The devastation of Iraq due to Saddam, not to allied sanctions

By Martin Woollacott

LONDON: The arguments that have gone on for years over Iraq have become so entrenched and bitter that it is difficult to disengage from them and recognize how much has changed. Sanctions are still discussed as if they were effective, whereas they have now almost completely withered away.

Military action by the Americans and the British is still weighed as if the initiative lay with Washington, which has not been so for years.

Neither the flurry of condemnatory declarations around the world after last week's raids, nor the justifications of the generals who ordered them moves us much forward in understanding the nature of what is undoubtedly one of the gravest world problems, the continued existence of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Some critics of the raids persist in presenting them as an attack pure and simple, whereas they are more properly seen as an attempt to prevent an escalation of the conflict.

The American and British governments acted not only to safeguard their servicemen after Iraq upgraded its air defenses, but also to avert the political and military crisis that would have burst upon us had the Iraqis shot down aircraft and captured pilots.

Think of the pressures both for retaliation and for appeasement in that case, the opportunism of third parties rushing in to mediate, the upsurge of emotion in the Arab world, the difficulty of taking rational decisions in such an atmosphere!

This danger has been reduced by the raids, but at the same time they show how fragile is a policy which depends on the calculation that we will never lose planes or aircrew, certainly not in any number.

Yet the no-fly zones are still the most intact and the most defensible element in the once formidable array of measures to contain Iraq. They provide some protection for the Kurds and for the Kuwaitis, in that as long as they exist Saddam could never be sure of American reaction if he tried to resume full control of the north or if he moved in a big way toward the Kuwaiti border.

Those inclined to think of the no-fly zones as disposable should bear in mind the attitude of people like Mahmoud Osman, a Kurdish socialist leader, who told the Guardian this week that he knew of no Kurd who did not want them to continue to be enforced, and the views of the Kuwaitis, so often brushed aside by other Arabs.

The no-fly zones also symbolize some degree of resolve. Like sanctions, even in their now vestigial form, they are a way of saying that the Iraqi regime is not a normal government, to be treated in a normal way, and that at no point in the years since the Gulf war ended has it made a single sincere effort to comply with United Nations resolutions.

But is a point of principle worth imposing if it causes much human suffering? Here again, events have moved us on from the old arguments. Madeleine Albright became infamous in the Arab world when she replied to questions about the impact of sanctions on Iraqi civilians, especially children, by saying: "We think the price is worth it."

But that was before the effect of sanctions had been reduced both by changes in the rules which gave the Iraqi government more income and freedom to trade, and by massive evasions.

The critics of sanctions cannot say both that they have become a joke and that they are still, whatever may have been the case in the past, the main cause of the misfortunes of Iraqis.

The deterioration in the conditions of life in Iraq must have many causes, notably the devastation that Saddam brought on his country by waging war on Iran. The damage done in the Kuwait war was piled on top of that.

A society which for a while had appeared to be flush with funds and which was engaged in pell-mell modernization and urbanization, highly dependent on imported items for its infra- structure, suddenly regressed.

If it had been less developed, it would have been less damaged. Saddam's government was peculiarly incapable of managing the resulting crisis. Quite apart from the ruthless diversion of funds to military spending, the Iraqi government is neither efficient or fair.

It had operated for years a wasteful system of social bribery, selectively rewarding army, party, bureaucracy, and business class. In the old days even the least privileged derived some benefit, and there was typically lavish spending on social services.

Indeed the case can be made that Saddam went to war, both with Iran and Kuwait, precisely so he could maintain this profligate style. When this could no longer be done, the circle within which people were sustained and rewarded by the government was redrawn, and those outside duly suffered.

Sanctions certainly did not help, but the argument that they were contributory rather than central is strengthened by the fact that there has been no clear improvement in life for ordinary people in Iraq since they were run down.

The new American secretary of state, Colin Powell, traveling around the Middle East over the next few days, has the unenviable job of trying to persuade Arab leaders that there can be a common approach to Iraq.

But the coalition created at the time of the Gulf war cannot be revived. It was already on its last legs in 1996, when Saddam sent his tanks into Irbil and suffered no consequences, and it expired by late 1998, when the last major American missile onslaught on Iraq went unsupported.

Arab governments are motivated by a fear of Saddam and by a fear of their own public opinion, and these fears could only be allayed if they thought the United States was determined to remove Saddam.

The Bush administration has not shown such a determination, and, while it may be harder on Iraq than its predecessor, it does not seem likely it will do so.

Indeed, the United States and Britain would probably end sanctions in all but a few categories if Iraq would agree to a restoration of arms inspections, even if those inspections were likely to be superficial. Saddam's desire for the total humiliation of his enemies may nevertheless prevent this happening.

Sanctions might have worked, in spite of Saddam's obstinacy, if they had not been quite quickly subverted. As Tim Trevan, a former adviser to the UN special commission for Iraq, wrote in his book "impatience with sanctions is the best way to ensure they will not work", while "increasing support for sanctions over time, as with Rhodesia and South Africa" can convince a regime that it must buckle under.

Iraq, instead, saw sanctions unraveling rather than strengthening as Russia, China, France, and Arab states dropped out.

Have sanctions strengthened Saddam, or is it more that weak sanctions have strengthened him? Can it truly be said that he is strengthened at all? It is hard to know, concerning a society as necessarily secretive and devious as Iraq is under Saddam.

One may repine over the ineffectiveness of the policies applied to Iraq without quite giving up hope that in some way not visible now Saddam has been undermined, and without wanting to abandon a few measures, some practical and some symbolic, which mark out the Iraqi regime for what it is -- a danger to itself, to its neighbors, and to the world.

-- Guardian News Service