Friends of the Iraqi regime consider the Security Council’s failure to adopt a US proposal to impose “smart sanctions” on that country as a great political victory for Baghdad. Obviously, the interests of the common man in Iraq were of no concern to these “friends”.
It is sad to note that the Arab intellectuals who blindly support the Iraqi regime are scandalously apathetic to the plight of the hungry and sick — the overwhelming majority — in the country. The failure of the draft bill means, for the immediate future at least, the end of hope for a people who have been looking forward for some relief from their prolonged ordeal. The rejected sanction proposals contained flexible clauses and simplified restrictions that would have facilitated easier inflow of commodities.
The proposed system of sanctions was named “smart” because it sought to alleviate the sufferings of the people without relaxing the siege on the government. It also aimed at slashing down the list of items that were not allowed to import and at cutting down the lengthy bureaucratic procedures and irksome monitoring process involved in the purchase of goods with the money earned from oil sales. .
Ironically enough, the Iraqi regime is pleased with the Security Council’s decision. It welcomes any situation that perpetuates the sufferings of the people. It does not want a situation in which people get plenty to eat and enough medicines to treat their children because it will end the people’s crisis and aggravate the political crisis. The regime, obviously, wants to hold the people hostage to the political system. It wants people to believe that their suffering is the direct outcome of the UN sanctions.
We Arabs should be more sympathetic to the Iraqi people than their own government is and strive for an end to the sanctions. The idea of their partial easing is also welcome because it will help improve the living conditions of Iraqis considerably.
It is natural to wonder why the proposed sanctions were called “smart”. Those who coined the name should have used some other word to carry the idea of lighter punishments. But the adjective “smart” gives quite a different impression. In fact, the idea arose from the complaints lodged by some Iraqi officials about the difficulties faced by them in the purchase of required goods and the tough methods adopted by UN agencies in implementing the Oil for Food formula. The US grabbed the idea and presented it under a new name. However, it was a blunder on two counts: to call it “smart” was the first mistake; the US presenting it was the second.
The odd name for a system of punishment made the Arab public misunderstand it as a new set of terrible high-tech punishment. It was not realized that the sanctions aimed at reducing the punishment almost by half, with special stress on alleviating people’s sufferings.
A full lifting of the sanctions will not please the Iraqi regime. It has never been concerned with the plight of the common man. It has been pushing the people from one war to another. The best idea, in my opinion, is to lift the sanctions in full while keeping the regime’s military under strict surveillance and letting the country have political and domestic freedom.
The sanctions have not hampered the regime’s activities seriously because virtually all the banned items are being smuggled in with the help of friendly countries who defended the regime in their bid to protect their own interests. Such a stand by those countries have, in fact, stood in the way of achieving the goals for which the sanctions were imposed.
