[Editor's Note: This document was supplied uncredited. Please, anyone, let me know who wrote this so that I may give them their props.
–Daniel]
While estimates
and overall statistics vary, few independent authorities will protest the fact
that at least 500,000 Iraqi children have died since 1990 as a direct result of
the economic sanctions. More humans have died from sanctions than died from the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the civil war in Bosnia. A September, 1999
UNICEF report confirmed this number of excess deaths, finding that infant
mortality rates in Iraq have more than doubled since the imposition of
sanctions. The 1998 UNICEF report found that over 5,000 die each month for lack
of adequate food and medicine. Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq and
Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday called this statistic "conservative."
Economic sanctions
against Iraq are costly from an American perspective (in the range of $1 billion
per year), and deadly from an Iraqi perspective. They target the most
vulnerable members of the Iraqi society – the poor, elderly, new born, sick
and young – in such a way that many consider economic sanctions more lethal
than violence and more punishing than war. Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire
referred to sanctions on Iraq as "the economic nuclear bomb." The
economic sanctions, coupled with the pain inflicted by US military attacks, have
reduced Iraq's infrastructure and economy to virtual rubble; oxygen factories,
water sanitation plants and hospitals stand useless, their lifesaving powers
denied. Surveys by UN agencies and independent NGOs continue to report tragic
and precipitous declines in health and nutrition throughout Iraq.
The UN Department of
Humanitarian Affairs has found that "public health services are near total
collapse – basic medicines, life-saving drugs and essential medical
supplies are lacking throughout the country. Fifty percent of rural people have
no access to potable water and waste water treatment facilities have stopped
functioning in most urban areas."
Before the Gulf War,
Iraq had the best health care system in the Middle East, and one of the best
educational programs in the world. Its health indicators were comparable to may
western European nations. Iraq is today one of the most malnourished,
impoverished and underfed nations, although it sits on the second largest oil
reserves in the world.
According to
former UNSCOM Chief Inspector, W. Scott Ritter, Iraq has been "qualitatively
disarmed." Mr. Ritter explains that Iraq does not currently possess the
capability to use, launch, or deploy chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.
The UNSCOM teams were incredibly effective at reducing Iraq's arsenal.
According to UNSCOM Chairperson Richard Butler, if disarming Iraq was considered
a five-lap race, "Iraq would be three-quarters of the way around the fifth
and final lap."
Tragic irony and
faulty logic sustain the embargo. The United States bombs Iraq and maintains
economic sanctions, which have destroyed more human lives than all weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq combined, because Iraq "has not complied with UN
resolutions." The sanctions are more lethal and illegal than any failure
of the Iraqi regime to comply with inspectors. Moreover, there is no way for
Iraq to fully comply unless the United States ceases to arm Iraq's
neighbors, who have the ability to threaten its borders.
The United States
supplied Iraq with most of its weapons. Just two days before Iraq invaded
Kuwait, then-President George Bush approved and signed a shipment of military
supplies to Iraq. The United States and Britain were the major suppliers of
chemical and biological weapons to Iraq in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War,
in which the United States supported both sides with weapons sales. A report
from the US Senate Committee on Bank, Housing and Urban Affairs found that nine
out of ten biological materials used in Iraq's weapons components were bought
from US companies.
Finally, the United States
possesses, and keeps on hair-trigger alert, more nuclear weapons than any other
nation in the world. US Congress has failed to ratify the Test-Ban Treaty.
Many Iraqis feel that it is disingenuous of the United States – sitting
atop the world's largest nuclear arsenal, refusing to allow its weapons sites to
be inspected by international experts, and being the only nation in the world
ever to drop an atomic bomb – to tell Iraq what it can and cannot produce.
UN Resolution
687, article 14, calls for regional disarmament as the basis for reducing Iraq's
arsenal. By arming Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East, the US is contravening
the same UN resolution with which it maintains the economic sanctions. The US
acts hypocritically, asking that the UN maintain economic sanctions, while
bombing unilaterally and refusing to pay its UN dues.
While the United
States claims to be pacifying the Middle East by stemming Iraq's arsenal, it
continues to arm Iraq's neighbors at a rapacious pace. Some of the consumers of
American military technology – in the Middle East and elsewhere – read
like a "Who's Who" of international terrorists, human rights
violators, and dictators. The US supplies Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey,
and Syria with weapons and technology, all of whom are Iraq's neighbors and
could potentially threaten Iraq's border. Eighty-seven percent of the weapons
used by the Indonesian military in the repression of East Timorese were sold by
the US military or US weapons contractors.
The Iraqi
regime, knowing that the United States favors Saddam Hussein's ouster and will
impose sanctions until a regime change, has no incentive to cooperate with the
United States or intrusive inspections. Two secretaries of state under
President Clinton – Madeline Albright and Warren Christopher – have
publicly stated that sanctions will remain intact until Saddam Hussein is driven
from power. The Iraq Liberation Act has budgeted $97 million toward this end.
Richard Butler
removed inspectors from Iraq prior to the December 1998 bombardment of Iraq,
contrary to recent reports of the US State Department. According to Butler's
own records, his team of weapons inspectors made numerous unimpeded visits the
week before the December bombing. On only a few visits was he prevented from
inspecting a site.
Numerous
revelations, confirmed by Butler, indicate that he was in frequent communication
with the US military the week before the bombing, making increasingly strident
statements about the supposed intransigence of the Iraqi regime. The US
government admitted, after an embarrassing Washington Post story, the it had
been using UNSCOM to spy on Iraq.
In its
September, 1999 Report, the US State Department alleged that Iraq is warehousing
and stockpiling medicine with malicious intent. The warehousing of medicines is
heavily monitored by the UN and is acknowledged by local UN administration and
staff to be caused by logistical problems stemming from nine years of sanctions
and lingering Gulf War damage. UN officials in Iraq call this allegation "a
myth that needs debunking."
The United Nations
conducts frequent itemization of the food and medicine that is stored in Iraq.
Dr. Popol, Acting Director of the WHO in Iraq, and Hans Von Sponeck have
repeatedly called for the "de-politicization" of distribution,
insisting that any stockpiling of medicine and equipment is the result of Iraq's
abysmal infrastructure.
Iraq
must purchase goods multinationally rather than indigenously. Items come in
pieces – dental chairs arrive, but compressors must be ordered from another
company, or syringes arrive, but needles take longer. Thus, items must be held
in Baghdad until they are complete. This happens, Von Sponeck explained, with
about one-half of the orders. Moreover, the UN 661 Sanctions Committee takes
longer to approve some orders than others, thus forcing Iraq to keep medicine in
storage until complements are approved. Most contracts pertaining to spare
parts – to to rebuild water, sanitation, or electrical facilities –
have been denied under "dual use" considerations.
Denis
Halliday stated on January 12, 1998, that Iraq would need at least $30 billion
to meet its current requirements for food, medicine and infrastructure. After
allocations are taken out of the oil revenues to finance Gulf War reparations
and UN administrative expenses, the amount of money that trickles down to the
average person in Iraq is 25 cents per person per day.
The New York
Times recently noted that Saddam Hussein "chose to spend what money was
available on lavish palaces and construction projects." The US State
Department used as evidence a new amusement park being built outside Baghdad,
and satellite reconnaissance photographs of a town that had been razed by Iraqi
troops. It was later admitted that the "evidence" was, in fact, a
photograph of an archeological dig, far from the site of the alleged massacre.
While it is true
that Iraq is permitted to sell approximately $5.2 billion of oil per month,
these funds are not at the discretion of Saddam Hussein, but rather are kept in
a UN escrow account, in the New York branch of the Bank of Paris. Thus, the
allegation that Saddam Hussein diverts humanitarian aid for personal wealth and
political power is near impossible. The United Nations keeps careful accounting
of expenditures, most of which is spent on Gulf War reparations and financing UN
programs. The economic sanctions facilitate the black market in Iraq,
strengthening the hegemony of a small and wealthy elite, while targeting the
most vulnerable members of Iraqi society. The upper echelons in Iraq –
those whom the US seeks to undermine – are, in fact, helped by the
sanctions, as is the government, whose grip of power is emboldened by the fact
that sanctions hinder political, social, and educational development. Pluralism
and characteristics of a civil society will flourish only when sanctions are
lifted.
Sanctions are
simply not the same in the north and south. In releasing the recent report,
UNICEF's Executive Director, Carol Bellamy explained the differences in Iraqi
mortality rates as follows: the Kurdish north has been receiving humanitarian
assistance for longer than the remainder of Iraq, agriculture in the north is
better, evading sanctions is easier (the northern borders being far more
porous); the north receives 22 percent more per capita from the Oil for Food
program than the center/south, and the north gets about 10 percent of all
UN-controlled assistance in currency, while the rest of the country receives
only commodities.
UN agency directors
and supervisors who monitor the distribution in the south consider the
government distribution to be "exemplary," said Dr. Popol. "The
Iraqi government is saving many lives with its distribution mechanism."
France, China and Russia are three countries among many which are united in opposition to the economic sanctions against Iraq. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, they have continually challenged the US and UK position on sanctions. The Pope, 53 bishops, Denis Halliday, numerous religious leaders, and scores of national institutions have condemned and protested both sanctions and military strikes. Two Nobel Peace Laureates, three delegations of physicians, and five congressional staffpersons have traveled to Iraq this year in violation of sanctions in order to promote international concern for, and understanding of, the conditions found in Iraq. The Arab League has called for the immediate lifting of the economic sanctions. The US is setting a dangerous precedent in the Middle East, promoting discord and violence, and paving the way for future wars, which will be fought by the next generation of US citizens. Our children may have to pay dearly for the mistakes we are making today. Both Halliday and Von Sponeck have noted a sharp increase in fundamentalism in Iraq, likened by both to the political marginalization as the Treaty of Versailles began to punish the people of Germany.
Since the December bombing campaign against Iraq, US and UK fighter planes have flown thousands of sorties over the northern and southern "No-fly zones" to "protect" northern Kurds and southern Shiites. They patrol the Iraqi air space, they say, so that Iraq cannot attack its own people, as it did during the 1980s. While UN resolutions do call for the protection of Iraqi minorities, there in no stipulation for military enforcement of the zones. Many legal experts have charged that patrolling these zones is illegal. The US and UK planes have killed, according to UNOHCI, hundreds of innocent civilians, and injured many more.
General Electric owns NBC, Westinghouse owns CBS, Disney owns ABC. Oil companies such as Exxon, Texaco and Mobil – all with an interest in sustaining economic sanctions to keep Iraq oil off the market – have representatives on the corporate boards of these networks, as does Lockheed Martin, which builds the F-22 fighter plane. General Electric and Westinghouse make bomb parts and fighter plane components. That they would consider their corporate profits when deciding how to portray the situation is Iraq is neither surprising nor new. These networks often treat Pentagon and State Department reports and comments as factual, rather than attempting to verify them with UN officials in Iraq.