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May
8, 2003
Julie
Hilden
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Mickey
Z.
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May
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May
9, 2003
The Post-War
Iraq Paradox
Don't Lift the
Sanctions Yet!
by RAHUL MAHAJAN
After five years spent working to end the sanctions
on Iraq, I find myself in an odd position. I'm opposed to the
current U.S. plans to end the sanctions.
The new situation is fascinating. For
a dozen years, every time we in the anti-sanctions movement talked
about the suffering caused by the sanctions (well over 500,000
children under the age of five dead and a society in ruins),
the constant refrain from the Bush administration, the Clinton
administration, and the Bush administration -- was that the suffering
was not caused by sanctions but by the regime. Once the regime
is destroyed, miraculously, the Bush administration realizes
overnight that sanctions were actually harmful and that it's
necessary to remove that burden from the Iraqi people in order
to provide humanitarian aid and reconstruction.
Adding to the confusion, the two countries
on the Security Council previously most against continuation
of the sanctions, France and Russia, did an about-face and opposed
the U.S. plans. Both (especially Russia) have insisted that sanctions
cannot be lifted until U.N. weapons inspectors certify that Iraq
is disarmed of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is true
even though Vladimir Putin of Russia openly mocked Tony Blair
about the dramatically unconfirmed claims by "coalition"
members that Iraq possessed WMD that posed a threat to the world.
Did this administration, which tried
to keep Iraqi infants from being vaccinated for diphtheria and
limited imports of streptomycin into the country, see a blinding
light on the road to Baghdad? And did other countries suddenly
decide that the deaths of Iraqi children was, as Madeleine Albright
put it in an interview in 1996, a price worth paying and this
time merely in order to uphold a trivial legalistic argument?
Actually, it's not so confusing. The
United States has moved to consolidate control over Iraq. The
talks being held by selected members of the "Iraqi opposition"
under the control of the U.S. military are not intended to create
an independent government, but rather one which is tightly controlled
by the United States just as in Afghanistan. As in Afghanistan,
the meetings are excluding entire segments of the political spectrum.
They are being done with express disregard of calls across that
spectrum for meetings to be held under neutral U.N. auspices
rather than under those of an occupying power with clear plans
for increased regional domination.
Those plans have become clear as well.
The Bush administration wants to set up permanent military bases
in Iraq, making it the main Middle East staging area for U.S.
"force projection." The massive political leverage
given by this presence will be used as a club against Iran and
Syria and also to force the Palestinians to acquiesce to the
Israeli occupation through the latest "peace plan."
The administration also wants not only to open up future Iraqi
exploration to foreign corporations (with U.S. and maybe British
corporations presumably favored) but to privatize, at least in
part, the state oil companies and their currently producing wells.
All of these things can be obtained through
the U.S. military presence and the creation of what will essentially
be an Iraqi puppet government. However, some problems are the
kind that can't be solved by bombs. Existing U.N. resolutions
require Security Council approval for Iraqi oil sales and for
disbursement of oil money to pay for other goods. Other countries
may be leery of buying Iraqi oil without some clear understanding
that what they're doing is legal, so the United States cannot
simply declare those resolutions void by fiat, the way it declared
war on Iraq.
The draft resolution being currently
circulated would give the United States very open, explicit control
over Iraq's oil industry and the money derived therefrom. Then,
instead of being forced to disburse USAID funds to corporations
like Bechtel that are closely tied to current and past administration
figures in closed bidding processes with no foreign corporations
allowed, the United States will be able to use Iraq's money to
pay off mostly American corporations. In the process, it will
try to escape the legal obligation it shares with the United
Kingdom: since they committed an illegal aggressive war (with
no Security Council authorization) against Iraq, they are financially
responsible for the reconstruction. Iraq should not have to pay
for its own reconstruction, especially since for years to come
its oil revenues will be barely enough to meet the basic needs
of its people.
This fundamental violation of the rights
of the Iraqi people is being done in the name of the immediate
crisis faced. Yet the way that the sanctions work is not the
way they used to. Most imports are automatically approved without
any requirement for deliberation by the Sanctions Committee.
Furthermore, the biggest bureaucratic delays were created by
deliberate U.S. understaffing, so that there were never enough
people to review all the proposed contracts (see Joy Gordon's
article "Cool War: Economic Sanctions as a Weapon of Mass
Destruction, Harper's, November 2002). Finally, all members of
the Security Council have indicated willingness to cooperate
in expediting the release of all goods required for immediate
needs. In the long run, the sanctions must be lifted because
they impose a highly inefficient foreign control of the Iraqi
economy, causing the collapse of local economic activity and
requiring money that should be spent internally to be spent on
foreign corporations; in the short run, there is no compelling
reason to lift them in the absence of a legitimate Iraqi government
that has the right to make choices about how Iraq's oil wealth
is to be used for the benefit of the Iraqi people, not for U.S.
corporate boondoggles and plans for military-based political
domination.
France and Russia are opposing this move
(France rather weakly), not because of any genuine concern about
WMD, but for two reasons. First, the venal one: they don't want
to be completely shut out of any lucrative postwar contracts
and certainly want to hang on to oil concession deals signed
with the previous Iraqi regime. Second, a reason that activists
in the United States and elsewhere should support fully: they
don't want to retroactively legitimize U.S. aggression and thus
contribute further to its more and more openly imperial role
in the world.
In fact, overt subordination of the United
Nations to the United States is a central part of the Bush administration
agenda. It has served notice that the U.N. has no role in anything
"important" not in weapons inspections, in the Iraqi
political process, in major reconstruction decisions, nor in
peacekeeping (where a multinational "coalition of the willing"
is being assembled). Instead, as George Bush said, the "vital
role" of the U.N. is easily defined: "That means food.
That means medicine. That means aid." Or, as Richard Perle
said even more openly, in an op-ed shortly after the war began
titled "Thank God for the death of the U.N.," "The
'good works' part will survive, the low-risk peacekeeping bureaucracies
will remain, the chatterbox on the Hudson will continue to bleat."
No longer content with a system where nominally the U.N. is the
ultimate authority but the United States dominates it by coercion
and bribery, the Bush administration wants explicit recognition
that the U.N. should play only the roles allowed to it by the
United States.
An example from history helps to illuminate
the fundamental principle regarding the sanctions. When Iraq
invaded Kuwait in August 1990, one of the first things it did
was try to set up a puppet regime composed of Kuwaitis to rule
the country as a satellite of Iraq. It would actually have withdrawn
most of its army had that regime gotten any international recognition.
Instead, the sanctions that were levied at U.S. insistence embargoed
not only Iraq's oil sales but Kuwait's. Kuwaiti oil was not to
be sold so that an illegitimate regime could not plunder Kuwait's
oil wealth for the benefit of the Iraqi government. Those sanctions
were indefensible for reasons that don't apply today, including
the almost complete termination of food imports into Iraq (although
food was technically allowed under UN Security Council Resolution
666, in practice virtually none got in). The principle, however,
was sound.
Today, the United States is willing to
(partially) withdraw after it installs its own puppet regime
(one that will presumably have more independence than the one
Iraq tried to install, but will still be subservient to U.S.
dictates). It also wants to plunder Iraq's oil wealth for its
own political purposes and for the benefit of U.S. corporations.
This is reason enough to keep the sanctions on until there is
a legitimate Iraqi government. This can only happen if U.S. and
other "coalition" forces withdraw, there is a multinational
U.N. peacekeeping force with no participation from any of the
aggressor nations, and the Iraqis are given a genuine chance
to exercise their right to self-determination.
Rahul Mahajan
is a member of the Nowar
Collective. His newest book, "Full
Spectrum Dominance: U.S. Power in Iraq and Beyond" will
be out in June 2003. His articles are collected at http://www.rahulmahajan.com
He can be reached at rahul@tao.ca
Yesterday's
Features
Julie
Hilden
When It's a Crime to Visit Your Son
Mickey
Z.
Partisan Protests?
Mark
Zepezauer
Evil is as Evil Does
David Lindorff
The Coming Senior Revolution
Abu
Spinoza
The Detention of Dr. Huda Ammash
Ben
Tripp
The Other "F" Word
Norman
Madarasz
God in the Service of the Security
State: a Dispatch from Brazil
Stew Albert
Pushovers
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 5/08
Website
of the Day
Department of Sexual Security
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