Saddam Hussein’s Enemies: Paving the Road to the Invasion of Iraq

Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net

Anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait

“Britain and the US killed Iraq. I wish I was martyred.” Tariq Aziz, former Foreign Minister of Iraq [1]

Baghdad – the City of Peace

Baghdad, founded in 145 of the Muslim era (762 CE) by Abu Ja’far al-Mansour, was named Madinat as-Salam – the City of Peace, and sat proudly astride the Tigris river. The Round City was built on the west bank but spread to the east over the ensuing centuries. Ruler of the entire Muslim world, Baghdad rivalled Constantinople in the splendour of its palaces, its tile domed mosques and massive forts of burnt brick at Ukhaidir2 and Samarra with its spiral minaret. Baghdad’s rich and diverse culture, its poets, musicians and artisans of fine watered silk work known as Tabby cloth3 expanded across the Caliphate and throughout Muslim Spain with contacts all along the Silk route in the other direction reaching China. Each Arab Iraqi ruler sought to construct the finest buildings and monuments employing many thousands of the best artisans from across the Caliphate to achieve it.

As Iraq’s contemporary leader, Saddam Hussein perceived himself to be following in these footsteps, building monuments to Arab culture and honouring his cultural heritage. His capital was secular, modern and outward looking while conserving and protecting Iraq’s historic and religious sites.

The palaces and mosques were to be a testimony to Iraq’s survival in the face of adversity. Intended to rival the beauty of the Taj Mahal, the al-Rahman mosque was part of a project conceived to become the greatest centre of Islamic learning with a university and a library attached to the central mosque building rising towards the sky. Set in the heart of the Baghdad district of Mansour the work had been well under way since 1999. The 2003 US-led invasion put an end to construction.4 Now the great building looms like a ghost, site a symbol of foreign aggression and local adversity.

Among the giant statues and busts forged in President Saddam’s likeness several were positioned at the corners of the newly-built palaces of al-Salam (the Peace Palace) and the extended Republic Palace. He bore the helmet of the great Muslim conqueror, Salah ad-Din.

Cultural and historic tributes also featured on the designs of Iraq’s paper currency and its coins featuring Abbasid architecture and the inscriptions on its golden dinars as well as Iraq’s ancient Mesopotamian and Islamic sites, of Hammurabi and of the Sumerians.

Constant undermining of Iraq’s sovereignty

On 28 April 1989, President Saddam Hussein celebrated his 52nd birthday. It was his tenth year in office. The war with Iran was over and the Kurds were subdued. Iraqi children dressed up in regional costumes sang and danced before their leader. A group of musicians played classical Arab music. Saddam’s top officials, among them the red-headed, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, shared around pieces from a giant birthday cake.

As in every year since taking office as president in 1984, a commemorative postage stamp was issued in honour of the Great Leader’s birthday. Reconstruction was also now underway: Basra, Iraq’s second city, was being rebuilt after the massive devastation of the war with Iran and new buildings and monuments to glorify Iraq were going up or in planning. Iraq was looking forward to the future.

This was all about to change.

By 28 April 1990, as Saddam Hussein’s 53rd birthday passed, the clouds over his capital were growing even darker. Kuwait had been stealing Iraq’s oil and together with the UAE had been producing more than the OPEC Cartel’s agreed quota of oil. By July 1990, Iraq was openly accusing Kuwait of a theft worth $2.4 billion of Iraq’s oil. A letter by Tariq Aziz was read out in full on Iraqi television and radio.

The letter said that “The attempts by the governments of Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates to flood the oil market with extra crude is a premeditated and deliberate plan to weaken Iraq and undermine its economy and security…This is a short-sighted, selfish and dangerous view which causes great harm not only to Iraq, but to the whole Arab nation…”

Kuwait had a quota of 1.5 million barrels per day but had been producing as much as 1.9 million b/d. The UAE produced as much as 2.1 million b/d, more than double its quota of 1.09 million b/d during the same period. As a result, price pre barrel fell to $14 from the $18 benchmark. Even a fall of $1 per barrel was costing Iraq $1 billion a year in its oil-dependent economy.5

Saddam Hussein was not incorrect over going into Kuwait – after all, the US and UK had taught the Kuwaitis about Slant and Directional Drilling so they could drill into Iraq’s main oil fields – and they had stolen $100,000 millions worth of Iraq’s oil. Why did British Airways land a plane in Kuwait when Saddam Hussein’s forces had taken over? The problem with Kuwait arose from the theft of Iraq’s oil. Who the hell created Kuwait anyway?”6

Western reporters generally omitted these details from their accounts in service to government policy.

Saddam Hussein felt justified in seeking compensation for Kuwait’s activity and when none was forthcoming went on to attack Kuwait. He had met with little objection from US Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, just eight days before when discussing the issue. He would go on to regret the impact of the decision retrospectively.

July 25, 1990 – Presidential Palace – Baghdad

U.S. Ambassador Glaspie – I have direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation with Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive numbers of troops in the south. Normally that would be none of our business, but when this happens in the context of your threat s against Kuwait, then it would be reasonable for us to be concerned. For this reason, I have received an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship – not confrontation – regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to Kuwait’s borders?

Saddam Hussein – As you know, for years now, I have made every effort to reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more, brief chance. (pause) When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution, then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death…[7]

When Iraqi ground forces entered Kuwait on August 2, 1990, President Bush immediately proclaimed that the invasion “would not stand” and vowed to help Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in their efforts to force the Iraqis out.

On August 7, 1990, US President George H.W. Bush (Senior) put Operation Desert Shield into effect using the excuse of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Once the coalition of the willing was assembled this would then be launched as Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. In order to support the move, “Bush authorized a dramatic increase in U.S. troops and resources in the Persian Gulf…

On November 29, 1990, the United Nations Security Council authorized the use of “all means necessary” to remove Iraq’s forces from Kuwait, giving Iraq the deadline of midnight on January 16, 1991, to leave or risk forcible removal. After negotiations between U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Tariq Aziz, failed, Congress authorized Bush to use American troops. Bush then gave the order on January 17, 1991, for US forces to lead the Coalition under General Normal Schwarzkopf. 8

Intensive bombing to underway in both Baghdad and Kuwait and by February ground forces went into Kuwait and crossed the Iraq border into Iraq. On February 28 Schwarzkopf called a ceasefire and the Iraqi generals surrendered on March 3, 1991. [9]

Kuwait and the first Gulf War

Iraq’s problem with Kuwait contained no military threat to the United States nor had it anything to do with the promotion of terrorism. The bombs used against Iraq in response were a very far cry from the vaunted “precision targeting” by so-called smart bombs. Civilian casualties and mass destruction ensued. Kuwait was all about oil. Undermining the Iraqi leader was also very much a personal vendetta by the Bush family and their clique.

In a special feature published i by The NY Times in September 1990, “Confrontation in the Gulf: The Oil Field Lying Below the Iraq-Kuwait Dispute” it was acknowledged that:

“…Iraq’s dispute with Kuwait, has its roots in Britain’s decision in 1899 to establish Kuwait as a British protectorate. The Kuwait royal family had ruled the area since 1756, but Iraq still considered it part of its southern province. The dispute flared again more than 30 years ago, shortly after oil was discovered in 1953 in Iraqi territory in the huge Rumaila reservoir. After the Arab League of States established the Kuwait-Iraq border two miles north of the southern tip of the oilfield, Kuwait erected oil rigs on its own territory and drilled into the rich pool below. Kuwait has never disclosed how much Rumaila oil it has pumped…” [10]

Robert Kimmitt, (a former US deputy treasury secretary) was the key player responsible for assembling the international coalition to drive Iraq’s forces out of Kuwait relying on overwhelming force.  A former investment arbitrator at the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) he was awarded the President’s medal by Bush for assembling the Coalition against Saddam. (His younger brother, Mark Kimmit, a military man, went on to become the spokesman for Coalition operations in Iraq in 2003 and 2004) according to British author and campaigner, Greg Muttitt. [11]

Bombing Baghdad before, during, and after Kuwait – Saddam claims Iraq’s moral victory

The Coalition bombardment under Operation Desert Storm had gotten underway on 17 January 1991, a date thereafter commemorated by Saddam Hussein who insisted that Iraq’s ‘victory’ owed to his country being in the right: victory was not a matter contingent upon military superiority but upon the moral high ground. Kuwait had been at fault for stealing Iraq’s livelihood after all so Iraq had won the victory.

Desert Storm was also a major opportunity for the Coalition countries to test their latest fighting machines and to do so in a disproportionate manner. The undertaking was reliant on confidence in impunity from prosecution. They claimed to be pursuing an evil tyrant to a populist and largely ignorant home audience.

Desert Storm involved the unjustified massacres of Iraqi soldiers and civilians, including foreign workers and Jordanian and Kuwait truckers. Not even nomadic Bedouin were spared – clearly not military targets. The US military claimed, as it does till today, that it was war and war justified all. The same arguments are used in favour of rendition, black detention sites and special torture methods under the banner of fighting terrorism. [12]

On the ground, Abrams M-1 A-I Tanks pursued, and then destroyed the inferior Iraqi T-72s in the course of their withdrawal. Every moving object on the Kuwait-Basra road, Highway 80, was indiscriminately obliterated, including civilian and commercial vehicles. The road later became known as the Highway of Death.

The road to Amman was not spared either. It also became a Highway of Death. Anything moving along the road could be attacked and frequently was.

Dams in the north were also attacked for no good reason and stray bombs fell on civilian homes killing and maiming those beneath.

An overwhelming media and propaganda exercise was put into effect whereby the perpetrators of this carnage exonerated themselves from all blame in the devastation of Iraq.

By exerting psychological warfare on the people of Iraq from August 1990 onwards, and consistently vilifying Saddam Hussein in the Western media, the United States and United Kingdom sought to topple the Ba’ath regime firstly by exploiting their links with Iraqi dissidents, mainly the Kurds and Shi’a living in their countries, and backing the CIA-led Iraqi National Council (INC) front group under wealthy Shi’a Iraqi, Ahmed Chalabi’s mandate. The rival Iraqi National Accord (INA) under the Kurdish rebel parties would eventually seize control of Iraq’s oil wealth for themselves and their old friends, including Israel. USAID run under the CIA helped bring this about. Brad Camp’s name appears regularly. Working for USAID and doing business deals at the same time he went on to work for the KAR group after leaving USAID and based himself in Erbil. [13] He presents himself as an ‘independent energy analyst advising local companies and pitching Kurdish companies. The publication, Kurdistan Review puts a squeaky-clean face on a dirty business sector. [14]

A reliable insider claims that out of 15 PSA contracts in Kurdistan, Israel held direct interest in them and helped facilitate the illegal oil sales from Kurdistan in 2006. Hence, Iran’s claims of targeting Israel in Kurdistan in the recent missiles strikes.

USAID was also involved in the same kind of deals in Africa.

In the propaganda which the Western leaders fed to their own citizens, any positive reference to the past thirty years of development and socio-economic advances in Iraq under Saddam Hussein was omitted. Accounts were dominated by scaremongering that exploited terms like ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and ‘international terrorism’ redacting Iraq’s true history – ancient and modern. Profiles of Saddam Hussein himself were distorted. Graduates examining the period later were often surprised by the extend of support for Saddam. See, for example, a published thesis from 2014, “Saddam is Iraq, Iraq is Saddam” – Saddam Hussein’s Cult of Personality and the Perception of his Life and Legacy, from which the following astute observation derives:

“Study of pre-Islamic Iraq was greatly encouraged by Saddam Hussein, and the amount of funding he granted to archaeological research surpassed that of any previous regime.”

As established, the rise in funding can be partially attributed to Saddam’s identification with ancient Iraqi heroes, and his desire to join them on the pages of history. Saddam, on numerous occasions, called himself the “successor” of both Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin…

On August 2, 1990 at 2:00 am local time, Iraq launched an invasion of Kuwait with four elite Iraqi Republican Guard divisions (1st Hammurabi Armoured Division, 2nd al-Medinah al-Munawera Armoured Division, 3rd Tawalkalna al-Allah Mechanized Infantry Division and 4th Nebuchadnezzar Motorized Infantry Division) and Iraqi Army Special Forces units, equivalent to a full division. Although a minute detail, the names of the armed divisions exhibit Saddam’s use of imagery depicting Iraq as a great, ancient leader within the Arab world for military purposes. This was further demonstrated in Saddam’s victory day speech on August 2 where he said: “Two August has come as a very violent response to the harm that the foreigner had wanted to perpetuate against Iraq and the nation…Honor will be kept in Mesopotamia so that Iraq will be the pride of the Arabs, their protector, and their model of noble values…

On the Arab street, Saddam was admired as a leader who dared challenge the Persians, Israel and the West; he was a symbol of Arab steadfastness in the face of Western aggression. One European political analyst in the Gulf said, “Simply by standing up for so long to the punishment of this massive and modern allied force, Saddam has become larger than life. He’s playing to a lot of audiences that have too few heroes and already, win or lose, Saddam’s image is going to be with us for years, maybe decades, to come.” [15]

The savage re-taking of Kuwait equally saw the targeting of Iraq’s infrastructure on a massive scale. Its formerly thriving oil industry was deliberately undermined.

Under Kimmitt’s directives, once Iraq had failed to comply with the UN’s ultimatum to leave Kuwait, the countries he had assembled as ‘allies’ – that included Arab states, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – attacked Iraq, blasting the country with their latest war toys. (The more than 1500 bombing sorties on Baghdad can be seen, in retrospect as a trial run for 1993, 1998, 2001 and 2003). The Allies deployed their latest jet fighters against unequal Iraqi weaponry including:

A10 Thunderbolts

F-117 A Stealth Fighters

F-14 Tomcats

F-15 Eagles

F-16 Falcons

F-111

Tornado

Jaguar

B-52 Stratofortress

Mirage F-1s [16]

Baghdad was still being attacked for no reason even as the last Iraqi troops fled from Kuwait on 27 February 1991 ” with at least six aerial attacks being among the most violent on targets in and around Baghdad since the beginning of the war”. [17]

Defence Secretary Dick Cheney smoothly threatened: “The liberation of Kuwait is not enough. The Iraqi military menace must also be eliminated. [18]

Human Rights Watch observed of this strategy:

“The burden on the allies to disclose additional information about the destruction of Iraq’s electrical system is heightened by subsequent public statements from U.S. Air Force officers involved in planning the air war which indicate that the purpose of destroying the electrical system was to harm civilians and thus encourage them to overthrow Saddam Hussein. As we noted in the Introduction to Part II of this report, Air Force officers in June indicated that the targeting of Iraq’s infrastructure was related to an effort “to accelerate the effect of the sanctions.” 145 Col. John A. Warden III, the deputy director of strategy, doctrine and plans for the Air Force, acknowledged that the crippling of Iraq’s electricity-generating system “gives us long-term leverage.” [146] He explained it this way: Saddam Hussein cannot restore his own electricity. He needs help. If there are political objectives that the U.N. coalition has, it can say, “Saddam, when you agree to do these things, we will allow people to come in and fix your electricity.”

“Another Air Force planner admitted that the attacks also were designed to put pressure on the Iraqi people to oust Saddam Hussein: Big picture, we wanted to let people know, “Get rid of this guy and we’ll be more than happy to assist in rebuilding. We’re not going to tolerate Saddam Hussein or his regime. Fix that, and we’ll fix your electricity.”147

A month after the retaking of Kuwait, when the Kurds and pro-Iran Shi’a groups staged rebellions against Baghdad, encouraged by US President George W. Bush, the Coalition forces abandoned them to their fate allowing Iraq to fly helicopter gunships and bring in its ground forces to crush the uprisings. Only public outcry over the scenes of dying Kurds in the mountains pushed the Coalition to take belated action.

The No-Fly Zones were established long after hundreds of unnecessary deaths caused as much from landmines along the escape route as from the cold because Turkey had closed its borders to terrified families even as they began to flee and then kept them stranded up on the mountains near its border. [19] But there was a hidden agenda to them. It was not a humanitarian mission in essence. As Jeremy Scahill wrote sensibly for Counterpunch before the 2003 invasion on December 4, 2002

“Shortly after an incident in mid-November in which Iraqi forces fired on American warplanes that had entered the country’s airspace, US War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called Iraq’s actions “unacceptable” and alleged that Iraq was the “only place on the face of the earth where our forces are being fired on and the response is measured.”…

“You see 1990 is not 2002,” says Saeed Al Musawi, Iraq’s Deputy Foreign Minister. “Yes, Iraqi troops entered Kuwait. Yes, it was a use of force against a sovereign country. The situation was rectified, and Iraq paid a heavy price. Now, they say ‘we want to change the government. We don’t like the president.’ We are a nation of 7,000 years of civilization. This talk is not only an insult to us but to the dignity of all human beings…

No assassination or coup or invasion will erase this from the hearts and minds and memories of the tens of thousands of Iraqi children who have grown up in pure misery, watching their parents humiliated, beaten down, killed. Long after Saddam Hussein is gone, no matter how he goes, America will be facing the children of Iraq for generations to come. Among them will be Mustafa and his siblings, whose 6-year-old brother Haider was killed by a US laser-guided cruise missile during Washington’s undeclared war against Iraq.” [20]

The No-Fly Zones provided detailed intelligence to the Pentagon and the British government. Those that died in numerous bombing sorties below across Iraq were of no consequence to their planning. Half a million children died because of the related sanctions regime as bombing continued virtually daily. [21]

Human Rights Watch observed of the aftermath:

“The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the disabilities of post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology. [19]

Estimates about the extent of damage in Iraq vary wildly. Then Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Saadoun Hammadi, in February put the cost of repairing the damage in Iraq from the air war — to roads, bridges, electrical-generating plants, oil refineries and other facilities — at $200 billion. [20] One U.S. official interviewed by Reuters indicated that such a figure was not off the mark:

The Iraqis spent at least $160 billion on infrastructure projects in the 1980s. Assuming that most of them have been damaged or destroyed, reconstruction would cost considerably more in 1991 dollars…[21]

During the Gulf war, the initial list of 400 strategic targets almost doubled to over 700, based on two factors: additional intelligence-gathering that identified targets, and an increased number of B-52 and F-117A bombers available in the military theatre to attack targets.28…The President was concerned about one set of targets and asked that it be dropped. It included statues of Saddam and triumphal arches thought to be of great psychological value to the Iraqi people as national symbols. [31]”

Uranium-tipped weapons (DU) and White Phosphorus

In the course of the Gulf War, Britain and America also fired some 30,000 DU-tipped shells and over 900,000 DU-tipped bullets. This left a residue of radioactive poison in the air, water, ground and food of the nation. Numerous soldiers with the Allied forces that had handled it also became ill with Gulf War Syndrome – the effects for those upon whom it exploded were fatal. [22]

To heighten awareness of the threat posed by depleted uranium and active uranium deposits, the Iraqi government ran a public campaign and produced a postage stamp highlighting the multiple birth defects in Iraqi children born at the time the weapons were being used in the first Gulf War and thereafter. [23]

When it came to punishing Iraq for using the weapons with which the West had armed Saddam, they showed no compunction about using weapons with uranium-based components and white phosphorous they termed Whiskey Pete.

Clinton’s militarism – Operation Desert Fox

George Bush Snr’s Democrat successor, Bill Clinton, took office on January 20, 1993. [24] On June 26, 1993, he ordered US warships, stationed in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, to launch 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles against the headquarters of the Mukharabat (Iraqi Intelligence Service) in central Baghdad. The building was heavily damaged along with nearby homes killing nine Iraqi people.

A massive public protest took place in Baghdad against the “unwarranted act of aggression” [25] by the United States under the Clinton Administration. Diplomatic relations between Baghdad and Washington were effectively ended.

On this occasion, the pretext made was “retaliation” for a so-called plot by Iraq to assassinate George Bush during a visit to Kuwait. He was to be honoured there for his role in forging the Coalition that attacked Iraq and drove its forces from Kuwait. This has been officially disproven since and denied equally by Saddam Hussein. As early as May 1993, the Boston Globe got hold of a CIA report that concluded that Kuwait might have “cooked the books” in an effort to play up the “continuing Iraqi threat” to Western interests in the Persian Gulf because it has a “clear incentive to play up in that”.26 Saddam Hussein laughed at the notion saying Bush Senior was no threat and not even in power. [27] It was not his style to assassinate foreign Western leaders or their relatives.

The two-day long massacre at Mutla Ridge – the Highway of Death- by US fighter jets of Iraq’s escaping armed forces and civilian convoys burned even survivors to death. [28] Thousands of people were killed as in a turkey shoot and there were some 1500 destroyed vehicles. [29]

Madeleine Albright in role as US ambassador to the UN claimed the 1993 cruise missile attack was “designed to damage the terrorist infrastructure of the Iraqi regime, reduce its ability to promote terrorism, and deter further acts of aggression against the United States.” Colin Powell would be the spokesman on the military aspects. Powell had become the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989 under George Bush and US Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney. Both would go on to drive through the 2003 invasion, delivering the same pretext as before to the American public while focusing on profits from oil and reconstruction behind the scenes.

Between December 16-19, 1998, Bill Clinton would proceed to launch Operation Desert Fox in theory aiming at security locations in Baghdad over four consecutive days of attack but the palaces were also targeted, and many civilian areas came under bombing. The military campaign, the longest running since Vietnam, lacked all concern for the people of Iraq or the heritage of the country. Then in role as US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, can be remembered for her callous remark: “It’s a very hard choice … but the price, we think the price is worth it.” [30]

This price was only paid by Iraq’s long suffering people; more people had been killed by then than those in Hiroshima including the high cost of life owing to the sanctions regime.

Iraq had also been prohibited from operating its international flights and inbound flights were also prohibited in an effort to isolate the country further. A week after Clinton’s massive bombing raid under Desert Fox (December 16-19, 1998) on December 26, Baghdad declared that it would defend its national airspace against invading aircraft. It was preceded by France’s withdrawal from the No-Fly Zone patrols leaving Washington and London alone to enforce what they still claimed to be the “will of the international community.” They had agreed their own agenda.

Shortly into 1999, Hans von Sponeck, the last UN Humanitarian Assistance Coordinator for Iraq, began compiling what he called “Air Strike Reports” of the ongoing US and British attacks. They were delivered every three months to the UN Security Council and its Secretary General, Kofi Annan. Von Sponeck revealed that in 1999 alone, there had been 132 air strike incidents and the UN staff had been witness to 28 of them. The joint UK/US forces had killed 144 civilians and wounded 446 others during these strikes.

“I was very severely reprimanded particularly by the British authorities for having ‘strayed off’ my mandate,” he recalled later. “The reports showed destruction of civilian property in areas where there shouldn’t have been a foreign air zone established in the first place.” [31]

He also wrote an open letter to British Minister responsible for Iraq, Peter Hain, dated January 3, 2001, worthy of reproduction in full here:

Dear Minister Hain,

17 December 2000 was the first anniversary of UN Resolution 1284. This resolution was offered by the UN security council last year as a step forward in resolving outstanding disarmament, and arms monitoring issues as a precondition for the suspension of comprehensive economic sanctions against Iraq.

As many feared, including myself, this resolution was a still-born creation. For this neither the British nor the Iraqi governments but rather the people of Iraq continue to pay dearly and daily. The European public is increasingly unwilling to accept such a policy. There is deep concern because of the suffering of innocent civilians and the irrefutable evidence of violations of international law by the UN security council.

Without a transparent political agenda and a determined end to contaminating information, I do not see an end to this costly human tragedy in Iraq. Your speech of 7 November at Chatham House has not helped in this regard. Let me single out nine specific points of what you have said:

“Our air crews risk their lives patrolling the skies above southern Iraq.”

The public does not know that you do this without a mandate by the UN security council. It is in your hands to stop endangering your pilots by withdrawing them from Iraqi skies. It angered your office that I introduced air-strike reporting for 1999 while serving in Iraq. I did so as the UN secretary general’s designated official for security because of the dangers for the security of a highly mobile team of UN observers travelling daily on the roads of Iraq. The report showed that out of 132 incidents, UN staff was witness to such air strikes on 28 occasions.

The public does not know that in the very areas you established as ‘no-fly zones’ to protect (7) the population living there, 144 civilians died and 446 were wounded by UK/US airforces. The FCO classified these reports as Iraqi propaganda with a UN imprimatur” even though much of it was collected and verified by UN staff travelling in the areas at the time of the strikes.

“Our sailors are involved in activities to curb the illegal export of Iraqi oil.”

This is known. You are silent, as you have been in all your statements, about the UK condoned export of illegal oil from Iraq into Turkey. Your silence is understandable albeit not acceptable if you want the full story to be known. US/UK concurrence to this illegal export of oil is in exchange for Turkish government agreement to the use of Incirlik airbase in south-eastern Anatolia for allied sorties into the northern no-fly zone of Iraq. [32]

“I firmly believe that he (President of Iraq) remains determined to develop his nuclear, chemical and biological weapons capacity.”

You offer no evidence. What I in turn ‘firmly believe’ is that you want to keep a picture of Iraq alive even though it no longer reflects the realities on the ground. This is not surprising. Without it the case for sanctions would be over. I remind here of what former Unscom chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter recently said: “There is absolutely no reason to believe that Iraq could have meaningfully reconstituted any element of its WMB capabilities in the past 18 months.” Around the same time, Dr Blix, executive chairman of Unmovic, answered the question whether there was any indication that Iraq was trying to rearm. “No, I do not think you can say this. We have nothing to substantiate this.”

Iraq resolution 1284 “represents the collective will of the Security Council and has the full force of International Law.”

You know how deceptive this assertion is. Three out of five permanent members and Malaysia did not support this resolution. Yes, security council decisions constitute international law. This puts a formidable responsibility on the shoulders of the UN security council. You are aware, no doubt, of the increasing numbers of serious objections by international legal experts to the continued application of these laws. The evidence is overwhelming that after ten years of sanctions these ‘acts’ have become illegal.

(UN) “resolution 1284 removed the ceiling on the amount of oil Iraq is allowed to export.”

This is a political ploy. Your government knows well from annual UN reports on the state of the Iraqi oil industry that Iraq cannot pump more oil unless the UN security council allows a complete overhaul of the oil industry. You mention “recent increases’ in (oil) production.” Why do you do this when you know that the Iraqi oil output has not increased at all but exports have fluctuated around 2.2m barrels per day?

“With this large amount of revenue available, one cannot help but ask why we still see pictures of malnourished and sick children?”

My first reaction to this tendentious statement is to ask whether your officials ever show you UN documents? Unicef has repeatedly pointed out that this reality is only going to change when the sanctions regime is once again replaced by a normally functioning economy. Let me add that more often than not, it is the blocking of contracts by the US/UK which has created immense problems in implementing the oil-for-food programme. The present volume of blocked items amounts to $2.3bn the highest ever.

“It is an outrage that the Iraqi government wilfully denies food and medicine…”.

Please forgive me if I say that it is an outrage that against your better knowledge you repeat again and again truly fabricated and self-serving disinformation. Why do you ignore UN stock reports which give you the monthly distribution situation and which, verified by UN observers, show for food, medicines and other humanitarian supplies an average of over 90% distributed per month?

“Contrast the situation with northern Iraq where the same sanctions apply but Saddam’s writ does not run.”

This statement is correct. The Kurdish areas are indeed doing better. I am distressed, however, about the false impression you create with the simplistic causality you offer. A fair comparison would mention that i) the Kurdish population received 19.4% of the oil revenue, i.e. a disproportionately higher amount than the population in central/southern Iraq; ii) sanctions are regularly broken in northern Iraq; iii) there is extensive cross-border trade with Turkey and therefore good income earning opportunities; iv) the UN security council does not block many contracts benefiting the Kurdish areas; v) the climatic conditions in the hilly areas of the north are more favourable. Why are you, Minister, not mentioning these factors?

“… there are those who are undermining sanctions and challenging the authority of the UN.”

Yes, this is true, and it includes me. Do accept, Minister Hain, that I do so with the utmost discomfort. I am fully aware that this weakens the very machinery which has been set up to deal with conflicts like this one. However, I see no other alternative when the fundamentals of human rights and international law are applied in a biased and lopsided manner. The human rights coin has two sides, Minister. Lawlessness of one kind does not justify lawlessness of another kind! This has grave consequences not only for the suffering of the Iraqi people but also for the importance we should ascribe in Europe to the laws earlier governments have helped to create. The FCO should carefully study the deposition of Professor Bossuyt to the Human Rights Commission in June 2000. It provides comprehensive legal arguments by a large group of jurists of the serious violation of international law by the UN security council in which the UK has always played such an important role.

Let me end by saying, the Iraq file cannot be handled objectively and in the interest of the people of Iraq unless the hidden agenda disappears. When this happens then but only then does this sentence in the closing paragraph of your Chatham House speech get the value it deserves. ” We support human rights, transparency and accountability for other people because the values we demand for ourselves!” Yes, this is how it should be, Minister!

Yours Sincerely
H.C. Graf Sponeck
Former Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq

Geneva, December 2000 [33] (Emphasis added)

Of note, Peter Hain, went on to become Northern Ireland secretary and then did a political about-turn on the issue of the occupation of Iraq. [34] [35]

No Legal Basis for No-Fly Zones

Hans von Sponeck also openly rejected there being any legal basis for the No-Fly Zones in either the UN charter or Security Council resolutions. He had observed in interview: “That’s a total misnomer. There is no UN mandate for the establishment of these two no-fly zones. There is always a reference to resolution 688, which deals with an appeal to the Secretary General to ensure the protection of minorities in Iraq. That is not, by a wide stretch of the imagination, an agreement that you can establish, in some other country, airspace that belongs only to you and is blocked to the national aircraft. It is an illegal establishment of a zone for bilateral interests of the US and the UK.”

Baghdad consistently criticized UNIKOM – the UN Iraqi-Kuwaiti Observation Mission – which monitored the demilitarized zone between the Iraq/Kuwait border, for refusing to document the violations of Iraq’s sovereignty by US and UK warplanes and to properly name the parties entering the demilitarized zone. In its reports, UNIKOM refers to the warplanes only as “unidentified planes.” Their identities were entirely clear.

President Turgut Özal of Turkey also announced that Ankara would comply with Resolution 661 by stopping the flow of Iraqi oil carried across Turkey by pipeline. Iraq’s economy was switched off with almost the same speed and ease.” [36]

Sanctions-busting flights

As Counterpunch recalls, Saddam Hussein’s next move then “set the scene for the first sanctions-busting flight to Iraq: A Russian plane landed at Saddam International Airport on August 17, 2000, just newly-refurbished. Perhaps most significant was that Moscow did not apply for permission for the flight at the US-dominated sanctions committee at the UN. The US and Britain objected to the flight, but to no avail. France’s Ambassador, Jean-David Levitte said, “For many years now, we have considered that there is no flight embargo against Iraq.”…This opening led to a flood of foreign aircraft into Baghdad, carrying medicines, food and humanitarian goods, along with foreign dignitaries all speaking out against the flight bans and the sanctions…

“Empowered by this international defiance of Washington’s policy, Baghdad went on to announce that its fleet carrier, Iraqi Airways, would resume domestic flights on November 5, 2000. Iraqi Information Minister, Mohammed Al Sahaf, said after the first flight had departed: “These flights will continue despite the threats, as they aim to smash the American-British criminal acts of imposing illegal no-fly zones.” [37]

2001-2002 – the Preparations

In early December 2002, Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri, wrote to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan accusing the US and UK governments of practicing “blatant state terrorism” by bombing civilian targets in Iraq. Sabri said that from October 18 to November 17, 2002, the no-fly zone bombings had killed 10 people and wounded seven others. He said Baghdad reserves the right of “legitimate self-defense under the UN Charter and international law.” [38]

Overlooking the International Ba’ath Party headquarters in what is now the green Zone, the al-Rashid hotel hosted most foreign visitor including Western journalists. A large mosaic was laid across its threshold with the face of George W. Bush looking up into the passing feet. Everyone could literally walk over him.

The US and UK had continued to bomb Iraq several times a week without any declaration of war on through to the escalation of February 2001 – months before 9/11. The excessive force the Coalition unleashed in the massacre of retreating Iraqi forces and civilians at Mutla Ridge heading north after the ceasefire prefigured the style of war crime that the Coalition, and foremost, the United States, were capable of.

Sites restored after previous bombing raids were being bombed again and more than once with many fine buildings and key government ministries deliberately put beyond repair. [39]

Between Operation Desert Fox and the unlawful US-led invasion of March 2003, the US and UK bombed Iraq almost weekly. The pretext offered to the public was that of Saddam’s violations of the No Fly Zones and development of WMD, despite these projects having long since been ceased and the weapons destroyed. The Americans also dropped stray bombs inside the northern No Fly Zone of Kurdistan resulting in numerous deaths and the maiming of Kurdish children. The same occurred in the largely Shi’a south.

Galloway sets it straight: The Oil For Food Deal [40]

In the stark words of George Galloway, a rebel consistently vilified by the Western media almost as much as the Iraqi leader had been:

“Giving the lie to their own denials, the British government then supported the establishment of the oil for food programme through which the Iraqi government would be allowed to sell a tightly restricted amount of oil, under close UN supervision, with the proceeds going into an escrow account in New York. Iraq could then buy a savagely limited range of goods for their civilian population through, and only through that escrow account. But every contract had to go through the filter of the sanctions committee, to be considered by killers in smart suits appointed by the US and British governments (99 per cent of all blocked contracts were stopped by either the British or American representatives, or both).

“Even before the oil for food programme, the Anglo-American axis repeatedly asserted that the embargo did not cover food or medicine. This lie ignored the fact that Iraq had no income with which to buy food or medicine and that all its assets had been frozen… Iraq struggled to pump their permitted volumes of oil; the attrition of oil extraction and distribution systems by bombing and the embargo on spare parts had taken their toll. The new arrangements banned virtually all spare parts as having potentially military use. The sanctions committee continued to be the eye of a needle through which little got through without difficulty…

“They knew, but never said so, that fully thirty per cent of the value of oil sales was being immediately confiscated by the Compensation regime and handed out to cash-rich Kuwait and other US-friendly claimants for losses incurred in the 1990 invasion…Saddam couldn’t have been spending the oil revenue on weapons. First of all, he never saw the cash; it was paid straight from the UN to the suppliers of carefully vetted goods. Secondly, Iraq was completely besieged by land, se and air. How could Iraq be bringing in weapons? If it could, what was the use of the sanctions that were working the killing fields…Before the 1991 war this (Iraqi dinar) could be exchanged at $3.50 for one Iraqi dinar, but by the 2003 war the rate had sunk to 2,500 dinars to one dollar… Cook bitterly defended the line Iraqi children had to be starved because their leader was ‘building palaces and ‘buying weapons of mass destruction’. ..[41]

New Labour cabinet member, Clare Short, resigned from the Blair government on 12 May in protest two months after initially backing the war on Iraq. Her letter of resignation stated: “In both the run-up to the war and now, I think the UK is making grave errors in providing cover for the US mistakes rather than helping an old friend… American power alone cannot make America safe… But undermining international law and the authority of the UN creates the risk of instability, bitterness and growing terrorism that will threaten the future for all of us.” [42]

Enduring human cost

Twelve years after Iraq had almost recovered from the devastation wrought by the first Gulf War, the US-led invasion and subsequent Occupation was immeasurably more destructive than the heavy-handed reaction to Iraq’s very short-lived invasion of Kuwait.

America under Bush Jnr and Britain under Tony Blair aimed to control the supply of Iraqi oil on a long-term basis through establishing a malleable puppet government in Baghdad. (See Part Two of this essay, The Truth about the Saddam Hussein Affair).

Reassembling the Coalition to attack Iraq – Endgame

Fast-forward to 2003 and the illegal invasion that supplanted the Ba’ath government with an American and British puppet administration labelled the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) – an assortment of Iraqi – mainly Shi’a and Kurdish – dissidents opportunists and politicians running contractors. Once impoverished Kurdish rebels from the two main political parties, the KDP and the PUK, and their extended families, and Iraqi Shi’a Khomeini loyalists were given free reign.

Within the first two years of regime change they would destabilise and plunder the country while the US, UK, the international oil companies and numerous entrepreneurs reaped enormous profits from doing business in Iraq.

Their erstwhile partner, Saddam Hussein, had long been wise to their ambitions in Iraq. They were even satirised in his pre-invasion novella, Zabiba and the King, and in heated speeches filmed during the farce labelled the ‘Dujail trial’. “It is no accident that both of the prime ministers under the American occupation have been members of the Da’wa party. That is the real reason the trials started here. “ 43 former US Attorney General, and Saddam’s chief defence lawyer, Ramsey Clark said. “It is sheer revenge for the Da’wa party. Putting it first is their way of saying they’re on top now; they call the shots…” [44]

In the stark assessment of Alexander Alamovich Navruzov whose last words chime well here:

“Why it is that US policy towards Iraq was so cynical and callous, and why the US continued pursuing disastrous and costly policies through the decades remain open to question. Seldom do policymakers acknowledge the cynicism and blithe disregard for human rights, with exception to Kissinger and his infamous mantra that “covert action should not be confused with missionary work.” Without a doubt, access to oil superseded human rights. Without a doubt, the greed of corporations and desire of politicians to satisfy their corporate constituents was a major factor as well. To what extent racism played a role is unclear, and also not openly acknowledged or deeply explored…” [45]

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.