Interesting article from Daily Times of London:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;$sessionid$ZGKVHYWZPEROFQFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/opinion/2004/04/23/do2301.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2004/04/23/ixopinion.html
The UN is a ship of fools, and not the panacea for Iraq
By Alan Philps
(Filed: 23/04/2004)
The harshest test of a reporter in Iraq was a visit to the Saddam Hussein children's hospital in Baghdad. No heart could fail to be moved by the suffering of the patients in their fly-blown beds, and no head could fail to understand that the sanctions imposed after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait were in part to blame. But still there was a nagging doubt about the reality of the scene: although the suffering was real, the regime was partly responsible for the shortage of drugs and was using it to tug at the heart strings of the West.
The dilemma eased somewhat after 1995 when Saddam agreed on an oil-for-food deal. The UN would authorise sales of oil, and the money would be spent on imports of food and medicine. This humanitarian gesture has now been exposed as perhaps the biggest financial scam of all time. Saddam and his lieutenants creamed off millions of pounds in kickbacks, while at the same time buying influence abroad, particularly in Russia and France. The biggest humanitarian effort in the history of the world - feeding 23 million people - turns out to have been an oil-fuelled scandal. It is alleged that friendly politicians and businessmen around the world, as well as at least one senior UN official, benefited.
UN officials will say that they were not responsible for auditing the contracts (read: they turned a blind eye); they were tasked with preventing a catastrophe brought on by the failure of the first Bush regime to get rid of Saddam in 1991. If Saddam creamed off 10 per cent, that is a small price to pay for preventing the starvation of millions.
A colder eye would see the oil-for-food programme as a fine example of the law of unintended consequences. The oil-for-food programme, as implemented by the UN, made war inevitable, since it provided Saddam with a steady revenue to pay his security forces and build his palaces, while he penned sub-Mills & Boon novelettes.
Bolstered by the illegal revenues of the oil-for-food programme, and relieved of the duty of feeding his people, Saddam was able to drift comfortably off into a fantasy world. This made his downfall at the hands of the Americans inevitable. Had he been under real financial pressure, he might have provided the proof that he had no weapons of mass destruction - as now appears to be the case - which would have led inevitably to the lifting of sanctions.
It is worth examining the UN record. At the level of emergency aid, the UN keeps millions alive in Africa. The World Food Programme, a UN agency, is the largest humanitarian organisation on the planet. All over Africa, it is the UN that has the lorries, the planes, the 4x4s and the know-how to get food to the starving.
But, once again, the question has to be asked, where does all this effort and dedication lead? Ultimately, the effect is to prop up corrupt regimes and stifle economic reform. In gloomy moments, staff complain that they are just a sticking plaster on a patient who needs stronger medicine - political reform at home and a fairer economic system globally.
On the military level, there is not enough space on this page to detail all the failures of blue-helmet operations around the world. Starting with the Congo in the 1960s, they have been vessels of wishful thinking that have foundered on harsh diplomatic realities. In Rwanda, the UN force in place was actually reduced on the eve of the genocide 10 years ago. In Sierre Leone, a 17,000-strong multinational force collapsed in the face of some drunken gunmen, only to be rescued by a task force of 800 British soldiers who restored the situation. In Bosnia in 1995, the UN-enforced "safe haven" of Srebrenica turned into a death camp for 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. It was the worst massacre in Europe since 1945.
It would be unfair to blame the soldiers. The UN does not have its own army: it has to carve out armies from the crooked timber available in the General Assembly. The member states rarely have a common purpose, except to shove the problem on to some one else's shoulders.
In Rwanda, the UN commander predicted the genocide, but received no support from New York, where the Americans were desperate to avoid an African intervention. In Bosnia, senior French officers did side deals with the Serbs and exchanged intelligence. In Sierra Leone, a major component of the UN force was Nigerian, whose efforts went into fleecing the locals and smuggling diamonds.
At best, the UN can freeze a conflict - as in Cyprus or between Israel and Syria, provided both sides agree. It can do old-fashioned nation-building - as happened in Cambodia - provided there is no significant armed opposition.
On the diplomatic front, the outlook is not much brighter. The hours spent by Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, knocking heads together in Cyprus seem destined to end in failure.
So why is everyone talking about the UN as the panacea for Iraq? If we think this ship of fools will carry us to safety, we are wrong. The Spanish have blown apart the pretence that the world is just waiting to pour troops into Iraq if the operation is conducted under a UN flag. The new government in Madrid said it would wait to see if the UN was going to take over by June 30, but in fact has already started to pull its forces out. Nor is the rest of the world in any rush to send troops to Iraq. The fact that the UN headquarters in Baghdad was blown up by a suicide bomber shows that no foreign soldier - even in a blue helmet - is safe.
The UN special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, can help broker a political settlement. The UN Security Council can help legimitise it. But Iraq is too tough a problem for the UN to play a leading role on the ground. The US and Britain will have to deal with it. To place all our hopes in the UN is wishful thinking.
There is only one solid basis to work on: that the Iraqis can find common ground among themselves to restore their state and let the foreign troops depart in time. Everything that helps to that end is to be welcomed, but Annan has no magic wand.
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