Iraq sanctions

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United Nations sanctions against Iraq were imposed by the United Nations and the United States in 1990 following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and continued until the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. They were perhaps the toughest, most comprehensive sanctions in history, and have caused much controversy over the humanitarian impact, culminating with two senior UN representatives in Iraq resigning in protest of the sanctions.[1][2]

Contents

[edit] Introduction

On August 6, 1990 the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq, providing for a full trade embargo, excluding medical supplies, food and other items of humanitarian necessity, these to be determined by the Security Council sanctions committee. After the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi sanctions were linked to removal of Weapons of mass destruction by Resolution 687. [3]

The United Nations economic sanctions were imposed at the urging of the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The New York Times stated: "By making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, [sanctions] would eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power." [4] If the economic sanctions were designed to topple Saddam, then they were a failure. However, David Cortright and George A. Lopez argue that "the much-maligned UN-enforced sanctions regime actually worked ... containment helped destroy Saddam Hussein's war machine and his capacity to produce weapons."[5] But other research stated that the sanctions caused the deaths of many, many Iraqi children and others for health-related reasons owing to disease from lack of clean water from banning of chlorine, lack of medicine, impoverishment, and other factors. [4] [6] [7] [7]

[edit] Effects of the sanctions

[edit] Intended Effects

In a 2004 Foreign Affairs article,

George A. Lopez and David Cortright ... credit sanctions with: Compelling Iraq to accept inspections and monitoring; winning concessions from Baghdad on political issue such as the border dispute with Kuwait; preventing the rebuilding of Iraqi defenses after the Persian Gulf War; and blocking the import of vital materials and technologies for producing weapons of mass destruction. [8]

.

[edit] Side Effects

The modern Iraqi economy had been highly dependent on oil exports: In 1989, the oil sector comprised 61% of the GNP. A major drawback of this over-dependence has been the narrowing of the economic base during the last three decades, with the agricultural sector rapidly declining in the 1970s. So some claim that the post-1990 sanctions had a particularly devastating effect on Iraq’s economy and food security levels of the population.[9]

Shortly after the sanctions were imposed, the Iraqi government developed a system of free food rations comprising of 1000 calories per person/day or 40% of the daily requirements, which an estimated 60% of the population relied on for a vital part of their sustenance. With the introduction of the Oil-for-Food Programme in 1997, this situation gradually improved. In May 2000 a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) survey noted that almost half the children under 5 years suffered from diarrhoea, in a country where the population is marked by its youth, with 45% being under 14 years of age in 2000. Power shortages, lack of spare parts and insufficient technical know-how lead to the breakdown of many modern facilities.[9]

The overall literacy rate in Iraq had been 78% in 1977 and 87% for adult women by 1985, but declined rapidly since then. Between 1990 and 1998, over one fifth of Iraqi children stopped enrolling in school, consequently increasing the number of non-literates and losing all the gains made in the previous decade. The 1990s also saw a dramatic increase in child labor, from a virtually non-existent level in the 1980s. The per capita income in Iraq dropped from $3510 in 1989 to $450 in 1996, heavily influenced by the rapid devaluation of the Iraqi dinar.[9]

Iraq had been one of the few countries in the Middle East that invested in women’s education. But this situation changed from the late eighties on with increasing militarisation and a declining economic situation. Consequencently the economic hardships and war casualties in the last decades have increased the number of women-headed households and working women.[9]

Some researchers say that over a million Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of the sanctions, [10] although other estimates have ranged as low as 170,000 children. [7] [11] [12] UNICEF announced that 500,000 child deaths have occurred as a result of the sanctions.[13] The sanctions resulted in high rates of malnutrition, lack of medical supplies, and diseases from lack of clean water. Chlorine, was desperately needed to disinfect water supplies, but it was banned from the country due to the potential that it may be used as part of a chemical weapon. On May 10, 1996, Madeleine Albright (U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations at the time) appeared on 60 Minutes and was confronted with statistics of half a million children under five having died as a result of the sanctions. She replied "we think the price is worth it", though in her 2003 autobiography she wrote of her response (answering a loaded question):[14][15]

I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it. … I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That is no one’s fault but my own.[16]

Denis Halliday was appointed United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level. In October 1998 he resigned after a 34 year career with the UN in order to have the freedom to criticise the sanctions regime, saying "I don't want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide"[17] However Sophie Boukhari a UNESCO Courier journalist reports that "Some legal experts are skeptical about or even against using such terminology." and quotes Mario Bettati (who invented the notion of "the right of humanitarian intervention") "People who talk like that don’t know anything about law. The embargo has certainly affected the Iraqi people badly, but that’s not at all a crime against humanity or genocide." and reports that William Bourdon the secretary-general of International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said "one of the key elements of a crime against humanity and of genocide is intent. The embargo wasn’t imposed because the United States and Britain wanted children to die. If you think so, you have to prove it."[18]

Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, subsequently also resigned in protest, calling the effects of the sanctions a "true human tragedy"[19]. Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq, followed them.

[edit] Infant and child death rates

Iraq's infant and child survival rates fell after sanctions were imposed.
Iraq's infant and child survival rates fell after sanctions were imposed.

A May 25, 2000 BBC article[20] reported that before Iraq sanctions were imposed by the UN in 1990, infant mortality had "fallen to 47 per 1,000 live births between 1984 and 1989. This compares to approximately 7 per 1,000 in the UK." The BBC article was reporting from a study of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, titled "Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq", that was published in the May 2000 Lancet medical journal.[21][22]

The study concluded that in southern and central Iraq, infant mortality rate between 1994 and 1999 had risen to 108 per 1,000. Child mortality rate, which refers to children between the age of one and five years, also drastically inclined from 56 to 131 per 1,000.[20] In the autonomous northern region during the same period, infant mortality declined from 64 to 59 per 1000 and under-5 mortality fell from 80 to 72 per 1000, which was attributed to better food and resource allocation.

The Lancet publication was the result of two separate surveys by UNICEF between February and May 1999 in partnership with the local authorities and with technical support by the WHO. "The large sample sizes - nearly 24,000 households randomly selected from all governorates in the south and center of Iraq and 16,000 from the north - helped to ensure that the margin of error for child mortality in both surveys was low," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said. She also noted that "if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998."[23]

In the spring of 2000 a U.S. Congressional letter demanding the lifting of the sanctions garnered 71 signatures, while House Democratic Whip David Bonior called the economic sanctions against Iraq "infanticide masquerading as policy."[24]

Estimates of direct casualties of the sanctions remain a highly contested subject. An short overview of claims:[25]

[edit] Oil for Food

Main article: Oil-for-Food Programme

As the sanctions faced mounting criticism of its humanitarian impacts, several UN resolutions were introduced that allowed Iraq to trade its oil for goods such as food and medicines. The earliest of these resolutions were introduced in 1991.

UN Resolution 706 of 15 August 1991 was introduced to allow the sale of Iraqi oil in exchange for food. [26]

UN Resolution 712 of 19 September 1991 confirmed that Iraq could sell up to $1.6 billion US in oil to fund an Oil For Food program. [27]

Iraq was in 1996 allowed under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme (under Security Council Resolution 986) to export $5.2 billion (USD) of oil every 6 months with which to purchase items needed to sustain the civilian population. After an initial refusal, Iraq signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in May 1996 for arrangements for the implementation of that resolution to be taken. The Oil-for-Food Programme started in October 1997, and the first shipments of food arrived in March 1998. While improving the conditions of the population, Denis Halliday who oversaw the programme believed it inadequate to compensate for the adverse humanitarian impacts of the sanctions.

Thirty percent of the proceeds were redirected to a Gulf War reparations account.

In 2004/5 the Programme became the subject of major media attention over corruption, as Iraq had systematically sold allocations of oil at below-market prices in return for some of the proceeds from the resale outside the scope of the programme. Individuals and companies from dozens of countries were implicated.

[edit] Lifting of sanctions

It took a long time to lift the sanctions. While UN resolutions subsequent to the cessation of hostilities during the Gulf War imposed several requisite responsibilities on Iraq for the removal of sanctions, the largest focus remained on the regime's development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and in particular its laggard participation in the UNSCOM-led disarmament process required of it. The goal of several western governments had been that the disruptive effects of war and sanction would lead to a critical situation in which Iraqis would in some way effect "regime change", a removal of Saddam Hussein and his closest allies from power.

Hussein was at this point widely seen as a tyrant whose nominal cooperation concealed malign aims. With him in power, there was a general inclination to be skeptical about whether Iraq would disarm, and about whether it would be open and cooperative about the inspection process, particularly after revelations of post-war concealment forced a reevaluation of the extent of the country's biological weapons program.[citation needed]. Hussein's son-in-law is heard speaking of concealing information from UN inspectors on audiotapes released in 2006. [28] [29] Hussein may have considered the many governments' displeasure with him, but particularly that of two veto-wielding UNSC members, the United States and United Kingdom (both of which took the hardest lines on Iraq), as a no-win situation and disincentive to cooperation in the process. [30]

Additionally, UNSCOM had allegedly been infiltrated by British and American spies for purposes other than determining if Iraq possessed WMDs. [31] [32] Former inspector Scott Ritter was a prominent source of these charges. While not agreeing with Ritter fully, former UNSCOM chief inspector David Kay said "the longer it continued, the more the intelligence agencies would, often for very legitimate reasons, decide that they had to use the access they got through cooperation with UNSCOM to carry out their missions."[33] [34].

Saddam, who portrayed all this as a violation of Iraq's territorial sovereignty, became less cooperative and more obstructive of UNSCOM activities as the years wore on, and refused access for several years beginning in August 1998. Ultimately Saddam condemned the US for enforcing the sanctions through the UN and demanded nothing less than unconditional lifting of all sanctions on its country, including the weapons sanctions. The US and UN refused to do so out of concern that Saddam's regime would rebuild its once-powerful military and renew its WMD programs with the trade revenues. Renewed pressure in 2002 led to the entry of UNMOVIC, which received some degree of cooperation but failed to declare Iraq's disarmament immediately prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for which it was withdrawn and became inactive in Iraq.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who called the sanctions "the most intrusive system of arms control in history",[35] cited the breakdown of the sanctions as one of the causes or justifications of the Iraq war.[36]

The sanctions regime was finally ended on May 22, 2003 (with certain arms-related exceptions) by paragraph 10 of UN Security Council Resolution 1483. [37]

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ New Statesman - John Pilger on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s
  2. ^ http://www.zmag.org/vonsponek.htm
  3. ^ "UN Security Council Resolution 687".
  4. ^ a b "Sanctions in Iraq Hurt the Innocent". Seattle Post Intelligencer (August 7, 2003).
  5. ^ Containing Iraq: Sanctions Worked
  6. ^ "Iraqi Sanctions: Without Medicine And Supplies, The Children Die". Hartford Courant (October 23, 2000).
  7. ^ a b c Cortright, David (November 2001). [A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions "A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions"]. The Nation.
  8. ^ Containing Iraq: Sanctions Worked
  9. ^ a b c d UNICEF Evaluation report 2003 IRQ: Iraq Watching Briefs — Overview Report, July 2003
  10. ^ Centre for Population Studies
  11. ^ a b Reason Magazine - The Politics of Dead Children
  12. ^ The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict. PDA Research Monograph 8, 20 October 2003. Carl Conetta
  13. ^ Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq (CASI)
  14. ^ U.S., U.N. not to blame for deaths of Iraqis | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs) | Find Articles at BNET.com
  15. ^ "Albright's Blunder. Irvine Review (2002). Archived from the original on 2003-06-03. Retrieved on 2008-01-04.
  16. ^ Albright, Madeleine (2003). "Madam Secretary: A Memoir ", 275. 
  17. ^ John Pilger New Statesman - John Pilger on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s] New Statesman, 4 October 2004
  18. ^ Sophie Boukhari Embargo against Iraq: Crime and punishment UNESCO website.
  19. ^ BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | UN sanctions rebel resigns
  20. ^ a b "Child death rate doubles in Iraq". BBC. May 25, 2000.
  21. ^ "Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq". By Ali, M.;Shah, I. The Lancet. May 2000. Vol: 355, Pages: 1851-1858.
  22. ^ Centre for Population Studies. DFID Reproductive Health Work Programme. Lists bibliographic details for article, "Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq".
  23. ^ "Iraq surveys show 'humanitarian emergency'". UNICEF Newsline August 12, 1999
  24. ^ "Global Policy Forum", weekly update at GPF Feb. 14 - 18 2000
  25. ^ "Secondary Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century", list of minor conflicts and casualty claims with sources 1899-1997
  26. ^ PDF of resolution 706
  27. ^ PDF of Resolution 712
  28. ^ CNN.com - On tape, Hussein talks of WMDs - Feb 19, 2006
  29. ^ ABC News: Tapes Show Son-in-Law Admitted WMD Deception
  30. ^ The myth of lifting
  31. ^ BBC News | Middle East | Unscom 'infiltrated by spies'
  32. ^ UN weapons inspections | World news | guardian.co.uk
  33. ^ frontline: spying on saddam: interviews: david kay
  34. ^ FAIR ACTION ALERT: Spying in Iraq: From Fact to Allegation
  35. ^ Containing Iraq: Sanctions Worked
  36. ^ Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks in Wilmington, Ohio
  37. ^ Resolution 1483 - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum

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