By Abbas Fadl Murtada

The US-sponsored United Nations sanctions against Iraq are not having their desired effect. This is the part of the scathing verdict of a new US congressional report released last month, acknowledging not only that the sanctions have created a humanitarian crisis in Iraq but that they have served to bolster Saddam Hussein's brutal regime.

The document, entitled "Congressional Staffers' Iraq Trip Report," details the findings of a delegation that made a five-day trip to Iraq in late July and early August 1999. The delegation included congressional aides from the offices of Democratic representatives Danny Davis of Illinois, Sam Gejdenson of Connecticut, Earl Hilliard of Alabama, and Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, as well as from that of Independent representative Bernard Sanders of Vermont. Amos Hochstein, a senior Democratic Party staffer on the House International Relations Committee, also went but declined to endorse the report, arguing that its conclusions were simplistic and accusing Saddam Hussein's regime of using the suffering of the Iraqi people as a public relations tool.

Backed by a multinational naval blockade, the UN sanctions regime against Iraq was instituted after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The sanctions restrict all trade, including oil exports, which traditionally generate some 90 percent of the country's revenue. Under the terms of the so-called "oil-for-food programme," begun in December 1996, Iraq is allowed to sell limited quantities of oil to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods under strict UN supervision. Although the scheme was ostensibly launched to prevent any further deterioration in the condition of the 23 million Iraqis living under the excruciating sanctions, it has had little perceptible effect on their lives. The effect of the sanctions has led many opponents to denounce them as a "silent weapon of mass destruction," and their imposition as an "act of genocide."

Devastating they have certainly been. A study published last summer by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated that the death-rate for Iraqi children under 5 rose from 56 to 131 per 1,000 births in the decade since sanctions were imposed. In 1990, Iraq was ranked 55th out of 130 countries on the human development index. In 1995 it occupied the 106th place, and by 1999 it had slipped to the 125th.

The Congressional Staffers' report says that citizens and UN officials working in Iraq told the aides that the unrelenting sanctions were taking a terrible toll on the country's standards of living, particularly the health-care system and the educational and economic infrastructures.

The sanctions have crippled Iraq's health-care system, which was among the best in the region before the Persian Gulf War. Doctors in Iraq now have no access to medical journals. Hospitals lack basic equipment and medicine. Essential equipment is frequently embargoed because it comes within the broad category of "dual use" equipment, meaning it could have both military and civilian uses. For instance, the importation of medical syringes is banned because they could be used to create anthrax spores.

The deterioration of the hospital system means that advanced surgical techniques are rarely performed. The report also provides glimpses into this tragic situation. It reports that doctors often administer only 50 percent of the recommended medicine dosages to treat pneumonia, diarrhoea, and meningitis; that hospitals lack chemotherapy drugs to treat cancers, a fact that leads to frequent relapses; bone-marrow transplants are no longer performed for leukemia patients.

The director of the Al-Mansur Teaching Children's Hospital in Baghdad told the aides that "most of the children he sees are under-developed and not well-nourished, and therefore become immune-depressed and more vulnerable to diseases." The doctor also linked the marked rise in cancer cases in Iraq since the Gulf War to the use of depleted-uranium ammunition. Cancer rates are highest in southern Iraq, where the heaviest use of depleted-uranium weapons occurred during 'Desert Storm'.

The sanctions also prohibit the importation of chlorine, a water disinfectant that is all the more vital because of the destruction of Iraq's sewage treatment plants by western bombing in 1991. In this regard, the Congressional Staffers' report gives a heart-rending account of thousands of Iraqi children dying, usually as a "result of unclean water and exacerbated by malnutrition, for which basic medications and treatments are unavailable... Most diarrhoeal diseases causing the illness and death of children are water-borne."

The sanctions have also driven the vast majority of Iraqis into a life of hunger and poverty. Citing estimates of UN officials stationed in Iraq, the report says that the average Iraqi family spends 70 percent of its income on food, despite monthly rations distributed under the "oil-for-food programme." That proportion of income spent for food is one sign, according to the report, of "imminent famine." Many families are living in a "situation of complete deprivation" with access only to an inadequate monthly food ration, consisting mainly of flour, rice, tea, sugar, oil, soap and baby food, which only lasts about 21 days.

The report also records a serious deterioration in the quality of education as a result of the sanctions. It cites a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report that literacy rates in Iraq declined from 80 percent to 58 percent between 1987 and 1995. The deterioration is particularly visible in the crumbling schools buildings and outdated textbooks.

In addition, the report blames the sanctions for causing a loss of intellectual capital and human resources in Iraq. There has been an exodus from Iraq since the embargo, essentially for economic reasons. Some analysts believe that some four million Iraqis now live outside their country. It is hard to envision a future scenario in which they will return to Iraq, even if the sanctions are eased. "This brain drain is having severe consequences on Iraq's once-advanced scientific, technological and academic progress," explains the report. "The result is complete intellectual deprivation."

This is compounded by the problem of the ageing of Iraq's professional classes, many of whom were trained during the 1960s and 1970s and are fast approaching retirement age. The erosion of this professional workforce will mean that Iraq will not have the skilled and experienced workforce required when it comes to reconstructing the country's infrastructure in the post-sanctions future.

The report also warns that the sanctions have fostered growing 'extremism' among younger Iraqis, who take a harder line against the US and its allies than do Saddam Hussein and the leaders of his Ba'ath Party. "It is from these younger Ba'ath figures that pressure on Saddam Hussein is emerging from the right, challenging his 'too accommodating' stance towards the UN and the West," the report says.

The Congressional Staffers' report has given the lie to the justifications for the sanctions policy offered by four successive US administrations. The Iraqi people are suffering, American officials admit. But the author of their suffering, they say, is Saddam Hussein who uses them as pawns in a game of military and political aggrandizement. The sanctions are needed to contain the regime externally, to whittle away his weapons programs, and to spur the Iraqi people to topple him.

The publication of the report raises many questions regarding its policy significance and the timing of its release. Many observers believe that the report will add heat to the debate that faults Washington for insisting on harsh economic sanctions which put the country's "social fabric under serious attack."

The report is also likely to provide ammunition for US lawmakers who back legislation to lift the sanctions. In fact, one congressional staff member candidly admitted that the group which wrote the report favours lifting all economic sanctions against Iraq. Demands that the sanctions be lifted have been building in the US. In October 1998, 43 congressmen signed a letter to president Clinton calling on him "to de-link the economic sanctions, which have been a complete failure, from the military sanctions." Earlier this year, some 70 congressmen signed a letter to Clinton calling for a change in approach and denouncing the sanctions as "infanticide masquerading as policy."

Moreover, the report comes amid growing international clamor, led by a vast array of international figures and groups ranging from pope John Paul II to UN officials, to scrap economic sanctions. Their staggering human toll has led many to condemn America's self-appointed role as the Wyatt Earp of Iraq. In fact, Washington finds itself almost alone in defending a policy held responsible for high infant mortality and the impoverishment of almost all of Iraq's 23 million people.

Meanwhile, a series of resignations by UN officials also supports the argument that the sanctions against Iraq are counterproductive and should be abandoned. Hans von Sponeck, the co-ordinator of the UN "oil-for-food programme" inside Iraq, tendered his resignation in February in protest against their civilian toll. A few days later, Jutta Burghardt, Iraq's director in the World Food Programme, followed suit. In 1998, Denis Halliday, von Sponeck's predecessor, had also resigned to protest the effects of the sanctions. By Halliday's estimates, 5,000 Iraqi children die every month from the impact of economic sanctions. The total number of children to have died since 1991 as a result of the sanctions is estimated at more than 500,000 - more than the total number of American soldiers killed in combat in all the wars fought by the US in the 20th century.

In a report issued on March 13, one day before the release of the Congressional Staffers' report, UN secretary general Kofi Annan warned that Iraq's current oil-output was unsustainable. He acknowledged that the sanctions were hurting Iraqi civilians and revealed that the UN was considering "smarter sanctions." Annan defined these as "sanctions that focus on individuals whose behaviour we want to target rather than a blunt instrument that may affect the entire population." He said that the US and Britain are unnecessarily slow in approving deliveries of necessary medical equipment. He recommended doubling to $600 million the amount Iraq is allowed to spend on its debilitated oil industry from its UN-controlled sales of crude oil.

Annan's 63-page report to the security council further maintained that the UN's efforts to counter the impact of trade sanctions on ordinary Iraqis will continue to falter without greater investment in Iraq's oil industry. The secretary general obliquely criticized the two pillars of Washington's policy toward Iraq: its reluctance to allow greater investment in the Iraqi oil sector, and its hard-line approach to potentially "dual use" exports. "The effectiveness of the [oil-for-food] Programme has suffered considerably not only due to shortfalls in the funding levels, but also due to the very large number of applications placed on hold," Annan said in the report.

According to UN officials, Washington is responsible for the vast majority of holds on contracts for $297 million worth of oil-sector spare parts. By January 31, 2000, $1.2 billion of oil-sector spares were authorized by the Security Council, while $506 million worth of contracts were approved. "There is an urgent need to review further the procedures for the approval of applications with a view to reducing the excessive number of holds placed on applications, which have been affecting adversely the overall implementation of the Programme," Annan stated.

Earlier last month, a report issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had warned that the very survival of the Iraqi people was under threat after two wars and a decade of sanctions. The ICRC report singled out Iraq's collapsed health facilities and badly damaged water sanitation system as posing the gravest dangers.

The congressional report also comes amid signs that Washington is quietly considering responding to international pressure to lift the sanctions on Baghdad. On February 25, the Washington Post reported that the US government has begun reviewing its screening of machinery, oil industry spare parts, pesticides and other industrial products imported by Iraq. The review came as a response to rising concern among US allies that restrictions on "dual use" technology are undermining efforts to ease human suffering in Iraq.

Notwithstanding the sugar-coated, pseudo-philanthropic rhetoric of the Congressional Staffers' report, greedy and selfish economic considerations seem to be weighing more than lofty humanitarian ones in the US debate on relaxing the sanctions. The report is candid in this regard. One of the aides' stated objectives is "to bring home to their Members of Congress a first-hand look and as much information as possible on . . . the role of economic sanctions in the decline of US grain exports to Iraq, and the potential for increasing such exports after economic sanctions are lifted."

The shift towards the possibility of ending sanctions, moreover, seems to be linked to the vagaries of world oil prices. The fact that it comes only on the heels of the recent rise in the price of crude oil cannot be overlooked. This increase is the result of OPEC's ability to put a cap on its members' output. That the rise has worried the US was evident in the Middle Eastern trip made last February by the American energy secretary Bill Richardson, during which he tried (but failed) to persuade the Gulf Arab countries to open the oil taps. The rise in oil prices is all the more serious for the US government as this is an election year. The Democrats fear that rising oil prices will kill the economic boom in America and so undermine their re-election hopes.

In the aftermath of Richardson's failure, one wonders whether the US is considering flooding the market with oil from Iraq, the country with the world's second largest proven reserves.

Muslimedia: April 1-15, 2000

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