-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.jordantimes.com/Wed/features/features2.htm
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Jordan Times (Features Section)
Iraq — 11 years on
By Dr. Omar Al Taher
IT HAS been exactly eleven years ago today since the US and its
allies launched their largest military campaign since World War II
with the ostensible aim of ejecting Iraqi troops from Kuwait. This
objective was attained within 42 days of unrelenting aerial
bombardment, but Iraq has since been placed under a sanctions regime
designed to cripple it economically and subdue it politically. Over
those eleven long years, over 600,000 Iraqi children have died as a
direct result of the sanctions. This prompted three top UN officials,
Dennis Halliday, Hans Von Sponeck and Bolghardt, to resign in protest
at what they termed “the slow and silent death of an entire nation”;
the UN has not known a rebellion like this in its 55-year history.
Having visited Iraq lately, I couldn't help noticing that the very fabric of Iraqi
society is gradually disintegrating. Mass migration from the country to urban areas
has transformed the once great and prosperous cities o
f Baghdad and Basra into huge shantytowns; corruption, prostitution and beggary are
commonplace. Eleven years of sanctions have eroded the previously resilient and
vibrant middle class, rendering it destitute and helpless
. The far-reaching implications of the embargo are destined to continue to impact
Iraqis' lives for decades to come.
Almost everything is denied the people of Iraq, including food, clothing and medicine.
As far back as 1994, reports out of Iraq, compiled by Western agencies, spoke of
widespread chronic malnutrition and death among young
children; an unprecedented human rights disaster. The result of this “collateral
damage”, as US and British officials wish to call it, is that over half a million
Iraqi children under the age of five have been killed; tw
ice the number of those killed by the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki in 1945.
A quick glance at the list of items that Iraq is denied reveals the absurdity and the
ugly face of the much-celebrated “new world order”. The list includes: books, pencils,
paper, soap, light bulbs, clean water, anaesthet
ic, lifesaving drugs, X-ray machines and films, heart and lungs machine, vaccines,
firefighting equipment, etc. The pretext is that such items have a potential for
military application. Frankly, everything has the potenti
al for dual usage, and one is genuinely surprised that the list does not include
nails, which could be used in nail bombs, and Pepsi bottles, which could be used for
Molotov cocktail bombs!
The effects of the embargo against Iraq stand as a stark indictment of the Americans
and the British and everything they claim to stand for. One is inclined to point to
peoples, as opposed to governments, because these tw
o countries are supposed to be democratic and free, governed by democratically elected
officials who are accountable to their respective electorates, i.e., decisions made by
these officials are in essence the decisions of
their electorates. Their relationship is likened to the relationship that exists
between a principal and an agent, which entails that the principal cannot escape
liability for the acts and omissions of his agent.
By contrast, the Iraqis could in no way be blamed for the policies of Saddam Hussein
because, put simply, the Iraqis never voted Saddam in office. Here lies the difference
between the West and Iraq. Punishing the Iraqi pe
ople for Saddam's actions is akin to punishing an innocent child for an offence
committed by his father. So much for Western fairness, equity and fair play!
Experts on the Middle East fear that this state of affairs is a recipe for disaster in
so far as the future of the Middle East is concerned. Historically, Iraq has been a
key player in the region, and it logically follows
that it would always have a crucial role to play by virtue of the dictates of
geopolitics. US and British officials talk, day in and day out, of a Middle East
living in peace and harmony. What harmony would be expected f
rom a county that has been singled out and placed under the most comprehensive
sanctions regime in modern history? The effects of this genocidal war are likely to
backfire, derailing all what the US and its underling, the
UK, are working towards.
George Bush's and Tony Blair's sugar-coated speeches that the “quarrel is not with the
Iraqi people but with the Iraqi leader” is neither here nor there. The resentment one
senses in discussions with Iraqis is directed to
wards the two countries and, by implication, the two peoples, the Americans and the
British. The fear, which is shared by many who have studied the Middle East, is that
by antagonising and humiliating an entire nation, th
e likelihood of transforming every Iraqi into a Saddam is very much a possibility, not
to say a probability.
When confronted with the fact that over 4,000 Iraqi children are dying every month due
to the embargo, Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, retorted without a
qualm: “Well, we think the price is worth it.” Furt
hermore, on innumerable occasions, she went on record stating that even if the UN
Disarmament Committee's report gave Iraq a clean bill of health, the US position is
not to lift the sanctions so long as Saddam remained in
power. This candour, which borders on insolence, explains Iraq's non-cooperative
stance. The Iraqi leadership is aware that if all its weaponry (from biological
weapons to even hand grenades) are accounted for and decomm
issioned, the sanctions are there to stay. So, why cooperate?
One cannot help recalling the eerie words of James Baker, former US secretary of
state, during his eleventh hour meeting in Geneva in January 1991 with Tareq Aziz, the
then Iraqi foreign minister, that Iraq “risks being r
elegated to a pre-industrial age status” if it doesn't pull out of Kuwait by Jan. 15.
Well, this objective was fulfilled with the ejection of Iraqi troops from Kuwait on
Feb. 28, 1991. Why does the West continue its aggre
ssive foreign policy towards Iraq?
The answer lies in that following the collapse of the Soviet Union — the Arab world's
traditional ally — the US resolved that the time was ripe to redraw the map of the
Middle East. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 has o
utlived its validity, and the area was in need for a new arrangement, this time to
accommodate Israel's long-term designs. Iraq, with its huge potential and nationalist
aspirations, regardless of its government, was the s
tumbling block that needed to be sorted out, so to speak. In an
interview a couple of years ago, Tareq Aziz stated that Iraq favours
military strikes to the status quo. After all, war is governed by the
Geneva Convention, while the silent war that has been waged over the
past eleven years, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians,
continues to go unnoticed and doesn't make news headlines.
However, the pressing question remains: How many more Iraqis need to
perish before the American and the British peoples react and put a
stop to the atrocities committed in their name?
The writer, a holder of a PhD degree in international affairs and an
LLB degree from the UK, is currently a legal trainee at a law firm in
Amman. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
End<{{{
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