>National Security Advisor Samuel Berger termed it "the most
>complete embargo of any country in modern times."
>
>The sanctions/blockade that U.S. officials openly boast
>about has wreaked havoc on the lives of the Iraqi people. At
>least 1.25 million Iraqis have died as a direct result of
>the sanctions, and millions more are suffering from severe
>malnutrition, illness and psychological distress.
>
>Iraq's infrastructure has deteriorated disastrously. A
>large majority of the population no longer has access to
>clean water, the sew age system has collapsed in many areas,
>and frequent electric power outages negatively impact on all
>sectors of modern society.
>
>Sanctions-induced inflation has destroyed the buying power
>of workers and middle-class professionals alike. The most
>common currency denomination in circulation is the 250-dinar
>bill. Worth $750 before the sanctions, its value is now 12
>cents. The dinar has lost 99.98 percent of its former value
>in relation to the dollar.
>
>Pensions and salaries have been increased by 20 times in
>the same period, yet they are worth almost nothing today. A
>mid-level government employee who earned a salary of 300
>dinars in 1990 might be making 6,000 dinars today. But today
>the exchange rate is about 1,900 dinars to the dollar,
>compared to one dinar to three dollars before the sanctions.
>
>Only a food rationing system described by all observers as
>exceptionally equitable, combined with free health care,
>education and social services, has prevented the sanctions
>from taking an even greater toll. Still, there are extreme
>shortages of food, medicine, clothing, paper and many other
>basic goods. The food ration currently provides about 1,100
>calories a day, far below the minimum requirements for a
>healthy diet.
>
>Before the blockade, Iraq had made great strides in
>providing nutrition, housing, health care, education, clean
>water, electrification and other necessities to its people.
>Iraq provided humanitarian assistance to a number of Arab
>and African countries.
>
>Dr. Abdul Rizzak al-Hashimi, president of the Organization
>for Peace, Friendship and Solidarity, told the ISC
>delegation, "Iraq is not a country that needs humanitarian
>aid. The problem is that we are being prevented from using
>the resources we have by the sanctions."
>
>`OIL FOR FOOD' LITTLE HELP TO IRAQIS
>
>Dr. al-Hashimi explained to the assembled delegates of the
>ISC why the UN Security Council "Oil for Food" Resolution
>661 had failed to resolve Iraq's crisis, and was, in fact,
>never meant to. He pointed out that of the approximately
>"$18 billion in oil sales since Resolution 661 was
>implemented three years ago, more than $6 billion has gone
>to compensation to Kuwait and multi-national corporations,
>and to pay for UN costs related to Iraq. If a UN official is
>working on Iraq, no matter if they are located in New York,
>Geneva or Iraq, their salaries are paid out of the Oil for
>Food fund."
>
>Of the remaining $12 billion, representatives on the 661
>Committee, a sub-committee of the Security Council, have
>blocked the completion of contracts worth $5.9 billion that
>Iraq had negotiated to purchase needed imports. Virtually
>all contract vetoes have been cast by the U.S. and Britain.
>
>The 661 Committee has particularly blocked contracts
>related to rehabilitating the shattered infrastructure, al-
>Hashimi said. In dollar amounts, only 12 percent of
>electricity, 18 percent of water and sewage treatment, 6
>percent of irrigation, 19 percent of oil installation, 13
>percent of higher education, 12 percent of school, and 0
>percent of communications-related contracts have been
>approved.
>
>The approximately $6 billion in approved contracts, most
>for directly consumable food and medicine, amounts to $7.58
>per month for each Iraqi citizen. This is far less than what
>is needed to provide for the immediate needs of Iraq's
>people. But even if it did meet those needs, it wouldn't
>begin to solve the sanctions-created catastrophe.
>
>Without repairing the devastated infrastructure, the
>water, sewage, power and other systems in Iraq as a whole
>cannot recover. Even if children with severe diarrhea and
>dehydration can be saved by medical treatment, they return
>home from the hospital to drink the same contaminated water.
>
>Ramsey Clark responded to Dr. al-Hashimi's remarks,
>saying, "Four years ago, when we opposed the `Oil for Food'
>deal, people thought we were crazy. But we said then that it
>was just a slow process of strangulation. It was a device by
>the U.S. to avoid having to deal directly with the question
>of ending the sanctions," after world opinion had turned
>against them.
>
>Clark said, "We owe a great debt to the Iraqi people for
>their courage, fortitude and sacrifice. We must demand
>accountability for what has been done to them, and not 50
>years from now, but now."
>
>The great anger here toward the U.S. and its imperialist
>junior partner Britain is based on their joint bombing
>operations, which continue on an almost-daily basis, and their
>insistence that the sanctions against Iraq remain in place.
>These two "great powers" are the same ones that together
>exploited Iraq and its vast oil resources before the 1958
>revolution, consigning the Iraqi masses to lives of extreme
>poverty.
>
>The aim of Washington today is to roll back history and
>return Iraq to its old colonial status. But despite all the
>suffering and death, Iraqi people from all walks of life
>that our delegation has met are determined to never let that
>happen.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
>From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 22:31:09 -0500
>Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>Content-transfer-encoding: Quoted-printable
>Subject: [WW] Equador Eruption Cut Short
>Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>-------------------------
>Via Workers World News Service
>Reprinted from the Feb. 3, 2000
>issue of Workers World newspaper
>-------------------------
>
>ECUADOR ERUPTION CUT SHORT: U.S ENGINEERS COUP
>AGAINST PEOPLE'S GOV'T
>
>By Andy McInerney
>
>After weeks of mass mobilization, the people of Ecuador
>succeeded in ousting the pro-International Monetary Fund
>president, Jamil Mahuad. A coalition of Indigenous people,
>unions, students, leftist parties and low-level military
>forces toppled Mahuad on Jan. 21--after taking the streets
>of all the Andean country's main cities and surrounding the
>parliament building.
>
>Tens of thousands poured into the streets of Quito to
>welcome the new government of "National Salvation." Red
>flags emblazoned with the hammer and sickle flew side by
>side with the Ecuadorian national flag and the huipala, the
>rainbow flag of the Indigenous movement, in the vast crowd
>of workers, peasants and students.
>
>The victory was short-lived. Ecuador's top brass--backed
>by the United States government--intervened to shore up the
>country's capitalist class and its political
>representatives. On Jan. 22, the military ousted the
>National Salvation Committee and installed Mahuad's vice
>president, Gustavo Noboa, as president.
>
>Noboa immediately pledged to continue Mahuad's neoliberal
>economic policies of austerity and privatization, including
>the hated plan to "dollarize" the economy--replacing the
>country's currency with the U.S. dollar.
>
>But whether the ruling class and its U.S. backers will be
>able to impose this plan over a mobilized population is far
>from certain.
>
>ECONOMIC MISERY FUELS UPRISING
>
>Ecuador, a South American country of 12 million, is in the
>midst of a dire economic crisis.
>
>Production declined by 7 percent in 1998. Inflation is
>running at 60 percent annually. Poverty is rampant.
>
>The crisis falls especially hard on the Indigenous
>population. Forty-five percent of the population is
>Indigenous, according to the Confederation of Indigenous
>Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). Of these, 80 percent live
>in absolute poverty.
>
>Ecuador's economic crisis is a symptom of the general
>capitalist crisis raging across wide regions of Latin
>America. Colombia is facing depression-level conditions.
>Brazil--Latin America's largest economy--faced a currency
>devaluation in 1999, sending prices of imported goods
>soaring.
>
>This crisis is magnified by the "neoliberal" economic
>policies that the IMF dictates to the political regimes in
>Latin America. Under these policies, subsidies of food,
>electricity and gas must be cut. State services and
>industries must be privatized. Tariffs that protect local
>industry from penetration by the world's biggest imperialist
>powers must be dropped.
>
>In 1996, Ecuadorian President Abdala Bucaram tried to
>impose these policies in Ecuador. In 1997, he was ousted
>after mass demonstrations.
>
>Mahuad took over the presidency in 1998. His attempts to
>impose the same neoliberal economic regime brought into
>motion the same social forces that toppled Bucaram.
>
>The movement to oust Mahuad opened on Jan. 6, when the
>Patriotic Front (FP) launched demonstrations in Quito aimed
>at forcing Mahuad's government out and reversing the
>neoliberal policies. The FP is a mass coalition that unites
>unions, student organizations, small business groups,
>women's groups, African Ecuadorians, community activists and
>leftist political parties.
>
>On Jan. 15, CONAIE launched a "national uprising" aimed at
>bringing tens of thousands of Indigenous people to Quito to
>force the government out. In the course of this
>mobilization, activists set up a "People's Parliament" as
>well as dozens of local organs of popular self-rule.
>
>Mahuad deployed 30,000 troops to prevent the peasants from
>reaching the city. Despite that, by Jan. 20 tens of
>thousands had made their way into Quito.
>
>The CONAIE march won the support of students and other
>sectors of Ecuadorian society, who organized support
>demonstrations. Thousands of militant peasants and their
>allies surrounded the Congress and the National Bank. Oil
>workers struck to support the protest.
>
>On Jan. 21, detachments of the army broke ranks and joined
>the demonstrations. Units guarding the National Congress
>stepped aside and allowed Indigenous activists to seize the
>building.
>
>CONAIE leader Antonio Vargas declared the People's
>Parliament as the governing body of the nation, announced
>Mahuad's removal, and declared the dissolution of the
>Congress and the Supreme Court.
>
>Hours later, the movement that took over the Congress
>announced a three-person National Salvation Committee to
>govern the country. The committee included Vargas, Col.
>Lucio Gutierrez and Carlos Solorzano. Gutierrez was one of
>about 50 mid-level officers who sided with the uprising.
>Solorzano is a former chief justice of the Supreme Court.
>
>ROLE OF THE MILITARY
>
>The leaders of the uprising obviously placed great hopes
>in winning over the military to the side of the people and
>against Mahuad. For example, on Jan. 5 FP leader Luis
>Villacis met with Gen. Carlos Mendoza, head of the
>Ecuadorian Joint Command and Minister of Defense, to discuss
>the aims of the popular movement.
>
>>From the point of view of revolutionary strategy, the
>military reflects the class character of the society it
>arises from. In capitalist societies, it is first and
>foremost an organ of repression of the capitalist class of
>bosses, bankers and big landowners aimed at the masses of
>poor and working people. The top officer corps are from the
>ruling classes themselves or have slavishly demonstrated
>their loyalty to the elite.
>
>On the other hand, the rank-and-file soldiers and sailors
>of the military come from the working class. They are often
>drawn to the military as a means to provide for themselves
>and their families. During times of revolution and great
>social crisis, these troops can be won over to turn against
>their officers and side with the working class.
>
>Between these poles are the junior officers--the colonels,
>lieutenants and captains--who have often risen from the
>rank-and-file. Several times in history, as in Ethiopia and
>Afghanistan, a segment of these mid-level officers has
>demonstrated both the skill and the determination to provide
>leadership against the ruling class in a revolutionary
>working-class upsurge.
>
>In Ecuador's "January days," the military showed exactly
>this class dynamic. Hundreds of regional and low-level
>officers quickly joined the uprising, bringing their units
>with them. Troops in Quito were reluctant to act against
>their Indigenous sisters and brothers.
>
>The generals at first postured as allies of the movement.
>Hours after the National Salvation Committee was proclaimed,
>Gen. Mendoza met with the new leaders. He replaced Col.
>Gutierrez on the committee and declared the formation of a
>"government of the Ecuadorian people. We cannot speak of
>left or right."
>
>But the replacement of Gutierrez was an omen of events to
>come.
>
>U.S. ROLE
>
>United States imperialism viewed the installation of a
>people's government in Ecuador with growing alarm. U.S.
>Embassy representatives warned of an immediate halt to all
>economic aid and investment, threatening to isolate the
>country as it has Cuba--by implication, to impose an all-out
>blockade.
>
>Their message was brought directly to the National
>Salvation Committee--by Gen. Mendoza. In the early morning
>hours of Jan. 22, Mendoza announced that he was abandoning
>the committee. He announced that the military brass would
>back Noboa, a representative of the old political regime.
>
>This move was widely seen as evidence that the Ecuadorian
>generals were never for the people's movement at all.
>Mendoza's maneuver dashed any hopes that the military high
>command could be counted on as an ally in the struggle--and
>revealed that the generals, working with U.S. imperialism,
>only sought to maintain their grip on power.
>
>"What we were trying to do was to prevent the
>international isolation of Ecuador," Mendoza said. In fact,
>he was demonstrating his class loyalty to the Ecuadorian
>capitalists and their U.S. backers.
>
>On Jan. 23, the old Congress, stacked with representatives
>of Ecuador's political elite, voted to accept Mahuad's
>"abandonment" of his office and declared Noboa the new
>president.
>
>In effect, the U.S. government, acting through the
>Ecuadorian general staff, engineered a coup against a
>genuine people's government in Ecuador.
>
>MASSES VOW TO CONTINUE STRUGGLE
>
>With Mahuad out of office, the tens of thousands of
>Indigenous activists began to leave the capital and return
>to the countryside. But by all accounts the struggle is far
>from over.
>
>Dozens of the military officers who supported the
>uprising, including Col. Gutierrez, were jailed for treason
>immediately after Noboa's accession to the presidency. A
>campaign is building to guarantee their safety, as well as
>that of the other leaders of the uprising.
>
>CONAIE leader Vargas vowed to build a new campaign against
>the Noboa regime. "Noboa wants to take advantage of our
>people's fight to keep helping the same people as always,
>the corrupt bankers," he told a Mexican news service on Jan.
>23. "We will defend our historic fight."
>
>"We don't accept this presidential succession," one
>Indigenous activist told Reuters as he left the capital.
>
>The Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador (PCMLE) is
>closely allied with the Democratic People's Party, one of
>the members of the Patriotic Front coalition. It issued a
>statement on Jan. 23 warning that "the workers, the
>Indigenous people and peasants, the teachers, the democratic
>youth and women committed to the necessity of social change
>cannot do anything but declare our frontal and active
>opposition to this regime that only means greater
>exploitation and oppression, greater hunger and misery for
>the majority of the people.
>
>"The PCMLE calls on all the people's and democratic forces
>to continue the combat against this government."
>
>BALANCE SHEET OF THE "JANUARY DAYS"
>
>The Ecuadorian workers and peasants may have been
>temporarily defeated by imperialist pressure and the
>military high command's double cross. But the decisive
>battle may be ahead.
>
>What have the Ecuadorian masses gained? First of all, tens
>of thousands of people--Indigenous, workers, students--have
>gained a living lesson in the most vital of all
>revolutionary subjects: the struggle for power. They have
>learned in the streets who are their friends and who are
>their enemies. They have witnessed which leaders within the
>struggle are the most determined and resolute in combat.
>
>Second, they have gained the experience of constructing
>class organs of combat. The local People's Parliaments, set
>up in each region of the country by the CONAIE, are
>essentially peasant committees of self-government and
>organization. They set an example for the workers and
>students in the cities to construct the basis for what could
>be, in a broader revolutionary crisis, organs of dual power.
>
>Finally, they have tasted their political strength. The
>power of the Ecuadorian masses has toppled two presidents in
>three years. The ruling class in Quito and its backers on
>Wall Street must be petrified that next time, the target
>will be not just a president but the entire capitalist
>regime.
>
>On the other hand, what has the Ecuadorian ruling class
>gained? It has salvaged its political regime--for now. But
>the bosses and their politicians have yet to find a way to
>impose their neoliberal economic program on the masses. The
>economy continues to deteriorate. The currency continues to
>slide.
>
>In neighboring Colombia, the flames of revolution are
>burning throughout the countryside, with a clear political
>leadership aimed at constructing a genuine people's
>government for the benefit of the workers and oppressed.
>This is a decisive pole of attraction for the Latin American
>revolutionary movement, and it is certainly being studied by
>the Ecuadorian left.
>
>Millions of Cubans have taken to the streets in recent
>months demonstrating their support for their socialist
>government and their iron determination to resist U.S.
>imperialism after the kidnapping of Eli=A0n Gonz=A0lez.
>
>In Venezuela, the people have elected a progressive
>government based on defending its national sovereignty
>against U.S. imperialism.
>
>The most recent demonstrations in Ecuador show that there
>is a tide of rebellion sweeping Latin America. For U.S.
>workers and progressive activists, this offers the
>opportunity to extend a hand of solidarity. A strong
>solidarity movement here can both stay the hand of U.S.
>imperialism in its plans to stem the tide and bring the
>experiences of Latin America to new layers of activists--
>like those fighting the World Trade Organization or
>struggling to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
>
> - END -
>
>(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
>copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
>changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
>Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
>to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
>
>
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