A Problem From Hell

by Samantha Power

  162. Daniel Burstein, “A Visit with the Khmer Rouge,” Washington Post, March 9, 1980, p. C1.

  163. John Burgess, “Cambodian Thanks U.S. for Help at U.N.,” Washington Post, August 8, 1980, p. A1.

  164. Elizabeth Becker, “Sihanouk Seeks Backing for Neutral Cambodia,” Washington Post, February 23, 1980, p. A21.

  165. Along with the United States, China, Belgium, Ecuador, Pakistan, and Senegal voted to continue to recognize the KR government, whereas the Soviet Union, Congo, and Panama voted against approving its credentials. Benin, Congo, Guinea-Bissau, India, Madagascar, São Tomé and Principe, and Sierra Leone submitted an “amendment” to the draft resolution that would have kept the Cambodian seat at the UN empty, but the General Assembly chose not to vote on the measure.

  166. The Cambodian ambassador to the UN was not Ieng Sary but Thiounn Prasith, who lives to this day in Westchester County, despite countless efforts by Cambodia activists to have him deported.

  167. Debate of the General Assembly, 34th sess., 3rd plenary meeting, September 18, 1979.

  168. Ibid., p. 50.

  169. John Burgess, “Cambodian Thanks U.S. for Help at U.N.,” Washington Post, August 8, 1980, p. A1.

  170. “No Thanks,” Washington Post, August 11, 1980, p. A18.

  171. “Hold-Your-Nose Diplomacy,” Washington Post, September 17, 1980, p. A18.

  172. Jack Anderson, “Pol Pot or Not?” Washington Post, September 14, 1980, p. C7.

  173. Don Oberdorfer, “U.S. to Support Pol Pot Regime for U.N. Seat,” Washington Post, September 16, 1980, p. A1.

  174. Some of the individuals whose opposition to the KR might have led one to believe they would back Vietnam in fact urged support for the four-party coalition that included the Khmer Rouge. Representative Stephen Solarz was one of them. In the mid-1980s he initiated congressional efforts to aid the non-Communist resistance. “The last thing I wanted to see was the return of the Khmer Rouge, but the next to last thing I wanted to see was Cambodia dominated by Vietnam,” he says. Solarz believed the debate at the Credentials Committee, however symbolic, was an overblown tribute to the guilty consciences that many felt about KR terror. “The debate at the UN was its own sideshow. Whether the seat was filled or it remained empty, it had zero to do with the Khmer Rouge. It had more to do with a statement of morality. I thought the breast-beating was irrelevant. I mean, where were these people when Pol Pot was executing his wicked will?”

  175. Elaine Sciolino, “Tainted Cambodia Aid: New Details,” New York Times, November 1, 1988, p. A3.

  176. The combination of Western isolation and Vietnamese mismanagement led to a famine. It is extremely difficult to compile meaningful population statistics in Cambodia, but one recent demographic analysis puts the death toll due to the famine at 300,000; see Patrick Heuveline, “The Demographic Analysis of Mortality Crises: The Case of Cambodia, 1970–1979,” in Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely, eds., Forced Migration and Mortality (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2001), pp. 102–129. Others have argued that widespread famine did not occur; see Judith Banister and E. Paige Johnson, “After the Nightmare: The Population of Cambodia,” in Ben Kiernan, ed., Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge, the United Nations and the International Community (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1993), pp. 65–139, and Ben Kiernan, “Review Essay: William Shawcross, Declining Cambodia,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, January-March 1986, pp. 56–63.

  177. Report to the Economic and Social Council, July 2, 1985, 4/SUB, 2/1985/6.

  178. Becker, When the War Was Over, pp. 503–504.

  179. United Nations, Treaty Series, “United States of America, Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam, Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Viet-Nam and Republic of Viet-Nam: Protocol to the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet-Nam Concerning the Return of Captured Military Personnel and Foreign Civilians and Captured and Detained Vietnamese Civilian Personnel. Signed at Paris on 27 January 1973,” Treaties and International Agreements Registerd or Filed or Reported with the Secretariat of the United Nations, p. 203, No. 13296 (1974).

  Chapter 7, Speaking Loudly and Looking for a Stick

  1. December 1968 remarks quoted in William Korey, “The Genocide Treaty: Unratified 35 Years,” New York Times, June 23, 1984, sec. 1, p. 23.

  2. Spotlight, May 14, 1979. See Charles R. Allen Jr., “The Genocide Convention: America’s Shame,” Reform Judaism 10, 4 (Summer 1982): 12.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Congressional Record. 99th Cong., 2nd sess., 1986, 132, pt. 15:S1355.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Kathleen Teltsch, “Library Show Recalls Man Behind Treaty on Genocide,” New York Times, December 4, 1983, sec. 1, p. 62.

  7. Korey, “The Genocide Treaty”; William Korey, “Lemkin and Trifka: Memory and Justice,” Christian Science Monitor, August 30, 1984, p. 11.

  8. Congressional Record, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1985, 131, pt. 46:S4386.

  9. Ibid., pt. 78:S7961.

  10. Ibid., pt. 48:S4520. Proxmire got the House statistic from a speech given by Representative Stephen Solarz the previous week.

  11. Ibid., 99th Cong., 2nd sess., 1986, 132, pt. 6:S392.

  12. Ibid., pt. 14:S1252.

  13. “Soviet Hypocrisy,” New York Times, May 5, 1954, p. 30.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Congressional Record, 99th Cong. 2nd sess., 1986, pt. 14:S1252.

  16. Ibid.

  17. “U.S. Urges Ratification of Genocide Convention,” Department of State, Bulletin, November 1984, p. 66. “Remarks at the International Convention of B’nai B’rith,” September 6, 1984, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1984, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1987), pp. 1242–1246.

  18. Bernard Gwertzman, “Reagan Will Submit 1948 Genocide Pact for Senate Approval,” New York Times, September 6, 1984, p. A1.

  19. Bernard Weinraub, “Reagan’s German Trip: Furor over Remembrance,” New York Times, April 18, 1985, p. A1.

  20. David Hoffman, “Reagan Defends Plan to Visit German Military Cemetary,” Washington Post, April 13, 1985, p. A1.

  21. Jay Matthews and Helen Dewar, “Wiesenthal Rejects Trip to Bitburg; White House Seeks Holocaust Survivors to Join President,” Washington Post, April 27, 1985, p. A1.

  22. Hoffman, “Reagan Defends Plan.”

  23. “Transcript of Remarks by Reagan and Wiesel at White House Ceremony,” New York Times, April 20, 1985, sec. 1, p. 4.

  24. David Hoffman, “Honoring Wiesel, Reagan Confronts the Holocaust; Bergen-Belsen Put on Trip Itinerary,” Washington Post, April 20, 1985, p. A1.

  25. David Hoffman, “German Soldiers Called ‘Victims’; Reagan Defends Itinerary,” Washington Post, April 18, 1985, p. A1.

  26. The United States attached two reservations, five understandings, and a declaration. The second reservation held that the genocide convention could not authorize any legislation or action by the United States if it were prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. This provision has become a standard accompaniment to U.S. ratifications of international human rights treaties. It is problematic because it leaves the executive branch again free to decide, if a case of genocide arises, whether or not compliance with the treaty in the case at hand violates some provision of the U.S. Constitution, which it will interpret. Future presidents can thus reopen some of the very debates that had stalled ratification in the first place for nearly forty years. With this pair of reservations, the U.S. Senate made it clear that it did not see the law as meaningfully “binding.” The Senate understanding held that the words “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” should be interpreted as the intent to destroy “in whole or in substantial part” the group concerned. In its 1988 implementing legislation, the Senate would define “substantial part” as “a part of a group of such numerical significance that the destruction or loss of that part would cause the destruction of the group as a viable entity within the nation of which su
ch a group is a part.” The Senate understood the words “mental harm” as the “permanent impairment of mental facilities through drugs, torture, or similar techniques.” The Senate also “understood” that it would not participate in any future international criminal tribunal without ratifying a separate treaty to that effect.

  27. Congressional Record, 99th Cong., 1st sess., 1985, 131, pt. 103:S10203.

  28. Ibid. An amendment offered by Senator Chris Dodd (D.–Conn.) to modify the effect of the ICJ reservation was defeated 8-9.

  29. Congressional Record, 99th Cong., 2nd sess., 1986, 132, pt. 15:S1355.

  30. Ibid., pt. 16:S1441.

  31. Ibid., pt. 15:S1355.

  32. Ibid., 100th Cong., 2nd sess., 1988, 134, pt. 8:S552.

  33. “Remarks by President Ronald Reagan on the Occasion of Signing the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987,” Federal News Service, November 4, 1988.

  34. Congressional Record, 100th Cong., 2nd sess. 1988, 134, pt. 149:S16798.

  Chapter 8, Iraq

  1. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993), pp. 4–5, 56.

  2. Kurds are divided not merely by party but by language and geography: Sorani speakers of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are located east of the Greater Zab River; Kurmanji speakers of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) are found near the Turkish border to the river’s north and west. On September 17, 1998, at the prodding of the Clinton administration, Barzani and Talabani signed the Washington agreement, in which the KDP and PUK affirmed Iraqi territorial integrity, committed themselves to improving the administration of the three northern provinces, and condemned in-fighting among them, pledging “to refrain from resorting to violence to settle differences or seeking outside intervention against each other”; Barton Gellman, “Kurdish Rivals Cement U.S.-Brokered Pact; Leaders of Northern Iraq Rebels Set Aside Bitter Feud, Agree to Share Power and Resources,” Washington Post, September 18, 1998, p. A26.

  3. See the Pike Committee Report, reprinted as “The Select Committee’s Investigative Record,” Village Voice, February 16, 1976, p. 85.

  4. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, p. 35.

  5. Ibid., pp. 37–38. See also Ismet Sheriff Vanly, “Kurdistan in Iraq,” in Gerard Chaliand, ed., A People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1993), pp. 185–188; David Hirst, “Rebels Without Recourse,” The Guardian, December 7, 1976, p. 4; Shiloah Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, Tel Aviv University, Middle East Contemporary Survey, vol. 1, 1976–1977 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978), pp. 410–411; vol. 2, 1977–1978 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979), p. 521; and vol. 3, 1978–1979 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980), pp. 568–570.

  6. Middle East Watch, Human Rights in Iraq (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 103–104.

  7. The Export-Import Bank discontinued a short-term loan program when Iraqi borrowers failed to meet repayment schedules, but in 1987, under pressure from the Reagan administration, it resumed short-term lending guarantees, setting up a $200 million revolving fund for the purchase of U.S. products.

  8. See, for example, a 1985 Amnesty International report documenting the execution of some 300 civilians in one town; Amnesty International’s January 1988 press release, “Iraqi Security Forces’ Use of Rat Poison, or Thallium, Against Political Opponents”; Elaine Sciolino, “The Big Brother: Iraq Under Saddam Hussein,” New York Times, February 3, 1985, sec. 6, p.16.

  9. Middle East Watch, Genocide in Iraq, p. 41, quoting Al-Iraq, September 13, 1983.

  10. The Nixon administration ordered a moratorium on chemical weapons production in 1969 in the wake of public outcry at the use of napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam. Yet after several years of lobbying by Reagan administration officials, the Pentagon secured funding for new chemical weapons production in 1985 in order to modernize and replace aging stockpiles. At that time it was generally estimated that the United States possessed approximately 30,000 tons of chemical weapons (with some estimates as high as 35,000–45,000 tons), the vast majority of which were declared obsolete by the Department of Defense. See Michael Weisskopf, “Reagan Seeks to End Chemical-Weapons Ban; Superior Soviet Nerve-Gas Stocks Cited,” Washington Post, March 1, 1985, p. A6; Bill Keller, “U.S. Preparing New Production of Nerve Gases,” New York Times, August 11, 1985, sec. 1, p. 1; and Steven R. Bowman, “IB94029: Chemical Weapons Convention: Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service Issue Brief, September 20, 2000. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 bans “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases.” It does not ban the production or stockpiling of chemical weapons. In April 1997 the U.S. Senate did ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Complementing the Geneva Protocol of 1925, the CWC does ban the production and stockpiling of chemical weapons and commits signatories to dismantling chemical weapons and their production facilities by 2007, unless the parties agree to extend the deadline. U.S. implementation has been delayed by debates over disposal methods. A recent independent analysis was pessimistic that the United States would complete its chemical weapons disposal by the 2007 deadline. As of May 2001, according to the U.S. Army’s “Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization” website, over 24,000 tons of chemical weapons remain to be disposed of out of the original national stockpile.

  11. Anthony H. Cordesman, Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East (London: Brassey’s, 1991), p. 89; W. Seth Carus, “The Genie Unleashed: Iraq’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Program,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy paper no. 14, p. 3.

  12. Attributed to Lt. Gen. Mahid Abd Al-Roshid, Commander of the Iraqi Army’s Seventh Corps, circa 1985. CIA, “Iraq’s Chemical Warfare Program: More Self-Reliant, More Deadly.” A Research Paper, August 1990, p. 3.

  13. Cordesman, Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East, p. 92.

  14. Statement read by the Department of State spokesman John Hughes, March 5, 1984, cited by the Department of State, Bulletin, April 1984, p. 64.

  15. George P. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), p. 239.

  16. The 1987 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report attached this resolution. The UN sent fact-finding teams to the Gulf in 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988, and each time they concluded that Iraq had used chemical weapons. By September 1988 the teams had made seven separate findings of Iraqi use. Yet the United States extended diplomatic relations with Iraq only months after the first finding in 1984. In July 1988 Iraq finally admitted use but claimed that Iran began the practice and that it was only self-defense. “We believe that every nation has a right to protect itself from invasion. The means might be controversial—there are differences to this matter from different angles,” Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz said. “Sometimes such weapons were used in the bloody war, by both sides. It was a very complicated, bloody conflict.” Serge Schmemann, “Iraq Acknowledges Its Use of Gas but Says Iran Introduced It in War,” New York Times, July 2, 1988, p. A3. In August 1988 the UN Security Council passed a resolution sponsored by the UK, West Germany, Italy, and Japan—and not by the United States—condemning chemical weapons use in the Iran-Iraq war and for the first time stating that “appropriate and effective measures” would be taken if the weapons were used again.

  17. David Segal, “The Iran-Iraq War: A Military Analysis,” Foreign Affairs, Summer 1988, p. 956. Even as late as 1988, this article presented the choice as one “between the possible adverse effects of offending world opinion and the certain adverse effects of being overrun by Iranian soldiers.”

  18. The UN fact-finding experts found chemical weapons use in 1984 and 1985 but did not single out Iraq by name. In 1986, 1987, and 1988, they explicitly blamed Iraq. The fact-finders began to lose faith. In their report of May 6, 1987, they wrote: “We all firmly believe that, at the specialist level, we have done all we can to identify the types of chemicals and chemical weapons being used in t
he Iran-Iraq conflict. If, in the future, a further mission is requested, then we will of course all be ready to respond. However, we now feel that technically there is little more that we can do that is likely to assist the United Nations in its efforts to prevent the use of chemical weapons in the present conflict. In our view, only the concerted efforts at the political level can be effective.” Report of the Secretary General to the UN Security Council, S/18852, May 8, 1987, pp. 13–19, 25–31; emphasis added.

  19. It had just emerged that Reagan’s national security adviser, Robert McFarlane, had traveled to Teheran on an Irish passport, carrying a Bible inscribed by President Reagan to the ayatollah. The McFarlane story would prove to be only a hint of the mischief under way in the White House, where with the aid of NSC staffer Oliver North, the Reagan administration had sold arms to the Iranians through an intermediary and then diverted the profits to Nicaragua’s anti-Communist contra resistance.

  20. Middle East Watch, Human Rights in Iraq, p. 133.

  21. Ibid., pp. 16–17, citing the Sun (London), September 8, 1981.

  22. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, War in the Persian Gulf: The U.S. Takes Sides, 100th Cong., 1st sess., 1987, S. Prt. 100–160, p. 19.

  23. Haywood Rankin, “Travels with Galbraith—Death in Basra, Destruction in Kurdistan,” U.S. government memorandum, September 27, 1987, p. 16.

  24. Ibid., p. 3.

  25. Ibid., p. 6. The Iranian authorities extended this revelry even to foreigners, sending a telegram of congratulations to the family of a German journalist who was killed at the front.

  26. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, War in the Persian Gulf, p. 15.

  27. U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1987, report submitted to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 100th Cong., 2nd sess., 1987, p. 1172.

  28. “Iraqis Repulse ‘Karabala X,’” confidential cable from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad to Secretary of State George Shultz, April 27, 1987, p. 2; reproduced as 00423 in National Security Archive, ed., Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf War (1980–1994) (Alexandria, Va.: Chadwyck-Healey, 1995).