Iraq to pay $400 million for Saddam's mistreatment of Americans

On September 09, 2010, CS Monitor put out an article entitled: “Iraq to pay $400 million for Saddam's mistreatment of Americans”

The idea might sound very noble and natural to a neutral observer. Saddam as the head of the Iraqi state, mistreated them, therefore the country is responsible to compensate. But if one digs, layers and layers of hypocrisy will surface, both on individual and institutional levels:

These American citizens—who are apparently worldly enough to have been in that region in the 90s and be able to pull a massive lawsuit like this—are most probably aware of at least some of the emotional, physical, economical, political and human distress that the Iraqi people have gone through for several decades. And they also probably know that their country is responsible for a good chunk of such distress. During approximately two decades their country, the United States, supported the Iraqi dictator who put its people through unheard-of repression. After the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, their country spearheaded attacks and sanctions that ended squeezing the remainder of life out of the Iraqi public. As Sadaam’s regime’s grip on power remained nearly intact despite all these pressures, in 2003, their country attacked this already devastated country, Iraq, and caused more distress and destruction for this people. Now some American citizens can bring themselves to make this people (through their government) pay $400 million as compensation for their emotional distress?

On the institutional levels, the fact that the US has turned the settlement of this lawsuit into a precondition for “Washington to be willing to push for an end to the UN sanctions,” is nothing but a legal bribery. As we see throughout the article (and in the rest of this piece), the US has also used its position of power as the big brother (read: the big occupying bully) in the international life of the Iraqi government to leverage the settlement of this lawsuit. If the lawsuit has good legal arguments, why not let it proceed through conventional ways?

One might not find too many “illegal” issues with what has happened here. However, there are certainly many faults in the way this case has been handled.


Disclaimers:

1. Nothing I write here intends to play down the brutality of Saddam and his regime during a good majority of his disastrous rein. After all, the emotional distress that I went through as a child living in Iran throughout the eight years of Iran-Iraq war is at least as grave as the one these Americans who brought the claim went through.

2. When I talk about American hypocrisy, I recognize that hypocrisy might be one of the main defining characteristics of any superpower. The US, in the case, happens to be that superpower and has therefore inherited this symptomatic quality. The citizens of such a power often get infected by the hypocrisy at different scales. I, however, am fully convinced that if they become conscious of it, they cannot easily overturn it.

3. Whatever I write here does not intend to downplay the pain and suffering that the American citizens who brought the case went through. I do not see them as perpetrators in this case, but rather as victims of an unhealthy balance of power and the false sense of entitlement it brings with it.


This is another incredible episode of the American hypocrisy. American citizens who were sent to that region (or went out of their own will) probably either as military/intelligence operatives or as business men are holding the new Iraq responsible for paying reparation for something that Saddam did. How and from whom are the Iraqi people who suffered torture and death in much graver scales then the few Americans—while the US was in bed with Saddam Hussain—going to get their reparations? Is their only fault is that they were born in Iraq while the Americans were lucky enough to be American?

Let’s do a quick analysis of what is being presented in Jane Arraf’s article:
“Iraq has quietly agreed [emphasis added] to pay $400 million in claims to American citizens who say they were tortured or traumatized by Saddam Hussein’s regime after his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.”

It is important to pay a special attention to the term “agreed”. Given the circumstances the Iraqi government has been put in, did they have any other viable choice but to agree? Here are only parts of the pressures that were put on the Iraqi government to “agree:”

1. “Settling the claims […] has been seen as a key requirement for Washington to be willing to push for an end to the UN sanctions.” Mind you that these sanctions were put in place during the Saddam era and one would think that given the new government is not a continuation of the Saddam’s regime, they shouldn’t be kept under the sanctions anyway.

2. “The Development Fund for Iraq, created by the UN, holds Iraq's current oil revenue … and other frozen assets. The mandate of the advisory body which oversees it expires at the end of this year and Iraq needs US and international support to replace it with direct control of its revenue.” So to get back their rightful position, they basically have to please the US.

3. “… roughly $900 million fund in frozen assets held by the US government to settle unresolved contracts under the Oil for Food program.” Another chunk of Iraqi money wrongfully held this time by the Americans.
So the US is basically pressing its foot against the Iraqi government’s throat, which gets the Iraqis to agree to probably whatever the US asks for. “If you want your own money back,” says while holding millions of dollars of Iraq’s money hostage “you better give us what we want.”

Doesn’t this sound like the forced confessions that the US has been taking out of unlawfully detained “terrorist suspects” for years in Guantanamo and its several secret sites around the world? The American soldiers beat the daylight out of an undernourished human, put him/her in isolation or stress situations for unbearably long periods and use all other hosts of inhumane pressure mechanisms for the person to say: I am a terrorist. It also resembles the forced confessions the Iranian government keeps getting out of political and (now with the case of Sakineh) non-political prisoners?

The consent of the Iraqi government to pay the $400 million is in nature just like the consent of the poor Guantanamo prisoner who signs a paper to admit his/her links with “terrorist groups” or the devastated Iranian woman’s admission of all sorts of crimes just to make sure her hell on earth comes to an end.

These two paragraphs in the CS Monitor article are fascinating: “The money [to settle the claims] comes out of a roughly $900 million fund in frozen assets held by the US government to settle unresolved contracts under the Oil for Food program.
The program was an exemption to the sweeping trade sanctions in the 1990s, under which Iraq was allowed to sell oil to foreign buyers under supervision to buy food and medicine. It ended with the 2003 war, leaving dozens of countries and companies with unfulfilled contracts.”

Who is responsible for the severance of these “unfulfilled contracts”? Saddam Hussain or the Iraqi people? Or is it the country(ies) that illegally invaded Iraq that naturally ended in non-fulfillment of Iraq’s commitments under the Oil for Food contracts? Then the country that spearheaded the illegal attack, i.e. United States, is holding “$900 million fund in frozen assets” and uses it to pressure the Iraqi government to pay reparation to her citizens. What a justice!

Now let’s look at who these “citizens” are. The article indicates that “the claims include compensation for emotional distress from the children of two contractors seized near the Iraq-Kuwait border in 1990, Americans held as human shields in an effort to prevent a US attack, [emphasis mine] and …].” We all know that the context around the Iraqi attack on Kuwait and then the US led attack on Iraq in 1990 was very complex and there are mixed feelings about it. But for heaven’s sake, these Americans were held to prevent a US attack. If I were in their place, I would be more distressed from the fear of being bombed by my country’s bombs than from being in the custody of the Iraqis. So shouldn’t they be asking for compensation from the US government too? Maybe they are worried that their case will be dismissed by the court just like the recent case about CIA’s “extraordinary renditions” was dropped by the Federal Court.

It is done, I know. But wouldn’t it be glorious if these American citizens who are being compensated for “emotional distress” put this money into a fund to support the families of the victims of Saddam regime’s brutalities? A humane gift to those tens of thousands of families and individuals who suffered Saddam’s repression but have no powerful advocate (with massive leverage tools like the American government) to get their voice heard. This will be a great gesture from the American people towards the Iraqi people who are still suffering from destructive American foreign policy.

Ps: it is curious to see that the few critical points mentioned by the author are left to the last few lines of the article.