Sanctions Against Iraq Should End

Sanctions Against Iraq Should End.

Cruel Policy Is Killing Thousands Of Children And Has Failed To
Dislodge
Saddam Hussein

Editorial

TEN years ago this week, the United Nations slapped economic sanctions
on
Iraq after its army overran Kuwait. Now, at the United States'
insistence,
the sanctions drag on in the face of failure.
Dictator Saddam Hussein remains ensconced in power, immune from the
constraints that were supposed to oust him. The victims are the Iraqi
people, especially children. An economy in shambles is decimating a
generation too young to have memories of, let alone to have fought in,
the
Persian Gulf War.

Estimates of the children under five who have perished from disease and
malnutrition as a result of sanctions range from 250,000 to more than a
half-million over the decade. That's 50,000 children a year, 4,000 a
month,
more than 100 children a day -- a generation vanishing.

Two former administrators of the U.N.'s humanitarian relief program in
Iraq
have resigned in protest, one calling the sanctions ``genocide.''
That's too
strong a term, for it ignores Saddam's role for his people's suffering.
But
in Iraq, as in Cuba, on which Congress is debating relaxed sanctions
after
40 years, sanctions have proven to be both morally repugnant and
ineffective.

Broad sanctions will not force Saddam to turn over the weapons of mass
destruction he hid or has developed since 1998, when he kicked out U.N.
arms
inspectors after bombing raids by Britain and America. And they will
not
foment a rebellion to remove Saddam. Saddam's cronies are insulated.
Sanctions have created a two-tiered economy, oppressive for the poor
and
porous for the elites, who live off contraband oil.

Since 1996, the United Nations has allowed limited exports of oil for
food,
medicine, and, lately, for spare parts for the oil production. A sharp
rise
in the market price of oil has upped the value of exports to $7 billion
a
year, which should ease hunger for Iraq's 23 million people.

But the United States and Britain have blocked contracts for
fertilizers,
pharmaceuticals and even ambulances, on suspicion that Iraq's military
might
appropriate them. And the food-for-oil program doesn't help rebuild
Iraq's
crippled infrastructure: water works, power stations, sewer systems and
hospitals. It's the combined effects of anemia, drought and disease --
diarrhea from befouled water and alarming rates of cancer -- that are
culling the young and old.

There's no question Saddam bears some responsibility. He continues to
pour
money into a fetish of palace-building. And he would, it's safe to
assume,
use some money from the lifting of sanctions to press ahead with a
biological weapons, if not a nuclear weapons, program.

But sanctions have failed as a lever to move Saddam. And, while ending
the
ban on oil sales wouldn't guarantee relief for ordinary Iraqis, it
would
shift the blame for his people's misery squarely onto him.

There are no foolproof solutions to constrain Saddam, but there are
alternatives: economic and travel restrictions targeting the ruling
clique
and a continued ban on the import of weapons and military machinery,
accompanied by a long-term monitoring system. Violations would be met
with
air strikes. The United States, which has continued to bomb Iraqi
military
sites, should continue to control the skies over Iraq.

Support for broad sanctions, always ambivalent, is thinning as nations
move
to re-establish relations. America's allies have become increasingly
queasy
about the toll that sanctions are taking.

But there's been no sign of regret or even a call for a policy review
in the
White House and no talk of sanctions on the convention floor in
Philadelphia. The news media have all but ignored the topic.

Such intransigence and indifference are disturbing. Economic sanctions
against Iraq should be rolled back, if not repealed altogether.