Publicado: 02-01-2002
Iraq: The Hostage
Nation
by
Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday
A
major shift is occurring in US policy on Iraq. It is obvious that
Washington wants to end 11 years of a self-serving policy of containment of the
Iraqi regime and change to a policy of replacing, by force, Saddam Hussein and
his government.
The current policy of economic sanctions has destroyed society in
Iraq and caused the death of thousands, young and old. There is evidence of that
daily in reports from reputable international organizations such as Caritas,
Unicef, and Save the Children. A change to a policy of replacement by force will
increase that suffering.
The creators of the policy must no longer assume that they can
satisfy voters by expressing contempt for those who oppose them. The problem is
not the inability of the public to understand the bigger picture, as former US
secretary of state Madeleine Albright likes to suggest. It is the opposite. The
bigger picture, the hidden agenda, is well understood by ordinary people. We
should not forget Henry Kissinger's brutally frank admission that "oil is much
too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the
Arabs".
How much longer can democratically elected governments hope to
get away with justifying policies that punish the Iraqi people for something
they did not do, through economic sanctions that target them in the hope that
those who survive will overthrow the regime? Is international law only
applicable to the losers? Does the UN security council only serve the
powerful?
The UK and the US, as permanent members of the council, are fully
aware that the UN embargo operates in breach of the UN covenants on human
rights, the Geneva and Hague conventions and other international laws. It is
neither anti-UK nor anti-US to point out that Washington and London, more than
anywhere else, have in the past decade helped to write the Iraq chapter in the
history of avoidable tragedies.
The UK and the US have deliberately pursued a policy of
punishment since the Gulf war victory in 1991. The two governments have
consistently opposed allowing the UN security council to carry out its mandated
responsibilities to assess the impact of sanctions policies on civilians. We
know about this first hand, because the governments repeatedly tried to prevent
us from briefing the security council about it. The pitiful annual limits, of
less than $170 per person, for humanitarian supplies, set by them during the
first three years of the oil-for-food programme are unarguable evidence of such
a policy.
We have seen the effects on the ground and cannot comprehend how
the US ambassador, James Cunningham, could look into the eyes of his colleagues
a year ago and say: "We (the US government) are satisfied that the oil-for-food
programme is meeting the needs of the Iraqi people." Besides the provision of
food and medicine, the real issue today is that Iraqi oil revenues must be
invested in the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure destroyed in the Gulf
war.
Despite the severe inadequacy of the permitted oil revenue to
meet the minimum needs of the Iraqi people, 30 cents (now 25) of each dollar
that Iraqi oil earned from 1996 to 2000 were diverted by the UN security
council, at the behest of the UK and US governments, to compensate outsiders for
losses allegedly incurred because of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. If this money
had been made available to Iraqis, it could have saved many
lives.
The uncomfortable truth is that the west is holding the Iraqi
people hostage, in order to secure Saddam Hussein's compliance to ever-shifting
demands. The UN secretary-general, who would like to be a mediator, has
repeatedly been prevented from taking this role by the US and the UK
governments.
The imprecision of UN resolutions on Iraq - "constructive
ambiguity" as the US and UK define it - is seen by those governments as a useful
tool when dealing with this kind of conflict. The US and UK dismiss criticism by
pointing out that the Iraqi people are being punished by Baghdad. If this is
true, why do we punish them further?
The most recent report of the UN secretary-general, in October
2001, says that the US and UK governments' blocking of $4bn of humanitarian
supplies is by far the greatest constraint on the implementation of the
oil-for-food programme. The report says that, in contrast, the Iraqi
government's distribution of humanitarian supplies is fully satisfactory (as it
was when we headed this programme). The death of some 5-6,000 children a month
is mostly due to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition. The US
and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials is responsible
for this tragedy, not Baghdad.
The expectation of a US attack on Iraq does not create conditions
in the UN security council suited to discussions on the future of economic
sanctions. This year's UK-sponsored proposal for "smart sanctions" will not be
retabled. Too many people realize that what looked superficially like an
improvement for civilians is really an attempt to maintain the bridgeheads of
the existing sanctions policy: no foreign investments and no rights for the
Iraqis to manage their own oil revenues.
The proposal suggested sealing Iraq's borders, strangling the
Iraqi people. In the present political climate, a technical extension of the
current terms is considered the most expedient step by Washington. That this
condemns more Iraqis to death and destitution is shrugged off as
unavoidable.
What we describe is not conjecture. These are undeniable facts
known to us as two former insiders. We are outraged that the Iraqi people
continue to be made to pay the price for the lucrative arms trade and power
politics. We are reminded of Martin Luther King's words: "A time has come when
silence is betrayal. That time is now."
We want to encourage people everywhere to protest against
unscrupulous policies and against the appalling disinformation put out about
Iraq by those who know better, but are willing to sacrifice people's lives with
false and malicious arguments.
The US Defense Department, and Richard Butler, former head of the
UN arms inspection team in Baghdad, would prefer Iraq to have been behind the
anthrax scare. But they had to recognize that it had its origin within the
US.
British and US intelligence agencies know well that Iraq is
qualitatively disarmed, and they have not forgotten that the outgoing secretary
of defense, William Powell, told incoming President George Bush in January:
"Iraq no longer poses a military threat to its neighbours". The same message has
come from former UN arms inspectors. But to admit this would be to nail the
entire UN policy, as it has been developed and maintained by the US and UK
governments.
We are horrified by the prospects of a new US-led war against
Iraq. The implications of "finishing unfinished business" in Iraq are too
serious for the global community to ignore. We hope that the warnings of leaders
in the Middle East and all of us who care about human rights are not ignored by
the US government. What is now most urgently needed is an attack on injustice,
not on the Iraqi people.
Hans
von Sponeck was UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq from 1998 to 2000; Denis
Halliday held the same post from 1997 to 1998.