Iraq Under Siege
The Deadly Impact of Sanctions and War
Anthony Arnove (Editor)
In this critically acclaimed collection, leading voices against the sanctions document the human, environmental, and social toll of the US and UK-led war against Iraq. This updated edition examines George Bush’s and Tony Blair’s escalation of the conflict as part of their global “war on terroism,” even though no evidence exists that ties Iraq to the tragic events of September 11.
Carefully documented, thoroughly researched, and written in clear language, Iraq Under Siege is invaluable for anyone who wants to understand the roots of US policy in Iraq and the Middle East. The volume also includes photographs and first-person accounts from Iraq that show the human story of the sanctions, which have now been in place for 12 years, ending with concrete ideas on how people can help end the war on Iraq.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments and Note to the Updated Edition
Introduction to the Updated Edition (2002) by Anthony Arnove
Part I: The Roots of US/UK Policy
1 America's War Against Iraq: 1990-2002 by Naseer Aruri
2 Iraq: The Impact of Sanctions and US Policy by Phyllis Bennis and Denis J. Halliday; Interviewed by David Barsamian
3 US Iraq Policy: Motives and Consequences by Noam Chomsky
Part II: Myths and Realities
4 Collateral Damage by John Pilger
5 Myths and Realities Regarding Iraq and Sanctions by Voices in the Wilderness
6 The Media's Deadly Spin on Iraq by Ali Abunimah and Rania Masri
7 The Hidden War by Robert Fisk
8 One Iraqi’s Story by Howard Zinn
Part 3: Life Under Sanctions
9 Raising Voices: The Children of Iraq 1990-1999 by Kathy Kelly
10 Targets—Not Victims by Barbara Nimri Aziz
11 Sanctions: Killing a Country and a People by George Capaccio
Part 4: Documenting the Impact of Sanctions
12 Sanctions, Food, Nutrition, and Health in Iraq by Dr. Peter Pellett
13 Toxic Pollution, the Gulf War, and Sanctions by Dr. Huda S. Ammash
Excerpt from "Raising Voices: The Children of Iraq 1990-1999," by Kathy Kelly
It is January 8, 1997. I am in a car driving from Baltimore to Washington, DC, at 6:15 a.m. With me are Simon Harak, a Jesuit priest and theology professor, and Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert, Dominican sisters from Baltimore. We will later meet Aft Laffin, a Catholic lay worker, at the Senate Hart Office Building. Our plan is to enter the Senate confirmation hearings of Madeleine Albright for Secretary of State.
Leslie Stahl went to Iraq for 60 Minutes. On the program that aired May 12, 1996, she asked Albright, who was then the US ambassador to the United Nations, to explain US policy in the context of the devastation she had seen among the children of Iraq. Albright responded: "It’s a hard decision, Leslie, but we think the price…is worth it."
We arrive two hours before the hearing. Already thirty people are in line. Tucked inside our coats are folded enlargements of pictures of Iraqi children I visited in August 1996, children whose sunken eyes plead for relief from starvation and disease.
The hearings begin and we hear mutterings that there is no room inside for members of the public. I feel disappointed and a bit silly, having raced from Chicago to Washington on a moment’s notice, apparently for naught. Much to our relief, after then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher is escorted out, the security guards allow the people in line to enter in groups of ten as the hearings proceed.
We are among the first forty admitted. We have agreed beforehand that immediately after Albright concludes her remarks, we’ll stand, one by one, to raise our pictures of the children and express our urgent concerns.
Albright stresses her commitment to universal human rights, but as regards Iraq she only affirms readiness to maintain a tough policy. As the applause subsides, I stand up.
"Albright," I call out, "over one-half million Iraqi children have died because of US/UN sanctions. In May 1996, you told 60 Minutes that this was an acceptable price to pay in order to maintain US interests in the region. Are you prepared to withdraw that statement?"
A security guard, Officer Goodine, is at my elbow. Senator Jesse Helms motions to him to remove me, but the young officer raises his hand politely as if to indicate "just a moment, let her finish," and he gently taps my arm.
"These children are helpless victims," I call out again, moving into the aisle. " Albright, please, you could do so much good."
The officer leads me out as though he were ushering at the opera. Simon Harak is already on his feet, asking Albright if she would impose the same punishment on every other country that fails to comply with US demands.
Ardeth, Carole, and Art rise, in turn, to speak. After we are all escorted out, Albright addresses the committee: "I am as concerned about the children of Iraq as any person in this room. . . . Saddam Hussein is the one who has the fate of his country in his hands, and he is the one who is responsible for starving children, not the United States of America."
On January 10, 1997, Voices in the Wilderness sent out a statement of our response, saying in part:
Iraqi children are totally innocent of oil power politics. All those who prevent the lifting of sanctions, including Madeleine Albright, are not. One line disclaimers of responsibility may appear suavely diplomatic, but the children are dead and we have seen them dying. According to the UN itself, they died as a direct result of the embargo on commerce with Iraq. Many United Nations members favored significantly easing these sanctions. The US government and Madeleine Albright as its spokesperson prevented that from happening. This economic embargo continues warfare against Iraq, a silent war in which only the weakest, most vulnerable and innocent non-combatant civilians—women, children and families—continue to suffer.
One year earlier, in a modest act of nonviolence, we wrote to US Attorney General Janet Reno declaring our intent to deliberately violate the UN and US sanctions against the people of Iraq. We said we realized the possible penalties we faced, but that we hoped she would join us in demanding that the US government lift the embargo against Iraq.
Four Voices delegations traveled to Iraq in 1996 and thirty more have gone as of the end of 1999. Each group openly defies the sanctions by taking medical relief supplies directly to Iraqi children and families. Our trips create a drama that we hope will gain attention for the plight of the Iraqi people, especially the children. Upon return, we "hit the ground running," with presentations in classrooms and community groups. We contact our legislators, send out mailings, and try very hard to push the issue into the mainstream media.
In the meantime, 150 Iraqi children die every day.
Contributors
Ali Abunimah: A media analyst and activist, and frequent commentator on Palestine and the Middle East, Abunimah is vice-president of the Arab American Action Network, a Chicago-based social service and advocacy organization, and co-founder of The Electronic Intifada website (electronicintifada.net). Visit Ali Abunimah's web page.
Dr. Huda S. Ammash: Ammash is an environmental biologist and professor at Baghdad University and is a researcher at the Iraqi Academy of Science. Ammash earned her PhD from the University of Missouri. She has conducted extensive research and written numerous scientific papers on the environmental and biological impact of sanctions.
Anthony Arnove: Arnove worked for seven years as an editor at South End Press before becoming a freelance editor and writer. A regular contributor to ZNet, his writing has appeared in The Nation, International Socialist Review, Monthly Review, Socialist Worker, Z Magazine, In These Times, Financial Times, and other publications. An activist based in Brooklyn, New York, he is a member of the International Socialist OrganizationNational Writers Union. He contributed to The Struggle for Palestine (Haymarket Press), edited Terrorism and War, a collection of new interviews with Howard Zinn (Seven Stories Press), and is on the editorial board of International Socialist Review. Arnove is also a member of the Iraq Speaker's Bureau.
Naseer Aruri: Aruri is the Chancellor Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth and is chair of the board of the Trans-Arab Research Institute. He has lectured and written widely on Middle East politics and history. He is the author of Dishonest Broker: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (South End Press). He is also the editor of Palestinian Refugees: The Right of Return (Pluto) and co-editor of Revising Culture, Reinventing Peace: The Influence of Edward W. Said (Interlink).
Barbara Nimri Aziz: An anthropologist and journalist, Aziz has written extensively on Iraq since her first visit there in 1989. Her articles have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Toward Freedom, and several anthologies including Food for Our Grandmothers (South End Press). She has contributed essays on Iraq to Metal of Dishonor (1999) and Genocide by Sanctions (1998), both published by the International Action Center. Aziz hosts a weekly radio public affairs magazine on Pacifica WBAI Radio from New York. She is also executive director of the Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc.
David Barsamian: Barsamian lives in Boulder, Colorado, and is the producer of the award-winning syndicated radio program, Alternative Radio. A regular contributor to The Progressive and Z Magazine, Barsamian is the editor of Eqbal Ahmad: Confronting Empire (South EndPress/Pluto), the editor of Propaganda and the Public Mind, a collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky (South End Press/Pluto), and author of The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting (South End Press).
Phyllis Bennis: Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC. She is an author and journalist and has written about UN and Middle East issues for almost twenty years. Her most recent books include Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN, second edition (Olive Branch Press) and Before and After: US Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis (Olive Branch Press). She also co-edited Beyond the Storm: A Gulf Crisis.
George Capaccio: Capaccio is a writer, storyteller, and teacher based in Arlington, Massachusetts. He has traveled to Iraq on eight delegations to document the impact of sanctions. Capaccio has written on Iraq for The Progressive and other publications. His poetry collection, While The Light Still Trembles, won the 1999 PeaceWriting Award from the University of Arkansas. Capaccio is a member of Voices in the Wilderness.
Noam Chomsky: Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published fourteen books with South End Press, including Pirates and Emperors, Old and New: International Terrorism in the Real World, Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, and Propaganda and the Public Mind (in the UK by Pluto Press).
Robert Fisk: Fisk is an award-winning reporter for The Independent newspaper in London (www.independent.co.uk). He served as Middle East correspondent for The Times (London) from 1976 to 1987 and for The Independent since 1987. Fisk received the 1998 Amnesty International UK Press Award. He is a seven-time winner of the British International Journalist of the Year Award (most recently in 1995 and 1996). Fisk currently lives in Beirut. His writing appears in The Nation, The Independent, and other publications worldwide. His classic book Pity the Nation was released in a third edition by Oxford Paperbacks in 2001.
Denis J. Halliday: Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed Denis J. Halliday to the post of United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq in September 1997. He served as an Assistant Secretary-General until he resigned the post in protest of sanctions in Fall 1998. Prior to that, Halliday served in the UN for 34 years, including as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management and Director, Division of Personnel, United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Halliday has spent most of his long career with the United Nations in development and humanitarian assistance-related posts both in New York and overseas, primarily in South-East Asia. Halliday graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and holds an MA in Economics, Geography and Public Administration.
Kathy Kelly: An activist based in Chicago, Illinois, Kelly helped initiate Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the sanctions against Iraq. For bringing medicine and toys to Iraq in open violation of the sanctions, she and other campaign members have been notified of a proposed $163,000 penalty for the organization and threatened with twelve years in prison. Kelly has been to Iraq numerous times. She has taught in Chicago-area community colleges and high schools since 1974, and is active with the Catholic Worker movement. Read more about Kelly's work in Iraq.
Rania Masri: Masri is a human rights advocate, writer, researcher, and environmental scientist. Masri is the director of the newly formed Southern Peace Research and Education Center at the Institute for Southern Studies. Masri has a doctorate from North Carolina State University. She is a national board member of Peace Action, the Arab Women's Solidarity Association's representative to the United Nations, and the coordinator of the Iraq Action Coalition. She is a contributor to The Struggle for Palestine (Haymarket Press).
Dr. Peter L. Pellett: Pellett is Professor Emeritus of Nutrition at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He served on four United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization missions to Iraq. He has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization, UNICEF, US Department of Agriculture, World Food Program, and National Academy of Sciences. Pellett is a board member of the International Nutrition Foundation for Developing Countries. He is the Editor in Chief of Ecology of Food and Nutrition.
John Pilger: Pilger is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and author. He has twice won Britain's highest award for journalism, Journalist of the Year. He has been named International Journalist of the Year and his documentaries have won Academy awards in the United States and United Kingdon. His most recent documentaries for London-based Independent Television (ITV) include Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq and Palestine Is Still the Issue. Pilger's documentary Death of a Nation: The Timor Conspiracy has been shown in theaters internationally. A regular contributor to the Guardian and New Statesman, he is the author of Hidden Agendas (New Press), Heroes (South End Press), and The New Rulers of the World (Verso).
Sharon Smith: Smith was the national coordinator of the signature ad campaign to end sanctions. A leading member of the International Socialist Organization in Chicago, she was active in building opposition to the 1991 Gulf War. A member of the National Writers Union, she is a regular columnist for the Socialist Worker newspaper, as well as a frequent contributor to the International Socialist Review. She is author of End of the American Dream (Haymarket).
Voices in the Wilderness: Since March 1996, Voices has led numerous delegations to hospitals and clinics in Iraq, breaking the siege imposed by the sanctions. Voices advocates nonviolence as a means for social change. The organization opposes the development, storage, and use—in any country—of any weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, chemical, biological, or economic. Read more about Voices' current work in Iraq.
Howard Zinn: Zinn is Professor Emeritus at Boston University. He is the author of numerous books, including A People’s History of the United States, the plays Emma and Marx in Soho (South End Press), The Zinn Reader, and the autobiographical You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train. He lives with his wife, Roslyn, in Massachusetts and lectures widely on history and contemporary politics.
Praise:
“For more than a decade, an inhuman campaign of sanctions—the most complete ever in recorded history—has destroyed Iraq as a modern state, decimated its people, and ruined the agriculture, its educational and health care systems, as well as its entire infrastructure. All this has been done by the United States and United Kingdon, misusing United Nations resolutions against innocent civilians, leaving the tyrant Saddam Hussein more or less untouched. This remarkable book is an invaluable documentation of the tragedy in Iraq, and deserves reading by every citizen interested in the appalling reality of US and UK foreign policy.”
—Edward W. Said
“This book gives us a key to understand the New World Order, and warns about how Iraq’s tragedy may be a model for global bullying and global impunity in coming times.”
—Eduardo Galeano
“Here is a brilliantly collated body of unrelenting, undeniable evidence of the horrors that sanctions and war are visiting upon the people, in particular the children, of Iraq. For ordinary citizens sanctions are just another kind of dictatorship. Remote-controlled, seemingly civilized, they actually, literally, squeeze the very breath from babies’ bodies.”
—Arundhati Roy
“Iraq Under Siege is a very useful weapon in our international struggle against sanctions. This is not only the horrible story of children dying as a result of sanctions, a story our papers are so reluctant to write about. It is also a well argued warning about the kind of 'globalized' world they will build for us, if we let them.”
—Daniel Singer, The Nation
“This is a very important book and I hope it will be widely read.”
—Tony Benn, MP British Parliament (see Benn's review in New Statesman)
“The arguments for change are pretty convincing. The undecided should pay heed.”
—The Economist
“Iraq Under Siege is a vitally important wake-up call to end the sanctions while providing activists with plenty of documentation to back up their claims of U.S. injustice.… A page-turner, regardless of the reader's degree of familiarity with Middle East peace issues.”
—Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
“A solid beginning to understanding a portion of the West's influence on this diverse and complicated part of the world.… The wide range of authorship leaves us with a resource that is diverse, while presenting a focused cry for resolution.”
—Andrew Dickson, Clamor Magazine
“A passionate and hard-hitting analysis of the situation in Iraq by leading voices against the sanctions.… The book comes with a clear message: sanctions against Iraq are wrong. Building a compelling case of deprivation and deception of the tragedy of the Iraqi people coupled with their heroism, Iraq Under Siege concludes with details of the growing international movement to end sanctions. This is a book not only for the activist, but also for anyone concerned with justice and with foreign policy.”
—The New Internationalist
“By documenting the impact of the sanctions, exposing the fallacies and distorted arguments of the establishment and the bias of the media, this book makes a valuable contribution to breaking the silence and complacency that surround the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. It is bound to contribute to the mainstreaming of the growing anti-sanctions movement, which is dedicated to helping the Iraqi people reclaim their destiny.”
—Hala Maksoud,
President, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
“Each page is a document of outrage.”
—Socialist Worker, US
“A sustained, coherent, and comprehensive critique of U.S. policy on Iraq.”
—Texas Observer
“Iraq Under Siege is a remarkable collection of analytical essays, emotive calls to action, and useful ‘to-do’ lists for activists. It must be read. And it must be acted on.”
—Z Magazine
“This marvelous collection of essays is both heartbreaking and inspiring.”
—Socialist Review
“[Iraq Under Siege] is not just an amazingly useful tool to activists working to end the sanctions, but a very important work that adds to the growing literature on international relations, the mainstream media’s failure to include balanced coverage of this issue, [and] myths that cloud our vocabulary and understanding of the Middle East.”
—Fellowship Magazine
“The first book to grant a glimpse behind the veil of ideology and propaganda that shrouds the contemporary official record.”
—Sean Gonsalves,
“The anthology Iraq Under Siege is a solid, credible, and comprehensive rebuttal to the prevailing US/British policy of continued enforcement of cruel sanctions on the people of Iraq. This anthology—authored by prominent writers and practitioners—constitutes a long-awaited corrective to the obvious imbalances that characterize much of the media coverage which, in turn, often reflect a sickening obliviousness of policy-makers to the unending miseries of a proud and gifted people.”
—Clovis Maksoud, Center for the Global South
“Each of the contributors takes on a different aspect of the sanctions. What is their impact on the Iraqi population? Who imposed them and why? What’s at stake for the US? How complicit is the media? How does the oil-for-food program really work? And, most importantly, what can we do to end the sanctions? Through its powerful eyewitness accounts of life in Iraq and carefully researched, myth-busting chapters, Iraq Under Siege provides a powerful antidote to our rulers’ lies and does a great service to the cause of ending the sanctions.”
—International Socialist Review
“This is a definitive and powerful indictment of one of the greatest war crimes of the last quarter of the twentieth century.”
—Bookmarks Review of Books
“A brilliant book, which exposes the grim reality behind the US New World Order and British 'ethical foreign policy'.”
“Scrupulously edited for accuracy, readability and diversity of voice, [it] works either as a good introduction to the crisis in Iraq or a resource for activists.”
—The Socialist
The Book Publisher:
South End Press | 7 Brookline Street #1 | Cambridge, MA 02139-4146 | info@southendpress.org
