Behind Washington's demand to lift sanctions on Iraq
By Sara Flounders
The U.S. government has demanded the complete
and immediate lifting of UN Security Council sanctions on
Iraq.
For 13 years, a world movement against the sanctions had met
total resistance by the U.S. government, under both Republican
and Democratic administrations. Why has Washington now reversed
itself on this question? And how should the world movement
against sanctions respond to Washington's new strategy?
First, it is important to understand the Bush
administration's motives.
The UN Security Council now has control over at least $30
billion, held in its Oil for Food accounts, that was
accumulated by the sale of Iraqi oil during the sanctions
regime.
Since it militarily destroyed the government, the U.S. has
appointed itself the overseer of Iraq and the force that will
hand-pick a new government. But the sanctions keep the money
from going to Iraq. So the U.S. wants an end to sanctions so
that these billions of dollars can be turned over to a
U.S.-administered government in Iraq. It regards the money as
plunder owed it for its criminal invasion and destruction of
Iraq's sovereignty.
In addition, billions of dollars of Iraqi money have been
frozen since August 1990 in accounts around the world. An end
to sanctions could be a first step in making this money
available to a U.S.-controlled "Iraqi government," which would
then turn it over to greedy U.S. corporations that have been
awarded contracts for the "reconstruction" of Iraq.
The sanctions caused the deaths of more than a million and a
half Iraqis, according to UN estimates. Should the government
that caused these deaths and laid waste to Iraqi cities in a
brutal war of conquest now be trusted to administer the funds
it has so long withheld from the Iraqi people?
It is essential to recognize that the U.S. or Britain have
no right to any of the resources in Iraq. There is no
justification for the tens of thousands of imperialist troops
occupying the country. It is criminal, lawless aggression. Now
the U.S. campaign to end the sanctions and turn the billions in
withheld Iraqi funds over to itself, the occupiers, is piracy
in its most blatant form.
Billions at stake
This issue of lifting the sanctions on Iraq is shaping up as
the next big confrontation in the UN Security Council.
France, Russia and China all have veto power over whether to
end the sanctions. A number of countries on the Security
Council have reminded Washington that sanctions cannot be
lifted until UN weapons inspectors confirm that Iraq has no
weapons of mass destruction. This diplomatically throws in
Washington's face the same fraudulent excuse that the U.S.
government used for 13 years to continue the sanctions.
France has further enraged the Bush administration by
proposing that civilian sanctions could be "suspended" for
humanitarian reasons. By stating that it was not for "lifting"
sanctions, it was reminding Washington that the web of
sanctions the U.S. had spun gives the UN Security Council
control over all of Iraq's future oil revenues. This is also
Russia's position.
White House spokesperson Ari Fleischer rejected these views
by stating categorically, "The sanctions should be lifted, not
merely suspended. ... With the regime gone, the U.S. position
is economic sanctions are no longer necessary."
As long as sanctions officially remain in place, the revenue
from all Iraqi oil sold will continue to be deposited into UN
accounts. Billions of dollars are at stake in future contracts.
The countries on the Security Council that had joined the U.S.
in imposing sanctions are not so anxious to turn these
accumulated funds, the bidding on all reconstruction contracts,
and the future oil revenues over to the conquerors.
Of course, France may be all too willing to strike a quiet
deal with U.S. imperialism for a share of these expropriated
funds and future contracts. France, it should be remembered, is
also an imperialist power with global financial interests based
on looting the resources of developing countries that were
formerly part of its colonial empire. France has troops in a
number of African countries.
This is part of the reason why Washington does not want the
United Nations involved in any way in Iraq. The Bush
administration does not want any other financial claims on its
unilateral theft.
Syria, a rotating member of the Security Council, stated
that lifting sanctions would "legalize the U.S. and British
invasion." It would give the U.S. "the right to control Iraq's
oil and install a government it prefers."
Meanwhile, the Bush administration is rushing to install
just such a government. It reportedly plans by early May to put
day-to-day control of the oil industry in the hands of Iraqis
appointed by the Bush administration. They in turn will be
under the "civil" administration of retired U.S. Gen. Jay
Garner. A former CEO of Shell oil company, Philip J. Carroll,
will head an advisory committee for the Iraqi oil industry.
This committee is clearly where the real decisions will be
made.
Until it is clear who has legal title to Iraq's oil, it will
be difficult for the U.S. to sell the oil on the world market.
Before the 1991 war, Iraqi oil revenue was more than $20
billion a year.
History of UN sanctions
It is worth reviewing the history of U.S./UN sanctions
imposed on Iraq, their impact and what is at stake today in
this new and old debate.
In August of 1990, using its overwhelming power, Washington
crafted and rammed through the UN Security Council the economic
sanctions that have strangled Iraq over the past 13 years. The
sanctions were defined as a measure to force Iraq to withdraw
from Kuwait.
It should be remembered that on July 25, before the invasion
of Kuwait, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie had met with Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein. He informed her that Iraq would take
measures against Kuwait if negotiations failed. The rich
sheikdom had been keeping oil prices low and stealing Iraqi oil
by slant drilling under its land. Iraq was in dire financial
shape because of its war with Iran.
Glaspie replied that Washington had "no opinion" on Iraq's
conflict with Kuwait.
When Iraq did move into Kuwait, however, the U.S. demanded
and got from the UN the most extreme form of collective
punishment ever imposed on an entire people.
Iraq could not sell its oil or any goods at all. It could
not import anything. All its funds held in banks outside of
Iraq--billions of dollars from the sale of oil--were frozen.
With its funds frozen, without any trade, credits or loans, the
entire economy shut down. Inflation spiraled wildly out of
control.
When the Pentagon started bombing in January 1991, its
targets were chosen to sharpen the deadly impact of the
sanctions. The U.S. consciously destroyed the water,
sanitation, sewage and pumping facilities, along with
food-processing plants, pharmaceutical plants and medical
facilities. Epidemics of cholera, typhoid and measles erupted.
Within months, tens of thousands of Iraqi children were dead
from polluted, untreated water.
At the end of the massive U.S. 40-day bombing campaign, Iraq
withdrew from Kuwait. This should have ended the reason for the
UN sanctions. But as a condition of the cease-fire, the U.S.
demanded that sanctions remain until the UN Security Council
had confirmed that Iraq had destroyed any unconventional
weapons it may have obtained.
This became the excuse for a protracted struggle to demand
the right to send thousands of inspectors into Iraq to confirm
that Iraq had no such weapons. Whole industries necessary for
any modern industrialized country to function were blown up,
including chemical plants and plants making fertilizers and
pesticides. Despite over 9,000 inspections, the continuing
threat of U.S. veto has kept these starvation sanctions in
place for 13 years.
The campaign against sanctions
From its very inception in 1991, the International Action
Center waged a campaign to end the sanctions on Iraq. Former
U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the founder of the IAC, in
an effort to bring world attention to the impact of sanctions,
made the difficult trip to Iraq every year with fact-finding
delegations. He wrote an International Appeal to End Sanctions
on Iraq that was signed by a number of world leaders, along
with international human rights groups and peace
organizations.
The appeal characterized sanctions as a weapon of genocide
and a "crime against humanity," as defined by the Nuremberg
Principles. The appeal was translated into many languages and
became the basis of a series of international peace conferences
in London, Rome, Athens, Madrid, Tokyo, New York and San
Francisco.
By 1995 a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report
confirmed that 567,000 children under the age of five had died
as a direct result of the continued UN sanctions. A growing
global mobilization demanding that sanctions be lifted created
a radical shift in world public opinion.
As world outrage mounted, the U.S. shifted its public
relations approach. In an attempt to give a humanitarian cover
to its brutal policy, it pushed through the Oil for Food
Program. This program allowed Iraq to sell a limited amount of
its oil and buy food and medicine from the revenue. The UN
Security Council, under a special committee called the 661
Committee, would control all the revenue and review every
contract for supplies that Iraq would receive.
Out of these severely restricted oil sales, Iraq would also
have to pay reparations to Kuwait and a host of other claims
arising from the U.S. destruction and bombing in the 1991 war.
From January 1997, when this program began, to the end of 2001,
Iraq was able to sell approximately $50 billion worth of oil.
All this money was deposited into a UN-controlled account. Iraq
received less than 25 percent of this amount for the purchase
of food and medicine, amounting to less than 22 cents per day
per person.
Some 34 percent of the Iraqi Oil for Food revenue went to
the Kuwaiti monarchy and other "victims" of the 1991 war.
ExxonMobil received $200 million in "war reparations" from the
Oil For Food funds, which were supposed to feed starving Iraqi
children. Billions of dollars also went to the UN to administer
this program. A multi-billion-dollar bureaucracy was created
that guaranteed lucrative contracts to many countries.
For the past six years the U.S. and British representatives
on the 661 Committee have denied, delayed or obstructed most of
the contracts submitted by Iraq. Under U.S. pressure the
committee denied over 90 percent of Iraq's contracts for the
repair of water/sewage treatment and irrigation projects.
Because of this continual obstruction, billions of dollars
from oil sales were never released for Iraq's desperate needs
but continued to be held in UN accounts. These funds, along
with future oil revenue, is what U.S. corporate power wants
undisputed control over.
The world movement to end the sanctions on Iraq is in
essence a movement to struggle for the right of the Iraqi
people to control their own resources. The sanctions have been
a crime against humanity and an assault on the national
sovereignty of every developing country. They must be
lifted.
But the U.S. occupiers of Iraq today must not be allowed to
continue their imperialist plunder in another form. The
anti-war and anti-sanctions movement must demand that U.S.
troops get out, along with their hand-picked stooges. It must
defend the right of the Iraqi people to control their own
resources. Not one penny from Iraq's oil should go to the
criminal U.S.-occupation regime.
Sara Flounders is coordinator of the Iraq Sanctions
Challenge and a co-director of the International Action
Center.
Reprinted from the May 8, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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