Just How Bad Were UN Sanctions Against Iraq?
The impact of UN sanctions on Iraq has been difficult to quantify — and that’s part of the problem.
![](https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/17171434/l-vulgar-sanctions.jpg)
Illustration by Ricardo Santos
Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, and a range of like-minded activists declared in 2000 that “the sanctions [on Iraq] are weapons of mass destruction.” This issue of Jacobin agrees, but over twenty years later, debate continues to rage about the sanctions’ short- and long-term impacts. Beginning in August 1990, the United Nations imposed the longest-running and […]