Blaming Sanctions
And exonerating Saddam.

any 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.