Smart Sanctions in Iraq?
Tom Jackson Lauren Cannon Jeff Guntzel
For Voices in the Wilderness
July 3, 2001 Lauren C. Cannon
In June 2001, Voices in the Wilderness-UK sent a team to Iraq to investigate the effects of economic sanctions on ordinary Iraqi's, living under the embargo, now in its eleventh year. Voices in the Wilderness- US was invited to lead the delegation, the 37th of its kind over the last five years, employing a method of person-to person diplomacy that brings us in to contact with gracious friends in Iraq, many of whom are becoming emboldened with the growing international support to end the sanctions. Others however, seem braced for years of continuing politicized debates over their very lives, as sanctions have become institutionalized.
This visit was intended to coincide with discussions at the Security Council of the UN, where the UK proposal for smart sanctions' was being hotly debated. The Britons and Americans on our team were deeply apprehensive about how the UK (US backed) proposal of smart sanctions' would affect everyday Iraqis, sensing that their welfare would receive more lip service than actual measured improvement in economic terms, under this carefully crafted plan. The smart sanctions' proposal is more about saving face than saving lives.
We saw evidence that Hans Von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, former UN Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq who each resigned their posts in protest of the sanctions, forecasted quite right in stating what is proposed amounts to a tightening of the rope around the neck of the average Iraqi citizen (May 29, 2001.) After study of the proposal, we sought to verify what the smart sanctions' might translate to, for ordinary Iraqi's. One particular focus of research was whether the revenues from Iraq's border trade (that the US and UK want to cut off, claiming funds are used for weapon manufacturing,) might actually be the very funds that support desperately needed rebuilding of Iraq's devastated infrastructures. Our fact-finding mission collected anecdotal evidence of this in every sector we visited. We hope future work will build on what we found.
The proposal was rejected this week at the UN, as Russia threatened a veto at the Security Council, and the UK and US have tried to cover their humiliating defeat at trying to seal up the sanctions regime. The existing Oil For Food Program has been extended for the next five months. But this is only a tabling of that particular version of smart sanctions' and the next round is yet to come. The US pushed for language in the agreement to include a commitment to revamp the sanctions in the future. After five more months of living by the Oil For Food Program, Iraqi's will be no less eager to adopt the next draft of a strangling commodity-based smart sanctions, devoid of any means to re-inflate their economy and resume purchasing power. How is Iraq paying its Doctors?
Contrary to the common misconception that money from border trade with Iraq's neighbors can only line the pockets of one man in Iraq, our delegation found evidence that Iraq wants to re-invest in its future, as it had done before the Gulf War. In three different regions visited in Iraq, doctors reported their salaries had gone up to 30,000 Dinar/ month. This is still the pitiful equivalent of only $15/ month, but a significant increase from 5,000 Dinar just a year ago. After seeing a full 4-5 million of Iraq's best educated people, a quarter of Iraq's population, leave the country in the last ten years, for lack of opportunity or resources, Iraq has begun to try to plug the holes of this exodus through paying salaries out of the only incoming cash it has: border trade. Is it not hard to imagine that Iraq, or any country, might seek alternative ways to retain professionals that they have invested state education in, when all revenues are controlled by a Security Council, on which they have no voice? How else might Iraq pay its doctors and teachers? The smart sanctions' are designed to wrestle off anything that is not under the UN control. If the welfare of the Iraqi people is the true stated goal of changing the sanctions regime, might there first be research as to how people in Iraq are currently able to provide for their families when there is no clear end in sight for the existing sanctions? The smart sanctions' policy may have been meticulously crafted to cut off the support for the Baath party's security apparatus or other state sanctioned expenditures, but if ending the humanitarian suffering in Iraq were really the goal, would eliminating the only source for paying essential doctors in Iraq be the first line of attack?
Cutting off Border Trade Would Also Cut Iraqis Improving Water
Further evidence that border trade can reach beyond the elite was seen by our delegation in the water treatment sector. Because of the direct targeting of the water treatment plants during the Gulf War (documented in the recently de-classified DIA papers,) Iraq has a greatly reduced capacity to treat solid waste. We learned from UNICEF on June 20, that they have tracked a six-fold increase in normal water pollution over this decade of sanctions, and that a full six million people is at risk in Iraq for lack of clean water. Dr. Carel DeRooy, Director of Health and Nutrition for UNICEF, stated that $1 billion is needed to repair the water treatment facilities in the central and south of Iraq (a conservative estimate by many accounts.)
Currently, with the Oil for Food Program providing only supplies (and zero direct funds,) UNICEF estimates the cost for increasing water treatment output by one cubic meter per day is $40. If a cash component were to be introduced, it would cost a third of that97just $15/cubic meter per day. The cash component would enable UNICEF to employ local labor and buy replacement parts. Without having to go through the time consuming channels of waiting for approvals and receive parts from abroad, the speed of the improvements in water treatment might begin to match that of the north of Iraq, where there has been a cash component, and the improvements in public health are quite evident. The sanctions were designed as an emergency program, and no one ever imagined they would last ten years, said Dr. DeRooy. They have naturally become very inefficient over time. We asked him to triage which sectors needed repair first if the cash component were to begin, and he said he would hesitate to even attempt to triage within a humanitarian disaster of this magnitude, where all health, education, and social sectors are so interdependent and in need immediate address.
When in Basra, our delegation met Mr. Hammid, a chief engineer at the Basra Water Authority, whose job is to deliver clean water to two million people in the heavily bombed and now polluted southern city of Iraq, once a thriving oil port. He confirmed that chlorine has been largely taken off hold' at the UN Security Council, but said, despite it being approved on the green list' for fast track,' the monitoring system itself is extremely inefficient. He stated that 40% of Basra families do not get properly treated water. Our team observed evidence of this when we staying with families whose young children with fragile immune systems are sick with diarrhea. Mr. Hammid said the tracking of the approved chlorine takes months at times. Looking visibly fatigued, he described an instance when one container of chlorine was misplaced before reaching Basra, and a halt ensued on all chlorine until the monitors could find it. The Basra Water Authority is routinely about 35% short of the chlorine that he needs for adequate water treatment, despite the holds' being released.
Mr. Hammid was unexpectedly frank with us. Some of the much needed money for improving the structures at the battered plant has come from border trade money. He said cash is needed in order to return the water to appropriate health standards, not simply more supplies. When a pump breaks, he said, I have to take it out and ship it back to the foreign country that it came from and wait months for its return. This shuts down an entire portion of my plant. I have no ability to foster local employment and repair of parts, despite being acutely aware of how the local families need the income, not to mention the clean water.

Ongoing Incursions into Iraq's Airspace
Eleven years of cruel sanctions are apparently not enough. Our delegation also saw firsthand how ordinary Iraqi's continue to endure the ongoing terrors of the US/UK no-fly zone' sorties and bombings. When we were in Baghdad, the Iraqi News Agency reported that there had been a US/UK bombing in Telafer, Northern Iraq, on June 19, 2001 which killed 23 and injured 12. We met nine of twelve injured boys in the Telafer General Hospital on June 22, 2001 and surveyed the site of the reported bombing.
We found a small 3x3 foot crater on a soccer field surrounded by debris, including large missile fragments. We were able to collect some of the missile fragments and are conducting soil sample tests and submitting the serial numbers of the fragments to the US Pentagon for any possible verification. The numbers appear to correspond to those of the Mark 82 air to surface missile, like those used in Kosovo/a by the US in 1999. White House spokesman Ari Fleisher immediately denied any US involvement in the bombing stating, why not ask the Iraqis?
If the US glides off, refusing any dropping of bombs, it can not possibly avert the responsibility for the daily incursions through Iraq's sovereign airspace. Since April 1991 in the north, and August 1992 in the south, the US no-fly zone bombings have been part of a weekly terrorizing of Iraqis, supposedly the people in those regions that they are designed to protect. As we visited the simple soccer field in Telafer, we knew that the onus for this tragedy lies with the American authorities ordering these bombings, even if this case may not be clear cut. Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery fire could not be the only cause of what has destroyed these families and maimed these surviving young boys.

Thinking Beyond Smart Sanctions'
Voices in the Wilderness urges people to call on US authorities to recognize international law, regarding these continuing incursions. We express remorse and regret for all of the suffering caused by the prolonged economic and military warfare against the Iraqi people, struggling under crippling sanctions and unilateral unjustified bombings. We seek immediate negotiation and dialogue as the preferred nonviolent means to resolve disputes.
Sanctions should be lifted, not smartened. Deemed a failure, now by most of the international community outside the US and UK, the policy will continue to face opposition to proposals which force Iraqi's to live in a medieval state of siege, with only commodities being lobbed over the castle gates. Cutting off the bridges over the moat will only further impoverish those 23 million Iraqis, held hostage along with the king.
We must speed our efforts to educate about what tinkering with a failed policy can mean for ordinary people in Iraq. The next assessment of the Oil for Food Program will be made in December 2001. Iraqis need purchasing power and work, not further handouts, and not another round of public relations games. They are dependent upon our voices to help build a new dialogue over the next five months. Food and medicine supplies coming in is an emergency redress. It will not address the need to pay doctors and to treat water. A true and vital rebuilding of the essential infrastructures in Iraq, including the oil industry, Iraq's means for cash, is the only honest next step toward restoring health and livelihood for the millions in Iraq, many of whom were not even born at the start of the Gulf War. We must call for an immediate lifting, not a tailoring or smartening, of sanctions, if we are to be about saving lives, not saving face.
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