By Kobi Snitz
The Diamondback
U. Maryland

(U-WIRE) COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- The latest UNICEF report on mortality for children under age 5 in Iraq concludes 500,000 children have died, mainly of malnutrition, diarrhea and pneumonia since the U.S. sanctions began. The deaths are a result of the destruction of the civilian infrastructure that was targeted by the U.S.-led coalition's bombings during the 1991 Gulf War and of the economic sanctions that are in effect to this day.

Targets bombed in Iraq include power generation stations and water treatment plants, which have little relevance for a short military conflict but are sure to cause a humanitarian crisis -- as indeed they have. The same pattern of bombing -- and the United States' refusal of diplomacy -- was most recently seen in Yugoslavia. The long-term effects on the civilian population there are beginning to be apparent as well.

Even though no survey of total civilian casualties of the sanctions has been done, estimates based on the under-5 mortality range from 1 to 2 million. This is in addition to an estimated 200,000 who were killed by the bombing.

Economic sanctions were first imposed on Iraq a few days after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990. United Nations Resolution 661 called on all U.N. countries to stop trade with Iraq and demanded that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait. The original resolution was later amended by various oil-for-food resolutions; small amounts of oil could be sold, and Iraq could use the proceeds, minus reparations to Kuwait and U.N. expenses, to import supplies that have to be individually approved by the United Nations.

According to the U.N. estimates of the actual amount needed to repair Iraq's infrastructure, the oil-for-food program is far from sufficient. For that reason, Denis Halliday, the chief of the U.N. humanitarian mission to Iraq, resigned in protest in 1998.

The only demands specifically made of Iraq in the U.N. resolutions are for the withdrawal from Kuwaiti territory and the return of stolen Kuwaiti property. Using its veto power, however, the United States has prevented the lifting of the sanctions even after Iraq was driven out of Kuwait and payment of reparations to Kuwait began.

The connection between the weapons inspection and economic sanctions is a U.S. policy that is often opposed by the U.N. Security Council countries. In that sense, the sanctions should be seen as a U.S. policy that is thinly disguised as U.N. policy. Furthermore, as Rania Masri points out, the targeting of civilian population by the sanctions violated the U.N. charter, the Geneva Convention and numerous U.N. General Assembly resolutions and fits the definition of international terrorism in the U.S. legal code.

Finally, the United States' use of U.N. authority for its actions must be considered in light of the fact that the United States most often ignore U.N. authority. Two well-known examples are the United States' refusal to pay its back dues to the United Nations and Israel's refusal to withdraw from the occupied territories.

The sanctions imposed on Iraq are the most comprehensive sanctions ever imposed on a country. Given that Iraq depends on imports for much of its food and medicine and much of the civilian infrastructure was deliberately destroyed during the Gulf War, the mass killing cannot be anything but deliberate policy.

In an interview on 60 Minutes, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked if she thought the lives of 500,000 children are a price worth paying. Albright replied, "I think it is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think is worth it." She later complained that it is unfair to "lay that guilt trip" on her.

The current episode of mass killing committed by the United States, which has been going on for almost nine years now, is not an isolated incident. From Vietnam to Yugoslavia, the United States repeatedly resorts to waging war on the populations of much weaker adversaries. Nor is mass killing inconsistent with official U.S. policy as revealed recently in declassified U.S. Strategic Command papers on deterrence policy.

These actions are our collective actions and as such, we are all responsible for them, particularly those of us who are college-educated and therefore in a position of relative influence. As Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Edward Said wrote about the sanctions on Iraq, "If we remain silent, we are condoning a genocide ... when a crime reaches these proportions, silence is complicity."

This policy is not unchangeable; campus students and others around the country are organizing to stop the sanctions. There are many ways in which we can work to end this crime, and the first step is education.

(C) 1999 The Diamondback via U-WIRE