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[casi] Anita Liburn, Swedish Iraq-Committee against E-Sanctions




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http://www.transnational.org/features/2002/Lilburn_IraqPeaceEconomy.html

Petition for Peace and Economic Development in Iraq


By

Anita Lilburn
Chair, Swedish Iraq-Committee against the Economic Sanctions (SIES)
www.gandhitoday.org/sv/irakindex.shtml


September 3, 2002

For twelve years, the Nordic countries have supported and participated in
economic sanctions against Iraq. These sanctions have been described by
many high United Nations officialsæincluding Denis Halliday, Hans von
Sponeck and Jutta Burghartæand representatives of UN agencies and NGO's as
"an ongoing genocide". The figures stated in reports issued by the UN
itself are well known by now: more than 1.5 million Iraqis have died as a
direct consequence of the sanctions and ongoing bombings. According to
UNICEF 5000 children a month are dying from lack of food, medicines and
clean water, a severely damaged infrastructure and a devastated economy.

No exemption has been made to the sanctions to allow for the import of
water purification equipment and chemicals. Without these the population of
this desert country has no access to potable water. In the UN Security
Council, the United States and United Kingdom have on 18 occasions blocked
the import of such equipment and chemicals. They have done this despite the
knowledge that this policy has led to epidemics of diseases such as
cholera. In the new sanctions programme introduced through UN Resolution
1409 in May 2002 there are still restrictions on the import of items needed
for the purification of water as well as on items needed for medical
treatment

The sanctions have not led to democratic changes. On the contrary, civilian
society is being crushed, Saddam Hussein's power within Iraq has been
strengthened, and the internal opposition weakened. Through its adherence
to the sanctions policy, our countries are participating in a crime against
humanity.

And now the US is trying to lead a reluctant world to accept and support a
full-scale military assault on Iraq.by spreading misinformation in the
international media regarding Iraq's "persistent stocks of WMD",

There are many dissident voices regarding the military status of Iraq,
struggling to make themselves heard.

When the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control (WPNAC) published a
false report that Iraq had carried out nuclear tests in 1989, it was
refuted by the American Independent Commission on the Verifiability of the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). According to the report of
that commission, there had been no seismic activity within 50 km of the
alleged test site in 1980-99, demonstrating that no nuclear tests had been
carried out at that site during that period.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) made its annual inspection in
Iraq in January, 2002, and its chief inspector, Anrzey Pietruwski, reported
to Reuters that Iraq had cooperated completely and that the inspections had
proceeded unhampered. (Reuters, 31 January, 2002)

Hans Blix, former chief of IAEA, said in an interview on Swedish radio in
May, 2000, that the nuclear capacity of Iraq had been totally destroyed in
1998, and that its missile capacity had been destroyed to a sufficient
degree to satisfy the criteria of the inspections. Hans Blix is not a
"dove" regarding Iraq; he is in fact a strong advocate of sanctions, but he
is not prepared to issue false information to support their maintenance at
all costs.

Blix's views on the disarming of Iraq are supported by Major Scott Ritter
of the American Marine Corps, who participated in the Gulf War and later
became chief of the United Nations Special Commission weapons inspection
team in Iraq (UNSCOM), 1991-1998.

In The Guardian on 19 January, 2001, Ritter said: "During the most
stringent on-site inspection regime in the history of arms control, Iraq's
biological weapon programmes were dismantled, destroyed or rendered
harmless in the course of hundreds of no-notice inspections. The major
biological weapons production facility ... was blown up by high explosive
charges and all its equipment destroyed. Other biological facilities met
the same fate ... Moreover, Iraq was subjected to intrusive, full-time
monitoring of all facilities with a potential biological application.
Breweries, animal feed factories, vaccine and drug manufacturing
facilities, university research laboratories and all hospitals were subject
to constant repeated inspections."

In a lecture at the Sul Ross State University of Texas in November, 2001,
he said: "Iraq does not pose a threat to anybody. It is a devastated
country and it has not had a chance to rearm." Major Ritter advocates a
resumption of weapons inspections, a continued arms embargo and an
immediate lifting of the economic sanctions.

Within the United States, American politicians are well aware of Iraq's
military weakness, and some of them have spoken out on the issue. On
retiring from his post, William Cohen, Secretary of Defense in the Clinton
administration, said to President Bush: "Iraq no longer poses a threat to
its neighbours." And on the TV programme, "Face the Nation", the present
Secretary of State, Colin Powell, commented on the military status of Iraq:
"That million-man army of ten years ago is gone. He is sitting on a very
much smaller army ... that does not have the capacity to invade its
neighbours any longer." But the wing within the Bush administration that
has chosen to ignore these voices has proved to be the strongest.

An attack on Iraq would affect the whole explosive region. Nevertheless,
the United States, a country situated thousands of miles away, seems
determined to "defend" Iraq's neighbours, against their wishes. The Arab
League summit meeting in Beirut in March unequivocally rejected an attack
on Iraq, saying: "We reject the threat of attacking Arab countries,
especially Iraq. We reaffirm our complete rejection of any attack on Iraq."
In addition, the Arab League called for "the lifting of the sanctions on
Iraq, ending the punishment of the Iraqi people."

Opposition to US threats has also been expressed from diverse other
sources. Massoud Barzani, leader of the Kurdish Democratic Party, recently
said: "The Iraqi issue will not be solved by military action or covert
action." In England, many members of the Labour Party have indicated the
strongest opposition to their leader, Tony Blair's endorsement of any
American action against Iraq, including a full-scale military invasion.
Several EU countries, as well as Russia and China, have also expressed
opposition.

While the Iraqi people are living under this threat of war, the deadly
economic sanctions continue. Despite steadily growing opposition to them
all over the world, the leadership of the US and UK have insisted, year
after year, that the sanctions must stay in place as long as weapon
inspectors are not allowed into Iraqæand lately, as long as Saddam Hussein
remains in power.

But in the light of the circumstances under which the weapons inspectors
left Iraq in December, 1998, and in the light of subsequent events, it is
difficult to see that the US and UK have a sincere commitment to weapons
inspections. In his documentary film, Shifting Sands, the former UNSCOM
weapons inspector, Major Scott Ritter, describes the process by which the
head of the programme, Richard Butler, deliberately provoked a critical
deterioration of relations with Iraq, in order to justify the withdrawal of
the UNSCOM team and the bombing campaign that followed immediately after.
As Ritter reveals, allegations that the weapons inspectors were "thrown
out" of Iraq constitute a matter of widespread misinformation.

More recently, in an article in the Los Angeles Times in June, 2002, Major
Ritter describes reports of approval for covert operations to overthrow
President Hussein as being calculated to derail negotiations to reintroduce
weapons inspections teams, which are susceptible to infiltration and
manipulation by intelligence services. Again, the function of the release
of "strategic information" is apparent.

What guarantees are there that Iraq will not rebuild its arsenal of weapons
of mass destruction if the sanctions are lifted? None, of course. As long
as Iraq possesses human knowledge, scientists, pens and paper, there will
also be opportunities to develop arms. But this is true for all countries.
There can be no guaranteeing a total lack of weapons of mass destruction in
any country. Should punitive economic warfare against the population of
that country therefore go on forever?

The criteria that have been used to justify the sanctions and the
persistent military hostilities against Iraq could be used to justify
sanctions and hostilities against quite a few countries, not least the US
itself. The US possesses both chemical and biological weapons, and the
largest arsenal of weapons of mass destructionænuclear weaponsæin the
world. The United States is also the only country in the world ever to have
used nuclear weapons. But independent weapon inspections are not permitted
within the US. All the other nuclear powersænow including Israel, India and
Pakistanæfulfil the criteria, too. But would we wish to punish the peoples
of those countries for the policies of their regimes by depriving them of
their right to life and health? Would we wish to see bombs fall over
Washington, Moscow, Paris, London, Tel Aviv, New Delhi? Of course not! So
why the Iraqi people? Why Baghdad?

According to international law, no country has the right to interfere in
the internal affairs of another country. The fact that the Iraqi people
live under a dictatorship does not give other states or the UN the right to
act on behalf of that people. A change of leadership will not be
accomplished through economic sanctions against the people, who did not
choose him. And it must not be achieved by bombing towns and villages, nor
through invasion by another state.

The people of Iraq must decide their own fate, and the best way we can help
them is to lift the sanctions. When starvation and disease, poverty and
desperation are no longer dominating people's lives, when they can regain
their strength and dignity and again work for a living instead of being
beneficiaries of a humiliating and inadequate hand-out system, then they
will be in a far better position to act for what they themselves see to be
in their best interests.

But the establishment of democracy is not part of US plans for Iraq. The
American government already has its own candidates with which to replace
their former favourite, Saddam Hussein: former Iraqi military officers,
some with a great deal of blood on their hands, and all of them sympathetic
to US determination to control the oil resources of the region. One of
these is General Khazraji, formerly Saddam's chief of staff, who lives in
political asylum in Denmark and has been accused of involvement in the use
of chemical weapons against the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. The
interests of democracy and human rights are subordinate to the Bush
government's interests in abundant sources of oil.

What line will Sweden and Denmark take in the planned war against Iraq?
Will our governments side with a state that violates international law and
exercises what should correctly be termed state terrorism? Or will they
obey international law, respect the spirit of the UN Charter and refuse to
support such a war?

And what about the sanctions? We cannot excuse ourselves by saying: "We
knew nothing!" We know enough, and we have known for a long time.

We demand that our governments voice their opposition to an all-out attack
on Iraq. In addition, we demand that our government advocate and actively
work within the UN for:

- an immediate stop to the bombing raids on Iraq;

- an unconditional repeal of economic sanctions against Iraq;

- the convention of an international peace conference for the Middle East,
with the participation of all concerned parties, including states and
representatives of national minorities, with the objective of resolving the
major conflicts in the region: weapons of mass destruction, the Palestinian
question, the Kurdish question and other human rights issues.



Anita Lilburn

Spokesperson of the Swedish Iraq Committee Against Economic Sanctions
(SIES)

Anita Lilburn, ordförande

Svenska Irakkommittén mot de Ekonomiska Sanktionerna (SIES)



© TFF and the author


Roger Stroope
Peace is a Human Right
Austin College


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