Foreign Affairs News
     Source: Guardian
     Published: 11/18/00 Author: Jeremy Hardy
     Posted on 11/18/2000 08:46:09 PST by Antiwar Republican

Degraded policy

Children suffering, filthy water, burning villages: these are our
sanctions against Iraq

Special report: Iraq

Jeremy Hardy
Saturday November 18, 2000

Monday sees the launch of a national petition against sanctions in
Iraq. It will probably pass unnoticed. Sanctions aside, Britain and America
bomb Iraq whenever they feel
like it, and with no news coverage at all. Presumably, the purpose of
the bombing and sanctions is to degrade something. The something is
ourselves.

I'm sure those who are reinventing world politics in the light of a
new-found enthusiasm for western military intervention, are convinced that
Saddam Hussein is about to fall
at any moment. If he does at least Iraq will be newsworthy. Saddam is
getting more press these days anyway because he's sitting on a lot of
oil. So are we, if only we had
the wit to renationalise it, but since we gave it all away, we rely on
oil companies to make nice with dictators and help them to crush
internal opposition so that we can
keep our hauliers trucking. The oil-for-food programme is one way in
which the west has sought to keep the oil coming.

In fact, the amount of oil which Iraq is allowed to export was set
higher than its much degraded industry was able to produce. Even then the
programme is not as generous
as it sounds, because the oil money is held in a UN-managed account
with 30% coming off the top in reparations and imports subject to approval
by the Security Council.
Equipment vital to Iraq's electricity and water supplies are held up.
As a result water is frequently contaminated (there's a biological
weapon for you) and the national grid
could completely pack up at any moment.

The British government line is that medical shortages are the result of
stockpiling. Former UN humanitarian co-ordinators, Denis Halliday and
Hans von Sponeck, who
resigned in succession over sanctions, both dispute this. The
infrastructure was degraded by the west and distribution suffered. In addition,
some medicines and equipment
are useless without others. Much is lost through spoilage during power
cuts. In fact, von Sponeck stated, "We have found no evidence that
there is a conscious withholding
of medicines ordered by the government."

It is possible that such a policy exists. Certainly, Saddam has a
cavalier disregard for the suffering of his own people. He boasts to them of
how he enjoys his lavish
lifestyle, free from the ravages that sanctions and bombs have brought
to ordinary Iraqis. He feasts while they suffer. Perhaps he does
withhold medicines. But how would
that boost the case of the dwindling number of politicians who support
the sanctions? It further demonstrates that the 10-year war we have
waged against his people, while
ostensibly having "no quarrel" with them, is all grist to the mill as
far as he is concerned. That is why all the voices for change in Iraq,
and all Saddam's opponents in exile,
are telling us to stop.

The west certainly has a curious notion of what it is not to have a
quarrel with someone. I suppose in the sense of fisticuffs over a
Leylandii tree, it is not a quarrel. Perhaps
extermination is a better word. According to Unicef, which as a UN
agency is forced to tread carefully, sanctions have contributed to the
deaths of 500,000 children since
the Gulf war, and 800,000 are chronically malnourished. Asked to
comment on such figures, Madeleine Albright has replied: "We think the price
is worth it." And it is
always worth going to her rather than to Robin Cook. The organ grinder
doesn't mess about. She plays a simple tune that's easily recognisable.
The monkey leaps about
all over the place, making a lot of silly noises.

So let's listen to Washington rather than Westminster. Albright told us
in 1997: "We do not agree ... that if Iraq complies with its
obligations concerning weapons of mass
destruction sanctions should be lifted." In 1998, former weapons
inspector Scott Ritter said: "Sanctions only punish the people of Iraq, they
don't punish this regime." In
June this year, the former head of Unscom, Richard Butler, said: "We
now know that using economic sanctions to bring about compliance in the
weapons area does not
work." Deputy US national security adviser, Robert Gates, said back in
1991: "Iraqis will pay the price while [Saddam] remains in power. All
possible sanctions will be
maintained until he is gone." That year, Colonel John A Warden III, of
the US air force, said that the wrecking of Iraq's electricity system
"gives us long-term leverage".

According to Mike Horn, who flew F-15s in two tours of duty in the
northern no-fly zone, "You'd see Turkish F-14s and F-16s inbound, loaded to
the gills with munitions.
Then they'd come out half an hour later with their munitions expended."
When US pilots flew back over the Kurds whom the no-fly zone ostensibly
protects, they would see
"burning villages, lots of smoke and fire". Instructions were not to
interfere. Someone remind me who this quarrel is with?

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