Jewish World Review July 25 , 2000 / 22 Tamuz, 5760
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
IF THERE EVER WERE an award for dictatorial
chutzpah, Iraq's Saddam Hussein would
be the hands-down winner.
The Butcher of Baghdad constantly whines that
United Nations sanctions are depriving his
"starving, dying people" of the food and medicine they desperately
need.
But it turns out that Saddam's own Health Ministry has been
hoarding enormous quantities of the medical aid allowed into Iraq
and not distributing these humanitarian materials to the Iraqi
pharmacies, clinics and hospitals urgently in need of them.
The reason for the hoarding, say senior Middle East intelligence
sources: Saddam's health minister keeps the medicines under
wraps until shortages push prices up on the black market, then
sells the medicines to black-market profiteers who pay for them in
foreign currency rather than Iraqi dinars.
This hard currency is then used to pay for government purchases
that bypass the sanctions that have been in place since the Gulf
War, as well as for luxury goods for Saddam's ruling clique.
These same intelligence sources tell me they've long suspected this,
but now they have proof. A burst sewage pipe flooded several
government warehouses in Baghdad's Al-Nasser Square recently
and damaged huge amounts of hoarded medicines, part of the
UN's oil-for-food-and-medicines arrangement.
The flooding occurred just before the government was about to
float some of its drug cache onto the market, causing not only a
loss of some $33 million, but an even more severe shortage of
medicines available to the Iraqi public.
So what does Saddam do? He orders his Health Ministry not to
request fresh supplies from the UN lest its inspectors enter the
damaged warehouses and see for themselves what he and his
merry band of black marketers have been up to.
Of course, someone's got to be held responsible, so Saddam has
Ahmad Abd el-Hadi, the man in charge of the damaged
warehouses, executed and two deputy health ministers bounced
from their jobs. The minister of health, Umid Midhat Mubarak,
one of Saddam's buddies, sits safe.
This corruption has its roots in the post-Gulf War failure to bounce
Saddam from power. Sanctions were slapped on Iraq instead, and
Saddam was told they'd be lifted only when he complied with
weapons inspections. Even then, the UN, led by the U.S., relented
in 1996 and agreed that Iraq could sell some of its oil in exchange
for foods and medicines — but not strategic supplies.
Now comes the real chutzpah: Saddam and his stooges throw the
UN arms inspectors out and continue to whine that the
oil-for-food-and-medicines program is a plot "to keep Iraq in a
cage." To add insult to injury, an armed Iraqi mysteriously entered
a UN aid office in Baghdad last month and shot it up, killing two
and wounding seven.
And Saddam smiles knowingly when the rest of the UN's foreign
personnel pack up and leave Iraq for their own safety.
In fact, the UN has long been aware that medical supplies don't
reach the free market, but get "stuck" in warehouses. Just last
year, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that $300 million
worth of supplies and equipment were held up in warehouses
because of Iraqi authorities' inability and lack of motivation to
distribute them.
Remember that the next time you hear someone echo Saddam's
whining about the hardships that sanctions impose on the Iraqi
By Richard Z. Chesnoff
JWR contributor and veteran journalist
Richard Z. Chesnoff is a senior correspondent at US News
And World Report and a columnist at the NY Daily News. His latest book is Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe
Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History.
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