By Shannon Raymond

This week marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The invasion provoked outrage in the international community, prompting the United Nations Security Council to institute a worldwide ban on trade with Iraq with the stated goal of forcing Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. Even after the U.S. and allies defeated Saddam’s military and restored Kuwait’s sovereignty during the 1991 Gulf War, the sanctions continued in order to pressure Saddam to abandon his weapons of mass destruction programs and fulfill other obligations, including paying war reparations and border demarcation with Kuwait. Over approximately thirteen years, the sanctions had devastating unintended consequences for the people of Iraq. On this anniversary, it is important to reflect on the events of this era to understand their enduring effects on Iraq and the region as a whole. 

United Nations Sanctions

Although the embargo included exceptions for humanitarian goods, in practice, the sanctions were so restrictive that almost no goods were allowed into Iraq. The U.S. and the U.K. vetoed billions of dollars worth of contracts to send items ranging from water purifiers and construction materials to eggs and toothpaste, citing their potential for military use. Even shipments of some critical vaccines were blocked due to concerns they could be used to produce biological weapons, contributing to increases in child mortality during the period.

In 1995, the Oil-for-Food Program (OIP) was introduced, allowing Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil in exchange for food and humanitarian supplies. However, the program only provided Iraq’s population with a fraction of its nutritional needs, and was riddled with mismanagement from both the Hussein regime and the United Nations, rendering it ineffective at quelling the growing humanitarian and economic crisis. 

Although the exact number is unclear, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people died from inadequate access to food, clean water, medicine, and other necessities as a result of the sanctions. These figures include an estimate of about 106,000–227,000 excess child deaths from August 1991 through March 1998. These deaths could be attributed to both the direct embargo on critical goods as well as the inability for the Iraqi government to repair war-damaged infrastructure due to lack of income. Targets of Operation Desert Storm’s intense 42-day air campaign included civilian facilities such as highways, power plants, and water purification plants. The damage was so extensive that some estimates value it at over 600 billion USD.

 A 1991 UN report on the post-war conditions in Iraq described the situation as follows:

“The recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic infrastructure of what had been, until January 1991, a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society. Now, most means of modern life-support have been destroyed or rendered tenuous. Iraq has, for some time to come, been relegated to a pre-industrial age, but with all the disabilities of a post-industrial dependency on an intensive use of energy and technology.” 

Although officially lifted over two decades ago, the lasting effects of the sanctions can still be seen in various aspects of Iraqi society today. 

Lasting Impacts

Among the other destructive (yet less tangible) effects of the sanctions was the overall loss of human capital in Iraq. 

The embargo prohibited the government from selling oil on the global market, which generated most of its revenue. Iraq’s GDP plummeted, and its population was thrown into a period of hyperinflation and poverty. In the first five years after the sanctions were imposed, the Iraqi dinar (IQD) traded for about 10,000 times less than it did before the sanctions, at a value of about 3,000 IQD to 1 USD by the end of 1995. Wages and savings quickly lost most of their value. Unable to make a livable wage, many Iraqis resorted to selling personal possessions or taking on odd jobs to make ends meet. This effect was especially pronounced among government-employed professionals. Teachers, engineers, doctors, and other professionals left their posts in droves at a time when their services were most needed. Combined with the infrastructure problems and lack of essential goods, the ramifications of this era can still be seen in a variety of sectors today, particularly education and healthcare. 

Education

Prior to the 1990s, the Iraqi education system was one of the best in the region. The opposite is true today. The completion rate for upper secondary education in the country today is only about thirty percent, significantly below the regional average. Additionally, the quality of education in the country has seen significant decreases since the Gulf War. The roots of these challenges can be traced back to the effects of the sanctions. During the 1990s, about 40,000 teachers left their positions. To compensate, the government hired less-experienced educators. According to the Middle East Research and Information Project, “​​Prior to 1990, teachers had three to five years of training after secondary school; by the end of the 1990s, 20 percent had only one year of training before starting to teach.” Additionally, the quality of the education system was hampered by the fact that hundreds of schools were damaged and destroyed in the Gulf War, creating a large and persistent gap between the needs of a growing population, and the country’s ability to build enough schools. Even today, around half of all schools are in need of repair. Moreover, schools are often overcrowded or utilize a “shift” system to accommodate as many students as possible. All of these factors have led to a decrease in educational attainment and quality. This especially disadvantages Iraq’s large youth population, contributing to the country’s high unemployment rates. About 37% of the country’s youth are not in employment, education, or training— a rate much higher than the regional average.

Healthcare

Before the Gulf War, Iraq had a strong healthcare system. Access to adequate healthcare was nearly universal. Professionals were well-trained, with many receiving their education in Europe or the United States, and had access to modern equipment. All of this changed under the sanctions. 

Unable to sufficiently rebuild damaged hospitals, electrical grids, or sanitation infrastructure, the quality and availability of healthcare suffered. This was compounded by the loss of qualified professionals discussed earlier. The effects of this era are still seen in the decreased capabilities of the modern generation of Iraqi healthcare professionals. During the embargo, Iraq’s universities and high schools did not have access to new textbooks and scientific equipment, significantly decreasing the quality of medical education in Iraq. Combined with an inability to access the internet, foreign medical journals, or new technology, the sanctions resulted in an entire generation of medical professionals receiving inadequate training, causing the overall quality of the Iraqi healthcare system to erode. Today, many Iraqis turn to much more expensive hospitals abroad or private healthcare options as opposed to the government-funded public healthcare due to its substandard quality, meaning that only higher-income people can access quality healthcare.

Lessons Learned

When examining how sanctions lifted over twenty years ago still have such damaging effects on Iraqi society, the necessity to reevaluate the use of this coercive tool becomes clear. Especially considering that the sanctions ultimately did not achieve their overarching goal of toppling the Hussein regime, there is a particularly strong argument to be made for rethinking whether and how sanctions are to be employed as a tool of foreign policy. 

While sanctions may seem to be a “nonviolent” method of coercion at face-value, in reality, this is a dangerously reductive view. The global community must recognize the gravity of such comprehensive economic penalties and employ them in much more thoughtful ways in order to avoid repeating the Iraqi experience. When nontargeted sanctions like the ones discussed here are imposed, the implementing power (whether that be the United Nations or an individual country) has an obligation under International Human Rights Law to establish reliable, impartial mechanisms to monitor the humanitarian impact and mitigate harm to civilians from those penalties. The world must take these lessons from this dark period of history to ensure that this devastation in the name of peace does not occur in the future.  

Shannon Raymond is a research intern at EPIC. She is pursuing her bachelor’s degree in Government and Economics at William & Mary.