By Bruce Finley
Denver Post International Affairs Writer
Feb. 14 - AMARA, Iraq - Iraqi Lt.
Khaled Ramady stands proudly in front
of a dilapidated brick fort after a
Colorado peace group passes by.
He and his troops consider themselves
"at war" with U.S. and British warplanes
that regularly bomb Iraq. And they won't
let visitors check their guns, just as their
leader Saddam Hussein won't let United
Nations inspectors look for possible
chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons.
Kuwait is "our right," 24-year-old
Ramady adds.
"As long as you want to dominate my country, we will fight you."
Now much of the world is starting to believe that and wondering
what to do.
For nearly 10 years, a United Nations economic and military
crackdown - the most comprehensive in history - has tried to control
Saddam Hussein. And he's still having his way, while 24 million
working Iraqis struggle. U.N. officials say average incomes have
dropped from around $1,200 to $10 a month.
The United States remains firmly committed to defeating Hussein.
U.S. policy calls for "containment until regime change" - making sure
he doesn't threaten other countries or amass weapons, and eventually
removing him from power.
But the Colorado peace group, which was in Iraq recently on a
12-day fact-finding mission, is not the only such organization calling
for a new course of action to ease the plight of ordinary Iraqis.
Some 70 members of U.S. Congress this month asked President
Clinton "to turn a new page in our dealings with Iraq" and lift the
economic sanctions.
And the 50-nation coalition marshaled to fight the Gulf War against
Iraq "is certainly deteriorating," said Diane Rennack, foreign policy
analyst for the U.S. Congressional Research Service.
U.N. Security Council members France, China and Russia for
months have chal lenged U.S. and British efforts to ensure rigorous
weapons inspections in Iraq. Commercial interests in oil-rich Iraq are
growing.
On Feb. 2, a Russian tanker was caught smuggling Iraqi oil in
violation of the embargo. U.S. Navy SEALs seized that tanker.
Embargo-defying trade is on the rise, U.S. officials warn, reaching an
estimated $25 million worth of illegal oil exports a month.
Inside Iraq, the nine Coloradans encountered European and Chinese
business groups edging into the once-prosperous country they expect
will bounce back if sanctions are lifted. Taxi drivers running the road
between Amman, Jordan, and Baghdad say they move more and
more French, Russian, Chinese and Canadian businessmen scoping
out opportunities. Private-sector patience with sanctions is wearing
thin.
Hans von Sponeck, the senior U.N. official in Iraq, questioned the
morality of continuing "to keep a nation in the refrigerator. ... We
must give each other a chance." On Sunday, von Sponeck asked to
be relieved of his duties - he'd be the second U.N. chief in Baghdad
to resign.
And senior Iraqi officials, in interviews around Baghdad, insisted Iraq
wants only to live in peace.
So what does this mean for U.S. influence in the 21st century -
especially when it comes to main taining multilateral economic
sanctions?
Dozens of countries are targets of unilateral U.S. sanctions - a
traditional foreign policy tool, short of war, designed to further U.S.
interests. But in a global economy where commerce is ever more
fluid, experts believe that only by building international consensus can
the United States really bring pressure to bear. That requires serious
diplomacy.
"To the extent the United States pushes too hard, it will stimulate
resistance" from other world powers, warns Richard Haass, director
of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institute in Washington,
D.C., and a senior adviser to President Bush during the 1991 Gulf
War that repulsed Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Yet Haass said he's baffled by critics of sanctions against Iraq.
Ordinary Iraqis may be suffering, he said. "It's just important that
people not blame the sanctions for what is the cynical result of Iraqi
policy." Sanctions must continue, he said, lest Hussein do something
outrageous. "It's only a question of when, not if. Clearly the best
outcome is he's out of power." But he's not. And some U.S. officials
say he may be re-arming.
So, the U.S. government is lobbying hard for a new U.N. plan that
would return weapons inspectors to Iraq in return for eventually lifting
sanctions. Hussein "is still a threat to Kuwait," contends Beth Jones,
deputy assistant U.S. Secretary of State focusing on Iraq. "Inspectors
would make it better." In preparation for their January trip, members
of the Colorado peace group wanted to speak with a weapons
inspector. They turned to U.S. Air Force Capt. Eric Jackson, 31,
raised in Buena Vista and now stationed in Wyoming.
An aerospace engineer, Jackson spent four and a half months in
1996 and 1997 working in Iraq with Richard Butler on the United
Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspection team.
He traveled up and down roads - including the one in front of Lt.
Ramady's fort - stopping everywhere from fertilizer plants to storage
bunkers in search of weap ons material.
Iraq "was probably six months away from having the (nuclear) bomb
in 1991," Jackson told the Coloradans. And Iraqis may well have
learned, from U.S. military advisers in the 1980s, details of U.S.
satellite surveillance, he said.
But "sanctions are not going to work," he contends. They are a crude
"continuation of the medi eval approach of surrounding castles and
trying to starve people out." Moreover, current U.S. demands for
Iraq to allow more inspections amount to "an untenable position,"
Jackson said, because chemical and biological weapons in a relatively
industrialized country such as Iraq can be practically impossible to
detect.
In Baghdad, senior Iraqi officials insisted Hussein has no territorial
ambitions - and the top U.N. official backed up their case for easing
economic sanctions.
"We want only to maintain our sovereignty as a nation. We would
like to have peaceful coexistence between Iraq and its neighbors,"
Usama Badraldin, a senior foreign ministry official, said in a Denver
Post interview.
Yet the new U.N. plan to end sanctions after bringing in inspectors "is
unworkable," he said, because it would prolong a process already
tainted by allegations that some inspectors shared information with
intelligence agencies.
Iraqi officials didn't express any urgency toward breaking today's
deadlock. "It's up to the United States," Badraldin said, "to decide
how to roll the ball. We are open. We are ready. We have no
precondition other than: Respect our dignity. Respect our
sovereignty." A senior official of Saddam's ruling Baath Party, Abdul
Hashemi - a Boston University graduate who later served as Iraq's
ambassador to France and as education minister - spoke for the
government in a meeting with the Colorado group.
"What Iraq wants: Just leave us alone," he said. "We have oil. The
United States wants oil. The oil we have, we will sell it. We can't
drink it. We will not prevent you from getting it. And we will not let
Iraqi oil be used against you." He denounced U.S. efforts to "liberate"
Iraq by toppling Hussein, and challenged the Coloradans to see
today's conflict from a broader perspective.
"If you are really for human rights," he implored, "then respect those
rights for me." Meantime, weapons inspections vehicles were lined up
and ready to go outside von Sponeck's U.N. office.
Von Sponeck warned that today's standoff between governments is
creating an angry generation of Iraqis whose education and diet are
deteriorating under economic sanctions.
Millions of working Iraqis "have nothing to do with whatever was
done by their leaders," von Spo neck said in a Denver Post interview
earlier this month. "So why should they be hooked in the first place?
It's regrettable that, in the confrontation of Iraq, the population itself
is
taken for granted. This is the call that any responsible person has to
make: end the singling out of a population to continue to suffer." Back
in the United States, some of the 70 Congress members who signed
a Jan. 31 letter asking President Clinton to lift economic sanctions
planned to introduce Iraq legislation this week. It aims at easing the
humanitarian situation while continuing an embargo on weapons.
Current policy "is not compassionate, and it's not consistent with our
moral position in the world," said U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell (RCalif.),
a co-author of the letter to Clinton. "And we're not accomplishing
what we set out to do. ... You're not pressuring Saddam with these
economic sanctions. You're hurting his people." In Iraq, from civil
servants to mothers depending on food rations in slums, people
begged the visiting Coloradans for relief.
"I just want to raise my children," implored Sabeha Taher, a single
mother of five, in a crumbling home in the ancient city of Samarra.
"It's my duty," she said. "What can we do?"