Compromised

Sanctions hurt the innocent. Is there a better way to right the world's
wrongs?

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday March 8, 2000

We know we live in a global age, yet something is missing. Every day we see
more proof that we are living in a shrinking, shared world - linked by a form
of communication that covers the entire planet, the aptly named world wide
web. We live in a different kind of world, where what happens in Kansas can
be known seconds later in Kent. The days of separate nations minding their
own business, each one distinct and in charge behind its own borders, have
gone forever. Yet we have not yet worked out the rules for this new,
international game. For if we all live in one world, what can people in one
country do to stop bad or evil things happening in another?
The question has gained urgency. Last week we writhed with frustration at our
own inability to save the homeless, dehydrated and desperate of Mozambique.
This week, thanks to a couple of skilled and committed film-makers, we will
debate the rights and wrongs of our conduct in Iraq and Kosovo. All the while
we keep looking at the suddenly healthy, smiling figure of Augusto Pinochet
bounding from his wheelchair - and out of the clutches of British and Spanish
justice.

A year ago an answer seemed within our grasp. A new mood of global governance
was abroad, with the old ringfence that protected state sovereignty suddenly
corroded. The House of Lords had ruled that Pinochet did not enjoy immunity
simply because he had once been sovereign in his own land. And the 19 nations
of Nato decided that Serbia's sovereignty over Kosovo did not include the
right to pursue a murderous policy of "ethnic cleansing". In those decisions
one could make out the first draft of a new rulebook for the globalised world
- one which understood human rights to be universal, enforced by an
international community unafraid to violate the old doctrine which allowed
states to do whatever they like within their own borders.

But if that was the mood of 1999, this year has seen a change of heart, with
the Kosovo operation losing some of its lustre. The northern town of
Mitrovice is the scene of ongoing fighting, with clashes between Albanians
and international peacekeepers reaching an even bloodier pitch yesterday. On
Sunday night the BBC will air a two-hour expose of the machinations behind
last year's conflict: Moral Combat - Nato at War. In it, Allan Little, who
covered the Balkans for most of the last decade, reveals the less lofty
motivations of some of the lead players in the drama. He draws from Tony
Blair the candid admission that this was a propaganda war to be fought much
like an election campaign. None of this makes last year's war wrong. But it
does point up the uneasy fit between morality and combat.

A harder case is the ongoing punishment of Iraq. Once again it is television
- for all the interminable bleatings about dumbing down - which has put the
issue on the national radar screen. John Pilger's ITV film on Monday night
argued that western sanctions are failing to hit Saddam Hussein, but
succeeding in hurting and killing Iraq's people, including half a million
children. With harrowing footage of sick kids, Pilger argued that the UN's
Oil for Food programme - which allows Baghdad to sell oil and spend the
proceeds on food and medicine - is too mean. Vital drugs like diphtheria
vaccines and chemotherapy medication, are on the banned list - ruled out
because they could be used for Saddam's chemical weapons programme. The only
result of the sanctions, charged a line-up of former UN officials who have
resigned in disgust at this western-backed "genocide", is to tighten Saddam's
grip on his country. He can blame Iraq's woes on a foreign enemy while the
kind of educated elite who might one day have challenged his regime are being
starved out of existence.

It is a powerful case but there is a defence. British and US officials insist
that sanctions need not hurt the innocent: Saddam is hoarding food and
medicine - and buying 10,000 bottles of whisky a month for himself and his
chums - in a deliberate bid to grind down his own people, chiefly for the
propaganda coup of films like Pilger's. He need only accept the latest UN
resolution, open up Iraq to weapons inspectors, and the sanctions could be
lifted. Above all, says foreign office minister Peter Hain, what do Pilger
and co suggest as an alternative policy? How would they stop Saddam - with
his proven record of aggression - from becoming an even greater, nuclear
threat?

What both Iraq and Kosovo confirm is that when it comes to international
action, there are no good choices, only bad and flawed ones. Every option
involves compromise with immorality; for every angel whispering advice, there
is a devil at his side. What possible rules can we devise to guide us
through?

We might declare that we act wherever atrocity strikes. That, more or less,
was the logic of the PM's Chicago speech last year setting out a Blair
doctrine of humanitarian intervention. But wouldn't such a doctrine require
action to save the Chechens from the Russians or Tibet from the Chinese? It
would: yet not too many are advocating air strikes against Moscow or Beijing.
This suggests an amendment to the rule: we act whenever atrocity strikes -
unless the offending country is strong and has a nuclear arsenal. If they
have the bomb, they can do what they like. This may work as a factual
description of the realpolitik world we live in - but it hardly stands as an
inspiring principle for the new globalised world. Besides, it would act as an
instant incentive to non-nuclear countries to get the bomb quick.

Maybe a rule for non-military action is easier to come by. We know that
sanctions can be an effective tool (they helped end apartheid), yet they seem
repugnant in Iraq. Why? The key difference might be public opinion. In white
South Africa sanctions worked because there was a body of business interests
and voters who were hurt by sanctions and who could lobby their government.
Public opinion was a political actor. That is not true in Baghdad and only
slightly true in Belgrade. Sanctions simply impoverish a nation, creating
precisely the conditions in which an alternative political class cannot
prosper. In Iraq, they have become a form of collaboration with the very
dictator they are meant to remove. Sanctions can only work, it seems, where
there is a public opinion to influence.

That may not be much of a rule, but it could be a start. It could also act as
a guide: suggesting, perhaps, that instead of punishing all Serbs we refuse
travel visas and freeze the assets of named members of the Belgrade ruling
elite. The US has moved toward that idea and it is a good one, targetting the
people who matter rather than everyone. As for the rest of the rulebook, the
demand for UN consensus before international action is a noble ideal and
maybe a good starting point. Whatever rules we devise we need to get to work
quickly. If our world is becoming a global village we have to decide how to
police it - and soon.









hkanteh

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