“The US-Iraqi conflict soap-opera is becoming a
civilizational tragedy. The cock-fight between Tariq Aziz
and Richard Butler is pathetic beyond words. The easy
argument, held by Washington and its allies and uncritically
promoted in leading media, is that Iraq must be punished for
suspending cooperation with UNSCOM albeit it continues it
with IAEA. But this whole inspection enterprise is founded
on logical contradictions, and it is intellectually and
ethically flawed. After years of inspection and sanctions,
no solution is in sight, because there can be no solution
down THIS road. The West never thought of how to end this
conflict, and without a sanctions lifting plan, it’s bound
to produce more violence and create ever more hate against
the Western world,” states Dr. Jan Oberg, director of
TFF.
1) UNSCOM searches not only for weapons of mass
destruction but for the capacity to manufacture them. It
looks for agents, components, research, development and
manufacturing of materials necessary to produce the agents.
Potentially every corner of the Iraqi society can be
inspected as alleged chemical and biological weapons (CBW)
sites are (also) civilian sites such as breweries,
hospitals, fertilizer and pesticide plants, pharmaceutical
industries, laboratories etc. It will always be debatable
what is produced for civilian and for military purposes – if
the distinction can be made.
2) It will NEVER be possible for UNSCOM to declare
that there is not a single gram of material left in Iraq
that can be used for (later) production of mass destructive
weapons. Biological substances in particular can be hidden
in small quantities on the ground, moved around constantly
or deposited underground. Thus there is an argument for
permanent inspection, motivated by ‘assumptions’,
‘suspicion’, ‘indications’ or ‘reasons to believe’ that some
Iraqis hide something somewhere. Furthermore, whatever Iraq
wants to hide, it can hide somewhere abroad.
3) Even if we imagine that UNSCOM would one day
declare Iraq free of all weapons, materials and capacities
and even if this could be empirically verified as true, Iraq
could – and most likely would – make a decision to start
from scratch again. Expert knowledge can not be destroyed by
inspectors.
4) Thus, neither the UN nor the US can state
clearly what the exact criteria are for Iraq to get the
sanctions lifted. On October 30, the UN Security Council
again failed to mention that sanctions could be negotiated
or partially lifted, for instance in proportion to
compliance and verification. No positive incentive, as seen
by the Iraqis, exists. UNSC resolution 687 has so many
demands, also beyond Articles 8 to 13, that something could
always be brought up to prevent the lifting of
sanctions.
5) According to UN reports, the sanctions have
directly and indirectly already killed more than 1 million
Iraqi citizens, while the Iraqi elite continues to live in
luxury; WHO estimates that 250 to 300 people die per day in
1998. No aim, not even the wish to prevent proliferation of
of nuclear and other mass destructive weapons, can justify
this. Rather, given the social and political structure of
the conflict, sanctions has become a mass destructive,
genocidal weapon over these eight years.
6) The five permanent members of the UN Security
Council are nuclear weapons states and have no intentions to
become nuclear-free. The United States alone has some 10,000
intact warheads that will be unaffected by START I and
II which prescribe only the destruction of launchers, not
warheads. As long as this is so, there will ALWAYS be
nuclear ‘have-nots’ who will try to join the club.
7) Iraq has neither tested nor used nuclear
weapons. The United States has used and numerous times
threatened the use of nuclear weapons since 1945. India and
Pakistan went nuclear in May and Israel is known to have all
it takes to go nuclear. India and Pakistan was punished by
economic sanctions, but President Clinton has now decided to
lift most of them already, allegedly because Pakistan faced
a financial collapse and would consequently be unable to pay
its international debt. Not only will Pakistan obtain new
loans and a debt restructuring agreement with IMF, Pentagon
will also resume military training programs in both
countries. So much for the principle of equal treatment of
threshold and de facto nuclear countries by the UN and
Washington.
8) What triggered off the whole crisis was Iraq’s
aggression against Kuwait. Between 1945 and that event, some
forty cases of aggression had taken place, most of them
without being brought before the Security Council, including
Saddam Hussein’s popular invasion of Ayatollah Khomeini’s
Iran. The United States a few months ago committed a
unilateral act of aggression by sending some 70 cruise
missiles against Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan allegedly
to defeat terrorists who were one supported by CIA. It
defended the act by reference to Article 51 in the
UN Charter about the right to self-defence. It also
leads the planning of an attack against Yugoslavia in
support of militant Kosovo-Albanian secessionism. And Turkey
regularly invades Iraqi territory with impunity.
9) The United States and its allies have so far
been conspicuously unable to explain convincingly their
goals and priorities. Neither do they seem willing to
identified where these goals may conflict or undermine each
other: Does this whole enterprise aim to prevent Iraq
forever from acquiring mass destructive weapons? Or just
delay that event? If so, why only Iraq? Is the real purpose
to topple Saddam Hussein and install some other leadership?
To which extent is the Iraqi policies a consequence of US
‘management’ of the Israeli-Palestine-Arab conflict – and
how does activities against Iraq vary with the Middle East
‘peace’ process? Is the free flow of oil, rather, the
real issue? Is this a moral crusade against a ‘rogue’ state,
an ‘evil regime’? A variation on the theme of
Christianity versus Islam? Is it part of what George Bush at
the time called the new world order?
10) Ambassador Butler and others repeatedly
refer to Security Council resolutions as “law” and that Iraq
must keep what it has promised. However, Security Council
members have repeatedly chosen not to abide by these laws or
enforce them with friends when they saw fit. Furthermore, if
one studies Resolution 687 of April 3, 1991, it can
certainly be argued that it was formulated, in the heat of
the moment, more to punish Iraq by stockpiling demands and
dictates than to serve as a blueprint for fair cooperation
that could lead, in the future, to Iraq’s ‘rehabilitation’
in the eyes of the world.
Says Jan Oberg: “Saddam Hussein is a murderous
tyrant. But this can not forever be used as cover-up for
fundamental, logical inconsistencies, lack of policy and for
so many double standards. They are
THE STUFF OUR BOMB THREATS ARE MADE OF.
They give the Iraqi government surprisingly many points in
the ‘debate’. And bombing a military dwarf who can’t
threaten yourself is hardly a sign of statesmanship or
wisdom. It’s intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
Just think of any young Iraqi boy or girl at the age of
15 or 20 today. What will they have learnt about the United
States and the West? Some of their relatives have suffered
or died, they themselves have been victims of sanctions –
and Iraqi propaganda – for a good half of their lives. Their
wish to become part of the ‘modern world’ has turned into
hate, into potential future terrorism. The West is producing
enemies and “clashes of civilisations” for the future. When
Saddam Hussein, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are all gone,
the rest of us will have to live with the consequences of
their deeds. Bombings will not provide the West with a
better policy. It will not make Saddam Hussein or the Iraqi
people come our way. Psychology and the world just don’t
work that way. And the bombing threat is not much of a
deterrent to a state that has been virtually disarmed and in
which sanctions kill 300 civilians per day – something
bombings hopefully will not do.
The profound mistake since 1991 has been to see
inspection as a one-way street. The Iraqis saw it as
punishment, as dictates. But inspection requires
cooperation, mutual trust. The Iraqis must be convinced that
we are only there to halt the proliferation of mass
destructive weapons AND that we do likewise with any
threshold state while striving to become nuclear-free
ourselves. But they cannot possible trust the US/West on
that. The West, on its side, must be able to trust that the
Iraqis do not cheat. We have no certainty of that and,
without changing our policy, it is unlikely that we ever
will.
What is needed now is a plan that lifts some of the
sanctions as a reward for what Iraq has complied with up
till now and which defines the steps for lifting the rest.
Iraq needs to trust the West AND the West is dependent on
trusting Iraq. That’s where conflict-resolution begins. And
from there we can hope to achieve reconciliation between all
the parties in the future,” concludes Jan Oberg.
