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pro-Iraq, anti-sanction agitators, active since well before the
September 11 attacks, have found a new voice in the United Nations
Security Council's six-month extension of the oil-for-food provision
of sanctions on Iraq — which Baghdad's ambassador to the U.N.
signed earlier this week — and in recent speculation that Hussein's
fiefdom may be next on our list of targets in the war on terror.
These groups, most notably the Washington, D.C.-based Education
for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), argue that it is American aggression
and punitive sanctions that cause the misery, poverty, and despair
in Iraq, but seem to give a pass to Hussein's tyrannical dictatorship.
EPIC board
member Ramzi Kysia wrote recently that "UNICEF estimates that
sanctions — not Saddam Hussein — have been the cause of
at least 500,000 deaths among Iraqi children under the age of five."
He has also written that sanctions created conditions "that
have resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths."
But that's not quite true. The claim is based on faulty information
and partial surveys, and parrots information trumpeted by the Iraqi
government — information based on extrapolations from small,
unscientific samples.
But according
to George Lopez and David Cortright, proponents of lifting the sanctions
and coauthors of The Sanctions Decade: Assessing U.N. Strategies
in the 1990s, the numbers in the reports are grossly inflated.
"The most frequently cited studies," they claim, "rely
primarily on official Iraqi information sources." The Food
and Agricultural Organization study, for example, contains an estimate
by the Iraqi Ministry of Health that 109,000 people died annually
due to sanctions, though the ministry admitted it had no objective
method to confirm this figure.
The truth is
that Kysia and others in the anti-sanctions crowd use the classic
mistake of post hoc ergo proctor hoc logic as the basis for
their claim that sanctions are killing children. They claim that
because poverty and the health of children are worse than what was
projected before the sanctions — the sanctions must be the
cause.
But even the
U.N. itself has given the lie to EPIC's claims. The Security Council
responded to the FAO and other reports in 1995 by offering to allow
Iraq to sell $2 billion in oil, to be used solely for the purchase
of food and medicine — the second such offer since the sanctions
were imposed. Saddam Hussein rejected the (rather generous) proposal
as an imposition on Iraqi sovereignty, preferring instead to press
for a complete removal of sanctions — despite his failure to
comply with the U.N. plan he had agreed to follow.
State department
spokesman Richard Boucher said the point of the sanctions is "to
keep Iraq from threatening the people of the region, from threatening
its neighbors and having the wherewithal to rebuild its military,
and especially to develop the capability in the area of weapons
of mass destruction." The sanctions don't, however, prohibit
food and medicine from reaching the people of Iraq — the onus
for that failure lies on Hussein and his government.
In fact, it
is the United States and Britain who are pushing for the new "smart
sanctions" that would remove nearly all limitations on trade
with Iraq. The proposal increases enforcement of the arms-sale ban
and anti-smuggling efforts, addressing the concerns of EPIC and
other anti-sanctions groups while maintaining the original intent.
Even before the Security Council met to discuss the proffer, Iraq's
foreign minister, Naji Sabri, said that his nation would not accept
the less-restrictive changes, actually calling them a "tightening"
of the sanctions. And while agreeing to the new six-month extension
of the current sanctions, he also declared that "Iraq rejects
totally any new or future restriction on its trade dealings."
Russia, too,
scuttled the plan, instead arguing — successfully — for
a delay and the extension of current prohibitions. By June, the
council will begin considering the U.S. plan and agree to a list
of importable items that would need U.N. review. Though the State
Department's proposal benefits the people of Iraq, it is not supported
by Hussein and his henchmen.
A master of
propaganda, Hussein has many convinced that were it not for the
sanctions, his people would be living in health and prosperity.
He has given a perverse twist to Potemkin Village tours, showing
journalists and sympathizers the "effects" of sanctions.
But even while his people starve, Hussein and his inner circle are
getting the best food, housing, and medical care available. Make
no mistake: Resources are available in Iraq. Even under the sanctions,
Iraq's people need not starve — whatever Kysia may claim about
the sanctions having been "designed" to devastate the
economy. In fact, Kurds protected by the no-fly zone have contravened
Hussein's public-relations efforts by actually using the oil money
for food and medicine, rather than new altars to the Iraqi leader.
The U.N.'s
oil-for-food program has allowed Baghdad to increase its revenues
from $4 billion in 1997 to more than $17 billion last year. Hussein's
personal wealth was estimated by Forbes magazine, in 1997,
at $6 billion — enough to eradicate hunger and poverty in his
country. He has built scores of presidential palaces and monuments
since the sanctions were imposed — all with funds that could
have been used for food and medicine for his people.
Hussein can
end the sanctions — this year — and with them, much of
the suffering of his people; thus far, he's chosen not to. The Iraqi
dictator continues to resist the environmental and human-rights
terms of the postwar agreements: He continues to drain marshes in
southern Iraq; produce and employ chemical weapons; and threaten
other religious and ethnic groups, most notably Shiites and Kurds.
And he repeatedly refuses to allow inspections to ensure that he's
not developing weapons of mass destruction.
In a debate
at Georgetown University less than a month after the September 11
attacks, EPIC's executive director, Eric Gustafson, claimed that
sanctions have helped keep Hussein in power, because Iraqis "rally
around the flag in times of war or economic tragedies." Though
that may be true where people are free to express themselves, Iraqis
do so at the point of a gun or under the cudgel of a secret policeman.
As we have seen in Afghanistan and elsewhere, when oppressive regimes
are toppled, the people rejoice in their newfound freedom. Former
CIA director James Woolsey said it well in a recent interview: When
the oppressive regime is lifted in Iraq, "there will be dancing
in the streets of Baghdad." Let us hope that the sanctions
soon become moot, and the people, free.
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