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The Dishonest Case
for a War on Iraq
by Alan Simpson, MP - Chair of Labour Against the War
Dr. Glen Rangwala - lecturer in politics at Newnham College,
University of Cambridge
There is no case for a war on
Iraq. It has not threatened to attack the US or Europe. It is
not connected to al-Qa'ida. There is no evidence that it has
new weapons of mass destruction, or that it possesses the means
of delivering them.
This pamphlet separates the evidence for what we know about Iraq
from the wild suppositions used as the pretext for a war.
1. THREAT
For there to be a threat to the wider world from Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction, there need to be two distinct components:
the capability (the presence of weapons of mass destruction or
their precursor elements, together with a delivery system) and
the intention to use weapons of mass destruction.
Most of the discussion on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
from British and American governmental sources has focused on
Iraq's capabilities. However, a more fundamental question is
why the Iraqi regime would ever use weapons of mass destruction.
There are three aspects to this:
(a) External military use.
The US administration has repeatedly
stated that Iraq is a "clear and present danger" to
the safety and security of ordinary Americans. Yet the Iraqi
leadership have never used weapons of mass destruction against
the US or Europe, nor threatened to. Plans or proposals for the
use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq against these countries
have never been discovered, and in their absence can only be
presumed to be non-existent.
Iraq would face massive reprisals if its leadership ever ordered
the use of weapons of mass destruction on the US or Europe. It
is difficult to imagine circumstances in which the Iraqi regime
would use these weapons directly against any Western country.
The only conceivable exception would be if the Iraqi leaders
felt they had nothing left to lose: that is, if they were convinced
of their own imminent demise as a result of an invasion. Weapons
of mass destruction were not used by Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War,
despite having both a much more developed capacity than it holds
at present (see below) and the routing of its army. The best
way to avoid prompting Iraqi leaders to use any non-conventional
capacity would be to refrain from invading Iraq or attempting
to assassinate or depose its rulers.
The only occasion on which the Iraqi government used weapons
of mass destruction against another country was against Iran
from 1981/82 to 1988. The use of mustard agents had a devastating
impact on Iranian troops in the first years of the war, and the
civilian death toll from the use of sarin and tabun numbers in
the thousands. However, it should be noted that the use of chemical
weapons was undertaken with the compliance of the rest of the
world. The US Secretary of State acknowledged that he was aware
of reports of Iraqi use of chemical weapons from 1983, and a
United Nations team confirmed Iraqi use in a report of 16 March
1984. Nevertheless, the US administration provided "crop-spraying"
helicopters to Iraq (subsequently used in chemical attacks on
the Kurds in 1988), gave Iraq access to intelligence information
that allowed Iraq to "calibrate" its mustard attacks
on Iranian troops (1984), seconded its air force officers to
work with their Iraqi counterparts (from 1986), approved technological
exports to Iraq's missile procurement agency to extend the missiles'
range (1988), and blocked bills condemning Iraq in the House
of Representatives (1985) and Senate (1988).
Most crucially, the US and UK blocked condemnation of Iraq's
known chemical weapons attacks at the UN Security Council. No
resolution was passed during the war that specifically criticised
Iraq's use of chemical weapons, despite the wishes of the majority
to condemn this use. The only criticism of Iraq from the Security
Council came in the form of non-binding Presidential statements
(over which no country has a veto). The 21 March 1986 statement
recognised that "chemical weapons on many occasions have
been used by Iraqi forces against Iranian forces"; this
statement was opposed by the United States, the sole country
to vote against it in the Security Council (the UK abstained).
In summary, Iraq has never used chemical weapons against an external
enemy without the acquiescence of the most powerful states. It
has done so only in the knowledge that it would be protected
from condemnation and countermeasures by a superpower. There
is no reason to suspect that the Iraqi leadership now places
any military gains it might achieve through the use of chemical
weapons above its desire to form international alliances with
major powers.
Further reading: "U.S. Diplomatic and Commercial Relationships
with Iraq, 1980 - 2 August 1990", www.casi.org.uk/info/usdocs/usiraq80s90s.html
(b) Arming terrorists
One prospect raised by President
Bush in his State of the Union address of 29 January was that
hostile countries such as Iraq could supply non-state organisations
with weapons of mass destruction, to use against the US:
"By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose
a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to
terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They
could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States."
The State Department's annual report on terrorism, released on
30 April 2001, stated that the Iraqi regime "has not attempted
an anti Western terrorist attack" since 1993. The small
paramilitary groups that Iraq supports, such as the Arab Liberation
Front (in Palestine) and the Mujahidin e-Khalq (Iran), have no
access to Iraq's more advanced weaponry, let along weapons of
mass destruction. Furthermore, these groups have never carried
out attacks on the US or Europe, and have little if any supporting
infrastructure in those countries. The Iraqi regime has no credible
links to al-Qa'ida, either in the perpetration of the 11 September
attack, or in the presence in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan (controlled
by the US-backed Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, not the Iraqi
government, since 1991) of Ansar al-Islam. This group is an off-shoot
of the US-backed Islamic Movement of Iraqi Kurdistan which has
taken funds and arms from Iran and (reportedly) from al-Qa'ida.
The Iraqi regime has not been shown to have any intention of
attacking the Western world, and it knows that it would be subject
to massive reprisals if it did so. In summary, Iraq has shown
no indication that it would be willing to use terrorists to threaten
the outside world with weapons of mass destruction.
Further reading: "Did Mohamed Atta Meet an Iraqi Spy in
Prague?", at slate.msn.com/?id=2070410
(c) Internal repression by the
Iraqi military
As part of the Anfal campaign
against the Kurds (February to September 1988), the Iraqi regime
used chemical weapons extensively against its own civilian population.
Between 50,000 and 186,000 Kurds were killed in these attacks,
over 1,200 Kurdish villages were destroyed, and 300,000 Kurds
were displaced. The most infamous chemical assault was on the
town of Halabja in March 1988, which killed 5,000 people. Human
Rights Watch regards the Anfal campaign as an act of genocide.
The Anfal campaign was carried out with the acquiescence of the
West.
Rather than condemn the massacres of Kurds, the US escalated
its support for Iraq. It joined in Iraq's attacks on Iranian
facilities, blowing up two Iranian oil rigs and destroying an
Iranian frigate a month after the Halabja attack. Within two
months, senior US officials were encouraging corporate co-ordination
through an Iraqi state-sponsored forum. The US administration
opposed, and eventually blocked, a US Senate bill that cut off
loans to Iraq. The US approved exports to Iraq of items with
dual civilian and military use at double the rate in the aftermath
of Halabja as it did before 1988. Iraqi written guarantees about
civilian use were accepted by the US commerce department, which
did not request licences and reviews (as it did for many other
countries). The Bush Administration approved $695,000 worth of
advanced data transmission devices the day before Iraq invaded
Kuwait.
As for the UK, ten days after the Foreign Office verbally condemned
the Halabja massacre, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
rewarded Iraq by extending £400 million worth of credits
to trade with Iraq.
The Iraqi regime has never used chemical weapons in the face
of formal international opposition. The most effective way of
preventing any future use against Iraqi civilians is to put this
at the top of the human rights agenda between Iraq and the UN.
The Iraqi regime's intentions to use chemical weapons against
the Kurds will not be terminated by provoking a further conflict
between the Iraqi state and its Kurdish population in which the
Kurds are recruited as proxy forces. The original repression
of the Kurds escalated into genocide in response to Iran's procurement
of the support of the two main Kurdish parties for its military
efforts from 1986. This is essentially the same role that the
US sees for the Kurds in its current war preparations.
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction are a false focus
if the concern is with regional security. Chemical weapons were
not used for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. A peaceful Gulf region
can be achieved only through building political links between
Iraq and its neighbours. This is why the Arab states of the Middle
East have started to reintegrate Iraq into regional networks
and purposeful dialogue. Their interests are ill-served by attempts
to turn the countries of the Gulf against each other once again.
Further reading: Dilip Hiro, "When US turned a blind eye
to poison gas", at: www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,784125,00.html
2. NUCLEAR
In 1998, when the US ordered
UN weapons inspectors to leave Iraq, it was widely accepted the
Iraq's nuclear capacity had been wholly dismantled. The International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), charged with monitoring Iraq's nuclear
facilities after the Gulf War, reported to the Security Council
on 8 October 1997 and subsequently Iraq had compiled a "full,
final and complete" account of its previous nuclear projects,
and there was no indication of any prohibited activity. The IAEA's
fact sheet from 25 April 2002, entitled "Iraq's Nuclear
Weapons Programme", recorded that "There were no indications
that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production
of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical
significance."
In recent months, however, the UK government has put primary
emphasis on Iraq's alleged nuclear programme. UK ministers have
made three major claims:
(a) That Iraq was within three years of developing a nuclear
bomb in 1991.
This could be true. Uranium was
imported from Portugal, France, Italy and other countries; uranium
enrichment facilities operated at Tuwaitha, Tarmiya, and Rashidiya,
and centrifuge enrichment facilities were being built at al-Furat,
largely with German assistance. Theoretical studies were underway
into the design of reactors to produce plutonium, and laboratory
trials were carried out at Tuwaitha. The main centre for the
development of nuclear weapons was al-Atheer, where experiments
with high explosives were carried out. However, IAEA experts
maintain that Iraq has never had the capacity to enrich uranium
sufficiently for a bomb and was extremely dependent on imports
to create centrifuge facilities (report of the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, 28 June 2002). If this is so, Iraq
may have only been close to developing a bomb if US and European
assistance had continued to the same extent as before.
In the Gulf War, all Iraq's facilities capable of producing material
for a nuclear programme and for enriching uranium were destroyed.
The IAEA inspected and completed the destruction of these facilities,
with the compliance of the Iraqi government. From 1991, the IAEA
removed all known weapon usable materials from Iraq, including
22.4kg of highly enriched uranium. The IAEA left 1.8 tonnes of
low-grade uranium in heavyweight sealed barrels at the Tuwaitha
facilities. This uranium has remained untouched by the Iraqis,
and is inspected annually by experts from the IAEA, who have
confirmed that the seals had never been tampered with. The remaining
facilities at Tuwaitha and buildings at al-Atheer were destroyed
by the IAEA by 1992.
(b) That Iraq could make a nuclear device "within three
years" without foreign assistance.
This claim, repeated by a UK
Foreign Office minister, derives from a statement from the head
of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in February 2001
that Iraq could enrich its own uranium and construct its own
nuclear device in three to six years. This claim was backed up
by a statement from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control
that Iraq's only uranium extraction facility at al-Qaim has been
rebuilt (it had been destroyed in 1991). If Iraq was again extracting
uranium, then it could reasonably be presumed that it was intending
to enrich and weaponise it. The allegation about Iraq's extraction
of uranium, however, seems to be wrong.
Since the emergence of these claims, a number of journalists
have visited al-Qaim and have found it in a state of disrepair.
Paul McGeough, the much-respected Middle East correspondent of
the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote on 4 September 2002 that the
site appeared to be a "near-vacant lot ... as the result
of a clean-up supervised by the [IAEA]". Reuters reporters
have confirmed the same impression. If Iraq was hiding its nuclear
extraction facilities every time a journalist visits, this would
beg the question of when any extraction could actually take place.
If Iraq has no operating facilities to extract uranium, and if
it continues to refrain from accessing the low-grade uranium
sealed at Tuwaitha, then there is no way it could produce a nuclear
device without foreign assistance.
Furthermore, enriching uranium requires substantial infrastructure
and a power supply that could be easily spotted by US satellites.
No such information has been provided. Over the past year, US
and UK sources have made much of the fact that Iraq has attempted
to import specialized steel and aluminium tubes that could be
used in gas centrifuges that enrich uranium. According to the
Washington Post (10 September 2002), such tubes are also used
in making conventional artillery rockets, which Iraq is not prohibited
from developing or possessing under UN resolutions. As David
Albright, former IAEA inspector in Iraq and director of the Institute
for Science and International Security, told the Washington Post,
"This is actually a weak indicator for suggesting centrifuges
-- it just doesn't build a case. I don't yet see evidence that
says Iraq is close."
(c) That Iraq could have a nuclear bomb "within months"
if fissile material is acquired from abroad.
Even the US Department of Defence
recognises that claims about Iraq's imminent production of a
nuclear bomb are not credible: "Iraq would need five or
more years and key foreign assistance to rebuild the infrastructure
to enrich enough material for a nuclear weapon" (January
2001 intelligence estimate). However, the International Institute
of Strategic Studies (IISS) managed to hit the headlines in September
2002 by claiming that Iraq "could assemble nuclear weapons
within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained."
This claim is no more than a tautology.
If Iraq could import the core material for a bomb, then it would
have a bomb. Obtaining the fissile material is the most difficult
part of constructing any nuclear device, and there are no signs
that Iraq has attempted to obtain any such material from abroad.
According to the Nuclear Control Institute (nci.org/heu.htm),
"With bomb-grade, high-enriched uranium (HEU), a student
could make a bomb powerful enough to destroy a city". Unless
we are to stop any students of physics from entering Iraq, the
best control on the circulation of fissile material would be
to invest resources into safeguarding Russia's nuclear material.
We would then need to complete a fissile-material cut-off treaty
as agreed by the UN General Assembly in 1993.
On 7 September 2002, Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed that
commercial satellite photographs showing new buildings near a
facility that had been part of Iraq's nuclear programme before
1991 were "proof" of Iraqi intentions. By contrast,
a spokesperson from the IAEA - which had provided the pictures
months earlier - said: "We have no idea whether it means
anything. Construction of a building is one thing. Restarting
a nuclear program is another."
Further reading:
IAEA's fact sheet from 25 April 2002, entitled "Iraq's Nuclear
Weapons Programme" www.iaea.org/worldatom/Programmes/ActionTeam/nwp2.html
Garry Dillon (IAEA Action Team in Iraq: Director of Operations
from January 1994, head from June 1997), "The IAEA Iraq
Action Team Record: Activities and Findings ", in Iraq:
A New Approach (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, August
2002), at
www.ceip.org/files/pdf/Iraq.Report.pdf
3. CHEMICAL and BIOLOGICAL
Allegations about Iraq's chemical
and biological weapons fall into three categories:
"that Iraq has retained weapons that were produced before
1991. "that Iraq has kept or rebuilt facilities since 1998,
which are allegedly producing or able to produce new chemical
or biological agents that can subsequently be weaponised; and
¨ that Iraq could threaten other countries by delivering
these agents, by missile or through other means.
(a) Retained stocks?
Up to 1998, a substantial part
of the work of the weapons inspectors in Iraq was to track down
chemical and biological agents that Iraq produced before their
entry in 1991, and to check the documentation that showed how
much of each agent Iraq had manufactured. However, the amount
Iraq is thought to have produced in the 1980s was found to be
greater than the quantity that Iraq or the inspectors verified
as having destroyed. The discrepancy between the two levels is
the amount that remains - in the inspectors' language - "unaccounted
for".
The levels of agents that are unaccounted for in this way is
large: 600 metric tonnes of chemical agents, such as mustard
gas, VX and sarin; and extensive amounts of biological agents,
including thousands of litres of anthrax as well as quantities
of botulinum toxin, aflatoxin, and gas gangrene, all of which
had been weaponised before 1991. But the fact that these quantities
are unaccounted for does not mean that they still exist. Iraq
has never provided a full declaration of its use of chemical
and biological weapons against Iran in the 1980-88 war, and destroyed
large quantities of its own stocks of these weapons in 1991 without
keeping sufficient proof of its actions.
In some cases, it is quite clear that the stocks no longer exist
in usable form. Most chemical and biological agents are subject
to processes of deterioration. A working paper by the United
Nations Special Commission on Iraq (Unscom) from January 1998
noted that: "Taking into consideration the conditions and
the quality of CW-agents and munitions produced by Iraq at that
time, there is no possibility of weapons remaining from the mid-1980's"
(quoted in Ritter, Arms Control Today, June 2000). Many other
chemical or biological warfare agents have a shorter shelf life.
The sarin produced by Iraq in the 1980s was found to have up
to 40% impurities, entailing that it would deteriorate within
two years. With regard to biological weapons, the assessment
by Professor Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic
and International Studies should be taken seriously: "The
shelf-life and lethality of Iraq's weapons is unknown, but it
seems likely that the shelf-life was limited. In balance, it
seems probable that any agents Iraq retained after the Gulf War
now have very limited lethality, if any" (Iraq's Past and
Future Biological Weapons Capabilities, 1998, p.13).
There are two potential exceptions for materials that would not
be expected to have deteriorated if produced before 1991. Mustard
gas has been found to persist over time, as shown when Unscom
discovered four intact mustard-filled artillery shells that would
still have constituted a viable weapon. Unscom oversaw the destruction
of 12,747 of Iraq's 13,500 mustard shells. The Iraqi regime claimed
that the remaining shells had been destroyed by US/UK bombardment.
This claim has not been verified or disproved. However, as former
UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter notes, "A few hundred
155 mm mustard shells have little military value on the modern
battlefield. A meaningful CW attack using artillery requires
thousands of rounds. Retention of such a limited number of shells
makes no sense and cannot be viewed as a serious threat."
The other potential exception is VX nerve agent. It became clear
to Unscom during the 1990s that Iraq had succeeded before 1991
in producing stabilised VX in its laboratories - that is, VX
agents that would not deteriorate over time. However, to produce
significant stocks of VX requires advanced technology that Iraq
did not have. Iraq did have some elements of the production equipment
for developing VX on a large scale. Unscom tested this equipment
before destroying it in 1996, and found that it had never been
used. This would indicate that Iraq, despite its attempts before
1991, had never succeeded in producing VX on a significant scale.
(b) Re-built facilities?
If the stocks that Iraq had produced
before 1991 are no longer a credible threat, then what of the
facilities that Iraq may still have to produce more weapons of
mass destruction? The major facilities that Iraq had prior to
1991 have all been destroyed. The Muthanna State Establishment,
Iraq's main plant for the production of chemical warfare agents,
was destroyed partially through aerial bombardment and partly
under Unscom supervision. Al-Hakam, Iraq's main biological weapons
facility that was designed to make up to 50,000 litres of anthrax,
botulinum toxin and other agents a year, was destroyed in May-June
1996.
However, US and UK officials have claimed that new plants have
been built since 1998. Among the allegations are that two chemical
plants that were used to produce weapons before 1991 have been
rebuilt at Fallujah; further chemical and biological weapons
sites have been partially constructed at Daura and Taji; and
that "mobile biological production laboratories" have
been deployed that would be able to circumvent any inspectors
who are re-admitted into Iraq. It has also been claimed that
other existing civilian facilities have been partially converted
so as to be able to produce agents for weapons of mass destruction.
These allegations are difficult to assess. Even the IISS study
of September 2002 - edited by Gary Samore who had been a senior
member of President Clinton's staff and thus involved two years
before in the making of the allegations - concluded that the
claims about mobile laboratories were "hard to confirm".
Much of the information comes from individuals who claim to have
been scientists employed by the Iraqi government but who have
now "defected" to Europe or the US. The US has offered
financial rewards to scientists who defect, as well as guarantees
of asylum. As a result, many of the claims may be exaggerated,
highly speculative or simply concocted. US State Department officials
have often mentioned that they do not take verbal information
obtained from defectors seriously; it may be more plausible to
assume that their information is publicised more as part of attempts
to win support for a war than to make a realistic assessment
of Iraqi weapons development.
The Iraqi government has invited journalists to visit some of
the sites that the UK and US have mentioned. For example, journalists
who visited the Taji warehouse in mid August - which the US claimed
days before was a major biological weapons facility found only
"boxes of powdered milk from Yemen, Vietnam, Tunisia and
Indonesia and sacks of sugar imported from Egypt and India",
according to the Reuters correspondent. The visiting journalists
are not weapons inspectors, and do not have the resources to
monitor facilities for chemical agents or radiation; but they
are able to ascertain if major new production facilities have
been constructed. Now that the Iraqi Foreign Minister has made
an unconditional offer to the UN to readmit weapons inspectors
(on 16 September), allegations about the production of new facilities
can be checked. However, the British Foreign Secretary and the
White House have both disparaged the Iraqi offer, even though
it could lead to the verified disarmament of Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction.
(c) Delivering an attack?
Possession of chemical or biological
agents is not enough to threaten another country, even if the
Iraqi regime desired to. British and American claims about possession
have therefore been linked to allegations that Iraq could fire
these agents on missiles, which could even reach Europe.
The first problem with this claim is the very low number of longer
range missiles that Iraq might have. According to Unscom, by
1997, 817 out of Iraq's known 819 ballistic missiles had been
certifiably destroyed. On the worst-case assumption that Iraq
has salvaged some of the parts for these missiles and has reconstructed
them since 1998, even Charles Duelfer - former US Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State, deputy head of Unscom and strong proponent
of an invasion of Iraq - has provided an estimate of only 12
to 14 missiles held by Iraq. Even under this scenario, it is
difficult to see Iraq posing a threat to the rest of the world
through its missiles. Furthermore, biological weapons cannot
be effectively dispersed through ballistic missiles. According
to the IISS, much of the biological agent would be destroyed
on impact and the area of dispersal would be small. For example,
if anthrax is filled into missile warheads, up to 95% of the
content is not dispersed (according to the Director of Intelligence
of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff: www.bt.usf.edu/reports/Anthraxthreat.pdf
British ministers have made much of the claim that Iraq has experimented
with using small Czech-built L-29 training jets as remote-controlled
drones, which could deliver chemical and biological weapons.
Such drones were apparently spotted at Iraq's Talil airbase in
1998. A British defence official invoked the possibility that
if these drones were flown at low altitudes under the right conditions,
a single drone could unleash a toxic cloud engulfing several
city blocks. He labelled them "drones of death". The
hyperbole is misleading: even if Iraq has designed such planes,
they would not serve their purpose, as drones are easy to shoot
down. A simple air defence system would be enough to prevent
the drones from causing damage to neighbouring countries. The
L-29 has a total range of less than 400 miles: it would be all
but impossible to use it in an attack on Israel. The only possibility
for their use against Western targets would be their potential
deployment against invading troops.
Further reading:
Scott Ritter (former head of Unscom's Concealment Unit), "
The Case for Iraq's Qualitative Disarmament", from Arms
Control Today (June 2000), at www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_06/iraqjun.asp
4. Conclusion
Many of the assessments of Iraq's development of biological,
chemical and nuclear weapons are based largely on a hypothetical
analysis of what could be done by the Iraqi regime if it was
determined to produce these weapons. Using worst-case scenarios,
they present Iraq's potential activities - such as importing
fissile material or producing anthrax spores - as an immediate
threat. Whilst such assessments may be valuable in order to understand
the range of possibilities, they do not provide any evidence
of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or the Iraqi regime's intention
to use them. As Hans Blix, executive chairman of Unmovic - the
new UN weapons inspection body - said on 10 September, there
is much that is unknown about Iraq's programmes,
"but this is not the same as saying there are weapons of
mass destruction. If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained
weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons
I would take it to the Security Council."
You cannot launch a war on the basis of unconfirmed suspicions
of both weapons and intentions. It would be better to take up
Iraq's unconditional offer of 16 September to allow inspectors
to return, and to reject the plans for an invasion to achieve
"regime change".
The US and UK policy has been to provide disincentives to Iraqi
compliance rather than incentives. The UK has refused to rule
out its support for "regime change" even if a full
weapons inspections system is in place: Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw has only said that the possibility of an invasion "recedes"
in such circumstances. Senior members of the present US administration
have been more forthright: Vice-President Cheney labelled the
return of weapons inspectors to Iraq as counterproductive in
his Nashville speech of 26 August. Inspections would be counterproductive
to US war plans, but would also serve to discover - and if necessary,
constrain - Iraq's weapons programmes.
If the Iraqi regime is led to believe that the US has made an
invasion inevitable, it will have no reason to co-operate with
weapons inspectors. As Hans Blix said on 18 August, "If
the Iraqis conclude that an invasion by someone is inevitable
then they might conclude that it's not very meaningful to have
inspections."
The Iraqi regime also has a clear disincentive if it believes
that the weapons inspectors will - like their predecessors in
Unscom - collect information that the US government would use
to plot its overthrow. That Unscom was engaged in such actions
is now beyond doubt. Its executive director from 1991 to 1997,
Rolf Ekéus, said on 28 July that the US tried to gather
information about Iraq's security services, its conventional
military capacity and even the location of Saddam Hussein through
the supposedly impartial weapons inspections programme. It is
not hard to guess why the US wanted such information.
Iraq has repeatedly asked for a clear timetable for the lifting
of economic sanctions to be coupled with the weapons inspections
system. This is not an unreasonable demand: in fact, it was the
agreement made in the ceasefire that ended the Gulf War, and
which the US in particular has done so much since 1991 to obscure.
The ceasefire agreement - Security Council Resolution 687 - lays
out the elements of a political solution: an independent weapons
inspectorate, an end to the threat of war, a clear timetable
to lifting economic sanctions, and the creation of a weapons
of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East (entailing the
need for the end of Israel's nuclear arsenal).
On each of these four points, the US in particular stands in
clear violation of the terms of the agreement.
The consequences of that violation have been apparent in the
deterioration of the weapons inspections system. Garry B. Dillon,
the Director of Operations of the IAEA Action Team in Iraq from
January 1994, and its head from June 1997, characterised Iraq's
compliance with the nuclear inspectorate from late 1991 to mid-1998
as "essentially adequate" (in the paper cited on p.4
above). Dillon concludes that "Iraq's motivation to co-operate
was shattered by the statement [by the then-US Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright] that, regardless of Iraq's compliance, the
embargo and the sanctions would not be lifted as long as President
Saddam Hussein remained in power". Backing a "carrot
and stick" approach to Iraq, Dillon argues that "the
carrot should represent a tangible benefit, not merely the withholding
of the stick. Indeed, during 1998, Iraq repeatedly claimed that
'the light at the end of the tunnel had gone out.'"
If the US and UK re-engage with the political process that was
laid out in the ceasefire resolution, Iraq will once again be
provided with reasons to cooperate with the weapons inspectorate.
That possibility, which will remove the need for instigating
a humanitarian crisis inside Iraq and instability in the region,
should not be dismissed lightly.
This briefing was written by
ALAN SIMPSON MP and GLEN RANGWALA.
LABOUR AGAINST THE WAR,
PO Box 2378, London E5 9QU;
tel.: 020-8985 6597; fax: 020-8985 6785
email: latw@gn.apc.org;
www.labouragainstthewar.org.uk
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Featured Publications The Dishonest Case for a War on Iraq by Alan Simpson, MP - Chair of Labour Against the War Dr. Glen Rangwala - lecturer in politics at Newnham College, University of Cambridge There is no case for a war on
Iraq. It has not threatened to attack the US or Europe. It is
not connected to al-Qa'ida. There is no evidence that it has
new weapons of mass destruction, or that it possesses the means
of delivering them. The US administration has repeatedly
stated that Iraq is a "clear and present danger" to
the safety and security of ordinary Americans. Yet the Iraqi
leadership have never used weapons of mass destruction against
the US or Europe, nor threatened to. Plans or proposals for the
use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq against these countries
have never been discovered, and in their absence can only be
presumed to be non-existent. One prospect raised by President
Bush in his State of the Union address of 29 January was that
hostile countries such as Iraq could supply non-state organisations
with weapons of mass destruction, to use against the US: As part of the Anfal campaign
against the Kurds (February to September 1988), the Iraqi regime
used chemical weapons extensively against its own civilian population.
Between 50,000 and 186,000 Kurds were killed in these attacks,
over 1,200 Kurdish villages were destroyed, and 300,000 Kurds
were displaced. The most infamous chemical assault was on the
town of Halabja in March 1988, which killed 5,000 people. Human
Rights Watch regards the Anfal campaign as an act of genocide.
In 1998, when the US ordered
UN weapons inspectors to leave Iraq, it was widely accepted the
Iraq's nuclear capacity had been wholly dismantled. The International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), charged with monitoring Iraq's nuclear
facilities after the Gulf War, reported to the Security Council
on 8 October 1997 and subsequently Iraq had compiled a "full,
final and complete" account of its previous nuclear projects,
and there was no indication of any prohibited activity. The IAEA's
fact sheet from 25 April 2002, entitled "Iraq's Nuclear
Weapons Programme", recorded that "There were no indications
that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for the production
of amounts of weapons-usable nuclear material of any practical
significance." This could be true. Uranium was
imported from Portugal, France, Italy and other countries; uranium
enrichment facilities operated at Tuwaitha, Tarmiya, and Rashidiya,
and centrifuge enrichment facilities were being built at al-Furat,
largely with German assistance. Theoretical studies were underway
into the design of reactors to produce plutonium, and laboratory
trials were carried out at Tuwaitha. The main centre for the
development of nuclear weapons was al-Atheer, where experiments
with high explosives were carried out. However, IAEA experts
maintain that Iraq has never had the capacity to enrich uranium
sufficiently for a bomb and was extremely dependent on imports
to create centrifuge facilities (report of the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, 28 June 2002). If this is so, Iraq
may have only been close to developing a bomb if US and European
assistance had continued to the same extent as before. This claim, repeated by a UK
Foreign Office minister, derives from a statement from the head
of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in February 2001
that Iraq could enrich its own uranium and construct its own
nuclear device in three to six years. This claim was backed up
by a statement from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control
that Iraq's only uranium extraction facility at al-Qaim has been
rebuilt (it had been destroyed in 1991). If Iraq was again extracting
uranium, then it could reasonably be presumed that it was intending
to enrich and weaponise it. The allegation about Iraq's extraction
of uranium, however, seems to be wrong. Even the US Department of Defence
recognises that claims about Iraq's imminent production of a
nuclear bomb are not credible: "Iraq would need five or
more years and key foreign assistance to rebuild the infrastructure
to enrich enough material for a nuclear weapon" (January
2001 intelligence estimate). However, the International Institute
of Strategic Studies (IISS) managed to hit the headlines in September
2002 by claiming that Iraq "could assemble nuclear weapons
within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained."
This claim is no more than a tautology. Allegations about Iraq's chemical
and biological weapons fall into three categories: Up to 1998, a substantial part
of the work of the weapons inspectors in Iraq was to track down
chemical and biological agents that Iraq produced before their
entry in 1991, and to check the documentation that showed how
much of each agent Iraq had manufactured. However, the amount
Iraq is thought to have produced in the 1980s was found to be
greater than the quantity that Iraq or the inspectors verified
as having destroyed. The discrepancy between the two levels is
the amount that remains - in the inspectors' language - "unaccounted
for". If the stocks that Iraq had produced
before 1991 are no longer a credible threat, then what of the
facilities that Iraq may still have to produce more weapons of
mass destruction? The major facilities that Iraq had prior to
1991 have all been destroyed. The Muthanna State Establishment,
Iraq's main plant for the production of chemical warfare agents,
was destroyed partially through aerial bombardment and partly
under Unscom supervision. Al-Hakam, Iraq's main biological weapons
facility that was designed to make up to 50,000 litres of anthrax,
botulinum toxin and other agents a year, was destroyed in May-June
1996. Possession of chemical or biological
agents is not enough to threaten another country, even if the
Iraqi regime desired to. British and American claims about possession
have therefore been linked to allegations that Iraq could fire
these agents on missiles, which could even reach Europe. Home Page | Building the Global Village | Events Latest News | Featured Publications | Join Today | Fundraising |