http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/010116/5007311.html

Ten years after the Gulf War, UN should stop punishing people of Iraq

FREELANCE

"I had been instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults. ... History will slaughter those responsible."

- Denis Halliday, former co-ordinator of the UN humanitarian program in Iraq, who resigned in protest in 1998.

With its 100,000 to 200,000 deaths, 5 million displaced people and $200 billion in damage, the Gulf War was the single most devastating event in the Middle East since World War I. But for the Iraqi people, it was only the beginning of a long nightmare.

For a decade, the UN Security Council - led by the U.S. and Britain and with the continued support of Canada - has maintained the most severe sanctions regime in the history of the United Nations against Iraq. As a result, Iraq has gone from relative prosperity to massive poverty and has seen the death of 1.5 million citizens, 600,000 of them children under 5. Reports say children continue to die at the rate of 150 to 200 per day, 70 per cent of women suffer from anemia and 55 per cent of schools are unfit for learning.

The Geneva Convention prohibits starving civilians as a means of warfare and targeting installations necessary for their survival. The convention also prohibits collective punishment. Despite this, the sanctions against Iraq prohibited all trade including food, even though the country relied on imports for 70 per cent of its food.

A few months after the bombing started 10 years ago today, it became clear that Desert Storm had targeted the civilian infrastructure of Iraq. Its the bombers deliberately targeted water-treatment facilities and, today, problems related to the lack of drinkable water are still the main causes of death among Iraqi children.

European public opinion is currently alarmed at depleted uranium because of the suspected deaths of a few soldiers who served in Kosovo and Bosnia. But who is worried that 25 times more DU was rained on Iraq and that alarming rates of certain kinds of cancer and horrible congenital malformations have been observed there for several years? Who do we hear denouncing the fact that Iraq is prevented from simply importing the needed detection instruments?

Within the framework of the Oil for Food program, revenues from Iraqi oil are deposited into an account administered by the United Nations. Despite its benevolent name, the program allocates only 53 per cent of funds for central and southern Iraq where 86 per cent of the population live. Thirty per cent goes to a compensation fund for war damages caused in Kuwait.

Despite the high price of oil and the improvements to the OFF program, the monthly food ration remains the most important part of household revenue for most ordinary Iraqis. The U.S. and Britain continue to block a large number of contracts for rebuilding of bombed-out infrastructure.

The OFF program prevents the reconstruction of Iraq and perpetuates the misery of its people. And its "improvements," of which Canada is so proud, have the pernicious effect of portraying as saviours the very ones who are responsible for the destruction of Iraq.

Increasing numbers of Canadians are speaking out against support for sanctions. However, the federal government continues to ensure Canadian military participation in the naval blockade. It sheds crocodile tears over the humanitarian situation in Iraq and congratulates itself on CIDA's contribution this year of $3.8 million, while ignoring the fact that Canada has devoted about $1 billion to the destruction of Iraq since 1990.

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War, let's denounce the odious, illegitimate and illegal character of this huge operation of havoc and plundering of a country whose civilian population continues to pay the price.

This operation, allegedly mounted to protect Iraq's neighbours and its Kurdish population against a brutal dictatorship, aims more realistically at the destruction of Iraq as a regional power and at the usurpation of its tremendous oil resources.

We are convinced that the citizens of Canada, who have never been consulted on these policies and their effects, would equally refuse that such crimes be committed on their behalf and with their tax dollars.

- Francine Nemeh is a director of the Quebec Association for International Co-operation. Raymond Legault and Bechir Oueslati are members of Voices of Conscience. This article was excerpted from a longer version signed by 40 prominent Quebecers. The full text and list of signatories is available in French at www.aqoci.ca