By Donna Abu-Nasr / Associated Press

Twelve years have passed since the United Nations punished Iraq for its Kuwait invasion by imposing strict sanctions, and plunged an advanced society with the world's second largest oil reserves into Third World misery.

Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, claiming it as a long-lost province. It also complained the emirate was over-pumping oil, thus pushing down Iraqi oil revenues, and drilling in a field claimed by both sides.

Iraq's occupying army was routed seven months later by an international coalition and the sanctions forbade it to sell oil freely.

Iraq was left in ruins. Its electrical, water and sanitation systems collapsed. Roads, bridges, government complexes Ñ the fruit of Iraq's oil wealth Ñ had been bombed. Neighborhoods were flooded with sewage, and garbage went uncollected. The economy, already weakened by Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, was devastated.

No one knew how long the sanctions would last. Most spent the first couple of years living off savings and government food rations. A pirate class emerged, selling smuggled food at exorbitant prices.

Despite the sanctions designed to weaken him, Saddam prospered. As his people faced hunger, reports surfaced that the Iraqi leader was spending as much as $1 billion on palaces and presidential retreats, including a lakeside mansion more than four times the size of the White House.

By the third year of the sanctions, government food subsidies were cut by 40 percent, partly because of a poor harvest. Iraqis could not afford spare parts for farm machines. Herbicides and pesticides were also barred by the sanctions. Medicine imports slowed to a trickle. Malnutrition was rampant.

In 1994, the Iraqi government said the mortality rate among children under 5 had at least tripled, to 29,558 over a seven-month period.

Outside Iraq, a fierce debate flared about the morality of the sanctions. Opponents argued that far from cowing Saddam, they were causing the pointless deaths of children. Defenders said it was up to Saddam Ñ if he cooperated fully in dismantling all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs along with the long-range missiles to deliver weapons of mass destruction, then sanctions would be suspended and eventually lifted.

The educational system was once one of the best in the Middle East. Now the literacy rate has plummeted to 58 percent. School roofs caved in, windows broke. Parents pulled children from school to work as carpenters and mechanics. Begging and theft started to rise.

In late 1996, Saddam finally agreed to a U.N. program allowing Iraq to use oil profits to buy food, medicine and other supplies that have no military use.

That program has brought some relief. Government rations of rice, flour, tea, sugar and soap have almost doubled the daily caloric intake to 2,100 calories per person. There's chlorine to purify water. Hospitals have acquired medical equipment and most medicines are now available, as is anesthesia, though it still costs extra.

Many Iraqis work two or three jobs to supplement their average $5-to $7-a-month salaries.

Contraband also helps. Experts estimate that oil smuggled out of Iraq earns at least $1 billion each year.

The sanctions that were meant to contain Saddam have instead turned food rations into his machine for controlling Iraqis. They know that those who breathe a word against their leader will go hungry, or worse.

Iraq's tightly controlled press is dedicated solely to deifying Saddam.

Just a generation ago, Baghdad seemed destined for a renaissance. It drew artists, writers and workers from an Arab world mired in strife and poverty. Arabs used to say: "Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads."

Today, Baghdad's intellectual life shuffles along through the sheer will of a few old-timers. The Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra, the Arab world's first, makes do with dilapidated instruments. Poetry readings take place in tiny cafeterias.

A university professor held up a textbook on politics, its cover carefully wrapped in gift paper, and said: "This is the only copy we have at the university. My students take turns reading it."

Cars rumble along with patched-up spare parts. Homes need coats of paint.

Only the nouveaux riches who are close to the ruling circles are better off. They alone can afford Italian lingerie, Swiss watches, gleaming new cars and satellite dishes, banned by the government but sold on the black market.

Whom do Iraqis blame for their misery? It's hard to tell in a country where no one dares utter a word against the government. But publicly at least, they say they are victims of the West, the United States and Britain.