Reprinted from The Common Good, no 10, Advent 1998

www.catholicworker.org.nz

 

Stop The Genocide - Lift The Sanctions

By Jim Consedine

In supporting the maintenance of sanctions in Iraq, the New Zealand Government is directly supporting the genocide of the Iraqi people.

If this sounds alarmist or extreme, let it be noted that it simply reflects the position our government took in the latest round of confrontation with Iraq. Prime Minister Jenny Shipley and Foreign Secretary Don McKinnon were 100 percent behind the UN Security Council’s decision to go to war again against Iraq. The mighty US economic empire has cowed the UN into submission on this issue. The NZ Government was supporting it to the hilt. Our forces were on stand by and ready to go. We were all set to join a war against a country most of us cannot even locate on a map. It was called off apparently only a matter of minutes before the balloon was to go up. And little old New Zealand was, as usual, in on the act, hanging onto the shirt tails of the United States. We should be downright ashamed of our sinfulness and moral ineptitude.

The sanctions policy is one of slow genocide against the Iraqi people. All the Security Council members know this. They have seen and read the reports from their own agencies including UNICEF, the World Food Programme, The UN High Commission for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross to name only some. These reports contain horrific information on the deadly effects of the sanctions.

Jim Fine, a member of the Friends Service Committee in Palestine and Iraq during the Gulf War, returned to Iraq earlier this year. He reports that even by September 1991, eight years ago, it was already possible to say that economic sanctions. against Iraq had taken a higher toll in civilian lives that the coalition bombing during the war. The deaths, mostly of infants, children, the aged and the infirm - that is, the most defenceless - were caused by sanction-induced shortages of food and medicine coupled with the war- time destruction of electrical, water and sanitation facilities.

Now, seven years later, the devastation is everywhere and deaths are routine and widespread. The same sanction-induced shortages of food, medicine, clean water and sanitation are the cause, making the sanctions in effect a silent weapon of mass destruction that takes the lives of some 3000 - 5000 each month. Medical journals such as the Lancet and the British Medical Journal attest to recent big rises in Iraq in water-borne infectious diseases such as cholera and typhoid, as well as malnutrition.

To take five examples from hundreds of figures:

1.2 million Iraqis have died since 1991, 75,000 of them children (UN 1997).

4500 children younger than five die every month (Unicef 1996).

The mortality rates of children younger than five has increased six times since 1990 (WHO 1996).

Lymphoblastic leukaemia rates have increased four times (Lancet 1998)

Nutrition surveys show consistent malnutrition rates for children younger than five of about 30 per cent (Unicef-Ismag 1998).

The diseases they suffer from are for the most part either preventable or curable. Malnutrition caused by poverty is the most widespread. An average Iraq resident earns $NZ3 per month. Anaemia, severe diarrhea, a high rate of premature babies born with respiratory distress syndrome, rickets, typhoid, many cancers especially leukemia, and gastroenteritis form the bulk of the medical cases. There is only one CT scan in the whole of Iraq for the civilian population.

There is a widespread misconception abroad that conditions have improved considerably since the US sponsored ‘oil for food’ resolution was accepted in 1996. Oil did finally begin to flow out of Iraq under the terms of UN Resolution 986 in December 1996, but recurring technical and political problems insured that only a fraction of the permitted aid reached Iraq. Jim Fine says that in effect, the resolution served less to bring adequate relief to Iraqi civilians and more to quieten concerns over their situation and deflect blame for their suffering from the US.

Recent reports, however, cast severe doubt over the efficacy of the UN sanctions regime. A UN report issued on 1 September confirmed the view that the oil-for-food programme, designed to offset the effects of the sanctions, suffered from bureaucratic delays, and that reparations, UN expenses, and oil price fluctuations meant that the UN was $US1 billion behind schedule on Phase Three of humanitarian aid to Iraq.

Among members of the Security Council, and between UNICEF and UNSCOM, the UN is bitterly divided on the sanctions.

On 4 September the executive director of the Office of the Iraq Program, Benon Sevan, admitted that the oil-for-food program ‘was never meant to take care of all the needs of the Iraqi people. It was just a temporary measure.’

On 1 October the UN co-ordinator of the oil-for-food programme, Denis Halliday, dramatically resigned to expose the ‘damage and futility of sanctions, a totally bankrupt concept,’ he said.

‘It damages the innocent people of the country, and probably strengthens the leadership, pushing people to take extreme positions.’

The US government has been amazingly successful in promoting the notion that all the blame lies with Saddam Hussein. That Saddam is a despot and a war criminal is a position we have stated loud and clear in these pages before. (The Common Good, Lent, 1998) That his weapons programme is a danger is something we also believe. But he is also only one of possibly 20-30 such odious leaders currently governing and heading blood stained military dictatorships. Many of these same people (and Saddam is one such example) were promoted into power by the US government. Some have even been trained by the US military. Many are armed by US arms manufacturers. Saddam is only one of many with dangerous weaponry.

The morality of the UN Security Council also needs to be examined. There were two grave and morally indefensible faults in their approach. To link humanitarian needs to reparation, weapons inspections and a host of other conditions to Iraqi acceptance of the Council’s political conditions violates the principle of international humanitarian law that civilian relief should be unconditional and is morally reprehensible. Secondly, to offer such an inadequate amount of relief that Baghdag had little incentive to accept the package, left the Iraqis feeling powerless and humiliated. It was always highly unlikely that Saddam would respond positively. And so it proved. Seeking to humiliate him and demanding such high reparation for his part in the Gulf War is a failed political concept. It was never going to work. And don’t they now say that one of the major causes of WW2 was the humiliation of Germany after the Great War and the impossible reparation demanded by the allies? Do we never learn from history?

Lest anyone hasn’t heard, the Pope has repeatedly been a voice in the international wilderness in decrying further military action in the Gulf. The Church in Iraq led by Archbishop Djibrael Kassab has time and again begged the West to hear the cries of the innocents suffering from the sanctions. Like Rachel’s children long ago, they cry into the wind and no one hears.

New Zealand leaders should take the opportunity during the summer holidays to reflect on the immorality of our country’s stand in relation to sanctions. Already the blood of innocent civilians is on our hands. That is a sinful and immoral position to be in. We should withdraw our support for sanctions and oppose any more military action in the Gulf.