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Killing Sanctions in Iraq..
Letters to the Editor (1) Phyllis Bennis and Denis Halliday, The Nation, 21 January 2002
The Bush Administration's rapidly escalating threats of expanding the "war against terrorism" to Iraq are pushing the eleven-year-long US-Iraq sanctions and bombing-based conflict to newly dangerous levels. Despite the lack of any serious evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks, the exploitation of already wide-spread government and media-created anti-Iraq sentiment among the American public makes the possibility of a new US assault a serious danger.
The US war against Iraq, still characterized by crippling economic sanctions imposed in the name of the United Nations and continual low-level military strikes, has emerged as the linchpin of the Administration's debate over the future of foreign policy. That debate pits the ideologues grouped around Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, against the Secretary of State Colin Powell-led pragmatists. And while Washington policy-makers and pundits ruminate, the UN Security Council's December 27 compromise on extending the "Oil for Food" program in Iraq prolongs the still-simmering debate over so-called "smart sanctions" to replace the current "dumb" sanctions regime in place since 1990.
It is in this highly volatile and dangerous context that David Cortright took to the pages of The Nation to argue for a new "smart sanctions" regime. He predicates his analysis on the hardly novel idea that peace and religious groups opposed to sanctions must recognize that "the more credible we are, the more effective we will be". The problem is, Cortright's misleading and sometimes disingenuous argument ends up agreeing with Administration or other critics that the anti-sanctions case is not credible, and accepting the legitimacy of continuing the US effort to strangle the Iraqi people, albeit by slightly amended methods.
By opening with Osama bin Laden's statements about the deadly impact of the Iraq sanctions, and data on loss of life indicated by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (and endorsed by the UN and others), Cortright adroitly delegitimizes all other critics of US Iraq policy by linking them to the two most US/UK demonized leaders in the world. He is right in stating that many in Washington have made their careers arguing that anti-sanctions campaigners have exaggerated the numbers; but he is wrong in claiming that this argument is anything more than a pretext for maintaining a failed sanctions policy. If Cortright's goal was to appropriately discredit the debate over numbers-is it really 567,000 total children or 227,000 children under five killed by sanctions?-as horrifyingly irrelevant, his statement should have been simple. "We don't know precisely how many hundreds of thousands of children have been killed; we do know that even one thousand, let alone a hundred thousand, and certainly let alone several hundreds of thousands, are way too many. And the debate is a spurious effort at denial and deflection". Instead, Cortright contests the often-cited UN numbers in misleading detail, seeking to legitimize instead lower figures calculated by private sources. However careful his language, what implication can be drawn other than that economic sanctions are somehow acceptable if "only" 250,000 children, rather than the half a million whose deaths Madeleine Albright memorably deemed "worth it", have been killed?.
He then goes on to claim that "sanctions could have been suspended years ago if Baghdad had been more cooperative with UN weapons inspectors". Such a claim negates the success of UNSCOM's early years, regardless of whether Iraqi compliance was eager or reluctant, when hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions, and all manufacturing and production capacity in Iraq (for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons) were destroyed. And, even more relevant, has Cortright forgotten the myriad of US commitments to keep sanctions in place regardless of such Iraqi cooperation and compliance? James Baker said in 1991 "we are not interested in seeing a relaxation of sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power". In spring 1997 Madeleine Albright announced "we do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted". And President Bill Clinton, later that same year, said that "the sanctions will be there until the end of time or as long as he [Saddam Hussein] lasts".
In discussing the impact of economic sanctions on the Iraqi infrastructure, Cortright admits that most of the civilian deaths are in fact linked to sanctions, recognizing that "comprehensive trade sanctions compounded the effects of the war, making it difficult to rebuild and adding new horrors of hunger and malnutrition". In doing so he seems tacitly to acknowledge the linkage between the damage done by US bombing of Iraq's civilian infrastructure in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, the child death rates (as reported by UNICEF) from water-borne diseases, and the way that sanctions prevent the repair and reconstruction of that infrastructure.
But he undermines that recognition by claiming that the UN Oil for Food program now includes "broader economic assistance and the rebuilding of infrastructure", as if the program was an international aid program. In fact, he even criticizes Iraq for continuing "to obstruct and undermine" what Cortright calls "the aid program". Iraqis know-though many Americans may not-that the oil for food program is not an aid program at all, but simply a mechanism for insuring UN control of Iraq's own oil revenues. The program allows the UN to control the spending of Iraqi oil revenue, first taking off the top some 30-35 percent for overhead and compensation payments, now mainly to the Kuwaiti royal family, Israel, and US oil companies. There is virtually NO international aid going into Iraq, with the exception of a few small and under-funded NGO projects. Calling Oil for Food an "aid" program doesn't make it so.
Cortright is right in recognizing that under the program, "oil exports are regulated, not prohibited". But large-scale investment in the oil sector, the kind of investment required to pay for the serious rebuilding of the water, electrical, telecommunications and other bombed-out infrastructures, IS prohibited. And even if the current prohibition on international private investment in Iraqi oil was lifted, no oil company worth its stockholders would risk multi-billion investment in an Iraqi economy subject to the whims of Security Council [read: US and UK] shut-down.
Cortright claims the Oil for Food program "was a bona fide effort by the Security Council to relieve humanitarian suffering. If the government of Iraq had accepted the program when it was first proposed, much of the suffering that occurred in the intervening years could have been avoided". While some Council members from Europe and the global South may indeed have been concerned about the crisis facing Iraqi civilians, the overriding concern, particularly of the Council's most powerful members, was one of bad propaganda. Oil for Food was a sophisticated effort at spin control. And from its origins, it was understood and explicitly stated that it was never designed to repair Iraq's shredded economic and social fabric, but simply to prevent even further deterioration and loss of human life. As for Iraq's initial rejection of the program, the early version offered would have provided less than $2 billion per year, of which 30 percent would be diverted to the UN Compensation Committee and another 5 percent designated for UN overhead costs. Considerations of sovereignty aside, that would not provide enough to even keep a population of 22 million people alive, let alone healthy, and it certainly would have denied any possibility of rehabilitating even part of the civilian infrastructure. Iraq would have remained forbidden to rebuild its infrastructure or its economy.
Cortright blithely claims that "oil revenues during the last six months of 2000 reached nearly $10 billion. This is hardly what one would call an oil embargo". No one ever said it was an oil embargo. It isn't. It's a trade, investment, intellectual, educational, scientific, social, cultural and communications embargo. Ten billion dollars in oil revenue translates into significantly less than half of that in goods and services actually reaching Iraq. Cortright ignores that much of the total revenues even within the limits of the oil for food program are unavailable largely to Iraq because of U.S and UK holds on contracts needing approval by the UN Contracts (661) Committee in which Washington holds a veto. In the entire six years of the Oil for Food program, over $44 billion worth of Iraqi oil has been sold. But of that huge-sounding amount, only about $16 billion has reached the 22 million Iraqis.
Why? Cortright himself acknowledges that "funds are still controlled through the UN escrow account, with a nearly 30 percent deduction for war reparations and UN costs". The official compensation fund deduction has recently been reduced from 30 to 25 percent, but there is also 5 percent in overhead costs paid to the UN (including the costs of the new still undeployed arms inspection agency UNMOVIC approved in December 1999). And as of November 2001, according to the Secretary-General's report, there are currently $4.2 billion in contracts for various civilian goods held up by US (occasionally UK) veto, and $3.5 billion sitting in the UN escrow account in Paris waiting to be disbursed.
But despite that clearly desperate scenario, Cortright still claims that "Baghdad has more than sufficient money to address continuing humanitarian needs". His source for this assertion is UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's statement that "the Government of Iraq is indeed in a position to address the nutritional and health concerns of the Iraqi people". The Secretary-General's unwillingness to directly contradict Washington may well have led him to speak of "addressing" such problems rather than actually "solving" them. But significantly more important is the unassailable fact that nutrition and health are not the only humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. Such a claim would ignore that the basic requirements of education, employment, housing, repair of the social fabric, rebuilding of electrical generating capacity, water and sanitation infrastructure, freeing up the economy, reestablishing normal international commercial and communications links, etc., are also essential for the recovery and well-being of the people of Iraq.
In a similar vein, Cortright examines the on-going disparity between conditions in the Kurdish North where the Oil for Food distribution is UN-administered, and the government-controlled Center-South of Iraq. He does go further than most US officials are willing to go in acknowledging the real reasons for the comparatively better living conditions in the North. Northern Iraqis get 22 percent higher per capita income from the Oil for Food funds, the North has most of Iraq's rain-based agriculture, there is significant cross-border trading with Turkey in the North, there are numerous private European relief agencies. Those factors have led to a modest difference between North and Center-South. Infant/child mortality is only some 5 percent less than in the Center-South, for example. But then, inexplicably and without any citation or source, Cortright goes on to claim that "these differences alone do not explain the stark contrast in the mortality rates. The tens of thousands of excess deaths in the south-center, compared to the similarly sanctioned [sic] but UN-administered north, are also the result of Baghdad's failure to accept and properly manage the UN humanitarian relief effort". Given his recognition of the specific differences facing Iraqis living in the two zones (above), Cortright should realize that Iraqi Kurds are not, in fact, "similarly sanctioned"-although like everyone in Iraq they do suffer greatly.
Even more significantly, he provides no facts to back the claim of "Baghdad's failure to properly manage the program", a claim that flies in the face of reports of the Secretary-General plus consistent evidence provided from all former and current directors of the Oil For Food program. From Denis Halliday (one of the authors of this article) and his successor, Hans von Sponeck, both of whom resigned their posts in protest of the continuing impact of sanctions despite the Oil for Food program, to the current director Tun Miyat, every director has recognized that Iraq's management of the program was perfectly proper. The problems in the program stem not from Iraq mismanagement, but from its UN-imposed constraints that prevent restoration of a working economy.
Cortright proposes a number of improvements to the "smart sanctions" proposal brought to the UN by Washington and London earlier this year. Some of his ideas appear superficially useful, such as allowing foreign investment, eliminating restrictions on non-oil exports, or allowing a cash component in center-south, but in reality not so. The bottom line remains that until Iraq regains control of its oil reserves and revenues so that it can negotiate large-scale investment with whatever oil companies it chooses, the rebuilding of the once-modern economy and country and its once-cosmopolitan, once-educated and once-healthy urban population, remains out of reach. As long as the US-orchestrated escrow account, combined with UN politics and bureaucracy, controls Iraq's economy, the smartest sanctions remain way too dumb, missing their alleged targets like American "smart" bombs.
Cortright concludes that "Despite the evidence of Baghdad's shared responsibility for the ongoing crisis, sanctions opponents have continued to direct their ire exclusively at the United States and Britain". This demonization of those who oppose sanctions-driven genocide is simply not accurate; there is plenty of blame to go around, and most anti-sanctions campaigners have no hesitation to say so, including both of the assistant secretaries-general who resigned and both authors of this article. Baghdad is responsible for plenty of problems; it is a regime as repressive now as it was throughout the 1980s when it was backed financially, politically and militarily by Washington. But the Iraqi regime is not responsible for the deaths from hunger and disease of hundreds of thousands of its citizens-that responsibility lies with the US-dominated UN Security Council.
And sadly, that responsibility lies overwhelmingly with our government, and the anti-sanctions movement is right in keeping our focus there. Cortright himself, despite his apparent belief that no one in Washington pays attention to the anti-sanctions movement, admits that the United States and the United Kingdom developed their smart sanctions plan specifically "to parry this criticism". For those who see Baghdad's responsibility for the overall crisis as more central, what possible justification can there be for Washington to further punish the beleaguered people of Iraq whom it professes to care about, those who are forced to live under that regime? One would expect such justifications to arise from ignorance or malice-from the White House, the Pentagon or State Department apologists. One would have hoped that long-time peace activists such as David Cortright would know better.
Some version of smart sanctions may have been appropriate for the UN back in 1990; after more than a decade of devastatingly dumb sanctions, it's simply too little and too late, and Iraq is too badly devastated, for such proposals. Military sanctions as defined in paragraph 14 of Resolution 687, aiming at creating a weapons of mass destruction-free zone throughout the Middle East (including but not limited to Iraq), should continue. But the only smart thing to do with economic sanctions now is to end them-not attempt to discredit those who have been fighting to do just that.
A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions - David Cortright, The Nation, 3 December 2002
The humanitarian disaster resulting from sanctions against Iraq has been frequently cited as a factor that motivated the September 11 terrorist attacks. Osama bin Laden himself mentioned the Iraq sanctions in a recent tirade against the United States. Critics of US policy in Iraq claim that sanctions have killed more than a million people, many of them children. Saddam Hussein puts the death toll at one and a half million. The actual numbers are lower than that, although still horrifying.
Changing American policy in Iraq is an urgent priority, both for humanitarian reasons and as a means of addressing an intensely felt political grievance against the United States. An opportunity for such a change may come soon, as the UN Security Council considers a "smart sanctions" plan to ease civilian sanctions. As we work to change US policy and relieve the pain of the Iraqi people, it is important that we use accurate figures and acknowledge the shifting pattern of responsibility for the continuing crisis.
The grim question of how many people have died in Iraq has sparked heated debate over the years. The controversy dates from 1995, when researchers with a
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) study in Iraq wrote to The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Society, asserting that sanctions were responsible
for the deaths of 567,000 Iraqi children. The New York Times picked up the story and declared "Iraq Sanctions Kill Children". CBS followed up with a segment on
60 Minutes that repeated the numbers and depicted sanctions as a murderous assault on children. This was the program in which UN ambassador (and later
Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright, when asked about these numbers, coldly stated, "The price is worth it".
Albright's comments were shocking, as were the numbers, but doubts were soon raised about their validity. A January 1996 letter to The Lancet found
inconsistencies in the mortality figures. A follow-up study in 1996, using the same methodology, found much lower rates of child mortality. In October 1997 the
authors of the initial letter wrote again to The Lancet, this time reporting that mortality rates in the follow-up study were "several-fold lower than the estimate for
1995-for unknown reasons". While the initial report of more than 567,000 deaths attracted major news coverage, the subsequent disavowal of those numbers
passed unnoticed in the press.
The two most reliable scientific studies on sanctions in Iraq are the 1999 report "Morbidity and Mortality Among Iraqi Children", by Columbia University's Richard
Garfield, and "Sanctions and Childhood Mortality in Iraq", a May 2000 article by Mohamed Ali and Iqbal Shah in The Lancet. Garfield, an expert on the
public-health impact of sanctions, conducted a comparative analysis of the more than two dozen major studies that have analyzed malnutrition and mortality figures in
Iraq during the past decade. He estimated the most likely number of excess deaths among children under five years of age from 1990 through March 1998 to be
227,000. Garfield's analysis showed child mortality rates double those of the previous decade.
Ali, a researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Shah, an analyst for the World Health Organization in Geneva, conducted a
demographic survey for UNICEF in cooperation with the government of Iraq. In early 1999 their study surveyed 40,000 households in south-central Iraq and in the
northern Kurdish zone. In south-central Iraq, child mortality rates rose from 56 per 1,000 births for the period 1984-89 to 131 per 1,000 for the period 1994-99. In
the autonomous Kurdish region in the north, Ali and Shah found that child mortality rates actually fell during the same period, from 80 per 1,000 births to 72 per
1,000.
Garfield has recently recalculated his numbers, based on the additional findings of the Ali and Shah study, to arrive at an estimate of approximately 350,000 through
2000. Most of these deaths are associated with sanctions, according to Garfield, but some are also attributable to destruction caused by the Gulf War air campaign,
which dropped 90,000 tons of bombs in forty-three days, a far more intensive attack than the current strikes against Afghanistan. The bombing devastated Iraq's
civilian infrastructure, destroying eighteen of twenty electricity-generating plants and disabling vital water-pumping and sanitation systems. Untreated sewage flowed
into rivers used for drinking water, resulting in a rapid spread of infectious disease. Comprehensive trade sanctions compounded the effects of the war, making it
difficult to rebuild, and adding new horrors of hunger and malnutrition.
Sanctions opponents place the blame for Iraq's increased deaths squarely on the United States and the continuing UN sanctions. Certainly the United States bears
primary responsibility for the war and unrelenting sanctions. Washington has pursued a punitive policy that has victimized the people of Iraq in the name of isolating
Saddam Hussein. The United States has continued to bomb Iraq over the years, and if some in Washington get their way, it will soon launch new military attacks in
the name of antiterrorism.
The government of Iraq also bears considerable responsibility for the humanitarian crisis, however. Sanctions could have been suspended years ago if Baghdad had
been more cooperative with UN weapons inspectors. The progress toward disarmament that was achieved came despite Iraq's constant falsifications and
obstruction.
Also significant has been Iraq's denial and disruption of the oil-for-food humanitarian program. UN officials proposed the relief effort in 1991 when evidence was first
reported of rising disease and malnutrition. The idea was to permit limited oil sales, with the revenues deposited in a UN-controlled account, for the purchase of
approved food and medical supplies. Baghdad flatly rejected the proposal as a violation of sovereignty. Concern about worsening humanitarian conditions led the
Security Council to develop a new oil-for-food plan in 1995. It increased the level of permitted oil sales and gave responsibility for relief distribution in the
south-central part of the country to the Iraqi government. Again Iraq rejected the program, but after further negotiations, Baghdad finally consented in 1996, and the
first deliveries of food and medicine arrived in 1997.
The oil-for-food program was never intended to be, and did not provide, the needed economic stimulus that alone could end the crisis in Iraq. But it was a bona fide
effort by the Security Council to relieve humanitarian suffering. If the government of Iraq had accepted the program when it was first proposed, much of the suffering
that occurred in the intervening years could have been avoided.
The Security Council has steadily expanded the oil-for-food program. In 1998 it raised the limits on permitted oil sales, and in 1999 it removed the ceiling altogether.
Production has risen to approximately 2.6 million barrels per day, levels approaching those before the Gulf War. Oil revenues during the last six months of 2000
reached nearly $10 billion. This is hardly what one would call an oil embargo. Oil exports are regulated, not prohibited. Funds are still controlled through the UN
escrow account, with a nearly 30 percent deduction for war reparations and UN costs, but Baghdad has more than sufficient money to address continuing
humanitarian needs. Said Secretary General Kofi Annan in his latest report, "With the improved funding level for the programme, the Government of Iraq is indeed in
a position to address the nutritional and health concerns of the Iraqi people".
Not only are additional revenues available, but the categories for which funds can be expended have been broadened to include oil production, power generation,
water and sanitation, agriculture, transportation and telecommunications. The program is no longer simply an oil-for-food effort. The emphasis has shifted from simple
humanitarian relief to broader economic assistance and the rebuilding of infrastructure.
Despite these improvements, Baghdad has continued to obstruct and undermine the aid program. Iraq has periodically halted oil sales as a way of protesting
sanctions. During the first half of 2001, oil sales were approximately $4 billion less than in the previous 180-day period. According to Annan, the oil-for-food
program "suffered considerably because...oil exports...[have] been reduced or totally suspended by the government of Iraq". In June and July 2001, as the Security
Council considered a new "smart sanctions" plan, Iraq again withheld oil exports to register its disapproval of the proposal. The result was a further loss of oil
revenues and a reduction of the funds available for humanitarian needs.
The differential between child mortality rates in northern Iraq, where the UN manages the relief program, and in the south-center, where Saddam Hussein is in
charge, says a great deal about relative responsibility for the continued crisis. As noted, child mortality rates have declined in the north but have more than doubled in
the south-center. The difference is especially significant given the historical pattern prior to the Gulf War. In the 1970s child mortality rates in the northern Kurdish
region were more than double those in the rest of the country. Today the situation is reversed, with child mortality rates in the south-center nearly double those in the
north. The Kurdish zone has enjoyed a favored status in the relief program, with per capita allocations 22 percent higher than in the south-center. The region contains
most of the country's rain-fed agriculture. Local authorities have welcomed the continuing efforts of private relief agencies, and have permitted a lively cross-border
trade with surrounding countries. But these differences alone do not explain the stark contrast in mortality rates. The tens of thousands of excess deaths in the
south-center, compared to the similarly sanctioned but UN-administered north, are also the result of Baghdad's failure to accept and properly manage the UN
humanitarian relief effort.
Despite the evidence of Baghdad's shared responsibility for the ongoing crisis, sanctions opponents have continued to direct their ire exclusively at the United States
and Britain. To parry this criticism, and to further expand relief efforts, Washington and London have developed a smart-sanctions plan to lift most restrictions on
civilian imports, while retaining a tightly enforced arms embargo. Under the US/British plan, civilian imports would be permitted to flow freely into Iraq. Weapons and
military-related goods would continue to be prohibited, and dual-use items would be subject to review. Oil revenues would still flow through the UN escrow account,
but there would be no limits on the volume or range of civilian goods that could be purchased with these funds. While not a formal lifting of sanctions, the proposed
restructuring plan would further remove restrictions on the civilian economy and provide additional relief for the Iraqi people. Most governments have supported the
plan, and fourteen of the fifteen members of the Security Council were prepared to vote in favor when it was considered in July. Russia balked at the proposal,
however, primarily out of economic self-interest, with Baghdad promising lucrative contracts to Russian oil companies in exchange for Moscow's support for a
complete lifting of the sanctions. The plan was shelved, but it is expected to come up again at the Security Council in December.
Many peace and religious groups opposed the smart-sanctions plan when it was proposed. Some condemned the proposal even before the details were announced,
flatly asserting that smart sanctions kill children. A more effective response would be to highlight the shortcomings of the plan and urge further steps toward the easing
of civilian sanctions. Such steps would include permitting foreign investment in Iraq, eliminating restrictions on non-oil exports, and providing cash for the purchase of
food and other goods from local producers rather than foreign suppliers. It is also important, peace and human rights groups surely would agree, to maintain military
sanctions until Iraq complies fully with the UN disarmament mandate and permits a final round of weapons inspection.
We can and must do more to help the Iraqi people. The more credible we are, the more effective we will be.
Cortright Replies
I'm glad my article has stirred debate about sanctions in Iraq. Such a debate is especially
critical now, as Phyllis Bennis and Denis Halliday note, because of the increasing danger of
a new US war against Iraq.
With my critics, I have long opposed US military attacks and have urged the lifting of
sanctions on civilians. As I said in the article and have written elsewhere, the United States
is primarily responsible for the catastrophe in Iraq because of its policies of military
aggression and unrelenting sanctions. I have demonstrated and lobbied to change these
policies, and I am actively working now to prevent a new war.
But I also support nuclear disarmament and the elimination of weapons of mass
destruction. I oppose such weapons for the US or any other government-including Iraq,
which used chemical weapons in the 1980s and was and may still be actively developing
nuclear weapons. The UN disarmament mandate, accepted by Iraq in 1991, is a legitimate
and important step toward strengthening international norms against the development and
use of weapons of mass destruction. It has reinforced the trend toward more intrusive
on-site inspections, which are necessary to guarantee disarmament. To abandon this
mandate, especially after so much progress toward Iraqi disarmament was achieved during
the 1990s, would be a setback to global nonproliferation efforts.
Acknowledging Iraq's obligation to disarm is also important because the rationale for US
military action, if it comes, is likely to be the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction. That threat is unknown right now, because of the end of UN inspections three
years ago, and no doubt has been greatly exaggerated by the war lobby to stir up fear. But
we cannot ignore the possibility of that threat, or the tremendous hold it has on public
opinion. We need to espouse an alternative policy that contains Iraq's military ambitions
but avoids harm to innocent civilians.
Smart sanctions point in that direction. They would lift all restrictions on civilian imports.
The review of dual-use items (which the United States has indeed abused) would be
limited to a specific Goods Review List, which the Security Council is now considering.
The only sanctions remaining would be the embargo on military imports. The continuing
arms embargo should then be broadened, as Anthony Arnove rightly argues, into a Middle
East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, as specified in paragraph 14 of the original
Gulf War cease-fire resolution. The fact that disarmament ultimately must be global is not a
reason for discounting progress in particular countries or regions.
Paragraph 22 of the cease-fire resolution also requires the Security Council to lift sanctions
once Iraq complies with the UN disarmament mandate. If Iraq permits UN inspectors to
complete their work, all sanctions must be lifted. Reiterating this obligation is necessary to
provide an inducement for Iraqi cooperation. Without such assurance, Iraq faces the
prospect of unending sanctions and is left with no recourse but to resist.
In this regard Stanley Heller is right to criticize my overstatement that sanctions could have
been lifted long ago if Iraq had accepted UN demands. As George Lopez and I noted in
The Sanctions Decade, Iraq has complied with many of the UN's requirements. Instead of
responding to these partial concessions with an easing of pressure, however, the United
States has hijacked UN policy and asserted that sanctions will remain until Saddam
Hussein goes. This regime-change policy is the single biggest obstacle to the lifting of
sanctions. On the other hand, if the government of Iraq had cooperated with rather than
obstructed UN weapons inspectors, it would have been more difficult for the United States
to justify its policy.
Heller says it is a falsehood that Iraq has the means to meet its humanitarian needs, but he
ignores the quote from Kofi Annan that Iraq is indeed in a position to address the
nutritional and health conditions of the Iraqi people. More than 70 percent of Iraq's
considerable oil income can be used for the purchase of humanitarian goods. Total oil
revenues in 2000 were approximately $18 billion, of which more than $13 billion was
available for civilian imports. This compares favorably with the $11 billion in total imports
in 1989.
Claudia Lefko and Peter Pellet correctly note that the world community knew early in the
1990s of the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. This is precisely why the Security Council
proposed the oil-for-food program in 1991. If Iraq had accepted the plan then rather than
five years later, much suffering could have been avoided.
The Garfield and Ali/Shah studies are complementary, not contradictory as Jeff Lindemyer
asserts. Garfield's recent estimate of 350,000 deaths is based directly on the Ali/Shah
study. The latter was indeed commissioned by Unicef, but the authors did not publish an
estimate of 500,000 deaths.
Bennis and Halliday make the most important point: that whatever the numbers, they are
far too high. No level of preventable death among children is acceptable. My critics and I
differ over the best way to end this humanitarian nightmare, but we share a common
commitment to easing civilian suffering and preventing a war that would compound and
intensify Iraq's misery. Let us work together toward these urgent priorities.
Letters to the Editor (2) - Phyllis Bennis and Denis Halliday
The Bush Administration's rapidly escalating threats of expanding the "war against
terrorism" to Iraq are pushing the eleven-year-long US-Iraq sanctions and bombing-based
conflict to newly dangerous levels. Despite the lack of any serious evidence of Iraqi
involvement in the September 11 attacks, the exploitation of already wide-spread
government and media-created anti-Iraq sentiment among the American public makes the
possibility of a new US assault a serious danger.
The US war against Iraq, still characterized by crippling economic sanctions imposed in the
name of the United Nations and continual low-level military strikes, has emerged as the
linchpin of the Administration's debate over the future of foreign policy. That debate pits
the ideologues grouped around Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, against the
Secretary of State Colin Powell-led pragmatists. And while Washington policy-makers and
pundits ruminate, the UN Security Council's December 27 compromise on extending the
"Oil for Food" program in Iraq prolongs the still-simmering debate over so-called "smart
sanctions" to replace the current "dumb" sanctions regime in place since 1990.
It is in this highly volatile and dangerous context that David Cortright took to the pages of
The Nation to argue for a new "smart sanctions" regime. He predicates his analysis on the
hardly novel idea that peace and religious groups opposed to sanctions must recognize that
"the more credible we are, the more effective we will be". The problem is, Cortright's
misleading and sometimes disingenuous argument ends up agreeing with Administration or
other critics that the anti-sanctions case is not credible, and accepting the legitimacy of
continuing the US effort to strangle the Iraqi people, albeit by slightly amended methods.
By opening with Osama bin Laden's statements about the deadly impact of the Iraq
sanctions, and data on loss of life indicated by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (and
endorsed by the UN and others), Cortright adroitly delegitimizes all other critics of US Iraq
policy by linking them to the two most US/UK demonized leaders in the world. He is right
in stating that many in Washington have made their careers arguing that anti-sanctions
campaigners have exaggerated the numbers; but he is wrong in claiming that this argument
is anything more than a pretext for maintaining a failed sanctions policy. If Cortright's goal
was to appropriately discredit the debate over numbers-is it really 567,000 total children
or 227,000 children under five killed by sanctions?-as horrifyingly irrelevant, his statement
should have been simple. "We don't know precisely how many hundreds of thousands of
children have been killed; we do know that even one thousand, let alone a hundred
thousand, and certainly let alone several hundreds of thousands, are way too many. And
the debate is a spurious effort at denial and deflection". Instead, Cortright contests the
often-cited UN numbers in misleading detail, seeking to legitimize instead lower figures
calculated by private sources. However careful his language, what implication can be
drawn other than that economic sanctions are somehow acceptable if "only" 250,000
children, rather than the half a million whose deaths Madeleine Albright memorably
deemed "worth it", have been killed?
He then goes on to claim that "sanctions could have been suspended years ago if Baghdad
had been more cooperative with UN weapons inspectors". Such a claim negates the
success of UNSCOM's early years, regardless of whether Iraqi compliance was eager or
reluctant, when hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions, and all manufacturing and
production capacity in Iraq (for nuclear, chemical and biological weapons) were
destroyed. And, even more relevant, has Cortright forgotten the myriad of US
commitments to keep sanctions in place regardless of such Iraqi cooperation and
compliance? James Baker said in 1991 "we are not interested in seeing a relaxation of
sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power". In spring 1997 Madeleine Albright
announced "we do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its
obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted". And
President Bill Clinton, later that same year, said that "the sanctions will be there until the
end of time or as long as he [Saddam Hussein] lasts".
In discussing the impact of economic sanctions on the Iraqi infrastructure, Cortright admits
that most of the civilian deaths are in fact linked to sanctions, recognizing that
"comprehensive trade sanctions compounded the effects of the war, making it difficult to
rebuild and adding new horrors of hunger and malnutrition". In doing so he seems tacitly to
acknowledge the linkage between the damage done by US bombing of Iraq's civilian
infrastructure in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, the child death rates (as
reported by UNICEF) from water-borne diseases, and the way that sanctions prevent the
repair and reconstruction of that infrastructure.
But he undermines that recognition by claiming that the UN Oil for Food program now
includes "broader economic assistance and the rebuilding of infrastructure", as if the
program was an international aid program. In fact, he even criticizes Iraq for continuing "to
obstruct and undermine" what Cortright calls "the aid program". Iraqis know-though many
Americans may not-that the oil for food program is not an aid program at all, but simply a
mechanism for insuring UN control of Iraq's own oil revenues. The program allows the UN
to control the spending of Iraqi oil revenue, first taking off the top some 30-35 percent for
overhead and compensation payments, now mainly to the Kuwaiti royal family, Israel, and
US oil companies. There is virtually NO international aid going into Iraq, with the exception
of a few small and under-funded NGO projects. Calling Oil for Food an "aid" program
doesn't make it so.
Cortright is right in recognizing that under the program, "oil exports are regulated, not
prohibited". But large-scale investment in the oil sector, the kind of investment required to
pay for the serious rebuilding of the water, electrical, telecommunications and other
bombed-out infrastructures, IS prohibited. And even if the current prohibition on
international private investment in Iraqi oil was lifted, no oil company worth its stockholders
would risk multi-billion investment in an Iraqi economy subject to the whims of Security
Council [read: US and UK] shut-down.
Cortright claims the Oil for Food program "was a bona fide effort by the Security Council
to relieve humanitarian suffering. If the government of Iraq had accepted the program when
it was first proposed, much of the suffering that occurred in the intervening years could
have been avoided". While some Council members from Europe and the global South may
indeed have been concerned about the crisis facing Iraqi civilians, the overriding concern,
particularly of the Council's most powerful members, was one of bad propaganda. Oil for
Food was a sophisticated effort at spin control. And from its origins, it was understood and
explicitly stated that it was never designed to repair Iraq's shredded economic and social
fabric, but simply to prevent even further deterioration and loss of human life. As for Iraq's
initial rejection of the program, the early version offered would have provided less than $2
billion per year, of which 30 percent would be diverted to the UN Compensation
Committee and another 5 percent designated for UN overhead costs. Considerations of
sovereignty aside, that would not provide enough to even keep a population of 22 million
people alive, let alone healthy, and it certainly would have denied any possibility of
rehabilitating even part of the civilian infrastructure. Iraq would have remained forbidden to
rebuild its infrastructure or its economy.
Cortright blithely claims that "oil revenues during the last six months of 2000 reached nearly
$10 billion. This is hardly what one would call an oil embargo". No one ever said it was an
oil embargo. It isn't. It's a trade, investment, intellectual, educational, scientific, social,
cultural and communications embargo. Ten billion dollars in oil revenue translates into
significantly less than half of that in goods and services actually reaching Iraq. Cortright
ignores that much of the total revenues even within the limits of the oil for food program are
unavailable largely to Iraq because of U.S and UK holds on contracts needing approval by
the UN Contracts (661) Committee in which Washington holds a veto. In the entire six
years of the Oil for Food program, over $44 billion worth of Iraqi oil has been sold. But of
that huge-sounding amount, only about $16 billion has reached the 22 million Iraqis.
Why? Cortright himself acknowledges that "funds are still controlled through the UN
escrow account, with a nearly 30 percent deduction for war reparations and UN costs".
The official compensation fund deduction has recently been reduced from 30 to 25
percent, but there is also 5 percent in overhead costs paid to the UN (including the costs of
the new still undeployed arms inspection agency UNMOVIC approved in December
1999). And as of November 2001, according to the Secretary-General's report, there are
currently $4.2 billion in contracts for various civilian goods held up by US (occasionally
UK) veto, and $3.5 billion sitting in the UN escrow account in Paris waiting to be
disbursed.
But despite that clearly desperate scenario, Cortright still claims that "Baghdad has more
than sufficient money to address continuing humanitarian needs". His source for this
assertion is UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's statement that "the Government of Iraq is
indeed in a position to address the nutritional and health concerns of the Iraqi people". The
Secretary-General's unwillingness to directly contradict Washington may well have led him
to speak of "addressing" such problems rather than actually "solving" them. But significantly
more important is the unassailable fact that nutrition and health are not the only
humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. Such a claim would ignore that the basic
requirements of education, employment, housing, repair of the social fabric, rebuilding of
electrical generating capacity, water and sanitation infrastructure, freeing up the economy,
reestablishing normal international commercial and communications links, etc., are also
essential for the recovery and well-being of the people of Iraq.
In a similar vein, Cortright examines the on-going disparity between conditions in the
Kurdish North where the Oil for Food distribution is UN-administered, and the
government-controlled Center-South of Iraq. He does go further than most US officials are
willing to go in acknowledging the real reasons for the comparatively better living
conditions in the North. Northern Iraqis get 22 percent higher per capita income from the
Oil for Food funds, the North has most of Iraq's rain-based agriculture, there is significant
cross-border trading with Turkey in the North, there are numerous private European relief
agencies. Those factors have led to a modest difference between North and Center-South.
Infant/child mortality is only some 5 percent less than in the Center-South, for example. But
then, inexplicably and without any citation or source, Cortright goes on to claim that "these
differences alone do not explain the stark contrast in the mortality rates. The tens of
thousands of excess deaths in the south-center, compared to the similarly sanctioned [sic]
but UN-administered north, are also the result of Baghdad's failure to accept and properly
manage the UN humanitarian relief effort". Given his recognition of the specific differences
facing Iraqis living in the two zones (above), Cortright should realize that Iraqi Kurds are
not, in fact, "similarly sanctioned"-although like everyone in Iraq they do suffer greatly.
Even more significantly, he provides no facts to back the claim of "Baghdad's failure to
properly manage the program", a claim that flies in the face of reports of the
Secretary-General plus consistent evidence provided from all former and current directors
of the Oil For Food program. From Denis Halliday (one of the authors of this article) and
his successor, Hans von Sponeck, both of whom resigned their posts in protest of the
continuing impact of sanctions despite the Oil for Food program, to the current director
Tun Miyat, every director has recognized that Iraq's management of the program was
perfectly proper. The problems in the program stem not from Iraq mismanagement, but
from its UN-imposed constraints that prevent restoration of a working economy
Cortright proposes a number of improvements to the "smart sanctions" proposal brought to
the UN by Washington and London earlier this year. Some of his ideas appear superficially
useful, such as allowing foreign investment, eliminating restrictions on non-oil exports, or
allowing a cash component in center-south, but in reality not so. The bottom line remains
that until Iraq regains control of its oil reserves and revenues so that it can negotiate
large-scale investment with whatever oil companies it chooses, the rebuilding of the
once-modern economy and country and its once-cosmopolitan, once-educated and
once-healthy urban population, remains out of reach. As long as the US-orchestrated
escrow account, combined with UN politics and bureaucracy, controls Iraq's economy,
the smartest sanctions remain way too dumb, missing their alleged targets like American
"smart" bombs.
Cortright concludes that "Despite the evidence of Baghdad's shared responsibility for the
ongoing crisis, sanctions opponents have continued to direct their ire exclusively at the
United States and Britain". This demonization of those who oppose sanctions-driven
genocide is simply not accurate; there is plenty of blame to go around, and most
anti-sanctions campaigners have no hesitation to say so, including both of the assistant
secretaries-general who resigned and both authors of this article. Baghdad is responsible
for plenty of problems; it is a regime as repressive now as it was throughout the 1980s
when it was backed financially, politically and militarily by Washington. But the Iraqi regime
is not responsible for the deaths from hunger and disease of hundreds of thousands of its
citizens-that responsibility lies with the US-dominated UN Security Council.
And sadly, that responsibility lies overwhelmingly with our government, and the
anti-sanctions movement is right in keeping our focus there. Cortright himself, despite his
apparent belief that no one in Washington pays attention to the anti-sanctions movement,
admits that the United States and the United Kingdom developed their smart sanctions plan
specifically "to parry this criticism". For those who see Baghdad's responsibility for the
overall crisis as more central, what possible justification can there be for Washington to
further punish the beleaguered people of Iraq whom it professes to care about, those who
are forced to live under that regime? One would expect such justifications to arise from
ignorance or malice-from the White House, the Pentagon or State Department apologists.
One would have hoped that long-time peace activists such as David Cortright would know
better.
Some version of smart sanctions may have been appropriate for the UN back in 1990;
after more than a decade of devastatingly dumb sanctions, it's simply too little and too late,
and Iraq is too badly devastated, for such proposals. Military sanctions as defined in
paragraph 14 of Resolution 687, aiming at creating a weapons of mass destruction-free
zone throughout the Middle East (including but not limited to Iraq), should continue. But
the only smart thing to do with economic sanctions now is to end them-not attempt to
discredit those who have been fighting to do just that.
Copyright 2001-2002 The Nation.
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