IRAQIS poured into the streets of Bagdad on Monday night to celebrate the signing of an oil for food agreement with the United Nations, writes Michael Jansen. It allows their government to sell up to $2 billion in oil over an 180 day period to provide funds for the purchase of desperately needed food and medical supplies.
Although hailed as a victory in Iraq, the signing of the "memorandum of understanding" in fact amounted to capitulation by Bagdad to the diktat of the Security Council, dominated by the US and Britain, which are determined to "contain" Iraq and bring down President Saddam Hussein.
Iraq will receive only half of the proceeds of oil sales, while 30 per cent will go to war reparations, 10 per cent to the rebel Kurds and 10 per cent to pay UN expenses. This means Iraq, which used to earn $16 billion a year from oil exports, will have funds for only the most basic medical and food supplies. Before sanctions were imposed in 1990 Iraq purchased $500 million a bear in medical supplies and imported two thirds of its food needs.
Although the government has been empowered to arrange oil sales, and to purchase and distribute supplies, every transaction and arrangement must be closely monitored by the council employing a range of auditors, technical experts and humanitarian agents. Since separate distribution arrangements were made for the three northern provinces comprising the Kurdish "sale haven", the oil for food deal also perpetuates and reinforces the de facto partition of the country imposed by the US and Britain at the end of the 1991 Gulf war.
UN agencies have reported that a half a million children have died since 1990 due to the punitive sanctions regime. Another three million suffer from severe malnutrition. Diseases like polio and measles, nearly eradicated before the war, have reappeared. The elderly and chronically ill die because of lack of medications. The inhabitants of Bagdad face a long hot summer of dangerously polluted drinking water because there are no spare parts for water plant equipment or purification chemicals.
Although Bagdad hopes the return of Iraqi oil to the market could create a demand for the lifting of sanctions, the US and Britain have made it clear that this deal is an exception which could, by reducing pressure on the council caused by Iraqi suffering, prolong sanctions.