Iraq sanctions

The Iraq sanctions were a near-total financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on the nation of Iraq. They began August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and continued until May 22, 2003, after the fall of the Saddam Hussein government in the US-led invasion earlier that year. Their stated purpose was at first to compel Iraq's military to withdraw from Kuwait and after that to compel Iraq to pay reparations, and to disclose and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction, among other things.

Initially the U.N. Security Council had adopted Resolution 661, a resolution that imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq. After the end of the 1991 Gulf War, those sanctions were extended and elaborated on, including linkage to removal of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), by Resolution 687. The sanctions banned all trade and financial resources except for medicine and "in humanitarian circumstances" foodstuffs. They were perhaps the toughest, most comprehensive economic sanctions in human history. The controversy over the increased child-and-infant mortality, poverty, and suffering of the Iraqi people during sanctions led two senior UN representatives in Iraq to resign in protest. Increased child mortality was observed in Iraq's (government controlled) south and center, but not in the (then independent) north, where child mortality decreased. Estimates of civilian deaths during from the sanctions range from 100,000 to over 1.5 million, most of them children.

Goals
The UN Resolutions had the express goals of eliminating WMDs and extended range ballistic missiles, prohibiting any support for terrorism, and forcing Iraq to pay war reparations and all foreign debt.

A non-express goal of the sanctions held by some was the removal of Saddam Hussein. It was openly stated in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, expressing a sense of the U.S. Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, that U.S. policy was to "replace that regime" in Iraq,  to force Hussein from power, an outcome not referenced in the resolutions. And in 1991, Paul Lewis wrote in the New York Times: "Ever since the trade embargo was imposed on Aug. 6, after the invasion of Kuwait, the United States has argued against any premature relaxation in the belief that by making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people it will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power." The economic sanctions failed to topple Saddam, and may have helped further entrench his rule.

American war policy architect Douglas J. Feith has argued that the sanctions diminished Iraq militarily, in terms of WMDs, and in its capacity for attacks against its neighbors as its supply lines were cut. In a 2004 Foreign Affairs journal article, the scholars George A. Lopez and David Cortright credit sanctions with: "Compelling Iraq to accept inspections and monitoring; winning concessions from Baghdad on political issue such as the border dispute with Kuwait; preventing the rebuilding of Iraqi defenses after the Persian Gulf War; and blocking the import of vital materials and technologies for producing weapons of mass destruction." Cortright and Lopez argue that "the much-maligned UN-enforced sanctions regime actually ... helped destroy Saddam Hussein's war machine and his capacity to produce weapons." Hussein told his FBI interrogator that Iraq's armaments "had been eliminated by the UN sanctions."

Effect of the sanctions on the Iraqi people
The modern Iraqi economy had been highly dependent on oil exports: In 1989, the oil sector comprised 61% of the GNP. A major drawback of this over-dependence has been the narrowing of the economic base during the last three decades, with the agricultural sector rapidly declining in the 1970s. So some claim that the post-1990 sanctions had a particularly devastating effect on Iraq’s economy and food security levels of the population.

Shortly after the sanctions were imposed, the Iraqi government developed a system of free food rations comprising of 1000 calories per person/day or 40% of the daily requirements, which an estimated 60% of the population relied on for a vital part of their sustenance. With the introduction of the Oil-for-Food Programme in 1997, this situation gradually improved. In May 2000 a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) survey noted that almost half the children under 5 years suffered from diarrhoea, in a country where the population is marked by its youth, with 45% being under 14 years of age in 2000. Power shortages, lack of spare parts and insufficient technical know-how lead to the breakdown of many modern facilities.

The overall literacy rate in Iraq had been 78% in 1977 and 87% for adult women by 1985, but declined rapidly since then. Between 1990 and 1998, over one fifth of Iraqi children stopped enrolling in school, consequently increasing the number of non-literates and losing all the gains made in the previous decade. The 1990s also saw a dramatic increase in child labor, from a virtually non-existent level in the 1980s. The per capita income in Iraq dropped from $3510 in 1989 to $450 in 1996, heavily influenced by the rapid devaluation of the Iraqi dinar.

Iraq had been one of the few countries in the Middle East that invested in women’s education. But this situation changed from the late eighties on with increasing militarisation and a declining economic situation. Consequently the economic hardships and war casualties in the last decades have increased the number of women-headed households and working women.

Researcher Richard Garfield estimated that "a minimum of 100,000 and a more likely estimate of 227,000 excess deaths among young children from August 1991 through March 1998" from all causes including sanctions. Other estimates have ranged as low as 170,000 children. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998. As a partial explanation, she pointed to a March statement of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues which states: "Even if not all suffering in Iraq can be imputed to external factors, especially sanctions, the Iraqi people would not be undergoing such deprivations in the absence of the prolonged measures imposed by the Security Council and the effects of war."

Chlorine posed a particular problem since it can be used to purify water or make a chemical weapon. Denis Halliday was appointed United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level. In October 1998 he resigned after a 34 year career with the UN in order to have the freedom to criticise the sanctions regime, saying "I don't want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide" However Sophie Boukhari a UNESCO Courier journalist reports that "Some legal experts are skeptical about or even against using such terminology." and quotes Mario Bettati (who invented the notion of "the right of humanitarian intervention") "People who talk like that don’t know anything about law. The embargo has certainly affected the Iraqi people badly, but that’s not at all a crime against humanity or genocide." and reports that William Bourdon the secretary-general of International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said "one of the key elements of a crime against humanity and of genocide is intent. The embargo wasn’t imposed because the United States and Britain wanted children to die. If you think so, you have to prove it."

Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, subsequently also resigned in protest, calling the effects of the sanctions a "true human tragedy". Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq, followed them.

Estimates of deaths during sanctions
Estimates of excess deaths during sanctions vary depending on the source. The estimates vary due to differences in methodologies, and specific time-frames covered. A short listing of estimates follows:


 * Unicef: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago."
 * Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.
 * Iraqi Baathist government: 1.5 million.
 * Iraqi Cultural Minister Hammadi: 1.7 million (includes sanctions, bombs and other weapons, depleted uranium poisoning)
 * "probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20. October 2003
 * 350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", Slate Explainer, "Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?", 9. October 2001.
 * "Richard Garfield, a Columbia University nursing professor ... cited the figures 345,000-530,000 for the entire 1990-2002 period" for sanctions-related excess deaths.
 * Zaidi, S. and Fawzi, M. C. S., The Lancet (1995, estimate withdrawn in 1997):567,000 children.
 * Editor (then "associate editor and media columnist") Matt Welch, Reason Magazine, 2002: "It seems awfully hard not to conclude that the embargo on Iraq has ... contributed to more than 100,000 deaths since 1990."
 * Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark: 1.5 million (includes sanctions, bombs and other weapons, depleted uranium poisoning).
 * British Member of Parliament George Galloway: "a million Iraqis, most of them children."
 * Economist Michael Spagat: "very likely to be [less than] than half a million children."

Infant and child death rates
A May 25, 2000 BBC article reported that before Iraq sanctions were imposed by the UN in 1990, infant mortality had "fallen to 47 per 1,000 live births between 1984 and 1989. This compares to approximately 7 per 1,000 in the UK." The BBC article was reporting from a study of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, titled "Sanctions and childhood mortality in Iraq", that was published in the May 2000 Lancet medical journal. The study concluded that in southern and central Iraq, infant mortality rate between 1994 and 1999 had risen to 108 per 1,000. Child mortality rate, which refers to children between the age of one and five years, also drastically inclined from 56 to 131 per 1,000. In the autonomous northern region during the same period, infant mortality declined from 64 to 59 per 1000 and under-5 mortality fell from 80 to 72 per 1000, which was attributed to better food and resource allocation.

The Lancet publication was the result of two separate  by UNICEF surveys between February and May 1999 in partnership with the local authorities and with technical support by the WHO. "The large sample sizes - nearly 24,000 households randomly selected from all governorates in the south and center of Iraq and 16,000 from the north - helped to ensure that the margin of error for child mortality in both surveys was low," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said.

In the spring of 2000 a U.S. Congressional letter demanding the lifting of the sanctions garnered 71 signatures, while House Democratic Whip David Bonior called the economic sanctions against Iraq "infanticide masquerading as policy."

Arguments over culpability for excess deaths
The Lancet and Unicef studies observed that child mortality decreased in the north and increased in the south between 1994 and 1999 but did not attempt to explain the disparity, or to apportion culpability: "Both the Government of Iraq and the U.N. Sanctions Committee should give priority to contracts for supplies that will have a direct impact on the well-being of children," UNICEF said. However, others did attempt to explain this disparity, or use this to apportion culpability. In The Nation, 2001, David Cortright argued that Iraqi government policy, rather than the UN Sanctions, should be held responsible. He wrote:"The differential between child mortality rates in northern Iraq, where the UN manages the relief program, and in the south-center, where Saddam Hussein is in charge, says a great deal about relative responsibility for the continued crisis. As noted, child mortality rates have declined in the north but have more than doubled in the south-center. ... The tens of thousands of excess deaths in the south-center, compared to the similarly sanctioned but UN-administered north, are also the result of Baghdad's failure to accept and properly manage the UN humanitarian relief effort." In The New Republic, 2001, Michael Rubin argued that "The difference [t]here is that local Kurdish authorities, in conjunction with the United Nations, spend the money they get from the sale of oil. Everywhere else in Iraq, Saddam does. And when local authorities are determined to get food and medicine to their people--instead of, say, reselling these supplies to finance military spending and palace construction--the current sanctions regime works just fine. Or, to put it more bluntly, the United Nations isn't starving Saddam's people. Saddam is." However, in Reason Magazine, 2002, Matt Welch acknowledged this but replied that the sanctions are not "'exactly the same' in both parts of Iraq" because "Under the oil-for-food regime, the north, which contains 13 percent of the Iraqi population, receives 13 percent of all oil proceeds, a portion of that in cash. Saddam's regions, with 87 percent of the population, receive 59 percent of the money ... none of it in cash. And there are other factors affecting the north-south disparity..."

Author Anthony Arnove also writes that the situation is more complicated: "Sanctions are simply not the same in the north and south. Differences in Iraqi mortality rates result from several factors: the Kurdish north has been receiving humanitarian assistance longer than other regions of Iraq; agriculture in the north is better; evading sanctions is easier in the north because its borders are far more porous; the north receives 22 percent more per capita from the oil-for-food program than the south-central region; and the north receives UN-controlled assistance in currency, while the rest of the country receives only commodities. The south also suffered much more direct bombing..."

A study in the Middle East Review of International Affairs disputed the idea that the disparity was caused by anything other than Iraqi government policy. It argued that South and Central Iraq had the means to purchase an amount of supplies equivalent to the amount of money the North received per capita, but that Baghdad simply refused to order them in sufficient quantities. It further noted that the North suffered a separate blockade imposed by the central government, was plagued by civil war, had far worse medical facilities than the rest of the country, had recently been subjected to chemical genocide, and that its development projects were regularly held hostage by the central government. Finally, the study asserts that, because half the funds Northern Iraq received had not been spent, the amount of supplies the North actually purchased were less per capita than what the central government was provided—even with Baghdad deliberately under-ordering goods. The sanctions, in and of themselves, would actually have saved lives (according to the study)--their goal was not to prevent humanitarian supplies from reaching Iraq, but to force the Iraqi government to spend more of its revenue on such commodities. They required the government to spend at least 72% of its income on human services, whereas the government had previously never spent more than 25%.

President Bill Clinton argued that Iraq actually had far more money to spend on humanitarian supplies under the sanctions regime than it would have had over the same period based on the trends that existed before the Gulf War, adding that "we have worked like crazy" to avoid the unnecessary suffering of civilians. He stated: Before the sanctions, the year before the Gulf War, and you said this ... how much money did Iraq earn from oil? Answer—$16 billion. How much money did Iraq earn last year from oil? How much money did they get, cash on the barrel head, to Saddam Hussein? Answer—$19 billion that he can use exclusively for food, for medicine, to develop his country. He’s got more money now, $3 billion a year more than he had nine years ago. If any child is without food or medicine or a roof over his or her head in Iraq, it’s because he is claiming the sanctions are doing it and sticking it to his own children.

Genocide scholar Milton Leitenberg stated: "All alleged post-1990 figures on infant and child mortality in Iraq are supplied by the Iraqi government agencies." Iraq denied UN requests to admit independent experts to assess living conditions. In Significance, 2010, economist Michael Spagat argues that the ICMMS survey, the only one (of four) international sanctions surveys (graphed in his paper) to show a dramatic increase in child mortality, is suspect because of the abusive, manipulative nature of the Iraqi regime. He offers two possible explanations for the north/south discrepancy: First, the Kurdish zone was free of Saddam’s control. In the South/centre, though, the reaction of Saddam Hussein’s regime to the sanctions must be part of a full explanation for child mortality patterns in this zone. ... A second potential explanation for the strange patterns displayed by the South/ Centre in the [data] is that they were not real but, rather, results of manipulations by the Iraqi government.

Public discourse about the sanctions
On May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright (then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) appeared on a 60 Minutes segment that Albright later regretted as coming "across as cold-blooded and cruel." Lesley Stahl asked her "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied "we think the price is worth it." Albright later criticized Stahl's segment as "amount[ing] to Iraqi propaganda," said that her question was logically flawed, and claimed that Saddam Hussein, not the sanctions, was to blame. Albright further said " I had fallen into a trap and said something I did not mean."

Oil for Food
As the sanctions faced mounting criticism of its humanitarian impacts, several UN resolutions were introduced that allowed Iraq to trade its oil for goods such as food and medicines. The earliest of these resolutions were introduced in 1991.

UN Resolution 706 of 15 August 1991 was introduced to allow the sale of Iraqi oil in exchange for food. UN Resolution 712 of 19 September 1991 confirmed that Iraq could sell up to $1.6 billion US in oil to fund an Oil For Food program.

Iraq was in 1996 allowed under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme (under Security Council Resolution 986) to export $5.2 billion (USD) of oil every 6 months with which to purchase items needed to sustain the civilian population. After an initial refusal, Iraq signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in May 1996 for arrangements for the implementation of that resolution to be taken. The Oil-for-Food Programme started in October 1997, and the first shipments of food arrived in March 1998. While improving the conditions of the population, Denis Halliday who oversaw the programme believed it inadequate to compensate for the adverse humanitarian impacts of the sanctions.

Thirty percent of the proceeds were redirected to a Persian Gulf War reparations account.

The U.S. State Department criticized the Iraqi government for inadequately spending this money: In a stinging letter issued recently, the United Nations has pointed out the extent of Saddam Hussein's callous disregard for the welfare of his own people. ... In the ... six-month phase of the program (June to December, 2000), Saddam Hussein's dereliction in providing for the Iraqi people and the nation's economy is laid bare. During this period, US$7.8 billion were available to Iraq for purchases during this period, yet Iraq submitted purchase applications worth only US$4.26 billion - barely 54 percent of the amount available for purchases to help the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people. In 2004/5 the Programme became the subject of major media attention over corruption, as Iraq had systematically sold allocations of oil at below-market prices in return for some of the proceeds from the resale outside the scope of the programme. Individuals and companies from dozens of countries were implicated.

Lifting of sanctions
The sanctions did not end until the Iraq War. Accepting a large estimate of casualties due to sanctions, Walter Russell Mead argued on behalf of such a war as a better alternative than continuing the sanctions regime, since "Each year of containment is a new Gulf War." (Mead was not the first to publish such an argument. ) In his testimony to the Chilcot Inquiry, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair also argued that ending sanctions was one benefit of the war.

While UN resolutions subsequent to the cessation of hostilities during the Persian Gulf War imposed several requisite responsibilities on Iraq for the removal of sanctions, the largest focus remained on the regime's development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and in particular its laggard participation in the UNSCOM-led disarmament process required of it. The goal of several western governments had been that the disruptive effects of war and sanction would lead to a critical situation in which Iraqis would in some way effect "regime change", a removal of Saddam Hussein and his closest allies from power.

Hussein's son-in-law is heard speaking of concealing information from UN inspectors on audiotapes released in 2006. "I go back to the question of whether we should reveal everything or continue to be silent. Sir, since the meeting has taken this direction, I would say it is in our interest not to reveal." Hussein may have considered the many governments' displeasure with him, but particularly that of two veto-wielding UNSC members, the United States and United Kingdom (both of which took the hardest lines on Iraq), as a no-win situation and disincentive to cooperation in the process.

UNSCOM had allegedly been infiltrated by British and American spies for purposes other than determining if Iraq possessed WMDs. Former inspector Scott Ritter was a prominent source of these charges. Former UNSCOM chief inspector David Kay said "the longer it continued, the more the intelligence agencies would, often for very legitimate reasons, decide that they had to use the access they got through cooperation with UNSCOM to carry out their missions.".

Saddam, who saw all this as a violation of Iraq's sovereignty, became less cooperative and more obstructive of UNSCOM activities as the years wore on, and refused access for several years beginning in August 1998. Ultimately Saddam condemned the US for enforcing the sanctions through the UN and demanded nothing less than unconditional lifting of all sanctions on its country, including the weapons sanctions. The US and UN refused to do so out of concern that Saddam's regime would rebuild its once-powerful military and renew its WMD programs with the trade revenues. (But Douglas Feith reports that in 2001 "before the 9/11 attack, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated diluting the multinational economic sanctions, in the hope that a weaker set of sanctions could win stronger and more sustained international support." ) Renewed pressure in 2002 led to the entry of UNMOVIC, which received some degree of cooperation but failed to declare Iraq's disarmament immediately prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for which it was withdrawn and became inactive in Iraq.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who called the sanctions "the most intrusive system of arms control in history", cited the breakdown of the sanctions as one cause or rationale for the Iraq war.

The sanctions regime was finally ended on May 22, 2003 (with certain arms-related exceptions) by paragraph 10 of UN Security Council Resolution 1483.

In the 2004 Osama bin Laden video, Osama Bin Laden cited retribution for the sanctions as one of the motivations for the September 11 attacks.

External links and References

 * U.S. Department of State, Released September 13, 1999 (updated 2/23/00), "Saddam Hussein's Iraq"
 * David Edwards, Zmag, 3 March 2000, Interview with Denis Halliday
 * David Cortright, "A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions". The Nation, November 2001.
 * Council on Foreign Relations, May 23, 2003, "Iraq: U.N. Sanctions"
 * The Daily Telegraph, 25 May 2003, "Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade"
 * John Pilger, New Statesman, 4 October 2004, on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s, and Impact of Iraq sanctions
 * IRIN News, news agency of the UN OCHA agency, looks again at the figures (August 2005): IRAQ: Child mortality rates finally dropping
 * In These Times, Christopher Hayes, March 6, 2006, "Were Sanctions Worth the Price?"
 * How Thirteen Years of US-Imposed (sic) Economic Sanctions Devastated Iraq Before the 2003 Invasion - video report by Democracy Now!
 * John Pilger, New Statesman, 4 October 2004, on why we ignored Iraq in the 1990s, and Impact of Iraq sanctions
 * IRIN News, news agency of the UN OCHA agency, looks again at the figures (August 2005): IRAQ: Child mortality rates finally dropping
 * In These Times, Christopher Hayes, March 6, 2006, "Were Sanctions Worth the Price?"
 * How Thirteen Years of US-Imposed (sic) Economic Sanctions Devastated Iraq Before the 2003 Invasion - video report by Democracy Now!
 * How Thirteen Years of US-Imposed (sic) Economic Sanctions Devastated Iraq Before the 2003 Invasion - video report by Democracy Now!
 * How Thirteen Years of US-Imposed (sic) Economic Sanctions Devastated Iraq Before the 2003 Invasion - video report by Democracy Now!
 * How Thirteen Years of US-Imposed (sic) Economic Sanctions Devastated Iraq Before the 2003 Invasion - video report by Democracy Now!

الحصار الدولي على العراق Irak ambargosu