Alternative Insight

The Politics of Starvation
An Updated Survey

Note: This recent survey updates a previous article.
The revised article has an INTRODUCTION, short studies of five nations; Cuba, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, North Korea and a CONCLUSION.

INTRODUCTION
The powerful can't always use military might to suppress adversaries. Their own citizens and world opinion may react unfavorably and undermine a military adventure. Logistics may not favor it. Beside, they have other means. One of these means is economic warfare; a method that can silently crush an adversary without firing a shot. Gone to its extreme, economic warfare has the force of a neutron bomb: It disables the nation's infrastructure and debilitates its population.

Economic warfare requires preparation before implementation.
First, the "grieved" country accuses its adversary of intended crimes of aggression. The adversary is powerless to defend itself and becomes marked with the adjective "rogue state." Since the "rogue state" cannot ameliorate the crimes of which it is accused, being that they may not exist, and since these states are usually proud and will not compromise with their national integrity (one reason for their fate) further action must be taken against them. The next step is isolation. This step has several stages.

Although contrary to law in democratic countries and contradictory to the criticism made by the democratic countries against a policy of the former Soviet Union, which imposed travel restrictions on its citizens, the "grieved" country cautions and sometimes forbids all its citizens, except its intelligence services, to travel to the "rogue state." The "grieved" nation then uses enforcement procedures that bypass its own constitutional laws. These include actions such as heavy fines, harassment, embarrassing airport searches, letting the neighbors know, and calls from the internal revenue department. The reasons mentioned for these undemocratic actions are: to protect travelers from being contaminated with "rogue" germs, shield them from vicious propaganda and prevent them from being kidnapped for ransom and from accusations of spying. These are valid reasons, The unmentioned reasons are: to assure the "rogue country "doesn't acquire tourist dollars that might enable it to survive, make certain that travelers don't learn that all they have read and heard from their government is propaganda and prevent rogueidization in which a happy citizen suddenly sympathizes with the rogue and acquires rogue traits.

In the final stage, the "rogue state" is isolated from international agencies, relief efforts, finances and communications. After the "rogue state" is forced into an isolation it doesn't desire, it might achieve the adjective "hermit kingdom." That denomination signifies it is ready for the great strike, economic warfare. The economic warfare punch has many shapes. Sanctions that are not used against favored countries, although these nations might arouse the wrath of the world community, are used with impunity against the disfavored country. If the preferred sanctions cannot be implemented then an illegal embargo is enforced by warships that arrive close to the beaches and dwarf the rowboats of the "rogue country," or by airplanes that guard against infiltration of military weapons, such as water pumps, medicines and construction materials. Sometimes explosive mines and cluster bombs are dropped on the rogue's territory to complete the embargo. If the embargo proves insufficient for the cleansing task, then the "grieved" country might arm surrogate warriors inside or close to the "rogue country" and have them add human catastrophes to the natural catastrophes that inflict the "rogue country." Although the laws of the "grieved"country might prohibit this rash action, the laws are conviently circumvented.

Rogues that have special qualifications earn the title of terrorists. This title sticks to their names like velcro. It appears in all articles, headlines, dispatches, reports and news, as if the word terrorist followed by the country name is one word. The "terrorist nation" earns this title by committing an evil deed that is usually in response to the tens of evil deeds committed against it. No matter! Economic warfare leads to the final step in whipping a "terrorist nation "back into shape--starvation. If the food supply dwindles then certainly the poor unfortunate citizens of the "terrorist nation" will act as those who proclaimed "Liberte," "Egalitie" and "Fraternitie" in the French revolution. They will storm the gates of their oppressors, take away their cake and demand bread. The United States has implemented political policies that have caused starvation in several countries. Israel has followed that policy in Palestine. Despite the punitive measures, the leaders of the "terrorist" nations still eat cake while the populations suffer greatly from economic deprivation and, in some cases, starvation.

Since WWII, the United States participated in sanctions against approximately 35 countries.

"Of 104 sanctions episodes from World War II until 1990, when the United States was the undisputed Western superpower, Washington was a key player two-thirds of the time. In 80 percent of U.S.-imposed sanctions,the policy was pursued with no more than minor cooperation from its allies or international organizations, i.e., unilaterally. The enormous growth in U.S. power after the collapse of the Soviet Union becomes evident when we consider that during the four years of President Bill Clinton’s first term alone, U.S. laws and executive actions imposed new unilateral economic sanctions sixty-one times on a total of thirty-five countries. These countries were home to 2.3 billion people, or 42 percent of the world’s population, and they purchased exports of $790 billion, or 19 percent of the global export market." - Contemporary Conflicts

First think South Africa; then think Libya, Nicaragua, Burma, Sudan, Iran, Angola, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Yugoslavia and expect others. Intentional interferences and disruptions to a nation's economy and business operations occur often from many sources, and are part of the "white collar" crime that affects the world. Economic warfare, of which sanctions are one part, is certainly more serious than "white collar" crime, and people suffer greatly from this warfare. Intentional starvation of people, due to interference by a foreign source, is the most serious aspect of economic warfare. It is a major crime and another form of terrorism.

The most recent punishing sanctions by the United States have been against Cuba, North Korea and Iraq. The U.S. has also assisted Israel in its economic warfare against Palestine and Lebanon.

Cuba
The United States imposed an embargo against Cuba almost immediately after the 1960 Cuban revolution. Forty plus years of embargo have not succeeded in accomplishing the policies for which the United States claims it instituted the embargo - compensation to U.S. firms nationalized by Cuba and the overthrow of the Castro regime. The only result of the embargo has been deprivation of the unfortunate Cuban people.

Cuban expropriation of American property and its land reform policies motivated the United States into decreasing Cuba's sugar subsidy and implementing an embargo that intended to deny Cuba of spare parts for the U.S. machinery that powered the Cuban economy. The Soviet Union aided Cuba in these unfortunate years by purchasing sugar at inflated market prices and forwarding strategic materials to the island. Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union strengthened Uncle Sam's determination to cripple Cuba by the use of embargo. Although the reasons for the embargo faded with the years and became totally unnecessary after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States' determination to overthrow the Castro government increased its economic warfare. In 1992, congress passed The Cuba Democracy Act, which forbade United States subsidiaries to trade with Cuba and deprived the island of $700 million in trade, 70% of which had been in food and medicine. The Act also prohibited U.S. citizens to spend money in Cuba, but allowed private groups to deliver food and medicine. Although the United Nations General Assembly on November 2, 1995, voted 117 to 3 to recommend an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, President Clinton on March 12, 1996 signed into law The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, otherwise known as The Helms-Burton Act. This Act imposed penalties on foreign companies doing business in Cuba, permitted U.S. citizens to sue foreign investors who make use of American-owned property seized by the Cuban government and denied investors in Cuba all entry into the U.S.

A tightened embargo reinforced Cuba's suffering after Russia withdrew subsidies. The pre-90's Cuba has been credited with eliminating hunger and malnutrition and wiping out infectious diseases. The World Health Organization (WHO) complimented Cuba for its public health system. Cuba of the mid-90's portrayed another image. The American Association for World Health and the American Public Health Association determined that the embargo caused significant deterioration in Cuba's food production and health care:

New Jersey Congressman Torricelli predicted that his Cuban Democracy Act would bring Castro's downfall within one year. That did not happen. Humanitarians, such as Congressman Torricelli, have been eager to take advantage of the sufferings of the Cuban people for political purposes rather than affording the people a means to recover from their tragedy.

In 2000, the Clinton administration finally allowed Cuba to have some relief from an aggressive economic warfare. The administration passed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, which allowed the sale of agriculture and medicine to Cuba for humanitarian purposes. According to the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba reached $380 million in 2004. The U.S.-Cuba Trade Association estimates the total amount exported to Cuba since 2000 at nearly $2 billion.

In 2005, China and Venezuela made mutual trade deals beneficial to Cuba. During September 2006, Russia agreed to grant Cuba credit worth $355 million, as well as to restructure some of its recent debt. The intergovernmental agreement identified seven areas in which the credit will be used: investment cooperation projects, modernization of Cuba’s energy sector, reconstruction of water conservation facilities and railroads, the design and delivery of air navigation systems, and the modernization of the transportation system.

In contrast. U.S. President Bush in 2003 reinforced the embargo by prosecuting individuals known to have traveled to Cuba without a Treasury Department license and denying licenses to certain kinds of travelers, notably students, who had previously been permitted to go.

After Castro leaves his office, Cuba will probably invite more private investment. U.S. financial institutions will be eager to invest but might be too late to the party.

Iraq
If Iraq were Pompeii, then the US would be Mt. Vesuvius.

The US, after destroying much of Iraq in a declared war, continued to destroy it in first an undeclared war and later in another declared total war. The undeclared war contained every imaginable form of warfare: direct military, economic, incitement to revolt, aid to insurgency, blockade, spying, and propaganda.

This suffering has been outlined in a UN Report on the Current Humanitarian Situation in Iraq, submitted to the Security Council, March 1999.
Due to the length of the report, only significant features are mentioned.

Before the Gulf War:

After the Gulf War

Observations and recommendations
Data during the 1990's pointed to a continuing degradation of the Iraqi economy with acute deterioration in the living conditions of the Iraqi population and severe strains on its social fabric. As summarized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) field office, ""the country has experienced a shift from relative affluence to massive poverty". In marked contrast to the prevailing situation prior to the events of 1990-91, the infant mortality rates in Iraq reached the highest in the world, low infant birth weight affected at least 23% of all births, chronic malnutrition affected every fourth child under five years of age, only 41% of the population had regular access to clean water, 83% of all schools need substantial repairs."

The International Study Team noted, "Most of the babies who lost their lives during the war period must have died from diseases related to poor nutrition, lack of clean water, and related deprivations."

The 2003 invasion of Iraq continued the destruction of Iraq.
Iraq is a war torn nation, with sectarian strife bordering on civil war. As of July, 2007, post-invasion deaths of Iraqi civilians are estimated at about 70,000.

A London Guardian report provided additional information on the effects of the war on Iraqi civilians.

Rory Carroll in Baghdad: March 31, 2005, The Guardian

Acute malnutrition among Iraqi children aged under five nearly doubled last year because of chaos caused by the US-led occupation, a United Nations expert said yesterday.
Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food, said more than a quarter of Iraqi children do not have enough to eat and 7.7% are acutely malnourished - a jump from 4% recorded in the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion. Reporting to the commission's headquarters in Geneva, the Swiss professor claimed the situation was "a result of the war led by coalition forces.

By July 2007, child malnutrition had diminished. This has been replaced by severe psychological damage to children of the war-weary nation.

The humanitarian organization Save the Children, in a 2006 report that concerned children in conflict zones, estimated that 818,000 Iraqi children, ranging in age from 6 to 11, were not in school, roughly one in every five children in that age group. One of the studies on primary-school-age children in Baghdad found that nearly half of the 600 children surveyed had experienced a major traumatic event since the war began. Just over one in every 10 suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, the study found.

The exodus of almost 2 million Iraqis to adjacent nations completes this tale of economic and social destruction to a nation that angered a world power.

North Korea
The proud and impoverished nation of North Korea has been continually subjected to sanctions, threats of economic sanctions and hastily withdrawn sanctions. The media is peppered with the words: "U.S. Lifts sanctions," "U.S. recommends sanctions," :South Korea wary of sanctions." It's difficult to know if North Korea is being sanctioned or being forced into being sanctioned. After its 2006 claim of conducting a nuclear test, the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic Korea) leaders responded to intended sanctions by labeling them as "a declaration of war."

The DPRK has, from time to time suffered from economic warfare, which includes restrictions on trade and financial transactions. Export of sensitive dual-use items (i.e., items that have both military and non-military uses) have, at times, been prohibited. Some of the sanctions:

A meager $25 million dollars of DPRK funds had been frozen in a Macao bank with charges of money laundering and counterfeiting, none of which has been proven.

June 25 — "North Korea said Monday that its dispute with the United States over $25 million frozen in a bank in Macao had been resolved, and that it would begin to carry out its much-delayed promise to shut down its main nuclear plant."

Sanctions intended to collapse the North Korea regime have only collapsed the North Korean people. Starvation during droughts have occurred. Although some international assistance has been provided to North Korea, the intensive economic warfare waged against the "hermit kingdom" has exacerbated its problems without any apparent benefit to its principal antagonist, the United States.

Israel has taken the United States policy of politics by starvation and incorporated that policy into a means of control in its occupation of Palestine and in its wars against Lebanon.

Palestine

Since 1967, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has featured destruction of Palestinian water wells and diversion of Palestinian water supplies. Israel has destroyed masses of olive trees, orchards, vineyards and infrastructure, including an airport, roads and factories. Coastal shores have been blockaded, deliveries of vital goods disrupted, taxes withheld, curfews enforced and money confiscated. A separation wall has almost completely isolated Palestinian cities in the West Bank. The West bank and Gaza have being turned into giant concentration camps. In April 2006, the European Union adopted the US-Israeli plan to punish the Palestinian people for its democratic election of Hamas to a majority in the Palestinian parliament by temporarily suspending aid to the Palestinian Authority.

It is not possible to document all of the politics by starvation in a short report. Some dispatches indicate the extent of this nefarious policy.

Palestinian Collapse Hurts All: Raja Khalidi, senior economist with United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Beset by yet another round of shocks, which only intensified as the eyes of the world turned to Lebanon, the Palestinian economy is today undergoing a process of systematic "de-development." The economic decline is sharper and more debilitating than was experienced at the beginning of the second intifada in 2001-2002, with unprecedented poverty, deteriorating living conditions and mounting social strife. If current conditions persist, by the end of 2007 the economy will be 35 percent smaller than in 2005 - in fact, it will be at the level of 15 years ago. Per capita national income will fall to below $1,000 per year, about half the 1999 level. More than 50 percent of the Palestinian labor force will be unemployed.


Lands have been illegally seized for illegal construction of an illegal barrier that separates Palestinians from illegal Israel settlements and, incidentally from other Palestinian communities, but does not separate Israel from interfering with the Palestinians. Palestinian farmers will not be able to till some lands and many olives will not be picked. Israel has already destroyed Palestinian olive groves, hothouses and orchards. In some communities, teachers and students must pass through a gate to get to school. A likely scenario: interruptions and delays of medical emergencies, food for civilians and feed for animals; diminished water supplies for drinking and irrigation; relatives, including grown children and parents in disparate communities unable to conveniently visit one another.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs - July 2006

Since 28 June (2006) and the beginning of the IDF operation in the Gaza Strip, the IDF fired on average between 200 – 250 artillery shells each day and the IAF conducted more than 220 air strikes including the bombing of the Gaza power plant on 28 June. The destruction of the plant's transformers left Gazans with electricity for an average of between six to eight hours per day. This also led to a water shortage across the Gaza Strip with Palestinians in urban areas receiving as little as two to three hours of water supply per day as the water distribution has not been synchronized with electrical supply.

The IDF operation has caused 5,100 Palestinians to flee from their homes at different times and seek shelter in UNRWA schools. Thousands of other Palestinians are estimated to have been displaced and sought shelter elsewhere. The operation led to the destruction of 34 Palestinian structures and 3,666 dunums (367 hectares) of agricultural land.

AMMAN, Sept 27, 2006 (AFP) - 'The UN commissioner for Palestinian refugees on Wednesday urged the world to put pressure on Israel to end its blockades of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying conditions there are going from bad to worse."

Israel took advantage of the June 2007 internecine warfare in Gaza to strenghthen Fatah against Hamas, and in effect, enable Fatah to continue the fighting.. Israel released some of the $770 million tax funds withheld from the Palestinian government and forwarded the money to President Mohammad Abbas and his Fatah followers. These tax receipts have been needed by the Palestinian government for public use and their seizure have crippled the Palestinian economy.

Meanwhile 1.5 million Gazans live in a land mass of 139 square miles, which is only twice the size of Washington, D.C. Unlike Washington, D.C., the Gaza territory must use land for agriculture, fisheries and industry to sustain its population.

Lebanon

Israel applied its policy of politics by starvation to its 2006 war in Lebanon.
The verification is found in an August 2006 Amnesty International Report.

Deliberate destruction or ‘collateral damage’?

During more than four weeks of ground and aerial bombardment of Lebanon by the Israeli armed forces, the country’s infrastructure suffered destruction on a catastrophic scale. Israeli forces pounded buildings into the ground, reducing entire neighbourhoods to rubble and turning villages and towns into ghost towns, as their inhabitants fled the bombardments. Main roads, bridges and petrol stations were blown to bits. Entire families were killed in air strikes on their homes or in their vehicles while fleeing the aerial assaults on their villages. Scores lay buried beneath the rubble of their houses for weeks, as the Red Cross and other rescue workers were prevented from accessing the areas by continuing Israeli strikes. The hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who fled the bombardment now face the danger of unexploded munitions as they head home.

The Israeli Air Force launched more than 7,000 air attacks on about 7,000 targets in Lebanon between 12 July and 14 August, while the Navy conducted an additional 2,500 bombardments. The attacks, though widespread, particularly concentrated on certain areas. In addition to the human toll – an estimated 1,183 fatalities, about one third of whom have been children, 4,054 people injured and 970,000 Lebanese people displaced – the civilian infrastructure was severely damaged. The Lebanese government estimates that 31 "vital points" (such as airports, ports, water and sewage treatment plants, electrical facilities) have been completely or partially destroyed, as have around 80 bridges and 94 roads. More than 25 fuel stations and around 900 commercial enterprises were hit. The number of residential properties, offices and shops completely destroyed exceeds 30,000. Two government hospitals – in Bint Jbeil and in Meis al-Jebel – were completely destroyed in Israeli attacks and three others were seriously damaged.

In a country of fewer than four million inhabitants, more than 25 per cent of them took to the roads as displaced persons. An estimated 500,000 people sought shelter in Beirut alone, many of them in parks and public spaces, without water or washing facilities.

Amnesty International delegates in south Lebanon reported that in village after village the pattern was similar: the streets, especially main streets, were scarred with artillery craters along their length. In some cases cluster bomb impacts were identified. Houses were singled out for precision-guided missile attack and were destroyed, totally or partially, as a result. Business premises such as supermarkets or food stores and auto service stations and petrol stations were targeted, often with precision-guided munitions and artillery that started fires and destroyed their contents. With the electricity cut off and food and other supplies not coming into the villages, the destruction of supermarkets and petrol stations played a crucial role in forcing local residents to leave. The lack of fuel also stopped residents from getting water, as water pumps require electricity or fuel-fed generators.
The evidence strongly suggests that the extensive destruction of public works, power systems, civilian homes and industry was deliberate and an integral part of the military strategy, rather than "collateral damage" – incidental damage to civilians or civilian property resulting from targeting military objectives.

It is also forbidden to use starvation as a method of warfare, or to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population. Some of the targets chosen – water pumping stations and supermarkets, for example – raise the possibility that Israel may have violated the prohibition against targeting objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population.

In the final seventy two hours of the 2006 war, Israel dropped thousands of cluster bombs on southern Lebanon that are estimated to contain almost 4 million bomblets. As of February 14, 2007, the UN Mine Action Coordination Center (UNMACC) in South Lebanon had identified 847 cluster bomb strike locations, contaminating a total of 34 million square meters of land.
Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

CONCLUSION
Warfare is visualized in terms of dead soldiers, battlefield blood, eerie noises and bombed-out structures. We can't easily comprehend that warfare can be silent and still be deadly. Economic warfare has equivalents to military war. The country that takes the offense becomes the aggressor, as in any war, and the destruction to the defending state is equally brutal. In most cases, the economic war has worse results: In a one sided manner, the civilian population of the defending nation suffers greatly and the aggressor country suffers few losses. The war rarely achieves the results that the offended party desired and no peace treaty is signed. The struggle remains an open issue.

A limited form of economic warfare may, at times, have a legitimate purpose. A complete economic war, that invades all aspects of a country's life and continues until it debilitates the population, cannot be accepted. In a military campaign, atrocities and human rights violations are often committed. Although no shots are fired and battlefields are not identifiable, economic warfare cannot camouflage its atrocities and disguise its severe human rights violations.

alternativeinsight
july 2007

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