Anthony Arnove

Hans

von Sponeck resigns March 31 as the director of the United Nations humanitarian

program in Iraq. Normally, the comings and goings of UN officials isn’t a

subject for headlines or a source of encouragement for activists, but von

Sponeck is now the second person to resign from this position, which involves

oversight of the UN’s oil-for-food program. Like his predecessor, Denis J.

Halliday, von Sponeck has issued a clear call for an end to the sanctions after

seeing first-hand their devastating consequences for the Iraqi people.

“Sanctions

must be lifted,” von Sponeck told a delegation from Voices in the Wilderness

and Fellowship of Reconciliation that I accompanied to Iraq in early March.

“It cannot continue that [the UN] punishes the most vulnerable and the most

innocent.”

Von

Sponeck’s resignation follows the highly publicized public departure of

Halliday as humanitarian coordinator in fall 1998. Halliday had worked for the

UN for 34 years; von Sponeck has worked there for 36 years. Since his

resignation, Halliday has dedicated himself to the cause of ending the

sanctions, speaking to audiences internationally about what he describes as a

“genocide” against Iraqis. Von Sponeck says he is now interested in speaking

out about the impact of sanctions, too, and is committed to working to see them

lifted.

In

announcing his resignation, von Sponeck noted that “I’m not at all alone [in

the United Nations in ] in my view that we have reached a point where it is no

longer acceptable that we are keeping our mouths shut” about the tragedy in

Iraq. In fact, his resignation was immediately followed by an announcement from

Jutta Burghardt, the director of the World Food Program’s operations in Iraq,

that she would also be stepping down. “It is a true humanitarian tragedy what

is happening here and I believe any human being who looks at the facts and the

impact of the sanctions on the population will not deny that [von Sponeck] is

right,” Burghardt said.

The

resignations of Halliday, von Sponeck, and Burghardt have sent the State

Department and British Foreign Ministry — the two main defenders of the war

being waged against the Iraqi people — into a frenzy. State Department

spokesperson James Rubin attacked von Sponeck, suggesting that he was unsuitable

for the post of humanitarian coordinator and that he had acted “beyond the

range of his competence or his authority” in pointing to the problems of the

oil-for-food program he administered. “His job is to work on behalf of the

Iraqi people and not the regime,” Rubin asserted. Others charged that von

Sponeck had come under the influence of Halliday. One diplomat told the

Financial Times that “There was a feeling that Halliday had become a kind of

militant, and it was thought Von Sponeck, who is very calm, would be different.

But he too started to speak about sanctions.”

Pro-sanctions

forces are increasingly on the defensive. Explaining why the Clinton

administration held a March 23 press conference in Washington, DC, at which it

attempted to raise fears that the Iraqi government is building a base for rebels

fighting the government of neighboring Iran, one unnamed senior administration

official said, “This is a propaganda campaign. There’s no question that this

is what we are doing here. This is part of our effort to show the world the

danger Saddam [Hussein] would pose if the controls on the access to his oil

revenues were lifted.” Because of that potential threat from its former ally

— which the United States happened to have supported against Iran in the

Iran-Iraq War –, the twisted logic goes, ordinary Iraqis must suffer a state of

siege that has doubled under-five child mortality in central and southern Iraq (Unicef);

destroyed its once highly advanced medical system; eroded literacy; caused mass

unemployment; and deprived a generation of any hope.

It’s

not only the United States that is losing “the propaganda campaign.” Noting

that the UN sanctions committee, dominated by the United States, has held up

$1.7 billion of Iraqi purchases under the oil-for-food program, UN

Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered a report to the Security Council on March

24, in which he said, “We are in danger of losing the argument or propaganda

war–if we haven’t lost it already–about who is responsible for this

situation, President Saddam Hussein or the United Nations.” Annan added:

“The United Nations has always been on the side of the vulnerable and weak …

yet here we are accused of causing suffering to an entire population.”

The

Washington press conference about the Iran bases was clearly timed to coincide

with the UN Security Council meeting and to hold the line on sanctions in the

council. Only Britain and the United States voted for the most recent resolution

maintaining sanctions, Resolution 1284. China, France, and Russia abstained,

reflecting the further erosion of support for the US position. France and

Russia, for reasons of self-interest more than humanitarianism, are eager to

gain access to Iraq’s enormous oil reserves. Iraq owes Russia more than $6

billion from the Gulf War; and France has an edge on Iraqi oil concessions,

should sanctions on Iraq be lifted. France has already set a precedent for

sanctions busting when a buck is to be made. The French-based oil corporation

Total defied US sanctions on Iran a few years ago, signing a multi-billion

dollar oil arrangement and openly challenging the United States government to

retaliate.

These

are not the only signs that the tide is turning against sanctions. Britain’s

ITV recently devoted an hour and a half to John Pilger’s important new

documentary, “Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq,” which was

seen by millions of viewers. British papers were dominated by anti-sanctions

arguments in the following weeks. The Economist, hardly an ally on such matters,

recently questioned sanctions, noting that “Saddam Hussein remains implanted

in power without, for the past 15 months, any UN inspectors on the spot to

discourage him from reinventing his nastiest toys. At the same time, sanctions

have all but destroyed his country: its health and educational systems have

collapsed; its infrastructure has rusted away; its middle classes have

disappeared into poverty; [and] its children are dying.”

A

parliamentary committee in Britain, the Select International Development

Committee, has just issued a report in which it argues: “although sanctions

may well represent a low-cost alternative to war in financial terms, they are

all too often as damaging–in humanitarian and developmental terms–as armed

conflict…. There is a clear consensus that the humanitarian and developmental

situation in Iraq has deteriorated seriously since the imposition of

comprehensive economic sanctions whilst, at the same time, sanctions have

clearly failed to hurt those responsible for past violations of international

law as Saddam Hussein and his ruling elite continue to enjoy a privileged

existence.”

Closer

to home, a delegation of five Congressional staffers that traveled to Iraq in

August and September 1999 with Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy

Studies has recently issued a report challenging the sanctions regime. The team

concluded that “oil for food program funds are barely enough for Iraqis’

urgent and immediate physical needs, with nothing made available for

intellectual needs. The result is complete intellectual deprivation…. The

image of emaciated babies and malnourished young children ill or even dying in

Iraq is by now well-known in the U.S. The staff delegation, visiting hospitals

in Baghdad, Amara and Basra, found that reality unchanged, with most of the

children dying from treatable diseases, usually the result of unclean water and

exacerbated by malnutrition.”

In

“Ballad of a Thin Man,” Bob Dylan sang the damning lines “Something is

happening here, and you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” capturing

a moment in the 1960s which the tide was turning against media and government

lies in the service of power — at home and abroad. Internationally, the tide is

now turning against sanctions, but the US and UK are not going to drop them

without a significant fight. “The United States is, and will remain, second to

none in enforcing sanctions,” James Rubin emphasized in a recent letter to the

Washington Post.

The

movement against sanctions is reaching a critical mass, but we still have our

work cut out for us if we are going to see the embargo and the ongoing bombings

ended. On April 4 and August 6 (Hiroshima Day and the ten-year anniversary of

the imposition of sanctions), activists will be coming to Washington, DC, to

engage in education, protest, and civil disobedience to pressure Congress to end

the sanctions. We owe it to the Iraqi people to be there.

Anthony

Arnove ([email protected]) is the editor of Iraq Under Siege (South End Press).

He recently traveled to Iraq with members of Voices in the Wilderness and the

Fellowship of Reconciliation. For information on the demonstrations in

Washington, DC, contact Voices in the Wilderness at [email protected].