Parekh is a third-year physiological science student.
By Saadia Parekh
This past August, America celebrated 10 years of genocide in
Iraq. For 10 years, Iraq has been silently dwindling away under
U.N.-imposed and U.S.-sponsored economic sanctions. In this time,
over one million Iraqi people have died. Of those, over 500,000 are
children under the age of five who have died of causes such as
starvation, malnutrition, disease and even mere diarrhea.
With such apparent atrocities, we must question what purpose the
sanctions are serving and why it is that even after 10 years of
inflicting such horror on the Iraqi people, the U.S. and British
governments refuse to budge on the issue.
Originally, according to the United Nations Resolution 687, the
sanctions were to remain until Iraq met certain specific
requirements regarding weapons of mass destruction. More recently
however, it has been stated that the sanctions will remain as long
as Saddam Hussein is in power. If this is truly the case, then the
sanctions have had exactly the opposite effect than has been
intended. Rather than removing Saddam from power, the sanctions
have merely served to strengthen his regime.
 Illustration by JARRETT QUON/Daily Bruin The reasoning
behind economic sanctions is that the civilian population, through
some form of protest, will vote or carry out a coup d’etat
that will cause its government to change its ways so that the
sanctions can be lifted. Such reasoning has proven to be flawed in
multiple cases.
In Cuba, such sanctions have been in place for almost half a
century, yet Castro’s regime still stands. The sanctions on
Iraq have been in place for ten years, but Saddam is as powerful as
ever. Not only have sanctions failed to remove dictators from
power; they have directly contributed to strengthening the
dictator’s control as he rallies his people against a common
enemy, the imposer of the sanctions.
In Iraq, continued sanctions have resulted in an ever-increasing
anti-American sentiment, leaving neither Saddam nor the Iraqi
people any incentive to comply, especially if the Iraqi people
believe the alternative to be a U.S.-sponsored government.
In addition, rather then targeting the regime, the sanctions
have targeted innocent civilians. While the Iraqi people suffer,
Saddam continues to build lavish palaces for himself. Even if the
civilians revolted against their dictator, they have been rendered
too weak to accomplish their task. Iraqi people struggling just to
survive and make ends meet hardly have the energy to struggle
against a powerful ruler.
The sanctions have left an entire society weak and helpless.
Iraq, which once had one of the most advanced health care systems
in the Middle East, which provided free health coverage for all
citizens, now lacks even the most basic of medicines. Diabetics are
left without insulin and asthmatics are without inhalers. Patients
suffering from cancer do not even have aspirin to help ease their
pain in their last days. The lack of medicines, coupled with water
that cannot be purified due to a block on chlorine, has made
numerous treatable diseases, such as influenza, dysentery and even
dehydration into virtual death sentences.
Sadly though, the ones left to pay the price most dearly are the
children of Iraq. Thirty-two percent of children under the age of 5
are malnourished. Mothers in Iraq, weary of watching their children
die slow, painful deaths, ask why the United States doesn’t
just drop a nuclear bomb on them.
Have we become so heartless? According to the United
Nation’s own figures, more than 5,000 children die each month
as a result of the sanctions. The situation is so severe that
multiple U.N. officials have quit their posts out of protest of the
United Nation’s insistence of maintaining the sanctions.
Denis Halliday, former U.N. coordinator of humanitarian aid, has
said, “We are in the process of destroying an entire society.
It is as simple and as terrifying as that.”
How can anyone, specifically Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, say that “the price is worth it”? It is
horrifying that a grandmother could think that any policy, whether
effective or not, is worth the lives of thousands of children.
How long will we let this cruelty go on before we open our eyes
and admit that the sanctions have failed? How long will we let
innocent children pay the price for a ruthless ruler before we
realize that the sanctions have done nothing to weaken him? How
long will we allow ourselves to be convinced that the price is
“worth it” before we stand up and say it is not?
As a country which applauds itself for its anti-terrorism
policies, perhaps we should look at our own policy toward Iraq. As
defined in Webster’s dictionary, terrorism is “the
practice of coercing governments to accede to political demands by
committing violence on civilian targets.” If the sanctions
aren’t an act of terrorism, then what is?
As Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General put it,
“It’s like we put a gun to the heads of the children of
Iraq. We say, “˜Saddam Hussein, you do what we say or we pull
the trigger.’ Then we pull the trigger every day.”
It is time we admit the grievous wrong we have committed and
acknowledge the sanctions for what they are: a failure. It is time
that we stand up to our officials and say we will no longer let
them taint our hands with the blood of the Iraqi people.
Ten years have passed since the sanctions have been placed and
if the sanctions continue in this same manner, it won’t be
long until Iraq becomes a figment of history and the cries of the
Iraqi people become nothing more than silence.