Don't Lift the Sanctions Yet

After five years spent working to end the sanctions on Iraq, I find myself in an odd position. I'm opposed to the current U.S. plans to end the sanctions.

The new situation is fascinating. For a dozen years, every time we in the anti-sanctions movement talked about the appalling suffering caused by the sanctions, the constant refrain -- from the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, and the second Bush administration -- was that the suffering was not caused by sanctions but by the regime. Once the regime is destroyed, the Bush administration miraculously realizes overnight sanctions were actually harmful and that it's necessary to remove that burden from the Iraqi people in order to provide humanitarian aid and reconstruction.

Adding to the confusion, the two countries on the Security Council previously most against continuation of the sanctions, France and Russia, did an about-face and opposed the U.S. plans. Both (especially Russia) have insisted that sanctions cannot be lifted until UN weapons inspectors certify that Iraq is disarmed of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This is true even though Vladimir Putin of Russia openly mocked Tony Blair about the dramatically unconfirmed claims by "coalition" members that Iraq possessed WMD that posed a threat to the world.

Did this administration, which tried to keep Iraqi infants from being vaccinated for diphtheria and limited imports of streptomycin into the country, see a blinding light on the road to Baghdad? And did other countries suddenly decide that the deaths of Iraqi children was, as Madeleine Albright put it in an interview in 1996, a price worth paying, and this time merely in order to uphold a trivial legalistic argument?

Actually, it's not so confusing. The United States has moved to consolidate control over Iraq. The talks being held by selected members of the "Iraqi opposition" under the control of the U.S. military are not intended to create an independent government, but rather one which is tightly controlled by the United States, just as in Afghanistan. As in Afghanistan, the meetings are excluding entire segments of the political spectrum. They are being done with express disregard of calls across that spectrum for meetings to be held under neutral UN auspices rather than under those of an occupying power with clear plans for increased regional domination.

Those plans have become clear as well. The Bush administration wants to set up permanent military bases in Iraq, making it the main Middle East staging area for U.S. "force projection." The massive political leverage given by this presence will be used as a club against Iran and Syria and also to force the Palestinians to acquiesce to the Israeli occupation through the latest "peace plan." The administration also wants not only to open up future Iraqi exploration to foreign corporations (with U.S. and maybe British corporations presumably favored) but to privatize, at least in part, the state oil companies and their currently producing wells.

All of these things can be obtained through the U.S. military presence and the creation of what will essentially be an Iraqi puppet government. However, some problems are the kind that can't be solved by bombs. Existing UN resolutions require Security Council approval for Iraqi oil sales and for disbursement of oil money to pay for other goods. Other countries may be leery of buying Iraqi oil without some clear understanding that what they're doing is legal, so the United States cannot simply declare those resolutions void by fiat, the way it declared war on Iraq.

The draft resolution being currently circulated would give the United States very open, explicit control over Iraq's oil industry and the money derived therefrom. Then, instead of being forced to disburse USAID funds to corporations like Bechtel that are closely tied to current and past administration figures in closed bidding processes with no foreign corporations allowed, the United States will be able to use Iraq's money to pay off mostly American corporations.