Ending the Iraq Impasse

Hans von Sponeck, a former UN assistant secretary-general, resigned as UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq in February 2000 in protest at the impact of sanctions on the Iraqi people.

How have ten years of United Nations sanctions affected Iraq? At the political level, it is obvious that sanctions have not unseated the government; they have not brought about changes in Iraq’s leadership and they have not even destabilised the ruling elite. On the contrary, sanctions have helped to consolidate a tightly controlled state and have significantly reduced the chances for an internal opposition to emerge. In fact, sanctions have enhanced President Saddam Hussein’s political capital as they have prompted a rallying-round-the-flag effect. The Iraqi population has joined the leadership in arguing that their plight is due to the externally imposed sanctions. This, of course, is the reverse of the position of the United States government, which claims Iraqi suffering is entirely the fault of the Iraqi dictatorship.

Ten years of comprehensive economic sanctions, however, have provided irrefutable evidence of the naivety of assuming “that a social transmission belt exists that turns economic damage into political gains”.¹ It remains unclear whether Iraq still has a biological weapons capacity. But military sanctions did succeed in significantly weakening Iraq and forcing its compliance on dismantling nuclear, ballistic and chemical weapons production capacities, either wholly or in part. Consequently, Iraq in mid-1998 was extremely close to seeing the application of Paragraph 22 of Security Council resolution 687, which would have ended economic sanctions.

I cannot here enter into why instead Iraq was attacked by US and British warplanes in December 1998. It should be mentioned, however, that even if the Iraqi authorities met the (legitimate) demands for compliance on the elimination of biological weapons material, that would in no way guarantee a permanent closure of this issue. So long as the requisite expertise remains in Iraq, it would not be difficult for it to re-establish its biological weapons laboratories. Demands for full compliance, therefore, are either gullible or a pretext for another agenda. More generally, if compliance with resolution 687 was indeed the real objective, the Security Council’s refusal to recognise Iraq’s progressive compliance and to reward such compliance with concurrent incremental easings of sanctions was a fundamental mistake of historic proportions. The serious implications for the entire normalisation process and more directly for the wellbeing of the Iraqi people need not be stressed here. In making this observation, I wish to argue that the entire Iraq discussion must change track if the genuine intent is to bring about constructive dialogue with Baghdad.

The Impact of Sanctions

In economic terms, the situation in Iraq after ten years of sanctions is grim. Most civilian industrial enterprises—more than 70 per cent in the estimate of some observers—are either defunct or operating at a much reduced level. Unemployment has reached an estimated level of 60 to 75 per cent. This, together with the sanctions regulations forbidding the use of oil revenues for local investment, has fostered within the Iraqi population a handout mentality and led to the humiliating de-professionalisation of a once large and well-trained technical and professional class. The Iraqi economy is increasingly driven by illicit business transactions directly attributable to ridiculously porous borders. Iraq’s borders are wide open to the export of crude, diesel and to a lesser extent refined oil products. In exchange, these borders are also open for the import of all kinds of goods, often not affordable by the average citizen. One can only speculate how open these borders are for the import of items of strategic value. This makes a mockery of the meticulous nature with which the Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council approves or frequently blocks items procured with licit oil revenues and which are sorely needed by the civilian population. The use of items such as gas cylinders, computers, water purification equipment, centrifuges, etc., included in the humanitarian programme could be monitored fairly reliably by United Nations observers in Iraq. Instead, the manner in which the Security Council actually manages sanctions against Iraq is so inadequate that it breeds illicit behaviour and promotes the illegally acquired prosperity of a few, with serious political, economic and social consequences. These include rampant inflation and the total impoverishment of the ordinary Iraqi.

Never has a country been subjected more severely and lengthily than Iraq to comprehensive sanctions in the absence of a real understanding of the human cost involved. The reaction of the Security Council and of individual member governments over the past ten years has been to recognise periodically that the humanitarian crisis was deepening and that the international response was inadequate. This in turn led to ad hoc incremental improvements in the sanctions regime and eventually to the adoption in April 1995 of Security Council resolution 986 and the oil-for-food programme. Since that date there have been further improvements, such as raising the amount of oil Iraq was allowed to extract to a total of $5.2 billion per six months. This translated after various deductions into a net resource for humanitarian purposes of $2.9 billion per six months, including 30 per cent for the UN Compensation Commission.² Iraq had become a sanctions “laboratory” designed to test human endurance.

An Inadequate Programme

All reviews of the oil-for-food programme since operations began in 1996 have shown that, although important, it is totally inadequate.³ At best it has halted social deterioration. For example, malnutrition rates have stabilised in central/southern Iraq at the high level of 14.6 per cent of children aged under five. The programme has also helped to slow the rate of deterioration in such areas as water supply and sanitation. It has not, however, managed to reverse trends, e.g., with regard to illiteracy or mental illness among the young. In fact, in many areas conditions have severely deteriorated under sanctions. Thus, Unicef reports that the mortality rate of children under five has risen from 56 per thousand in 1991 to 131 per thousand in 1999. Malnutrition, re-emerging diseases such as diarrhoea, typhoid and cholera, inadequate supplies of medicines, even lack of transport and means of communication in emergencies, account for this avoidable tragedy.

The evidence of ten years suggests that this tragic situation is overwhelmingly due to sanctions and the inhumane manner in which a programme that in itself is inadequate to meet minimum human needs has been implemented.

The US State Department initially criticised the United Nations for not producing enough data about conditions in Iraq. Then the UN system, particularly Unicef and the World Health Organisation, began to carry out important surveys on nutrition, child mortality, water and sanitation, mental health, etc. Instead of welcoming these efforts, the US authorities responded by questioning the reliability of the data. For example, it was shown in a stock analysis published by the United Nations in February 2000 that 91.7 per cent of all humanitarian supplies had been distributed to end-users since the inception of the oil-for-food programme. This is a figure the US government simply ignores. Instead, it continues to accuse the Iraqi regime of hoarding supplies—a completely false assertion. At the same time, it would be wrong to defend the total accuracy of data collected by the United Nations. Conditions in present-day Iraq inevitably inhibit the conduct of comprehensive factual surveys. What can be said with confidence, however, is that the trends identified in UN statistics are real and warrant the conclusion that the distribution of humanitarian supplies, including medicines, is satisfactory. Contrary to statements by Washington and London, the United Nations has no evidence of wilful withholding of such supplies.

Data that cannot be disputed at all involves the financing of the oil-for-food programme. In phases 1 to 3, the net amount available for meeting basic physical needs was $1.3 billion, for phases 4 to 6 this increased to $2.9 billion, and in phase 7 to $4.2 billion. What is consistently overlooked is that these amounts translate respectively into $113, $252 and $408 per person per annum. No one can defend such funding as adequate given the humanitarian situation in Iraq today.

Oil revenue, the meagre lifeline for the Iraqi population, has been deeply politicised by all sides in the Iraq dispute. An example is the announcement by the Security Council earlier this year—reflected in its resolution 1284—lifting the ceiling on the amount of oil Iraq could pump. In theory, the lifting can only be welcomed; in practice, it has little consequence unless a wide range of measures is adopted concurrently.

The likelihood that this will happen is slim. The sanctions regulations do not allow oil-field development, nor do they permit comprehensive rehabilitation of existing facilities upstream and downstream. In any case, the allocated funds of $600 million per phase are dismally short of what is needed for even basic repairs to the Iraqi oil industry.⁴ To complicate matters further, spare parts for the oil industry are rarely off-the-shelf items, but have to be tailor-made to suit a country’s needs. Yet oil spare-part contracts for Iraq are frequently put on hold by the UN Sanctions Committee. Oil missions appointed by the UN secretary-general and led by Sayboldt, a Dutch firm of oil overseers, have regularly visited Iraq and reported on the extremely dangerous state of its oil fields. This allows the Security Council’s decision to lift the oil ceiling to be put into its proper perspective: under present conditions Iraq is not going to increase its oil output much beyond the present 2.9 million to 3.1 million barrels per day, simply because the oil industry in its present state is unable to do so. What explains the increased oil revenue of the past twelve months is not “volume” but significantly higher oil prices.

Beyond the inadequacy of the oil-for-food programme not much can be said about the overall human condition of the Iraqi civilian population. Despite repeated efforts by Baghdad-based UN agencies and me to obtain agreement to carry out an assessment of social conditions in Iraq, neither the UN Office of the Iraq Programme in New York nor the Security Council responded favourably. In fact, efforts were made to prevent an assessment beyond limited reviews of the impact of the humanitarian programme. In a debriefing with the UN Security Council on 29 February 2000, I yet again urged the council to initiate this long overdue review of social conditions in Iraq. At the insistence of primarily the French, Russian and Malaysian representatives on the Security Council, it was agreed in May to carry out this important review.

Such an assessment will undoubtedly confirm the general inadequacy of the oil-for-food programme. Sensitive analysts will also bear in mind that life is not just about physical needs. They will look especially at the non-material aspects of deprivation in Iraq, e.g., the total lack of opportunities for Iraqis to develop fully their human potential, a prescribed right elaborated in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Such an assessment should furthermore confirm the accuracy of UN data on the deterioration of conditions in Iraq, and that the political contention that the human suffering there is entirely ascribable to the Iraqi regime is simplistic and substantially false. That contention in any case could provide no justification for continuing to adhere to a faulty foreign policy.

The assessment will unquestionably also confirm that a once strong and educated middle class has been all but destroyed; that all classes have been impoverished; that licit coping mechanisms have given way to illegal means of surviving, largely by sanctions breaking. This in turn has led to a social transformation, bringing to the fore a new class of profiteers, an economic mafia which has teamed up with the political elite. As an ambassador in the Security Council observed, “And all of this under the benevolent eye of the Security Council!”

Any assessment will confirm what UN officials in Baghdad have repeatedly stressed: the preparation for life of Iraqi youths and young adults has been severely impaired. This is chiefly because of the virtual collapse of the education system through lack of resources, both human and financial, aggravated by the Security Council’s irresponsible blocking of contracts and the Iraqi government’s use of extra-legal funds for non-essential purposes.

After ten years of sanctions against Iraq, there can be only one overall conclusion: comprehensive economic sanctions have failed. The human cost has been enormous and well beyond the acceptable “humanitarian threshold”. This conclusion is shared by a growing number of governments and parliaments around the world. In January 2000, the International Development Committee of the UK House of Commons in reference to Iraq concluded in a report entitled The Future of Sanctions: “We find it difficult to believe that there will be a case in the future where the United Nations would be justified in imposing comprehensive sanctions on a country … comprehensive economic sanctions only further concentrate power in the hands of the ruling elite.” In the foreword to The Sanctions Decade, the already cited study by David Cortright and George A. Lopez, Canada’s foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy writes: “It is imperative that sanctions reflect the objectives of the international community, not just the national interests of its most powerful members.” Such comments should serve as a reminder to Washington and London that they are increasingly isolated in their ill-conceived Iraq policy.

Sanctions and Human Rights

Keeping in mind that this paper is concerned with the effects of sanctions, it must be said that the Iraqi regime’s human rights violations and breach of international treaties in no way absolve the international community of its obligation to maintain ethical and legal standards in its treatment of Iraq. Reviews by experts on international law, for example, at the UN Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in June 2000 and at meetings I attended in Brussels and Washington this year, leave no doubt that ten years of sanctions against Iraq have resulted in serious breaches of all relevant treaties and treaty-like instruments, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Vienna and Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

An important but often forgotten element in the sanctions debate is the time factor. It can be argued that in 1990/91, Article 41 of Chapter VII of the UN Charter (the right to impose economic sanctions and sever diplomatic relations) was not in conflict with Articles 1.1 (the United Nations must act in conformity with the principles of justice and international law), 1.2 (the United Nations’ goals include the development of friendly relations among nations based on respect for self-determination), 55.c (the United Nations shall promote universal respect for human rights) and particularly Article 24.2 (the Security Council shall act in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations). But today Article 41 clearly is in conflict with these other articles. It must be remembered that there is a hierarchical relationship between articles of the UN Charter and that the concept of subsidiarity is applicable. Principles of justice and international law (Article 1.1) and the preservation of human rights (Article 55.c) take unquestionable precedence over the provisions of Chapter VII (Article 41). Unicef reports that some five thousand children die every month in Iraq as a direct result of sanctions, i.e., because of a policy which is no longer based on principles of international law.⁵

Carrots and Sticks

Parliaments, politicians, non-governmental organisations and concerned individuals⁶ around the world, but above all twenty-three million Iraqi citizens, are looking to the protagonists, primarily Iraq, Kuwait, the United States and the United Kingdom, for sincere efforts to resolve the political stalemate and end a UN-condoned humanitarian crisis of a kind the world has never previously witnessed.

A comprehensive Middle East peace process cannot exclude Iraq. Political realism must join hands with a commitment to adhere to international law and the moral imperative not to allow a human tragedy to continue.

It has been convincingly shown elsewhere, most recently in the handling of sanctions against Libya, that conflict resolution requires incentives. A carrot and stick strategy, rather than a purely punitive approach, has to be the basis for ending the Iraq stalemate. The architects of Security Council resolutions 687 and 1284 will argue that this is what these resolutions already provide. But the history of the treatment of Iraq over the last ten years proves that this contention is incorrect. The US State Department likes to claim that it has reluctantly come a long way in agreeing to the final text of resolution 1284, thereby allowing a less restrictive definition of “compliance” than was the case with resolution 687. The fact is that resolution 687 allowed for the “lifting” of sanctions once compliance was certified, while resolution 1284 merely allows for “suspension”, which is a step backwards. The Iraqi leadership’s known behaviour and the experience of years of confrontation pointed to only one conclusion: that Baghdad would reject resolution 1284, as indeed has been the case since it was adopted in December 1999, with all the tragic humanitarian consequences outlined already.

Adoption of resolution 1284 has created a political stalemate which is not only becoming increasingly dangerous, but for which the civilian population, as predicted long ago, is paying dearly and daily. The question is, how long can the UN General Assembly and the international community condone such a stalemate? How long can they entrust the welfare of a nation to fifteen member governments which for an inordinate amount of time have been unable, at the expense of the Iraqi population, to resolve their differences in the Security Council? The implications of this state of affairs are frightening not only from a humanitarian perspective, but also in terms of the value that the international community places on adherence to legally binding international agreements.

If, in recognition of the ground reality in Iraq, all parties, the visible and the less visible alike, could be swayed to desire a return of normalisation to this ravaged country, then a carrot and stick approach must become the basis for a new beginning. US president Bill Clinton’s 11 July statement at the Israeli–Palestinian peace talks at Camp David also applies to the Iraq stalemate: “There can be no success without principled compromise.” Tinkering with the edges of the economic sanctions regime, incremental improvements of the oil-for-food programme, do not constitute a carrot. The following six measures could, on the other hand, be part of a promising carrot and stick approach. The international community should:

1. Begin a confidence-building process, initially at a low level and behind closed doors, with all protagonists at the table. This assumes a willingness to de-demonise the Iraqi leadership. This may seem an unpalatable or even impossible condition, but the Middle East has already witnessed at least one instance of such de-demonisation.

2. Agree to delink the military embargo and Iraqi disarmament from the civilian embargo, and to lift comprehensive economic sanctions in exchange for an Iraqi agreement to re-establish non-intrusive arms inspections. It will be easier to offer this carrot if the West drops its political amnesia and remembers its years of military support for Iraq.

3. Allow Iraq once again to become a paid-up member of Opec and of the United Nations. Iraq owes about $15 million in dues to these two international bodies and is presently blocked from paying its membership fees, unlike some other UN member countries which choose not to pay their dues to the world body.

4. Permit the early overhaul of the shattered Iraqi oil industry, both upstream and downstream, as an important step towards putting the economy on a more secure footing to benefit the civilian population.

5. Allow with appropriate safeguards the incremental return to the Iraqi authorities of responsibility for managing Iraq’s financial assets. It is known that this is an area of particular concern to Washington and London. Successful confidence-building measures, transparency and safeguards should, however, allay these concerns.

6. Gradually remove barriers to private-sector capital investment in order to allow the rebuilding of the civilian infrastructure, particularly in the areas of water, sanitation and social services, including transport and communications.

These significant ameliorative measures would be in exchange for an Iraqi agreement to co-operate in six areas:

1. The establishment of an arms inspection and monitoring facility, as already mentioned.

2. & 3. The imposition of “smart” sanctions on (i) the selling of specified weapons to Iraq, and (ii) on post-sanctions profiteering by groups within and outside Iraq.

4. The immediate rebuilding of a free and universal education system in all parts of the country.

5. A guarantee by Iraq to confirm local autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan and the fair sharing of revenues for the Kurdish governorates of Dohuk, Erbil and Suleimaniya.

6. Agreement by Iraq to facilitate regular reviews by the United Nations of the evolving post-sanctions humanitarian situation in the country.

It is beyond the scope of this presentation to go into details about these twelve steps, which in some form or other will have to be part of any process of normalisation. It should also be understood that these twelve measures are not to be considered a complete package, nor is the complexity of each individual measure underestimated. But this paper is offered as a contribution to breaking a stalemate which has had such dire consequences for an innocent population and for the upholding of international law. 

Endnotes

1. See David Cortright and George A. Lopez, The Sanctions Decade: Assessing U.N. Strategies in the 1990s (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), p. 19.

2. This UN body handles claims by governments, organisations and individuals for damages and losses incurred in connection with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

3. This programme is implemented in phases of six months each. In August 2000 it entered its eighth phase.

4. For phases 4 to 6 the amount was $300 million. There was no allocation in earlier phases.

5. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights refers to an individual’s right to life.

6. Even Messrs Richard Butler and Scott Ritter, formerly of Unscom, the body charged with disarming Iraq, have belatedly recognised the gravity of the mistake of continuing to link disarmament and economic sanctions.