(originally published in the Stony Brook Press, February 25, 1998)
By Stephen Preston Introduction
In my arguments against the bombing of and economic sanctions against Iraq, I am often confronted with opinions which seemed poorly formed and poorly informed. This is understandable, as the debate over these issues in the major news media (in particular, the major television networks and CNN; the New York Times and Washington Post; Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News, etc.) has been almost oppressively one-sided. You¹ve surely noticed that the more pressing debate is frequently not whether to drop bombs, but rather on how many bombs we need; not whether to lift sanctions, but how to deal with those selfish nations which want sanctions lifted.
This is true not only in Op-Ed pages, where everything is laid out plainly, but also more subtly in "objective" news stories. For example, a reporter might discuss Clinton¹s plan, then add that the other side favors more bombing than he does; the reporter thus neglects the common view that no bombing is needed at all. Or, as happened in a recent Newsday article on the demonstrations at Ohio State, an article might mention both sides of the issue but then finish the article with one militant view; the objectivity of the article thus lends support to the rationality of the militant view.
I think public opinion has been dramatically polar precisely because there are a number of facts about the situation which are simply not well-known. Thus, this article is written to provide crucial information, so that people can form and defend their opinions more rationally. It will not be uncritical of the United States, and thus some will ignore it. It will also not blame the entire conflict on Saddam Hussein, and thus many others may ignore it. However, I hope that the cautious reader will interpret my opinions as they are meant: as a view of the world which is quite popular outside the United States, and which can therefore provide a partial antidote to the US media's bias.
Now I want to say one more thing before proceeding, and that is that by all estimates, at least one million Iraqi citizens have died as a result of both the bombings of the 1991 war and the economic sanctions which followed. Innocent people are dying, at the rate of about 200 per day, because of the sanctions, and the situation will be much worse if the US begins bombing. Therefore, it is imperative that those who support the killings bear the burden of proving why they are necessary. A court does not subpoena an innocent man to ask him why he did not kill his wife; similarly, the pacifist is not obligated to explain why hundreds of thousands should not die for US interests. Bear this in mind carefully, and if you do not agree, please be sure you have a convincing reason for the murders you are advocating. And now, a condensed history of the conflict in Iraq.
Early History
At the turn of this century, Iraq and Kuwait were both under the domain of the Ottoman Empire, as were many other Arab nations. At the beginning of World War I, many Arabs wanted independence from the Ottomans, and Britain encouraged their revolts to help destabilize the Ottomans. After the defeat of the Ottomans, the British divided up the Arab people among themselves. The borders between Iraq and Kuwait were decided by Sir Percy Cox during an emotional meeting between himself and Arab leaders; Geoff Simons wrote that "there is always the suspicion that, on a different day and in a different mood, Sir Percy Cox would have defined a different Middle East."
Britain also decided what the governments of the Arab nations would be, contradicting their promise to the Arabs of true independence. The al-Sabah family remained the monarchs of Kuwait, as they still are today. Feisal, a leader of the Syrian revolt against the Ottomans, was made the King of Iraq, and remained relatively loyal to British interests. He, his son, and grandson would all rule Iraq between 1921 and 1958, though there were many coup attempts, some briefly successful.
In 1958, a bloody military revolution led by Brigadier Abdul Karim Kassem killed the king and many of his supporters. The Ba'athist party had been formed in Iraq, Jordan, and Syria as a group whose goal was to unite all Arabs in one nation. Saddam Hussein joined this movement at the age of about 20, and one of the first things he did was participate in a Ba'athist assassination attempt on Kassem, which failed. After several failed coups in the 1960's, a coup in 1968 brought the Ba'ath party into power; General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr became the president, and Saddam Hussein became deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), which would govern Iraq for the next thirty years. Hussein was responsible for all internal security, and his first task was to begin a violent repression of the Ba¹ath¹s enemies. In 1979, Saddam put Bakr under house arrest and persuaded him to resign, making himself the President. Saddam¹s first action was to violently purge the Revolutionary Command Council of all his enemies.
At the same time as Saddam Hussein was seizing power, the Ayatollah Khomeini was leading a fundamentalist Islamic revolt against the Western-friendly Shah in Iran. The Iranians viewed Islam as the common basis for the leadership of the Middle East, unlike the more secular view of the Ba'ath party of Arabs being united against all others, including the Iranians. Iran was also ruled by Shi'ites, while Iraq was ruled by Sunnis, and Iran began inciting Iraqi Shi'ites to revolt against Saddam. Iraq and Iran had a historical dispute over the Shatt al-Arab waterway, as well. Iraq and Iran fought a series of border skirmishes, and eventually Iraq invaded Iran. Since Iran had no powerful allies to defend it, this was expected to be an easy conquest for Saddam. However, Iran was stronger and more resilient than anticipated, and the war ended up lasting from 1980 to 1988. The US government illegally supplied weapons to the government Iraq, as well as briefly to Iran (in exchange for a promise to release hostages). The sales to Iran were discovered in 1986 (the Iran-Contra scandal), while the sales to Iraq weren¹t discovered until 1992. Iraq used Western-bought chemical weapons against Iran during several battles of the war, and was condemned by the UN for violating the Geneva Protocol. The war finally ended in 1988 in essentially a stalemate; both countries were devastated.
The Kuwait Conflict
Iraq not only had the support of most Western nations, but also of most Arab nations, including Jordan, Syria, as well as Persian Gulf nations such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which Iraq was soon to have disputes with. By the end of the war, however, Iraq was deeply in debt. The country owed $30 billion to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia for war debts, as well as about $40 billion to Western nations for arms. Saddam Hussein seems to have expected Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to cancel this debt, and demanded more money from them in exchange for defending them from Iran. In early 1990, Kuwait decided to increase production of oil past the agreements of the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC), an oligopoly of the Middle Eastern oil producers. Iraq accused Kuwait of waging "economic war", as the price of oil decreased from $18 a barrel to $11 a barrel; Iraq lost $7 billion a year. Kuwait was also getting its extra oil from the Rumallah oil field, which straddled the border between Iraq and Kuwait; Kuwait was accused of "slant-drilling" into Iraq's territory, and thus was taking an additional $2.6 billion from Iraq. Iraq demanded that Kuwait cancel its debts and give them another $10 billion loan. Kuwait dismissed the demands. Iraq began to threaten Kuwait more and more openly, and moved Iraqi troops to the Kuwaiti border. Saddam Hussein spoke with US Ambassador April Glaspie in a now-famous discussion on July 25, 1990. He complained of his problems with oil pricing and Kuwait. She agreed, and encouraged him: "We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait." Saddam interpreted this as being a "green light" to attack Kuwait, and did so nine days later on August 2. The U.S. condemned the invasion immediately. Ostensibly, the change in opinion was because the rest of the world had only expected Saddam to threaten Kuwait at its borders, not to actually seize the entire nation.
The American Attack
Before continuing, it is necessary to try to understand what motivated the United States' next actions. Why was the United States so concerned about Kuwait being invaded? Surely it was not to oppose the use of aggression in the New World Order; at the time, the U.S. had just been condemned by the UN for its illegal invasion of Panama, and was ignoring recent World Court rulings demanding that it pay Nicaragua for reparations after the US's covert invasion and war. It was partly about oil: the US has two contradictory goals with regard to oil prices. It wants low prices for oil on world markets because it makes costs lower for American manufacturing corporations, but it also wants high enough prices so that American oil companies will continue to make high enough profits on resale of oil. Thus it had to have fairly tight supervision over everything in the Middle East to ensure that prices were at exactly the right level. But there was a larger concern, which was generally unmentioned. The al-Sabah family was incredibly rich, and held about $150 billion in assets in Western economies. Ten percent of foreign investment in the U.S. was from Kuwait. When Iraq seized Kuwait's assets, it would surely sell them quickly to raise cash to pay its debts and rebuild its infrastructure. This sudden loss of investment would possibly trigger problems in the market, which had to be avoided at all costs.
So the UN Security Council passed its first resolution on the issue on August 2, condemning the occupation of Kuwait, compelling Iraq to withdraw, and calling for intensive negotiations on their disputes. The next step was to freeze Kuwait's assets in foreign markets, both to prevent Iraq from using them and to keep the markets secure. Bush did this unilaterally, then persuaded other countries to do the same. On August 6, the next Security Council resolution proposed sanctions against any movement of goods or money into or out of Iraq, excepting medical equipment and "in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs." On August 13, Secretary of State James Baker declared that the U.S. would send troops into the Gulf to enforce the sanctions.
It soon became evident that the US sought a military solution. As war seemed increasingly inevitable, Iraq and other nations began proposing conditions under which Iraq would withdraw from Kuwait. On August 12, Iraq had proposed to withdraw from Kuwait if Syria withdrew from Lebanon and Israel withdrew from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The American government rejected this proposal. On August 23, Iraq offered to withdraw from Kuwait if sanctions were lifted and Kuwait yielded on its border disputes with Iraq. The American government rejected this proposal as well. Negotiations continued for the next several months; on January 2, it was revealed that Iraq had offered to withdraw if the foreign military left the Persian Gulf and there was agreement on the Palestine-Israel problem and on eliminating all "weapons of mass destruction" from the Middle East. Finally, Yasser Arafat (the leader of the PLO at that time) soon announced that Iraq would withdraw before a solution to the Palestine problem was devised, as long as there was a strong commitment in the Security Council to solve it eventually. The American government rejected this proposal also, as it had all the others. All the while it had claimed it was still seeking a diplomatic solution, though its only effort was James Baker¹s conference with Tariq Aziz, in which the former issued an ultimatum to the latter: withdraw from Kuwait or we will force you out.
When the US finally, inevitably, invaded Iraq on January 17, 1991, most agreed that it was more of a slaughter than a war. The bombing campaign against Iraq destroyed the infrastructure, including the electrical system and therefore most of the manufacturing and communications. Estimates were that several thousand civilians were killed, and Middle East Watch later said that most of the deaths could have been avoided (and that many of the civilian killings violated the Geneva Protocols). At one point, a stealth bomber destroyed a bomb shelter, killing several thousand civilians inside. Many of the bombs used in the war were not "smart bombs", as claimed, but standard bombs, which missed their targets about 75% of the time. Other violations of the Geneva Protocols include the killing of thousands of Iraqi soldiers retreating out of Kuwait; planes dropped bombs on trucks driving out of Kuwait on what is now known as the "Highway of Death". Bombing in Iraq continued for several days after Iraq had completely left Kuwait, and then a ceasefire was proposed. Some in the US complained that the military should have invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein, but President Bush said this was impossible because no other nation supported this.
History Repeats Itself (Almost)
One of the major terms of the ceasefire, in UN Security Council Resolution 687, was that Iraq had to submit to inspections of the entire country, to destroy all chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons in Iraq. The economic sanctions, which were originally intended only to get Iraq out of Kuwait, would be extended until the Security Council was convinced that there were no more such weapons in Iraq. These sanctions had already been very destructive to the Iraqi economy, and human rights organizations began denouncing the sanctions as too harsh. Elias Davidsson, a human rights worker, asked, "Are we accomplices to mass murder?" Ramsey Clark, Attorney General under President Carter, called the sanctions another "weapon of mass destruction." The Security Council enacted resolutions to try to ease the human suffering, allowing Iraq to sell a certain amount of oil periodically; the proceeds were to be used partly to pay for food and medicine, partly to pay for war reparations and the expenses of the UN's inspection program. However, the amount of food Iraq was allowed to buy was only half what it was estimated to need, and thus starvation and severe disease continued, especially among children. The UN recently estimated that about 200 children under the age of five are dying every day, even with the "oil-for-food" program.
Although the sanctions were intended to last only until it was certain that Iraq had no weapons, the US had declared that the sanctions would remain indefinitely. Some have denied this contention, but there is much evidence. 1991: "All possible sanctions will be maintained until [Saddam Hussein] is gone." - Marlin Fitzwater, White House spokesperson. 1993: "It is inconceivable that Saddam Hussein could remain in power if he complied with all UN resolutions." - Dee Dee Myers, White House press secretary. 1995: "Sanctions cannot be lifted, whatever the degree of Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions, as long as President Saddam remains in power." - British Foreign Office. In recent weeks, the issue has been raised again, and Clinton and Albright have repeatedly said that sanctions will never be lifted as long as Saddam Hussein remains president. As many have suggested, the ultimate purpose is to starve Iraqi people and otherwise make them so miserable that they will overthrow Saddam Hussein themselves. It is difficult to dispute that this is the ultimate goal of the American government, as evidenced by the funding of around $100 billion to the CIA between 1991 and 1996, in order to support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein (which ultimately collapsed because the opposition groups splintered). It should be remembered that these are exactly the same techniques that were used to destabilize the Nicaraguan Sandinista government in the 1980's, an action which the World Court declared illegal.
It has been increasingly difficult to justify continued sanctions. From 1991 to early 1993, Iraq was not complying fully with Resolution 687. For example, Iraq was denying that they had been able to make biological weapons, then admitting they had the technology after documents were discovered and denying they had actually produced any, then admitting they had actually produced some after it was found. In recent years, Iraq has become very compliant, with relatively few and minor violations. In 1995, the a UNSCOM field officer said "They have done an excellent job. Our commission is convinced it¹s all over." In August 1995, the chief weapons inspector, Rolf Ekeus, called for lifting of sanctions because of cooperation with inspectors, but was ignored. London's Guardian wrote, "It is generally agreed that Iraq has already destroyed all of its weapons of mass destruction."
Occasional bombing continued after the 1991 war, and threats of more bombing were virtually constant since the end of the war. But the excuses for bombing have become much flimsier since the end of the war: the most recent threat was due to Iraq preventing access to Presidential sites, though the UN never believed there were actually weapons in these sites (contrary to the President's claims). The UN believes that all weapons have been destroyed, and they now seek only documents to confirm this. While there is much optimism that the threat of war is over, Clinton is still trying to suggest that the US will now attack Iraq with even slight provocation.
Will sanctions remain indefinitely? Some countries have explained their support of sanctions quite clearly. For example, the output of other OPEC nations has increased to balance the loss of Iraqi oil, while the price has remained essentially the same. So naturally, if Iraq were to resume its pre-war oil production, either the other OPEC nations would have to decrease their own production, or the price on the world market would decline sharply. Either option would result in a significant loss of revenue for all OPEC nations, as well as US oil companies. So while in Tuesday's Newsday, a UN official claims that the process is almost over and will probably end in 30 days, it seems likely that some excuse will be found to maintain the sanctions even longer. As many have pointed out, there is no justification in the UN for continued sanctions after the inspections are over. Their continuance up to this point, which have resulted in about one million deaths from disease and starvation in Iraq (out of a population of 17 million), is at best a violation of the Geneva conventions and UN law; at worst, it is brutal genocide.
It is hard to claim that Saddam Hussein is not a cruel dictator, especially given Iraq¹s history. But it is equally hard to justify Clinton¹s continued belligerence, regarding both bombing and sanctions. If Iraq were not the only nation which actually has to submit completely to UN resolutions (unlike Israel, Indonesia, and many other friends of the US), our government¹s actions might be justified. But the fact that the US has arbitrarily decided that one million innocent Iraqis must die is absolutely inexcusable.
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Sources:
Simons, Geoff. Iraq: From Sumer to Saddam
Simons, Geoff. The Scourging of Iraq