The United Nations sanctions against Iraq have had one outcome only: an exhausted and hungry people whose conditions are deteriorating by the day.
In the course of the past 10 years the world has come to realise that it is dealing with a totally unprecedented situation. Thus an old weapon such as economic sanctions is being reconsidered and its usefulness in a primarily political conflict is being doubted.
Sanctions have been and continue to be imposed on a number of states, such as North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and what remains of Somalia. However, there is a noticeable difference between the sanctions to which these states have been subjected and the sanctions that have been imposed on Iraq.
We are dealing here with an unprecedented conflict of wills: the will of a superpower and the will of a leadership that is moved only by its obsession for survival. Whereas there are opportunities for dialogue and greater opportunities for maneuvering and circumventing sanctions in the other cases, the parties to the Iraqi case appear to have lost all lines of retreat and room for maneuvering.
Consequently, everything seems to be possible in this conflict. The only result it has yielded is that there is one victim only: namely the Iraqi people in whose name and for whose sake sanctions were imposed in the first place under the pretext of saving them from their leaders. It is also in the name of the Iraqi people that their leaders are waging their war against sanctions in their own way.
As I have written in this column about two years ago, the failure of sanctions is not a matter of opinion that is open to discussion. It is a real fact which the United States should admit, without stubbornness and without the pride of a superpower. The time of argument over this matter has passed some time ago. One conclusion after another prompts us to say once again that sanctions have completely lost their moral justification as a weapon in a political battle.
Sanctions against Iraq have become futile and have a completely opposite effect. They have brought Iraqi men and women to an abyss of unimaginable economic and social deterioration and ruin. Whether we acknowledge that this outcome is due to the blindness and totality of the sanctions and the wrong assumption that the hunger of the people will drive them to rebellion, or due to the fact that the Iraqi leaders have succeeded in harnessing the battle into serve their survival in power, the indisputable result is that sanctions have become a mechanism that systematically destroys the Iraqi people and cannot be assumed to be a mechanism that drives Iraqis to rebellion.
The desired rebellion should be approached and dealt with separately from sanctions. A sure fact has been imprinted in the memory of the Iraqi people, which is that the international community and the United States in particular have let them down, for they see before them one of the most equivocal, hazy, and uncertain policies in the world in a conflict such as the one the United States has been fighting for ten years.
The world has not seen an uncertain and confused policy that lacks options such as the United States policy towards Iraq. Asking Iraqis to have confidence in US intentions seems to be an impossible task in light of such a policy.
What is to be done then? I say once again that the United States should give the Iraqi leaders the victory they want – victory in the battle of sanctions – so that the Iraqi people will be able to live in better conditions. That is the best thing that could be done at present. The Iraqis should be left to themselves to decide their fate and the fate of their leaders.
All what has been done throughout the past years has achieved opposite results, results that run counter to all desired objectives.
Neither have the Iraqi leaders been affected or weakened by sanctions, nor have the Iraqi people rebelled. That means only one thing, namely that sanctions have failed.
It is not reasonable that Iraqi men and women should continue to pay the price of the failure of policies that have been drawn up in their name and for their sake.
– Translated from our sister newspaper, Al Ayam.