A rchive Date
[ 21-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/goldstein_apr20.html
U.S. and UN play the blame game
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN -- Toronto Sun
April 20, 2003
The question of whether to end the United Nations' 13-year-old campaign of economic sanctions against Iraq has officially entered the twilight zone.
The effort to phase out sanctions is now being led by the U.S., previously the most vocal proponent of sanctions at the Security Council, along with Great Britain. Meanwhile, Russia, which along with France and China opposed sanctions prior to the war in Iraq, now wants them to continue. At least for now.
What has caused these 180-degree shifts in position?
Following its toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime, the U.S. is anxious to get on with reconstruction in Iraq and to spread the costs around, which the easing of sanctions would assist.
But Security Council members who opposed the war now see sanctions as a way to reassert UN control in postwar Iraq. Not only are they suspicious of U.S. motives, but worried the Bush administration plans to give the spoils of war - i.e. huge reconstruction contracts - mainly to U.S. firms.
Complicating this debate is the fact the process for lifting UN sanctions - first imposed four days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August, 1990 - is now tied to Iraq dismantling its weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
Russia, et al. - including, it appears, Canada - argue this can only be confirmed by the return of UN weapons inspectors, who left Iraq just prior to the American-led invasion.
But the Bush administration argues Iraq's WMDs, which have yet to be found, obviously no longer constitute a threat, since coalition forces now control the country.
In a logical world, the solution would appear to be easy - the Americans would allow the UN inspectors back into Iraq to assist them in searching for WMDs and to verify any of their findings. At the same time, sanctions would be lifted so as much aid as possible could flow into Iraq, which can afford to help pay for the rebuilding effort - in addition to receiving donated humanitarian aid - because it has oil.
Then again, in the world of realpolitik, the free flow of Iraqi oil would hurt countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia, which rely on oil exports to bolster their domestic economies.
If the lifting of sanctions explodes into a major issue at the UN, it will put liberals and neo-cons into a moral pickle.
The toll of sanctions
For years the anti-war, anti-U.S. left - now in the camp of Russia, France and China - has been screaming that sanctions have been directly responsible for killing 5,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 per month, due to starvation and disease. Or, if you prefer, 500,000 children in all, or one million or 1.5 million, depending on the hysteria of the source, as Matt Welch observed in his March, 2002 article, The Politics of Dead Children (www.reason.com/0203/fe.mw.the.shtml).
On the other hand, pro-war, neo-con commentators have just as arbitrarily insisted the sanctions were not responsible for widespread suffering in Iraq, citing instead Saddam's refusal to disarm, his early rejection of various UN proposals to ease the sanctions and corrupt Iraqi officials who undermined the effectiveness of the oil-for-food program which began in 1996.
There has also been considerable debate as to whether the most commonly cited figure of 500,000 dead children under the age of 5 due to sanctions, is an official UN figure or a concocted one based on unchallenged data provided by Iraq.
As Welch documents in his exhaustive article, UN organizations such as UNICEF have cited the 500,000 figure, but repeatedly stressed, to little avail, that sanctions were only one contributing factor in these deaths, and that others included Iraq's wars with its neighbours and the inevitable decline in its own health and social service systems that resulted.
That said, no one who has studied the issue seriously denies that UN sanctions, or, if you prefer, Saddam's refusal to end them by disarming, imposed severe hardships on the Iraqis.
Even conservative estimates of the number of deaths of children under the age of 5 attributable to sanctions between 1991-98, for example, put the count at well over 100,000.
For the left, the "smoking gun" is a famous 1996 quote by Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the UN, who, when asked by 60 Minutes about unverified reports 500,000 Iraqi children had died due to sanctions and whether this was justified by what we now call Gulf War I, replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." Years later, Albright apologized for these remarks, saying they had been taken out of context.
Figures differ
On the other side, supporters of sanctions have cited instances where, for example, anti-U.S. commentators used the figure of 5,000 deaths per month, even while the Iraqi government on its own Web site was listing the number of all deaths from all causes for all children under age 5 at fewer than 3,000 per month, many of which had nothing to do with sanctions.
With the U.S. urging the end of sanctions and Russia, et al., saying no, will the neo-cons now demand an end to sanctions in the name of humanity? Will the left now insist they be continued as a guard against U.S. unilateralism in Iraq?
Back in the real world, there is no doubt sanctions - or, again, if you prefer, Saddam's refusal to end them by disarming - hurt Iraqis. And there is certainly no reason to continue sanctions now. Except in the Byzantine world of UN politics and the never-ending infighting that goes on there.
Lorrie can be reached at (416) 947-2212, by fax at (416) 947-3228 or by e-mail at lorrie.goldstein@tor.sunpub.com Or visit his home page Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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