By Jennifer Thompson
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein appears to have lost a desperate gamble. Despite the sickening hypocrisy which portrays Iraqi troops in Iraq as a "threat" and US troops half way around the world as "peacekeepers", the movement of Iraqi troops near the Kuwait border has allowed US President Bill Clinton to conduct a new military build-up without arousing widespread domestic opposition.
Hussein's gamble can be seen as an attempt to disrupt the virtually automatic continuation of the murderous US/UN sanctions against Iraq. These sanctions have been regularly renewed by the Security Council despite the fact that perhaps a majority of the permanent members would prefer that they be dropped or phased out.
The March meeting of the council could not agree on a formal statement announcing the continuation of the sanctions. France, Russia and China, in addition to some non-permanent members, were insisting on the inclusion of a commendation of Iraq for moving towards meeting UN terms on disarmament; this was opposed by the US.
At the July meeting the US again refused to endorse a statement appreciating Iraq's cooperation with UN Special Commission on Iraq. The US and Russia issued their own separate statements.
The Russian UN ambassador said that September should be the starting point for a new period of cooperation and a deadline set beyond which the council should consider lifting the oil embargo. Britain and the US, in contrast, insisted on including human rights performance and the recognition of a new land and maritime border between Iraq and Kuwait as a precondition for any consideration of lifting of sanctions.
The new border gives Iraqi territory to Kuwait, including part of Umm Qasr, Iraq's only port. Arab commentators, even those staunchly opposed to the Iraqi regime, see this as a ploy to ensure that Iraq and Kuwait remain at loggerheads and that Kuwait remains beholden to Anglo-American protection indefinitely.
Mass starvation near
A decree signed at the beginning of June by Saddam Hussein — providing draconian new punishments for theft, from chopping off the right hand to execution by firing squad — reflects a crime wave caused by an appalling economic situation.
By the start of 1994, inflation since August 1990 (when Iraq invaded Kuwait) was estimated at 6000%. The Iraqi dinar had been devalued even more, by a factor of 1700 against the US dollar at black market rates.
The US/UN sanctions have meant that Iraq has had nearly no revenue from oil and almost no source of hard currency — a devastating blow to an economy and civil infrastructure already reeling under the destruction of the war. In the months before August 1990, Iraq was producing 3.1 million barrels of oil per day, of which 2.7 million were exported. Oil production accounted for 95% of the country's export earnings prior to the war.
Four hundred thousand Iraqis had died by February 1994 as a result of the blockade — the majority of them children, the elderly and the chronically ill — according to detailed figures from Iraq's health ministry.
The situation is getting worse: the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) predicted in November 1993 that Iraqis would face mass starvation unless Iraq is allowed to import food, medicine and other vital goods. Factories and farms throughout the country operate at sharply reduced capacity due to shortages of raw materials, pesticides, fertilisers and spare parts.
An International Action Committee delegation led by former US attorney general Ramsey Clarke in February 1994 visited the largest pharmaceutical plant in Iraq to find that, due to sanctions on raw materials and spare parts, of the 270 different medicines produced before the war, only 50 were being produced, and at only 20-25% of previous levels.
Similarly in the agricultural sector, according to the FAO, 25-50% of the Iraqi crop this year consists of inedible weeds, mainly because of a shortage of seeds, pesticides and fertilisers that were previously imported.
The dramatic worsening of the food situation — highlighted by the removal of flour and sugar from the list of heavily subsidised rationed goods (all that most people can afford to buy), which had ensured a daily food intake estimated at 40% of adult requirements — is also due to the fact that Iraq is close to running out of foreign exchange for the purchase of humanitarian imports.
Because of the foreign exchange crisis, private merchants are taking the lead in importing food and medicine and charging exorbitant prices. "Before this war all medicines were given free to patients — now they have to pay their whole salaries to buy them at the pharmacies", said a physician in one of Baghdad's poorer districts.
The IAC's visit to Baghdad hospitals revealed that most beds were empty despite the fact that the country's death and illness rates had quadrupled. Doctors attributed it to their inability to treat patients because of lack of medicines. "We have no anaesthetics, no sutures, so operations have to be delayed", said one doctor, "so of course people die". The sanctions and the destruction of purchasing power have made much of the middle class poor, but the rich 1% became richer.
Before the war Iraq imported 70% of its food and US$500 million annually in medicines. While food and medicine are supposedly exempt from the sanctions, the reality is different, even apart from the foreign exchange problems. Many Western companies still refuse to sell medicines to Iraq despite UN approval for the sale of such items. A common practice by many governments has been to delay the approval for food and medicine until the expiration dates have passed.
Competing for spoils
The differences in the Security Council are related to competition associated with the reopening of trade with Iraq and the race to get in on lucrative reconstruction contracts, the continuing depressed state of the world oil market and other longer term aims of the US in consolidating its hegemony in the region.
According to Mariam Shahin, writing in the September 9 Middle East International, "US companies are competing with their European counterparts for preferential terms of trade, particularly in the areas of reconstruction and oil. French, German, Russian, Turkish, Polish, Romanian, Japanese, Indian, Pakistani and several other countries' business and even semi-official delegations are frequently seen in Baghdad ... There are many who now question whether the US insistence that sanctions remain is motivated more by economic than political factors.
"A European Commission official Went so far as to say: 'We suspect that the US may put a heavy price on the lifting of sanctions, a price that may include exclusive trade terms.' He compared this to the situation in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War, when US companies got nearly all the big contracts."
The continuing low price for oil which followed a sharp drop in oil prices in late 1993, has been a concern for the oil-producing Gulf allies of the US. While oil exporters have been concerned more to increase production to boost oil export income, the re-entry of Iraq into the world market might further depress the price of oil.
The US/UN policy is designed to bring Iraq to its knees, by inflicting massive suffering on the people and damaging its economy so that it will remain under the burden of war reparations, reconstruction costs and debt repayment for years, ending any potential to challenge US hegemony in the region.