Paying the price

Ten years ago this week, Operation Desert Storm was launched. Al-Ahram Weekly assesses a decade of suffering and punishment, and finds some victims are better off than others
Paying the price
Ten years of sanctions have only strengthened the regime and destroyed Iraqi society. Isam Al-Khafaji* looks back upon a bitter harvest, and wonders what monster will arise from the ashes of this all-out assault
An Iraqi technician soaked in crude oil
"Saddam Hussein himself showed little sign that he was moved by his people's plight. To him, as to those who were enforcing the sanctions, they were hostages, bargaining chips, whose very suffering was an asset. Thus he would arrange displays of dead children to shame his enemies... But the dead children were real. The tragedy was that in aiming at the hostage taker, the United States and its remaining allies were killing the hostages."
Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, Harper and Collins, 1999
In the post-cold war era, the word "sanctions" became a buzzword, a panacea for world ills. In the 45 years since the establishment of the UN, sanctions were only imposed on two countries: South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (ex-Zimbabwe). From 1990 on, the number of countries targeted by sanctions more than quadrupled. This could have been welcome news, a sign of shift to a world where a set of more humane measures that do not target civilians would replace devastating wars as a means of enforcing compliance with international law.
Because of the precedent Iraq set by being the first country that occupied the full territory of another sovereign member of the United Nations, the sanctions applied to it are the harshest ever imposed on any country in modern history. The harshness of the measures was legitimated by the fact that Iraq had "breached" international security, whereas in all the other cases, the punishment was for "posing a threat" to world peace.
In order to judge the effectiveness of the sanctions, however, we have to weigh them against their objectives, on one hand, and the costs incurred while implementing them, on the other. As is well known, the sanctions were imposed with the following initial aims: forcing withdrawal from Kuwait; ensuring the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including medium- and long-range delivery systems; and cutting off the supplies that had sustained the regime's capability of threatening its neighbours.
While the objectives were fairly well defined, the mechanisms through which sanctions would achieve them were never made clear; they were simply assumed. Because Iraq was only the third country targeted by UN sanctions, and because these sanctions did indeed contribute to the fall of white minority rule in Rhodesia, and to the disintegration of South Africa's Apartheid regime, a vaguely optimistic analogy may have been at work here. Yet the very powers that imposed the sanctions on Iraq implicitly admitted their insufficiency less than six months from the date of their imposition.
The launching of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991 and the devastating air campaign against Iraq amounted to recognition that the sanctions would not force Saddam Hussein to withdraw from Kuwait. The Gulf War came to a halt when the allies succeeded in liberating Kuwait, i.e. in achieving the first objective which the sanctions targeted. But rather than revising the whole rationale of continuing the sanctions, the major powers kept them in place as a means of tightening their grip on the Iraqi regime. The question here is: have the sanctions forced Iraq to dispense with its WMD and weakened Saddam's regime? If so, at what cost?
One way to approach this admittedly complex question is in the simple affirmative, which is what we have been hearing continuously from the US administration: Saddam Hussein is weaker today than ever, UNSCOM has been able to disclose and destroy huge amounts of WMD, and therefore the sanctions should stay in place. As for the cost, outgoing Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was more than frank during a chilling interview with CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl:
Stahl: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima... Is the price worth it?"
Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price worth it."
CBS News, 60 Minutes, 12 May 1996
Unfortunately, such an answer eschews the main issues that lie at the heart of the sanctions regimen. It also makes it appear unnecessary to search for the means of ensuring Iraq's security and the safety of the Middle East, which should be the real objectives behind the destruction of Iraq's WMD. As long as these issues are not addressed, the mechanism that has been applied until now can only be counter-productive, as I will try to show.
First, why haven't the sanctions led to effects similar to those imposed on Africa's two racist regimes? The short answer is that, while the latter were dictatorships, they were accountable to a constituency, albeit a narrow one: namely the whites. The legal channels for expressing dissent and objection and for voting out a government were already in place. In Iraq's case, the problem was (and is) not how to foment dissent. Dissent is already there. But the tyrannical structure of the regime is far from responsive or sensitive to the people's views and aspirations. Thus pinning one's hopes on popular pressure to force the regime to comply with UN resolutions is self-deceptive, unless one is hoping for mass protests in the form of revolution or rebellion. But have the sanctions contributed to making such a prospect possible? In other words, has a decade of sanctions altered the functioning of the Iraqi state and society? Has it led to the weakening of the state's grip on society and improved the chances for a democratic transition in Iraq, as much of the US rhetoric implies? Or has it cemented the unity between the leadership and the people, as the regime's propaganda claims? Such claims require a reexamination of the meaning of "strength" and "weakness," because any weakness on the regime's part must be weighed against that of society.
Sanctions on Iraq have hit ordinary people hard, which is not the case in the other countries targeted (including the two recent cases of Afghanistan and Sudan). The sanctions' comprehensive nature was aggravated by the fact that the country depended almost totally on imports for its population's survival.
The main defendants of the sanctions, the US and the UK, have repeated time and again that the problem is none other than Saddam Hussein, who is wickedly exploiting the plight of his people to gain international sympathy and perpetuate his hold on power. This is partly true: Iraq has been allowed to fulfil its humanitarian needs to whatever degree it can afford. This argument seemed to gain more credibility with the adoption of UNSC Resolutions 698 ("Oil for Food") and, more recently, 1284, which allow Iraq to export as much oil as it can to satisfy civilian needs. But the population's plight has not improved. Impartial observers agree that even Resolution 1284 will not solve the problem. Nor does blaming Saddam (however guilty he may be) absolve the US of responsibility for a policy that is clearly damaging Iraqi society.
Iraq's ability to import, but not to export, has been crippled by an objective reality in today's world: an infinitely wide variety of materials can be used to produce WMD if one is so inclined. Scrutinising and banning certain imports is not only futile, but is tantamount to offsetting any positive steps taken on the export front, as the following facts make clear:
Of almost $25 billion earned by Iraq, less than a quarter became goods in Iraqi markets. Thirty per cent of oil revenues were frozen on goods that were being held, or had not yet been received, while 30 per cent went to war compensation and to cover UN staff costs. Despite statements that restrictions and bureaucratic measures on imports would be eased, this situation is likely to persist as long as double-use material is not defined, and a mechanism for monitoring Saddam's programmes is not perfected.
What is the overall impact of this situation on Iraqi society and politics? A host of reliable surveys clearly demonstrates the impact of sanctions in terms of rising poverty, malnutrition, infant mortality, begging, prostitution and crime. The virtual blockade on legal imports is manipulated to cushion influential sections within Iraq's power structure against any adverse effects, while weakening the rest of Iraqi society. Any traveller to Baghdad can easily verify the availability of practically every commodity. Smuggling is flourishing, mainly via the UAE, Iran and Turkey, and serves to foster a network of powerful interests running from the sons of influential figures (with Saddam's son 'Uday foremost among them, but the group includes many others) to merchants, sanctions profiteers and intermediaries. The lesser beneficiaries include intelligence officers, special members of the Republican Guards, ordinary truck drivers, retail traders, and money changers. The main mechanism through which these powerful strata profit is inflation, which is the logical consequence in an atmosphere of general scarcity of goods and services. That is why, while the sanctions have been a social and economic shock that had to result in inflation, the astronomical rates reached were not inevitable. They have been created, intentionally or not, by the regime and its powerful figures, which have resorted to printing money, spreading rumours to withdraw hard currency from the people's hands, and creating market shortages.
A glance at the deterioration of the exchange value of the Iraqi dinar shows first that the drop was aggravated, but not caused, by the sanctions; that the deterioration began in the 1980s, when the dinar lost some 65 per cent of its value, and spiraled after 1993; it was then checked in 1996, which indicates that fiscal policy is at least partially responsible.
Given the regime's social structure, therefore, the sanctions' main impact was to empower those who were already powerful and to impoverish the victims and potential or actual opponents of the regime. Semi-official Iraqi sources today admit that the sanctions have widened the gap between rich and poor -- naturally without reference to the fact that the politically powerful are the main beneficiaries. The people's suffering is caused by American policy, we are told, and is being exploited by a handful of profiteers. Even though the data are censored and manipulated, serious attempts at measuring the widening gap have revealed alarming results. The Iraqi Society of Economists estimates that in 1993, the top 20 per cent of the population possessed 47 per cent of Iraq's national income, and the bottom 40 per cent only 14 per cent. The lowest five per cent had to make do with 0.8 per cent of total income, while the top five per cent appropriated 21.2 per cent of income. A recently published study concludes:
"The effects of the sanctions, combined with government policies, [have] greatly increased the divide between the wealthy and powerful, those whom Eric Rouleau has described as the 'nomenklatura,' who have profited from the crisis, and the majority of the population who struggle to maintain themselves at or above subsistence."
But poverty and huge income differentials alone do not account for the disintegration of the Iraqi social fabric. Many Third World societies suffer from levels of poverty and income differentials that are worse than today's Iraq, yet we cannot characterise them as disintegrating. We have to link these phenomena with atomisation and rentierism, for atomisation and dependence on the state have paralysed Iraqi society under the sanctions and given the central state even more power vis-à-vis society. The sweeping privatisation programme of 1987, and the pressures of the war against Iran, had already introduced new trends in Iraq: poverty, begging, crimes, the expansion of the informal sector, were once again evident. The sanctions reinforced these trends exponentially, but did not create them. Still, rather than blaming the state for their worsening conditions, people are encouraged to blame the US and the West in general. But most importantly, a weakened state has been using the rationing card as a means of imposing silence or acquiescence on the populace.
An efficient programme for the distribution of basic goods at nominal prices has been in force since 1990. Run through a centrally computerised distribution system that channels basics to households via local trading agents, this programme has been another powerful means of controlling people's geographic mobility, and enforcing government relocation programmes targeting the Kurds and those who emigrate to Baghdad in search of work opportunities. In exchange for food and a minimum of security, people are preserving a façade of silence, or at least are not venturing into collective oppositional action. Although symbolic acts of protest and signs of hatred towards the regime are rampant, they tend to take cynical forms and are not explicitly political. Mocking the state and the "leader," as well as individual signs of disobedience in the form of evasion and resistance, are to be found everywhere. The state, aware of these troubling signs, shows a degree of tolerance for society's relative de facto autonomy. A pro-sanctions stance might take these developments as substantiating the view that Saddam's regime has indeed grown weaker. While this may be true, it is equally true that society has been weakened more, and more rapidly, than the state. While an atomised and sanctions-exhausted population spends the bulk of its time chasing bread, an inefficient administrative apparatus has been functioning at lower cost -- a sign of the Iraqi state's flexibility and ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
This flexibility, it must be stressed, has not been the product of a deliberate state policy. Administrations, just like individuals and groups, develop survival strategies under pressure. In the case of the Iraqi state, such strategies have taken different forms. For one thing, the collapse of civil servants' incomes has led to widespread absenteeism and desertion. The result has been a less costly administration, characterised by a high level of feminisation of the state civil service.
Bribery and corruption, tolerated despite all the rhetorical threats of Saddam Hussein and his aides, have also become means of subsidising state activity. Public service today is sold to citizens at negotiated prices. Furthermore, under the pretext of resisting sanctions, the Revolutionary Command Council has introduced self-financing even to such institutions as state hospitals and clinics, secondary schools, and institutions providing basic services to the population. Rather than showing symptoms of "Somalia syndrome," therefore, a highly centralised state apparatus on which the majority of the population depends did show signs of weakness, but was able to adapt to the new circumstances. When it proved impossible for the central coercive, judicial or other agencies to perform their activities, "state-appointed" sheikhs were revived, awarded material privileges, and assigned roles as intermediaries or arbiters in running the affairs of their "subjects." Urban society, in Baghdad especially, does not harbour any genuine loyalty to the sheikhs, but uses them to circumvent hardship under the sanctions and to provide a measure of protection against the arbitrariness of state agencies. They are nonetheless seen as paid agents of the state. In the meantime, these sheikhs are cynically playing the old balancing game between their "constituencies" and the state. They can be an additional coercive agency against the populace whenever the state requires it. But from the point of view of the political centre, reviving such institutions can be a risky venture, because the Baathist regime requires a monolithic society that glorifies the state and its sole leader.
Analysts and observers have shown, correctly, that Iraqi society has been traumatised by the sanctions, while the power bloc is still able to reap tremendous wealth through various channels. But even in political, cultural and moral terms, the sanctions have hit Iraqi society much harder than the regime. Despite (or perhaps because of) almost two decades of warfare, rebellions, attempted coups, large-scale waves of violent opposition and desertion, not to mention the collapse of the country's infrastructure and the population's standard of living, the Iraqi regime has shown a surprising capability for survival and stability.
Indeed, in 1991 very few would have imagined that almost a decade later the opposition in exile would still be discussing the overthrow of a regime that has been in power for 32 years despite all the misery and pain that it has inflicted, and continues to inflict, on the people and the region. Given that the contemporary Iraqi state is only eight decades old, 30 years of rule by any one regime should be an outstanding record, and may offer an opportunity to rethink the efficacy of sanctions as a means of punishing it.
The legacy of the sanctions is only showing now. It does not seem overly pessimistic to speak of an "embargo generation" that will never recover from the effects of material deprivation, isolation from the outside world, and a sense of being not only neglected and forgotten by the international community, but also targeted by that community as an enemy. The tragedy lies in the fact that even if the embargo is lifted tomorrow, there are many unsatisfied needs that will never be compensated by a higher flow of income and goods. Rising illiteracy rates, school-leavers, and dead and severely malnourished children, are only a few examples of non-recoverable losses. Even where losses can be recovered, the rescue operation will take far greater resources now than it would have only a few years ago, as the case of damaged equipment shows.
Even when the Baath system enjoyed the friendship of both camps in the Cold War, as well as the support of most Arab countries, it tried to surround itself with the aura of the lonely yet courageous fighter, sacrificing itself in order to defend some lofty national cause. This type of aggressive ideology is well suited to dealing with isolation. Official Iraqi propaganda portrayed the humiliating defeat of the Gulf War as a victory, on the grounds that facing the armies of 30 countries led by the US was a triumph in itself. Now, the sanctions are being depicted as another battle that Iraq has to wage in defence of Baathist principles. The US has identified the Iraqi people, who on many occasions have shown their overwhelming opposition to the regime, with their jailer; the message the world is sending is that the Iraqi people are being punished for Saddam's violations of international law, thus creating the false impression that the dictator is acting under mandate from the people. That message suits Saddam perfectly.
An embargo generation that has been through the untold suffering of war, tyranny and sanctions has developed in addition a corrupt and impoverished political culture under three decades of Baathist rule. The combination of all these volatile elements is likely to produce a revanchist attitude even in the absence of Saddam's regime. If the comparison with Germany still holds, one might use the Versailles complex as a good precedent. Post-World War I Germany saw others squeezing it for compensation, reparations and territory; the people were left to suffer under the Weimar Republic, which the world thought was a peaceful democratic system that would last forever.
While no one denies that Saddam's regime will always pose a threat to its people, as well as to the region, sanctions cannot provide an adequate mechanism to enforce UN resolutions on the regime. We are living in a world where any maniac can manufacture biological or chemical weapons. To search every inch in a country almost as big as France in search of WMD is a futile and ridiculous exercise. Moreover, whether or not Iraq still possesses WMD, it is easy to ascertain that it no longer possesses the means of delivering them.
Isolating Saddam's regime is necessary, but isolating and punishing the Iraqi people can have far-reaching and dangerous consequences. And the sanctions are doing exactly that. What other options do we have to pressure the regime? The impasse of US policy lies in the fact that it has blindly put its faith in the panacea of sanctions. The short-term alternative to sanctions can be a strategy of deterrence. An internationally approved set of principles can draw red lines for Iraq, define actions that would be considered threatening to its neighbours or its people. But such a strategy must in the meantime address Iraq's security concerns. The world must commit itself to defending Iraq's sovereignty and integrity. As for the punishment of the figures who have committed genocide or war crimes, this should be left to the Iraqi people, who have suffered from these crimes.
Still, these are short-term measures that cannot address the "Iraqi question" adequately unless they are integrated within a wider and more constructive vision of this country's future. It is here that the curse of Iraq's geography returns once more. For almost its entire post-World War II history, Iraq's achievements or setbacks have been followed by the major powers, its weaker neighbours and certainly Israel in terms of purely regional or international politics. Until the 1958 revolution, decisions on the level of Iraqi oil production were taken with an eye to balancing, punishing, or checking any nationalist tide in Iran. In addition, Iraq was a component of the Cold War strategy through the Baghdad Pact. Until the victory of Iran's revolution, the major powers cared about Iraq's development only insofar as it affected the balance of power between the Arabs and Israel. In the 1980s, the Gulf and the US needed Iraq to shake at the Iranian revolution. No one posed the simple question: how can Iraq "check the Iranian threat," while posing no threat to tiny Kuwait? This question is important, because it shows that Iraq's place in the region should not be thought of only in terms of its balancing role, but in terms of what brings stability and prosperity to its people. These are not contradictory objectives, if we believe that a prosperous and democratic society is less tempted to go to war.
Iraq's regimes have not been innocent victims or pawns. But the way in which the world helped (or withheld help) has contributed to inflating the megalomania of leaders who fancied a regional role, or to pushing them to take a defensive position. In all this, the concerns of Iraqis were never an issue to be reckoned with. As long as Iraq is taken only as a regional player, not as a society of human beings with dreams and aspirations, any path that Iraqis will choose for their future development will be viewed with suspicion or fear by this or that power. Reorienting Iraq's choices towards the Fertile Crescent (i.e., Syria, Lebanon and Jordan) will not be viewed as an economically and culturally sound project, but as "destabilising" the regional balance of power.
The issue is no longer whether it is the regime or the people that has been weakened by the sanctions. The message is: Iraq has been weakened. And that is seen as fair as long as it means that Iraq will pose no threat to Israel or its southern neighbours.
To this end, Madeleine Albright believes, the price is right.
* The writer is an Iraqi scholar at the Centre for International Political Economy, University of Amsterdam. This article is extracted from "Not Quite an Arab Prussia: Revisiting Some Myths on Iraqi Exceptionalism," a paper presented at the Conference on the Future of Iraq, Nicosia, 15-18 July 2000.
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The past, and future, of Iraq
Battling the embargo 23 - 29 November 2000
Down-loading death 3 - 9 August 2000
Hard to believe 3 - 9 August 2000
Remembering the occupation 3 - 9 August 2000
Death for oil 13 - 19 July 2000
Black anniversary 20 - 26 January 2000
Summit from the ashes 14 - 20 January 1999
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