LONDON: The US Congress is incensed about a scandal. From 1996 to 2003 the UN’s oil-for-food programme allegedly enabled Saddam Hussein to misappropriate hundreds of millions of dollars. Certain UN officials — particularly Benon Sevan, the man in charge of the programme — are alleged to have pocketed large kickbacks. It is also claimed that foreign politicians took similar advantage of the system. These are serious accusations that warrant detailed investigation.

But one thing needs to be said at the outset: there is a wealth of documentation on the oil-for-food programme since 1996. It contains all the relevant information, including lists of all items supplied to Iraq. Those lists, like all details of Iraqi transactions, were drawn up meticulously by the UN Security Council’s sanctions committee, which consisted of Security Council representatives and operated by consensus.

No decision could be taken without endorsement by the US, which, with the UK, vetoed contracts worth millions of dollars on the grounds that certain products might be used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction — weapons we now know were a figment of US strategists’ imagination. The programme was subject to strict monitoring; if there were breaches, the US bears at least as much responsibility for them as the UN.

Nor should we forget the tens of millions of dollars misappropriated by the international community via the UN compensation committee in Geneva, which was largely manipulated by Washington. On the pretext of compensating those who suffered as a result of the Iraqi invasion, the committee creamed off up to 30 per cent of Iraq’s oil revenue to ‘reimburse’ impoverished victims, such as the Kuwaiti Oil Company. A payment of $200m was made as late as April this year, two years after the fall of Saddam, when Iraq was begging for loans.

But no committee of inquiry has been set up to investigate the most glaring scandal of all: the imposition of sanctions on Iraq in August 1990 and above all their maintenance after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. These have had devastating consequences on the country and will be a burden on it for a very long time to come.

While the media frequently drew attention to Iraq’s difficulties in obtaining food and medical supplies — even after the start of the oil-for-food programme in 1996 — they neglected the effect sanctions had on Iraqi society.

Despite the inventiveness of Iraqi engineers, the state’s infrastructure crumbled. Basic services, ministries, power stations and drinking water all became precarious. Corruption spread throughout society. Crime exploded. The inhabitants of Baghdad, who had never bothered to lock their doors, now barricaded their homes. When the US invaded, Iraq needed only a little push for the worm-eaten state to collapse. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service