"every hold placed on an application for an essential supply ... hurts the Iraqi people" Benon Sevan, Executive Director of oil-or-food, 21 September 2000.

Contents

1. Summary
2. Misleading Explanations
3. The Scale of the Crisis
4. How Sanctions Kill
5. The Sanctions Committee - From Ahtisaari to the Green Lists
6. The Role of the Sanctions Committee - Water Purification
7. The Role of the Sanctions Committee - Power Generation
8. The Role of the Sanctions Committee - Telecommunications
9. The Role of the Sanctions Committee - Oil Spare Parts
10. The Burden of Responsibility
11. Appendix - Lists of 'banned items

1) SUMMARY Return to top

For the last ten years, the ordinary people of Iraq have been suffering a massive humanitarian crisis which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of children under the age of five.

The Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council has helped to perpetuate this humanitarian crisis.

Over the last year, UN staff have repeatedly drawn attention to the 'excessive' level of 'holds' imposed by members of the Sanctions Committee on humanitarian imports into Iraq. The Secretary General of the UN himself has spelled out the damage these 'holds' have had on the 'oil-for-food' humanitarian relief programme on which millions of Iraqi families depend.

We do not know a great deal about the behaviour of the 15 countries which form the Sanctions Committee (only the US, Britain, France, China and Russia have been on the Committee throughout the decade of sanctions). The Committee sits behind closed doors, and the reasons behind a government's decision to block a contract have rarely been made public. It is sometimes difficult to substantiate allegations that have been made against the Committee by critics of the sanctions.

It is clear, however, that the Sanctions Committee has in the recent past blocked civilian imports into Iraq which could have significantly improved the humanitarian situation. Many of these contracts continue to be blocked at the time of writing.

Even if the Sanctions Committee were functioning correctly, however, and holds were eliminated, this would not by itself solve the humanitarian crisis. The humanitarian crisis was not created by the Sanctions Committee, and it cannot be solved by the Sanctions Committee.

The humanitarian crisis is largely the result of war and sanctions. The suffering continues for two main reasons:

A) The comprehensive economic sanctions are blocking the reconstruction of the civilian infrastructure - including the agricultural, water purification, sewage, sanitation, and power generation sectors.

B) The economic sanctions are also preventing the revival of the economy, which is essential to helping ordinary families in Iraq to regain their health.

Only when the economic sanctions against Iraq have been lifted will millions of ordinary families in Iraq have the opportunity to rescue their children from hunger and disease, and to give them the quality of life they enjoyed in 1990.

Even so, we can learn much about our own countries by examining the record of the Sanctions Committee, and we can help ordinary people in Iraq by pressing our governments to stop obstructing the current humanitarian programme in Iraq.

2) MISLEADING EXPLANATIONS Return to top

In order to understand how the Sanctions Committee helps to perpetuate the current tragedy in Iraq, we must first understand how the humanitarian crisis came into being, and what makes it continue.

For some years, the public debate around sanctions on Iraq gave the impression that the problem in Iraq was the supply of food and medicine.

Supporters of economic sanctions seemed to be saying that the right quantities of food and medicine were getting into Iraq, and that any suffering was the result of diversion or stockpiling by the Iraqi government.

Opponents of economic sanctions seemed to be saying that not enough food and medicine was getting into Iraq, and that the suffering there was the result of obstruction by the members of the Sanctions Committee.

Both these explanation for the humanitarian crisis were and are wrong.

Diversion and 'Hoarding' of supplies.

The suggestion that the Iraqi government was either stockpiling or diverting food and medicine purchased through oil-for-food has been thoroughly refuted by UN officials. There have been problems with very large quantities of medicines and medical supplies piling up in central warehouses. However, thorough investigations by the World Health Organisation have established that in so far as such stockpiling has exceeded standard medical practices, it has been the result of insufficient transportation, poor working conditions, low motivation for underpaid staff, and problems in importing the materials needed to carry out quality control checks on imported medicines and so on. Problems created in most cases by the economic sanctions regime itself. UN monitoring, which tracks medicine from entry into Iraq to the hospital pharmacy shelf, has found no evidence of diversion or of deliberate, malign, stockpiling by the Iraqi government.

Blaming Only the Sanctions Committee

The other explanation, that the humanitarian crisis was being, and is being, caused by Sanctions Committee obstruction, especially of medicine and medical supplies, is equally misleading.

There is no public record of the rate of refusal of medical imports over the last ten years, so it is difficult to know what volume of medical supplies may have been prevented by the Sanctions Committee over this period. It has been suggested that the Sanctions Committee was more obstructive on this score in its earliest years.

Whether or not this is the case, it is by now very clear that even if the Sanctions Committee had not blocked and/or delayed any consignments of food and medicine over the past decade, this by itself would not have been sufficient to prevent mass malnutrition and mass death among young children.

In February 1998, Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, announced a major review of the oil-for-food programme (which had been set up in 1996). He emphasised that the programme was to be 'multi-sectoral' in approach. It wasn't going to concentrate solely on food and medicine as other parts of the civilian economy were just as important in trying to stop the deterioration of public health in Iraq.

In December 1998, the World Food Programme declared that 'the main reason' for the continuing nutritional crisis in Iraq was 'the massive deterioration in basic infrastructure.'

3) THE SCALE OF THE CRISIS Return to top

The humanitarian crisis in Iraq has many facets. Apart from the costs to physical and mental health for both children and adults, there has been enormous pressure on family and social bonds. Crime, corruption, and prostitution have soared during the past decade. There has also been enormous cultural damage. A highly educated society has seen its education system wrecked by sanctions for an entire decade, with long-term consequences that no one can foresee. The adult literacy rate has declined dramatically from 80 per cent down to 53.7 per cent of the population.

The most troubling and painful aspect of the crisis is the way in which children's health has been affected. According to the Red Cross, 'For the first time in decades, diarrhoea has reappeared as the major killer of children. The highly specialized Iraqi doctors are now faced with third-world health problems - malnutrition, diptheria, cholera - which they were not trained to handle.'

Children's rights have been massively violated - including their rights to health and to life itself.

We can begin to understand the scale of the humanitarian crisis when we contemplate the (September 2000) estimate by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation that 800,000 Iraqi children under the age of five are chronically malnourished. Chronic malnutrition can lead to life-long physical and mental stunting. Anupama Rao Singh, UNICEF's director in Baghdad and a veteran of African famine work, points out that chronic malnutrition is 'extremely difficult to reverse, if not irreversible.'

In the summer of 1999, UNICEF released an estimate of child mortality which encapsulated the horror of the past decade for millions of Iraqi families.

UNICEF noted that during the 1980s, despite the Iran-Iraq war, children under the age of five enjoyed improved health. The proportion of children under five dying each year declined from 83 per 1000 to 50 over the decade. This improvement in health was reversed in the years after 1990 (when sanctions were imposed) so that the death rate per 1000 rose to around 133 in 1999.

If the improvement in child mortality rates had continued from 1990 to 1998, the death rate for under-fives would only have been 30 per 1000 and 500,000 more children would have survived the decade than actually did. In other words, half a million more children died than would otherwise have done so.

Clearly sanctions were not the only factor involved in the rise in child mortality. However, in the words of one careful independent analysis, "most" excess deaths were "primarily associated with sanctions" .

4) HOW SANCTIONS KILL Return to top

Let us focus on the issue of child malnutrition. It is clear that malnutrition is a major cause of increased rates of death among young children, therefore solving the malnutrition problem is critical to reducing the current death toll, apart from its importance in terms of the physical and mental development of individual children.

What causes the abnormal level of child malnutrition in Iraq?

a) Inadequate Food and Medicine

It is true that the food ration supplied to children over the past decade has been insufficient. At first the ration was supplied by the Iraqi Government alone, but without revenues from oil sales, the Government did not have the resources to provide an adequate diet. After the initiation of oil-for-food in 1996, more money was available, but the diet continued to be inadequate. Animal protein was only added in 1998, and fresh fruit and vegetables have never been part of the food ration. (Actually, it would be impossible for the rationing system to bulk buy and then deliver a month's worth of fruit and/or vegetables to 22 million recipients.)

And it is also true that the supply of medicines and medical supplies for treating children's diseases has also been insufficient over the past decade (and even over the past four years of oil-for-food). But UN agencies agree that the nutritional crisis in Iraq is the result of more than simply a lack of food.

b) A Collapsed Public Health Infrastructure

One key missing ingredient is clean drinking water. In March 2000, the International Committee of the Red Cross identified the 'collapse of the public health system' and 'the water problem' as the two 'major threats' to the health of the Iraqi population.

Children under the age of five have not developed the resistance to bacteria that adults have. They are more vulnerable to disease. If they fall ill with a waterborne disease, it is all too easy for them to lose weight through diarrhoea. It is a short step to the downward spiral disease-diarrhoea-malnutrition-increased vulnerability to disease and onward to death.

Providing clean drinking water means collecting water, purifying it, then distributing it unpolluted to people's homes (or nearby). The problem in Iraq at the time of writing is not that the chemicals needed for purification are blocked by the Sanctions Committee (though this was the case in earlier years), but that the distribution process is deeply contaminated (and the water collected is highly polluted). Because Iraq is flat, water must be pumped to end-users from the purification plant. When there is a power cut, the water begins flowing back towards the plant, creating a vacuum. Whatever is outside the pipe is sucked in through cracks and holes in the pipe, and enters the drinking water. Given the state of the sewage system and the breakdown of sanitation services, there is often sewage and rubbish around the water pipes, waiting to be sucked in.

That is why the UN Secretary General recommended 'in addition to adequate treatment of drinking water for the urban and rural population, improved distribution and sanitation networks... to reduce the risk of water-borne disease'.

So, in order to provide consistently clean drinking water to Iraqi families, the Government needs to restore the water purification/pumping, sewage, sanitation and electricity sectors. This is the 'multi-sectoral' reality of sanctions.

Childhood malnutrition is directly linked to a wide range of economic sectors which together make up the public health infrastructure. Without reconstruction of this infrastructure, one cannot restore child health to its previous levels.

c) A Collapsed Economy

However, even if the public health infrastructure were restored, this would not be sufficient to solve the humanitarian crisis.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation reported in 1995 that the solution to the nutritional crisis in Iraq 'lies in adequate food supplies in the country, restoring the viability of the [Iraqi Dinar], and creating conditions for the people to acquire adequate purchasing power [ie jobs]. But these conditions can be fulfilled only if the economy can be put back in proper shape enabling it to draw on its own resources, and that clearly cannot occur as long as the embargo remains in force.'

Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq Hans von Sponeck estimates unemployment in Iraq at over 60 per cent. For the minority in employment, real wages are a fraction of what they were in 1990. Senior doctors can apparently earn up to 100,000 Iraqi Dinars a month (June 2000). In 1990, 100,000 ID was worth £200,000. Now it is worth less than £35. Until the economy provides jobs for breadwinners, and they are paid wages in a currency which means something, they will be unable to provide necessities for their families which can only be obtained (or which can best be obtained) through market systems - fruit and vegetables, for example. (There is plenty of fruit and vegetables on sale on the streets of Baghdad, but few can afford it.)

A panel of experts commissioned to study the humanitarian situation in Iraq by the Security Council concluded in March 1999 that, 'The humanitarian situation in Iraq will continue to be a dire one in the absence of a sustained revival of the Iraqi economy.'

Childhood malnutrition is a product of the collapse of the Iraqi economy, and the massive loss in purchasing power of ordinary families. Until the economy has been allowed to reflate, one cannot restore child health to its previous levels.

d) Conclusion

Comprehensive economic sanctions have prevented the reconstruction of the public health infrastructure - they have prevented the Iraqi government from once again providing clean drinking water, for example.

The sanctions have also paralysed the economy so that families do not have the purchasing power to obtain basic necessities for their children, including fruit and vegetables.

Having set out the larger framework, we can now examine the role of the Sanctions Committee in perpetuating the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

5) THE SANCTIONS COMMITTEE - FROM AHTISAARI TO THE GREEN LISTS Return to top

Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990. The UN imposed comprehensive economic sanctions on 6 August 1990, under UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 661. A special committee of the Security Council was set up shortly thereafter to coordinate the sanctions regime. The committee is known in UN circles as 'the 661 Committee' because it was set up by UNSCR 661, but is more widely known as 'the Sanctions Committee'.

The 15 members of the Sanctions Committee are the same 15 nations that sit on the Security Council. So, apart from the permanent five members (China, Russia, France, Britain and the US), there are ten other rotating members of the Sanctions Committee. The Committee tries to work by consensus, giving each member a veto over each contract that comes before it.

According to Dr Eric Hoskins, an adviser to UNICEF on sanctions, the original intention was for each individual member state of the UN to enforce the sanctions itself. Each country would prohibit its nationals from trading with Iraq, freeze Iraqi assets, police borders, and inspect cargo, and report its efforts to the Sanctions Committee.

For a variety of reasons, however, there was soon what Dr. Hoskins calls 'a rapid and unfortunate transformation in the committee's function': 'Instead of reporting on the implementation of sanctions and providing liaison with member states, the sanctions committee was relegated to the role of licence bureau ..'

The Sanctions Committee became the gatekeeper for humanitarian supplies intended for Iraq.

Until April 1991, the only imports allowed into Iraq were medicines. (It seems that medical supplies such as needles and syringes were not permitted; only substances which actually cure diseases were allowed through.)

After the end of the war, however, UNSCR 687 changed the purpose of the sanctions from the liberation of Kuwait to the disarmament of Iraq. As the aims widened, so did the range of goods allowed into Iraq. While food became acceptable for the first time, there were other important goods which remained barred.

Paragraph 20 of UNSCR 687 permitted the import into Iraq of 'materials and supplies for essential civilian needs' as identified in the 'Ahtisaari report' of 20 March 1991 . The Ahtisaari report, drawn up by UN Under-Secretary-General Martti Ahtisaari, reported that among the 'materials and supplies for essential civilian needs' were goods for sanitation, water purification, communications, power generation, and transportation. None of these sectors was accepted as legitimate by the Sanctions Committee without a struggle - some are bitterly contested even at the time of writing.

One of the effects of the Sanctions Committee system in the early days was that even though medicines were exempt from the sanctions, blockade authorities and shipping management began refusing ocean passage to consignments of medicines that didn't have the right 'no objection' documentation from the Sanctions Committee.

Dr Hoskins comments, 'The absence of published lists, a lack of clear direction from the sanctions committee, and an understandable paranoia on the part of suppliers not wishing to incur the wrath of the Security Council resulted in a deluge of requests for committee approval and the subsequent, and predictable long delays in turnaround time.' Except for foodstuffs, medicines and other materials clearly associated with health-related activities, 'all requests continued to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis'. Furthermore, with decisions regarding approval made by consensus, each member of the committee had potential veto power over each and every request. 'The refusal by the Committee to grant approval to certain items - for example, pencils, lightbulbs, window glass, and even some heart drugs - was not always easy to understand.'

The situation changed dramatically in 1995 when the Security Council and the Government of Iraq agreed on a humanitarian programme known as 'oil-for-food'. Iraq was permitted to sell a specified quantity of oil every six months to purchase humanitarian goods (the ceiling was raised in 1998 and finally abolished in December 1999). The money paid for the oil goes straight into a New York bank account controlled by the UN.

Iraq and the UN agreed a 'distribution plan' setting out the humanitarian budget in each sector for each six month phase, and Iraq would then arrange contracts to supply these goods from suppliers around the world.

These contracts, once agreed, would be submitted to the Sanctions Committee for approval. If approved, the money would be released, and the goods would be supplied to Iraq. Contracts could be vetoed by a single member state.

No member has to explain its reasons for rejecting a contract. No record was published of the Committee's proceedings. Author Sarah Graham-Brown notes that 'Until 1995, no record of its discussions or decisions was made public or even circulated to interested parties such as Humanitarian Organisations, Security Council members, or the sanctioned state, Iraq.'

Interestingly, no list was ever published of 'banned items' (see appendix), though according to Dr Hoskins, occasionally lists of approved items were circulated 'to guide member states and other applicants'.

This practice has evolved into the 'green lists' published by the Security Council in throughout 2000. The 'green lists' specify particular goods and materials in the foodstuffs, medical, agricultural, educational, and water/sanitation sectors, and oil spare parts which may be imported into Iraq without having to be approved by the Sanctions Committee.

6) THE ROLE OF THE SANCTIONS COMMITTEE - WATER PURIFICATION Return to top

According to author Sarah Graham-Brown, the Sanctions Committee in December 1991 came to a 'gentleman's agreement' that members would 'generally look favourably on requests' within certain categories of humanitarian items. Among these items were civilian clothing, supplies for babies and infants, and, importantly, spare parts and materials for water treatment and sewage disposal plants.

Apparently, the Ambassador for Zimbabwe, on behalf of non-aligned members of the Security Council, had argued for what we now know as 'green lists' in a number of sectors. 'However, the hardline members of the Committee would not accept this, and the informal understanding was a compromise.' Britain and the US were not to relent for another eight years.

We do not know how long this 'agreement' lasted, or how well it functioned, but it is clear that water and sewage treatment did not receive 'favourable' treatment in 1999.

Oil-for-food has operated in six-month 'phases'. In October 1999, the Executive Director of oil-for-food, Mr Benon Sevan, reported that 54.4 percent of all applications in the water and sanitation sector circulated under phase V of the programme had been placed on hold. An anonymous UN official told the US magazine Counterpunch, 'Basically, anything with chemicals or even pumps is liable to get thrown out'.

The water and sanitation green list containing 1,581 items was submitted to the Sanctions Committee on 3 July 2000. The Committee approved the list, with the exception of 12 items, on 11 August 2000.

The Secretary-General reported in September 2000 that 'In the area of water and sanitation, infrastructural degradation is evident across the subsectors, from water treatment to water distribution.' He noted, 'In the absence of key complementary items currently on hold and adequate maintenance, spare parts and staffing, the decay rate of the entire system is accelerating.'

In other words, the water and sanitation sector, crucial to child health and child survival, is decaying. The oil-for-food programme is not halting that deterioration. The rate of deterioration is, in fact, accelerating, despite oil-for-food. This acceleration is happening, in part, because of holds being imposed by the Sanctions Committee on relevant goods and spare parts.

The Secretary General notes in his September 2000 report on oil-for-food that Baghdad is prioritising emergency repairs, 'so as to ensure that water supply is maintained to consumers'. This means that less attention is being given to sewage treatment, 'leaving Iraq's two main raw water sources (the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) heavily polluted, and raising significant concerns for the future'.

As of 31 May 2000, the UN had received 443 contracts for the water and sanitation sector worth $730m under oil-for-food. 291 contracts worth $501m had been approved, and 58 contracts worth $138m had been put on hold. In other words, over 21 per cent of contracts circulated for this vital sector were on hold in mid-2000.

As in many sectors, the absence of some of these goods may have impaired or blocked the performance of equipment which has been approved and imported and installed.

This is the problem of 'complementarity', described by oil-for-food coordinator Benon Sevan in a report in October 1999. Sevan noted that a 'serious issue' arises when applications are approved by the Sanctions Committee, and the equipment arrives in Iraq but then has to be kept in storage for an extended period 'because another interrelated or complementary application is on hold': 'The absence of a single item of equipment, sometimes insignificant in size or value, can be sufficient to prevent the completion of an entire project.'

"What is the use" Sevan asked, in a statement to the Council this September "if approval is given for the purchase of a very expensive truck and the application for the purchase of its ignition key is placed on hold ?"

7) THE ROLE OF THE SANCTIONS COMMITTEE - POWER GENERATION Return to top

One of the sectors left out of the 'green list' system is power generation. Electricity production was recognised as critical to the humanitarian effort as early as 1991. The Ahtisaari report referred to the 'energy and communications vacuum' as 'of crucial significance'.

a) Destroying the Electricity Sector - Achieving 'Leverage' in 1991

The energy 'vacuum' was largely a result of the Gulf War. By the end of the war only two of Iraq's twenty electrical plants were functioning, generating less than 4 percent of the power produced before the war.

Dr Eric Hoskins notes that, 'The breakdown in water and sanitation that occurred during the Gulf War, and the Iraqi Government's inability to effectively repair these services, have been responsible for outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, gastroenteritis, malaria, meningitis, brucellosis, measles, polio, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases.'

According to the data collected by the International Study Team in August 1991, there were an estimated 47,000 deaths among children under the age of five during the first eight months of 1991 as a result of the Gulf War and its aftermath.

The US human rights group, Middle East Watch, has noted that, 'insofar as the civilian population is concerned, it makes little or no difference whether [a civilian facility] is attacked or destroyed, or is made inoperable by the destruction of the electrical plant supplying it power. In either case, civilians suffer the same effects - they are denied the use of a public utility indispensable for their survival.'

In other words, if the destruction of electrical power plants was deliberate, then the US-led forces 'effectively bombed hospitals and sewage treatment and water purification plants, which are the kinds of war crimes that would have led to hanging at Nuremberg.'

It is shocking, then, to realise that power plants were deliberately targeted during the war.

In 1991 Colonel John A. Warden III, the deputy director of strategy, doctrine and plans for the US Air Force, acknowledged that the wrecking of Iraq's electricity system 'gives us long-term leverage': 'Saddam Hussein cannot restore his own electricity. He needs help. If there are political objectives that the UN coalition has, it can say, "Saddam, when you agree to do these things, we will allow people to come in and fix your electricity".'

General Schwarzkopf, US commander in the Gulf region, claimed that 'we never had any intention of destroying all of Iraqi electrical power.' Yet after this statement, US-led attacks on power generation facilities continued - including the destruction, after Schwarzkopf's statement, of two of Iraq's critical hydroelectric facilities, not hit by Coalition bombers until early February. By the time the air war was over, Schwartzkopf's forces had destroyed 95 percent of Iraq's prewar electrical-generating capacity.

Reuters reported that after the biggest power plant in southern Iraq was bombed, Basra 'came close to drowning in its own filth'. The power plant was then bombed twelve more times. It was 'completely incapacitated' after the first attack, according to the chief engineer, '[so] we though that would be it, there would be no further attacks. But they came back and struck again, and again and again.' The final attack came on 28 February, half an hour before the cease-fire. By then, most of the facility was apparently a 'scrap heap'.

US Air Force officers were quoted in the US press in June 1991 as saying that the targeting of Iraq's infrastructure had been related to an effort 'to accelerate the effects of sanctions.'

b) The Importance of Power Generation

Eight years after the Ahtisaari report, in November 1999, the head of oil-for-food in New York observed that, 'In the electricity sector to date, of the $764.8 million of applications submitted to the Committee [for government-controlled] Iraq, $337.7 million, or 51 per cent, remain on hold. I am sure we all share the view that there is a direct link between reliable power generation and the provision of health care, water and other basic services.'

In April 1999, Kofi Annan conducted a two-year review of the oil-for-food programme. He noted that, 'The slow collapse of the electricity infrastructure has consequences which are rippling through every aspect of life in Iraq, and provides a good example of how weaknesses in one sector can affect all other sectors.'

He reported to the Security Council that '[a]lmost all power stations, distribution networks, automatic control, protection and safety systems' were malfunctioning, causing damage, in varying degrees, to every type of equipment in the electricity network.

The 'erratic quality' of supply and 'increasingly frequent, unscheduled' power cuts damaged industrial and domestic appliances. The loss of power led to 'the spoilage and waste' of medicines and vaccines, and refrigerated food - creating 'dangerous health risks'.

Power cuts had also caused losses in 'rice and other crops requiring continuous irrigation' where farmers were dependent on electrical pumps. Water treatment plants had been unable to maintain output of treated water. The reduction in pressure in the water mains brought 'greater risk of cross-contamination' to drinking water.

The Secretary General also stated that the use of oil lamps, because of power cuts, increased the risk of domestic accidents. 'More importantly, hospitals dependent on inadequate emergency generators cannot operate life-saving equipment.'

In February 1998, Kofi Annan reported that to deal with the electricity sector's operating problems would cost 'over $7bn'. He also referred to the 'threat of a complete breakdown' in power generation, stating that the humanitarian consequences of such a breakdown 'could potentially dwarf all other difficulties endured by the Iraqi people'.

c) A Continuing State of Crisis - September 2000

In his report on oil-for-food in September 2000, the Secretary General observed that, '[i]nfrastructural impediments in the electricity sector continue to raise concern, as available generation capacity in the centre and south of the country remains at 50 per cent of installed capacity and rationing is still necessary.' Power cuts in Baghdad have been limited to 4 hours per day - the rest of government-controlled Iraq experiences power cuts of between 12 and 18 hours a day.

Kofi Annan also pointed out that '[e]lectricity supply throughout the network remains at risk through unforeseeable incidents'. In August 2000, for example, a fire in the transmission lines at Mussaiyab Power Station led to the loss of 600 megawatts of power, which increased power cuts to 8 hours per day for consumers in Baghdad and up to 20 hours in other affected areas governorates.

The Secretary General warned, 'The entire electricity grid is in a precarious state and is in imminent danger of collapsing altogether should another incident of this type occur.'

He also stated that as at 31 July 2000, 25 per cent of the electricity sector contracts submitted to the Security Council Committee were on hold: 'These holds represent the most critical components and spare parts, making much of the equipment already delivered under the programme inoperable.'

8) THE ROLE OF THE SANCTIONS COMMITTEE - TELECOMMUNICATIONS Return to top

As we have already seen, the Ahtisaari report in 1991 found that the 'communications vacuum' was of 'crucial significance' to the humanitarian situation. After much resistance from the US and UK, the Security Council finally agreed to include telecommunications in the budget for oil-for-food after a technical review in the autumn of 1998. A budget allocation of $100m was agreed in the spring of 1999.

In May 1999, the Secretary General's report on oil-for-food noted that, 'As the Ministry of Communications has noted and United Nations observers have reported, the extremely poor state of telecommunication services impacts negatively on the efficient procurement and distribution of humanitarian supplies.'

Experts from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) went to Iraq in August 1998 to review the situation, and Baghdad submitted a revised budget request based on their report, which was accepted by the Secretary General on 13 May 1999. In their report, the ITU experts concluded that the entire telecommunication infrastructure was deteriorating to such an extent that the quality of service was 'beyond comprehension', and that the rehabilitation and modernization of the telecommunication network would require an investment of $1 billion or more and could take between 7 and 10 years to complete.

The plan submitted to the UN was much more modest. It included the replacement of Baghdad Junction Network's analogue telephone system with a 'digital transmission link'. According to Kofi Annan, the direct beneficiaries of this project in terms of humanitarian facilities would include 34 hospitals, 98 drug distribution points, 6 ration centres, and several thousand food agents.

The complete replacement of three Baghdad exchanges would enable the Ministry of Health to communicate with the rest of the country's health services, including 132 public hospitals, 1,500 primary health care centres and 52 private hospitals. A new international communication system would increase effective contact between Iraqi technical ministries and their suppliers abroad.

In his introductory statement to the Secretary-General's November 1999 report on oil-for-food, Sevan expressed his concern at the fact that applications to carry out the plan drawn up by the ITU were being blocked by the Sanctions Committee: 'In terms of telecommunications, I should like to emphasize the necessity for the Council and its [Sanctions] Committee to address this long outstanding question, as it has significant implications for other sectors, in particular the efficient distribution of food and medicine. The needs are definitely there and yet 10 of the 13 applications circulated, worth over $100 million, have been placed on hold.'

In September 2000, the Secretary General once again expressed his desire to see the holds on telecommunications equipment lifted, as 'the lack of communications equipment is having a negative multiplier effect on the implementation of the humanitarian programme'.

In June 2000, Kofi Annan had had to report that 'implementation of telecommunications projects has not been possible because holds have been placed on the overwhelming majority of applications for telecommunications equipment for the Iraqi Telecommunications and Postal Company, valued in excess of $122 million as at 30 April 2000.'

9) THE ROLE OF THE SANCTIONS COMMITTEE - OIL SPARE PARTS Return to top

The oil-for-food programme, as the name suggests, depends on the flow of oil. After sanctions are lifted, Iraq is going to depend heavily on revenues from the sale of oil to fund reconstruction and to reflate the economy. Oil has for decades been the lifeblood of Iraqi society, enabling Baghdad to construct a welfare state that the Economist Intelligence Unit described as 'among the most comprehensive and generous in the Arab World'.

During the period of sanctions, the oil industry has been deprived of spare parts and equipment, leading to a deterioration which affects oil-for-food, and which will affect government revenues in the post-sanctions period.

In April 1998 a group of oil experts was asked by the UN Secretary-General to report on the state of Iraq's oil industry. They reported that the industry was in a 'lamentable' state, and recommended the urgent provision of equipment and spare parts. On 19 June 1998, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1175, authorising Iraq to import up to $300 million worth of oil industry spare parts and equipment.

At the time the Financial Times reported an anonymous US official as saying 'Lets have $300 million every six months. Our attitude is "let the oil flow", as long as rehabilitation work is closely monitored.'

But the oil did not flow. Indeed, Benon Sevan was forced to complain. 'In a briefing to the Security Council, Mr Sevan urged the UN sanctions committee, comprised of the 15 Council members, to stop dragging its feet in approving $300m for spare parts.' Meanwhile Bill Richardson, US ambassador to the UN, 'told reporters that Washington would continue to block all contracts it considered "frivolous".'

The first of the oil spare parts did not arrive in Iraq until the very end of November 1998.

After intense pressure from the UN system, the US finally announced on 15 January 1999 that it would lift roughly half the 'holds' placed on contracts for spare parts Iraq had requested to rebuild its petroleum industry. State Department spokesperson James Rubin said that 'lifting the holds would allow Iraq to boost its income to buy humanitarian goods under the UN oil-for-food program'.

In other words, the oil spare parts, far from being 'frivolous', were vital to the humanitarian programme.

Iraq was then allowed to allocate $300m for oil spare parts in each six month phase. Despite months of lobbying by the Secretary-General from October 1999 onwards, the Security Council steadfastly refused to increase this allocation to $600m in each six-month phase.

In March 2000, Kofi Annan observed, on the basis of several expert surveys, that since sanctions were imposed in 1990, 'the oil industry of Iraq has suffered seriously as a result of the absence of the required spare parts and equipment'. He estimated that the Iraqi oil industry had produced some 5,000 million barrels of oil with virtually no investment in infrastructure repairs or maintenance: 'The result has been a massive decline in the condition, effectiveness and efficiency of that infrastructure, coupled with appalling safety conditions and significant environmental damage.'

Furthermore, oil-bearing structures in the oil fields have suffered short-term damage, which could be repaired depending on the 'expeditious arrival of the necessary spare parts and equipment'. 'Increasingly, however, damage to these structures is becoming more long-term in nature, resulting in irreversible damage to oilfields and the permanent loss of production and export capacity.'

In letter to the Security Council dated 14th January 2000, the Secretary-General noted that, '[t]he continuing deterioration may also cause a major breakdown in Iraq's oil production and export capacity, which will have serious repercussions on the implementation of the humanitarian programme.' Sevan reiterated these comments on 7 February 2000, noting that they constituted a 'very clear warning'.

In September 2000, the Secretary General noted that as at 31 July 2000, 377 applications for oil spare parts and equipment had been submitted to the Sanctions Committee for the previous phase (VII). 287 applications, valued at $112.37 million, were approved. 86, worth $39.95 million, were placed on hold. 129 applications for phase VII remained under 'evaluation'.

As at September 18th a total of 503 applications for oil spare parts and equipment., worth some $266 mn, were 'on hold'. Sevan noted that "On the one hand, everyone is calling on OPEC to increase the export of oil. On the other hand, the spare parts and equipment that are the minimum requirement of Iraq's oil industry, have been facing serious obstacles in the [Sanctions] Committee."

10) THE BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY Return to top

On 25 October 1999, the Washington Post published a remarkable article subtitled 'Humanitarian Goods Are Being Blocked, UN Chief Charges.' The piece quoted the UN Secretary-General as saying that the United States was 'disrupting the operation' of the UN oil-for-food programme - the programme upon which millions of Iraqis depend for their survival. The Secretary General 'accused the United States of using its muscle on [the] UN Sanctions Committee to put indefinite "holds"' on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of humanitarian goods.

On 22 October 1999, in a letter to the President of the Security Council, Mr Annan had expressed his concern about 'the growing number of holds placed on applications and the resultant serious implications for the implementation of the programme.' In an Annex to this letter, oil-for-food's Executive Director, Benon Sevan, noted that, 'the number of holds overall continues to increase'. Since August 1999, the number of holds on applications had increased from 475 (total value about $500 million) to 572 (total value about $700 million). As at 12 October 1999, for example, 23.7 per cent of applications circulated under phase V had been placed on hold.

Sevan said, 'There is a high level of holds on applications circulated under phase V for telecommunications (100 per cent), electricity (65.5 per cent), water and sanitation (53.4 per cent) and oil spare parts and equipment (43 per cent). It is also noted that the time required by members of the Committee to review holds is becoming longer, on average 34 days.' Sevan also noted that 'unless immediate measures are taken ...the serious difficulties already being experienced in the implementation of the programme will be exacerbated' (emphasis added).

Months earlier, in his introductory remarks to the Secretary-General's August 1999 report Sevan said he 'hate[d] to sound like a broken record, talking constantly about the excessive number of holds placed on applications with serious implications for the implementation of the humanitarian programme.'

There has been considerable pressure on Washington and London over sanctions and over the holds in particular, during the life of the oil-for-food programme. This pressure has been exerted by figures like Kofi Annan and Benon Sevan within the system, and more publicly by figures such as Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, oil-for-food coordinators who resigned in protest against the inherent inadequacy of oil-for-food.

This pressure has borne some fruit in the shape of the green lists, and other 'accelerated procedures'. However, there continue to be holds in strategic areas, key sectors such as power generation, the oil industry, telecommunications, and so on, which have an impact on the humanitarian programme.

The Secretary General noted in his September 2000 report, that '[d]espite the commendable efforts which had been made to bring about a reduction in the number of contracts on hold, 647 contracts for humanitarian supplies, worth $1.5 billion, and 504 contracts for oil and spare parts, worth $279 million, were on hold as at 28 August 2000.'

On 18 November 1999, a Reuters report 'cited U.N. sources as stating that of 389 contracts on hold the US accounted for 337 while the U.K. accounted for 29 and both countries together for 23.'

On 25 February 2000, The Washington Post reported that, 'under growing domestic and international pressure to lift sanctions, the Clinton administration is considering ways to ease the restrictions on the import of machinery, oil industry spare parts, pesticides and other industrial products deemed necessary for the health and welfare of ordinary Iraqis.'

A senior State Department official told the Post that, insofar as Iraq's import requests were concerned, 'We're trying to change the presumption from passive denial to something with a little more forethought in it.' A revealing comment about what had gone before.

Another official told Associated Press that 'We want to go at it with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer.' . He neglected to mention the consequences of using a sledgehammer in circumstances in which a scalpel would be appropriate.

In any event it was not to be. Despite an initial drop in the value of goods placed on hold, by September 18th 2000 there were sine $1.982 bn worth of goods 'on hold' representing "13.44 per cent of the value of all circulated applications, as compared to 10.6 per cent, as at 30 June." In other words there has been "a net increase in the volume and value of the holds both in relative and absolute terms."

Oil-for-food was (on the most generous interpretation) designed only to halt the deterioration of Iraqi society (not to restore life to a decent level). For a number of reasons, including the holds imposed by the US and Britain, the programme has failed to achieve this modest end. There have been successes. Child malnutrition has been stabilised, though at an extraordinary and unacceptable level, with chronic malnutrition affecting perhaps one child in five under the age of five.

The story of the Sanctions Committee over the past decade reveals some ugly truths about the wrecking and delaying tactics of the US and Britain.

The story of the Sanctions Committee today presents those of us who live in these societies with moral challenges.

The Sanctions Committee is one element, important but not all-important, of the US/UK onslaught on the ordinary people of Iraq over the ten years of sanctions. The economic sanctions have caused mass destruction in the civilian population of Iraq by preventing the reconstruction of the public health infrastructure, and by collapsing the Iraqi economy, on which ordinary families depend for purchasing power.

Those who are concerned with human rights must struggle to stop the Sanctions Committee from choking the oil-for-food programme, but we must not forget that the real stranglehold on Iraq's children is the regime of economic sanctions itself.

10) APPENDIX - LISTS OF 'BANNED ITEMS' Return to top

There are several lists of items supposed to be 'banned' or 'vetoed' by the Sanctions Committee in circulation. Some are historical in nature, listing occasions on which particular goods have been rejected by the Sanctions Committee. Others are lists of items which are said to be unacceptable to the Sanctions Committee. We have not been able to find a list of either variety which can be supported by independent documentation.

In the era of the 'green list', the second kind of list is definitely an anachronism. One version which may still be being circulated is Eliass Davidson's list of tradable civilian commodities. Eliass Davidson apparently struck out from a pre-existing list of goods those which he considered were neither food, medicine or items of 'essential civilian need'. The list does not, to our knowledge, have any basis in the activities of the Sanctions Committee.