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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
What is your sense of the "Iraqi street" right now?
I can only imagine that the Iraqis have become almost immune to military threats from the U.S. However, after watching Afghanistan on CNN or al-Jazeera, they must be extremely concerned that the leadership in the U.S. is out of control, that there is a spiral of crazed fascism [here] that sees military solutions to every problem. So I think the Iraqis must be deeply concerned, and they must be wondering, how is it possible that this great democracy of the United States is out of control? Where are the American people? Why are they not controlling their government, which seems to be running amok?
Neoconservative hawks in and out of the administration have embraced Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress [Iraq's premier opposition party], although the INC is largely discredited in the Arab world, and Chalabi -- guilty of bank fraud in Jordan -- is considered a crook. Do you think the INC has any chance of becoming a viable power in a post-Saddam Iraq?
Given my experience of the dignity of the Iraqi people, and the importance they place on sovereignty, I don't think there will ever be any support for an opposition group that is financed from overseas -- in particular by the United States. I think that the INC has no credibility in Iraq. I think the issue of change -- if that's what's required -- is an issue that can only be addressed by the people of Iraq, and that can best be done when the embargo is removed and when the professional middle classes that are left in the country will again have time to focus on governance. But this is not Afghanistan. In terms of opposition groups, there's nobody on the ground. This is not an issue for the Kurds or even for the Shi'ah majority in the south. There's no imminent armed uprising about to take place, in my view.
Many opponents of Saddam -- not just those in the Bush administration -- would say that the humanitarian suffering of the Iraqi people is the fault of the regime and not of the sanctions.
The thought that this is somehow the policy of the Baghdad government is rubbish. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has never ever pointed a finger in that direction. He's reported regularly that the program, in as much as it works, works. There's no diversion of monies, or of foodstuffs. To point the finger at Saddam Hussein, of course, is very attractive. He's the bad guy, he's been demonized, etc., but we are in charge of the economy in Iraq so only we can change that. If you look at the history of the Baath Party and its social policies, this party stayed in power for 20 years by providing housing, employment, education and healthcare -- the very aspects of life that are missing now -- thanks to the U.N. and the deadly embargo of the Security Council.
If the American regime-change plan does not go through, how long do you think the "oil-for-food" program could continue in its present form? The executive director of the U.N.'s Iraq program, Benon Sevan, has just stated that, because of the restrictions on Iraqi oil exports -- championed by many Western diplomats as a means to curb smuggling by the regime -- the program is now close to broke. How viable is "oil-for-food" as a long-term humanitarian program?
"Oil for food" was designed to fail. It was designed to stop further deterioration in Iraq at a time when famine conditions prevailed. That's exactly what it has done. It has maintained quasi-famine conditions for many Iraqis now for over six years. So we've nothing to be proud of -- all we've done is stave off mass starvation.
Now the problem is the political game being played by Washington and London, in particular via the 661 Committee -- the sanctions committee. There's now over $5 billion worth of essential pharmaceutical and medical goods and equipment on hold. But the fact is that this program was never designed to resolve the crisis of Iraq; it was not designed to resolve the economic collapse -- in fact the money is not to be used, according to the Security Council, for investment or reconstruction of important infrastructure. And as we know, in the case of Iraq today, the majority of children die from water-borne disease, not from starvation per se. So this is a program which has modest value, although it's essential.
