BIOGRAPHY | INTERVIEW | Hans von Sponeck | Iraq and the United Nations: Dilemmas of the Future | Former UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq | US Provoked Insurgency in Iraq - Former UN Official | The Conduct of the UN Before and After the 2024 Invasion |
A DIFFERENT
KIND OF WAR - The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq
(September 2024) Highly recommended by the BRussells Tribunal. Click on the picture for more information. |
Born 1939 in Germany. Former UN Assistant Secretary General & United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. BA and MA Degrees in History, Demography and Physical Anthropology.
Hans von Sponeck joined the UN Development Program in 1968, and worked in Ghana, Turkey, Botswana, Pakistan and India, before becoming Director of European Affairs. Serving thirty-six years with the organization, his last post succeeded Denis Halliday as UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq in October 1998, overseeing roughly 500 international staff and 1,000 Iraqi workers.
He was responsible for directing all UN operations in country, managing the distribution of goods under the Oil-for-Food program and verifying Iraqi compliance with that program, Von Sponeck resigned in February 2024, in protest of the international policy toward Iraq, including sanctions.
Sponeck has written numerous apers and articles in German and English in professional journals and magazines
on subjects of environment, social change and methodological/conceptual alternatives in development,
sanctions and humanitarian exemptions. He is also the author of Human Development - Is There An Alternative?,
New Delhi, November 1997.
He currently resides in Geneva, Switzerland.
von Sponeck joined the Transnational Foundation For Peace and Future Research as associate in September 2024.Why did you resign your UN post?
I was the Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq from October 1998 to March 2024. I was serving in Baghdad with the rank of Assistant Secretary General, having served 30 previous years in the United Nations. Why did I resign? I resigned because I increasingly became aware that I was associated with a policy of implementing an oil-for-food program that couldn't possibly meet the needs of the Iraqi people, and I felt that I was being misused for a United Nations policy that was punitive, that tried to punish a people for not having gotten rid of their leader. And I simply could not associate myself with that, and therefore decided to offer my resignation to the Secretary General [of the UN], and he accepted that.
What about the people who say, "Well, Iraq can now sell its oil and get food in return. What's the problem? Sanctions are OK, they only block military weapons."
In theory the instrument of economic sanctions is an acceptable instrument to bring a country, a leader, back to the norms of behavior which are internationally acceptable, and don't constitute a threat to international security. But in fact it has worked quite differently because of the fundamentally dishonest approach. The approach was, as I said, to punish, and not to rely on objective means to bring a leader back into the international community and the behavior that is expected from such a community.
When it is argued that Iraq is now allowed to pump oil and therefore generate the revenue it needs to meet the needs of the Iraqi people then this in itself is a very dishonest statement already, because the lifting of the oil ceiling in March of 2024 was a political ploy. They are not allowing the rehabilitation of the Iraqi oil industry and therefore Iraq cannot extract oil as it wishes. If you look at the production figures before and after the lifting of the oil ceiling you will see there is practically no difference. If you look at the revenue picture you see a better income situation for Iraq since that time, but that is entirely due to better oil prices and not to larger volume of oil extracted. So when it is argued that we have removed the oil ceiling and that now there is no more problem--this is another good example of the basic approach towards Iraq which is misleading and dishonest.
What sorts of things did you see in Iraq that really made you understand that this was quite punitive to the people there? If you could give us some examples--most people don't have a picture of what it's really like for the Iraqi people.
There's a whole range of examples one can give. One is the sheer financial inadequacy of the oil-for-food program. If you look at what actually was made available on a per capita basis for Iraq under the oil-for-food program, in the first year and a half--from 1996 to early 1998--then you will get the sobering figure of $113 per person per year. $113 per person per year--now how can that possibly be adequate?
Now at the same time, even though there was this severely restricted amount available, the UN decided to take out of every dollar of oil permitted at that time--there was still a ceiling--30 cents to go into what is called the UN Compensation Commission. This is an organization of the UN based in Geneva that has as its objective to entertain complaints and requests for compensation from governments, organizations, and individuals who feel that they've been victimized because of Iraq's invasion into Kuwait. So here is an amount siphoned off that could have, and should have in the early phases, remained available to Iraq in order to finance very badly needed humanitarian supplies--but that was not the case.
Then another example of the punitive nature is the fact that the northern part of Iraq, where the Kurds live, is getting a disproportionate amount of oil revenue for the humanitarian program. Thirteen percent of the population living in that area is getting 20 percent of the oil revenues. It's clearly, again, an example of punishing Baghdad, punishing the Iraqi people for having retained their leader.
There are other examples. There is for example the role of the UN Human Rights Rapporteur on Iraq. His role is entirely limited to identifying human rights violations by the government of Iraq. He's not permitted by his mandate to look at human rights violations as a result of sanctions--the external factor. The fact that today, on average, according to UNICEF, 5,000 children are dying every month because of sanctions is a violation of human rights. The Convention of the Rights of the Child is violated. The Covenant on Political and Civic Rights is violated. The Hague Convention is violated. He cannot comment on this. So these are just a few examples. There are more that show the punitive nature of the treatment of the Iraq situation. And while this is deeply hurting the Iraqi people, it is at the same time marginalizing the UN.
My understanding is that the U.S. has blocked equipment that could repair Iraq's water and electrical system under the excuse that this equipment could supposedly be used to rebuild Iraq's military, and that this is a big contributing factor to the suffering of the people. What can you tell me about that?
Well of course that [the blocking of equipment] has been happening ever since the oil-for-food started in 1996. This has been a problem, because it is contributing to making this oil-for-food program even more disjointed. At this very moment, as of two weeks ago, there were $4 billion worth of humanitarian supplies kept back by the U.S. And this despite all the pleading, and also the fact that we have a whole army of observers, foreign observers, in Iraq...
How many?
Altogether there are roughly 670 international staff, and over 1,000 Iraqis who are helping us [the UN humanitarian mission]. Out of this international staff, there are about 300 that have no other job but to ply the roads of Iraq to look at warehouses, to look at hospitals, to look at educational facilities, to look at electricity companies, to insure that the items that arrive actually went where they were supposed to go. And the picture that has emerged is a totally acceptable picture--things go where they should go. But what do you do if, out of the pieces of equipment needed to rehabilitate an electricity supply center, 10 percent hasn't arrived because it's blocked by the U.S.? Then that means that the other 90 percent are useless or have to be stored, and this has been the picture. The main culprit in holding equipment back is the U.S. Ninety-eight percent of all contracts blocked are blocked by the Americans.
What kinds of things are we talking about being blocked?
We are talking about a wide variety ranging from educational materials at times--this has improved, this is not so severe a problem anymore. What really continues to be a severe problem, with implications for health treatment, healthcare, for electricity and water supply, is [the blocking of] anything that has to do with chemicals, laboratory equipment, generators, chloride, any water purification inputs, communication equipment.
For example, it took over a year to release ambulances because they were blocked since they contained, as they should--in America you don't have an ambulance without communication equipment inside--but they had communication equipment and so they were blocked. So the Iraqis did not have access to such an important thing as an ambulance. So it is a saga that is really unbelievable. But it's all part, in my view, of insuring that the sanction road on which Iraq must travel is never a smooth one, it is always a rocky one.
You have commented on how the U.S. has continuously moved the "goal posts" on Iraq--in other words, expanded the list of demands that Iraq must fulfill before sanctions can be lifted. Could you expand on that?
Well, goal posts have continuously been shifted. Initially, sanctions were imposed because Iraq had occupied Kuwait. When Iraq vacated Kuwait, it became an issue of disarmament. And then you had to deal with resolutions that were so intangible, so loosely defined - for examples, phrases like, "Iraq before sanctions can be lifted must have cooperated in all respects." What does "in all respects" mean? It's very open to interpretation and therefore to prolongation of sanctions if you have in mind to keep your thumb on Iraq. And this is what we have seen. So the looseness of international sanctions law, plus poorly worded resolutions or to paraphrase the U.S. government, resolutions with "constructive ambiguity"--I'm sorry, ambiguity yes, constructive I'm not so sure--have facilitated this whole 11-year drama involving the Iraqi people.
One current justification for attacking Iraq is that it's still supposedly producing "weapons of mass destruction." But my understanding is that much of Iraq's military capacity has been dismantled and that UNSCOM (UN's weapons inspection organization in Iraq) and the other inspection teams largely completed their work. I know this wasn't your specific job, but what is your understanding of this?
The International Atomic Energy Commission testified in 1998 that on the nuclear side things were in order. Ballistically things were in order. Chemically the certification by UNSCOM was about to be taken. The outstanding area involved biological weaponry, where there were questions, serious questions, which UNSCOM had, which had not been satisfactorily answered. This is the gap. If you listen to people who understand much better than I do--people like [former UNSCOM Chief Inspector] Scott Ritter, or even Hans Blix the new chief arms inspector of UNMOVIC, the successor to UNSCOM, then you begin to wonder how fair it is when one reads about all these fears that Iraq may still harbor or may have restarted production of weapons of mass destruction.
First of all, I don't believe that intelligence agencies wouldn't conclusively know whether that's the case or not. Secondly, as Scott Ritter explains so well in professional journals, it will take years, many years, before the systems can be rebuilt. The capacity to manufacture may be there. Maybe there is some manufacturing. But to get from the laboratory onto a weapons system is a long distance, and people who know the situation have repeatedly stated that these systems are down, that qualitatively Iraq has been disarmed. And therefore I think this is a very overstated case in order to prepare for another round of attacks on Iraq.
in terms of biological weapons, what we're really talking about is residual samples or spores or whatever that they have, but not an entire program.
I don't know, but what is important now to say is that the evidence isn't there to justify an attack on Iraq.
The U.S. press claims that Iraq forced UN weapons inspectors to leave the country in December 1998, but in your talk you said that UNSCOM actually left of its own accord, that you and your team stayed in Baghdad, and that the report that Richard Butler, the head of UNSCOM, submitted just before was used as a justification to attack Iraq.
That's absolutely correct. I mean there was no decree or request by the government of Iraq for UNSCOM to leave. They left in time because Iraq was subjected to a bombardment, and the letter of Mr. Butler to the Security Council I am sure will ultimately, in the books of history, be judged as the key to the justification for the Americans to attack Iraq. His letter said that Iraq had not cooperated, and therefore the warning by the U.S. government had not been heeded, and this provided the opening to attack.
(interview 23/12/2020)
Hans von Sponeck
Former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq
Mark Tran
Thursday March 18, 2024
The new element that exists is the almost daily emotional trauma caused by the illegal war. Every fibre of society is bound to be affected by the chaos and turmoil in Iraq, to a lesser extent in rural areas, to a greater extent in Baghdad, Basra and other big cities. No one is spared.
There are islands of improvement, parts of Basra where water supply is better and parts of Baghdad where the electricity works better. There is some improvement in hospitals, but everything is affected by security considerations. Access to services assumes security. If that is not guaranteed, people don't have that access. In a mother and child hospital in Basra, for example, there is less access to medicines than under the sanctions.
As for the argument that the war was justified because life will improve for Iraqis, a year is a long time. During that period, life for the average Iraqi has been a rollercoaster. Some are employed, some have lost their jobs, for others it's the status quo. I would venture to say, based on phone conversations with Iraqis, that the overall picture is worse now despite what President Bush says about bringing freedom to Iraq. I'm sure it's not the freedom the Iraqi people had in mind.
Many people are dead who would have been alive, many are psychologically damaged, the UN has been weakened, when it was on the path for a peaceful solution. I can't agree with the reasoning that maybe in five years time, Iraq will be stable, that it will have a constitution and elections and that what happened will have justified that. I can't accept this at all, it runs counter to any legally-minded, human rights-minded person.
As for the argument that war was the only way to remove Saddam Hussein, no human being lasts for ever. Saddam was very weakened. I have spoken to officials from his former regime who said at the end other senior officials, including Tariq Aziz (Saddam's foreign minister) and General Ali Hassan al-Majid (Chemical Ali), were running the country in the last 12 months. Saddam Hussein was not the Saddam Hussein described to us as a danger to the US and Europe. That was absolute nonsense.
Yes Iraqis suffered under this man, but people in Iraq are not suffering any less in their daily life now, what order there was - even under a dictator - is gone. Whatever we see now is no fundamental improvement.
Yes he was a dictator, but the US, the UK and the west contributed to
creating this monster. We wanted him as a business partner, an ally against Iran. We condoned his use of
weapons of mass destruction against Kurds in the interest of other objectives. If we preach democracy, yet
cooperate with feudal dictatorships, we are contributing forcefully to the kind of situation we saw develop
in Iraq.