abu-alwafa

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

US Travesty, Terrorist Atrocity, and UN Tragedy *

By Stephen Zunes
27/08/2003

Iraq is not the first country the United States has intervened in and then
tried to have the United Nations try to clean up after it. Never before,
however, have the consequences of a US military action been so tragic for
the world body and its dedicated civilian workers.

The Bush administration has insisted that the United States - not the
international community - should be responsible for securing the peace and
determining the political future of Iraq. Other countries are welcome to put
their soldiers and civilian workers on the line, but only under US
leadership.

As a result, in order to provide badly needed humanitarian relief to a
country that has suffered from a brutal dictatorship, three major wars,
devastating sanctions, some of the heaviest bombing in history, a foreign
invasion, and a total breakdown of law and order, the United Nations
Security Council agreed to partly legitimize the US occupation through a May
2003 resolution recognizing the US and UK as "occupying powers."

Furthermore, this authority places full responsibility for security on the
occupying powers. It does not grant the UN any authority for security, even
for its own personnel. The US refused to allow any UN peacekeeping or
security troops into Iraq.

While most Iraqis celebrated the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, there
is growing outrage at the military occupation. The UN should never have
agreed to participate under the authority of the occupation force. The
unfortunate result of that participation is that anyone working in Iraq
while the US is occupying the country is now a military target.

More than twenty humanitarian workers, administrators, advisers, and other
international civil servants paid for this policy with their lives when a
terrorist's bomb destroyed the UN's Iraq headquarters in a former Baghdad
hotel.

Ironically, the vast majority of UN member nations opposed the US invasion
of Iraq as a violation of the UN Charter and other fundamental principles of
international law. UN humanitarian workers were among the most outspoken
opponents of the twelve-year US-led sanctions regime against the country.
Sanctions hurt the Iraqi people far more than they did Saddam Hussein, who
took advantage of the chronic shortages to extend his control over the
population. It was UN inspectors who correctly recognized that all or
virtually all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, delivery systems, and
development facilities had already been destroyed some years earlier,
thereby challenging the Bush administration's grossly exaggerated claims of
an advanced Iraqi WMD program, which was used to rationalize the US
invasion.

Among those killed in the terrorist attack in Baghdad was UN special
representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, who had become the UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights last year after the US blocked the re-election
of his predecessor Mary Robinson, the former Irish president and outspoken
human rights advocate. The US preferred de Mello's more low-key style
developed over his decades of service to the United Nations, and while human
rights activists initially were disappointed in his appointment, they
acknowledged his skills and dedication.

Among the UN posts previously held by the former Brazilian diplomat was that
of chief administrator of East Timor during that country's two-year
transition to independence following the withdrawal of Indonesian occupation
forces in 2000. Ironically, if Iraq were under a UN Trusteeship (as had been
East Timor) rather than being under a US military occupation, this tragedy
would probably have never happened. Citizens of non-self-governing
territories are generally more willing to trust a UN administration to
advance their interests than they do a foreign superpower with strong
economic, political, and strategic interests in the region. This makes it
easier to assume a greater level of cooperation by the subjected population.

In Iraq, however, the Bush administration has insisted that the US
military - not UN peacekeeping forces - should be responsible for
maintaining peace and security.

Already, questions are being raised as to why - despite some beefing up of
security around the building preceding the attacks - the UN headquarters was
not guarded nearly as well as comparable buildings in Baghdad that are
housing US military and civilian personnel. Indeed, the vulnerability of the
UN facility may have contributed to its selection as a target for the
suicide truck bomber.

President Bush's confident pledge following the attack that "Iraq is on an
irreversible course toward self-government and peace" may unfortunately be
as premature as his speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln where he
stated that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." There is
disturbing evidence that an increasing number of the violent guerrilla cells
in Iraq are not simply the remnants of Baath Party loyalists of the old
regime, but independent nationalists and Islamists who were opponents of
Saddam Hussein - yet see US forces as foreign occupiers, not liberators. As
a result, the resistance is likely to grow, not weaken.

Like other counter-insurgency wars in recent history, the United States is
now faced with a lose-lose situation. Failure to aggressively pursue the
terrorists and other guerrilla elements in Iraq could be seen as a sign of
weakness, yet such offensive military actions in a largely urban country
would inevitably lead to still greater civilian casualties and - in
reaction - still more recruits for extremist groups.

It may not be long before a majority of Americans find themselves in
agreement with the longstanding critics of the US invasion and occupation:
even putting aside the important moral and legal issues, the US conquest of
Iraq has made the United States and the international community less secure
rather than more secure.

* This article was originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus.

Stephen Zunes is the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus (online
at www.fpif.org). He serves as an associate professor of Politics and chair
of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco
and is the author of Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the Roots of
Terrorism.

http://www.islamonline.net/

rob

Could it be that the UN REFUSED US security efforts?


secure

(online

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