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Oil Wars
:: Western "Humanitarianism" in Iraq ::
by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
On December 1998, the United States of
America, allied with the United Kingdom, embarked upon a new bombing
campaign against Iraq. As far as the Anglo-American allies were
concerned, the professed reasons for the bombing were straightforward:
Saddam Hussein had failed to comply with the UN weapons inspections.
His alleged ongoing failure to cease his nuclear, chemical and
biological weapons programmers, meant that the Hitler of the 90s still
constituted a grave and immediate danger to not only his own people,
but to his Middle East neighbours and, in fact, the entire world.
I. Oil at the Roots
A glance at the history of the West’s
relations with Iraq explains the roots of the Persian Gulf crisis.
Iraq was a compliant ally of the West - particularly of the United
States - throughout the 1980s, despite the fact that the Iraqi masses
were tyrannised under Saddam Hussein’s anti-humanitarian military
regime. The reason is clear: Iraq contains 10 per cent of the world’s
oil reserves. When the West’s puppet in Iran (the Shah) was toppled,
the Western powers colluded to push Iraq into a war with the newly
formed Islamic Republic, the aim being to re-impose Western hegemony
over the oil-rich region. This entailed strengthening the Iraqi war
machine. Iraq’s Western-endowed weapons of mass destruction -
including chemical and biological weapons - were subsequently employed
in its war against Iran, as well as at home in the gassing of
defenceless Kurds and Shi’ites, all of which occurred under the
auspices of the Saddam-West alliance.
However, when Saddam invaded Kuwait in
August 1990, endangering Western control over Middle East oil
reserves, it was clear that the West’s love affair with the genocidal
tyrant was over. The Western powers, indignant at this act of
rebellion by a former servant, saw the need to teach him and his
people a lesson in the rules of ‘world order’. Iraq was to set an
example of what happens to countries who refuse to follow the rules of
this ‘new’ world order. Cue the Gulf War.
II. Terminating Iraqis with an Iron Fist
The aim of the war, right from the
outset, was to smash the country’s civilian infrastructure, as well as
to provoke the Iraqi population and military into removing Saddam and
installing a new pro-West military dictatorship - a fact even noted in
July 1991 by chief diplomatic correspondent of the New York Times,
Thomas Friedman. Friedman reported that the West’s hope was for Iraqi
generals to topple Saddam Hussein, “and then Washington would have the
best of all worlds: an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam
Hussein.” In this way, the United States - civilised leader of the
“free world” - hoped to recreate the days when Saddam’s pro-West
“iron-fist... held Iraq together, much to the satisfaction of the
American allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia” – but this time without
disobedient Saddam.
Eric Hoskins, a Canadian doctor and
Coordinator of a Harvard study team on Iraq, observed that the Gulf
War bombing campaign “effectively terminated everything vital to human
survival in Iraq - electricity, water, sewage systems, agriculture,
industry, health care. Food, warehouses, hospitals and markets were
bombed. Power stations were repeatedly attacked until electricity
supplies were at only 4 per cent of prewar levels.” (New Statesman,
17 January 1992) Hoskin’s team of experts further recorded that: “The
children strive to understand what they saw: planes bombing, houses
collapsing, soldiers fighting, blood, mutilated and crushed bodies.
The children fight to forget what they heard: people screaming,
desperate voices, planes, explosions, crying people. They are haunted
by the smell of gunfire, fires and burned flesh.” (The Guardian,
23 October 1991)
III. Cutting off the Life-Line
As part and parcel of this new crusade
to install “an iron-fisted” military dictatorship in Iraq – but this
time without Saddam - comprehensive US/UN sanctions were imposed
against the country, preventing its people from receiving food,
medicine and other essentials of life. The official reason for the
sanctions is to prevent Saddam from obtaining the materials necessary
for mass destruction. The accompanying imposition of UNSCOM - the UN
Weapons Inspection Committee - was also justified on the same
objective. However, included amongst the food and medicine banned
under the sanctions are extraneous objects bearing no relation to the
prevention of weapons of mass destruction, e.g. ping-pong balls,
wheel-barrows, books, pencils, sandals - the list goes on; revealing
that the sanctions have other more sinister motives behind their
imposition. The real objectives of the sanctions were admitted by U.S.
Deputy National Security Adviser Robert M. Gates in May 1991: “Saddam
is discredited and cannot be redeemed. His leadership will never be
accepted by the world community. Therefore, Iraqis will pay the
price while he remains in power. All possible sanctions will be
maintained until he is gone... Any easing of sanctions will be
considered only when there is a new government.” (Los Angeles Times,
9 May 1991)
Accordingly, the overall result has been
the wholesale degradation of Iraqi civilian life. Iraqis are now dying
from starvation, disease, lack of clean water, lack of health-care,
lack of education, lack of electricity, sewage in the streets, among
other huge Western inflicted problems - all of which remain
conveniently under-reported by the mass media. The findings of human
rights organisations that have sent delegations to investigate the
crisis, such as the Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness, admit the
reality of “increasing suffering, death and desperation throughout
Iraq”, as is similarly “confirmed by recent UN reports”. For example,
the World Health Organization (WHO) observed in March 1996: “Since the
onset of sanctions, there has been a six-fold increase in the
mortality rate for children under five and the majority of the
country’s population has been on a semi-starvation diet.” The UN Food
and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported in 1997: “Famine
threatens four million people in sanctions-hit Iraq - one fifth of the
population - following a poor grain harvest... The human situation is
deteriorating. Living conditions are precarious and are at pre-famine
level for at least four million people... The deterioration in
nutritional status of children is reflected in the significant
increase of child mortality, which has risen nearly fivefold since
1990.”
IV. Blood for Oil Equals Genocide
Every month, 8,000 Iraqis die as a
direct result of the sanctions. In total, this has resulted in the
death of nearly 2 million civilians in about a decade, half of whom
have been children. Indeed, Dennis Halliday - former UN humanitarian
coordinator in Iraq and former UN assistant Secretary-General - and
his successor Hans von Sponeck both resigned in protest of the
sanctions, calling them “genocidal” (Cape Cod Times, June
2001). In light of these horrifying facts, the ‘Oil for Food’
resolution that is so lauded within the West, is exposed as a mere
political fraud. As noted in the March 1999 report of the UN Security
Council’s own Humanitarian Panel: “… in order for Iraq to aspire to
social and economic indicators comparable to the ones reached at the
beginning of the decade humanitarian efforts of the kind envisaged
under the ‘oil for food’ system alone would not suffice and massive
investment would be required in a number of key sectors, including
oil, energy, agriculture and sanitation.” The report finds that even
if ‘Oil for Food’ works perfectly, “the humanitarian situation in Iraq
will continue to be a dire one in the absence of a sustained revival
of the Iraqi economy, which in turn cannot be achieved solely through
remedial humanitarian efforts.”
The United Nations Sub-Commission on the
Promotion and Protection of Human Rights further issued a Resolution
in August 2000 outlining the direct link between sanctions and the
Iraqi civilian population’s suffering, and affirmed that it was
“considering any embargo that condemned an innocent people to hunger,
disease, ignorance and even death to be a flagrant violation of the
economic, social and cultural rights and the right to life of the
people concerned and of international law.” The UN human rights body
further referred to the 1949 Geneva Conventions which “prohibit the
starving of civilian populations and the destruction of what is
indispensable to their survival”, and accordingly “decided, without a
vote, to appeal again to the international community, and to the
Security Council in particular, for the embargo provisions affecting
the humanitarian situation of the population of Iraq to be lifted.”
However, Iraq itself has been blamed by
the Western powers for the effects of the sanctions. Saddam has been
accused by both the British and American governments of deliberately
witholding food or medicine from his own people. However, the
accusations, eagerly consumed by elements of the mass media,
contradicts the testimony of independent observers on the ground. For
instance, head of the UN Multidisciplinary Observer Unit Michael Stone
countered the political fabrications in an 18th December
1998 letter to The Independent: “Ministers and senior members
of the Opposition frequently state that the Iraqi leadership have
diverted supplies under this programme. This is a serious error. Some
150 international observers, travelling throughout Iraq, reported to
the United Nations Multidisciplinary Observer Unit, of which I was the
head. At no time was any diversion [of food or medicine supplies]
recorded. I made this clear in our reports to the UN Secretary
General, and he reported in writing to the Security Council
accordingly.”
V. Bombs Away
Nevertheless, in December 1998, the
merciless Western onslaught against Iraq was renewed on the pretext of
Saddam’s alleged failure to comply with UN inspections. As was later
revealed, UN inspections were merely a ruse to allow the West to
gather inside-intelligence on Iraq - the ongoing covert objective
being to overthrow Saddam and install a new pro-West tyrant. Thus,
Saddam’s alleged non-compliance with the UN inspections was merely a
fabrication, publicised by the US-UK partners to legitimise their
planned bombing campaign, which also provided a convenient
justification for the continuation and expansion of the Western
military presence - and thereby military hegemony - in this strategic
Gulf region. Political analyst Sara Flounders of the New York-based
International Action Center, founded and headed by former US
Attorney-General Ramsey Clark, refers to the fact that: “Former UNSCOM
inspector Raymond Zalinskas admitted to National Public Radio that UN
inspectors had already seen all reasonable weapons sites and had
destroyed whatever potential existed. Only by killing all the Iraqi
scientists could the US do more. [It is] all a ruse, used to cloak
Washington’s real aims in the Persian/Arabian Gulf.”
In fact, the report used to justify the
bombing - which had been produced by Executive Chairman of UNSCOM,
Richard Butler - was falsified for the sole purpose of justifying a
new campaign of terror. The New York Post reported in December 1998
that former chief
UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter testified: “What Richard Butler did last
week with the inspections was a set-up. This was designed to generate
a conflict that would justify a bombing.” Ritter added that US
government sources informed him when the inspections resumed that “the
two considerations on the horizon were Ramadan and impeachment.” He
continued: “If you dig around, you’ll find out why Richard Butler
yesterday ran to the phone four times. He was talking to his National
Security adviser. They were telling him to sharpen the language in his
report to justify the bombing.”
The real extent of the ‘humanitarian’
motives behind the US-UK attack can be further gauged from its
results. According to the Boston Globe reporting in December
1998, the Anglo-American air raids
commenced by destroying civilian structures:
flattening an agricultural school, damaging at least a dozen other
schools and hospitals, and knocking out water supplies for 300,000
people in Baghdad, as reported by the UN. This included the
annihilation of a large storehouse in Tikrit, filled with 2,600 tonnes
of rice. A maternity hospital, a teaching hospital and an outpatients’
clinic were also damaged, as well as parts of the Health Ministry. As
for the cutting off of water supplies to 300,000 civilians, this was
accomplished when a cruise missile destroyed one of the main water
systems in Karrada, a Baghdad suburb. Ten schools suffered damage in
Basra, while a secondary school in the Kirkuk in the Kurdish north,
reportedly sustained a direct hit. The systematic targeting of civilian
infrastructure has gone on ever since. For example, by the end of November 1999, as the Holy Month
of Ramadan drew closer, the allies implemented yet another 18 bombing
sorties over three northern provinces of Iraq. This time US bombs hit
a school in Mosul, injuring eight people, including children, as well
as damaging the school building and cars parked in the surrounding
area.
Thus, the expansion of the US/UK
military presence over Iraq via the so-called ‘no-fly-zones’ is
clearly not motivated by humanitarian considerations.
While the US claims to be
‘concerned’ about the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Shiite population
in the south, the fact is that those are the people who are being
killed and maimed on an almost daily basis by US bombs and missiles.
In reality, the US wants absolute control over these two regions
because that is where Iraq’s lucrative oil reserves are located. An internal UN Security Sector report for a
single five-month period records that: “41 per cent of victims of the
bombing were civilians in civilian targets: villages, fishing jetties,
farmland and vast, treeless valleys where sheep graze.” British
journalist John Pilger remarks on one particular incident when: “A
shepherd, his father, his four children and his sheep were killed by a
British or American aircraft, which made two passes at them.” A single
year of this bombing campaign against the Iraqi people has “cost the
British taxpayer £60 million.” (The Guardian, 4 March 2000)
VI. A New War?
In the aftermath of the 11th
September terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, the Bush administration has been gearing up for a new war on
Iraq. Plans exist to input 100,000 US troops into the country, coupled
with a new bombing campaign to topple Saddam and install pro-West
elements of the Iraqi opposition (The Herald, 31 January 2002).
But the US and British governments do not want democracy in the
region. They do not want freedom and prosperity for the Iraqi people.
In fact, they never did, as is obvious from the fact that they were
ultimately behind the installation and arming of Saddam himself. This
is because the freedom and self-determination of the Iraqi people
would mean that they utilise domestic resources as they please – and
that cannot be permitted.
Thus, the Anglo-American partners hope
to re-install a brutal military dictatorship that suppresses the Iraqi
people in order to secure unimpeded Western access to Persian Gulf oil
reserves – albeit absent disobedient Saddam. In other words, they want
a new Saddam-type entity to replace the old one who cannot be redeemed
because he disobeyed Western orders. And like all previous Western
military invasions of Iraq, the results are likely to be extremely
bloody, with thousands of Iraqi civilian fatalities and casualties,
and only more brutality and repression under yet another tyrant
installed by the West.
What can we do about it? We have to do
our best to raise public awareness of the situation in Iraq as a
result of the gruesome combination of both Saddam’s and Western
policy. And we must thereby generate widespread public opposition to a
new military invasion of Iraq, which would only escalate the
humanitarian crisis in that country. In this way, we might be able to
reign in the British and American governments from inflicting yet more
destruction on the Iraqi people.
Mr. Nafeez Ahmed is a
British political analyst and human rights activist based in London. He is
Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and
a
Researcher at the Islamic Human Rights
Commission.
For in-depth discussion of Western
policy in Iraq see "The 1991 Gulf Massacre" and "Bleeding the Gulf." Mr.
Ahmed is the author of the new 9/11 study, The War on Freedom: How
and Why America was Attacked, September 11, 2001.
Buy
the related book (s) now:
Source:
by courtesy & ©
2002
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
by the same author:
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