Iraqi Excess Undercuts Bid to End Sanctions

As Iraq this week tries to persuade the United Nations to lift economic sanctions punishing the country, Iraqi leaders are facing a growing public relations dilemma: New indications of lavish spending by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his inner circle undercut their claim that the embargo has brought severe hardship.

The sanctions come up for review at the U.N. on Monday, and they are expected to be renewed because Iraq has not destroyed all of its weapons of mass destruction, as required under the cease-fire agreement that ended the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

Although the debate will focus on compliance with the weapons requirements, some allies view the suffering caused by the sanctions as a reason to try to ease the embargo.

Eight years after the U.N. imposed the toughest sanctions ever slapped on any nation, Iraq has lost an estimated $115 billion in oil revenue. Iraqi leaders argue that the sanctions are responsible for food shortages, malnutrition and premature deaths.

To be sure, the sanctions have taken an enormous toll on the Iraqi people. Yet Western diplomats and experts on the region say that many other factors are also responsible, including government inefficiency, domestic repression, ethnic discrimination--and spending by Hussein on such comforts as new presidential palaces, which envoys were given access to for the first time this month.

Inside the compounds, envoys found palaces featuring imported marble, posh furnishings and elaborate landscaping--all paid for during the period the sanctions have been in effect.

There are other examples as well. When Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz journeyed from Baghdad to New York in November to complain to the U.N. Security Council about the sanctions, he made the last leg from Paris on the world’s most luxurious jetliner.

The Air France Concorde offered Aziz and his team of seven aides pampered service, haute cuisine and wines from the cellars of the best French chateaux.

The round-trip fare per head, according to the airline, was $8,453.20.

Clearly, diplomats and observers say, Hussein and his inner circle have escaped the most punishing restrictions.

Yet in the battle to influence world public opinion, they have exploited the hardships of ordinary citizens who have felt the squeeze.

For example, about the same time that Aziz was flying to New York, Iraqi officials in Baghdad escorted U.S. and European journalists through the fly-infested pediatric ward of a hospital, blaming a growing list of malnutrition cases and medical shortages on the sanctions.

In addition, government-organized demonstrators paraded empty children’s coffins through the streets to dramatize the death rate among children under age 5, which rose from 7,000 to 57,000 a year between 1989 and 1996, according to statistics Iraq gave to UNICEF.

“Iraq has been utterly brilliant in the way it has played the sanctions card,” said a Western diplomat who recently left Iraq. “It has turned punishment into a virtual asset in winning back acceptability and even helping the regime survive.”

A top U.N. official who accompanied Secretary-General Kofi Annan to Baghdad in February said that “Iraq is winning the propaganda war.”

The next crisis with Iraq may even erupt over the dispute pitting the United States against Russia, China and France over easing the embargo.

For the time being, however, no one disputes the endless imagery of wasted or diseased toddlers.

UNICEF estimates that more than 1 million children under age 5, nearly one-third of the youngsters that age in Iraq, are chronically malnourished. But diplomats and aid workers are raising questions about why these children are in trouble.

Many children in Baghdad hospitals are from Shiite Muslim and Kurdish areas, which have deliberately been deprived of food and medical care by the largely Sunni Muslim government, diplomats say.

In desperation, families use their limited resources to bring ill children to clinics in Baghdad--often too late to save them.

“What Iraq has done in both the [Kurdish] north and [Shiite] south is not just benign neglect,” said an envoy with long experience in Iraq. “It’s: ‘Let us help you die.’ And children are often the first to go.”

The problems with food are also made worse by deeply ingrained inefficiency, say envoys familiar with Iraq.

“The system was hopelessly inefficient without a war,” one diplomat said. “Add a war and the callousness of the regime, and you get dead and dying children.”

Last year, Iraq blamed a shortage of infant formula on inadequacies in the U.N. program designed to ease the hardships of sanctions by allowing Baghdad to sell oil to pay for food. Aid officials later discovered that the Iraqi government had simply failed to order enough formula, diplomats said.

Just how Iraq has spent a share of its limited resources was discovered this month by diplomats who escorted U.N. weapons inspectors through eight presidential palaces.

“They were beyond grandiose,” one participant said.

That first inside peek revealed eight palace compounds that contained a total of more than 1,000 buildings, with many more structures under construction.

The palaces featured walls, floors and artistic flourishes crafted from elegant marble in many hues--material both telling and costly because marble is not indigenous to Iraq, the envoys said.

One diplomat said that an Iraqi official, in a candid moment, quietly bragged that the sanctions-busting marble came from Europe.

Each compound has sumptuous villas surrounded by lakes, moats or canals, all man-made, and elaborate estates of sculpted scrubs and exotic flowers. One garden was described by diplomats as more lavish than the grounds at the palace of Versailles outside Paris. Another has an internal waterfall cascading about 50 feet. Several have indoor pools, according to diplomatic accounts.

“The bodies of water alone were a combination of Waterworld and Fantasyland,” the diplomat added.

At the same time that Iraq was installing pumps for the palace moats and canals, the regime claimed that it did not have such equipment for public sanitation sites in need of repair.

The eight compounds are among at least 48 new presidential sites built since the Gulf War’s end at a cost of up to $2 billion, according to diplomatic estimates. That figure does not count furnishings.

And the decor includes Japanese big-screen televisions and elaborate sound equipment, gold bathroom fixtures, magnificent Iranian silk carpets and French furniture in the style of Louis XIV.

All these things appear new and expensive, and virtually all were imported in defiance of sanctions, the diplomats said.

In an even bigger surprise to the diplomats, all eight palaces were empty.

“We all had the overarching impression that they had never been used,” said a Western envoy who toured the sites. “So what struck us was not just the enormous expense but the expense for no apparent purpose except aggrandizement of the leader.”

When pressed on what they are used for, Iraqi escorts told the diplomats that the palaces are for guests.

A U.N. official stationed in Iraq said the regime is “obviously wasting money on palaces,” although he did not agree that all suffering can be traced to the government.

He noted, for example, that child mortality is linked in part to waterborne diseases such as typhoid that thrive because Iraq’s sanitation system was seriously damaged during the Gulf War.

The cost of repairs has been estimated at $10 billion--far more than the regime has spent on the palaces. Iraq simply does not have enough money to make those repairs, the official said.

“I get a little tired about hearing about government spending on palaces, because you can argue with the priorities of every government,” the official said. “Why are children dying of malnutrition in the United States in Appalachia and places like Harlem while the U.S. government spends billions of dollars on bombers and missiles?”

In 1996, the U.N. tried to ease the impact of the embargo on ordinary Iraqis by authorizing the sale of nearly $2 billion in oil every six months so the government could buy food and medicine that would be directly distributed by U.N. workers.

This year, the ceiling has been raised to $5.2 billion, and the program has been expanded to include U.N.-supervised repairs of wrecked power and sanitation facilities. The U.S has consistently supported this oil-for-food program.

Since the Gulf War, the Iraqi government has predicted a catastrophe because of chronic food shortages: It says it is missing 61% of the amount it needs in grain supplies, 75% of the needed meat, 92% of fish, 91% of eggs, 60% of milk. But many experts challenge those figures.

“They describe a level of shortages greater than those that existed in Germany in the spring of 1945, after a strategic bombing campaign and mass land war fought on German soil,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, Mideast program director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “That’s physically and economically impossible.”

The credibility gap is underscored by Iraq’s own census.

Despite official claims of up to 1 million premature deaths and widespread famine, Iraq has experienced the highest population surge in its history--up from 17 million on the eve of the Gulf War to more than 21 million today.

Urban areas of Iraq not under repression have managed surprisingly well, according to diplomats and others in Iraq.

“Baghdad is not a starving city,” said a diplomat who has done two tours in Iraq. “Iraqis in the street are well clothed and relatively well fed. Shops are well stocked, though the variety is limited. The bazaar is in full swing of commercial activity. And there are enough late-model and luxury cars on the highways to suggest that it’s not just a small clique profiting handsomely now.”

Hussein’s second son, Osai, is often seen in a new white Porsche en route to his favorite riverside nightclub. His older brother, Uday, until he was shot and crippled two years ago, drove a red Porsche.

The most opulent manifestation of Iraqi government excess is found on Hussein’s birthday, April 28.

Each year, the celebrations have become larger and more costly. Aspects of the weeklong festivities include fireworks, concerts, festooned streets, troupes of singers, bagpipers and dancers in stadium performances, art exhibitions, candle-lighted processions, brass band parades and helicopter gunship demonstrations.

To mark Hussein’s 55th birthday, a military parade was held in his hometown, Tikrit, that featured 300 tanks, artillery and armored vehicles, 1,000 marching troops, military bands and dozens of freed white pigeons.

Hussein stayed away, however. Television showed him sitting in a gilded chair on a dais, amid massive floral arrangements, watching children perform. Afterward, he left in a gilded chariot drawn by six horses.

Hussein’s 60th birthday, last year, featured several special touches. A procession of 60 yachts owned by the president’s inner circle and its allies sailed down the Tigris River, while more than 20 gold-plated statues depicting various moments in Hussein’s life were unveiled in cities across the country.

The most revealing gesture, however, may have been the regime’s attempt to share the event with the public. At distribution centers in schools, government ministries, ruling Baath Party offices and other state facilities, every Iraqi was eligible to show up for a piece of Hussein’s birthday cake.