Should the largely pauperized population of today’s Iraq be held responsible for making ‘reparation’ payments to people and institutions in Kuwait and elsewhere that were damaged by Saddam Hussein’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait?
Should the extremely poor population of today’s South Africa be held responsible for making ‘reparation’ payments to people and institutions in even poorer Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, and elsewhere that were damaged by the apartheid regime’s decades-long aggressions against those countries?
Should the largely pauperized population of today’s Iraq be held responsible for making ‘reparation’ payments to people and institutions in Iran that were damaged by Saddam Hussein’s September 1980 invasion of Iran and the very lengthy war that ensued and that also involved Iraq’s largescale use of chemical weapons against Iran?
I would say that the people damaged in all three of these cases have roughly equivalent moral claims to some form of ‘reparation’. But the problem is, of course, that the people now governing in South Africa (and ‘governing’ as best they can in Iraq) are people who were themselves majorly the targets of the earlier, abusive governments in those two places. So it is hard to see how these new successor governments can be held responsible for the sins of their predecessors… And indeed, in South Africa, the question of the country paying financial recompense to the peoples of Mozambique, Namibia, and Angola has never really to my knowledge come up.
And neither has the question of Iraq paying reparations to Iran.
All of which makes it fairly disquieting for me to have learned recently that the UN Compensation Commission that was established in 1991 with the purpose of “process[ing] claims and pay[ing] compensation for losses and damage suffered as a direct result of Iraq’s unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait” has continued until now on its course of turning over to Kuwait and other claimants regular payments funded by the UNCC’s expropriation of five percent of the proceeds of Iraq’s oil exports.
Just yesterday, the UNCC issued a press release describing proudly how in the current quarter it has disbursed $417.8 million to claimants in seven countries. The countries that got the biggest shares of those payments? Kuwait, which got $335.5 million, and Saudi Arabia, which got came in a distant second with $30.3 million.
A factsheet issued by the UNCC some time earlier reported that “Awards of approximately US$52.5 billion have been approved in respect of approximately 1.55 million … claims”, and at that point around $21 billion had been disbursed. As far as I can see from the charts I viewed, the lion’s share of that money has gone to Kuwait.
Now I know Saddam’s regime was bad, and caused much damage to Saudis and Kuwaitis. And it is possible (I suppose) that there, somewhere, some indigent Kuwaitis who benefit a lot from these reparations. But Kuwait’s GDP per capita in 2005 was $17,421. It seems quite crazy to me to expect that Iraq’s hard-pressed people should still today– 15 years after the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam’s rule, and more than three years after Saddam’s overthrow at home– be paying these reparations to Kuwait.
Doesn’t anyone in the international “community” remember the effect the reparations exacted from Germany after WW1 had in helping to incubate Nazism among the Germans? Is this a good way to build stability in the Gulf region today?
[Cross-posted at Transitional Justice Forum.]
5 thoughts on “Sins of the predecessors”
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“This morning I woke up in a curfew;
O god, I was a prisoner, too – yeah!
Could not recognize the faces standing over me;
They were all dressed in uniforms of brutality. eh!
How many rivers do we have to cross,
Before we can talk to the boss? eh!
All that we got, it seems we have lost;
We must have really paid the cost.
(thats why we gonna be)
Burnin and a-lootin tonight;
(say we gonna burn and loot)
Burnin and a-lootin tonight;
(one more thing)
Burnin all pollution tonight;
(oh, yeah, yeah)
Burnin all illusion tonight.”
-Bob Marley
Should the largely pauperized population of today’s Iraq be held responsible for making ‘reparation’”
I do not get your question here, Iraq already paying reparation to Kuwaitis and others from different countries who affected by the invasion 1991.
As far as I know (correct me if I am wrong) for 13 years Iraq paying reparation and after 2003 still the payment continues.
But then you answered your question that according to UN Compensation Commission report showing Iraqi payments.
I should noted here that this UN Compensation Commission refused continually Iraq government demands before 2003 to send a representative to discuses the claims that presented or received by UN Compensation Commission, further more there were a lot of talk that many companies /Kuwaitis made claims far from real loss caused by the invasion in 1991.
This behaviour of UN Compensation Commission seems fishy and seamers not professional as UN agency should be unitarily between the sides of the argument and according to international law.
From the Oil For Food Programme looks to me this UN Compensation Commission have same seamer and fishy miss use of the money paid by Iraq if its more corrupted than Oil for Food Program one.
In regards to Iran, should be highlight that Iran kept many Iraqi military fighters include SU-43, Maig 29 and other advance fighters that Iraq flee them from Kirkuk Air Base and Iran refused to return them back to Iraq, also EITA as I believe accused Iran that they using few Iraqi Airways Airplanes that was in Iran and they repainted and used them in Internal Air routs. So if there is claims then should these things taken in account.
Speaking about “Sins of the predecessors” what about France, Italy and Britton when they invaded ME courtiers in and North Africa, if reparations exacted from Germany why then Algera lost One Millions of their generation defending their land France invasion not getting any reparations? Or the Libyans whom lost 100,000 of their men defending their land the invasions not paid reparations too them.
And the most important the Britt’s and their invasion of Iraq and other countries and the lose of human lives through the looting of the Iraqi oil specially from Kirkuk Oil fields were hold by Britt’s for years?
So why all this silence for those cases and now you talking now about Kuwaitis and Iran? What your point here who’s SIN bigger Iraq or those aggressors in WWI and WWII, even 1991, and most importantly 2003?
It would be appropriate for the United States to make significant reparations to Iraq in the form of payments to every Iraqi for the illegal, destructive, pointless war we waged on them. We can afford it.
Helena,
Iraq be held responsible for making ‘reparation’ payments to people and institutions in Iran
BTW, if you talking about “Sins of the predecessors, I would add this
Why Iran invaded and occupied to date those three Bahraini’s Islands in the Arabic Gulf with no one from the international community those who talking about “Transitional Justice” like you forgot to bring it lightens of the sin of Iran in gulf region from 1975 till now. Dose the Iranians did or asked for ‘reparation’ payments for their Sin?
Iran parliament voted at a time that Bahrain State is an Iranian city during that time no one in international community spoke about the justice in regard of this.
I wounder if your “Transitional Justice” working in favour for none side and is single sided not two side of your argument?
Personnally, I think that each state invading another state has to pay compensation for its aggression. Thes compensation should be reasonnable, aka proportionnal both to the dammages caused and to the wealth of the offender.
But if Iraq has to pay compensations, so do the US, who has caused so much harm to both public infrastructures and private properties in Iraq.