Business Times Malaysia
Trends: Punitive or just plain vindictive?

HOLLYWOOD has made blockbusters out of Saddam Hussein and Iraq. But while
the American movie industry continues to make tonnes of money propagating
and perpetuating an unsavoury of Baghdad, the people of Iraq continue to
suffer from sanctions imposed by the United Nations' Security Council. For
nearly a decade, food and medicine have been made very scarce to the average
Iraqi. Thousands of infants in this country have died as a result of the
embargo. But Washington isn't ready to agree to ease the stranglehold.
Instead, there were reports over the weekend of US and British planes
raiding a railway station in the southern Iraqi city of As- Samawah. What's
going on?

The UN owes its members an explanation as to why the sanctions should be in
place for another day. And why the sophisticated US and British fighters
continue to put the lives of innocent people at risk and destroying their
homes and buildings with their raids. The UN Security Council had acted
against Iraq after its invasion of neighbouring Kuwait. It was a punitive
measure which was meant also to force Saddam to cooperate with UN
investigation into its weaponry. The world was in full agreement with the
Security Council then on the need to discipline Iraqi leader. But it is very
clear that the sanctions have gone on for too long and are no longer serving
their original purpose.

Is it personal now, a test of will between the administrators in Washington
and Baghdad? The rest of the world will be tempted to believe that it is.
The US must realise that it cannot justify its decision to keep the
sanctions with speculation after speculation that Saddam is still pursuing
an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. America's allies, Britain
especially, cannot continue to hold him responsible for the plight of the
Iraqis or argue that the people's suffering would end if he would cooperate
with the UN by renouncing nuclear and chemical weapons. Everyone knew that
by the time the sanctions started, Iraq had been defeated and humbled in the
Desert Storm and Baghdad was in ruins. With the sanctions and the
oil-for-food programme, Iraq grows weaker by the day.

The UN and the US must realise that the world feels increasingly
uncomfortable with their stand and the demonstration of the Western military
might over a country that could no longer fight back. What after this,
another Somalia? Many still remember how the UN approved the US-led invasion
of this little African nation in 1992. Will Saddam Hussein face the same
fate as Panama President Manuel Noriega, who was deposed by a US invasion
and taken to stand trial in the US? Or will he end up like Augusto Pinochet
or Suharto? Maybe, it is another Osama ben Laden that they fear.

This isn't Hollywood, this is real life. Real people are killed and are
dying because they refuse to topple the president. Children are starving and
denied medical care because their parents will not support Washington's call
for an Iraqi reformasi. It is unfair and inhuman. Good for Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez for becoming the first head of state to visit Iraq.
Good also for Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid for wanting to. And
Fidel Castro, Omar el-Bashir and Colonel Muammar Gadaffi.

The world should unite to send a clear message to Washington and the UN
Security Council to stop abusing the human rights of the Iraqis. Hopefully,
the same signal will find its way to the Organisation of Islamic Conference
(OIC) too. It has remained silent for too long on the Iraq issue and that
has become simply unacceptable. As long as the OIC behaves in such a manner,
the Muslim countries will continue to be subjected to the blinkered and
lopsided sense of justice of the powerful industrialised nations. When the
Islamic intellectual community converges on Chicago for their annual
gatherings next month, hopefully Baghdad will be mentioned. In November,
when the OIC leaders meet, a resolution denouncing further sanctions is the
least it can do.