Memorandum by Mr Carne Ross, Independent
Diplomat[1]
and former British diplomat
INTRODUCTION
1. This evidence derives from my work on
sanctions, in particular on Iraq, as a British diplomat. I was
a member of the Foreign Office from 1989 until my resignation
in 2004. From late 1997 until June 2002, I was First Secretary
(Political) at the UK Mission to the United Nations in New York.
I was head of the Middle East section in the political section
of the Mission, where I supervised two other diplomats. My primary
responsibility was policy on Iraq, where I was responsible for
reporting on and participating in discussions and negotiations
at the UN Security Council (UNSC) (I was also responsible for
other issues including Israel/Palestine, Libya/Lockerbie, the
Western Sahara and Afghanistan). Inter alia, I helped prepare
and negotiate many resolutions on Iraq concerning sanctions and
weapons inspections, including resolution 1284 (1999) which established
UNMOVIC, the UN weapons-inspection agency. As part of this work,
I was closely involved in the internal British government review
which led to the concept of "smart sanctions" on Iraq,
a new design of the sanctions regime which was eventually implemented
in 2002.[2]
I resigned from the Foreign Office in 2004 after giving testimony
to the official inquiry into the uses of intelligence on Iraq's
WMD (the "Butler Review").
LESSONS FROM
IRAQ SANCTIONS
2. There has yet to be an authoritative
history of sanctions on Iraq. The Volcker inquiry provides some
well-researched, careful and balanced analysis of the oil-for-food
programme, and thus some crucial aspects of the Iraq sanctions
experience, in particular the UN management of the programme,
butdespite its lengththe report is by no means comprehensive.
Nevertheless, from the considerable evidence so far available,
it is possible to draw some important lessons for the future:
3. First, and most important, the humanitarian
impact of sanctions should be carefully considered in the design
of any sanctions regime. The combination of sanctions and Saddam's
manipulations of the OFF programme together contributed to considerable
suffering and distress among ordinary Iraqis during the sanctions
years. During the years I worked on sanctions, I met innumerable
international humanitarian groups and ordinary Iraqis who testified
to the deleterious effects of sanctions. The OFF programme was
designed to ameliorate this suffering but by the time it was implemented
(in 1996) enormous damage had already been done. Thanks to the
unreliability of Iraqi statistics in this period, we will never
know the true effects. But the consensus is clear among NGOs and
Iraqis. The weight of evidence clearly indicates that sanctions
caused massive human suffering among ordinary Iraqis, in particular
children, and equally massive damage to Iraq's economy and civilian
infrastructure, damage for which Iraq is still paying today. Wethe
US and UK governments who were the primary engineers and defenders
of sanctionswere well-aware of this evidence at the time,
but we largely ignored it or blamed all these effects on the Saddam
government. While the Iraqi government did deliberately impede
the full implementation of the OFF programme (initially by failing
to agree the programme, and later for instance by interfering
with distribution of goods or cutting off oil supplies to deny
funds to the programme), these manipulations account only for
part of the damage done by sanctions. Sanctions effectively destroyed
the Iraqi civilian economy, denying the entire population the
means to live, and forcing them into dependence on UN and government-supplied
rations. The effect of the import ban was primarily felt by the
civilian population and not the government elites, who were insulated
by illegal oil revenues and sanctions-busting imports. In other
words, the sanctions affected precisely the wrong people. Not
only was this a grave moral failing, but this also undermined
the political support necessary to maintain sanctions (see below).
4. Related to this, the second important
lesson is that any sanctions regime should be carefully targeted
on those whose behaviour sanctions are trying to affect. Sanctions
on Iraq were successful in many significant ways. They prevented
Iraq from significantly rearming with either conventional or unconventional
weapons. During the period I worked on the subject (until mid-2002),
it was the private and considered view of both the UK and US governments
that Iraq had no substantial WMD stocks or the means to deliver
them. We believed that sanctions had prevented any substantial
rearmament by Iraq. And in these terms, sanctions were a success
in effecting the US/UK strategy of "containment". But
in terms of their stated goals (as elaborated in the Security
Council resolutions, and in particular resolution 687), sanctions
were only sporadically effective in forcing the Saddam government
to comply with Iraq's obligations to cooperate fully with weapons
inspections and fully verify its disarmament of WMD. In other
ways, sanctions had perverse effects. The Saddam government used
sanctions to portray Iraq as a "victim" of unfair US
policies, and to portray Saddam Hussein himself as an heroic rebel
against western hegemony. Moreover, the design of the OFF programme
reinforced the government's control over its population. It did
this in two ways: firstly, as sanctions had largely destroyed
the non-government civilian economy, ordinary people were denied
the means to support themselves, making them dependent on UN and
government-distributed rations; secondly, the UN itself was obliged
to rely on the government to distribute OFF goods to civilians.
This delivered an enormous power to the government, courtesy of
the UN Security Council. In the UK and US governments, we were
fully aware of this deficiency but did nothing to amend it.
5. Third, to be effective, sanctions
regimes must be properly supervised and policed. Modern economies
are complex. There are innumerable ways in which governments or
officials can evade sanctions. The Volcker Report and the Iraq
Survey Group's report both describe in detail the many ways that
the Saddam regime illegally imported prohibited goods and illegally
exported oil, outside of the UN escrow account. The principal
source of illegal revenue for the Saddam regime was not, as is
commonly believed, abuse of the OFF programme (eg through false
pricing or "kickback" bribes from suppliers). Instead,
the major source of illegal revenue was oil exports outside of
the programme, in particular to Turkey, Jordan, Syria and through
the Gulf to other recipients. These illegal exports amounted to
an estimated[3]
$12 billion, far exceeding the approximately $1.75 billion the
regime gained from abuse of the OFF programme. The Saddam government
was assisted in this source of illegal revenue by its neighbours,
above all Jordan, Turkey and Syria, who allowed and in some cases
(particularly Syria) facilitated the exports and sometimes themselves
purchased the illegally-exported oil.
6. Again, both the US and UK governments
were aware of this activity (though we underestimated its true
scale), but turned a blind eye to it, since both Turkey and Jordan
were regarded as "allies". Officials in both governments
on several occasions tried to persuade our governments to take
more robust action to stop these illegal exports. But we were
not successful. Both the US and UK governments will now argue
that they tried to take action against this smuggling but were
blocked by French and Russian obstruction in the Security Council.
This was true, but it was not the whole truth. In reality, the
US turned a very deliberate blind eye to smuggling by Turkey and
Jordan in particular, but also the Gulf states. The Iraq Survey
Group estimated that most of approx $12 billion in illegal revenues
came through the so-called trade protocols with Jordan and Turkey.
It would not have required Security Council agreement to persuade
the Turks or others of Iraq's neighbours (who at the end of the
day were dependent on the US for their security) to stop the smuggling.
It would have required a sustained and energetic diplomatic campaign,
supported by technical expertise in border monitoring, work to
control goods going into and out of Iraq and the tough and complicated
work to target Saddam's illegal overseas financial holdings. This
was never done. Not only would such a campaign have increased
the funds available to the humanitarian programme, but it would
also have removed the means on which the Saddam regime relied
to pay his troops, build his palaces and, to the limited extent
that he did, rearm. Without this illegal income, the regime would
have been severely weakened and perhaps would have collapsed.
This can now never be proved, but such a policy could have provided
an alternative to war.
7. Fourth, and following the point above,
any sanctions regime, but particularly massive and complex regimes
of the kind imposed on Iraq require an enormous amount of official
work to monitor, amend and supervise. Although the UK and
US devoted more staff to Iraq sanctions than most countries, it
is now clear that our resources were inadequate to the enormous
and complicated task before us. Volcker took 18 months, spent
around $35 million and employed approximately100 experienced investigators
to perform his investigation. In both the US and UK governments,
the number of officials working directly on sanctions/OFF issues
was no more than a handful. Maintaining any sanctions regime requires
a constant and detailed effort, involving many different arms
of government, as many strands of policy must be brought together,
including intelligence, diplomacy, and technical assessment (eg
of the complicated technology of so-called "dual-use"
goods). We should have established a multi-disciplinary unit of
this kind. Instead, both governments relied on a scattered group
of officials, who worked hard but whose efforts could have been
much more effectively coordinated. Moreover, the "churn"
of officials through the desks in London in particular meant that
many lessons were repeatedly relearned.
8. Connected to this point is the role of
the UN. The Volcker Report has comprehensively described the many
failings of the Office of the Iraq Programme (OIP), the UN body
which ran the OFF programme. Significantly, Volcker said that
the failings of the OIP were typical of broader problems within
the UN. The UN itself must bear considerable blame for those failings.
There is much to do to remedy and improve management culture and
oversight in that body. Reform is underway. The world needs an
effective and respected UN: we should all therefore hope and ensure
that these reforms are implemented and are successful in producing
a transparent, incorrupt and efficient UN. But there are lessons
for our own governments too, in this case the US and UK. In retrospect,
the member states should have done much more to supervise the
OIP and OFF programmes. While we were at the time aware of some
of the problems in the programme, for instance kickback payments
by suppliers, we did little about them. One clear lesson from
the OFF debacle is that those states which care most about such
things (in this case the US and UK) must intrude into and interrogate
more aggressively the UN bodies charged with implementing such
programmes.
9. The Volcker inquiry revealed that some
2,200 companies internationally were involved in illegal dealings
with Iraq both under and separately from the OFF programme. Some
of these companies were American, others were British. The responsibility
to investigate and supervise the activities of these companies
fell and falls to national governments, not the UN. In most cases,
our governments approved and authorised these companies to do
business under the OFF programme. Clearly, in retrospect, our
governments should have done more in way of supervision of the
companies involved (for instance, by examining their accounts,
interviewing company officials etc) to prevent and investigate
any illegal activity. It is not clear that even today, after the
Volcker inquiry, all wrongdoing by these companies will be investigated
and, where necessary, punished.
10. Fifth, to be effective any international
sanctions regime must enjoy broad political support. By the
time I worked on Iraq in the UN Security Council in the late 1990's,
sanctions were widely seen in the international community as unfair
and cruel punishment on the Iraqi people. The evidence of humanitarian
distress was mounting. US and UK arguments to sustain sanctions,
on the grounds that Iraq had not fully complied with its obligations
to disarm, were seen as poorly-founded and were undermined by
statements, for instance by then-President Clinton, that sanctions
would be maintained as long as Saddam remained in power ie by
implication that sanctions would remain even if Iraq fully complied
with its disarmament obligations. Weapons inspections were seen
as increasingly nugatory: after the mid-1990's the inspectors
found no substantial stocks of illegal weapons, but were instead
engaged in a confrontational and aggressive cat-and-mouse game
with the Iraqi government. We maintained (correctly) that Iraq
had failed fully to account for its past WMD holdings or to provide
full access to its WMD sites or personnel. But by many this was
seen as insufficient grounds to maintain comprehensive economic
sanctions. As a result, we had more and more difficulty passing
resolutions in the Security Council to maintain the pressure on
Iraq. Although there was little chance of sanctions being lifted
(which would have required a resolution of the UNSC which we could
veto), there was dwindling enthusiasm for their maintenance. France,
Russia, China and others (many of whom had significant economic
interests in Iraq) became more and more vociferous in attacking
sanctions and urging that Iraq be "rewarded" for its
progress in disarmament so far (for example, in the nuclear "file",
where Iraq had by 1999 substantially cooperated with the IAEA).
Sanctions-busting, such as allowing flights to Iraq, became more
egregious. Any pressure we put on Iraq's neighbours to comply
with sanctions (which was in any case sporadic and inconsistent)
was often ignored. The Saddam government began to claim that sanctions
were crumbling and it was the US and UK, not Iraq, which faced
diplomatic isolation. It took the threat of invasion in 2003 for
Iraq finally to accept UNMOVIC, the UN weapons inspection agency,
and at last cooperate in the Security Council's demands.
11. In relation to this point, sixthly,
it can be seen from the above that support for sanctions, and
thus their effectiveness, in any particular case, is related
to whether they are seen internationally as legitimate. When
agreed in 1990, comprehensive sanctions were widely regarded as
a proportionate response to Iraq's illegal invasion of Kuwait.
But as time went by, and the humanitarian damage wrought by sanctions
became clearer (and as Iraq complied to some extent, but never
fully, with its disarmament obligations), international support
waned. By contrast, in the case of sanctions on Libya (imposed
after the indictment of two Libyan agents for the Lockerbie bombing),
which I also worked on in the UN Security Council, sanctions were
much more narrowly targeted (an arms embargo, and bans on flights
and associated aviation activities). Although Libya complained
loudly at the "injustice" of sanctions, and attempted
to claim that they were causing humanitarian damage, the Security
Council maintained the sanctions with fewer breaches and greater
political pressure on Libya to comply (though even here it took
a major change in the terms of compliance for Libya eventually
to comply).
12. This point leads on to an important
conclusion about the objectives of sanctions. With Libya,
the aim of sanctions was clear and easily-stated: the handover
of those indicted for Lockerbie to the courts concerned (first
a Scottish court, but later amended to a Scottish court convened
in The Hague). In theory, Security Council resolution (SCR) 687
clearly stated the requirements for Iraq to fulfil in order for
sanctions to be lifted: the verifiable disarmament of its WMD
and missiles, and Iraq's continuing cooperation with the weapons
inspectors and ongoing monitoring. But in practice these conditions
proved highly disputable: what comprised full cooperation? If
the weapons inspectors could find no weapons surely Iraq had verifiably
disarmed? If not, what comprised verifiable disarmament? These
debates occupied us in the Security Council for years, and led
to highly-complex elaborations of these conditions in SCR 1284,
which restated the conditions for sanctions "lift".
The lesson is clear: to be widely-supported and therefore effective,
sanctions need conditions which can be stated as clearly and unambiguously
as possible, and ideally conditions which can be fulfilled in
a binary (yes or no) fashion.
13. Finally, there is a broader argument
about the political credibility and consistency of those who propose
and defend UN sanctions. The UN Security Council, where UN sanctions
regimes must be agreed, is not a court of law. It is a deeply
political body where decisions are made only partly on the basis
of what is right, but more on the basis of who has most power
and influence. No one issue, whether Iraq, Iran or Sudan, is seen
in isolation but as part of a complex power-play of how the world
should be arbitrated. In the Council, you have to cajole, persuade
and sometimes (if necessary) bully in order to get your way. Perceptions
of any country's standing and integrity form part of that power
to influence.[4]
During my spell on the Council, and to this day, British (and
American) standing and influence in the Security Council has been
consistently undermined by what many see as western "double
standards" over the Middle East, and in particular Israel/Palestine.
Many countries, and not only Arab countries, felt that the US
and UK demanded compliance with the resolutions to the letter
by Iraq, while punishing its civilian population. Meanwhile, it
was felt, the US allowed Israel to ignore Security Council resolutions
(SCRs 242 and 338 in particular) which demanded that it relinquish
the Occupied Territories. This perception continues to weaken
American and British arguments today, over Iran or Sudan, that
the Council must stand up for international law and right. In
the Security Council, it is naïve, in the case of Iran, Sudan
or elsewhere, to pretend that American or British wishes or arguments
will be seen in isolation.
July 2006
1 Independent Diplomat is a non-profit diplomatic
advisory group founded in 2004; it provides advice and assistance
to those countries or political groups which may lack experience
or resources in diplomacy. Back
2
In general terms, from 1990 onwards all imports and exports were
prohibited to and from Iraq except those goods which were explicitly
authorised by the 661 Committee. The smart sanctions concept,
which was developed-tardily-in response to concern at the humanitarian
effects of sanctions, reversed this system to allow Iraq to import
all goods except those explicitly prohibited on a list agreed
by the Security Council. This new system took many months, if
not years, to agree in the UNSC and was only implemented in 2002. Back
3
Estimates taken from the US government Iraq Survey Group, whose
figures are roughly consistent with the Volcker report. Back
4
US academic Joseph Nye has termed this power of moral suasion
and reputation, "soft power". Back
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