Global Policy Forum

By Michael Littlejohns

Kofi Annan has again questioned whether the "blunt instrument" of economic sanctions is a proper response to threats or acts of aggression when its impact on a largely blameless civilian population can be devastating. He returned to the issue in a thoughtful address Wednesday to a New York audience of leading humanitarians as the Iraq embargo drags on, the UN Security Council is seriously split over it, Iraqi women and children suffer and die, and Saddam Hussein revels in his regime's survival despite the best efforts of the US and the UK to take him out.

Coincidentally, two days earlier Annan held critical discussions with Iraqi leaders at the Islamic states summit in Qatar but failed to persuade Baghdad to allow UN weapons inspectors back in to complete the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, a key condition for the lifting of sanctions. On the general question of economic embargoes, he said, "The record of what one recent study called the 'Sanctions Decade' of the 1990s has raised serious doubts not only about the effectiveness of sanctions but also about their scope and severity. Too often, innocent civilians have become victims not only of the abuses of their own government, but also of the measures taken against it by the international community. "They are thus doubly victimized."

Still, the handing over last year of the two Libyans accused of carrying out the murderous Lockerbie bombing, who now are being tried at The Hague under Scottish law, was "a case of effective sanctions, although it took a long time to achieve this result, and until the trial is over we shall not know whether the suspects are indeed the authors of that terrible crime," he said. A Security Council mandated embargo finally persuaded Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi to surrender the alleged killers.

In what he evidently considers a case of bad sanctions, Annan brought up Bosnia, which for a time was the object of an arms embargo that, he recalled, many saw as favoring the aggressor (the Serbs) while it effectively denied this UN member state its Charter-given right of self-defense. From Africa to the Middle East, there were other examples. (He refrained from mentioning the delicate case of unilateral US economic measures against Cuba, which the UN General Assembly has again said should be halted.)

Back to Iraq, the UN chief came close to apologizing to its civilian population for what they have endured these past nine years, saying, "I deeply regret the continuing suffering of the Iraqi people and hope that [the embargo] . . . can be lifted sooner rather than later." But he reminded the New York audience that this must depend on finding a way, somehow, "to move the Iraqi government into compliance with Security Council resolutions." Annan spoke of the burdens borne by neighbors of an embargoed state. Their economic and trading losses had not been adequately addressed, he said. As a result, there was every incentive for them "to let sanctions become porous" -- as has happened around Iraq.

The humanitarian consequences of sanctions presented the most acute, most pressing challenge to the Security Council, the Secretary General stressed. It was usually, and tragically, the people and not their leaders who suffered. Indeed, those in power not only transferred the price of sanctions to the less privileged but, perversely, often benefitted from sanctions through black market activity, controlling the distribution of limited resources and using an embargo as a pretext to eliminate domestic opposition.

Over time, he said, sanctions almost inevitably transformed an entire society "for the worse" as evaders, smugglers and the like rose to the top of the socio-economic ladder and normal economic development was stifled. "We all know," said Annan, "that despotism flourishes in backward and isolated societies, while interaction with the outside world generally favors prosperity and freedom. Is it not therefore unrealistic to expect to bring about positive change through a policy of embargo and deliberate isolation of an entire people?" Sanctions as they now are invoked need refining, he believes. "If we want to punish, let us punish the guilty; and if we want to bring about change, let us target the powerful, not the powerless."

Annan was addressing dinner guests of the International Rescue Committee, which honored the distinguished American humanitarian and diplomat John Whitehead with its Freedom Award. The Secretary General took the opportunity to mention the forthcoming changing of the guard at UNHCR, where Dutch former prime minister Ruud Lubbers will replace Sadako Ogata as head of this refugee relief agency, whose largest implementing partner is the Rescue Committee. He voiced his "profound gratitude and admiration" for Ogata and her 10 years of service and observed that Lubbers had a hard act to follow. He counted on IRC and others to help the Dutch official to perform effectively and imaginatively.