The Hostage Nation
Former UN relief chiefs Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday speak out against an attack on Iraq
A major shift is occurring in US policy on Iraq. It is obvious that Washington
wants to end 11 years of a self-serving policy of containment of the Iraqi
regime and change to a policy of replacing, by force, Saddam Hussein and
his government.
The current policy of economic sanctions has destroyed society in Iraq and
caused the death of thousands, young and old. There is evidence of that
daily in reports from reputable international organisations such as Caritas,
Unicef and Save the Children.
A change to a policy of replacement by force will increase that suffering.
The creators of the policy must no longer assume that they can satisfy voters
by expressing contempt for those who oppose them.
The problem is not the inability of the public to understand the bigger
picture, as former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright likes to suggest.
It is the opposite. The bigger picture, the hidden agenda, is well understood
by ordinary people.
We should not forget Henry Kissinger's brutally frank admission that "oil
is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs".
How much longer can democratically elected governments hope to get away
with justifying policies that punish the Iraqi people for something they
did not do, through economic sanctions that target them in the hope that
those who survive will overthrow the regime? Is international law only applicable
to the losers? Does the UN security council only serve the powerful?
The UK and the US, as permanent members of the council, are fully aware
that the UN embargo operates in breach of the UN covenants on human rights,
the Geneva and Hague conventions and other international laws.
It is neither anti-UK nor anti-US to point out that Washington and London,
more than anywhere else, have in the past decade helped to write the Iraq
chapter in the history of avoidable tragedies. The UK and the US have deliberately
pursued a policy of punishment since the Gulf war victory in 1991. The two
governments have consistently opposed allowing the UN security council to
carry out its mandated responsibilities to assess the impact of sanctions
policies on civilians. We know about this first hand, because the governments
repeatedly tried to prevent us from briefing the security council about
it. The pitiful annual limits, of less than $170 per person, for humanitarian
supplies, set by them during the first three years of the oil-for-food programme
are unarguable evidence of such a policy.
We have seen the effects on the ground and cannot comprehend how the US
ambassador, James Cunningham, could look into the eyes of his colleagues
a year ago and say: "We (the US government) are satisfied that the
oil- for-food programme is meeting the needs of the Iraqi people."
Besides the provision of food and medicine, the real issue today is that
Iraqi oil revenues must be invested in the reconstruction of civilian infrastructure
destroyed in the Gulf war. Despite the severe inadequacy of the permitted
oil revenue to meet the minimum needs of the Iraqi people, 30 cents (now
25) of each dollar that Iraqi oil earned from 1996 to 2000 were diverted
by the UN security council, at the behest of the UK and US governments,
to compensate outsiders for losses allegedly incurred because of Iraq's
invasion of Kuwait. If this money had been made available to Iraqis, it
could have saved many lives.
The uncomfortable truth is that the west is holding the Iraqi people hostage,
in order to secure Saddam Hussein's compliance to ever-shifting demands.
The UN secretary-general, who would like to be a mediator, has repeatedly
been prevented from taking this role by the US and the UK governments. The
imprecision of UN resolutions on Iraq - "constructive ambiguity"
as the US and UK define it - is seen by those governments as a useful tool
when dealing with this kind of conflict.
The US and UK dismiss criticism by pointing out that the Iraqi people are
being punished by Baghdad. If this is true, why do we punish them further?
The most recent report of the UN secretary-general, in October 2001, says
that the US and UK governments' blocking of $4bn of humanitarian supplies
is by far the greatest constraint on the implementation of the oil-for-food
programme. The report says that, in contrast, the Iraqi government's distribution
of humanitarian supplies is fully satisfactory (as it was when we headed
this programme). The death of some 5-6,000 children a month is mostly due
to contaminated water, lack of medicines and malnutrition.
The US and UK governments' delayed clearance of equipment and materials
is responsible for this tragedy, not Baghdad. The expectation of a US attack
on Iraq does not create conditions in the UN security council suited to
discussions on the future of economic sanctions.
This year's UK-sponsored proposal for "smart sanctions" will not
be retabled. Too many people realise that what looked superficially like
an improvement for civilians is really an attempt to maintain the bridgeheads
of the existing sanctions policy: no foreign investments and no rights for
the Iraqis to manage their own oil revenues. The proposal suggested sealing
Iraq's borders, strangling the Iraqi people. In the present political climate,
a technical extension of the current terms is considered the most expedient
step by Washington.
That this condemns more Iraqis to death and destitution is shrugged off
as unavoidable. What we describe is not conjecture. These are undeniable
facts known to us as two former insiders. We are outraged that the Iraqi
people continue to be made to pay the price for the lucrative arms trade
and power politics. We are reminded of Martin Luther King's words: "A
time has come when silence is betrayal. That time is now." We want
to encourage people everywhere to protest against unscrupulous policies
and against the appalling disinformation put out about Iraq by those who
know better, but are willing to sacrifice people's lives with false and
malicious arguments.
The US Defence Department, and Richard Butler, former head of the UN arms
inspection team in Baghdad, would prefer Iraq to have been behind the anthrax
scare. But they had to recognise that it had its origin within the US. British
and US intelligence agencies know well that Iraq is qualitatively disarmed,
and they have not forgotten that the outgoing secretary of defence, William
Powell, told incoming President George Bush in January: "Iraq no longer
poses a military threat to its neighbours".
The same message has come from former UN arms inspectors. But to admit this
would be to nail the entire UN policy, as it has been developed and maintained
by the US and UK governments. We are horrified by the prospects of a new
US-led war against Iraq. The implications of "finishing unfinished
business" in Iraq are too serious for the global community to ignore.
We hope that the warnings of leaders in the Middle East and all of us who
care about human rights are not ignored by the US government. What is now
most urgently needed is an attack on injustice, not on the Iraqi people.
Hans von Sponeck was UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq from 1998 to 2000; Denis Halliday held the same post from 1997 to 1998.