The following is a partially edited transcript of a meeting between a US led group, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Mr. Hans Von Sponeck, the UN Humanitarian Aid Co-ordinator in Iraq. Mr. Von Sponeck started with a presentation, and later answered questions from the group.

HANS VON SPONECK

Former UN Humanitarian Aid Co-ordinator – Iraq

Recorded by Grant Wakefield and Miriam Ryle
at the UN Building – Baghdad, April 5th 1999

Let me start by saying we are now in the almost towards the end of this fifth phase of two and a half years of what we call '986' programmes, which are programmes which are defined by Security Council Resolution 986 as an attempt to meet basic human needs of the population in this country which is, you know, about between 22 and 23 million people.

One thing that I should say here is that we have just gone through two assessments one of which was to supply one of the three panels which the Security Council had set up on Disarmament, on Missing Persons, and on Humanitarian Issues, to supply the panel that dealt with Humanitarian Issues with an assessment of how we see the situation as of now. And what we have tried to do in this context is what has not been done before and I am sure that this is an area of interest to you: which is to look for the first time at the social conditions in this country which go beyond what is in the 986 Programme defined by the Security Council.

So we have had something to say, surely to interest to medical colleagues, on the psycho-social well-being UNICEF has briefed you I am sure of that, on mental health, on poverty trends, on destitution on women and deprivation, on child mortality, the disabled, the elderly, population dynamics, education – de-professionalisation: it is frightening. You have seen it, if you have gone what is happening to people who are well trained and have no chance to work to their full capacity In the area of their training If they’re lucky, or, to work in something that is way below what they are trained for, or to be out of work, or as one Priest here said to me the other day, to be part of this ‘…emigration without noise,’ people who just quietly leave because of the circumstances here. So you have what I would call a knowledge depletion situation that really is very serious, and if you link that to…..and that was really the main purpose of sending this extra paper, which we were not asked to send, to the Security Council…. to make the point that right now we are selling the stage for depriving another generation of the opportunity to become responsible national and international citizens of tomorrow, and that might be the most serious htmlect of it all, apart from the nutritional deficiency, apart from the health problems, apart from the Inadequacy of the food basket as a way of satisfying food needs of people, to me the deprivation of young people to become responsible citizens is the most serious effect of nine years of embargo plus ten years of war-like situation in confrontation with Iran.

What kind of citizens do you have today_ Well - I wanted to show the Security Council something that is much more vivid and much more direct than to show them something that is nicely printed with modern technology that is not available here in Iraq, except to the UN, to show them what happens to these young people. I asked the receptionist in the little hotel where I am, what his friends had learned and what they are doing, and when you read this then you become already aware of a tragedy, a silent tragedy that is here in the making, beyond all the manifestations that you see as you drive, not through the brightly lit shopping areas, which are there, because profiteering is nicely in the making. You have a group of people who are getting more and more while you have a middle class that is becoming desperately, humiliatingly deprived of what they have had in their homes for many years which they have lost.

You go on Fridays to auctions and you can see that there are people who are selling the last little things their families had in order to get fundamental basic human needs that are not being able to be met by the humanitarian programme that the UN is supporting here. And here is just nine friends he listed, and here are four examples. None of these are working, by the way, in the area in which they trained. The first one a BSE in mechanical engineering works on a weaving machine. A graduate from the Geography department is working as a taxi driver. A BSE in mechanical engineering in a sweet stall. Graduated from medical college; no work. The CARE representative in this country, who I asked to list her Iraqi colleagues, who they were and where they were actually working, she wrote to me, sending me the list and added: ‘….to highlight just one case, not long ago I was served ice cream by a qualified medical doctor….’ I mean, this is just a little bit of information you may already have, which shows at what a tremendous disadvantage young people are growing up.

Then you go to Baghdad University. The Dean of the Law Faculty said to me:

"This is intellectual genocide for youth. I go to the head of the paediatrics department of the University of Basra, he says to me: ‘I get occasionally a paper which shows me what modern medical research is doing and then I will try and make photocopies for my students…’. And then he paused and looked at me and said: ‘….if I have photocopying paper."

That is the circumstance, and we have made a strong plea. I myself was in the Security Council in March and I pleaded for the removal of educational material as items of embargo. I think that’s cruel. It’s cruel for the wrong people. It’s cruel for the young who have a right to interact with your peers, your children’s and my children’s age group, and they cannot do that.

So the UN has painfully not been able to cover these htmlects very much. Why_ Because we were quite rigidly defined in 7 sectors that make up this multi-billion dollar programme that is at our disposal to meet basic, and I keep saying basic, physical needs, because we have said very little about the mental, metaphysical needs. So here we talk about food and medicines and water and sanitation equipment, about electricity, about agriculture, also about education. And unfortunately the educational orientation went in a way that I personally am not happy about; and that is in the supply of desks, of hardware certainly, not computers because they are highly embargoed, because of the ‘dual-use’ nature, foolishly, because if one can control this, one can control that also.

We have to control every gas cylinder that comes into this country. We have a number and we must make sure that ‘gas cylinder 765’ is there and the other one is over there. If you can do it with that detail, surely you can also do it with computers that are necessary for high school or university students that need to learn how to interact with modern technology. So, we, err, education’s part of it, of these 7 areas.

Then we have, in the North of Iraq the map you see over there, defines the three Northern Kurdish provinces of, on the extreme left of Dohuk; in the middle it is Erbil. In the South Sulamanlyah. These three are benefiting from a humanitarian programme that is quite different. Not different in substance so much as in approach. In the North the UN is the actual implementor We are distributing, we are procuring directly, we are installing and we are running the programme with the, in quote, ‘local authorities.’ In the rest of Iraq it is the government of Iraq that does it and we observe. We make sure that the food gets into the warehouse, we make sure that the food gets out of the warehouse into the food stores or the stores of the food agent and to the beneficiary. The same with medicines and the same with water and sanitation equipment and so on.

So here we have this seven sector programme which has a few special features in the North. The Northern area for example, because of the confrontations with the Turkish Kurdish groups, the PKK, the war with Iran, the war between the Kurds and the Arab forces, have led to a large degree of land-mining that have deprived the villagers from making use of their valuable agricultural land, and they were pushed into what are called collective towns, and they live there, waiting till the UN in its programmes is freeing certain areas from the mines so they can go back to these areas. Except for a five kilometre belt along the Turkish/Iranian border where the Iraq government has insisted that we can do no de-mining; they want to keep that as a safety area. In the South, where you have, from with various confrontations with Iraq and Kuwait, you have also a lot of mines: no one is doing anything about it. There’s a German medical, military team of 10 doctors and paramedics that are part of the border team that were commissioned, that the UN has set up between Kuwait and Iraq. They are doing a little bit of outreach of civilians because there are a lot of mines. And when I was down there the doctor in charge told me that in 15 days that they had 14 mine victims because they are going into, straying into these areas particularly at this time of year when it is mushroom season: the desert has mushrooms, they look for these mushrooms and they have a problem by becoming victims to the many mines that are around there.

That’s an area that has not been tackled, I’ve encouraged the Security Council to do something about that, I would like to see a de-mining awareness scheme and also hospitals to be equipped in the surrounding areas with appropriate medicines, which they do not have right now, to treat mine victims and to have a more active United Nations to help in the de-mining operations. There is an Argentine team of de-miners: all they do is to look after their own roads and areas where they are settled, have their camps, but they are not allowed to do any de-mining in the wider group. This is, a little bit, very superficially, of the areas we cover.

You have heard a lot, I am sure, about medicines, and the overstocking, in the hospitals of these medicines. If you get from someone a mono-causal explanation, then start getting suspicious. It is not, I repeat not, and you can check this with my colleagues, a pre-meditated act of withholding medicines from those who should have it. It is much, much, more complex than that.

For example, let me start with one factor: if you earn a dollar fifty a month in a warehouse that has medicines, will you work 14 hours a day_ I doubt it. You can’t even afford to be there 8 hours a day because you have to somehow make some other money, in order to get at least enough into your kitty [purse] in order to finance your household, problem number one. Problem number two: transport- there’s not enough transport. Problem number three: the warehouses in the provinces are in bad shape. Problem number four: the Security Council does not allow cash in the hands of the Iraqi authorities. No cash from us from that budget from oil revenues in the hands of the Iraqis. Therefore, very often, for their basic things there’s not the cash to ensure, for example, a special refrigeration situation is paid for, for drugs of that kind. Lots of problems of that kind because of little money.

Yes there’s also intermittent overstocking, and that intermittent overstocking can have two causes. One is a deliberate government directive to overstock. We are not arguing that his hasn’t been the case at times, but it is one factor and not a major factor in our opinion. The speculation, especially in the press, that this is because of military needs, that therefore they want to stock…..US doctors know very easily that this is a silly argument because what the military in times of war needs is not the kind of medicine that we are bringing in for normal diseases and illnesses into the warehouses, so that argument doesn’t hold very much.

So you have that, you have also the problem: can you imagine, the process of procuring a box of pills is_ The government of Iraq, though Kammadla, the organisation at the Ministry of Health responsible for ordering will say, ‘..we want this box of medicines.’ They look to a supplier, somewhere around the world, they find a supplier, that supplier makes an offer, that offer has to transfer into a contract, the contract has to be signed, It then comes to us, through the government of the producing country, because the onus is on showing that you don’t break the embargo, that you are not a sanctions buster, is from the country where the item is made that is to be exported to Iraq. So the government, usually the Ministry of Defence, comes into it -has to authorise the export of that item. The mission of that country to the UN then submits the item, the request to the UN, the UN then submits that to the sanctions committee, the sanctions committee has to approve it, and the Banque Nationale de Paris, as the holder of Iraqi money, must then release, on the basis of an irrevocable letter of credit, the funding. Now, ladies and gentlemen, can you imagine what can happen in the course of that many steps in terms of the delay that may occur_ I’m mentioning it because what you can have is you can have a consignment of psycho-tropic drugs that come into the country and suddenly, a day later, the same consignment comes again because one supplier went through the motions faster than the other, that leads to overstocking also. So there are many reasons why things go wrong in the medical sector.

You hear often, by those who want to prove that Iraq is intrinsically evil, that in the electricity sector it works well, but in the medical sector it doesn’t work well. Why_ Because, so the argument [goes] ‘…because the electricity is important for the military and therefore they do something there and it’s not important in the medical sector so they don’t do something there.’ First of all, to distribute [drugs] to 23 million people, is a much more intricate system than to distribute electrical spare parts to maybe 25 large electricity factories in this country. So it’s a scale problem here with which we deal, and I don’t think one can so easily say that this is all because here is a priority and here no priority. So, it’s all a little bit more complicated than it looks, from a distance.

A word on the people we have here. We have, in moving this programme: the value of this programme at the moment, for the six month period we are in now we think, with good luck, depending on the oil prices, we may have about 2 billion dollars, we may have, the conservative figure is about 1.6 to 1.7 billion dollars for 6 months.

What is my role_ I am supposed to be the Humanitarian Co-ordinator here. [Media and] Press, again frequently try to get out of me anti-sanctions statements, and they won’t get that. That doesn’t mean that I am pro-sanctions. I am not at all pro-sanctions. But the reality of my function is that in this house, that has many windows and doors, I cannot afford to have these windows closed and these doors closed. I must work with the American ambassador to the Security Council as well as I work with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials in Iraq. That doesn’t convert me into a hypocrite, or someone who is not having any principles, but it makes me a bit cautious and tries to remind me every day that the main role that we have here, that I have here, is that of a manager of a humanitarian programme, with all the inadequacies that the programme has.

That reminds me, I did not give you a figure. If you assume lets say for the sake of argument, 2 billion dollars twice a year. 6 months, 6 months, two phases, 4 billion dollars a year for 22 million people, then you are getting a per capita figure per year of 180, just under 180 dollars. Now I ask you, 180 dollars per year_ That’s not a per capita income figure, that is the figure out of which everything has to be financed: from electrical services to water and sewerage, to food, to health, the lot. Now if you have 180 dollars and then the press ask me: ‘…do you consider that adequate for survival…_’ I can say at the very best, that the nose is just above the water, so that you are not drowning, but over the course of years, the nose is increasingly touching that water and many people are already drowning. So it is not a figure that we can really take lightly or accept as adequate. So that is something that needs to be said.

I want to say here, too, apart from trying to be a decent manager of a complex programme, I also want to be a trouble-shooter. We have just now had a case, we don’t know how it will end, 2,600 tons of rice, coming into the country and we discover that the first layer of rice is looking nicely and as it should, you go a bit further down and what you get is crusted, caked up with dirt, infested stuff: obviously a supplier who has tried to pull a fast one. Iraq is very often the victim of taking advantage of a country that has no freedom of direct accessing and payment and controlling. They get, not every day, but they do get these fraudulent contracts and troubleshooting has to be done here too.

But I also have the role that you want to play, and that is the role of an interpreter, an interpreter of the situation as it exists, in as unemotional terms as possible. [It’s] very hard sometimes particularly when you have no data, the tendency to become emotional is even greater, but the real conclusion one can only draw, [and] I’ve only been here just under 6 months, is that the way that this country has deteriorated in terms of its’ social fabric is a way that any one of us who has any kind of moral fabric in him or her can certainly not accept. And therefore the interpreter role to try to make a case for change, to try to also argue a basic re-thinking whether sanctions are really, of this kind, the answer to tackle and handle political leadership that the wider world does not consider appropriate or correct, and I wonder, I don’t think that the last chapter on the wisdom of sanctions has been written yet. And it is you, it is I, it is us who must, who can, together maybe make that difference and therefore I welcome enormously that you came. And I know that the Seattle Post Intelligencer (the US newspaper reporters travelling with the delegation), I hope will write a good series for the public, other newspapers should do the same, and we should move away, increasingly, from this cheap sensationalism. That doesn’t help anybody. We must understand what happens to people’s minds. You as doctors will be interested in the mental health situation which is not good. The figures suggest that mental illness amongst youth is on the increase. Well, I think I’ve said enough and I would be happy to respond to some questions, but this is what I wanted to say.

MR.VON SPONECK THEN TOOK QUESTIONS FROM THE GROUP

Q. What is the current climate in the Security Council, and is there any hope for change_

A. When I was in March in the Security Council in New York, one overwhelming expression of support, including, and I have to be fair, from the US representative and the UK representative, was that the humanitarian situation in Iraq now cannot continue like that. So that’s good, and we have to ‘cash in’ on that.

Q. One of the major problems associated with the 986 programme seems to be a lack of long term thinking. Can you comment_

A. One could talk a lot about the ad-hoc nature of this 6 month programme. The fact that there’s no training, no capacity building, no long term or medium term development orientation. So all of that they are aware, they want to have a change, they are talking about it and the basic attitude is positive I would say among all 15 [members of the Security Council]. Some of them keep reminding us, the US reminds us regularly: ‘…what’s the cause of it all_’ Yes, that’s fair but the point still is that the methods we are using make it worse, that’s the overall conclusion. Year after year there’s a further deterioration. What can [you] doctors, can [you] medical colleagues do_ I would say one thing you must forcefully do is to make your claim for the removal of all educational material from the list of embargoed items. That is the beginning of trying to open up the minds of the young people. From the US is a law: anything that is heavier than 4oz cannot be sent from America to Iraq. Now you can’t send a scientific paper to Iraq if you want to. If you wanted to, they would not let it through because it’s an embargoed item. You must in my view argue for opening up the mental prison that has developed here, [….] bring them back into the fold of internationalism and not let them shrink in their little world of Iraq.

Q. Is there is some other agenda here that we are not aware of here_

A. Of course there is.

** AT THIS POINT MR.VON SPONECK ASKED THAT ALL RECORDING DEVICES BE SWITCHED OFF SO THAT HE COULD SPEAK OFF THE RECORD. **

THE Q+A SESSION CONTINUED AFTERWARDS

Q. How can you reconcile the fact that the UN is mounting a humanitarian effort in Iraq to cope with the effects that are directly caused by UN imposed sanctions_

A. The UN doesn’t impose sanctions. It’s the UN Security Council member governments who come together and impose sanctions. The UN, we are the UN: we are implementing what we are allowed to implement, so I don’t see the distinction between US sanctions, in broad terms, and what is done and coming out of the Security Council of the UN. The leader in the discussion, for the sanctions, is the US side, and they are the ones, together with the British, that have devised many of the special provisions that govern the implementation of the 986 programme. They are coming together, in that Security Council of 15 nations and work as a team, and that’s the outcome, but I don’t see a separate US sanction regime that is markedly different from the UN Security Council regime.

Q. What are the reasons for the better health situation in the North of Iraq, as compared to the South_

A. If you talk to UNICEF, they gave you already some information. I just want to say [that] general malnutrition, chronic malnutrition, acute malnutrition, all three are in better shape in the Northern areas, these three Northern Kurdish areas, than the rest. That has many quite objective reasons, one of which is that in the Kurdish area of Iraq the per capita contribution from the Humanitarian programme is much higher than in the rest of Iraq, so that’s one reason. The other is that the Kurdish areas are adjacent to Turkey through which a lot of illegal items are coming into Iraq. [Also] the market mechanisms are much better functioning in those parts [with] much more private [sector] activity in this part of the country. That explains the centre and the South. Having said that I am sure my UNICEF colleague said to you that none of the figures: neither the 23% for general malnutrition in the South and centre, nor the 14% in the North is an acceptable figure: it’s bad and one should try and do something about it. The food basket has never managed to meet over any length of time the calorific levels of initially 2,300 then lowered to 2200 calories per day: always a bit lower. The food basket isn’t adequate.

Q. The entire 986 programme is dependant on Iraqi oil sales, yet Iraq can not seem to sell sufficient quantity to meet its’ humanitarian needs. Why is this_

A. [The permitted level of oil sales] It’s 5.2 [billion dollars]. Since May of last year it’s $5.2 [bn] The oil industry is in such bad shape that it cannot meet that. Plus the oil prices are poor; were poor. From a high of 16 or 17 dollars per barrel it went down to 8 dollars per barrel, so the income hasn’t been what was expected, it’s less. So instead of $ 5.2 [bn] it’s closer to 3 billion. Out of the three billion you have to deduct 30% which goes to the Iraq compensation commission in Geneva, which looks at government, industry and individual claims arising out of the Kuwait/Iraq war. Then comes out of that 0.8% for UNSCOM; 2.2% overheads for the running of the programme, and then you end up with something that is in the neighbourhood of 1.7 and 2 billion dollars per six months. If you take this, on a 12 month basis you have, lets say 4 billion dollars for 22.5 million people, if you divide that you get, per person, about 177 dollars per year and this is obviously a totally, totally inadequate figure.

Q. Does not the morality, or lack of it, in the Security Council disturb you_

A. I honestly think, really, not just because some of you are Americans, but I really honestly think that people like Ambassador Burleigh on the Security Council are also well meaning, they would also like to see…..it’s not just rhetoric when they say they are concerned about the human security, the human welfare. I think they genuinely are. But, in their scheme of weighing things, the political evil of the leadership here outweighs everything. That’s really what they are facing up to. The concept of Human Security, which we use, by the way, very nicely in other contexts the UNDP writes these Human Development reports every year. The concept of human security is a powerful concept and I think we should give it meaning by defining it in operational terms of the kind that we are now trying to do. We are trying to make a strong case about re-establishing the knowledge base; doing something about these special, targeted nutrition programme in these vulnerable groups. There was even something, a proposal, interesting, from the CARE representative here in this room who said: ‘…Look, resident doctors in hospital who have long hours of work here, 16 hours a day, they are a vulnerable group, they need to get special diets, they need to get special food….’ [This] makes good sense to me. So there are, there’s a lot of thinking now. And I think we have come to a point where the awareness, through you and through us, in the wider public is much better than it was. But we have to go further than that.

Q. Could you comment on the recent developments and implications of the use of Depleted Uranium ammunition in the Gulf war_

A. What can I say_ There was a symposium here, you know about it. There was an American Army Nurse here who spoke in very strong terms about how it had affected her. I don’t want to pass any [judgement]. I don’t know enough about it and maybe the truth lies [in] that all sides used something they shouldn’t have. I don’t know.

Q. What problems, if and when sanctions are lifted, will Iraq face in rebuilding its’ civilian infrastructure_

A. The money isn’t there. The lead up time, if you free sanctions, let sanctions go tomorrow, it will take years. The moment you get rid of sanctions all the ones who have a claim on Iraq will come forward, they want first from the unfrozen accounts, their money. So what Iraq will be left with is very little. Iraq now has an estimated national debt of 190 billion dollars, that includes the claims, some of which will be unrealistic, from the compensation commission. But the fact is that it’s a high amount of debt. The industry is in bad shape. The spare parts take quite a while. To open new oil fields will also take a while. So before you get a normalcy of a running economy that has money to spend for modernising and replacing antiquated infrastructure will take a long time. So it’s not going to be, today a problem and tomorrow no sanctions, end of the problem. I think it will take [time], the catching up. Also the fact that you have such a large number of people who by now should be in medium level leadership [there will be] problems which now are nothing, [but] to make them really competent will take also time. I think it will take ten plus years from, before you get to, from the moment the sanctions are dropped to a normal situation.

Q. As doctors and professional health carers we find it impossible to go along with a policy that holds civilians to ransom…..

A. I can only nod and agree with you. There is a much wider design here, you know, where Iraq fits somewhere and I don’t think that this design…that we have terribly much chance to nibble on this design. But there are governments, there are groups, there are people who are trying. I tell you I am highly impressed by what the French are doing in this country and for this country. The Russians, not an easy partner for us Westerners, but convincing in their concern, says nothing, maybe, about ultimately motives, but the manifestation of these motives with regard to Iraq are the right ones at this moment. The Chinese, again, for all kinds of reasons, so, there are efforts to question and to argue that the experiment is over, and we should never apply this kind of thing to any other country again. Because we have seen that this experiment fails, in human terms. I think that that is in itself maybe the best that can come out of all this.

Q. Can you comment on the fact that US and UK policy towards Iraq is so intrinsically linked to its’ disarmament_

A. [If Saddam Hussein] has no more capacity to produce biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. If that is certified by UNSCOM then supposedly this will lead to a comprehensive review which includes the Humanitarian situation and the end of sanctions. And we are not, according to those who deal with those subjects, we are not there yet.

Q. The role of UNSCOM was, according to most observers, manipulated by the US and UK. What alternative system could be implemented in its’ place_

A. Perhaps to move away from the previous style of inspection and replace it by intensive monitoring at the border; that’s a French proposal. So there is no dearth of all kinds [of ideas]. The Canadians came up with a proposal that led to the formation of these panels, in order to try and find a new way, all kinds of attempts to find a new approach. But I think the key to it all is how can there be an agreement on the disarmament issue. And if that happens then I think we have a chance to see a better approach with regard to how the public is treated. Until then, I think it will just drag on, that’s my feeling.

Q. The US and UK continue to bomb Iraq under the apparent authority and auspices of the ‘no-fly zones.’ What is the impact of these actions_

A. Aaah, it’s very hard for us sometimes to make an assessment of the actual damage and the propaganda that is surrounding that assessment. There were three different incidents [recently]. One led to the destruction of an illegal refinery in Basra in the South. That, I am told, that even that has been repaired, but that is not our concern. Then there were attempts, two attempts in fact not one, two, in the North affecting the Kirkuk-Turkey pipeline. They did some repairing and the oil continued to flow. Then there was two days ago the resumption of [bombing] and that led to the destruction of, not a refinery of course, but a part of the control mechanism for a pipeline. I don’t know whether, and you may want to find out in this repair business. It was repaired and it flows, but is it a temporary repair or full repair, I don’t know. But the overall flow of oil and the volume, it doesn’t look in terms of those incidents, any less good than it did before. In fact the overall revenue is better because the prices are higher.

Q. What are your feelings on what many people believe is the underlying cause of this situation: the arms trade_

A. Well you know as a UN person I can tell you that I am the first one who is disappointed about the progress with the Arms Register for example. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. The arms market is probably eating every day 2 eggs for breakfast because business is flourishing again. So I don’t think, this issue is on the side burner right now. It’s not a big discussion.

Q. It seems that the integrity and effectiveness of the UN as a world authority is collapsing. Could you comment_

A. Let me tell you. I’ve been in the UN 31 years, and the worse moment in my UN career, the first time, was when the war between Kuwait and Iraq started and the UN became prostituted. In mid December [1988] when the UN, the Security Council simply ignored [us], was the second time. And in Kosovo now, it’s the third time. So you know, the UN, who are we_

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