Economic sanctions as a weapon of mass
destruction
By Joy Gordon
Professor of Philosophy at Fairfield
University.
Her first book "A Peaceful Silent,
Deadly Remedy: The Ethics of Economic Sanctions" will be published by Harvard
University Press
These notes were taken during her
talk
on the "Iraq
- Just Solutions?" Workshop at the Potsdam
Einstein Forum, May 6, 2003.
Further details may be found in
Joy Gordon, Cool
War, Harper's Magazine, November 2002.
Abstract
lf any international act in the
last decade is sure to generate enduring bitterness toward the United States,
it is the epidemic suffering needlessly visited on Iraqis via U.S. fiat
inside the United Nations Security Council. Within that body, the United
States has consistently thwarted Iraq from satisfyng its most basic humanitarian
needs, using sanctions as nothing less than a deadly weapon, and, despite
recent reforms, continuing to do so. Invoking security concerns -including
those not corroborated by U.N. weapons inspectors- U.S. policymakers have
effectively turned a program of international governance into a legitimized
act ot mass slaughter.
Sanctions imposed on Iraq have been
comprehensive, meaning that virtually every aspect of the country's imports
and exports is controlled. There is no documentation
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of how and by whom such a death toll
has been justified for so long.
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how the danger of goods entering
Iraq was assessed, and
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how it was weighed, if at all, against
the mounting collateral damage?
All U.N. records that could answer my
questions were kept from public scrutiny. Documents are unavailable that
show how the U.S. policy agenda has determined the outcome of humanitarian
and security judgments.
General assessment: U.N. agencies
lacking in openness. U.S. purposely minimizing humanitarian goods delivery,
causing high child mortality, epidemics
The operation of Iraq sanctions involves
numerous agencies within the United Nations.
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The Security Council's 661 Committee
(so called because of Security Council Resolution 661, which initially
imposed sanctions on Iraq) is generally responsible for both enforcing
the sanctions and granting humanitarian exemptions.
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The Office of Iraq Programme (OIP),
within the U.N. Secretariat, operates the Oil for Food Programme. he Office
of Iraq Programme does not release information on which countries are blocking
contracts, nor does any other body. Access to the minutes of the Security
Council's 661 Committee is restricted. The committee operates by consensus,
effectively giving every member veto power.
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Humanitarian agencies such as UNICEF
and the World Health Organisation work in Iraq to monitor and improve the
population's welfare, periodically reporting their findings to the 661
Committee.
These agencies have been careful not
to publicly discuss their ongoing frustration with the manner in which
the program is operated.
Over the last three years (2000 -
2002), through research and interviews with diplomats, U.N. staff, scholars,
and joumalists, I have acquired many of the key confidential U.N. documents
concerning the administration of Iraq sanctions. I obtained these documents,
on the condition that my sources remain anonymous.
What they show is that the United
States has fought aggressively throughout the last decade to purposely
minimize the humanitarian goods that enter the country. And it has done
so in the face of enormous human suffering, including massive increases
in child mortality and widespread epidemics.
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It has sometimes given a reason for
its refusal to approve humanitarian goods, sometimes given no reason at
all, and sometimes changed its reason three or four times, in each instance
causing a delay of months.
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Since August 1991 the United States
has blocked most purchases of
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materials necessary for Iraq to generate
electricity, as well as
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equipment for radio, telephone, and
other communications.
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Often restrictions have hinged on the
withholding of a single essential element, rendering many approved iterns
useless.
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For example, Iraq was allowed to purchase
a sewage-treatment plant but was blocked from buying the generator necessary
to run it; this in a country that has been pouring 300,000 tons of raw
sewage daily into its rivers.
Introduction: Iraq's pre-Gulf war extensive
social, health care and economic programs
Saddam Hussein's government is well
known for its human-rights abuses against the Kurds and Shi'ites, and for
its invasion of Kuwait. What is less well known is that this same, government
had also invested heavily in health, education, and social programs for
two decades prior to the Persian Gulf War. While the treatment of ethnic
minorities and political enemies has been abominable under Hussein, it
is also the case that the well-being of the society at large improved drarnatically.
The social programs and economic development continued, and expanded, even
during Iraq's grueling and costly war with Iran from 1980 to 1988, a war
that Saddam Hussein might not have survived without substantial U.S. backing.
Before the Persian Gulf War, Iraq was a rapidly developing country, with
free education, ample electricity, modernized agriculture, and a robust
middle class. According to the World Health Organization, 93 percent of
the population had access to health care.
U.N. Secretary General's 1991 Envoy:
imminent epidemics and famine, U.S. Intelligence: degraded medical conditions
The devastation of the Golf War and
the sanctions that preceded and sustained such devastation changed all
that. Often forgotten is the fact that sanctions were imposed before the
war -in August of 1990- in direct response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
After the liberation of Kuwait, sanctions were maintained, their focus
shifted to disarmament. In 1991, a few months after the end of the war,
the U.N. secretary general's envoy reported that Iraq was facing a crisis
in the areas of food, water, sanitation, and health, as well as elsewhere
in its entire infrastructure, and predicted an "imminent catastrophe, which
could include epidemics and famine, if massive lifesupporting needs are
not rapidly met." U.S. intelligence assessments took the same view. A Defense
Department evaluation noted that "Degraded medical conditions in Iraq are
primarily attributable to the breakdown of public services (water purification
and distribution, preventive medicine, water disposal, health-care services,
electricity, and transportation). . . . Hospital care is degraded by lack
of running water and electricity."
Holds on imports: figures
Iraq cannot legally export or import
any goods, including oil, outside the U.N. sanctions system. The Oil for
Food Programme, intended as a limited and temporary emergency measure,
was first offered to Iraq in 1991, and was rejected. It was finally put
into place in 1996. Under the programme, Iraq was permitted to sell a limited
amount of oil (until 1999, when the limits were removed), and is allowed
to use almost 60 percent of the proceeds to buy humanitarfan goods (25
percent of the proceeds are reserved for reparations to Kuwait.)
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Since the programme began, Iraq has
earned approximately $57
billion in oil revenues,
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of which it has spent about $23
billion on goods that actually arrived. This comes to about $170 per
year per person.
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Most contracts for food in the last
few years bypassed the Security Council, thus foodstuff has arrived in
Iraq unimpededly.
Nearly everything for Iraq's entire
infrastructure - electricity, roads, telephones, water treatment - as well
as much of the equipment and supplies related to food and medicine has
been subject to Security Council review. In practice, this has meant that
the United States and Britain subjected hundreds of contracts to elaborate
scrutiny, without the involvement of any other country on the council;
and after that scrutiny, the United States, only occasionally seconded
by Britain, consistently blocked or delayed hundreds of humanitarian contracts.
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As of July 2002 more than $5 billion
in goods was not yet approved for delivery ("on hold").
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U.S. holds:
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in September 2001 holds on nearly one
third of water and sanitation and one quarter of electricity and educational-supply
contracts.
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between the spring of 2000 and 2002
holds on humanitarian goods tripled.
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in winter 2001 holds on dialysis, dental,
and fire-fighting equipment, water tankers, milk and yogurt production
equipment, printing equipment for schools, agricultural-bagging equiprnent.
The severe limits of funds created a
permanent humanitarian crisis.
In response to U.S. demands, the
U.N. worked with suppliers to provide the United States with detailed information
about the goods and how they would be used, and repeatedly expanded its
monitoring system, tracking each item from contracting through delivery
and installation, ensuring that the imports are used for legitimate civilian
purposes.
In a 661 Committee meeting on March
20, 2000, UNICEF official A.R. Singh made a presentation on the deplorable
humanitarian situation in Iraq: of the children in south and central governorates
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25 percent suffered from chronic malnutrition
(often irreversibly),
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9 percent from acute malnutrition, and
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child-mortality rates had more than
doubled since the imposition of sanctions.
Excessive numbers of holds, dual-use
goods
Dual-use goods, of course, are
the ostensible target of sanctions, since they are capable of contributing
to Iraq's military capabilities. But the problem remains that many of the
tools necessary for a country simply to function could easily be considered
dual use.
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Truck tires, respirator masks, bulldozers,
and pipes have all been blocked or delayed at different times for this
reason.
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Also under suspicion is much of the
equipment needed to provide electricity, tetephone service, transportation,
and clean water.
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Goods presenting genuine security concems
have been safely imported into Iraq for years and used for legitimate purposes.
Chloine, for example -vital for water purification, and feared as a poasible
source of the chlorine gas used in chemical weapons, is aggressively monitored,
and deliveries have been regular. Every single canister is tracked from
the time of contracting through arrival, installation, and disposal of
the empty canister.
Challenges: Many members of the
Secunty Council have been sharply critical of the hold practices. In the
April 20, 2000 meeting members of the 661 Committee challenged the legitimacy
of the U.S. decisions to impede the humanitarian contracts.
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The problem had reached "a critical
point," said the Russian delegate;
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the number of holds was "excessive,"
said the Canadian representative;
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the Tunisian delegate expressed concern
over the scale of the holds.
The British and American delegates justified
their position on the grounds that the items on hold were dual-use goods
that should be monitored, and that they could not approve them without
getting detailed technical information. But the French delegate challenged
this explanation:
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there was an elaborate monitoring mechanism
for telecommunications equipment, he pointed out, and
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the International Telecommunication
Union had been involved in assessing projects. Yet, he said, there were
holds on almost 90 percent of telecommunications contracts.
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Similarly, there was already an effective
monitoring mechanism for oil equipment that existed for some time; yet
the holds on oil conracts remained high.
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Nor was it the case, he suggested, that
providing prompt, detailed technical information was sufficient to get
holds released: a French contract for the supply of ventilators for intensive-care
units had been on hold for more than five months, despite his govemment's
prompt and detailed response to a request for additional technical information
and the obvious humanitarian character of the goods.
The water tanker example: In
2001 the United States blocked contracts for water tankers, on the grounds
that they might be used to haul chemical weapons instead. Yet the arms
experts at UNMOVIC (the U.N. Monitoring and Verification Committee), had
no objection to them: water tankers with that particular type of lining,
they maintained, were not on the "1051 list" - the list of goods that require
notice to U.N. weapons inspectors. Still, the United States insisted on
blocking the water tankers -this during a time when the major cause of
child deaths was lack of access to clean drinking water, and when the country
was in the midst of a drought.
U.S. - UNMOVIC disagreement:
Thus, even though the United States justified blocking humanitarian goods
out of concern over security and potential military use, U.S. blocked contracts
that the U.N.'s own agency charged with weapons inspections did not object
to. And the quantities were large. As of September 2001, "1051 disagreement,"
involved nearly 200 humanitarian contracts.
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As of September 2001, nearly a billion
dollars worth of medical-equipment contracts -for which all the information
sought had been provided -was still on hold.
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As of March 2002, there were $25 million
worth of holds on contracts for hospital essentials, sterilizers, oxygen
plants, spare parts for basic utilities - that despite release by UNMOVIC,
were still blocked by the United States on the claim of "dual use".
Beyond its consistent blocking of dual
use goods, the United States found many ways to slow approval of contracts.
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Lack of personnel: Although it
insisted on reviewing every contract carefully, for years it didn't assign
enough staff to do this without causing enormous delays. In April,2000
the United States informed the 661 Committee that it had just released
$275 million in holds. This did not represent a policy change, the delegate
said; rather, the United States had simply allocated more financial resources
and personnel to the task of reviewing the contracts. Thus millions in
humaritarian contracts had been delayed not because of security concerns
but simply because of U.S. disinterest in spending the money necessary
to review them.
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Switching reasons In other cases,
after all U.S. objections to a delayed contract were addressed (a process
that could take years), the United States simply changed its reason for
the hold, and the review process began all over.
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After a half-million dollar contract
for medical equipment was blocked in Feb, of 2000, and the company spent
two years responding to U.S. requests for information, the United States
changed its reason for the hold, and the contract remained blocked
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A tremendous number of other medical-equipment
contracts suffered the same fate.
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Fund management: In December
2000, the Security Council passed a resolution allowing Iraq to spend 600
million euros (about $600 million) from its oil sales on maintenance of
its oil-production capabilities. Without this, Iraq would still have to
pay for these services, but with no legal avenue to raise the funds. The
United States, unable in the end to agree with Iraq on how the funds would
be managed, blocked the measure's implementation.
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Retroactive pricing: In the spring
of 2001, the United States accused Iraq of imposing illegal surcharges
on the middlemen who sell to refiners. To counter this, the United States
and Britain devised a system that had the effect of undermining Iraq's
basic capacity to sell oil: "retroactive pricing". Taking advantage of
the fact that the 661 Committee sets the price Iraq receives from each
oil buyer, the United States and Britain began to systematically withhold
their votes on each price until the relevant buying period had passed.
The idea was that then the alleged surcharge could be subtracted from the
price after the sale had occurred, and that price would then be imposed
on the buyer. The effect of this practice has been to torpedo the entire
Oil for Food Programme. Obviously, few buyers would want to commit themselves
to a purchase whose price they do not know until after they agree to it.
As a result of this system, Iraq's oil income has dropped 40 percent since
last year, and more than $2 billion in humanitarian contracts -all of them
fully approved- are now stalled. Once again, invoking tenuous security
claims, the United States has put in place a device that will systematically
cause enormous human damage in Iraq.
Collapse of the water system, anticipated
by Pentagon official in 1991
The United States anticipated the collapse
of the Iraqi water system early on. In January 1991, shortly before the
Persian Gulf War began and six months into the sanctions, the Pentagon's
Defense Intelligence Agency projected that, under the embargo, Iraq's ability
to provide clean drinking water would collapse within six months. Chemicals
for water treatment, the agency noted, "are depleted or nearing depletion,"
chlorine supplies were "critically low", the main chlorine-production plants
had been shut down, and industries such as pharmaceuticals and food processing
were already becoming incapacitated. "Unless the water is purified with
chlorine," the agency concluded, "epidemics of such diseases as cholera,
hepatitis, and typhoid could occur." ("Iraq Water Treamwnt Vulnerabilities,"
Defense Intellligence Agency, January 18, 1991.)
Yet U.S. policy on water-supply contracts
remained as aggressive as ever.
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For every such contract unblocked in
August 2001, for exampte, three new ones were put on hold.
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A 2001 UNICEF report to the secunty
council found that access to potable water for the Iraqi population had
not improved much under the Oil for Food Programme, and specifically cited
the half a billion dollar of water- and sanitation-supply contracts then
blocked -one third of all submitted.
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UNICEF reported that up to 40 perrent
of the purified water run through pipes is contaminmed or lost through
leakage." ("Status of the Water and Sanitation Sector in South/Central
Iraq", UNICEF, September 2001). Yet the United States blocked or
delayed contracts for water pipes, and for the bulldozers and earth-moving
equipment necessary to install them.
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And despite approving the dangerous
dual-use chlorine, the United States blocked the safety equipment necessary
to handle the substance -not only for Iraqis but for U.N. employees charged
with chlorine monitoring there.
Among the many deprivations Iraq has
experienced, none is so closely correlated with deaths as its damaged water
system.
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Prior to 1990, 95 percent of urban households
in Iraq had access to potable water, as did three quarters of rural households.
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Soon after the Persian Gulf War, there
were widespread outbreaks of cholera and typhoid-diseases that had been
largely eradicated in Iraq - as well as massive increases in child and
infant dysentery, and skyocketing child and infant mortality rates.
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By 1996 all sewage treatment plants
had broken down. As the state's economy collapsed, salaries to state employments
stopped, or were paid in Iraqi currency rendered nearly worthIess by inflation.
Between 1990 and 1996 more than half of the employees involved in water
and sanitation left their jobs. By 2001, after five years of the Oil for
Food Programme's operating at full capacity, the situation had actually
worsened.
Child mortality
Since the Oil for Food Programme began,
an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of 5 have died as a result
of the sanctions. Child
mortality rate for Iraqi children under five years old was
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in late 1980s about 50 per thousand,
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by 1994 just under 90 per thousand,
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by 1999 nearly 130 per thousand; that
is, 13 percent of all Iraqi children were dead before their fifth birthday.
For the most part, they died as a direct or indirect result of contaminated
water.
In earty 2001, the United States had
placed hold on $280 million in medical supplies, including
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vaccines to treat infant hepatitis,
tetanus, and diphtheria, as well as
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incubators and
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cardiac equipment.
The rationale was that the vaccines
contained live cultures, albeit highly weakened ones, The Iraqi government,
it was argued, could conceivably extract these, and eventually grow a vitutent
fatal strain, then develop a missile or other delivery system that could
effectively disseminate it. UNICEF and U.N. health agencies, along with
other Security Council members, objected strenuously. European biologieal-weapons
experts maintained that such a feat was in fact flatly impossible.
At the same time, with massive epidemics
ravaging the country, and skyrocketing child mortality, it was quite certain
that preventing child vaccines from entering Iraq would result in Iarge
numbers of child and infant deaths. As late as in March 2001, when the
Washington Post and Reuters reported on the holds - and their impact- the
United States announced it was lifting them.
Targeting sanctions and Goods Review
List (May 2002) to buy security council approval
A few months later in 2001, the United
States began aggressively and publicly pushing a proposal for "smart sanctions",
sometimes known as "targeted sanctions". The idea behind smart sanctions
is to "contour" sanctions so that they affect the military and the political
leadership instead of the citizenry. Basic civilian necessities, the State
Department claimed, would be handled by the U.N. Secretariat, bypassing
the Security Council.
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In early June of last year (2001), when
the smart sanction proposal was under negotiation, the United States announced
that it would lift holds on $800 million of contracts, of which $200 million
involved business with key Security Councit members.
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A few weeks later, the United States
lifted holds on $80 million of Chinese contracts with Iraq, including some
for radio equipment and other goods that had been blocked because of dual-use
concerns.
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In November 2001, the United States
began lobbying the "Goods Review List" (GRL). The proposal passed the Security
Council in May 2002. The GRL had the effect of lifting $740 million of
U.S. holds on Russian contracts with Iraq, even though the State Department
earlier insisted that those same holds were necessary to prevent any military
imports.
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When U.N. weapons experts began reviewing
the $5 billion worth of existing holds in July 2002, they found that very
few of them were for goods that ended up on the GRL, or warranted the security
concern that the United States had originally claimed. As a result, hundreds
of holds have been lifted in the last few months
Under the new system, UNMOVIC and the
International Atomic Energy Agency make the initial determination about
whether an item appeears on the GRL, which includes only those materials
questionable enough to be passed on to the Security CounciL The list is
precise and public, but huge. Cobbled together from existing U.N. and other
international lists and precedents, the GRL has been virtually customized
to accommodate the imaginative breadth of U.S. policyrnakers' security
concerns.
Outlook
Some would say that the lessons to be
learned from September 11 is that we must be even more aggressive in protecting
what we see as our security interests. But perhaps that's the wrong lesson
altogether. It is worth remembering that the worst destruction done on
U.S. soil by foreign enemies was accomplished with little more than hatred,
ingenuity, and box cutters. Perhaps what we should leam from our own reactions
to September 11 is that the massive destruction of innocents is something
that is unlikely to be either forgotten or forgiven. If this is so, then
destroying Iraq, whether with sanctions or with bombs, is unlikely to bring
the security we have gone to such lengths to preserve.
version: February 25, 2004
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