Major Issues - Iraq

Mr. Conyers has been following the effects of economic sanctions and the plight of Iraqi people from many years now. It is his belief that the economic sanctions currently in place against Iraq must be removed so that millions of Iraqi people will not continue to be oppressed due the US's no holds barred intent to punish Saddam Hussein at any cost.

IRAQ SANCTIONS

In March, the UN Security Council panel on the humanitarian situation in Iraq reported, "the gravity of the humanitarian situation of the Iraqi people is indisputable and cannot be overstated." UNICEF still stands by their astounding estimate of about 5000 children dying every month. This is despite the Oil-for-Food deal, which allows Iraq to sell oil and through the UN, purchase food.

I have been urging a solution to the Iraqi crisis, which does not depend on the suffering of millions of vulnerable and innocent people. To this end I support the lifting of economic sanctions on Iraq while simultaneously tightening the military embargo and introduced HR 3825, The Humanitarian Exports Leading to Peace Act in the 106th. Last Congress, the bill garnered bipartisan support and you had 36 co-sponsors. I plan to re-introduce the bill this session. The legislation would:

Declare that certain sanctions prohibiting trade with Iraq under the Iraq Sanctions Act of 1990 or any other provision of law shall not apply to the export of any food or other agricultural products (including fertilizer), medicines, medical supplies, medical instruments, or medical equipment, or to travel incident to the sale or delivery of such items, with specified exceptions.

Preclude the Secretary of Commerce from requiring a license for the export of humanitarian assistance, but shall require persons to notify the Secretary when exporting such assistance.

Expresses the sense of Congress that the U.S. Government should take all necessary steps (including its position as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council) to end the suffering of innocent populations, primarily children and the elderly, by allowing the free flow of humanitarian aid to Iraq without threat of prosecution.

It directs the President to report to Congress with respect to the export of humanitarian assistance to Iraq.

Mr. Conyers also authored three bi-partisan letters to President Clinton asking that the military sanctions be de-linked from the military sanctions. (Please provide link to letters)

The cost of our containment policy does not have to be the death of 5000 children a month, and in fact the American role in the embargo that causes such devastation undermines any containment we hope to achieve.

The "Iraqi experiment" has failed and the comprehensive sanctions regime is both unviable and beyond the administrative capabilities of the UN. The unwieldy, inefficient and inconsistent bureaucracy of the Oil-for-Food program has ensured that the even the UN cannot even fulfill its own acknowledged prerogative to deliver urgent humanitarian aid. The program was intended as a transition, emergency operation, not a sustained effort to feed 23 million people for almost a decade. This program is in addition to restrictions placed on "dual use goods" (a label which includes chlorine needed for water purification and incubators need for babies), which the nation needs to rebuild its sanitation, health and agricultural infrastructures. Even after some limited reform, Oil-for-Food is still unable to meet the most basic needs of the people of Iraq. Some in Congress disagree with that, but I ask them where is their evidence? The World Health Organization, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, UNICEF, and the Secretary General of the UN have all found otherwise.

The main problem with Oil for Food is that it does not generate sufficient funds to even begin the process of rehabilitating Iraq's once-modern social and economic infrastructure, now at a Third World-level of impoverishment. Most children die of treatable water-borne diseases from contaminated water, untreated because of lack of medicine, or otherwise treatable cancers or other serious diseases for which chemotherapy or other life-saving drugs are unavailable, inadequate, or available only sporadically or in incorrect sequences. While few deaths are directly caused by starvation, deaths are more frequent because immune systems, especially children's, are compromised by inadequate food and years of malnutrition. The simple fact is that there is just not enough money to rebuild the water purification, sewage treatment and electricity generating facilities.

The long-term danger of economic sanctions goes beyond the immediate crisis of dying children. The intellectual embargo has isolated an entire generation from the rest of the world: medical education is deteriorating because of no access to medical journals, seminars, international exchanges, etc. Academic life has eroded without contact with journals, literature, and colleagues elsewhere in the world. An example of the devastation of the intellectual embargo is found in the report recently issued by the congressional staffers' delegation that went to Iraq in August and a met 12-year-old girl dying of cancer because she needed a bone marrow transplant. However, the transplant was impossible because doctors lack specialized equipment and drugs.

While it is true that oil smuggling funds amount to something like $400 million a year -- enough for lots of palaces. Not enough, regardless of intentions, to feed, clothe, provide medical care, or educate 23 million people. Though it is correct that the Iraqi regime should use that money for civilian assistance- we are dealing with a military dictatorship. Moreover this money is not a reachable by the sanctions and is not what we should be concerned with. The fact that Saddam Hussein may be smuggling oil out of Iraq does not relinquish us from our humanitarian responsibility to implement fair, compassionate policies to the people of the world. At the very least not implement policies we know are responsible for the deaths of hundred of thousands of innocents.

Mr. Conyers agrees that the dual use items should be monitored by the international arms monitoring agency to insure that chlorine, for example, is used for water purification and not for weapons manufacturing, but should not be excluded from purchase. The arms monitoring should include components both inside Iraq (monitoring use of dual use items) and outside Iraq's borders (monitoring weapons suppliers to insure they are kept out of the region). Prevention of Iraq's future re-armament must focus on potential suppliers, as well as maintaining a serious monitoring agency inside Iraq. There can be no absolute guarantees. But accepting the killing of 500,000 children because we don't have the creativity to craft another way to prevent the possibility of some unknown potential future threat, at some unspecified future time, is simply unacceptable.

The supreme aim in Iraq, to remove Saddam Hussein, is itself unviable whilst the dictator remains bolstered by such powerful cadres and the people remain divided and de-politicized. These sanctions can only help achieve political objectives when tangible opposition movements and the apparatus for dissent already exist. This is why sanctions against South Africa were an effective tool for ending Apartheid; the African National Congress was an organized, credible, internal, popular democratic opposition. When such institutions do not exist, sanctions can be counter-productive as they have been in Iraq, perpetuating the state of crisis upon which dictatorships depend and fostering a legacy of bitterness towards the west.

It has often been said that you cannot achieve democracy by undemocratic means. Mr. Conyers would add as a corollary that you also cannot inspire respect for human rights by undermining them.