An Embargo Too Far
By David Cromwell

Mariam Hamza has beautiful eyes, a loving personality and immense
courage.
She is also a symbol of one of the greatest human rights abuses of our
time.
This four year old Iraqi leukaemia patient hit the headlines in 1998
when
George Galloway, MP for Glasgow Kelvin, brought her back to the United
Kingdom. Here she could receive the medical treatment denied to her in
Iraq
as a result of the severe economic sanctions imposed by the west when
Saddam
Hussein's troops invaded Kuwait in 1990.
It is almost ten years since the people and oil reserves of Kuwait
were
liberated under what George Bush declared the "new world order". In
that
period, sanctions have led to the deaths of over one million Iraqi
civilians, according to figures produced by Unicef. Around half a
million
of
these victims are children under five. Each day, another 150 of them
join
the death list for want of clean water supplies, medication and food.
A
senior United Nations official in Iraq who resigned in protest at the
sanctions has spoken of Western "genocide." Meanwhile, Washington and
London
argue that the embargo must remain in force to prevent Iraq from
"threatening its neighbours." Or perhaps, as President Clinton says,
"until
the end of time, or as long as he [Saddam] lasts."
Recently, hundreds of people gathered at Kensington town hall in
London in
support of the people of Iraq and to demand that Clinton and Blair
lift the
sanctions immediately. The West is destroying "an entire generation",
said
Hans von Sponeck who resigned his post as head of the UN’s "oil for
food"
programme on March 31 this year. Under this humanitarian initiative,
Baghdad
sells oil to buy food, medicine and other supplies. After a 36 year
career
in the UN, von Sponeck resigned when it became clear that the
programme was
"wholly inadequate" to prevent the deterioration of the country's
infrastructure. Even the people's "minimum needs" were not being met,
in
contravention of the UN's own charter.
Von Sponeck is no lone bureaucrat with an axe to grind. Denis
Halliday, von
Sponeck's predecessor in Baghdad, is even more forthright. "We are in
the
process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and
terrifying as
that. It is illegal and immoral." Halliday, who resigned in 1998, is
scathing of the paltry nature of the UN's humanitarian initiative: "Of
the
$20 billion that has been provided through the oil for food programme,
about
a third, or $7 billion, has been spent on UN 'expenses', reparations
to
Kuwait and assorted compensation claims. That leaves $13 billion
available
to the Iraqi government. If you divide that figure by the population
of
Iraq, which is 22 million, it leaves some $190 per head of population
per
year over 3 years - that is pitifully inadequate."
Critics of the sanctions say that the modern state of Iraq is being
destroyed. Humanitarian supplies are routinely put on hold by the UN
sanctions committee in New York. The official reason? "Suspected dual
use".
The supplies include medical equipment, vaccines and painkillers such
as
morphine, all considered to be potential raw materials for weapons of
mass
destruction. And then there are the agricultural supplies, water
pumps,
safety and fire-fighting equipment - even wheelbarrows.
Journalist John Pilger told the packed meeting in Kensington,
"According to
Unicef, Iraq in 1990 had one of the healthiest and best-educated
populations
in the world; its child mortality rate was one of the lowest. Today,
it is
among the highest on earth." It was Pilger’s disturbing film, Paying
the
Price: Killing the Children of Iraq, broadcast on British television
in
March, which has done more than anything else to galvanise the public.
The
Foreign Office has reportedly been shaken by the massive outcry that
Britain
could be complicit in one of the greatest human rights abuses in
recent
times.
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has told Pilger that he would defend the
sanctions publicly "at any place and any time". However, Cook pleaded
a
prior engagement when invited to come to Kensington last week. Pilger
has
since asked Cook to name a venue and date of the Foreign Secretary’s
choosing. It should be an interesting debate.
The title of Pilger's documentary comes from an astonishing admission
made
by Clinton's secretary of state Madeline Albright. When asked on the
CBS
news programme "60 Minutes" if the death of more than half a million
children was a price worth paying, she replied, "We think the price is
worth
it".
Worth what? Presumably keeping Saddam in check - or destroying his
hold on
power. The tragic irony is that Saddam is a tyrant of the West’s own
making.
By brutally suppressing the Kurds and the Shia in the 1980s, Saddam
provided
"political stability" and "market opportunities" in Iraq to the
benefit of
western strategic and corporate interests. But when he invaded Kuwait
in
August 1990, threatening the oil-dependent United States, he had to be
punished. Bush later admitted that the Gulf War was all about "access
to
energy resources" and the threat to "our way of life". American and
French
intelligence reports reveal that the war left "in excess of 200,000
[Iraqi]
civilian deaths".
And still the bombing of Iraq continues, virtually unreported in the
western
media. When the air raids resumed in December 1998, we were told it
was
under "enhanced rules of engagement". Little has been said about what
that
may mean. The number of recent combat missions flown over Iraq by US
and
British forces is already greater than those flown over Yugoslavia in
the
"humanitarian" intervention of last year. Hundreds of Iraqi civilians
have
been killed. Now, after years of debilitating sanctions, bombing and
thorough weapons inspections, Iraq has no nuclear, chemical or
biological
capability left, says former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.
Saddam, he
emphasizes, represents "zero threat".
There are hopeful signs in the air of a policy change. In tandem with
mounting public opposition, parliamentarians in Britain and the US
have
called for the economic embargo against Iraq to be lifted. It has been
called a "blunt instrument" that hurts the people, not the leadership.
Meanwhile, as Robin Cook looks for a free date in his busy official
diary
to
defend the sanctions policy, Mariam and millions of other ordinary
Iraqis
are suffering for the sins of a dictator over whom they have no
control.