story by Jacqueline Becker
photo courtesy of Jacques Oskanian

he man serves his family poisoned chicken. He is desperate. He has already sold all his family's belongings. No one in his family has had a full stomach in months. All he has left is one chicken. The chicken, he decides, will be their last supper.

    "Unless he forced his wife and daughters into prostitution or became a thief, he had no hope," says Jacques Oskanian of his mother's neighbor in Iraq.

    "It was an honorable death for the family," says Oskanian.

    One year ago his mother, Aghavni Oskanian fled Iraq. Her stories of the desperate dilemmas many Iraqis face are nightmarish. The United Nations estimates that every month 5,000 children die due to a shortage of food and medicine.

    "Saddam is not suffering from the sanctions, it is the people of Iraq who are," notes Oskanian.

    But, he adds, Saddam Hussein is only one in a handful of ruthless dictators around the world.

    What happened to consistency? The United States is punishing Iraq for not complying with UN resolutions. However, several countries break UN resolutions repeatedly and face no reprisals. A double-standard? Before a judgement on the Iraq crisis can be made, it is important to understand the mind of Hussein and the history of Iraq.

    Saddam Hussein was born in the desert town of Takrit, April 28, 1937. Facts about his childhood are vague, but it is reported that his father was killed by the British who occupied Iraq at the time. He grew up distributing pamphlets for his revolutionary uncle, some which read, "Three Things God Should Not Have Created—Persians, Jews and flies." It is said that as a young boy he arrived to Baghdad with a gun in hand.

    Still in his teens, Hussein joined the revolutionary Baath Socialist Party. At 22, he was part of the hit team that led an attempted assassination on Iraq's military strongman, General Abdel Karim Kassem. Hussein escaped and fled to Egypt where he was inspired by Egyptian Nationalist Gamal Abdul Nasser. Here he studied law and plotted a coup. The years leading to his presidency were marked by revolutions, violence and civil unrest.

    By the time Hussein became President in 1979, he managed to manipulate Iraq in a way which led to his total, autocratic control of the country. Despite his vicious dictatorship, the United States supported Hussein throughout the entire Iran-Iraq war of the '80s.

    Then came 1991 and the crisis in Iraq. Suddenly, the world learned of a small country, located on the southern border of Iraq, known as Kuwait.

    In late July 1991, before Iraq invaded Kuwait, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Margaret Tutweiler announced, "We do not have any defense treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defense or security commitments to Kuwait."

    The next day Hussein summoned United States Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie to explain the statements.

    "April Glaspie gave Saddam Hussein the understanding that the U.S. was going to stand aloof from the crisis," says Dr. Dwight Simpson, Professor of International Relations at San Francisco State University. "In effect you could say, and this is one means of interpreting this, that the U.S. gave Saddam a sort of green light [to invade Kuwait]."

    April Glaspie has since been retired from the foreign service and has never made any comments with regard to this.

    "She was acting under orders from Washington-it wasn't her own doing-but they [the State Department] never explained this," adds Simpson.

    Eight days later, after meeting with Glaspie, Hussein invaded Kuwait.

    A misunderstanding? A calculated political maneuver by the United States? There are many theories.

    Oskanian says, "Kuwait only became a nation this century-the British carved it out of Iraq and gave it to the Sabah family who were loyalists. Iraqis know from experience that the West wouldn't care a fig tree for Kuwait were it not for their oil reserves."

    When the Iran-Iraq war ended, the long-standing territorial dispute Iraq had with Kuwait resurfaced. Iraq also upheld that Kuwait's overproduction of petroleum was hurting Iraq's economy.

    Ultimately the people of Iraq continue to pay for Hussein's actions. It has been more than six years since sanctions were imposed on the country, preventing vital food and medicine from entering. Iraqis who don't have contacts abroad are in desperate situations.

    "No one can trust even their own families. Saddam rewards anyone who spies or snitches on anyone suspected of engaging in subversive activity, that if you make one wrong move, even your own brother will sell you out of desperation," says Oskanian.

    United Nations resolutions require that sanctions remain in place until Iraq destroys its capacity for creating chemical and biological nuclear weapons. They also require that weapons sites be subjected to yearly inspections.

    According to Simpson, Israel, Turkey and Indonesia, to name a few, have been major violators of UN resolutions.

    In the early '80s, United Nations resolution 425 was formed so that Israel would leave occupied territory in Lebanon. Resolution 425 specifies: "Israel is to withdraw forthwith from Lebanon."

    "And as you know they [Israel] are still there," says Simpson.

    Over the past 25-30 years, Simpson estimates that Israel has ignored between 40 to 50 UN resolutions.

    In recent months, Hussein has refused to honor the UN resolutions. "He didn't refuse the UN inspection," says Simpson, "he balked when he found that the UN inspection team in large part was American, and the head of it was a former CIA agent."

    Furthermore, he says, the inspection team was doing all sorts of things besides fulfilling their mandate and Saddam didn't see the connection between complying and getting the sanctions lifted.

    Support from the international community for United States action is minimal compared to the 1991 Gulf War. Perhaps nations like France, Russia, and China want to veto any military action because they want to protect the deals they've arranged with Iraq once the sanctions are lifted. Also, Hussein may be taking advantage of the current Arab backlash against the United States for failing to broker a peace settlement with Israel.

    "What most thoughtful Arabs think, if one can generalize about them, is that Saddam Hussein is going to be bombed back into the stone age for not complying with this UN resolution, whereas other nations like Turkey and Israel are both out of compliance and they let it happen," says Simpson. On the other hand, ethnic pride may be a factor, too.

    "The Arabs are generally pleased that somebody has the stamina to stand up to the U.S. in a desperate situation like this," says Simpson.

    "Don't take this all to mean that, here in this office, we're praising Saddam. We're just trying to be objective and understand what really happened," he adds.

    The current Iraqi crisis has been diffused now that a deal is being hammered out between Iraq and the United Nations. But the question remains, will Hussein keep his promises to the UN? One thing the world can count on, is Saddam Hussein living up to the Arabic translation of his name-"One who confronts." But because of United States policy, it seems that the real people who are confronted daily are the millions of people suffering in Iraq.