GBN NEWS:
In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, many academics, and policymakers cite America's support for United Nations sanctions on Iraq, and the oft-reported figure of one million resulting deaths, as a legitimate grievance against Washington's foreign policy. However, the facts upon which these critics make their case do not hold up under close scrutiny. Not only does the one million dead figure and other statistics originate with the Iraqi government (and not UN research as is so often cited), but portions of Iraq are actually doing better under sanctions than before their implementation. One UN study even reported nine years into sanctions that half the Iraqi population was overweight. Comparing the impact of sanctions between opposition-controlled Iraqi provinces and the portions of the country ruled by Saddam Hussein indicates that, while the deleterious impact of sanctions upon the Iraqi population has been grossly exaggerated, what problems do occur are a result of Baghdad's political leadership.
In his taped broadcast following the beginning of U.S. military action against Afghanistan in October 2001, Usama Bin Laden blamed the United States for the suffering of the Iraqi people. The claim that international sanctions have led to the death of one million Iraqis is often accepted at face value by academics, activists, UN officials, and even some policymakers. Tracing such claims to their origin, however, casts doubt not only on the numbers but also regarding the often-assumed linkage between sanctions and suffering in Iraq.
On October 7, as the U.S. military campaign against Afghanistan began, the Qatar-based television station Al-Jazeera broadcast a tape from Usama Bin Laden. In an effort to push populist buttons in the Middle East, Bin Laden blamed America for suffering in Iraq, declaring, "There are civilians, innocent children being killed every day in Iraq without any guilt, and we never hear anybody."
Not only does Bin Laden's claim have an audience in the Islamic world for those believing that the United States seeks to undermine the Muslim nations, but also among many U.S. academics, journalists, and policymakers who readily accept claims that the U.S. is responsible for the deaths of more than a million Iraqis. For example, just two days after Bin Laden's video aired, Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) blamed sanctions for suffering in Iraq. The same day, the online political news magazine Slate declared (based on the statement of UNICEF director Carol Bellamy) in an article about the alleged death of one million children in Iraq that "UNICEF's data on Iraqi child mortality rates haven't been disputed." Such claims have found a receptive audience on college campuses. For example, in April 1999, the Yale College government voted on behalf of the entire Yale University student body to condemn sanctions on Iraq.
The claim that sanctions have caused upwards of one million deaths in Iraq has been so often repeated, it is now accepted as unquestioned truth. Perennial opponents of U.S. policy Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, among others, declare, "The sanctions [on Iraq] are weapons of mass destruction." The American Friends Service Committee has been very vocal in its opposition to U.S. sanctions policy, arguing that, "During the past ten years, sanctions have led to an almost complete breakdown in economic, medical, social, and educational structures." When resigning from his UN post, Denis Halliday, the former United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, declared, "We are in the process of destroying an entire society."
Even some practitioners of U.S. foreign policy have questioned sanctions. Richard Haass, later appointed to head the State Department Policy Planning Staff, and Meghan O'Sullivan wrote in their comprehensive critique of sanctions, "Sanctions can be costly for innocent bystanders, particularly the poorest in the target country and American businesses and commercial interests. In addition, sanctions often evoke unintended consequences, such as the strengthening of obnoxious regimes."
But where does the claim of mass death or even genocide in Iraq originate?
In short, with the Iraqi government itself. Saddam Hussein's government has since the mid-1990s claimed that United Nations sanctions had resulted in more than a million deaths. Surprisingly, Baghdad also prevented humanitarian organizations to conduct their own fieldwork to verify the claims. Unable to conduct their own large-scale surveying, some humanitarian organizations adopted Iraqi government figures, thus amplifying the claim. In 1995, for example, UNICEF estimated that more than 1.2 million Iraqis had died as a result of sanctions, while the US-based International Action Coalition claimed that by 1997, the economic embargo upon Iraq had killed 1.4 million people.
Baghdad's claims were spacious, though. Iraq expert Amatzya Baram compared the country's population growth rates over the last three censuses and found there to be almost no difference between in the rate of Iraq's population growth between 1977 and 1987 (35.8 percent), and between 1987 and 1997 (35.1 percent).