Special: Who Are We Punishing In Iraq?

by Andrew Mandell

An increasing number of voices are being raised against U.S. sanctions on Iraq. On Monday, February 14, 2000, a large group of protesters gathered in front of the U.S. Mission to the U.N., while eighty-six men and women were arrested in a nonviolent protest blocking the building's steps. The rally followed a thirty-day fast by twelve Americans calling for an end to the sanctions. Cornerstone reporter Andrew Mandell attended the protest and brought back this report.

"We are not an evil people, we are not evil." This beautiful human being, standing in the rain in front of a microphone, looked into our eyes and repeated the words, as if our propaganda had touched her own heart and she had to remind herself of the truth. "If my people must die, kill them quickly. The sanctions are too slow, and we cannot bear to watch our children die." These words were spoken to all of us, to America. I knew as deeply as I have ever known anything that this cry could not be redirected. It was for me to hear and for me to carry.

I felt the last lingering taste for a human enemy leaving my mouth and prayed it would not return.

Across from where we stood in the Dag Hammarskjold Plaza hung a memorial to my people, the Jews, lost in the Shoah. I looked back and forth between it and this grieving Iraqi woman as New York City buzzed on unchecked around us. Slowly, I see myself as an Iraqi and my baby lies dying from lack of medicine. Cut off and isolated, what would I do? How would I escape the rage and the hatred? The hatred. That is what we are feeding as we slowly starve these people of all hope.

Another voice is speaking now, reading a letter from part of the church in Iraq, a letter from all five of Iraq's Catholic bishops. It had stopped raining. "We appeal to all Catholics and Christians in America and the world. The sanctions are killing our people, our children, the ones Christ has given us to protect. They are killing our beloved Muslim brothers and sisters. They strike at our poor and our sick most of all. In the name of God's people, we ask you: Tell your government to end the sanctions against the Iraqi people. End the seven years of war against Iraq."

This February yet another top U.N. official involved with the Iraqi crisis resigned. Hans von Sponeck after thirty-six years of U.N. work, gave up his post as coordinator of the U.N. humanitarian program in Iraq. Von Sponeck said he had been pressured by the U.S. and Great Britain to refrain from comments questioning the moral basis of the sanctions. Before his decision to resign, von Sponeck told CNN:

"As a U.N. official, I should not be expected to be silent to that which I recognize as a true human tragedy that needs to be ended. . . . How long [should] the civilian population, which is totally innocent on all this, be exposed to such punishment for something that they have never done?" he asked.

"I am . . . very sorry that two important member governments are questioning my integrity and questioning whether I stay within my bounds. The very title that I hold as a humanitarian coordinator suggests that I cannot be silent over that which we see here ourselves.''

Ten days later, von Sponeck announced his resignation, stating his inability to be party any longer to the continued suffering of the Iraqi people. Von Sponeck is no stranger to dissent as his father, General Hans von Sponeck, was jailed in 1941 for disobeying Hitler's orders and was executed in 1944 during the purge which followed the July 20 attempt on Hitler's life.

The U.N. is no stranger to dissent over this issue. Jutta Burghardt, head of the World Food Programme in Iraq, also resigned, saying the latest U.N. resolution to ease the sanctions was unworkable.

Von Sponeck's predecessor, Denis Halliday of Ireland, left this post in protest in mid-1998:

"The sanctions . . . weren't leading to disarmament and, second, the cost of sanctions was completely unacceptable-killing 6,000 to 7,000 children a month. Sustaining a level of malnutrition of about 30 percent for children under five leads to physical and mental problems. It's incompatible with the U.N. Charter, with the Convention on Human Rights, with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and probably with many other international agreements. I just found that impossible to accept as the head of the U.N. in Iraq."

Halliday now devotes much of his time to speaking out on the issue. As many protesters of the sanctions, he readily acknowledges the Iraqi regime's complicity but sees that as largely a smoke screen for the failures of our own actions:

"If you wish, we can share the responsibility with Saddam Hussein, but we have no influence over him. But we certainly have influence over ourselves and over those we choose to represent us. As we sit here rather snug in our democracy, in our universities, in our homes, with our opportunities and our educations and our futures and our human rights intact, we are responsible for a policy in Iraq which is taking away from the people of Iraq not only their very lives, but the lives of their children, the lives of the next generation. We are seeing children suffering from chronic malnutrition in Iraq today who are going to be mentally and physically stunted for the rest of their lives. And we are responsible."

In February of 1998, when the U.S. threatened to heavily bombard Iraq, I traveled to the town of Fallujah with a joint U.S./U.K. Voices in the Wilderness delegation. Our British friends recalled that following the Gulf War, a British Royal Air Force pilot expressed remorse and grief because he was instructed to bomb a bridge just outside Fallujah, but the "smart bomb" he carried missed its intended target and instead hit a crowded marketplace. According to some reports, 150 people were killed, many more wounded.

We visited the marketplace, accompanied by a television crew, hoping that we could be a voice for people living in Fallujah who rightly feared more death and destruction as a new threat of bombardment loomed. We quickly attracted a large crowd in the marketplace. People were jostling and pushing to grab for our fliers that stated, in Arabic, the purpose of our trip. Surrounded by a crowd of angry people, I wondered if mob action might be looming.

Then a man began to shout, in English, and he was livid. "You Americans! I'll show you water you wouldn't give your animals to drink, and this is all that we have. And now you want to bomb us again!" Then he stared at me directly, and his face changed. "Madam, you are tired, you look too tired. You come with me. I get you lunch." He took me by the hand and led me through the crowd. Relentless hospitality. This has been our experience repeatedly, wherever we travel in Iraq.

But there is another story from Fallujah which must be told. In May of 1999, we again visited Fallujah. As before, a large crowd gathered, some vociferous, all eager to get leaflets. I spotted a young boy who was staring at me intently. "Ahmed," I asked our friend who was translating for us, "can you ask him what he is thinking about?" Responding to Ahmed's question, the young boy, probably eleven or twelve years old, squared his shoulders and said, "I am a scholar of the faith."

"Yes, but ask him what he's thinking," I persisted.

Ahmed posed the question again. "I am thinking," said the boy, "that when I grow up I will become a fighter pilot and bomb the United States."

Then Ahmed said, "Look, look at the man there." Standing behind the young boy, an old man with huge eyes daubed at a tear flowing down his cheek and sadly walked away.

(For up-to-date info see Voices in the Wilderness.)

The 1996 exchange between Lesley Stahl of the CBS program 60 Minutes and then-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright.

Stahl, speaking of the results of the U.N. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price-we think the price is worth it."

Statement from the National Gulf War Resource Center, the largest Gulf War veterans organization in the U.S: The NGWRC strongly believes that further civilian casualties in Iraq must be avoided. As soldiers, we were trained to abide by international laws relating to the treatment and protection of civilian populations. Economic sanctions which prevent or otherwise hamper nations from maintaining the public health of their citizens (as opposed to targeted military and diplomatic sanctions) are in violation of these international laws, including Geneva Protocol 1, Article 54, which prohibits the "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare." The U.N. and the U.S. must work toward an immediate end to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

"I asked myself many times where do the rights of children fit in here? Why should any, but especially children under the age of five, suffer so much and die in such numbers? Sadly, I had to witness ever repeated scenes of children dying as I walked through hospital wards. . . ." Margarita Skinner, UNICEF health coordinator in Baghdad (1991-1992)

"We do not seek to punish the Iraqi people for the decisions and policies of their leaders."

President George Bush, press conference, quoted in Washington Post, February 6, 1991