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No
Stomach for Sanctions |
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by John Tyler Connoley |
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July 13, 2004 |
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I almost died when I was
nine years old and living in Zambia. I came down with amoebic dysentery, a
disease of the large intestine most often caught from drinking contaminated
water. I started getting sick on a Friday afternoon, just after school. On
Sunday, when I was still suffering from vomiting and diarrhea, my mom asked
the nurse at the mission station what to do. The nurse said to make me drink
boiled water spiked with sugar and salt, and pray I'd get better soon. The main diagnosable
symptom of dysentery is bloody diarrhea, but I also had vomiting, fever, and
wrenching stomach pain. Dehydration gave me severe headaches (think the worst
hangover ever) and delirium. My parents say they knew I was really out of it,
when I stopped caring who saw me naked running to the bathroom -- I was a
very modest child. I remember sleeping in the bathroom where the cool tile
soothed my fever, and where I wouldn't have to risk not making it to the
toilet. I also remember people coming to the house to pray over me; I had to
get up to wretch in the middle of the prayer. In desperation, my parents
finally loaded me into the back of a pickup truck with a bucket, and drove me
six hours over a bumpy dirt road to the closest Salvation Army hospital. They
were sure I'd die, and I did lose twenty percent of my body weight. But, the
doctor said the sugar-water my mother fed me had kept me out of the grave. These days, whenever I get
a stomach flu or a case of food poisoning, the pain, fear, and helplessness
of those weeks comes back to me. During those moments, I invariably begin
thinking of the two million children who die from this type of diarrheal
infection every year, and particularly of the estimated half a million Iraqi
children who died of dysentery and cholera during the years of United Nations
sanctions against Saddam Hussein. During the past few
months, we've been reading news of the (shocking!) corruption in the UN Iraqi
Oil-for-Food program. The reporters make it seem as if no one knew the
sanctions were a terrible blight on UN policy. As if Kofi Annan hadn't
written in his Millennium Report in 2000, "When robust and comprehensive
economic sanctions are directed against authoritarian regimes, a different
problem is encountered. Then it is usually the people who suffer, not the
political elites whose behavior triggered the sanctions in the first
place." As if it hadn't been obvious to all observers that the sanctions
against Iraq were offering millions of dollars in profits to black-marketers,
while the dual-use clause led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
children. The dual-use clause, one
of the worst aspects of the Iraqi sanctions, stated that any item having a
potential dual military use had to be approved by a special committee before
being shipped to Iraq. Of course this included equipment to fix and repair
electrical plants and oil refineries. It also included chlorine bleach -- the
cheapest and easiest way to rid water of bacterial agents and a potential
ingredient in making chlorine gas. Likewise tanker trucks for distributing
clean drinking water to villages were deemed capable of carrying
more-dangerous cargo. Even hospital equipment could be potentially dismantled
and made into weapons. Time and again, the United States members of the
sanctions committee blocked such items from reaching Iraq, while thousands of
children died of diarrhea. Reports from the
contractors and soldiers rebuilding Iraq tell of power plants and water
treatment facilities carefully pieced together with recycled parts and
ingenuity. Unable to get the equipment to fix their aging infrastructure,
Iraqi engineers became master scroungers. Now American contractors, freed
from import bans, are working to replace fifteen years of makeshift repairs so
the children can have clean drinking water again. It took a war to make it
happen, because the sanctions did nothing to weaken Saddam Hussein. Instead, the sanctions
made him worse. They gave his government even more power, as it became the distributor
for food and water rations. They gave his government more money, as it became
a black market operator. They closed off relations with his government, so
CIA operatives had no reliable information about Saddam or his plans. And at
the same time, they sickened and weakened the very people they were supposed
to help. As Kofi Annan said in that 2000 report, "Indeed, those in
power, perversely, often benefit from such sanctions by their ability to
control and profit from black market activity, and by exploiting them as a
pretext for eliminating domestic sources of political opposition." You
could say we learned this the hard way, but at least we learned. Or did we? As of January, the United
Nations still had sanctions against five countries, including Afghanistan. An
almost fifty-year-old United States embargo against Cuba shows no signs of
lifting -- while it shows no signs of succeeding. And, recently, Colin Powell
has been threatening sanctions against Iran, because even though they don't
work and cause children to die, sanctions continue to be politically popular. Think about that next time you get the stomach flu. Then, when you're feeling better, write a letter to your representatives, and tell them you don't want our useless sanctions killing any more innocent children. |
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Copyright © 2004
by John Tyler Connoley
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All
Rights Reserved |