Learning From Iraqi Sanctions

By Moorthy Muthuswamy, April 2000

The US-led sanctions on Iraq are said to have led to tens of thousands of Iraqi children dying of malnutrition and lack of medical care. Even then, the sanctions appear to be justified for the following reasons: Saddam's regime was responsible for aggression against a neighboring country and is still holding on to power. The people of Iraq share not only this guilt but also are responsible for the continued presence of Saddam as the leader.

More importantly, the sanctions are placed to prevent Iraq (under the current leadership) from becoming strong enough to hurt its neighbors again. This is an example of human rights of the victims being given precedence over aggressors' children becoming casualties.

Since 1947, every Muslim majority region in the Indian subcontinent has seen non-Muslim (the victims) ethnic cleansing, the latest being Kashmir. 


The central human rights issue is the right of non-Muslims in the subcontinent to have a secular land to survive. That happens to be India and the question then is what PREVENTIVE measures it can take to enforce this human rights issue. While the non-Muslim populations in Muslim majority areas are moving toward zero, the Indian Muslim population has almost doubled. This seriously violates the above human rights doctrine! Therefore, secular India is well within its rights to ensure that the Muslim population in India is reduced significantly. Such a reduction in population can come about through selective family planning for Muslims to compensate their historically high growth rates. This same doctrine calls for the takeover of large portions of Islamic Pakistan's and Islamic Bangladesh's real estate (without subjects) as a penalty for non-Muslim ethnic cleansing as well.

The need of the hour, as the US has shown, is a big picture, problem-solving approach based upon human rights issues and secularism.