'Smart sanctions'
New tactic in U.S. war against Iraq
By Richard
Becker
On March 7, Secretary of State Colin Powell appeared
before the House International Relations Committee outlining
plans to step up military aggression against Iraq. Powell
called for a "three basket" approach: maintaining sanctions,
enforcing the U.S.-imposed "no-fly zones" and supporting
CIA-backed Iraqi opposition forces.
He also announced a new policy of allowing U.S. planes to
strike at "facilities or other activities going on in Iraq
that we believe are inconsistent with our obligations." In
the past, U.S. air strikes were supposedly limited to "Iraqi
air defense challenges to U.S. or British planes patrolling
no-fly zones in Iraq."
There has been a great deal of discussion in recent weeks,
much of it emanating from Powell himself, about shifting to a
policy of "smart sanctions" against Iraq. During his trip
through the Middle East in February, Powell advocated
"humane, smart sanctions," which he said would "target Saddam
Hussein, not the Iraqi people."
Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahaf responded by
asking rhetorically, "If we are now talking of 'smart
sanctions,' does that mean that the sanctions of the past 10
and a half years have been stupid ones?"
Since Powell returned from the Middle East, strong
opposition had been heard from within the Bush administration
to anything but increased hostility against Iraq. The Times
of London carried a headline, "Powell out of step over
sanctions." Powell's March 7 testimony before Congress was
designed to refute any such notion.
Powell's "smart sanctions" proposals, moreover, were never
meant as a humanitarian gesture, but rather as a way to
maintain the deadly blockade of Iraq.
Turn Iraq into 'a backward
and weak state'
The UN sanctions, which the U.S. insists on keeping in
place 10 years after the Gulf war, have killed more than 1.5
million Iraqis. As designed, the blockade has devastated
Iraq, destroyed much of its infrastructure and civilian
economy, and set the country back many decades.
On Jan. 9, 1991, then-Secretary of State James Baker had
said, "Iraq will be turned into a backward and weak state."
The intense bombing campaign that began a few days later and
the sanctions that have continued ever since were intended to
turn Baker's threat into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now, much of the world has turned against the sanctions.
Even some of the most compliant, pro-U.S. regimes in the
Middle East are opposing sanctions, opening trade and other
relations with Iraq. Deep anger over the sanctions, and the
U.S. role in oppressing the Palestinian people, has gripped
the entire region.
Powell proposes changing the outward form of sanctions by
"de-linking" economic from military sanctions. At the same
time, he has made it clear that there is no change in the
objective: keeping Iraq in a weakened state until its present
government is overthrown and replaced by one that will accept
the dictates of Washington.
What Powell wants might be called "sanctions with a human
face."
Powell told the House committee on March 7: "I think the
characterization that we are easing up or giving up is quite
incorrect. The sanctions were starting to fall apart. Saddam
Hussein and the Iraqi regime had successfully put the burden
on us as denying the wherewithal for civilians and children
in Iraq to live and to get the nutrition and health care they
needed.
"What we've been trying to do for the last six weeks is to
see how we could stabilize the collapsing situation and find
some basis of stabilization that would bring the
[pro-sanctions] coalition back together."
Powell later added, "We're also undertaking a fuller
review of other things that can be done to promote a regime
change."
'Smart sanctions' = colonialism
Coinciding with Powell's appearance, a liberal think-tank
called the Fourth Freedom Foundation issued a report on what
"smart sanctions" might look like. The principal author is
David Cortright, former executive director of the anti-war
group SANE/Freeze, now reborn as a consultant to the foreign
policy makers of U.S. imperialism.
The report notes Powell's call for smart sanctions in its
preface. "Our aim," say the authors, "is to provide a
technical study that spells out the meaning of a smart
sanctions strategy and is helpful to UN policy makers as they
respond to the dilemmas of sanctions in Iraq."
The report, "Smart Sanctions: Restructuring UN Policy in
Iraq," outlines the problem as follows: "After more than a
decade of controversy, the United Nations sanctions regime in
Iraq faces an unprecedented crisis."
Note that from the authors' point of view it's the
policy--not the people of Iraq--that is confronting a
crisis.
"The comprehensive trade embargo, previously one of the
tightest in history, is unraveling in dramatic fashion," the
report continues. It outlines several reasons for this,
including the resumption of civilian air flights to Baghdad,
an increase in "unauthorized trade," and Syria's new free
trade zone and reopened oil pipeline from Iraq.
"Despite these dilemmas, the United Nations has an
enormous stake in preventing the collapse of its policy in
Iraq," the report adds.
In fact, the vast majority of the UN member states and the
world's people want the murderous sanctions against Iraq to
be ended. It is the U.S. ruling class and its political
servants, including the authors of this study, who are
committed to "preventing the collapse" of the sanctions.
The study, which according to a number of media reports
reflects Powell's viewpoint, includes such provisions as:
Revamp the current embargo in favor of a sharpened
sanctions system aimed at two key targets--the control of
financial resources generated by the export of Iraqi oil, and
the prohibition against imports of weapons and dual-use
goods;
Maintain strict controls on Iraqi oil revenues and
military-related imports, but permit trade in civilian
consumer goods to flow freely;
Contract out to commercial companies the responsibility of
certifying and providing notification of civilian imports
into Iraq;
* Permit the ordering and contracting of civilian goods on
an as-required basis rather than in 180-day phases;
* Maintain UN financial controls;
* Continue to channel all Iraqi oil revenues through the
UN escrow account;
* Contract with an independent multinational oil-brokering
firm, through which all records and payments for permitted
oil purchases would pass, to manage the sales of Iraqi oil
and monitor any illegal surcharge payments;
*Establish a new compensation mechanism to provide
economic assistance to neighboring states and begin paying
Iraq's external debt;
* Freeze the personal financial assets of Saddam Hussein
and his family, of senior Iraqi political and military
officials, and of those associated with weapons production
programs;
* Tighten land-based monitoring by establishing at major
border crossings into Iraq fully-resourced Sanctions
Assistance Missions, modeled on the UN sanctions experience
in Yugoslavia;
* Establish a system of electronic tagging of approved
dual-use imports;
* Create a special investigative commission to track down
and expose sanctions violators;
* Assist member states in establishing effective penalties
for companies and individuals that violate the ban on
exporting weapons and dual-use items to Iraq; and
* Require Iraqi-bound cargo flights to submit to UN
inspection.
"No single element of this smart sanctions package stands
alone in wielding sufficient coercive clout," the study says.
"But linked together such controls provide a tightened
sanctions regime."
Threat of military escalation
The chance of Iraq voluntarily accepting such a plan is
exactly zero. This proposal is an obvious and outrageous plan
to reduce Iraq to the status of a permanent colony. And since
the United States dominates the UN, it is clear who the real
colonizing power would be.
If such a proposal is formally made through the UN
Security Council, or if it is raised unilaterally--as was
done with the "no-fly zones"--by the U.S. and rejected by
Iraq, then new military action may well follow. Some top Bush
administration officials, including Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld--who really should be called secretary of
war--and his chief assistant Paul Wolfowitz, have already
openly called for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.
For the past half-century, a strategic objective of the
U.S. ruling class has been to secure its unfettered and
unchallenged domination over the oil-rich Gulf region. The
"smart sanctions" is just one more tactic aimed at achieving
that goal. The anti-sanctions movement must unmask this
poisonous fraud, and renew the demand to unconditionally lift
the genocidal sanctions against Iraq.
Richard Becker has visited Iraq twice with the Iraq
Sanctions Challenge
project of the International Action Center.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
HOME
:: U.S. NEWS ::
WORLD NEWS ::
EDITORIALS
:: SUBSCRIBE ::
DONATE
Email
this article
Printable
page