Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
Iraq article |
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amatullah |
09/18/01 at 12:00:35 |
Bismillah and salam, U.S. policy on sanctions is just fine with Saddam Haroon Siddiqui EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR EMERITUS NOT ONLY are the economic sanctions on Iraq not achieving any of their stated goals, they are working in perverse ways. Let's count. 1) A decade ago, Iraq was totally isolated by the 33-nation Gulf War coalition led by the United States; today it is the U.S. that is isolated. The credit, or blame, for such a spectacular turnaround is not attributable to the wicked genius of Saddam Hussein but rather the peculiarities of American politics. Only Washington could have managed to so alienate its partners that Saudi Arabia, its staunchest Arab ally, and Turkey, a member of NATO, and even Kuwait, for which the Gulf War was fought, now oppose the sanctions. Walking through the inherited diplomatic and strategic ruins, Secretary of State Colin Powell tried to re-engineer the sanctions, easing restrictions on civilians but tightening the military embargo. But he had to abandon this - his first and only major foreign policy initiative - in the face of opposition from the Arab and Muslim world, Europe, Russia and China. 2) Let alone hurting Iraq militarily, sanctions are helping Iraqi military capability. The most bizarre example is how the Chinese, supposedly working on humanitarian relief, are widely suspected of laying a fibre optic network connecting radar stations for an anti-missile defence system. This new capability is credited with the recent Iraqi shooting of an American drone flying over Iraq as part of the ongoing Anglo-American bombing campaign. More scandalously, Americans may have helped the Chinese do it. United Nations officials in charge of enforcing the sanctions had raised a cautionary flag over the Chinese presence. But trying to get Beijing to support the Powell initiative in the Security Council, the U.S. lifted the hold on the Chinese items! 3) Saddam is stronger than ever. He and his coterie are not only not hurting under sanctions, they are benefiting - in various ways. Given human ingenuity, all sanctions leak. In Iraq, they are leaking all over. Illegal trade with Jordan, Turkey and Syria is booming. An old pipeline to Syria has been reopened. Bashar Assad told Powell that the line is only being tested, but up to 150,000 barrels of Iraqi crude is said to be getting through every day. Another open secret is the round-the-clock movement of trucks to Turkey, a virtual pipeline supplying a third of its diesel needs. Everyone is turning a blind eye, for two reasons. It is one way of compensating Turkey's estimated $20 billion loss under sanctions in lost bilateral trade. The traffic also helps the Kurds whose territory the trucks must pass through and pay a fee. Such oil revenues flow to Saddam, enabling him to put up palaces for his tight coterie of civilian and military elite, while the poor starve. Sanctions also spawn corruption wherever they are imposed. In Iraq, it is reaching new heights and sophistication. Not that those involved are genetically prone, but they have had a lot of time figuring out ways around the rules. The U.N. oil-for-food program - created in response to the international outcry against the horrendous effects of sanctions on civilians - has evolved into an Orwellian nightmare. Iraqi officials submit a mind-bogglingly long list of relief items. U.N. officials tick off each against a pre-approved list of what is permitted and what is not. (Hence the endless arguments over "dual use" items: Is a truck a carrier of food supplies or military hardware? Is a pencil destined for a school or a radar installation?) Following the haggling, the Iraqis get suppliers, foreign and local, to draw up contracts that must also be okayed by the U.N. But this is not as airtight as it sounds. It opens up room for kickbacks and deals for embargoed items. The system suits Saddam just fine. 4) Instead of eliminating Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, American zealotry on sanctions may have helped increase the arsenal. Since the surreptitious insertion of an American spy into the United Nations weapons inspection team led to the collapse of the mission nearly three years ago, there have been no inspections. Under the new system of monitoring from a distance, there is no way of knowing what Saddam is up to. His record suggests he bulks up any chance he gets. Lately, he has been free of oversight and full of new revenues. Ironically, this suits not just Saddam but Washington. It keeps the story out of the headlines and public scrutiny, notes Colin Rowat, a Canadian with the Cambridge University-based Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. 5) Sanctions, combined with the intifadah, have put moderate Arabs on the defensive and let Saddam strut as a defender of Palestinians. Besides racist tirades against Jews and "the Zionist entity," along with empty promises of liberating Palestine, he has been sending $10,000 cheques to each bereaved family in the occupied territories that has lost a member to Israeli attacks. Helping him rehabilitate are the two states with peace treaties with Israel, Egypt and Jordan, responding to public anguish at the disproportionate number of Palestinian deaths. Meanwhile, 600,000 Iraqi children under age 5 are dead due to malnutrition. And while the food program is now managing to avert widespread hunger, mass-scale misery continues. A collapsed infrastructure means rusty water pipes, busted sewer systems, little electricity. One cannot think of a more counterproductive foreign policy, mixing insensitivity and incompetence on as stupendous a scale as this. Haroon Siddiqui is The Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday. His e-mail address is hsiddiq@thestar.ca |
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