Pre-modern, modern and post-modern famine in Iraq

The UN Security Council imposed economic sanctions against Iraq in August 1990 in response to Iraqs military invasion of Kuwait. The sanctions banned virtually all trade with Iraq, in a context where between 60 and 85 per cent of Iraq's food consumption used to be imported, and the export sector accounted for up to 90 per cent of GDP Iraq has faced famine conditions since 1990. There have been dramatic declines in food availability and consumption, and dramatic increases in mortality rates, with anywhere between 200,000 and I million excess deaths. The Iraqi famine, however, is the result only partially of 'food availability' or even 'food entitlement' failures. Rather, this is a 'post-modern' famine referring to excess mortality that occurs in spite of protected food entitlements but due to non-food crises: notably, the stresses of macro shocks on relatively sophisticated health and social welfare systems. Iraq represents one of the most disastrous examples of the famine of the future - where essentially policy-induced macroeconomic shocks in a globally integrated economy can lead to dramatic increases in mortality over sustained periods of time.