Four days after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, sanction's were introduced against the country by the U.N. Security Council. Despite President Bill Clinton's assertion that the US has no quarrel with the people of Iraq, it is they who have suffered most under the now decade-long sanctions programme. The Iraqi middle class, once well off, comfortable, and well-travelled, has been all but decimated; a healthcare system that once rivalled those of first-world countries is in tatters; observers have seen a rise in diseases such as polio and cholera, once thought to be a relic of the past. While normal Iraqis suffer, Bagdad's Nouveau Riche enjoy meals worth one year's wages for any normal citizen. They are beneficiaries of Saddam's smuggling operation, successfully exporting oil despite U.N. border controls. The U.N. Oil-For-Food programme was introduced to stop exactly this kind of smuggling, allowing Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs - its effectiveness seems to be limited. While the humanitarian crisis spirals out of control, several U.N. officials are resigning, unable to continue while so many suffer. "If sanctions are not lifted, every day that passes enhances the chances that we are creating an anti-western group of people there who are tomorrow's political leaders, tomorrow's decision makers. Is that what we want? In a way Iraq has become a sanction testing laboratory - that is how I see it", says Hans Von Sponeck, who resigned from his post as U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. A powerful and in-depth report which poses a difficult question: Are the sanctions hurting the right people?

Produced by ABC Australia