UN’s demolition policy on Iraq
by Michael Jansen

US warplanes bombed northern Iraq again on Tuesday for the first time since
June 14. On Aug. 11 and 12 US and British bombers struck a food storage
depot and railway station in the city of Samawa, 170 kilometers south of
Baghdad. These were the first attacks in the south since July 22.

The resumption of Anglo-US strikes coincided with the visit to Baghdad on
Aug. 10-11 by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the first by a foreign head
of state since the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Chavez, who holds the rotating
presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC),
consulted with President Saddam Hussein ahead of the organization’s summit
in Caracas at the end of September. An oil industry informant said that the
taboo on contacts with the Iraqi leader had to be broken because Chavez was
calling on the other eight OPEC heads of state. Moreover, Venezuela’s
minister of oil and deputy foreign minister had already visited Baghdad.
Iraq, a major producer, could not be excluded.

Nevertheless US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright sharply criticized
Chavez’s visit as well as the pledge by Indonesian President Abdurrahman
Wahid, who also received the Venezuelan president, to follow suit.
Iraq estimates that Anglo-US warplanes based in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait, have flown 22,000 sorties since the bombing campaign was launched in
1998. Iraq gives a toll of 315 killed and 920 wounded in the 20-month
offensive. This count has been partially confirmed by UN investigators.
Routine bombing of targets-of-choice was initiated in December 1998
following a four day blitz against a variety of sites throughout Iraq. The
object of the blitz was to punish Iraq for expelling UN weapons inspectors
>from the country after it was revealed that some were agents of the US
Central Intelligence Agency.

Before the blitz, US and British warplanes bombed occasionally, claiming
that Iraqi anti-aircraft installations had locked their radar onto or fired
at the planes while patrolling the no-fly zones.” These air exclusion zones
were imposed in April 1991 and August 1992, respectively, allegedly, to
protect dissident Kurds and Shiites from attack by Baghdad. According to the
standing orders in force before the December blitz, aircrews were to confine
their attacks to anti-aircraft batteries which either opened up or tracked
their planes. Of course, there were numerous violations of the declared
standing orders.

Last week’s renewal of the bombing campaign, at what might turn out to be be
the previous rate of three or four raids a week also coincides with an
increase in pressure for the lifting of the punitive UN sanctions regime
imposed a decade ago. Sanctions are estimated to have killed 1.3 million
Iraqis so far. According to Iraqi figures, the current level of attrition is
10,000 people a month, of whom 7,000 are children under the age of five.
Ending an 18-day tour of Iraq this week, the director of the UN oil-for-food
program, Benon Sevan, said that implementation of the program needed a
“fresh look, a fresh approach and flexibility.” In particular, he said
contracts for urgently needed foodstuffs and medical supplies should be
expedited and obstacles eliminated. Ever since sanctions were imposed the US
and UK have used the Security Council’s oversight committee, which approves
purchases and disburses payments from Iraq’s escrow account, to delay
shipments and block contracts for supplies, particularly those which have
both civilian and military uses, such as ambulances and chemicals for water
purification and most kinds of machinery.

Washington has also prevented Iraq’s oil industry from receiving spare parts
to upgrade the country’s oilfields. Contracts for goods worth $1.7 billion
are currently on hold. Iraq is presently producing oil, its only source of
revenue, at a level of 3.1 million barrels a day but this rate could be cut
because of the degradation of the oil fields due to depreciating and broken
down equipment. A number of fields have already been irretrievably damaged.
Under new procedures Sevan said that lists of food, medical supplies and
educational and agricultural imports will not be submitted to the Council
committee but to technical experts who will speed up the vetting process and
approve contracts which have been routinely held up by the US and UK.
Finally, the bombing campaign coincides with the adoption by the UN
Secretariat of a new approach to the issue of eliminating and monitoring
Iraq’s unconventional weaponry and long-range missiles. France, China and
Russia, the three other permanent council  members, do not support the
aggressive, confrontational stance toward Iraq adopted by the US and
Britain. Although the three do not support the replacement of the former UN
inspection agency, UNSCOM, with a new body known as UNMOVIC, they did not
veto its creation when a resolution was put to the council last December.

Handed a fait accomplis, the Secretariat, also reluctant to resume
inspections in Iraq, appointed a non-confrontational Swede, Hans Blix, to
head UNMOVIC. Blix promptly said UNMOVIC would not follow the aggressive
example of UNSCOM. And, in a recent interview, Blix stated he does not
believe Iraq has been trying to rearm with prohibited nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons. This assessment contradicted the former UNSCOM chief,
the Australian Richard Butler, who continues to claim, to Washington’s
delight that Iraq is rebuilding its banned arsenal. Such reports, Blix
argued, cannot be substantiated.

The secretariat’s all too obvious shift has come about because
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his aides realize that the world
organisation is being used by the US and UK to destroy Iraq. This determined
demolition of a UN member state is flagrant violation of the UN Charter and
international law. This realisation seems to have crystallized when a second
UN humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad, Hans von Sponeck, resigned last
March in protest against sanctions and the way the oil-for-food program was
being manipulated. His predecessor, Denis Halliday, resigned in June 1998,
saying that the blockade of Iraq amounted to “genocide.”

No longer able to impose their will, the US and Britain seem to have
returned to bombing, their last resort in their war of attrition against
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the hard-pressed citizens of Iraq.

Michael Jansen, a longtime observer of Middle Eastern Affairs, wrote this
commentary in Nicosia for The Daily Star

DS: 18/08/00