5/26/00
  BY RAHUL MAHAJAN o PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALAN POGUE
   IRAQ UNDER SIEGE:
   The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War.
   Edited by Anthony Arnove.
   Photographs by Alan Pogue.
   South End Press.
   216 pages. $16.00 (paper).

   They made a wasteland and called it peace.
   - Tacitus
   I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is
   worth it.
   - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when asked by
   reporter Leslie Stahl whether U.S. policy objectives in Iraq were worth
   the
   death of 500,000 children

   The war against Iraq is not over. The past decade, marked internationally
   by a ceaseless U.S. effort to force other countries to open their markets
   to First World multinational corporations, has simultaneously seen Iraq
   cut
   off from the world, under a state of siege known as "economic sanctions."
   The situation is not as paradoxical as it first seems, since both "free
   trade" and the sanctions involve control of the policies of other
   countries
   by the elites of the First World. The sanctions against Iraq constitute
   the
   most comprehensive economic blockade of any country in modern times: in
   actual effect, a war against civilians that preferentially targets
   children, the elderly, and the poor.

   The effects of this blockade on a country that once imported 70
   percent of its food requirements, whose entire infrastructure was reduced
   to rubble by possibly the most intense bombing campaign in history, have
   been devastating. The number killed by the sanctions alone since 1990,
   variously estimated by different United Nations agencies, is likely over
   1
   million in all. Half of the dead are children under the age of five.
   According to reliable international estimates, another 5,000 or more
   children under five die every month as a consequence of sanctions. These
   innocent victims are caught between two forces that have repeatedly shown
   their callous disregard for human rights: Saddam Hussein and the U.S.
   government.

   The effects of the sanctions are becoming widely known. After years of
   silence, the U.S. media, in response to the heroic efforts of a small but
   dedicated group of international activists, have recently given some
   mainstream coverage to the conditions of life in Iraq, most notably in an
   excellent feature by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (available at
   www.seattle-pi.com/iraq/). Although such coverage is not comprehensive,
   and
   is generally anecdotal rather than statistical, cumulatively it does
   paint
   an illuminating picture of a country in crisis.

   One cannot, however, rely on the mainstream media to understand or report
   the diabolical way in which the sanctions are enforced, the steady stream
   of lies and disinformation disseminated by the U.S. government, the
   culpability of the United States, or, indeed, the real reasons for the
   policy. Over the past several years, much has been written on postwar
   Iraq.
   The work spans a broad range: Out of the Ashes, by Andrew and Patrick
   Cockburn, details the inner workings of Iraq's government and of covert
   U.S. operations in Iraq; Endgame, by Scott Ritter, chronicles the saga of
   weapons inspections; Iraq: Sanctions and Beyond, by Anthony Cordesman and
   Ahmed Hashim, analyzes Iraq as a security issue from a military
   perspective; The Scourging of Iraq: Sanctions, Law, and Natural Justice,
   by
   Geoff Simons, is a magisterial analysis and critique of the sanctions and
   of U.S. motives in Iraq. Interestingly, each of these authors
   characterizes
   the sanctions as a cruel and untenable policy, which inflicts massive
   harm
   on innocents while offering no chance of attaining any of the U.S.
   government's stated goals.

   Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War, a new
   collection
   from South End Press, is a valuable addition to this literature. Like
   Simons' book, it contains the necessary analysis to see beneath the
   surface
   of U.S. proclamations, and adds the vital dimension of personal
   experience.
   Most of the contributors have visited Iraq, and among them are some of
   the
   foremost activists in the anti-sanctions movement. The book includes
   pieces
   by political analysts Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn; journalists Robert
   Fisk
   and John Pilger; Middle East experts Phyllis Bennis and Barbara Nimri
   Aziz;
   Peter Pellett, head of three U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
   missions to Iraq; Iraqi biologist Huda Ammash; and prominent
   anti-sanctions
   activists Kathy Kelly (founder of Voices in the Wilderness, which has
   made
   over thirty trips to Iraq bringing medicine, in defiance of the
   sanctions),
   and Rania Masri, director of the Iraq Action Coalition. The book also
   includes an interview with Denis Halliday, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator
   in
   Iraq until he resigned in 1998 in protest of the sanctions. (His
   successor,
   Hans von Sponeck, and Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program's
   mission to Iraq, have done the same.) The result is a sustained,
   coherent,
   and comprehensive critique of U.S. policy on Iraq.

   The Results of the Sanctions
   Kelly describes hospitals full of children suffering from kwashiorkor and
   marasmus (diseases of severe malnutrition); doctors forced to stand by
   and
   watch while these children die because they have no medicine; people
   dying
   from waterborne diseases because Iraq has been allowed to import neither
   enough chlorine to treat the water nor new pipes to replace old, broken
   ones. Robert Fisk describes an estimated 300 tons of depleted uranium
   ordnance in southern Iraq, and an explosion of childhood leukemia and
   grotesque birth defects in that region since the war. In pre-war Iraq,
   the
   cure rate for leukemia was 76 percent; under the sanctions, leukemia is a
   death sentence. Professor Pellett covers the effects on the country as a
   whole: average food intake has declined by one-third; growth-stunting and
   wasting are now as common as in the worst-off Third World countries;
   mortality for children under five years old is almost 2.5 times the
   pre-sanctions rate.

   Considering these heavily documented, accumulating casualties, the
   reflexive U.S. response has been that all this suffering is the fault of
   Saddam Hussein. It is undeniable that Hussein cares more about his own
   power than about the welfare of his people; that a small elite lives very
   well while most Iraqis are suffering; and that anyone perceived as a
   threat
   to Hussein's power risks imprisonment or death. But it is also true that
   during the Seventies and Eighties, prior to the Gulf War, Hussein
   presided
   over a tremendous increase in the health and well-being of the Iraqi
   people
   - illiteracy almost wiped out, education free through the graduate level,
   health care excellent and free. In addition, most U.N. relief officials
   confirm that the only thing now preventing mass starvation has been the
   Iraqi government's food rationing system, implemented shortly after the
   institution of sanctions. That system has drawn praise for its fairness
   and
   efficiency from all knowledgeable quarters.

   It is true that the Iraqi elites - like those in most countries,
   including the United States - will buy expensive M.R.I. machines despite
   widespread shortages of basic medical supplies. But the amount of money
   re-directed by those sorts of transactions is minimal in relation to the
   needs of the Iraqi people. If anything, in the U.S. the social inequity
   is
   much greater - hospitals here glitter with fancy equipment while 45
   million
   people, disproportionately children, remain uninsured and without access
   to
   basic preventative care. It is illuminating to see the conventional
   defenders of the free market and of corporate super-profits, when they
   consider Iraq, suddenly discovering socialism.

   Since the actual facts are far from sufficient for the U.S.
   government to defend its sanctions policy, the administration has
   resorted
   instead to a remarkable array of disinformation. One of the hoariest
   charges is that Saddam has misappropriated United Nations Oil-for-Food
   funds to build palaces. Yet the simple structure of these transactions
   make
   that misappropriation quite impossible. Under Security Council
   Resolutions
   986 and 1153, Iraq is allowed to sell up to 5.2 billion dollars worth of
   oil every six months (that cap was recently raised). Roughly 3 billion
   dollars of that money goes to meet the needs of 23 million Iraqis (the
   rest
   is designated in advance for "reparations" to Kuwaitis and others). As
   the
   piece here by Voices in the Wilderness points out, no funds from the
   Oil-for-Food program even enter Iraq: all the money goes to a New York
   account of the Bank of Paris, from which funds are disbursed by the U.N.
   to
   pay for specific contracts Iraq has with foreign companies.

   Similarly false is the charge, usually accompanied in the U.S.
   press by photographs of warehouses full of goods, that supplies are being
   "hoarded" by the regime. U.N. officials in charge of monitoring the
   distribution disagree. The explanation lies rather in the way the
   Oil-for-Food program works. Every contract Iraq makes with a foreign
   company must include a complete specification of the end use of every
   item
   contracted for. It must then be approved by the U.N. Sanctions Committee,
   a
   body with one representative from each member of the Security Council,
   any
   one of whom can veto or indefinitely suspend any contract for any reason.
   If a contract cannot be fulfilled exactly as written, it is cancelled and
   the whole process must begin again. This procedure creates many problems
   for the Iraqis. They are not allowed to import refrigerated trucks
   because
   such trucks could have military uses - which means that perishable items
   (e.g., cancer medicine) cannot be transported. Some warehouses have only
   a
   single operating forklift.

   Equally serious is the problem of "complementarity." Frequently,
   the Iraqis receive insulin but no syringes, heart-lung machines but not
   the
   computers to run them. They are then forced to keep the goods they
   receive
   warehoused, hoping that the Sanctions Committee will allow the
   complementary equipment in. This problem occurs so often that many
   activists suspect that it is done on purpose. The U.S. is responsible for
   over 1,000 vetoes and holds on Oil-for-Food contracts; Britain is a
   distant
   second with 120.

   The Stated Motives
   Such peremptory behavior suggests we should question closely the
   government's stated motives. The two primary justifications for U.S.
   support of the sanctions are (a) that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
   make it a threat to its neighbors, and (b) that the U.S. is simply
   interested in upholding international law. As Anthony Arnove points out
   in
   the introduction to Iraq Under Siege, however, the U.S. has expressed no
   desire to limit its own weapons of mass destruction, or those of its
   allies. The U.S. maintains the largest such arsenal in the world,
   including
   nuclear and chemical weapons, and it supports and arms allied countries
   with severe records of regional aggression and human rights violations,
   such as Israel and Turkey. Nor is Iraq the only country to use weapons of
   mass destruction - the U.S. has used such weapons more than any other
   country.

   Furthermore, Iraq is no longer a threat to any of its neighbors.
   Scott Ritter, once a U.N. official in the weapons monitoring program and
   no
   friend of the Hussein regime, writes, "Iraq today possesses no meaningful
   weapons of mass destruction," and his claims have been echoed by other
   weapons inspectors. While Iraq's military has collapsed and its weapons
   have been dismantled, other countries in the area have engaged in an orgy
   of weapons-buying, mostly from the U.S.

   The international law argument is even more absurd. The sanctions
   violate the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the starvation of
   civilians
   as a method of warfare, and also, as Pellett points out, the Universal
   Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child
   (ratified by every country except the U.S. and Somalia). The December
   1998
   Desert Fox campaign, and the continuing "low-level" bombing ever since -
   never authorized by the Security Council - are violations of the U.N.
   Charter. The so-called "no-fly zones" have no U.N. authorization, and are
   simply a bi-lateral (U.S. and Britain) exertion of imperial power. The
   bombing - barely reported in the mainstream media, yet the longest
   campaign
   since the Vietnam War - has killed hundreds of innocent civilians.

   Another frequent defense of the sanctions is that they are somehow
   intended to bring down Hussein and his regime. This is an odd claim,
   since
   observers across the political spectrum - including the Iraqi opposition
   -
   insist that the sanctions have strengthened the Iraqi leader. The
   sanctions
   give the regime more control over the lives of ordinary Iraqis, who are
   now
   entirely dependent on the government dole, and have shifted the focus of
   ordinary Iraqis' anger away from their government and toward the U.S.
   Moreover, public energy is entirely consumed in the struggle for
   survival,
   making political action all the more difficult.

   The Permanent Motivations
   So what are the real motives driving this policy? It's hard to do more
   than
   speculate, but the writers in Iraq Under Siege present some plausible
   possibilities. Arnove argues that the primary motivation of postwar U.S.
   foreign policy has been to retain its position of extreme privilege - as
   New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman put it approvingly, "The hidden
   hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's
   cannot
   flourish without McDonnell Douglas." To this general motivation Chomsky
   adds the first rule of U.S. Middle East policy: that the resources of the
   region belong not to the people of the region, but to the U.S. Any
   development that might imperil that presumed ownership must be met with
   appropriate force. Given that unspoken and unacknowledged presumption,
   Chomsky argues, the sanctions make sense. After nationalizing its oil,
   Iraq
   had spread the benefits of its oil revenues, creating a significant
   highly-educated middle class which could not so easily be controlled by a
   weak feudal elite, such as those that rule in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
   Under this logic, continuing U.S. hegemony in the area requires the
   targeting of not just the rulers, but the general populace.

   A related question is whether the sanctions can be considered
   genocide. As Denis Halliday says in his interview, "It certainly is a
   valid
   word in my view, when you have a situation where we see thousands of
   deaths
   per month, a possible total of 1 million to 1.5 million over the last
   nine
   years. If that is not genocide, then I don't know quite what is." The
   U.N.
   Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
   (adopted in 1948, ratified with reservations by the U.S. in 1988),
   includes
   within its definition: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions
   of
   life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in
   part." The sanctions do seem calculated to destroy a significant segment
   of
   Iraqi society. The question of intent is less clear - certainly it is not
   as crude as the express desire to kill all Iraqis.

   But practically speaking, the continued sanctions hold the Iraqi
   civilian population hostage against the (undefined) good behavior of
   Saddam
   Hussein. Yet Hussein has no incentive to comply any further - for, as
   even
   conservatives like Cordesman and Ritter acknowledge, Clinton and various
   subordinates have repeatedly indicated that even should Iraq disarm
   completely, sanctions will not be lifted until Hussein is dead.
   Furthermore, the shapers of the policy consistently proclaim Hussein's
   indifference to the suffering of his people - never acknowledging that
   this
   supposition entirely obviates their argument for the sanctions.

   The basic mandate behind the sanctions is also unreasonably broad -
   as Chomsky says, "There is indeed a way to eliminate the capability of
   producing weapons of mass destruction, only one way, and that is the
   Carthaginian solution: you totally destroy the society." However extreme
   such a measure might appear, it seems to be, alas, effectively what the
   sanctions are doing.

   Iraq Under Siege concludes on an uncertainly hopeful note, with a
   description of various activist efforts against the sanctions, which
   sympathetic readers shall wish to pursue. It is mildly heartening to note
   that a recent letter to the president calling for the lifting of economic
   sanctions, sponsored by Congressmen John Conyers of Michigan and Tom
   Campbell of California, was signed by seventy congresspeople (only two of
   whom, Ciro Rodríguez and Sheila Jackson Lee, are from Texas). Iraq may
   still be saved, if enough Americans can be persuaded to act on their
   moral
   responsibility to put an end to the genocidal crimes of our government.
   Reading Iraq Under Siege is a good place to begin.

   Rahul Mahajan (e-mail: rahul@peaches.ph.utexas.edu) is a doctoral
   candidate
   in physics at U.T.-Austin, and actively involved in the movement to lift
   economic sanctions against Iraq. His work is acknowledged in Iraq Under
   Siege. He is a member of the Nowar Collective (which maintains one of
   Austin's largest progressive e-mail listservs), and on the Executive
   Committee of Peace Action Texas. For more information on Iraq, see
   www.iraqaction.org (Iraq Action Coalition) and www.nonviolence.org/vitw
   (Voices in the Wilderness).
   Observer staff photographer Alan Pogue visited Iraq with Voices in
   the Wilderness last year. His photographs are featured in Iraq Under
   Siege.