By Jeff Leys

For the past 15 years, our country has waged war against the Iraqi people. Over 15 years of bombs and sanctions, our country deliberately and with malice destroyed Iraq’s water treatment and distribution system, health care system, and educational system. Over 15 years, our country created the conditions under which Iraqis are forced to seek subsistence on a meagre food distribution system, now under threat of being monetized. Over 15 years, our country destroyed Iraq’s economy, creating a current condition of unknowingly high rates of unemployment.

Our country chose to impose and continue the brutal economic sanctions against Iraq, fully knowing the cost to innocent Iraqis. Our country chose to invade Iraq in March 2003 under the guise of any number of now disproved pretexts and pretensions. Since our country began its occupation of Iraq, upwards of 100,000 or more Iraqis have likely died because of the impact of the occupation. The child malnutrition rate has nearly doubled. It remains unsafe for children to go to school or to play in the streets, or for women to travel outside their homes. The health care system remains devastated. Our country’s military continues to level cities—Falluja, Tal Afar, Al Qaim, Karabalia—in some perverse version of whack-the-mole, claiming to be out to defeat the “insurgents”, but destroying the lives of tens of thousands of Iraqis.

In the face of our country’s crimes against Iraq, our own response as an anti-war movement remains feeble. Two separate national mobilizations are called to occur on the same day in Washington, D.C. this September. Turf battles between organizations are played out on the national stage and in public. Our movement circles up and once again fires inward towards the middle of the circle. Our movement’s demands become either so expansive or so restrictive that our anti-war movement totters on the brink of irrelevance.

The people of Iraq deserve more than this from those of us whose country has waged war upon the Iraqi people for the past 15 years. Let us discuss, debate, discern—and then act decisively upon—our responsibilities and obligations to the Iraqi people.

From: Kathy Kelly, Co-coordinator, Voices in the Wilderness
To: Senator Carl Levin, Chair, U. S. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Iraqi Oil Allocations to Foreign Leaders

July 29, 2005

Dear Senator Levin,

Greetings from Geneva, Switzerland, where nine companions and I are on day 14 of a fifteen-day fast outside the U.N. We are urging the UNCC to let compassion for Iraqi civilians guide their deliberations today and tomorrow, during which they’ll determine how much of a 65 billion dollar outstanding debt Iraq should be required to pay for Saddam Hussein’s 1990-91 war against Kuwait.

While here, some of us are preparing for a July 6, 2005 hearing in a D.C. federal court. We are charged with violating U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq. Lawyers will present additional oral argument, requested by the judge, as to whether or not we should pay a $20,000 fine, imposed by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for bringing medicines to Iraqi children and families.

On May 17, 2005, testifying before the U.S. Senate, you demonstrated that the U.S. OFAC failed to enforce U.S. sanctions against U.S. oil companies accused of violating the economic sanctions against Iraq during the years 2000 – 2002. Using Iraqi internal records, your staff tracked deals made with the Iraqi regime in which oil companies paid illegal surcharges for their transactions, allowing the Iraqi regime to pocket the surcharge “under the table,” beyond U.N. Security Council scrutiny. Your staff estimated that more than half of the money Iraq received in the form of surcharges was paid on oil sold to U.S. companies. Bayoil, headquartered in Houston, became the largest single buyer of Iraqi oil for the U.S. market, bringing in over 200 million barrels to the U.S.

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, June 28 (Reuters) - Iraq called on Tuesday for an end to a U.N. programme under which it pays compensation for damage from its 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War, arguing debts should be settled bilaterally.

Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Hamud Bidan spoke to Reuters before addressing the governing council of the U.N. Compensation Commission (UNCC), which uses five percent of Iraqi oil revenues for payouts.

“We suggest we stop the payments of five percent from oil revenues…it is too much for us. We think it is time now to stop and leave Iraq to negotiate directly with the states concerned,” Bidan said.

However, in a speech to the closed-door talks obtained by Reuters, Kuwait called for “political support…to ensure uninterrupted payments”.

For Immediate Release
June 27, 2005

By Kathy Kelly

In Baghdad, under economic sanctions, landing a job in a hotel offered at least a steady pittance of earnings. Some men made ends meet by working two eight hour shifts in different hotels. A dignified, well educated fellow would don a restaurant worker’s uniform in one hotel to serve tables all day and then quickly change into the uniform of a maintenance crew worker at the hotel across the street so that he could spend the next eight hours sweeping up cigarette butts.

But over time, in spite of the glaring disparities between their material well being and ours, durable friendships developed between members of Voices in the Wilderness delegations and the workers at hotels where we stayed. When, on rare occasions, we’d visit their homes, we’d leave wishing we could alleviate the harsh circumstances in which they lived. Especially during rainy, cold or extremely hot seasons, their homes were inadequate shelters. And they would never be able to save any money to get ahead working at the hotels.

Most of the men I knew no longer work at the hotels. Now that Baghdad is the most dangerous city in the world, random groups fire mortars, bombs, and other explosives at hotels. Some men were willing to risk staying on the job but were laid off by managers who, with few guests, couldn’t meet payrolls.