A BRIEF HISTORY OF UNITED NATIONS SANCTIONS AGAINST IRAQ

I. The Early Years of Sanctions

On August 6, 1990, four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Security Council passed Resolution 661, imposing comprehensive sanctions on Iraq and establishing a committee to monitor them. Both Iraq and the international community assumed that this embargo would be short lived - no more than six months - because that was in everyone's economic interest. Both sides took initiatives to resolve the conflict but on January 15, 1991 the Security Council endorsed a US-led coalition in a devastating air war which, contrary to just war theory, targeted much of Iraq's civilian infrastructure (e.g., water purification and hydro-electrical plants) for destruction.

Even before the fighting ended the UN dispatched a humanitarian impact mission. It described the catastrophic damage to civilians and their institutions, proposing that food supplies be immediately removed from the sanctions regime. At the same time, the ceasefire (R687) that followed Iraq's havoc-wreaking withdrawal from Kuwait extended sanctions by tying them to Iraq's disarmament of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). This resolution is a two-edged sword. On the one hand it conditions the lifting of sanctions on verifiable disarmament; on the other hand it mandates the lifting of sanctions once Iraq is declared free of WMDs. Iraq insists that the threat of an invasion by the US is the most fundamental violation possible of sanctions conditions. It has no incentive to comply with disarmament inspections because the US has no intention of keeping the other end of the bargain, the complete lifting of the embargo.

By August of 1991 the UN acknowledged the scale of the human disaster by calling for limited oil sales to pay for reparations, the UN emergency presence, and the humanitarian aid it brought. To ensure that oil revenue would be used exclusively for these purposes in the designated proportions, it set up an escrow account outside the reach of the Iraqi government (R706 and 712). For three reasons the Iraqi government rejected these resolutions. Firstly, Iraq still believed that the sanctions could not be made to last. Secondly, it insisted (and two UN sponsored humanitarian assessment missions concurred) that the $1.6 billion in permitted sales were woefully inadequate to the tragedy. Thirdly, it considered the whole exercise to be a fundamental violation of its sovereignty. For its part the Council then declared that Iraq bore full responsibility for its humanitarian problems. On the one hand, Iraq could have greatly lessened the suffering of its people by accepting the minimal help it was being offered. On the other hand, for Iraq to accept such draconian control over its own resources was to relinquish economic sovereignty in the long term.

II. Oil for Food and the Changes it Brought

As the consequences of war and sanctions devastated the civilian population, ad hoc Iraqi, UN, and NGO programs supplied the most urgently needed food and medicine. This woeful situation continued to worsen until April of 1995 when the Security Council and a desperate Iraq arrived at a compromise resolution, R986, the now famous 'Oil for Food' (OFF) program. Two billion in oil sales every six months was better than nothing. While the ceiling was higher than that proposed in 1991, the resolution allotted a disproportionate amount of aid to Iraq's three northern Kurdish governorates (provinces), which the UN controlled directly to shield them against attacks from Baghdad. Both parties still believed that OFF would be a short-term arrangement, Iraq because it was confident it could break the sanctions; the UN because it was sure that Iraq would comply in order to end its people's immediate misery.

It took a year and a half (until December of 1996) to make OFF operational. The Office of the Iraq Program (OIP), a whole new arm of UN bureaucracy, was instituted as the implementation body of the Iraq Sanctions Committee. All contracts for aid (emergency supplies as well as infrastructural equipment) requested by the government had to be approved by the Sanctions Committee. Each member country could place a 'hold' on any contract it considered to be 'dual use'. Iraq did, in fact, try to order military hardware or divert 'dual use' goods from civilian to military purposes. Resolution 1051 created a list of items that were banned because they had obvious military potential. The United States considered this list inadequate and soon began placing holds on contracts all other countries (including the United Kingdom) considered safely humanitarian. In the spring of this year the holds amounted to $5.2 billion!

Disputes accompanied even those goods that were approved. For its part, Iraq complained that it had become a dumping ground for medicines beyond their expiration date and that UN administrators disregarded valid concerns of Iraqi officials for equitable distribution of goods. Iraq insisted that in its state of infrastructural collapse it could not deliver supplies according to UN mandate. For its part, the UN complained that an unacceptable proportion of relief supplies never reached their intended destination and that massive civilian lives were endangered by Iraq's boycott of UN distribution plans. It is important to note that for the most part these problems were overcome. Reports by UN agencies consistently document that in most humanitarian delivery plans their Iraqi counterparts were fully co-operative.

Oil for Food is an emergency aid plan. It was designed by the Security Council not to be a reconstruction plan. Yet the recovery of the civilian sector required the restoration of water supplies, electricity generation, modernizing of the petroleum and telecommunications industries, rebuilding of hospitals and schools, irrigation of farmland. The Iraqi government insisted that this could happen only with the end of the escrow account and the return of economic control to its rightful owner, the Iraqi nation. The US and its allies insisted that this was impossible before 100% compliance by Iraq with weapons inspectors. But the devastation to people's lives continued to unfold. Most worrisome was the continuing calamitous child mortality and morbidity rate. To ease the immediate effects of the embargo but clearly not to alter its cause the Council increased the oil sales cap to $5.256 billion per six-month phase in February of 1998. Many fewer people died as a result. But the systemic problem remained. Other efforts, like the short-lived 'Anorim panels', were introduced into the Council to streamline aid delivery. In 2001 the oil sales cap was raised to $8.2 billion and this year the ceiling for oil revenues was removed. Again, fewer people died. But four factors minimized the gain. One, given the decrepit state of oil drilling equipment even the 2001 production ceiling could not be reached. Two, price controls set by the Sanctions Committee on oil sales deprived Iraq of normal profits. Three, the price of oil plummeted. Four, Iraq was allowed no legal recourse against companies that delivered shoddy goods or completely defaulted on contracts.

III. The Meaning of Recent Changes in UN Policy toward Iraq

By the end of 2001 the catastrophic inadequacy of the Oil for Food program to Iraq's recovery - by design - was evident even to many one-time supporters of sanctions. The singly most repugnant aspect of it was the billions of dollars worth of contracts put on hold by the US. Among them were a number of contracts on which Iraq was trying to cheat and import materials for military use. These abuses were covered by the dual use resolution already in place. The billions of dollar holds in civilian contracts by the US was purely punitive measure.

All winter the US and the UK were working on a Goods Review List, a new listing of imports prohibited because of their potential for military use. Any contract application made up of items not on the GRL would be passed without delay. To make this arrangement appealing to the other permanent five members of the SC (China, France, and Russia) the US promised to release all contracts it had placed on hold, most of which were submitted by firms from these three countries. This proposal was an indirect admission by the US that it was holding these contracts for political reasons rather than because they were dual use.

By means of Resolution 1409 the GRL became the core innovation of a new mechanism for operating OFF. It took the initial review of contracts away from the Sanctions Committee where any member for any reason could place any contract on hold and turned it over to less directly politicized UN bodies, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). When GRL items are detected, but only then, will a contract return to the Sanctions Committee. Most SC members argue that 1409 should be given one phase in which to prove its claim of approving all civilian aid, even large scale infrastructural components. Critics warn that, while it might streamline the approval of civilian aid, 1409 is entrenching sanctions, and with them, foreign control of the Iraqi economy.