August 6, 2000

Our Anti-Sanctions Movement Ten Years On

Phyllis Bennis (Institute for Policy Studies and member of the MERIP
Editorial Committee)
Denis Halliday (former UN Assistant Secretary General and Humanitarian
Coordinator in Iraq)
Peter Lems (Program Assistant for Iraq, American Friends Service Committee)

THE ANTI-SANCTIONS MOVEMENT

Our movement against the Gulf War began even before the war itself, before
the Pentagon's planes started dropping the bombs of Desert Storm. Months
before the war began, as the US ratcheted up the threats and escalated the
military buildup in the Gulf in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the
anti-war movement took to the streets. We stayed there until long after the
"100-Day War" was over.
When it became clear that the war, the real war, still wasn't over, the
movement that had tried to stop the war was recreated as the anti-sanctions
movement, fighting the now ten-year-long war of sanctions (and later,
resumed bombing) against the people of Iraq.
Our movement has accomplished a great deal. As we look back on its ten
years, we need to take stock of what we have been able to do, and what
remains to be done, so that Iraq can be rebuilt and so that its children
can
once again claim a future as their own.

WHAT WE'VE ACCOMPLISHED

We are succeeding--but it's not done yet!--in changing much of US public
opinion. People across the country, editorials in leading newspapers,
influential community and national political and religious leaders, all are
moving towards a greater understanding of the devastation caused by
economic
sanctions and US responsibility for that destruction. The massive response
to the 1999 national speaking tour and the explosion of local
anti-sanctions
organizations demonstrate these shifts in public consciousness. Throughout
Europe, the Middle East, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, anti-sanctions
attitudes are even stronger, bolstering our movement.

We have made major strides in Congress, where a strong core of the Black
Caucus and the Progressive Caucus have made the sanctions issue their own.
We have doubled the number of Congresspeople willing to call directly for
ending economic sanctions. Under the leadership of Rep. John Conyers and
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, those initial openings are widening. More public
hearings and briefings on the impact of sanctions, the congressional
staffers' delegation to Iraq and the public commitments of Rep. Conyers and
Rep. Cynthia McKinney to travel to Iraq have all been important. Rep. David
Bonior's charge that the sanctions are "infanticide masquerading as policy"
represented a major escalation of opposition to the sanctions by a ranking
House member who is ordinarily a close ally of the Clinton administration.

Our movement has built a strong and committed core of activists, with
faith-based constituencies, the Arab-American community, traditional peace
forces, veterans, anti-sanctions lobbyists and students as its strongest
center. Even some private sector voices (for whatever reasons of their own)
have spoken out against Iraqi sanctions. Combining lobbying, material aid
campaigns, education and civil disobedience, we have created a wide range
of
innovative tactics to put the issue of the humanitarian impact of economic
sanctions, and the horror of the bombings, squarely on the US political
agenda. We have broadened our work, combining congressional pressure with
other, more direct, efforts to influence public opinion. The impact of our
work can be seen in the administration's failure to follow through on
threats to arrest Voices in the Wilderness and other activists for
violating
the sanctions.

US policy is more and more isolated among the US public, and even more
dramatically in the UN and elsewhere in the international arena. US
officials have learned that their increasingly unpopular policy is best
implemented in the dark, away from public scrutiny. They have learned the
lessons of Ohio State and the Berkeley graduation. While presidential
candidates vie with each other to see who can appear "tougher" on Iraq, the
administration has long since stopped bragging about its Iraq policy as a
success story--it responds only in defensive mode.

Washington was always lying when it claimed to be "leading the whole world
against tyranny" in Operation Desert Storm. The war was always a unilateral
assertion of power. But now, because of the anti-sanctions movement,
Washington no longer dares to make the claim. We know better--increasingly,
people across the US know it, too.

In Canada, Australia, New Zealand, even in Great Britain, parliamentary
pressure is rising to force reluctant governments to break with the US-led
embargo. Parliamentarians from nearly every European country have visited
Iraq. Four Arab governments in the Gulf have recently restored full
diplomatic relations with Iraq. The US policy is isolated.

FOR THE FUTURE...

But despite all our accomplishments so far, the sanctions remain in place.
UNICEF's most recent report confirms the continued deterioration of
conditionsfacing children in Iraq. The most recent UN resolution (1284)
refining the Oil-for-Food program does not offer to lift sanctions and
provides no framework for Iraq to obtain the massive investment needed to
rebuild its oil, water, electrical and other key infrastructures. The US
continues its so-called "dual use" holds on $1.4 billion of contracts for
vitally needed humanitarian goods. 30 percent of all Iraq's Oil-for-Food
funds are still diverted off the top to the Compensation Fund now paid
almost entirely to Kuwait and to US and allied oil companies. The
resolution
established a new UN arms monitoring agency, but without lifting the
economic embargo the new inspectors are unlikely to be able to begin work.

Our job is far from over. What should we be looking towards as we
consolidate our anti-sanctions movement, ten years after we began?

STRENGTHENING OUR TIES

We need to link our work to the growing anti-corporate movement that is so
vibrant and exciting, from Seattle to Washington to Philadelphia, targeting
corporate control of US politics and especially as it challenges the threat
of corporate domination of the UN itself. Sanctions represent a horrifying
example of economic violence, and opposition to such violence remains at
the
heart of the anti-sweatshop, anti-WTO and related campaigns. The
anti-sanctions movement needs to be part of, not only supporters of, those
movements. We set a great standard when the anti-sanctions contingent
helped
to lead the multi-issue Unity 2000 demonstration at the Republican
convention. We need to do more.

The same is true for the environmental movement. The destruction of Iraq's
environment--including the consequences of trying to pump more oil from
degraded equipment left unrepaired for lack of money--is a disturbing part
of the humanitarian crisis wrought by sanctions. We need to do more to join
and become an active and vital part of the increasingly international
environmental justice movements.

We need to build on our strength in the churches and among faith-based
communities. Many of the mainstream churches have now passed
extraordinarily
strong anti-sanctions positions, but we haven't figured out how to maximize
getting that message, and mobilizing political actions based on that
message, to the base level of the churches. We can look as an example to
the
Jubilee 2000 movement-virtually every denomination has not only endorsed
Third World debt relief at the national level, but at the individual parish
level, too. We need to learn more about that mobilization: did the
initiative come from the bottom, or was it driven from the top? What can we
learn from Jubilee's success?

We need to figure out how to build a stronger base beyond the churches as
well. We have reached some broader sectors beyond the religious
communities,
but the moral core of the anti-sanctions movement seems to resonate most
strongly there. How do we expand our base, consolidate our work with the
peace movements and the Arab-American and Muslim communities, while
reaching
even broader parts of society? How do we build the crucial links with
people
and organizations of color? We know that's where support for our position
is
strongest, but we haven't succeeded yet at building ongoing partnerships
with those communities across the US. We need to reach other mainstream
constituencies too--unions, teachers, the women's movement, doctors and
many
more.

One way forward might be to build and strengthen our organizational links
with those working on issues related to sanctions. We talk about how the UN
has been made a victim of Washington's Iraq policy; that means we need to
broaden our outreach to organizations working to defend the UN, like the UN
Association or the World Federalists. We analyze how US Iraq policy
undermines the cause of real disarmament in the Middle East, so we need to
better coordinate our work with organizations working on nuclear
disarmament, opposition to the arms trade and related issues. We should be
sharing ideas and strategy with groups like the Arms Trade News staff of
the
Council for a Livable World, for example. Especially now, facing the likely
failure of the new UN arms inspectors to begin their work and the
election-driven possibility that the US might respond with a renewed
bombing
campaign, our links with the broadest US and international anti-military,
anti-nuclear and anti-arms trade organizations become crucial.

US policy towards Iraq is increasingly isolated. We need to build our ties
with the international anti-sanctions movement as part of our effort to
highlight how the US and Britain stand alone against world opinion in
imposing sanctions. Those ties exist, but we need to figure out how to
broaden and strengthen them, and how to use the work of our sister
movements
in Europe, the Middle East, Canada and elsewhere as a way of maximizing our
joint efforts to further isolate and thus weaken Washington's policy.

REFOCUSING THE DEBATE

Especially in this election period, especially with Dick Cheney, the
overseer of the Gulf War, as the vice-presidential nominee, we face new
opportunities but also new challenges. Suddenly the 1991 Gulf War is back
on
the public agenda-on the video screens of the Republican convention, on the
question list of the talk show hosts. We need to sharply refocus that
debate
to examine how the war continues, how economic sanctions and bombings are
continuing an unending war, the hypocrisy of Halliburton oil equipment
company CEO Dick Cheney profiting from oil equipment sold to Iraq, how the
yellow-ribbon patriotism of George Bush Senior and Stormin' Norman
Schwarzkopf  constitutes support for a policy that continues to kill more
than 5,000 Iraqi children under five years old every month.

We have created a broad analysis of the policy implications of Iraq
sanctions, but we haven't always made that analysis accessible to and
usable
by everyone in our movement. We haven't crafted a clear enough national
strategy to sharpen our focus and cohere our disparate strengths and
forces.
We need to improve the links between our national organizations and our
local grassroots anti-sanctions groups. The cry "lift the economic
sanctions" is heard all over, but we need to build a national movement with
a clear national goal.

EMULATING SUCCESS

We have a model to look at, in the movement against the decades-long
embargo
against Cuba. From the Baltimore Orioles to agribusiness executives to the
hunger-striking Pastors for Peace activists, work against the embargo
continued at every level. After years of work, suddenly, there was a
critical mass. Suddenly, the political cost for Congresspeople opposing the
embargo had diminished. Suddenly, there was a real vote to end enforcement
of key parts of the crippling embargo. Suddenly, a real end to the Cuban
embargo seems in sight. We have another example, seen in the new level of
diplomatic engagement, even over nuclear policy, that has replaced US
sanctions on and military threats towards North Korea. We see a significant
reduction in long-term punitive sanctions against Iran, Libya and Sudan.

Our movement against economic sanctions in Iraq must be next.

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Chris Toensing
Editor, Middle East Report
1500 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Suite 119
Washington, DC  20005

t (202) 223-3677
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