scale investment with whatever oil companies it chooses, the rebuilding
of the once-modern economy and country and its once-cosmopolitan,
once-educated and once-healthy urban population, remains out of reach. As
long as the US-orchestrated escrow account, combined with UN politics and
bureaucracy, controls Iraq's economy, the smartest sanctions remain way too
dumb, missing their alleged targets like American "smart" bombs.
Cortright
concludes that "Despite the evidence of Baghdad's shared responsibility for the ongoing crisis,
sanctions opponents have continued to direct their ire exclusively at the United States and Britain." This demonization
of those who oppose sanctions-driven genocide is simply not accurate; there
is plenty of blame to go around, and most anti-sanctions campaigners have no
hesitation to say so, including both of the assistant secretaries-general who
resigned and both authors of this article. Baghdad is responsible for plenty of problems; it is a
regime as repressive now as it was throughout the 1980s when it was backed
financially, politically and militarily by Washington. But the Iraqi regime is not responsible for the deaths from
hunger and disease of hundreds of thousands of its citizens--that
responsibility lies with the US-dominated UN Security Council.
And sadly, that
responsibility lies overwhelmingly with our
government, and the anti-sanctions movement is right in keeping our focus
there. Cortright himself, despite his apparent
belief that no one in Washington pays attention to the anti-sanctions movement,
admits that the United States and the United Kingdom developed their smart sanctions plan specifically
"to parry this criticism." For those who see Baghdad's responsibility for the overall crisis as more
central, what possible justification can there be for Washington to further punish the beleaguered people of Iraq whom it professes to care about, those who are
forced to live under that regime? One would expect such justifications to
arise from ignorance or malice--from the White House, the Pentagon or State
Department apologists. One would have hoped that long-time peace activists
such as David Cortright would know better.
Some version of smart
sanctions may have been appropriate for the UN back in 1990; after more than
a decade of devastatingly dumb sanctions, it's simply too little and too
late, and Iraq is too badly devastated, for such proposals.
Military sanctions as defined in paragraph 14 of Resolution 687, aiming at
creating a weapons of mass destruction-free zone throughout the Middle East
(including but not limited to Iraq), should continue. But the only smart
thing to do with economic sanctions now is to end them--not attempt to
discredit those who have been fighting to do just that.
DENIS HALLIDAY and
PHYLLIS BENNIS
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