Iraq: Reparations in Reverse

Quite apart from its crushing $125-billion sovereign debt, Iraq has paid $18.8-billion in reparations stemming from Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait. This is not in itself surprising: as a condition of the ceasefire that ended the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam agreed to pay damages stemming from the invasion. More than fifty countries have made claims, with most of the money awarded to Kuwait. What is surprising is that even after Saddam was overthrown, the payments from Iraq have continued.

Since Saddam was toppled in April, Iraq has paid out $1.8-billion in reparations to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37-million have gone to Britain and $32.8-million have gone to the United States. That’s right: in the past 18 months, Iraq’s occupiers have collected $69.8-million in reparation payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets worse: the vast majority of those payments—78 per cent—have gone to multinational corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website.

Away from media scrutiny, this has been going on for years. Of course there are many legitimate claims for losses that have come before the UNCC: payments have gone to Kuwaitis who have lost loved ones, limbs, and property to Saddam’s forces. But much larger awards have gone to corporations—of the total amount the UNCC has awarded in Gulf War reparations, $21.5-billion has gone to the oil industry alone. Jean-Claude Aimé, the UN diplomat who headed the UNCC until December 2000, publicly questioned the practice. “This is the first time as far as I know that the UN is engaged in retrieving lost corporate assets and profits,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 1997, and then mused: “I often wonder at the correctness of that.”

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