IRAQ: No to 'smart' sanctions

IRAQ: No to 'smart' sanctions against Iraq

US Secretary of State Colin Powell, while in Syria on February 26,
formally announced that the United States favours "refocusing" sanctions
against Iraq so that they impact less on ordinary Iraqis and more on Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein and his military. The brutal US-enforced United Nations'
sanctions have resulted in the deaths of at least 1.5 million Iraqis in
the last 10 years for want of medicine, food and clean water.

However, the unspecified "smart" sanctions being floated by Powell during
his current tour of US allies in the Middle East will do nothing to relieve
the misery of the people of Iraq.

What has caused Washington's sudden "reexamination" of its cruel sanctions
regime is not the immense human suffering and death that it has created
but the fact that Middle Eastern and many European governments are increasingly
disregarding the sanctions.

In the Middle East, populations in country after country are revolted
by the carnage that the sanctions have caused and are demanding that they
be lifted. Ordinary Arabs are growing increasingly angry at their governments'
cooperation with the US-British enforcement of the sanctions, as well as
the almost daily bombing raids on their neighbour.

The people of the Middle East are outraged at the double standards of
the imperialist US and British governments. Washington and London have
attempted to bomb and starve Iraq back to the stone-age because they claim
that Hussein refuses to abide by UN Security Council resolutions. At the
same time, Washington openly sides with Israel as it wages war on the Palestinian
people whose land was invaded and continues to be illegally occupied by
Israel in violation of many Security Council resolutions.

This hypocrisy could not have been more stark on February 16 when, at
the same time as British and US warplanes were raining bombs on Baghdad,
US and Israeli troops were conducting joint military exercises in Israel.

In Europe too, popular opinion is demanding that sanctions be lifted.
A majority of the UN Security Council's permanent members — France, Russia
and China — support the immediate lifting of sanctions; only Washington's
and London's veto power prevents this taking place. Of course, commercial
considerations also loom large for these capitalist governments.

Talk of "smart sanctions" is a clever ruse behind which the US hopes
it can salvage its discredited and unpopular sanctions regime and, more
importantly, relieve the growing pressure of the Arab masses on its client
states in the region.

While Powell stated on February 26 that some of the most outrageous
items on the list of imports banned for their supposed dual military and
civilian uses may be allowed — like water pumps for village wells and
refrigerated trucks to transport milk — he made it clear that the remaining
sanctions would be even more tightly controlled. The vast majority of "dual
use" imports would remain banned. He even hinted that under the "refocused"
sanctions, the UN would move to penalise states that breached them.

The deprivations of the Iraqi people have been caused not only by UN
bans that are so absolute that they prevent the import of almost anything
that has an industrial purpose — because US officials claim they may have
"dual use" — but also by the deliberate delay of allowable imports by
the US officials on the UN committee that approves them. As of February,
billions of dollars worth of vital imports needed for medical treatment,
civilian transportation, power generation, sewage treatment and the oil
industry were awaiting approval by the US. This is bound to continue under
"smart" sanctions.

The February 20 British Guardian — reporting on discussions between
US and British officials that agreed on the concept of new age, sensitive
sanctions — let the truth slip: "some officials suggested that the review
was designed primarily to improve perceptions of allied policy toward Iraq."

Sniffing the breeze, Labor's foreign affairs spokesperson Laurie Brereton
on February 21 rushed to issue a press release (obviously cribbed straight
from that morning's news reports) praising Washington's and London's "smart
sanctions" before the Coalition could do so. Clearly, a federal Labor government
will unquestioningly endorse Washington's genocidal policies in the Middle
East.

As long as any sanctions are in place against Iraq, it will be the children,
the sick and the elderly that will continue to bear the brunt of Washington's
increasingly unilateral vendetta against Hussein.

From GLW issue 439