Why the Security Council Will Never Lift the Sanctions on Iraq
by
Jan Oberg and Christian Harleman
Dissident Voice
March 14, 2003
When,
in 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, the Security Council decided about
inspections and sanctions it must have suffered from some kind of hubris. Iraq
should be punished for the invasion of Kuwait - and it did invade and it was
foolish and illegal to do so. Sanctions should put pressure on the regime and,
it was hoped, turn the people against the leadership. Hard as the sanctions
were, they were designed to last for a short time, the time it was assumed to
take to find and disarm Iraq's weapons of mass-destruction.
The winners of the war
dictated the conditions. Iraq, the loser, had to obey unconditionally. Lifting
the sanctions was made dependent upon the delivery of an inspection report to
the Security Council that would state that all that could be used in the
production of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons had been found and
destroyed and there was nothing left anywhere in Iraq.
Here is the trap produced by
the victors' hubris. This has lead to the sanctions being our moral problem; we
dealt with that previously. The major players seemingly were so triumphant
and self-assured about the rightness and the justice of their cause - the
punishment of Iraq - that they didn't even think of asking a few practical and
philosophical questions such as these:
1. Will it at all be
possible for inspectors to state that no amount of a substance pertaining to
weapons of mass-destruction exists in a country that covers about half a
million square kilometres and is not exactly eager to reveal everything about
its military?
2. Is it wise to make the
lifting of the sanctions conditional upon such a declaration by inspectors,
i.e. to use sanctions as leverage for the disarmament process?
3. What if the inspection
process takes a much longer time and inspectors will still be there in, say,
2003? If we want 100% compliance and a guarantee that Iraq is 100% clean, that
will take time. Sanctions are known to have negative effects on citizens. So,
isn't it a risk that, if we make slow progress, we will be made morally
responsible for the increasingly destructive humanitarian consequences?
Today it is easy to see that
the answers to these questions are no, no and yes.
To comb half a million
square kilometres for a few kilos of some chemical or biological substances is
quite a task. There is sand; there are stones, rivers, mountains and buildings
of all kinds. The Iraqis know how to drill deep down for oil; they could drill
a hole, hide something at the bottom and cover the hole. Or they could place
the stuff outside Iraq, in another country or on boats in international waters.
Alternatively, imagine that
every kilo and gram was actually found and destroyed - then what? Given that
the knowledge of how to produce these materials remains with thousands of Iraqi
scientists, engineers, assistants, workers and others, it would probably not
take long before they could re-introduce these substances or divert them from
civilian production facilities and laboratories. If so, would we re-introduce
sanctions?
We seem to be so afraid to
self-critically recognise that we, i.e. the Security Council and then most
governments and media, took for granted that all this would be simple and
quick. In December 1995, some quick-fix U.S. diplomats also put together the
Dayton Accords for Bosnia wishfully thinking that it would all be implemented
in 12 months; it still won't work.
Another not-so-easy problem
is this: while Iraq is obliged to disarm its weapons of mass-destruction, it
has a sovereign right to self-defence (UN Charter Article 51) and security by
means of a conventional military. Security Council resolutions emphasise that
the country's sovereignty and integrity shall be respected during the
inspection process.
But that is not how the
Iraqis can see it. Inspectors go to any place with only a few minutes notice.
Any place! Require to see everything, collect anything, ask any question,
interview anyone they find interesting. This goes for purely civilian sites and
sites of conventional defence; and that's in a country that is threatened by
history's strongest military power who also reserves the "right" to,
if necessary, use nuclear weapons on Iraq.
When Iraq has had the
slightest dissenting opinion about reasonable inspection versus intrusive,
intelligence collecting inspections, if they insist on their sovereignty as a
member of the United Nations, they are told that they'll be bombed because they
don't co-operate, because they are not in compliance with our ultimatums. Thus,
the philosophically nonsensical statement made time and again that Saddam is
the one who decides whether there will be a war.
Finally, there is the
problem of burden of proof. The inspection regime is so constructed that anyone
can state that he or she believes that Iraq possesses something it should not
possess. The US time and again practises the method of stating that it knows
that Iraq is hiding something that the inspectors have not and cannot find and
the Iraqis say they don't have. Remember the palace site issue? In that case
Iraq could prove that there was nothing there by opening them up to inspection.
But the philosophical question remains why the international community forced
Iraq to unilaterally prove that it had not violated the rules of the game, that
it was not guilty. In a constitutional state and in international, lawful
behaviour, the burden of proof is normally on the side of the council for the
prosecution.
Most things can be seen from
more than one angle. This is not only a matter of right and wrong, it is also a
matter of psychology: perceptions, feelings of pride, honour, sense of being
ignored and humiliated. And it is, ultimately, about trust. Why?
Because the inspection
mission is mission impossible. No inspection team will be able to
guarantee that every kilo of prohibited substances in Iraq have been found; it
could be disproved the next day. Even if it were proved, the substances and
weapons may come back, sooner or later. And solving the categorisation problems
mentioned above (civilian, conventional and mass destructive) will invariably
cause conflict between the parties - with good arguments (and not-so-clean
motives) on both sides.
These essential issues have
never been seriously discussed. Given that nobody seems to have thought them
through carefully at an early stage, the only answer has been that Saddam is a
criminal, a cheater, a liar, a man playing for time, etc. It was easier to
blame than to think - not to speak about being self-critical. (There were
enough negative lessons about sanctions that could have been used by the
Security Council in its deliberations back in 1991).
The best we can hope for is
an inspection report that will, one day, state that "there are reasons to
believe" that the Iraqis have give up 95, 96, 97, 98, or even 99 per cent
of their physically identifiable mass-destructive weapons and materials for
them. Some countries would be satisfied with that and insist that the sanctions
be lifted. Some, among them the United States, would not. The argument would be
something to the effect that "we can't trust that guy to even have 1 per
cent left. We can't let him or, later, his son acquire them after we have
lifted the sanctions. No, keep up the pressure and get a new regime we can
trust."
If the inspections regime
aims at 100 per cent certified disarmament of Iraq's mass-destructive weapons
and potential, the inspection will remain an absurd theatre. Waiting to lift
the sanctions will be like waiting for Godot. It's a meaningless "mission
impossible".
If it aims at less than 100
per cent, it must build on trust to compensate for the fact that there won't be
100 per cent guarantees by anybody. That trust is simply not there after 12
years of inspections, sanctions, quarrelling, threatening, mistrust, bombing
and mutual hate.
These are some of the more
philosophical reasons why we think the UN SC will never lift the sanctions.
Such a decision depends on 100 per cent certified disarmament and that will
never be stated on paper.
This inspection-sanctions
link was never of Saddam Hussein's making; he can't be blamed for the foggy
thinking it is based upon. The UN SC thoughtlessly and without vision, decided
this in a mood of triumphalism, victor's hubris and out of a wish, one must
assume, to humiliate the President of Iraq that they hated.
We have described
the results of this policy in before, backed up with facts from the UN on
the ground. It was hardly intentional, but the UN Security Council and the
international community have caused a genocide affecting one-half to one
million innocent Iraqis. Our sanctions have destroyed the economy, the school
and health-care system, the standard of living, the hopes and the social
strength of the only ones who could, in the best of cases, have toppled that
President: the Iraqis themselves.
Could it be that some
countries in the West have such bad consciences that the living witnesses to
this morally bankrupt policy must die because their suffering reminds us,
painfully, of our complicity in crimes, of our violations of the human rights
of the citizens in Iraq?
If there are decent leaders
in the international community, they should begin today, rather than tomorrow,
to discuss how we can cut the link between inspections and sanctions-lifting.
Until now, we have been wasting innocent lives every minute we discuss and plan
a war - a war to cover our deep feeling of guilt.
Please ask yourself, when
have the Iraqis suffered enough for their non-elected President's decision to
invade Kuwait 12 years ago? When does the civilised West become so civilised
that it is able to admit its mistakes? If it denies these mistakes and conducts
war instead, it is morally so feeble that the centre and all the rest may not
hold.
How can leaders and
governments, who know perfectly well what they did, have done and continue to
do, seek reconciliation and ask forgiveness from the people they have hurt so
much? This, not war, is the question that should occupy us. Is it already too
late?
Jan Oberg is the
Director of the Transnational Foundation For Peace and Future Research (TFF) in
Sweden (http://www.transnational.org). Christian Harleman is a TFF Associate. © Copyright Jan
Oberg and TFF 2003