The Effects of sanctions on the Muslims of Iraq

Since 1991 a combination of sanctions, deteriorating health care provisions, contaminated water amongst others have caused a catastrophe in Iraq. These general sanctions have been equally as devastating as the continued military campaign waged against Iraq. Before the bombing in January 1991 started, many touted sanctions as an alternative to war. However after 12 years we see that sanctions actually augmented and prolonged the suffering and damage caused by the bombardment. Sanctions have shown to be an adjunct and not an alternative to war.

The following is a variety of sources that each highlight the intentionally devastating effects of the 12 years of US/UK led sanctions upon the Muslims of Iraq.

Destroying a whole society

The UN sanctions, , have added to the death toll since 1991 and are estimated to be close to 1 million deaths with mass starvations and disease. Whilst Saddam Hussein has remained unaffected.

Denis Halliday a top UN official who resigned in protest over Iraq’s sanctions wrote, "because the policy of economic sanctions is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that ... Five thousand children are dying every month ... I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these."

In the same interview (with John Pilger, Squeezed to Death, Guardian, March 4 2000) Halliday said, "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. We all know that the regime, Saddam Hussein, is not paying the price for economic sanctions; on the contrary, he has been strengthened by them. It is the little people who are losing their children or their parents for lack of treated water. What is clear is that the Security Council is now out of control, for its actions here undermine its own Charter, and the Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention. History will slaughter those responsible."

UNICEF published an independent report on the impact of sanctions and UNICEF's perspective, in 1998. It included the following table that details the multitude of impacts that sanctions have had:

Direct effects (immediate)

1. Decreased Imports – Medicines; Food Imports; Agricultural Inputs - fertilizer, pesticides, spare parts; Industrial/Commercial inputs/parts; Other spare parts; Fuel; Educational materials Water Purification/supply inputs.
2. Decreased Exports - Impact on export earnings, access to foreign currency, etc.
3. Decrease in Communications - Including telecommunications, media
4. Impact on Diplomatic Efforts

Short term effects (intermediate)

1. Health - Deterioration in health status; Increased: Morbidity and mortality (esp. child), Maternal and perinatal [sic] mortality, Low-birth-weight babies, Infectious diseases, Epidemics, Malnutrition; Deterioration in water quantity and quality; Deterioration in health services; Decrease in available medicines, vaccines laboratory and diagnostic tests; Breakdown of medical, Xray, lab equipments.
2. Food Security - Higher market prices for basic foodstuffs; Entitlement" problems in obtaining food; Shortages of basic food items; Decrease in household diet and caloric intake; Decreased agricultural and production; Decrease in livestock production; Black market purchases
3. Economics - Decreased export earnings; Decreased trade leading to closure of business and industry; Inflation; Unemployment; Emergence of black market; Decreased wages, purchasing power; Increase in personal/household loans; Decreased economic activity (industry, commerce, agriculture, etc) due to lack of trading partners, resources, funds, inputs.

Long term effects (Chronic)

1. Health - Reduction in the overall (general) health status of the population; Deterioration in health services and diminished national capacity to provide care; Loss of previous gains in preventive and curative care services; Resurgence of illness and disease associated with poverty (e.g. epidemics, infectious disease)
2. Economic - Chronically decreased economic activity; Decline in revenue from all sources; Decline in GDP, GNP, per capital income; Loss of trade partners, regional/international trade interests; Chronically high unemployment; Collapse of public and private infrastructure; Decline in public education.
3. Social - Increased poverty; Increase in social inequality (Income gap between rich and poor); Social upheaval, violence distress; Decrease in social cohesion; Psychosocial impact difficult to measure

Source: The Impact of Sanctions: A Study of UNICEF's Perspective, Table 3, Eric Hoskins, MD Consultant, UNICEF New York February 1998

Despite the assault on the people of Iraq from sanctions, Collin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State claims these sanctions help them: Powell explained that he would work with U.S. allies to "energize the sanctions regime" against Iraq.

After more than a decade of sanctions, no one on the Security Council wants them, except the United States and Britain. The French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, has called them "cruel, because they exclusively punish the Iraqi people and the weakest among them, and ineffective, because they don't touch the regime". Had Saddam Hussein said on television "we think the price is worth it", referring to Unicef's figure of half a million child deaths, he would have been called a monster by the British government. Madeleine Albright said that. Whitehall remained silent. Iraq: the great cover-up: John Pilger

Even the most conservative, independent estimates hold economic sanctions responsible for a public health catastrophe of epic proportions. The World Health Organization believes at least 5,000 children under the age of 5 die each month from lack of access to food, medicine and clean water.

Malnutrition, disease, poverty and premature death now ravage a once relatively prosperous society whose public health system was the envy of the Middle East. I went to Iraq in September 1997 to oversee the U.N.'s "oil for food" program. I quickly realized that this humanitarian program was a Band-Aid for a U.N. sanctions regime that was quite literally killing people. Feeling the moral credibility of the U.N. was being undermined, and not wishing to be complicit in what I felt was a criminal violation of human rights, I resigned after 13 months.

To understand the gravity of the situation in Iraq, one must understand the damage inflicted by the 1991 Gulf War. The allied forces destroyed sewerage systems, water purification plants, electrical grids, hospitals, schools, grain silos—in short, the entire civilian infrastructure.

The consequences for Iraq have been disastrous. Raw sewage flows in the streets, contaminating the water, causing an upsurge in diarrhea, typhoid and cholera as the result. Electric power runs at less than 40 percent of pre-1990 levels. A major health problem is the sharp increase in cancers, leukemia and birth defects. This is most likely due to the use of depleted uranium weapons by allied forces during the Gulf War. Sanctions have wreaked havoc on the economy. To survive, families are forced to sell their belongings and to resort to begging and crime. School drop-out rates and childhood illiteracy have soared. Archeological sites, many of them bombed in the Gulf War, have been looted and their treasures sold overseas.

We are destroying an entire society. It is as simple and as terrifying as that. …What makes the sanctions especially shocking is that the member states of the Security Council have all along been fully aware of their devastating effects.

"End the catastrophe of sanctions against Iraq" by Denis Halliday for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer February 12, 1999. Denis J. Halliday is the former U.N. assistant secretary-general and U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Relief in Iraq. He served with the United Nations for 34 years, after which time he resigned from the U.N. in protest over the humanitarian cost of economic sanctions.

The Systematic Persecution of Children & Families

Studies show that the child mortality rate in Iraq has increased in government controlled areas of Iraq. Reports such as that by UNICEF say that child deaths have actually doubled in the last ten years. "The change in 10 years is unparalleled, in my experience," said Anupama Rao Singh in 2000, Unicef's senior representative in Iraq. "In 1989, the literacy rate was 95%; and 93% of the population had free access to modern health facilities. Parents were fined for failing to send their children to school. The phenomenon of street children or children begging was unheard of. Iraq had reached a stage where the basic indicators we use to measure the overall well-being of human beings, including children, were some of the best in the world. Now it is among the bottom 20%. In 10 years, child mortality has gone from one of the lowest in the world, to the highest."

UNICEF in its 1998 report The Impact of Sanctions reviewed the Impact of Sanctions on Children …In sanctioned countries, as elsewhere, adversity weighs most heavily on the poor. And among the poor, children are the most vulnerable. They are least able to resist deprivation, most susceptible to malnutrition and disease, and rely wholly on their families' ability to cope with hardship and misfortune.

In both Iraq and Haiti, sanctions resulted in dramatic increases in the price of staple foods. In Iraq, 1995 market prices had increased to more than 1,000 times their pre-sanctions levels. More costly food directly contributed to rising rates of malnutrition. In Iraq, from 1991 to 1995, wasting among under-5's quadrupled to 12 percent, while stunting doubled to 28 percent.

The immunization of children also suffers in countries affected by sanctions…In Iraq, vaccination programs were suspended in late 1990 due to shortages of syringes and other consumables, and vaccine coverage did not regain pre-sanctions levels until late-1991. The incidence of vaccine-preventible diseases, including pertussis, measles, diphtheria and polio all increased in Iraq during 1991/92.

Furthermore, the increase in infectious diseases uniformly observed in all sanctioned countries has been partly attributed to the deterioration of water and sanitation services, made worse by long delays in obtaining Security Council approval for spare parts and shortages of purification chemicals.

The above impacts have been associated with measurable increases in infant and child deaths… In Iraq, under-5 mortality rates had tripled by late 1991, due to the combined influences of sanctions and war…

The impact of sanctions, however, is perhaps most visible upon entering the households of affected families. Faced with higher prices for food, medicines and other essential items, sanctioned families are increasingly unable to cope. Unemployment, loss of income, and inflation make household survival even more difficult. Foodstores are quickly depleted, family possessions (including property) are sold, and loans are undertaken to provide much-needed income. In Iraq, 48 percent of households surveyed as early as September 1991 had already incurred heavy sanctions-related debts. Stress-related anxiety, depression, and violence are other manifestations of a family's growing inability to cope with hardship.

To supplement family incomes, children in sanctioned countries often leave school to seek employment, increasing school drop-out rates. Meanwhile women burdened with greatly increased household responsibilities face increasing difficulties in providing care for themselves and their families. Women's reproductive health and pre-natal care also suffers from the general decline in health services due to the ill-effects of sanctions. In Iraq, the proportion of babies born with low-birth-weight more than quadrupled (to 22 percent) between 1990 and 1995…

Finally, sanctions have a great impact on children with special needs. For example, in Iraq, children disabled by war were unable to procure prosthetics and other rehabilitative materials. Financial hardship led to child abandonment and increased begging. Other reports attest to the significant psychological impact of sanctions on children, the future impact of which is difficult to ascertain. UNICEF 1998 report "The Impact of Sanctions"

Not so smart sanctions

At the beginning of 2001, Britain hinted towards some "smart" sanctions in order to deflect criticism on the impact sanctions were having. Smart sanctions were passed in May 14, 2002 at the UN Security Council as the ninth revision to the original economic sanctions passed against Iraq in 1990. Yet, as von Sponeck commented, yet another UN official who resigned, "Like all previous revisions, "smart sanctions" leave the root cause of their troubles -- strangulation of the civilian economy -- unaddressed.". The proposed changes were nowhere near what was needed. As The Economist, the conservative British weekly, said, "The British proposal of 'smart sanctions' offers an aspirin where surgery is called for" (The Economist, 24th February 2001).

It was proposed that under these "smart" sanctions, Iraq would not have control over its own major source of income -- oil. The UK proposal required that the money Iraq earns from oil sales continue to be deposited into an escrow account controlled by the UN Security Council. Thus the US and the UK would retain the power to make decisions about when, where and most importantly, whether resources could be purchased to restore the health of Iraq's people and economy. The US and UK had at the time $3.71 billion in goods on "hold," preventing them from reaching the Iraqi people (S-G report, 18 May 2001, para 18). Smart sanctions were therefore an attempt by the U.S. and U.K. governments to spin things so that they are no longer blamed for the suffering that will certainly continue in Iraq under their plan.

In the book Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2002 the campaign group Voices in the Wilderness remarked “Resolution 1409 (the "smart sanctions" resolution) is a hollow solution to an urgent humanitarian crisis. …the change was mostly aimed at winning a public relations battle, not relieving ordinary Iraqis’ suffering.

"The resolution was intended to blunt any drive to end the sanctions altogether and to deflate criticism that the measures are hurting ordinary Iraqis more than their leader," Somini Sengupta reported in the New York Times. "It also seemed part of the diplomatic groundwork the Bush administration is seeking to lay as it presses its case that Mr. Hussein should be removed from power, perhaps by force."

In the words of the New York Times Magazine, the UN sanctions were "creating a P.R. nightmare of hungry children," particularly for the US government, "but smart sanctions created the impression of doing something."

At the time Resolution 1409 was adopted, $5 billion in contracts were "on hold," largely because of holds placed by the United States in the UN sanctions committee. Still, US and British officials place all of the blame on the Iraqi government,

UN workers on the ground in Iraq have a very different perspective, "The [oil-for-food] distribution network is second to none," Adnan Jarra, a UN spokesperson in Iraq, recently told the Wall Street Journal. "They [the Iraqis] are very efficient. We have not found anything that went anywhere it was not supposed to." Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2002

U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply

Thomas J. Nagy writes in The Progressive Magazine that he “discovered documents of the Defense Intelligence Agency proving beyond a doubt that the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay…"

The primary document, "Iraq Water Treatment Vulnerabilities," is dated January 22, 1991. It spells out how sanctions will prevent Iraq from supplying clean water to its citizens. The document goes into great technical detail about the sources and quality of Iraq's water supply. The quality of untreated water "generally is poor," and drinking such water "could result in diarrhea," the document says. It notes that Iraq's rivers "contain biological materials, pollutants, and are laden with bacteria. Unless the water is purified with chlorine, epidemics of such diseases as cholera, hepatitis, and typhoid could occur." The document notes that the importation of chlorine "has been embargoed" by sanctions. "Recent reports indicate the chlorine supply is critically low." Food and medicine will also be affected, the document states. "Food processing, electronic, and, particularly, pharmaceutical plants require extremely pure water that is free from biological contaminants," it says. …In cold language, the document spells out what is in store: "Iraq will suffer increasing shortages of purified water because of the lack of required chemicals and desalination membranes. Incidences of disease, including possible epidemics, will become probable unless the population were careful to boil water." The document gives a timetable for the destruction of Iraq's water supplies. "Iraq's overall water treatment capability will suffer a slow decline, rather than a precipitous halt," it says. "Although Iraq is already experiencing a loss of water treatment capability, it probably will take at least six months (to June 1991) before the system is fully degraded." This document, which was partially declassified but unpublicised in 1995.

Recently, I have come across other DIA documents that confirm the Pentagon's monitoring of the degradation of Iraq's water supply. These documents have not been publicized until now. The first one in this batch is called "Disease Information," and is also dated January 22, 1991. At the top, it says, "Subject: Effects of Bombing on Disease Occurrence in Baghdad." The analysis is blunt: "Increased incidence of diseases will be attributable to degradation of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification/distribution, electricity, and decreased ability to control disease outbreaks. Any urban area in Iraq that has received infrastructure damage will have similar problems." The document proceeds to itemize the likely outbreaks. It mentions "acute diarrhea" brought on by bacteria such as E. coli, shigella, and salmonella, or by protozoa such as giardia, which will affect "particularly children," or by rotavirus, which will also affect "particularly children," a phrase it puts in parentheses. And it cites the possibilities of typhoid and cholera outbreaks.

The second DIA document, "Disease Outbreaks in Iraq," states: "Conditions are favorable for communicable disease outbreaks, particularly in major urban areas affected by coalition bombing." It adds: "Infectious disease prevalence in major Iraqi urban areas targeted by coalition bombing (Baghdad, Basrah) undoubtedly has increased since the beginning of Desert Storm. . . . Current public health problems are attributable to the reduction of normal preventive medicine, waste disposal, water purification and distribution, electricity, and the decreased ability to control disease outbreaks." This document lists the "most likely diseases during the next sixty-ninety days (descending order): diarrheal diseases (particularly children); acute respiratory illnesses (colds and influenza); typhoid; hepatitis A (particularly children); measles, diphtheria, and pertussis (particularly children); meningitis, including meningococcal (particularly children); cholera (possible, but less likely)."

The third document in this series, "Medical Problems in Iraq," is dated March 15, 1991. It says: "Communicable diseases in Baghdad are more widespread than usually observed during this time of the year and are linked to the poor sanitary conditions (contaminated water supplies and improper sewage disposal) resulting from the war. According to a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)/World Health Organization report, the quantity of potable water is less than 5 percent of the original supply, there are no operational water and sewage treatment plants, and the reported incidence of diarrhea is four times above normal levels. Additionally, respiratory infections are on the rise. Children particularly have been affected by these diseases."

The fourth document, "Status of Disease at Refugee Camps," is dated May 1991. The summary says, "Cholera and measles have emerged at refugee camps. Further infectious diseases will spread due to inadequate water treatment and poor sanitation." The reason for this outbreak is clearly stated again. "The main causes of infectious diseases, particularly diarrhea, dysentery, and upper respiratory problems, are poor sanitation and unclean water. These diseases primarily afflict the old and young children."

The fifth document, "Health Conditions in Iraq, June 1991," is still heavily censored… Source observed that the Iraqi medical system was in considerable disarray, medical facilities had been extensively looted, and almost all medicines were in critically short supply. In one refugee camp, the document says, "at least 80 percent of the population" has diarrhea. At this same camp, named Cukurca, "cholera, hepatitis type B, and measles have broken out." Protein malnutrition ‘kwashiorkor’ was observed in Iraq "for the first time," the document adds. "Gastroenteritis was killing children. . . . In the south, 80 percent of the deaths were children (with the exception of Al Amarah, where 60 percent of deaths were children)."

As these documents illustrate, the United States knew sanctions had the capacity to devastate the water treatment system of Iraq. It knew what the consequences would be: increased outbreaks of disease and high rates of child mortality. …Over the last decade, Washington extended the toll by continuing to withhold approval for Iraq to import the few chemicals and items of equipment it needed in order to clean up its water supply. For more than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives. The United Nations has estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi children have died as a result of sanctions, and that 5,000 Iraqi children continue to die every month for this reason. No one can say that the United States didn't know what it was doing.

Increases in Cancer

The journalist John Pilger in his January 2001 article entitled ‘Iraq the great cover up’ wrote … In 1991, the UK Atomic Energy Authority warned that, if particles from merely 8 per cent of the DU used in the Gulf were inhaled, there could be "300,000 potential deaths". …For the Iraqi people, however, the cover-up continues. What has been striking about the political and media reaction over the past fortnight is that most of the victims of depleted uranium (DU) have rated barely a mention. Yet Tony Blair himself was made aware of their suffering when he was sent, in March 1999, UN statistics, published in the British Medical Journal, showing a sevenfold increase in cancer in southern Iraq between 1989 and 1994.

In Basra's hospitals, the cancer wards are overflowing. Before the Gulf war, they did not exist. "The dust carries death," Dr Jawad Al-Ali, a cancer specialist and member of Britain's Royal College of Physicians, told me. "Our own studies indicate that more than 40 per cent of the population in this area will get cancer in five years' time to begin with, then long afterwards. Most of my own family now have cancer, and we have no history of the disease. It has spread to the medical staff of this hospital. We are living through another Hiroshima. Of course, we don't know the precise source of the contamination, because we are not allowed [under sanctions] to get the equipment to conduct a proper scientific survey, or even to test the excess level in our bodies. We suspect depleted uranium. There simply can be no other explanation."

The Sanctions Committee in New York has blocked or delayed a range of cancer diagnostic equipment and drugs, even painkillers. Professor Karol Sikora, as chief of the cancer programme of the World Health Organisation, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Sanctions Committee]. There seems to be a rather ludicrous notion that such agents could be converted into chemical or other weapons." Professor Sikora told me: "The saddest thing I saw in Iraq was children dying because there was no chemotherapy and no pain control. It seemed crazy they couldn't have morphine, because for everybody with cancer pain, it is the best drug. When I was there, they had a little bottle of aspirin pills to go round 200 patients in pain." Although there have since been improvements in some areas, more than 1,000 life-saving items remain "on hold" in New York, with Kofi Annan personally appealing for their release "without delay". John Pilger Jan 2001; Iraq the great cover up.

Oil & Colonial Motivations

This is longstanding Anglo-American policy. Contrary to the propaganda version about protecting Iraq's ethnic peoples, the objective is to prevent a Kurdish secession in the north and the establishment of a Shi'ite religious state in the rest of the country, while maintaining the west's dominance of the region and its access to cheap oil. Iraq: the great cover-up: John Pilger: 19 Jan 2001

Iraq possesses the world’s second largest proven oil reserves, currently estimated at 112.5 billion barrels, about 11 percent of the world total, and its gas fields are immense, as well. Many experts believe that Iraq has additional undiscovered oil reserves, which might double the total when serious prospecting resumes, putting Iraq nearly on a par with Saudi Arabia. Iraq’s oil is of high quality and it is very inexpensive to produce, making it one of the world’s most profitable oil sources. Oil companies hope to gain production rights over these rich fields of Iraqi oil, worth hundreds of billions of dollars. In the view of an industry source it is "a boom waiting to happen." As rising world demand depletes reserves in most world regions over the next 10 to 15 years, Iraq’s oil will gain increasing importance in global energy supplies. According to one industry expert: "There is not an oil company in the world that doesn’t have its eye on Iraq."

Geopolitical rivalry among major nations throughout the past century has often turned on control of such key oil resources. Five companies dominate the world oil industry, two US-based, two primarily UK-based, and one primarily based in France. US-based Exxon Mobil looms largest among the world’s oil companies and by some yardsticks measures as the world’s biggest company. The United States consequently ranks first in the corporate oil sector, with the UK second and France trailing as a distant third. Considering that the US and the UK act almost alone as sanctions advocates and enforcers, and that they are the headquarters of the world’s four largest oil companies, we cannot ignore the possible relationship of sanctions policy with this powerful corporate interest.

The US and the UK governments also see control over Iraqi and Gulf oil as essential to their broader military, geostrategic, and economic interests. At the same time, though, other states and oil companies hope to gain a large or even dominant position in Iraq. As de-nationalization sweeps through the oil sector, international companies see Iraq as an extremely attractive potential field of expansion. France and Russia, the longstanding insiders, pose the biggest challenge to future Anglo-American domination, but serious competitors from China, Germany and Japan also play in the Iraq sweepstakes.

During the 1990s, Russia’s Lukoil, China National Petroleum Corporation and France’s TotalFinaElf held contract talks with the government of Iraq over plans to develop Iraqi fields as soon as sanctions are lifted. Lukoil reached an agreement in 1997 to develop Iraq’s West Qurna field, while China National signed an agreement for the North Rumailah field in the same year. France’s Total at the same time held talks for future development of the fabulous Majnun field.

US and UK companies have been very concerned that their rivals might gain a major long-term advantage in the global oil business. "Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas – reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to," enthused Chevron CEO Kenneth T. Derr in a 1998 speech at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, in which he pronounced his strong support for sanctions. Sanctions have kept the rivals at bay, a clear advantage. …Direct military intervention by the US-UK offers a tempting but dangerous gamble that might put Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron in immediate control of the Iraqi oil boom, but at the risk of backlash from a regional political explosion.

In testimony to Congress in 1999, General Anthony C. Zinni, commander in chief of the US Central Command, testified that the Gulf region, with its huge oil reserves, is a "vital interest" of "long standing" for the United States and that the US "must have free access to the region’s resources." "Free access," it seems, means both military and economic control of these resources. This has been a major goal of US strategic doctrine ever since the end of World War II. ...A looming US war against Iraq is only comprehensible in this light. For all the talk about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and human rights violations by Saddam Hussein, these are not the core issues driving US policy. Rather, it is "free access" to Iraqi oil and the ultimate control over that oil by US and UK companies that raises the stakes high enough to set US forces on the move and risk the stakes of global empire. As Investor’s Business Daily notes, if the US were to occupy Iraq, it would not only "gain a central staging base for future [military] operations," but "It would take control of 11 percent of the world's oil reserves, too. That 11 percent would help pay for the occupation" and "could also be leverage against oil-dependent Arab nations -- just as the U.S. used cheap oil in the 1980s to bankrupt the USSR." Voices in the Wilderness, Sanctions: Myth & Reality. Originally published in Iraq Under Siege, South End Press, 2002

06 February 2003

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