West Asia At War: Repression, Resistance and Great Power Games

by Talmiz Ahmad

In Iraq, the harshest manifestation of the policy was the inspections regime: UNSC Resolution 687, passed on 3 April 1991, provided for the destruction of all of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons. The UN secretary general then set up a commission to carry out on-site inspections, the incentive for Iraq being that, once it was certified as being without WMD, the sanctions would be removed. Thus began an inspections’ ordeal for Iraq that ended only with the US’s second war on the country in 2003 and the removal of the Saddam regime. The functioning of the inspections commission was closely controlled by US intelligence and other departments, which infiltrated their own officials into the inspections teams, obtained regular briefings from them and secured detailed information relating to Iraq’s military capabilities and deployments. Periodically, when the US found that Iraq was not being fully cooperative in accommodating its intrusive demands, military attacks would be launched to obtain compliance. On 29 April 1994, US Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that reports of full compliance by Iraq would still not be sufficient for easing of sanctions.25 After this, the inspections came to be used to affect a coup d’état or encourage a Kurdish insurgency.26 As repeated inspections failed to reveal any evidence of WMD, the inspections ceased to have any link with discovering these weapons. They became increasingly provocative and intrusive to encourage the Iraqi ...