The Unending War in Iraq Considering Sanctions Against the People Ofiraq
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Trinity College Trinity College Digital Repository Resist Newsletters Resist Collection 9-30-2000 Resist Newsletter, Sept. 2000 Resist Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter Recommended Citation Resist, "Resist Newsletter, Sept. 2000" (2000). Resist Newsletters. 325. https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/resistnewsletter/325 Inside: More Book Reviews ISSN 0897-2613 • Vol. 9 #7 A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority September 2000 The Unending War In Iraq Considering Sanctions against the People ofIraq According to reliable international esti RAHUL MAHAJAN mates, another 5,000 or more children un der five die every month as a consequence Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact of of sanctions. These innocent victims are Sanctions and War. Edited by Anthony caught between two forces that have re Arnove. Photographs by Alan Pogue. peatedly shown their callous disregard for South End Press. 216 pages. $16.00 human rights: Saddam Hussein and the US (paper). government. The effects of the sanctions are becom They made a wasteland and called it ing widely known. After years of silence, peace. (Tacitus) the US media, in response to the efforts of a small but dedicated group of international I think this is a very hard choice, but activists, have recently given mainstream the price- we think the price is worth it. coverage to the conditions of life in Iraq, (Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, notably in an excellent feature by the Se when asked by reporter Leslie Stahl attle Post-Intelligencer (available at whether US policy objectives in Iraq were www.seattle-pi.com/iraq/). Although such worth the death of 500,000 children.) coverage is not comprehensive, and is gen erally anecdotal rather than statistical, cu he war against Iraq is not over. The mulatively it does paint an illuminating pic Tpast decade, marked internationally by ture of a country in crisis. a ceaseless US effort to force other coun One cannot, however, rely on the main tries to open their markets t9 First World stream media to understand or report the multinational corporations, has simulta diabolical way in which the sanctions are neously seen Iraq cut off from the world, children, the elderly, and the poor. enforced, the steady stream of lies and under a state of siege known as "economic Th·e effects of this blockade on a coun disinformation disseminated by the US sanctions." The situation is not as para try that once imported 70 percent of its government, the culpability of the United doxical as it first seems, since both "free food, whose entire infrastructure was re States, or, indeed, the real reasons for the trade" and the sanctions involve control duced to rubble by possibly the most in policy. Over the past several years, much of the policies of other countries by the tense bombing campaign in history, have has been written on postwar Iraq. The work elites of the First World. The sanctions been devastating. The number killed by the spans a broad range: Out of the Ashes, by against Iraq constitute the most compre sanctions alone since 1990, variously esti Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, details the hensive economic blockade of any coun mated by different United Nations agen inner workings of Iraq's government and try in modem times: in actual effect, a war cies, is likely over 1 million in all. Half ofthe of covert US operations in Iraq; Endgame, against civilians that preferentially targets dead are children under the age of five. continued on page two Vol. 9, #7 RESIST Newsletter Page 1 The Unending War continued from page one by Scott Ritter, chronicles the saga of weap ons inspections; Iraq: Sanctions and Be yond, by Anthony Cordesman and Ahmed Hashim, analyzes Iraq as a security issue from a military perspective; The Scourg ing of Iraq: Sanctions, Law, and Natural Justice, by Geoff Simons, is a magisterial analysis and critique of the sanctions and of US motives in Iraq. Interestingly, each of these authors characterizes the sanc tions as a cruel and untenable policy, which inflicts massive harm on innocents while offering no chance of attaining any of the US government's stated goals. Iraq Under Siege: The Deadly Impact ofSanctions and War, a new collection from South End Press, is a valuable addition to this literature. Like Simons' book, it con tains the necessary analysis to see beneath Mothers and children fill the ward at Saddam Hussein's Children's Hospital in Iraq. the surface of US proclamations, and adds Many independent authorities assert that at least 500,000 Iraqi children under the vital dimension of personal experience. five have died since 1990, in part as a result of the sanctions and the effects of the Gulf War. Photo by Tina Manley Most of the contributors have visited Iraq, and among them are some of the foremost ones. Robert Fisk describes an estimated mented shortly after the institution of sanc activists in the anti-sanctions movement. 300 tons of depleted uranium ordnance in tions. That system has drawn praise for its The book includes pieces by political ana southern Iraq, and an explosion of child fairness and efficiency from all knowledge lysts Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn; hood leukemia and grotesque birth defects able quarters. journalists Robert Fisk and John Pilger; in that region since the war. In pre-war Iraq, continued on page three Middle East experts Phyllis Bennis and the cure rate for leukemia was 76 percent; Barbara Nimri Aziz; Peter Pellett, head of under the sanctions, leukemia is a death three U.N. Food and Agriculture Organiza sentence. Professor Pellett covers the ef tion missions to Iraq; Iraqi biologist Ruda fects on the country as a whole: average Ammash; and prominent anti-sanctions food intake has declined by one-third; activists Kathy Kelly (founder of Voices in growth-stunting and wasting are now as the Wilderness, which has made over thirty common as in the worst-off Third World trips to Iraq bringing medicine, in defiance countries; mortality for children under five of the sanctions), and Rania Masri, direc years old is almost two and a half times the tor of the Iraq Action Coalition. The book pre-sanctions rate. also includes an interview with Denis Considering these heavily documented, ILLEGITIMATli AUTHORITY Halliday, U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in accumulating casualties, the reflexive US ,=...,.u"' '1ocl.,/ CNWf6'- ~ 1'67 Iraq until he resigned in 1998 in protest of response has been that all this suffering is For Information and grant guidelines, write to: Resist, 259 Elm St., Suite 201 the sanctions. (His successor, Hans von the fault of Saddam Hussein. It is undeni Somerville, MA 02144 Sponeck, and Jutta Burghardt, head of the able that Hussein cares more about his own www.resistinc.org;[email protected] World Food Program's mission to Iraq, have power than about the welfare of his people; Resist Newsletter is published ten times a done the same.) The result is a sustained, that a small elite lives very well while most year by RESIST, Inc., (617)623-5110. The coherent, and comprehensive critique of Iraqis are suffering; and that anyone per views expressed in articles, other than edi US policy on Iraq. ceived as a threat to Hussein's power risks torials, are those of the authors and do not imprisonment or death. But it is also true necessarily represent the opinions of the RESIST staff or board. The Results of the Sanctions that during the Seventies and Eighties, prior Kelly describes hospitals full of children to the Gulf War, Hussein presided over a RESIST Staff: Jacquie Bishop suffering from kwashiorkor and marasmus tremendous increase in the health and well Robin Carton (diseases of severe malnutrition); doctors being of the Iraqi people-illiteracy almost AmandaMatos-Gon7alez forced to stand by and watch while these wiped out, education free through the Carol Schachet children die because they have no medi graduate level, health care excellent and RESIST Volunteer: Daphne Lees cine; people dying from waterborne dis free. In addition, most U.N. relief officials eases because Iraq has been allowed to confirm that the only thing now prevent Newsletter Editor: Carol Schachet import neither enough chlorine to treat the ing mass starvation has been the Iraqi Printing: Red Sun Press water nor new pipes to replace old, broken government's food rationing system, imp le- 0 Printed on Recycled Paper with Soy~- Page 2 RESIST Newsletter September 2000 The Unending War continued from page two points out, no funds from the Oil-for-Food goods they receive warehoused, hoping It is true that the Iraqi elites-like those program even enter Iraq: all the money goes that the Sanctions Committee will allow the in most countries, including the United to a New York account of the Bank of Paris, complementary equipment in. This prob States-will buy expensive M.R.I. ma from which funds are disbursed by the U.N. lem occurs so often that many activists chines despite widespread shortages of to pay for specific contracts Iraq has with suspect that it is done on purpose. The US basic medical supplies. But the amount of foreign companies. is responsible for over 1,000 vetoes and money re-directed by those sorts of trans Similarly false is the charge, usually ac holds on Oil-for-Food contracts; Britain is actions is minimal in relation to the needs companied in the US press by photographs a distant second with 120. of the Iraqi people. If anything, in the US of warehouses full of goods, that supplies the social inequity is much greater: hospi are being "hoarded" by the regime. U.N.