The Washington Peace Letter is published monthly for the social justice community of the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It's purpose is to support local, national and international struggles against oppression. It seeks to present a radical analysis of current events, covering information not readily available in the corporate media.

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In the late 60’s Iraqi playwright Yusuf al-Ani expressed prophetic insight. In his famous work The Key (al-Miftah), the protagonist, Haira, yearns to have a baby, but her husband refuses—not wanting to bring a child into a world that “boils and seethes.” Like every parent, he desires security for his children, “I want them to have a pleasant, peaceful life from the minute they open their eyes to the time they grow old.” In tears, Haira asks: “How can we find such security?” Her brother answers: “Security will come when the world becomes a world of love and goodness.”

Yusuf’s play is extraordinarily relevant to contemporary Iraq, where security for children is as nonexistent as love and goodness are in the White House. As we celebrate the 50th year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Security Council and the U.S. government continue to demonstrate callous disregard for the basic human rights of Iraq’s children, who are dying daily from a humanitarian crisis and repeated air attacks. By the UN’s own estimates, 4,500 children under 5 die every month from starvation and illness that are a direct result of sanctions against Iraq.

The basic rights to life, security and health are denied Iraq in the interest of “national security.”

Despite the unprecedented progress made by UN weapons inspectors (UNSCOM) in disarming Iraq, the UN-imposed sanctions regime has been a total humanitarian failure. According to UN sources, over one million Iraqis, mostly children, have died as a result of the most comprehensive economic sanctions ever imposed on a nation. The Clinton administration insists that economic sanctions will not be lifted until Iraq complies with UN resolutions. Yet the political manipulation of UNSCOM, recent air strikes, and a U.S. effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein have ensured Iraq’s non-compliance. Thus, current U.S. policy guarantees a continuation of the nightmare.

Secretary of State Madelaine Albright assures us that the death of half a million Iraqi children is a price worth paying.

Even if one can accept such a soul-damning wager, does our current policy really lead to greater national security for the United States? The U.S. record over the past eight years affords little evidence that our foreign policy has made the Middle East safer or more “secure.”

Since 1991, a violent obsession with Iraq and over $40 billion of arms sales to the Middle East have contributed to a failure in regional arms control, violating the spirit of UN Resolution 687, which calls for the Middle East to be a “weapons-of-mass-destruction free-zone.”

According to a 1992 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, the Middle East comprises only 3% of the world’s population yet imports one-third of the world’s military goods and services.

Shortly after the Gulf War, the United States, Russia, France, the U.K. and China (the five leading arms exporters in the world) came together in what were called the “P-5” talks. The closure of the war had created a brief window of opportunity. Regional and international cooperation to curtail the Middle East arms race was no longer a pipe dream but a distinct possibility, with an international consensus to limit the proliferation of all weapons to the Middle East.

Seven years later, that consensus is largely missing.

Although it is impossible to know what would have come of the P-5 talks, what is of concern was the U.S. role in the collapse of those talks. During the 1992 presidential campaign, before a crowd of cheering defense workers, President Bush announced the delivery of combat aircraft to Taiwan (which upset the Chinese leadership) and Saudi Arabia (which upset the very spirit of the talks). In so doing, the administration exchanged whatever political currency it had for the votes of key defense contractors, and defense industry profits. This pattern unfortunately continued well after the Gulf War. From August 1990 until the summer of 1994, the U.S. was sending the equivalent of one billion dollars a month in arms deliveries to the Middle East, or 72% of all sales to the region.

Concern about limiting weapons sales to the Middle East and working toward the ultimate goal of making the Middle East a “weapons of mass destruction free zone” has shifted to concern about dismantling Iraq’s nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and delivery systems, and the Iraqi attempts to avoid UNSCOM inspections. This shift from examining the militarization of the Middle East as a whole to—almost solely—disarming Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) is due to two broad reasons. The first is Iraq itself, as the perpetrator of past aggression and a nation that utilized chemical weapons, was working toward a biological weapons program, and was possibly less than five years from possessing a usable nuclear weapon. The second reason is the Pentagon’s “rogue state policy,” which has helped to justify the recent $112 billion increase in military spending over the next six years. As a result, the unrelenting focus of current U.S. foreign policy is to “contain” counties like Iraq. This focus completely overlooks human costs like the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

So how can citizens concerned with limiting the weapons build-up in the Middle East achieve a committed grassroots version of the stated P-5 consensus?

As peace activists, we must push our elected representatives to limit U.S. arms sales to the entire region and foster regional cooperation through arms control. We need to stress limitations on often-overlooked conventional weapons. And we must work toward the realization of UN Security Council Resolution 687, which supports “establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery.”

Sustained pressure on our elected officials is needed to achieve such arms control in the region, end air strikes on Iraq, bring about peace, and, most importantly, end the scourge of sanctions against the people of Iraq. Thousands of lives and our common humanity depend on the willingness of peace activists to work together to achieve these goals.

Eric Gustafson is the executive director of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), an organization that needs you! EPIC can be reached at (202) 543-6176. Micah Zenko is a Washington-area research writer. His recent internship with EPIC has made his life more meaningful and happy.

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