13 Facts About Iraq sanctions

Sanctions against Iraq were a comprehensive financial and trade embargo imposed by the United Nations Security Council on Iraq.

The original stated purposes of the sanctions were to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, to pay reparations, and to disclose and eliminate any weapons of mass destruction.

UNSC imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq by adopting and enforcing United Nations Security Council Resolution 661 in August 1990.

Resolution 661 banned all trade and financial resources with both Iraq sanctions and occupied Kuwait except for medicine and "in humanitarian circumstances" foodstuffs, the import of which was tightly regulated.

In later years, Iraq manipulated the OFFP to generate hard currency for illegal transactions, while some neighboring countries began to ignore the sanctions entirely, contributing to a modest economic recovery.

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Whereas it was widely believed that the sanctions more than doubled the child mortality rate, research following the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq has shown that commonly cited data were doctored by the Saddam Hussein regime and that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions".

Nevertheless, sanctions contributed to a significant reduction in Iraq's per capita national income, especially prior to the introduction of the OFFP.

Several US commercial interests with ties to Iraq lobbied against sanctions, as did the State Department, despite Secretary of State George Shultz's public condemnation of Iraq's "unjustified and abhorrent" chemical attacks.

Enforcement of the Iraq sanctions was primarily by means of military force and legal Iraq sanctions.

Legal side of Iraq sanctions included enforcement through actions brought by individual governments.

Those in the US who supported sanctions believed that low agricultural production in Iraq would lead to "a hungry population", and "a hungry population was an unruly one".

The Iraqi government, which understood the serious effects the sanctions could have on Iraq, was able to increase agricultural output by 24 percent from 1990 to 1991.

However, overall the sanctions failed and led to an unprecedented improvement in agriculture, creating a constituency of farmers in central Iraq who had a vested interest in the sanctions remaining in effect.