Sanctions 101

What do we mean by the slogan #SanctionsKill?

by Meredith Aby, member of the Anti-War Committee

Sanctions are punishments a country (or group of countries) puts on another country.  They can be economic and U.S. ban companies from selling goods to a specific country and/or they can be financial sanctions when the financial assets of certain people or organizations are frozen, so they can’t access their money in foreign bank accounts.  Sometimes politicians like to talk about “smart sanctions” which allegedly targeted and designed to only punish a small number of people rather than an entire nation.  But in reality “smart sanctions” are a lot like “smart bombs” they cause a lot of collateral damage but sound better in press conferences.

The AWC was born in 1998 during the campaign to end sanctions on Iraq.  Jess Sundin, a member of our committee, and other peace activists from the Twin Cities went on a trip to Iraq to challenge US sanctions and reported on the impact of sanctions firsthand.  She went to Saddam Children’s Hospital. Before the war, Iraq had an advanced medical system. Due to the sanctions, Iraq couldn’t buy medicine. They had this modern hospital, but no supplies. The pharmacy shelves were empty. People were dying of easily treated diseases, from dysentery due to poisoned water, from malnutrition, and from cancer caused by depleted uranium.  She saw that people in Iraq were dying because they couldn’t get heart medicine or inhalers – that their deaths were preventable.  

The stories that affected me the most were the ones about how the US sanctions wouldn’t allow Iraq to import pencils – claiming the lead could be used for weapons – which meant that kids did their lessons writing in dirt.  As a teacher those stories and photos broke my heart.  

The UN imposed strict economic sanctions against Iraq between 1990 and 2003.  According to UNiCEF around 1 million 500 thousand Iraqis, primarily children, died as a direct consequence of the imposed sanctions.

Thirty years after devastating sanctions were first imposed on Iraq, President Donald Trump’s threat of new sanctions this year sent a chill down their backs.  Trump that he would impose sanctions on Iraq “like they’ve never seen before” if U.S. forces were told to leave the country.

In the Democratic debates this year candidate after candidate seemed to offer sanctions in lieu of military action but what the US should have learned through the war on Iraq is that sanctions are like war. They target civilians and they kill.  So when politicians try to justify sanctions on places like Venezuela, Iran, Cuba and the other 36 other countries the US has sanctions on just remember sanctions kill.