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Thanks Gabriel, In response to the INC's Mr Al-Hussein's letter to the Guardian, his statement that: > It is disingenuous to suggest that the suffering of the Iraqi > people is the result of UN sanctions. prompted two thoughts: 1. there is no single cause of "the suffering" in Iraq, anymore than there is in any country on earth. In Iraq's case, there are a number of factors that contribute to suffering at the national level: the Iran War, the Gulf War, the sanctions, the current government. But then every person, like people anywhere else, will have their own experiences of pain or joy that are distinct from these national events. One hesitates to point these things out to an Iraqi, but attempts to attribute all suffering in Iraq to a single cause are simplistic. 2. On 19 April, 2001 Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of Mr Al-Hussein's INC, addressed the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He said that "The sanctions regime is skewed against the Iraqi people and in favor of Saddam ... Sanctions have enhanced the ability of Saddam to oppress the Iraqi people" and that "So long as you have no policy to remove the regime, sanctions are immoral and cannot be defended" (Boston Globe 20/4/1). While he is not clear on whether sanctions cause harm in themselves, or only when in the hands of Saddam Hussein, his remarks do seem to differ from those of Mr Al-Hussein. In general, though, I would recommend that anyone who does write on this be very careful not to equate "anti-sanctions" with "pro-regime". This is perhaps obvious, but nevertheless is a risk faced by those concerned about the effects of the sanctions as well as the state of the official Iraqi opposition. Colin Rowat |work| 269 Mercer Street, Room 710 | Department of Economics | New York University | New York, NY 10003, USA | (212) 998 8939 | http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cir2 | cir2@nyu.edu |home| 274 Vanderbilt Ave., #2 | Brooklyn NY 11205, USA | colinrowat@yahoo.com |tel/fax| (917) 517 5840 (mobile) | (707) 221 3672 (fax) | 9175175840@voicestream.net (SMS) _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full details of CASI's various lists can be found on the CASI website: http://www.casi.org.uk