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| Saddam's
Crimes: Avoiding The West's Responsibility
JNV Anti-War Briefing 100
14 January 2007 |
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SADDAM’S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Two weeks after the execution, it is the
manner of Saddam Hussein’s death that continues to hold
Western attention. Saddam’s crimes fade into the background—and
the complicity of the West in those crimes has been almost completely
erased from public discussion.
Saddam committed many crimes against the
Iraqi people, including his role in the 1968 Ba’athist coup
and the institution of a brutal dictatorship.
Beyond this, Saddam was also guilty of crimes
of aggression against Iran (1980-88) and Kuwait (1990-91), and
crimes against humanity in his massacre of Iraq’s Kurds
(especially the Anfal campaign in 1987-88) and the Shia Arab majority
(especially in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War).
It is a matter of historical fact, as we
shall see, that in all of these ventures (except the invasion
of Kuwait), Saddam enjoyed the (often active) support of Britain
and the United States. This barely features in the obituaries
and profiles published in the aftermath of his hanging.
WEAK ADMISSIONS
Those who do not completely ignore the complicity
of the West typically use of the vague word ‘support’
without specific details.
David Aaronovitch gives us a classic example:
‘For twenty years Saddam was tolerated
or supported by various Western powers and by the Soviet Union,
in the belief that he was better than the Iranians, better than
chaos and, above all, in the mistaken belief that his depredations
would be limited to the poor, bloody Iraqis.’ (Times,
1 Jan. 2007, p.13)
Soft words, backed by immediate justifications.
THE OBITUARIES
It is possible to understand part of the
story of Western sponsorship of Saddam’s crimes from mainstream
obituaries, if they are treated with care.
(Obituaries: Independent,
1 Jan., p.28; Guardian,
30 Dec., p.24; Telegraph,
1 Jan., p.23; Times, 1
Jan., p.38)
One way of de-emphasizing Western support
for Saddam is to delay the first mention of it, indicating that
it is unimportant. The Independent (first mention in para. 15)
and the Guardian (para. 26) are worse on this than the right-wing
Telegraph (para. 2) or The Times (para. 4).
ATTACKING IRAN, ARMED BY THE WEST
The Telegraph is also straightforward about
the Iraqi invasion of Iran:
‘Both sides were covertly supported
by America and Britain in the hope that they might provide a
check to each other’s ambitions... British and American
firms vied with one another for Iraq’s plump rearmament
contracts.’
The Independent adds:
‘It is worth recalling that Saddam,
who was subsequently demonised by America, relied on financial
and logistical support from the US (the US granted him $6bn
in loans and provided him with satellite pictures showing Iranian
troop concentrations).’
The Guardian is almost alone in pointing
out that not only did the West furnish conventional weapons, it
also supplied ‘the means to manufacture a whole array of
unconventional ones: nuclear, chemical and biological.’
For British newspapers, this should have
been a headline item, given the Matrix Churchill affair and the
massive Scott Report into the ‘arms-to-Iraq’ scandal.
A crucial part of this concerned licences
granted in 1989 to export high-precision machine tools to Iraq,
despite the acknowledgement (by Minister William Waldegrave, in
this case) that the British firm producing the machine tools,
Matrix Churchill, had been
‘taken over as part of a procurement
network for the Iraqi nuclear,
CBW [chemical or biological
warfare] and missile
programmes’,
and that previous orders had been ‘shipped
to the major Iraqi munitions establishments’.
In another secret memo, Waldegrave defended
the exports with the words,
‘Screwdrivers
are also required to make H-bombs’.
(Both Waldegrave quotes: David Leigh, Betrayed,
1993, p.184)
GASSING THE KURDS, REWARDED BY THE
WEST
Saddam’s outstanding crime, which defines
his rule, is the chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja,
in March 1988, killing 5,000 civilians. The Times is the only
newspaper to record the ‘punishment’ meted out by
Britain in response to the atrocity: ‘Britain doubled Iraq’s
export credit guarantees.’
‘Export credit guarantees’ are
loans offered to countries buying British exports. The year before
Halabja, Britain lent Iraq £175 million. Then, in 1988,
‘the British taxpayer advanced Saddam £340 million
in medium term credits.’ (John Sweeney, Trading
With The Enemy, 1993, p.99)
The Department of Trade and Industry admitted
in 1991 that in early 1988 it permitted the sale to Iraq of chemicals
used to manufacture poison gas. The DTI then withdrew the admission—leaving
open the possibility that British chemicals were used in the Halabja
attack. (Sweeney, p.94)
Saddam was emboldened to use chemical weapons
against his own people after the lack of Western reaction to his
earlier chemical weapons attacks on Iranian troops (a fact noted
in passing by The Times, Guardian and Independent). (See Juan
Cole for more.)
The Times remarks correctly that,
‘By now Saddam was convinced that
no atrocity of his risked serious punishment. He believed that
Western powers would not oppose his acquisition of nuclear weapons,
since they had allowed him to buy chemical weapons technology
and had apparently turned a blind eye to his agents buying nuclear
triggers and fissile material, often with money borrowed from
themselves under such guises as credit for agricultural products.’
MASSACRING THE SHIAS, AIDED BY THE
WEST
In 1990, Saddam miscalculated, invading Kuwait.
In 1991, he was expelled, and US-British-French forces drove deep
into southern Iraq. A massive national revolt followed. The Guardian
remembers: ‘President George Bush senior had urged the Iraqis
to rise up. But when they did so, he turned a deaf ear to their
pleas for help.’
This is not quite accurate.
US forces were poised to crush the heart
of the regime, the Republican Guard, in a ‘battle of annihilation’
(US commander Norman Schwarzkopf), but were stopped by President
Bush Sr. (Cohen and Gatti, In The Eye
Of The Storm, 1991, p.298)
Then Schwarzkopf permitted Saddam’s
helicopter gunships to operate against the rebels. (Mentioned
in The Times obituary.)
At the same time, US forces were refusing
to allow rebels to take weapons and ammunition from Iraqi military
bases. (MERIP, May 1992, p.9,
12-13; Said Aburish, Saddam Hussein,
London, 2000, p.308)
This is rather more than just ‘turning
a deaf ear’.
It is protecting
the regime.
US policy, supported by Britain, was summarized
by a US National Security Council official in Feb. 1991. Richard
Haass scolded an official of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
for doing too much to help a Kurdish rebel leader named Jalal
Talabani (now President of Iraq). Haass said: ‘You don’t
understand. Our policy is to get rid of Saddam, not his regime.’
(Cited, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn, Out
Of The Ashes, London, 1999, p.37)
DEEDS UNACCOUNTED FOR
At the time of his hanging, Saddam was also
on trial for massacring the Kurds.
Kani Xulam, founder of the American Kurdish
Information Network, tells Inter Press Service: ‘As a Kurd,
I don't think Saddam should have been executed right now’,
before the Kurdish catastrophe had been spelled out in court,
and before Saddam had revealed which countries helped him to carry
out the atrocities. (IPS,
31 Dec.)
In the one mainstream UK media article to
deal properly with the issue of complicity, Robert Fisk comments:
‘The whole truth died with Saddam Hussein
in the Baghdad execution chamber yesterday. Many in Washington
and London must have sighed with relief that the old man had been
silenced for ever.’ (Independent,
31 Dec.)
They must also have sighed with relief that
the British mainstream media once again silenced itself over the
West’s complicity with Saddam’s crimes.
Nuggets can be extracted here and there,
but the overall pattern is one of self-censorship, of service
to power.
One marvels in particular at the suppression
of any mention of Matrix Churchill and the damning Scott Report,
which helped to undermine the Conservatives and paved the way
for the squeaky clean Tony Blair.
JNV
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