BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE A critique of the British Government's narrative on UN economic sanctions
by
Dr. Eric Herring
Department of Politics, University of Bristol
September 1999
Under consideration for publication by Review of International Studies
Copyright © Eric Herring 1999. All rights reserved.
The British government has been the key player along with the United States in keeping in place UN Security Council economic sanctions on Iraq. How does the British government under Prime Minister Tony Blair justify that policy? This is the central question I address. From the imposition of sanctions up to mid-1997, approximately 720,000 deaths occurred in Iraq beyond the normal rate. The deaths have hit children disproportionately because they are less able to cope with chronic malnutrition, polluted water and lack of proper medical care. The question continues to be a pressing one, as Iraqis continue to die in vast numbers and many times more who survive will have their lives shortened and their health blighted irreversibly. The question is also particularly relevant as Blair's New Labour government claims to have introduced an ethical dimension to British foreign policy and a doctrine of international community so that it is meant to be informed by something more than realpolitik. I propose criteria for assessing narratives; I outline the narrative upon which the British government relies to justify the sanctions on Iraq; and I point to many of the uncomfortable silences in, and counters to, the British government's narrative. My argument is that, when these silences and counters are taken into consideration, the British government's narrative and its denial of any responsibility for the devastation of Iraqi society become very difficult to sustain. I develop a counter-narrative in which ordinary Iraqis are suffering due to the policies of both the UN Security Council and the Iraqi government rather than the latter alone. However, I argue that one's weighting of their relative responsibility for that suffering is a product of one's values and interpretations rather than of the gathering of facts alone. I conclude with an assessment of the policy debate regarding the sanctions.
ASSESSING NARRATIVES AFTER THE DEATH OF THE KILLER FACT
Social reality cannot be perceived directly. Instead, it is constructed through social interaction. Acceptance of this spells the death of the killer fact, that is, the fact which proves a narrative right or wrong decisively and indisputably. What we call facts do not tap into reality directly but involve interpretation. Indeed, put this way, the distinction between fact and narrative collapses - what we have are simple and complex narratives. By narrative I mean a story, usually with a beginning, middle, end and moral. In assessing narratives, a whole raft of questions springs to mind: what is the story? Who is telling it (who is the narrator)? Why are they telling it? What are its effects? Who are the audiences? How do the audiences re-tell the story? What has been left out to enable this story to be told? What other stories could be told? My objective is not to replace the existing narrative with a single replacement true narrative. I am not trying to replace one certainty with another, but to contribute to a politics of what might be called dialogue between uncertainties. However, nor am I suggesting that anything goes - that all narratives are equally valid. Just because we cannot choose definitively between narratives does not mean that there are no grounds for preferring one narrative over another. Various criteria are possible. The ones I use here are that one narrative is superior to another to the extent that it is valid in its own terms, accommodates more of the facts, addresses facts which appear not to sit comfortably with the narrative, engages with multiple narratives, understands that narratives are constructed and are not natural, offers the best interpretation it can without asserting that it has resolved the issue and found the truth, and is explicit and self-critical about its own values. To the extent that the British government's narrative is undermined, so must be the rationale behind its support for the sanctions.
THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT AND U.N. SANCTIONS ON IRAQ:
NARRATIVES, SILENCES AND COUNTER-NARRATIVES
The starting point for the British government's narrative is generally Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait on 2 August 1990. The UN Security Council declared this action to be illegal and imposed comprehensive sanctions under UN Security Council Resolution (SCR) 661 on 6 August 1990. All exports from Iraq or Kuwait were banned, as was the sale or supply to Iraq and Kuwait of all 'commodities or products, including weapons or any other military equipment'. Similarly, all funds were to be denied to Iraq. Hence its assets abroad were frozen. SCR 661 set up a committee of the Security Council (generally known as the Sanctions Committee composed of the Security Council members, including permanent representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China) to run the sanctions regime. In the terms of the resolution, 'supplies intended strictly for medical purposes, and in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs' and 'payments exclusively for strictly medical or humanitarian purposes and, in humanitarian circumstances, foodstuffs' were to be permitted. The sanctions were described in SCR 661 as measures intended 'to secure compliance of Iraq with paragraph 2 of resolution 660 (1990) [which demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait] and to restore the authority of the legitimate Government of Kuwait'.
Iraq did not withdraw from Kuwait. UN forces began an air bombardment of Iraq and Kuwait on 16 January 1991, and between 24 and 27 February 1991 a land offensive drove Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. However, economic sanctions remained in place. The Security Council set out the conditions for lifting the sanctions on 3 April 1991 under SCR 687. Under its terms, Iraq must unconditionally and indefinitely renounce nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons and ballistic missiles with a range of over 150 kilometres and related capabilities; cooperate with the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) regarding BC weapon and ballistic missile issues and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding nuclear weapon issues; provide full information about those banned capabilities; and accept ongoing monitoring and verification of its compliance. Once the Security Council is satisfied with the programme of compensation and the completion of all actions by Iraq called for above, the sanctions should be lifted completely. The sanctions could be lifted or 'reduced' on the recommendation of the Security Council, which reviews the sanctions every 60 days, 'in the light of the policies and practices' of Iraq. The sanctions are still in place.
The British government has accepted the various UN assessments of the disastrous humanitarian situation in Iraq. However, it insists that the situation is solely the responsibility of the Iraqi government. The criticisms are that Saddam Hussein is not bothering to act to alleviate the suffering of ordinary Iraqis or even that he is actively ensuring that they suffer to try to get the lifting of sanctions without having to comply with the UN's demands. I will concentrate on assessing the claims which seem to be most important to supporting those positions.
To what extent has Iraq complied with the relevant UN resolutions?
The sanctions are still being enforced, according to Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), because 'Iraq has not yet fulfilled the obligations imposed upon it by the UN' and because 'each review has concluded that Iraq has not yet met the conditions that would allow sanctions to be lifted or even relaxed'. In October 1998, UNSCOM (headed by Australian diplomat Richard Butler between July 1997 and July 1999) portrayed a rather mixed picture. It identified the remaining issues as being disarmament work regarding biological weapons; further information disclosure by Iraq in all areas but especially VX chemical warfare agent production and weaponisation; agreement of a system of long-term monitoring; and unilateral destruction of materials by Iraq which made verification of what has been destroyed difficult. On the other hand, it stated that 'the disarmament phase of the Security Council's requirements is possibly near its end in the missile and chemical weapons areas'. UN inspectors, both from UNSCOM and IAEA, have declared on many occasions over the years that their disarmament and information gathering work was almost over and that Iraq was near to full compliance. However, new evidence of Iraqi deception and non-compliance would emerge, or UN inspectors would make additional demands for information or inspections, which would trigger a new round of UN-Iraq disputes and military threats by the United States and Britain. Following the withdrawal of UNSCOM and the IAEA inspectors on 15 December 1998, the Security Council established three panels to review its relations with Iraq: they reported in March 1999. The humanitarian panel concluded that ‘under current conditions the humanitarian outlook will remain bleak and become even more serious with time’. The disarmament panel concurred with the previous UNSCOM and IAEA assessments regarding Iraqi compliance on disarmament. The panel on missing persons and Kuwaiti property reported that some but not all property and persons have been returned or accounted for. UN weapons inspectors have not (aside from minor exceptions) returned and so the monitoring and disarmament process continues to be effectively suspended.
Overall, the pattern is not one of simple non-compliance by Iraq, but one of partial compliance and a refusal to reward partial compliance with partial lifting of the sanctions. Why is this? At no point has there been a Security Council statement of what would be the conditions for a relaxation. The British narrative has been that it is keeping up maximum pressure to ensure full compliance. If so, then the policy has failed because full Iraqi compliance has not only not been secured, but its partial compliance withdrawn. However, as I now discuss, this may be what the British government wants, as Britain's objective may not be full Iraqi compliance but the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
The objective: securing Iraqi compliance with UN resolutions or bringing about the overthrow of Saddam Hussein?
Blair regularly refers to putting Saddam Hussein back into his cage and George Robertson, Defence Secretary and soon to be Secretary General of NATO, said that 'sanctions can easily be lifted on the decision of Saddam Hussein himself. He has that within his gift if he simply complies with the terms of the UN Security Council resolutions'. In contrast, there are many statements from US officials that their objective is to overthrow him, and that sanctions will stay until this is achieved. For example, in March 1997 President Bill Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said: 'We do not agree with those nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted'. Iraqi suspicions about British intentions must be fuelled even further by the firing of over 1,000 British and US missiles at Iraqi targets since their Operation Desert Fox attacks on Iraq in December 1998. Officially, the missiles have been fired to protect British and US aircraft patrolling the 'no-fly-zones' for Iraqi aircraft in the north and south of Iraq they have imposed supposedly to limit repression in those areas. However, the no-fly-zones have not received UN authorisation, and many believe that the Britain and the United States are provoking the incidents in order to chip away at Iraq's conventional forces.
If one takes the US and British positions at face value, there could be a situation in which Britain would be committed to lifting the sanctions while still leaving Saddam Hussein in power because of compliance with UN resolutions whereas the United States would be committed to keeping the sanctions in spite of compliance. One way to square the circle is to argue that, as long as Saddam Hussein is in power, he will never comply fully with the UN resolutions. After all. Saddam Hussein has made strenuous and continuing efforts to deceive UN disarmament inspectors. Hence the two objectives may be compatible. Whatever is the case, the official British narrative does not account for the US position or deal with the point that Iraq has no incentive to comply with the relevant UN resolutions, unless it believes that other states will force the lifting of the sanctions against the wishes of the US and possibly British governments. Nor does it address the point that US policy can be construed as being in violation of the very UN resolutions with which Iraq is being expected to comply because SCR 687 affirms explicitly the 'sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence' of Iraq. This last issue has formed part of the controversy of the slow start of the UN oil sales programme.
Why did Iraq initially refuse to participate in the UN oil sales programme?
The United Nations offered to allow the sale of some oil in August and September 1991 under SCR 706 and SCR 712, but Iraq refused to accept the conditions attached to the proposal. The UN proposed another oil sales deal on 14 April 1995 under SCR 986 which was accepted by Iraq in May 1996. The official British narrative is that this delay showed Saddam Hussein's total lack of interest in the welfare of his population. However, an alternative narrative is needed which takes into account more of the available information. First, SCR 706 gave no indication of how the $1.6 billion to be raised through the oil sales would be divided between humanitarian relief, the full costs of the activities of UNSCOM and the IAEA, half the costs of the Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Commission, and payments to the UN Compensation Fund. Second, Iraq was required to accept UN control of the funds raised plus extremely intrusive monitoring by UN observers throughout the country. The obvious Iraqi concern that the intrusive monitoring system might also be used for the purpose of espionage by the United States turned out to be at least partly valid, as former member of UNSCOM Scott Ritter has revealed. In the official British narrative, the fact that Britain (and the United States) were key players behind the resolution demonstrates their humanitarian concern, but this same fact must have heightened Saddam Hussein’s suspicions considering that they were his regime's leading opponents. Fourth, an indeterminate share of $1.6 billion was hardly going to seriously provide for the needs of the Iraqi people. Fifth, there was always the possibility that, even when money was raised, governments would start legal action to claim it. SCR 712 indicated that the funds would be insulated from legal action, but otherwise did little else than restate the same offer. Finally, Saddam Hussein may have believed that the sanctions regime would soon collapse and so the economy would begin to recover without him having to accept a deal with so many strings attached.
The UN and the official British narrative label the oil sales programme as 'oil for food'. However, in SCR 678 to which Iraq finally agreed, only 66% of the revenues are for food, medicine and humanitarian supplies in programmes to be implemented by Iraq in the centre and south of the country and by the United Nations in the north of the country receiving 53% and 13% respectively. The rest of the revenue is divided as follows: 30% to the UN Compensation Fund, 2.2% for administering the programme, 0.8% for the administrative costs of the UNSCOM, and 1% to the escrow account. Hence, although it is usually referred to as 'oil for food', only two-thirds of it is intended for humanitarian purposes in Iraq. Hence I refer to it as the 'oil sales programme', not the 'oil for food programme'. SCR 678 states that 'nothing in this resolution should be construed as infringing the sovereignty or territorial integrity of Iraq', which at least theoretically responded to one of the Iraqi government's objections. Overall, the British government's narrative that Iraq rejected an oil for food programme due simply to a complete lack of interest in the welfare of ordinary Iraqis, and that the British government in offering the deal was motivated purely by humanitarian concerns can be challenged in many respects. While Saddam Hussein is callous about the suffering of the Iraqi population, it is easily plausible that that is not the only or dominant factor in his rejection of SCRs 706 and 712.
Is Iraq allowed to purchase humanitarian supplies freely or is Britain being obstructive?
The Iraqi government produces a Distribution Plan for all the items it wants to import for phases of 180 days, the UN Secretary General considers for approval the plan overall, and the UN Sanctions Committee considers for possible approval each item requested for purchase within the plan. Due to their mutual hostility, Iraq virtually never requests contracts for items from Britain or the United States. The Foreign Office notes that 'Food, medicine and other supplies for essential civilian needs are not covered by the import ban' in SCR 661 and that only four per cent of items requested are vetoed by the Sanctions Committee (the UN's term for this is 'blocked'). Tony Lloyd, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, claims that Britain has proposed means for 'the speeding of approvals through the sanctions committee'. However, this bland and positive narrative is silent about, and contradicted by, counter-narratives claiming that Britain has on many occasions obstructed Iraq's purchase of humanitarian supplies on the grounds that they might be turned into weapons (even though the UN monitors delivery and distribution of those goods); or were not essential humanitarian supplies; or were inputs to industry, as if industry was not an essential part of civilian life. Karol Sikora, Chief of the Cancer Programme of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Professor of International Cancer Medicine at Imperial College, London has alleged that 'Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs, and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers. There seems to be a rather ludicrous notion that such agents could be converted into chemical or other weapons'. For Phase V (26 November 1998 to 25 May 1999) of the oil sales programme, the Sanctions Committee had, as of 16 August 1999, considered 999 applications for humanitarian contracts. Those which had been blocked included sugar from Vietnam; veterinary medicine from Spain; vegetable ghee from Egypt andTunisia; generator, boiler and measuring system equipment from Italy; laboratory equipment from Germany; soya bean meal from India; cheese, chillers, water treatment chemicals, pumps and compressors from France; and distribution network equipment from Turkey. In Britain, before an application to supply Iraq with goods can even be seen by the Sanctions Committee, it must first be approved by the Sanctions Unit within the Export Control Organisation of the British Department of Trade and Industry. The figure of four per cent must exclude all items which were blocked at national level before being allowed to go forward for approval to the Sanctions Committee.
Even if an item is not blocked, there is tremendous potential for disruptive stalling through the use of 'holds': a Sanctions Committee member can delay approval of an application, and only that same Sanctions Committee member can release that hold. The Foreign Office does not comment on these. As of 16 August 1999, the Sanctions Committee had placed holds on 141 of the 999 Phase V humanitarian contracts from many countries. None of the holds were for food, but eighteen were for medicines and medical equipment, including one for X-ray equipment from Austria. The holds were principally aimed at supplies for the electricity industry, but also water treatment, cranes, excavators, educational equipment and materials, trucks and vehicle spare parts. dental equipment, toilet soap, computers, pesticides, veterinary supplies and, strangely enough, wheelbarrows. As of 16 August 1999, the committee had also been presented with 524 proposed contracts for oil industry spare parts: 164 - one third with about one third of the total dollar value of the contracts, mostly from China, Russia, France and the United Arab Emirates - had been placed on hold and six blocked. On average it, it takes the Sanctions Committee 66 days to approve a food contract, whereas delivery takes only 59 days and distribution seven days. Unfortunately, the UN documentation does not identify which Sanctions Committee member imposed the holds, nor does it give reasons for the holds or for the length of the holds. However, it is generally believed that the United States has imposed most of the holds, with most of the rest being imposed by Britain.
To deal with this kind of problem, the Security Council's humanitarian panel proposed in March 1999 that a list of foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, and medical, agricultural and educational equipment and supplies should be drawn up, and that all such items should not require Sanctions Committee approval. It also proposed that dual use items (that is, items which may be diverted to prohibited weapons activities) not on that list should be authorised by the Sanctions Committee within two days. These proposals have not been adopted and the delays continue. Benon Sevan, Executive Director of the UN Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP), complained to the Security Council in July 1999 that 'The improvement of the nutritional and health status of the Iraqi people through [a] multi-sectoral approach ... is being seriously affected as a result of [the] excessive number of holds placed on supplies and equipment for water, sanitation and electricity.' Giving specific examples, Sevan argued out that the absence of even one small item can be enough to stall an entire project. In August 1999, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan pointed out that the number of holds was increasing and reiterated his appeal to the Sanctions Committee to speed up its review of items it has placed on hold. Lloyd claims that Saddam Hussein 'sought to buy equipment that is totally irrelevant; indeed it has been blocked by the sanctions committee of the UN because it is irrelevant to the needs of his people. He does not choose to prioritise the poor, or the malnourished children'. However, he is silent on holds imposed (probably by Britain or the United States) on goods which are important to the needs of those same people.
Why have large amounts of medical supplies not been distributed?
The stockpiling of medical supplies is given by the British government as conclusive proof of Saddam Hussein's diabolical nature and the irrelevance of sanctions to the suffering of ordinary Iraqis. In January 1999, Robertson stated Saddam Hussein 'has in warehouses $275 million-worth of medicines and medical supplies which he refuses to distribute' and asked rhetorically 'what kind of leader watches his children die and his hospitals operate without drugs, but keeps $275 million-worth of medicines and medical supplies locked up in a warehouse?' However, Robertson fails to note that the UN reports from which those figures are taken offer a very different narrative about the reasons for the stockpiling. In the period before such allegations began to be made, not only did the UN favour stockpiling, but the WHO argued for more of it. In November 1997, Annan reported that Iraq was maintaining a buffer stock for emergencies and that it 'releases supplies from the buffer stock as newly arrived stock becomes available as replacement.' Annan commented approvingly in June 1998:
The current stock, consisting of a 5 to 10 per cent reserve has been designed to cope with emergencies and has assisted in ensuring the availability of needed items. ... WHO has indicated that a more substantial reserve is the only practical solution to the procurement cycle with a delay of some four to five months before the start of arrivals [of replacements for depleted items].
Nevertheless, he expressed concerns about distribution bottlenecks caused by 'poor logistics, the absence of proper warehousing, inadequate management tools and a lack of staff support and training.'
The problems were exacerbated, according to Annan, by 'a surge in arrivals of commodities from April 1998 onwards', lack of transport, bulky equipment, and failure of some suppliers to indicate how to test supplies. In February 1999, Annan described the stockpiles as 'alarmingly high', but again the reasons given were not those implied by the official British narrative. The first was 'slow contracting by Kimadia, the Iraqi state company for drug imports' due to problems in Kimadia's attempt to computerise the ordering process and its use of inexperienced people to do it. No suggestion was made of deliberate sabotage by Kimadia. The second, and as far as the report was concerned, 'more serious' factor was 'the slow pace of distribution from Kimadia central warehouses to the governorate warehouses, and further to health centres.' The reasons given by Annan for this were 'lack of modern managerial tools', 'poor working conditions within the warehouses', 'lack of transport for moving the supplies', 'the rigid hierarchy in the Ministry of Health administration which makes it difficult for functionaries to approve deliveries without approval of superiors', and 'superiors may have deliberately withheld supplies in anticipation of emergency needs' after tensions increased as of September 1998. This last point refers to bombing by the US and British air forces. The third factor given was over-prescribing by physicians and the Iraqi Ministry of Health's desire to prevent waste of medicines by controlling supplies more tightly.
In an atmosphere of increasing political controversy over the warehousing issue, Annan argued in May 1999 that the reasons for the slowness of distribution were 'multiple and complex', but he identified 'the decline in professional competence and motivation' as a 'key reason'. What might have been the reason for this decline? It could be that they have been demotivated by eight years of poverty and ill health. Aside from this, Annan identified contributory factors external to Iraq: 'erratic arrivals', confusion caused by the fact that various brand-names refer to the same generic product, space problems caused by the recent delivery of bulky equipment, increased total volume of deliveries, and delays in the arrival of complementary parts and technical staff. In July 1999, Sevan indicated that 'lengthy delays' caused by the UN Sanctions Committee approval process meant that previously reliable suppliers had withdrawn, and so Iraq had been 'obliged to procure through less reliable brokers'. Sevan indicated that he wanted 'to demystify' the issue of warehoused humanitarian supplies through a comprehensive inventory. Initial results from the inventory showed the situation to be improving. By 31 July 1999, of drugs delivered to Iraq, 68.8 per cent had been distributed with 26.7 per cent set aside as buffer and working stock. Of medical supplies delivered to Iraq, 65 per cent had been distributed, and 15 per cent was being quality tested, had failed quality testing or was awaiting complementary accessories. Again, the British government's narrative is sustained by ignoring the contents of the reports on which it purports to be based and by making other accusations.
Why are conditions worse in the centre and south of Iraq - harsher Saddam or harsher sanctions?
The British government has made the most of the contrasts between the north of Iraq which is UN-controlled and the centre and south of the country where the programme is administered directly by the Iraqi government and monitored by the UN. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said of northern Iraq that 'it is no accident that the people are hugely better off ... The contrast with the rest of the country could not be starker’. All the reports referred to in this paper confirm the contrast: the narrative at issue here is what explains that contrast. The oil sales programme was meant to supplement Iraqi government supplies for the population. However, according to the Foreign Office, 'Instead the Government stopped supplying food rations as soon as "oil for food" was implemented' The oil for food programme allows the purchase of food and medicine but 'Saddam chooses not to purchase those.' Lloyd stated that the Iraqi government 'reduces the daily food ration from 2,200 calories to 2,050' and explained it as follows: 'this is [a] political choice made by Saddam against his own people. That is an undeniable consequence of the way in which he manipulates those programmes.' In fact, the Iraqi government not only buys food and medicine, but sells medicine to the public at only 25 per cent of their cost. Furthermore, according to Annan:
During the reporting period, owing to a shortage of in-country stock, only in March 1998 did the food basket contain the full ration for all commodities other than infant formula, whose shortfall was made up from stocks purchased independently by the Government of Iraq. In December 1997 and April 1998, while the food basket was supplemented by the Government, a reduced ration was distributed.
Although ration calories were cut (to 2,030 calories, not 2,050), this was because of shortfalls in the UN programme for which the Iraqi government attempted to compensate, at least in part. Before March 1998, the Iraqi government had refused to supply the UN-controlled northern governates with stocks from national reserves to make up for shortfalls caused principally by delayed delivery. Since then, central stocks have been going to the north, even though those food deliveries will be represented as proof of how much better things are in the UN-controlled north.
UNICEF calculated that the mortality rate among children under five in the north fell between 1979 and 1989, rose until 1994, and then fell again until 1999 (to below the rate for 1979 to 1989). In contrast, it calculated for the centre and south of Iraq fell during the 1980s but rose catastrophically during the 1990s to result in around 500,000 excess deaths among children under five. This has been cited by Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon among others upon as proof that the deaths are caused not by the sanctions but by Saddam Hussein alone. However, UNICEF explicitly rejects this:
the difference in the current rate [of child mortality] cannot be attributed to the differing ways the Oil-for-Food Program is implemented in the two parts of Iraq. The Oil-for-Food Program is two and a half years old. Therefore it is too soon to measure any significant impact of the Oil-for-Food Program on child mortality over the five year period of 1994-1999 as reported in these surveys.
Caroline Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, says there are a number of reasons for the difference - sanctions have been more easy to evade in the north, agriculture is easier there, and it has been receiving aid for a much longer period. Indeed aid began arriving in the north in 1991 whereas it began to arrive in the rest of the country only in 1997, and in large quantities only from the spring of 1998. In addition, according to Richard Garfield, a Columbia University epidemiologist who has studied the effects of the sanctions on Iraq, the north gets 22 per cent more per capita from the oil sales programme; gets 10 per cent of the funds raised in cash (unlike the centre and south which gets only commodities); and gets aid from 34 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) compared to eleven in the centre and south. On this basis, the narrative that the difference is caused by harsher sanctions rather than harsher Saddam is much more plausible.
Saddam Hussein's harshness in general terms is not in doubt. Around a million Iraqis died or were injured as a consequence of his wars against Iran and Kuwait, and perhaps hundreds of thousands more died or were injured in his repression of Kurdish opposition in the north of Iraq and Shiite opposition in the south of Iraq. Many thousands more have been murdered, tortured or mutilated, and terror has been a key instrument of his rule, including the use of chemical weapons against Kurds in Halabja. Under sanctions, he has prioritised his own survival and ambitions by ensuring that his military and terror apparatus is resourced and loyal. He could have acted to ensure that the Iraqi state performed significantly better in protecting those most vulnerable to the sanctions (the poor and the young). He has sought to draw attention to their suffering as a means of getting sanctions lifted without having to give up his pursuit of the weapons which the UN has been seeking to deny him. The brutality of Saddam Hussein makes it plausible that he would order the obstruction of humanitarian supplies if he thought it would be of advantage to him. This is all part of the British government's narrative, and is widely accepted by opponents of the sanctions concerned with the fate of ordinary Iraqis. However, there is no evidence that he did ever issue such an order, and the UN attributes the slowness of the distribution of humanitarian supplies to much less sinister reasons within Iraq and to the obstructiveness of the Sanctions Committee. Furthermore, even if the Iraqi government did optimise the effectiveness of its humanitarian programmes, the situation would still be dire: the UN has stated repeatedly and consistently that the scale of resources envisaged in the oil sales programme is totally inadequate.
In spite of the repression and the costs of the war with Iran, before the sanctions Iraqi agriculture was flourishing, the people were well fed with over 3,000 calories per day, adult literacy was around 95 per cent, 92 per cent had safe water, and 93 per cent had free access to modern health facilities. UNICEF concluded that 'Iraq had converted oil wealth into enhanced social well-being with considerable success' and The Economist's Economic Intelligence Unit observed that 'the Iraqi welfare state was, until recently, among the most comprehensive and generous in the Arab world'. If Saddam Hussein wants to be as powerful as possible, an educated, well-fed, healthy population is a means to that end. In other words, it would make sense for him to want the suffering to end, even if only for power-political as opposed to humanitarian ends. It is possible that he has always been prepared to accept the devastation of much of his societal power base through sanctions rather than give up his pursuit of banned weapons. However, he may have always believed that the sanctions would not last much longer and so he would not have to be faced with the choice, that the sanctions would remain even if he did renounce them, or that the UN would keep moving the goal posts on compliance so that it would not be possible to comply. Indeed, the United States demands Iraqi compliance with SCR 687 while refusing to comply itself, and with the United States overtly bent on his overthrow, Saddam Hussein may regard it as highly unwise to renounce the banned weapons even if sanctions would be lifted. We do not know either way, and US and British policy has contributed to that uncertainty.
CONCLUSION: NARRATIVES, VALUES AND POLICIES
The British government's narrative asserts that Iraq has not complied with the relevant UN resolutions; Iraqi non-compliance is the reason why sanctions are in still in place; Iraq refused for years to accept an offer to allow it to sell oil to buy humanitarian supplies; Iraq is now allowed to buy humanitarian supplies freely; the Iraqi government is choosing to withhold medical supplies; and conditions are much worse in Baghdad-controlled central and southern Iraq than in the UN-controlled north due to the policies of Saddam Hussein. I have developed a counter-narrative which is superior by the criteria indicated at the outset and which runs as follows: that partial compliance has not been rewarded with partial relaxation of sanctions; Iraqi incentives to comply are undermined further by the way that the United States has made it clear, in violation of the relevant UN resolutions, that it wants to retain sanctions in the hope that they will lead to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein even if Iraq does comply; for a long time there was little evidence that the oil sales programme would provide significant amounts of humanitarian supplies; Iraq's attempts to purchase humanitarian supplies are often obstructed by members of the Sanctions Committee; problems in the distribution of medical supplies are due to less sinister reasons within Iraq and also due to problems caused by the Sanctions Committee; and conditions are much worse in the centre and south because the sanctions have been much harsher there. Saddam Hussein has been prepared to sacrifice ordinary Iraqis in his efforts to survive and beyond that to bring about the lifting of economic sanctions without giving up weapons banned by the UN, and the British government has been willing to sacrifice them in its efforts to limit his capabilities to acquire those weapons, to make him renounce them or even to overthrow him. Although a precise calculation of relative degree of responsibility cannot be made, the Iraqi people are being ground to pieces in a power struggle, caught between Iraq and a hard place.
Narratives involve implicit or explicit values as well as interpretations. The British government has been attempting to limit Iraq's military capability in ways which involve depriving Iraq's civilian population of many of the means necessary to survival. The British government has tried to defend its policy morally by trying to shift all blame to the Iraqi regime. But many of its supporting claims have been problematic. For the means to have been proportionate in this case, the threat must be truly apocalyptic, and the British government's narrative hypes the threat with statements such as 'Prior to the Gulf War, Iraq produced enough chemical and biological weapons material to kill the world's population several times over.' This is true only in the ludicrous scenario of everyone standing still while a tiny drop is administered to them individually.
In spite of all the suffering, the British government has failed to achieve its objectives. If the goal was overthrowing Saddam Hussein, he is still there. Indeed, the sanctions may be reinforcing his position, by feeding Iraqi nationalism and vengeful anti-Westernism, encouraging even more corruption, making Saddam Hussein seem less vile than the West to many Iraqis, requiring a rationing system which allows the Iraqi state to monitor even more closely most Iraqis, and undermining the civil society which might provide the best hope for a more humane successor government. If the goal was arms inspections without sanctions, that has not been achieved. We have the opposite - sanctions without arms inspections. The approach of Britain and the United States seems to be to prolong as long as possible the deadlock in the Security Council that keeps the sanctions in place, even though the sanctions have failed. Some who think that Iraq is extremely dangerous, including former members of UNSCOM Tim Trevan of Britain and Ritter of the United States, are in favour of dropping the sanctions and launching a US-led UN war to remove Saddam Hussein and transform the Iraqi political system. There is virtually no chance of this happening. The second option being considered is offering to lift the sanctions and allow full-scale foreign investment in return for a much more limited degree of (probably ineffective) disarmament monitoring than in the past. This is favoured by France, Russia and China (and is Ritter's fall-back option). The United States and Britain say this is unacceptable, and Iraq wants the sanctions lifted unconditionally and immediately, though either might in the end decide to go for this middle option. The third possibility is that the sanctions system will collapse and Iraq will get what it wants - no sanctions and no monitoring. The chances are that the world will have to learn to live with an Iraq with renewed NBC weapon and missile programmes. Fortunately, chemical and especially biological weapons are very hard to deliver to their targets in a way that will inflict significant casualties or do so with any reliability. Their military value can be minimised by counter-measures and their political value might be minimised by education about their limited killing power. Nuclear weapons are vastly more effective at killing, and can be delivered more reliably on missiles, aircraft or other systems. Some reassurance can be drawn from the fact that nuclear weapons are relatively difficult to produce, and with much more seriousness about export controls than in the past it could take Iraq many years to acquire any. Whatever the outcome with regard to disarmament and monitoring, the British government's narrative on sanctions merely serves to prop up a failed policy which is inflicting terrible costs on the Iraqi people.
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