Iraq sanctions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

United Nations sanctions against Iraq were imposed by the United Nations in 1990 following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and continued until the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. They were perhaps the toughest, most comprehensive sanctions in history, and have caused much controversy over the humanitarian impact, culminating with two senior UN representatives in Iraq resigning in protest of the sanctions.

1 Introduction
2 Effects of the sanctions
3 Oil for Food
4 The difficult road to lifting of sanctions
5 External links

[edit] Introduction

On August 6, 1990 the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 661 which imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq, providing for a full trade embargo, excluding medical supplies, food and other items of humanitarian necessity, these to be determined by the Security Council sanctions committee. After the end of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi sanctions were linked to removal of Weapons of mass destruction by Resolution 687.[1].

The United Nations economic sanctions were imposed at the urging of the U.S. to remove Saddam Hussein from power. President George H. W. Bush stated: "By making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people, [sanctions] would eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power" (Seatlle-Post Intelligencer August 7, 2003, archived at: [2]). In as much as the economic sanctions were designed to topple Saddam they were a failure, however the sanctions caused the death of between 400 thousand and 800 thousand Iraqi children (Seatlle-Post Intelligencer August 7, 2003, archived at: [3]; Hartford Courant, October 23, 2000, [4]).

[edit] Effects of the sanctions

The sanctions crippled the Iraqi economy during the time they were imposed; much of Iraq’s infrastructure ran into disrepair from lack of materials and Iraq's capacity for aggression was all but destroyed. The initial purpose of the sanctions, and of all diplomatic sanctions, was to force Iraq's hand in cooperation with the United Nations and possibly cause a change in its previously aggressive foreign policy and abuses of human rights.

Critics of the sanctions say that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, disproportionately children, died as a result of them, [5] although certain skeptics claim the numbers to be less. [6] [7] [8] UNICEF has put the number of child deaths to 500,000.[9] The reasons include lack of medical supplies, malnutrition, and especially disease owing to lack of clean water. Among other things, chlorine, needed for disinfecting water supplies, was banned as having a "dual use" in potential weapons manufacture. On May 10, 1996, appearing on 60 Minutes, Madeleine Albright (then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations) was presented with a figure of half a million children under five having died from the sanctions. Not challenging this figure, she infamously replied "we think the price is worth it", though she later rued the comment as "stupid."[10]

Denis Halliday was appointed United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Baghdad, Iraq as of 1 September 1997, at the Assistant Secretary-General level. In October 1998 he resigned after a 34 year career with the UN in order to have the freedom to criticise the sanctions regime, saying "I don't want to administer a programme that satisfies the definition of genocide". Halliday's successor, Hans von Sponeck, subsequently also resigned in protest. Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Program in Iraq, followed them. According to von Sponeck, the sanctions restricted Iraqis to living on $100 each of imports per year.

[edit] Oil for Food

Main article: Oil-for-Food Programme

As the sanctions faced mounting criticism of its humanitarian impacts, Iraq was in 1996 allowed under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme (under Resolution 986) to export $5.2 billion (USD) of oil every 6 months with which to purchase items needed to sustain the civilian population. After an initial refusal, Iraq signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in May 1996 for arrangements for the implementation of that resolution to be taken. The Oil-for-Food Programme started in October 1997, and the first shipments of food arrived in March 1998. While improving the conditions of the population, Denis Halliday who oversaw the programme believed it inadequate to compensate for the adverse humanitarian impacts of the sanctions.

Thirty percent of the proceeds were redirected to a Gulf War reparations account.

In 2004/5 the Programme became the subject of major media attention over corruption, as Iraq had systematically sold allocations of oil at below-market prices in return for some of the proceeds from the resale outside the scope of the programme. Individuals and companies from dozens of countries were implicated.

[edit] The difficult road to lifting of sanctions

While UN resolutions subsequent to the cessation of hostilities during the Gulf War imposed several requisite responsibilities on Iraq for the removal of sanctions, the largest focus remained on the regime's development of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and in particular its laggard participation in the UNSCOM-led disarmament process required of it. The goal of several western governments had been that the disruptive effects of war and sanction would lead to a critical situation in which Iraqis would in some way effect "regime change", a removal of Saddam Hussein and his closest allies from power.

Hussein was at this point widely seen as a tyrant whose nominal cooperation concealed malign aims. With him in power, there was a general inclination to be skeptical about whether Iraq would disarm, and about whether it would be open and cooperative about the inspection process, particularly after revelations of post-war concealment forced a reevaluation of the extent of the country's biological weapons program. [11] Hussein may have considered the many governments' displeasure with him, but particularly that of two veto-wielding UNSC members, the United States and United Kingdom (both of which took the hardest lines on Iraq), as a no-win situation and disincentive to cooperation in the process. [12].

Additionally, UNSCOM had allegedly been infiltrated by British and American spies for purposes other than determining if Iraq possessed WMDs. [13] [14] Former inspector Scott Ritter was a prominent source of these charges. While not agreeing with Ritter fully, former UNSCOM chief inspector David Kay said "the longer it continued, the more the intelligence agencies would, often for very legitimate reasons, decide that they had to use the access they got through cooperation with UNSCOM to carry out their missions."[15] [16].

Saddam, who portrayed all this as a violation of Iraq's territorial sovereignty, became less cooperative and more obstructive of UNSCOM activities as the years wore on, and refused access for several years beginning in August 1998. Ultimately Saddam condemned the US for enforcing the sanctions through the UN and demanded nothing less than unconditional lifting of all sanctions on its country, including the weapons sanctions. The US and UN refused to do so out of concern that Saddam's regime would rebuild its once-powerful military and renew its WMD programs with the trade revenues. Renewed pressure in 2002 led to the entry of UNMOVIC, which received some degree of cooperation but failed to declare Iraq's disarmament immediately prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for which it was withdrawn and became inactive in Iraq.

The sanctions regime was finally ended on May 22, 2003 (with certain arms-related exceptions) by paragraph 10 of UNSC, after approximately 1.5 million people had died.Resolution 1483. [17]