GENOCIDE IN IRAQ The Case Against the UN Security Council and Member States

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This was one of the most heinous crimes of the 20th century, yet has received little coverage in the western press. The real weapon of mass destruction in Iraq was not nuclear, but the Security Council-enforced sanctions, that were knowingly maintained by the Security Council even as they killed  over one million Iraqis, including 500,000 children, according to the UN’s own administrators.  It was a price then US Secretary of State Albright infamously said was one “we are willing to pay.” This will be the authoritative book on genocide in Iraq.

 

 

 

Description

SYNOPSIS

Imposing sanctions on Iraq was one of the most heinous of crimes committed in the 20th century. Yet it has received little attention in the Anglo-American world. Despite the calamitous destruction resulting from the sanctions, no serious attempts by legal professionals, academics or philosophers have been undertaken to address the full scope of the immorality and illegality of such a criminal and unprecedented mass punishment.

Genocide in Iraq offers a comprehensive coverage of Iraq’s politics, its building, its destruction through aggression and sanctions, and an analysis of the legality of these sanctions from the point of view of international laws and human rights laws. It presents a detailed policy analysis indicating how, under Ba’ath rule, Iraq had risen to become—before 12 years of total sanctions were globally enforced—the most progressive and developed Arab nation in the Middle East. It then contrasts that rising nation to the devastated remains left in the aftermath of sanctions, which nonetheless was yet to endure, in 2003, the full force of the American “shock and awe” invasion.

The book explains why, in modern times, imperialist powers felt it was necessary to occupy Baghdad. It also puts forward the uniqueness of Iraq as at the heart of both Sunni and Shi’a theology, arguing it was this very centrality of Iraq, which far outweighs the significance of Arabia in socio-economic, religious and geostrategic dimensions, that at the same time makes Iraq a target.

It details the building of Iraq by the Ba’ath regime, part of which was done with remarkable speed, putting to rest the argument that other countries in the area were developed at a similar pace. It also details the devastation of Iraq by 2003 after 12 years of sanctions—a devastation so dreadful that already in 1996, by the UN’s own accounting, some 500,000 children under the age of 5 had died as a result; a devastation so pervasive and overwhelming that two of the UN’s own key administrators of the sanctions program, Denis J. Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, resigned in protest.

No other book published in English has made such an in-depth research and comparison of the two eras. Although previous books may have touched on the breach of international law through sanctions, this book, while making similar arguments on the breach of international humanitarian law and human rights law, goes further and argues that the Security Council itself, member states and the individual relevant members of the governments of that period are guilty of these crimes. More significantly, the book argues for the first time that imposing total sanctions is the equivalent of committing genocide. It challenges the argument by some Anglo-Americans that there is any need to establish specific intent to establish the crime of Genocide. In its section dealing with the Sanction Committee, it demonstrates how one man at any time could hold the whole of Iraq to ransom by denying the export of items so vital to the basic survival needs of millions.

The little that has been written has concentrated on a single aspect of the effects or consequences of the sanctions; mostly in articles in dedicated journals whose readership is limited. But as the crime of genocide is one on which there is no statute of limitations, it is hoped that this book will serve not only as an indictment of and barrier to future global imposition of sanctions, but also as a tool in bringing the actual perpetrators of this crime to a Nuremberg-style day of judgment.

Book Details

Publish Date

2012

Page Count

259

ISBN

978-0-9853353-0-4

EBOOK ISBN

978-0-9853353-6-6

Options

eBook, Paperback

Author

Abdul Haq Al-Ani,

Tarik al-Ani

Reviews

4 reviews for GENOCIDE IN IRAQ The Case Against the UN Security Council and Member States

  1. VINAY LAL, Professor of History, UCLA / blog

    “Abdul-Haq Al-Ani & Tarik Al-Ani’s Genocide in Iraq, published by the small and independent Atlanta-based Clarity Press, presents a severe but cogently argued and well-documented indictment of the United Nations Security Council, the principal vehicle through which the United States, the rogue-in-chief of all nation-states, effected the wholesale destruction of Iraq…

    Some scholars take the view that the sanctions policy of the United States cannot be impugned, since it is conducted under the rubric of the Security Council; if this is the case, then it becomes incumbent to conduct a close examination of the human rights implications of the sanctions policy of the Security Council. This is the other signal contribution of Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani’s book: its subtitle, “The Case Against the UN Security Council and Member States”, hints at the boldness of the argument, since the authors are quite certain that the Security Council, which ought to act strenuously to prevent genocide, became the agent for the genocidal destruction of a people and their nation.”
    VINAY LAL, Professor of History, UCLA / blog

  2. GIDEON POLYA, Countercurrents

    Genocide in Iraq: The case against the UN Security Council and member states by Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tarik Al-Ani (Foreword by Professor Joshua Castellino; Clarity Press, Atlanta) is an extremely important book that sets out the case for prosecution of people involved in the Zionist-backed, US-spearheaded genocide in Iraq during the period of Sanctions (1990-2003). Of course, as recognized by the authors, the carnage continued after the illegal US-led invasion and occupation. However the authors have chosen here to limit consideration to the horrendous effects of Sanctions because they were UN sanctioned, and in being associated with an estimated 1.7 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation (1990-2003; substantially children; an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide) violated the intent and letter of international law and international humanitarian conventions devised to protect non-combatants and children. This book should be in every state, city, local, school and university library so that everyone throughout the world (and especially children) can see for themselves the horrendous consequences of mass collective punishment of civilian populations to achieve political and strategic
    ends i.e. of state terrorism or more precisely, collective state terrorism.”
    GIDEON POLYA, Countercurrents

  3. NEXUS

    “A powerful case against the Security Council and many member states.”
    NEXUS

  4. KIM PETERSEN, DISSIDENT VOICE

    “…a very readable legal tour de force…Haq al-Ani and Tarik al-Ani begin with self-incriminating quotations by American officials and by providing the historical backdrop of Iraq, the treachery of Sykes-Picot, how Iraq was geographically blocked from ready access to the Persian Gulf, how Kuwait was created by British colonial fiat, how a monarchial client regime was installed in Iraq, and how Iraq’s oil wealth was plundered for British capitalist profit.

    The history continues with the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, the internecine battles for power in Iraq that consolidated under the Ba’ath party and the rule of Saddam Hussein. The comparatively rapid economic and social development of Iraq under the Ba’ath is detailed.

    The context is important because Iraq is a country that would not recognize Israel as a legitimate state (and neither do many other Muslim states, and why should a state formed by European Jews dispossessing the indigenous Palestinians and maintained by perpetual occupation, oppression, and warfare against neighbor states and an Israeli society wherein 20% are discriminated against by the majority?), it had nationalized its oil for the profit of its own people (not for Big Oil), and it had developed its economy along socialist lines….

    Genocide in Iraq is a must read for those who believe in justice and the equal application of law for all. It is also a must read for those who seek to understand the attack on Iraq from the Iraqi perspective — not just western media demonization. ”
    KIM PETERSEN, DISSIDENT VOICE

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