U.S. Discovers Waning Support for Economic Sanctions Against Iraq

As the United States looks for ways to pressure Iraqi President Saddam Hussein into backing down from his latest confrontation with the U.N., there is diminishing support here for what always has been Washington’s first weapon of choice against Iraq--economic sanctions.

While much attention has focused on the reluctance of Russia, France, China and some other countries on the U.N. Security Council to endorse a punitive American military strike against Iraq, the U.S. also has been unable to rally much backing for the less radical step of tightening economic restrictions on Iraq.

Moreover, the U.N. experience with Iraq has undercut support across the board for sanctions--described by foreign policy analyst Edward C. Luck as “the way station between words and warfare” and once touted as the millennial model method for taming renegade states.

But former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali once described sanctions as “a blunt instrument,” and the term has stuck, conjuring the image of a people beaten into submission.

While there is no chance that sanctions against Iraq will be lifted any time soon--the United States has promised to use its Security Council veto to keep them in place--diplomats and officials here suggest that it seems equally unlikely that a similarly tough regimen soon will be slapped on another country.

The eroding support for sanctions illustrates the narrow range of choices facing the Clinton administration as it contemplates what to do if Hussein continues to block U.N. inspectors.

Since its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and subsequent defeat in the Persian Gulf War, Iraq has been burdened by what often are described as the harshest penalties imposed by the U.N., most significantly a near-embargo on foreign oil sales.

The sanctions have crushed Iraq’s economy, sent child mortality skyrocketing and slowed the rebuilding of bridges, highways and power grids destroyed in the war. But they have not toppled Hussein nor have they forced him into full compliance with U.N. directives to eliminate his biological and chemical weapons.

Meanwhile, Hussein has learned how to manipulate world opinion by blaming the sanctions, and the United States, for the suffering of the Iraqi people while continuing to maintain a large and loyal military, build more palaces for himself, and, U.N. inspectors say, hoard illegal weapons.

In the November standoff between the U.N. and Iraq over American weapons inspectors, for example, Iraqi officials led Western television camera crews through the fly-infested pediatric wards of Baghdad hospitals to record the lack of medicine for Iraqi children.

There is little doubt of the genuine impact of the embargo. The United Nations Children’s Fund estimated in a report issued in November that one-third of Iraq’s children younger than 5, nearly 1 million youngsters, are chronically malnourished. That represents an increase of 72% since 1991, the year of the Gulf War.

Pilippe Heffinck, the Belgian relief coordinator for UNICEF in Iraq, said in a telephone interview from Baghdad that the sight of underweight children is “very common” in the capital. The weakness associated with undernourishment also has increased child deaths from disease, Heffinck added.

The number of childhood typhoid cases jumped from 2,000 to 28,000 between 1990 and 1996, he said, while child mortality from diarrhea and pneumonia increased drastically, all as a result of a decline in sanitation because of breakdowns in the country’s water and electrical systems.

The decline is particularly marked given Iraq’s relatively advanced industrial society before Hussein launched wars against Iran and the U.S.-led Persian Gulf coalition. “People had been living pretty well, and basic service worked pretty well and then practically overnight the budget for social services dropped 95%,” Heffinck said.

U.S. officials point out that Hussein could divert money from his military budget for public services and contend that he could end the sanctions by complying with U.N. resolutions that ended the Gulf War and require Iraq to destroy its illegal weapons and submit to U.N. inspections, return Kuwaiti prisoners of war and pay war reparations.

Despite such assertions, even some of America’s closest allies doubt privately whether the U.S. would lift sanctions as long as Hussein retains power.

The U.S. and Britain sought to ease the plight of Iraqis by sponsoring a U.N.-supervised program that allows Iraq to sell $2 billion of oil a year to be spent exclusively on humanitarian aid. But even that has become a source of controversy, with Iraq claiming that the U.S. has unfairly held up some deliveries. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson rejects the Iraqi claims as absurd.

When Iraq this week once again blocked some U.N. inspections, the U.S. gained unanimous condemnation by the Security Council.

Various academic studies, including a recently released report sponsored by the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, have suggested more tightly focused sanctions. “Sanctions should have an impact on the leaders and influence their behavior rather than on the population as a whole,” said Celso L.N. Amorim, Brazil’s ambassador here, a member of the Carnegie panel as well as chairman of a similar study undertaken in 1996.

Luck, executive director of the Center for the Study of International Organization at New York University Law School and a participant in the Carnegie study, said the key for the United States in dealing with Hussein is tenacity.

“Everyone should have known that this is going to be a long, difficult, persistent battle with Saddam Hussein, just as it has been with him all along,” Luck said.