IRAQ: Let's destroy this lethal weapon!
August will witness the 10th anniversary of the economic embargo against Iraq. Ten years ago, the United States, as part of its "New World Order", turned the invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi regime into an international crisis and an excuse to assert its arrogance and militarism.
At the beginning, the pretext was to force the Iraqi regime to withdraw from Kuwait and return the sheiks — the guards of the oil wells — to power. But to maintain the economic embargo, the US hypocritically claimed that the sanctions are a tool to defend the Iraqi people's human rights and to destroy the weapons of mass destruction of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship.
This hypocrisy means that the population of 20 million has been deprived of food, medicine and the basic necessities of life for 10 years. This has hit the most vulnerable sectors of Iraq — the children and the elderly — the hardest.
Over 10 years, the US propaganda machine, its puppets in the mainstream media and its friends in the reactionary Islamic and nationalist parties of the Iraqi opposition have all strived to hide the misery caused by the sanctions from international public opinion on the one hand, while yelling in the name of the Iraqi people about the need for sanctions in order to overthrow Saddam's regime on the other.
The last 10 years for the Iraqi people have been full of suffering, destruction and deprivation. The expectations of the Iraqi masses have been reduced to such a level that their dream is to eat a piece of bread that actually tastes like bread. Instead they are offered sawdust.
Diseases that can be easily treated by tablets claim the lives of many Iraqis every day. Hospitals are no longer places for treatment but sources of epidemics. Generations of children are born deformed and malnourished. Malnutrition has led to the death of nearly 2 million Iraqis.
The whole of the Iraqi population is effectively unemployed. Those who still work are unable to earn their daily expenses.
The excuses the US and other Western governments use to maintain this embargo are completely false. The Ba'ath regime is still in power and continues its oppression, militarism, execution and mass killings. Sanctions have given this regime more reason to intensify its oppression and dictatorship.
Contrary to the claims of the media and pro-US Iraqi bourgeois opposition, the economic embargo has not helped to weaken and overthrow the Saddam regime. The embargo has destroyed the resistance of the masses against the Saddam regime. It has weakened their will against its arrogance.
What kind of savage and inhumane policy is it that punishes the Saddam regime by killing thousands of children and cutting the milk, food and medicine supplies for newborn infants? What kind of policy is it that starves innocent people and destroys the fundamental pillars and institutions of their lives? Whoever uses such means to force Saddam Hussein to surrender is more criminal and cruel than him.
The fact is that millions of Iraqi people are outraged and frustrated at the starvation, deprivation and death and have started to protest and struggle to end the embargo and overthrow the regime.
We should be in absolutely no doubt that those in the Iraqi bourgeois opposition who support the economic embargo and try to hide its results are completely alien to the Iraqi masses and their suffering. Those who hope to gain power through death and starvation of children are also criminals.
Their actions demonstrate that they are a bad alternative to Saddam's regime and they are the other side of the same coin. Like the Ba'ath regime, they care little for human rights and freedom, so we must expose them and remove their influence from Iraq.
The US and its Iraqi opposition puppets claim that the genocide of the first six years has stopped. They claim that the "Food for oil" program enforced during the last four years under United Nations resolution 986 has ended the impact of the sanctions on the Iraqi people and that they now affect only the regime.
The truth is, this program is unable to stop the human disaster, or even alleviate it. This tragedy, this process of death and deterioration, is in fact intensifying.
What is distributed to the Iraqi people is a very small portion of the oil income. After paying the various UN agencies' expenses and the ransom to the Persian Gulf sheiks, what is left is stolen by those who are supposed to distribute it to the Iraqi people. The amount paid a month to a family of five is less than the income the UN staff who supervise the distribution earn in a few hours.
It is the sanctions that are weapons of mass destruction, used against the Iraqi people. It kills large numbers of people, innocent children and adults without discrimination.
If there is anyone who regards themself a supporter of freedom and human rights, or any party or organisation that defends freedom, but has doubts about the lethal and inhumane results of the sanctions, I invite them to come and see the evidence for themselves.
The sanctions against Iraq must be lifted immediately. This weapon of mass destruction must be abolished and prohibited forever.
This was the view of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI) from the beginning. The struggle to end the embargo has been one of the major campaigns of our movement and our party during the last 10 years.
The WCPI is launching a large international campaign against the economic embargo. The aim is to expose this deliberate policy to international public opinion and to mobilise the wide range of forces that support human rights to put pressure on the US, its Western allies and the UN to stop using this weapon of mass destruction and force them to immediately and unconditionally lift the sanctions.
Participation in this struggle and support for the WCPI's campaign is a decent, humane task for all parties, organisations, individuals and media institutions that regard themselves to be defenders of human rights, freedom, the rights of children and human dignity. It is a task for all who oppose arrogance, weapons of mass destruction and human misery.
We ask all of you to stand with us to remove this nightmare from the life of the Iraqi people. The organisations of the WCPI around the world are in the forefront of this struggle. We hope you will take the initiative to organise and run this campaign and make it a success.
BY REBWAR AHMAD
[Abridged. Rebwar Ahmad is secretary of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq.]