-Caveat Lector-
>From CounterPunch.Org
{{<Begin>}}
November 1, 1999
Albright's
Tiny Coffins
Back in 1996, when the number of Iraqi children killed off by sanc-tions stood
at around half a million, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made her
infamous declaration to Lesley Stahl on CBS that "we think the price is worth
it". Given such pride in mass murder at the top, it comes as little surprise to
learn that the State Department views the truth about the vicious sanctions
policy with the same insouciance as their boss regards the lives of Iraqi
children, now dying at the rate of four thousand a month.
"Saddam Hussein's Iraq", released by the State Department on September 13, is
an effort to persuade an increasingly disgusted world that any and all human
misery in Iraq is the sole fault and responsibility of the Beast of Baghdad.
The brazen tone of this sorry piece of propaganda can be assessed from the
opening summary: "The international community, not the regime of Saddam
Hussein, is working to relieve the impact of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis." An
examination of how the sanctions system actually works tells a very different
story.
Key to US self-justification is the so-called "oil for food" program under
which Iraq is allowed to sell oil. The precise fashion in which the US
manipulates this program is never set forth in its malign specifics.
CounterPunch readers should know the following:
Proceeds from such oil sales are banked in New York (at the Banque National de
Paris). Thirty-four percent is skimmed off for disbursement to outside parties
with claims on Iraq, such as the Kuwaitis, as well as to meet the costs of the
UN effort in Iraq. A further thirteen percent goes to meet the needs of the
Kurdish autonomous area in the north.
Iraqi government agencies, meanwhile, under consultation with the UN mission
resident in Baghdad, draw up a list of items they wish to buy. This list can
include food, medicine, medical equipment, infrastructure equipment to repair
water and sanitation etc., as well as equipment for Iraq's oil industry. UN hq
in New York reviews the list, approving or disapproving specific items. Then
the Iraqis order the desired goods from suppliers of their choice.
Now comes the most crucial step in the process. Once the Iraqis have actually
placed an order, the contract goes for review to the 661 Committee. This is
made up of representatives of the fifteen members of the Security Council and
is named for Security Council Resolution 661, which originally mandated the
sanctions, on August 6 1990. The Committee has the power to approve or
disapprove (although the preferred euphemism is to put "on hold") any of the
contracts. Approved contracts are then filled by the supplier and shipped to
Iraq, where they are inspected on arrival by an agency called Cotecna. When
this agency certifies the goods have arrived, the supplier is paid from the oil
cash in the bank in New York.
"Since the start of the oil-for-food program", the State Department report
declares, "78.1 percent [of the contracts submitted for review to the 661
Committee] have been approved". That means that 21.9 percent of the contracts
are denied. It goes without saying that the overwhelming majority of the vetoes
are imposed by the US and Britain. "The 448 contracts on hold as of August
1999", the State Department report explains, "include items that can be used to
make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons".
No one wants Saddam Hussein to make chemical or nuclear weapons, but it has
been abundantly clear since the end of the Gulf War that the US and its British
toadies regard the issue of Iraq's mass destruction weapons principally as a
means of ensuring that sanctions remain in place forever. For example, a friend
of CounterPunch fully conversant in an official capacity with the International
Atomic Energy Agency's inspection effort in Iraq-the nuclear equivalent of
UNSCOM-reports that the IAEA has been prepared for at least two years to
declare the Iraqi nuclear program dead but has been successfully pressured not
to do so by the US.
UN officials working in Baghdad agree that the root cause of child mortality
and other health problems is no longer simply lack of food and medicine but the
lack of clean water (freely available in all parts of the country prior to the
Gulf War) and of electrical power, which is now running at 30 percent of the
pre-bombing level, with consequences for hospitals and water-pumping systems
that Counter-Punch readers may all too readily imagine. Of the 21.9 percent of
contracts vetoed by the 66l Committee, a high proportion are integral to the
efforts to repair the water and sewage systems. The Iraqis have submitted
contracts worth $236 million in this area, of which $54 millions worth-roughly
one quarter of the total value-have been disapproved. "Basically, anything with
chemicals or even pumps is liable to get thrown out", one UN official tells
CounterPunch. The same trend is apparent in the power supply sector, where
around 25 percent of the contracts are on hold-$138 million worth out of $589
million submitted.
The proportions of approved/disapproved contracts do not tell the full story.
UN officials refer to the "complementarity issue", meaning that items approved
for purchase may be useless without other items that have been disapproved. For
example, the Iraqi Ministry of Health has ordered $25 millions worth of dentist
chairs, said order being approved by the 66l Committee-except for the
compressors, without which the chairs are useless and consequently gathering
dust in a Baghdad warehouse.
Albright's minions make great hay out of the vast quantities of medical
supplies (including the dentist chairs) sitting in Baghdad warehouses, implying
that Sad-dam is so cruelly indifferent to the suffering of his subjects that he
prefers to let them die while stockpiled medicine goes undistributed. "They
don't have forklifts," counters one U.N. official involved with the program.
"They don't have trucks, they don't have the computers for inventory control,
they don't have communications. Medicines and other supplies are not
efficiently ordered or distributed. They have dragged their feet on ordering
nutritional supplements for mothers and infants, but it's not willful. There is
bureaucratic inefficiency, but you have to remember that this is a country
where the best and the brightest have been leaving for the past nine years. The
civil servants that remain are earning between $2.50 and $10 a month."
The breakdown of the Iraqi communications system-it can take two days to get a
phone call through to Basra from Baghdad-is obviously a fundamental impediment
to the health system. The Iraqis have ordered just under $90 million worth of
telecommunications equipment, all of which is "on hold"-i.e., vetoed. The
excuse of course is that Saddam could use the system to order troops about,
notwithstanding the fact that the Iraqi security services have the use of their
own cell-phone system, smuggled in last year from China.
In further efforts to lay all responsibility for the misery of ordinary Iraqis
at the feet of Saddam alone, the State Department report alleges that "Iraq is
actually exporting food, even though it says its people are malnourished".
Leaving aside the copiously documented fact that the people of Iraq ARE
malnourished, UN officials hotly dispute the notion that food delivered under
the oil-for-food program has been diverted to overseas markets. "There is
absolutely no evidence for that", says one. "On the other hand, the Iraqis are
very rigorous in rejecting sub-standard shipments. You find a lot of stuff such
as baby milk, sent from neighboring Arab countries as aid, that in some cases
has passed its expiration date when it arrives so they ship it out again."
The Iraqis do not have this recourse for goods shipped under the UN program.
Once Cotecna certifies the goods have arrived, whatever their condition, the
suppliers get paid. The UN office in Baghdad supported a reasonable proposal to
the Security Council that the Iraqis be allowed to withold ten percent of the
payment until they have had a chance to inspect the goods. The proposal drew a
661 Committee veto, though not, for once, from the Anglo-Americans but from the
French and the Russians, who are both currently doing well out of the Iraq
trade.
Seeking out evidence of Saddam's depredations against his own people should be
an easy task, but the State Department report opts for fiction over fact when
possible. The report featured an aerial reconnaissance picture of "destruction
by Iraqi forces of civilian homes in the citadel in Kirkuk". According to
Mouayad Saeed al-Damerji, an internationally respected Iraqi archeologist, the
picture shows what is in fact an archeological dig at the 4,600-year old
citadel, in progress since 1985.
There appears little prospect of change in this miserable situation. Last year,
Denis Halliday, the UN coordinator for humanitarian relief in Iraq, quit in
protest over a policy that causes "four to five thousand children to die
unnecessarily every month due to the impact of sanctions". White House
officials expressed their delight that this irksome voice of moral outrage had
been removed from the scene, but Hans von Sponek, Halliday's successor, is
showing signs of treading the same path, publicly appealing for the end of
sanctions.
Friends say he is on the verge of quitting. For Albright that will be no less
acceptable a price than the thousands of little coffins that will serve as her
memorial. CP
{{<End>}}
><>< Now, if indeed Mad Maddy ever gets in trouble with a War Crimes Tribunal,
would she face the prospect of being stripped of her U.S. citizenship (assuming
she has same) and being repatriated (in the same fashion as some WW2
transgressors) to her last place of residence in Europe, namely, Serbia? Now,
Winter's coming to the Balkans and some reports show that EVEN her allies, the
Kosovarians, don't have adequate shelter against the elements. So, where's the
help -- on the way (out?) (back?) ? A<>E<>R ><><
A<>E<>R
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