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More
than 20 humanitarian workers were killed in the UN HQ in
Baghdad. |
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.”
The
Bush administration has insisted that the US – not the UN – should
be responsible for securing the peace of Iraq. |
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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. He can be reached at zunes@usfca.edu
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