NEW YORK
- When US President George W Bush and his opponent,
Democratic aspirant John Kerry, were asked about US
plans to stabilize an increasingly violent Iraq, both
singled out UN Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi as
the potential saviour who could rescue the country from
possible disaster.
Bush said Brahimi was trying
to figure out "the nature of the entity we'll be handing
sovereignty over to" on June 30, and that "we will find
this out soon".
Kerry went one better: "Brahimi
is one of the most skilled and capable people with
respect to Iraq and the Middle East. He can talk to all
the parties."
But is he really a likely saviour?
Not so fast, says Dilip Hiro, a respected
London-based Middle East expert who closely monitors
day-to-day developments in Iraq. "The fact is that Iraq
is so insecure today that despite the posse of
bodyguards that [US pro-consul] L Paul Bremer provided
for Brahimi, he would not let Brahimi leave the
heavily-guarded Green Zone [the secure US fortress in
Baghdad] - except for a dash to Mosul by helicopter,"
Hiro told IPS.
Also, many Iraqi leaders with
grass-roots backing refused to meet Brahimi inside the
fortress as a matter of principle, because that would
have implied their acceptance of the US-led military
occupation of Iraq, he added.
"The anti-Bush
feeling is running so high among Iraqi Arabs, [who
comprise about 85 percent of the population], that
Bush's praise of Brahimi at the press conference last
week was a kiss of death for him," said Hiro, author of
the meticulously-researched Secrets and Lies:
Operation Iraqi Freedom and After.
A former
foreign minister of Algeria, Brahimi is not only
secretary general Kofi Annan's special adviser on Iraq,
but, until recently, the UN special representative on
Afghanistan. The envoy is expected to brief the UN
Security Council next week on his consultations with
Iraqi leaders.
Although elections are
tentatively scheduled for January 2005, UN officials
have said this will depend on the security situation. A
UN electoral team, which returned to New York last week,
is expected to submit its own report on prospects for
meeting that timeline shortly.
Aside from
Brahimi's abilities and access to key Iraqi figures, and
the US turnaround on a UN presence in Iraq, questions
are being raised about whether the world body should
undertake an Iraq mission.
Senior UN official
Edward Mortimer was recently quoted on the new US
enthusiasm for UN involvement in the nation. Despite the
fact that "people were coming on bended knees", he said,
"it's quite unnerving to feel you're being projected
into a very violent and volatile situation where you
might be regarded as an agent or faithful servant of a
power that has incurred great hostility".
Asked
when he would send a UN team to Iraq, Annan told
reporters last week: "For the foreseeable future,
insecurity is going to be a major constraint for us, and
so I cannot say right now that I'm going to be sending
in a large UN team."
Longtime Middle East
analysts are skeptical that Brahimi can even be the UN's
knight in shining armor. They argue his mission is being
constrained by US limitations on his mandate. Brahimi's
proposals to bring stability to Iraq include the
dissolution of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council
and the appointment of an interim government in Baghdad
with a president, a prime minister and a cabinet of
ministers. All would be done only in consultation with
the US.
But despite Bush's decision to transfer
political power to an interim Iraqi government, the US
president says that Washington will still keep its
120,000 troops in Iraq and retain control of the
country's oil revenues.
"The Bush administration
has no intention of granting the United Nations the
power it needs to broker a transition to genuine
sovereignty in Iraq," Matthew Rothschild, editor of
Progressive magazine, told IPS. "In fact, the United
States doesn't want genuine sovereignty. It wants
suzerainty."
Rothschild predicted Bush is going
to the UN only to get a "bigger fig leaf for what will
be an ongoing - and increasingly bloody - US
occupation."
"The United Nations should not be a
party to this farce," Rothschild warned, adding, "only
if the United States comes to the United Nations and
says it no longer intends to be the one calling the
shots, and it genuinely seeks a multilateral solution in
which Washington plays only a small part and contributes
only a small fraction of the troops, will there be any
chance for this transition to work."
"For so
long as the occupation remains, at bottom, a US
occupation, it is doomed," Rothschild added.
Bush, who went to war with Iraq last March
without the full blessings of the UN, has turned to the
much-maligned world body only because he had no other
alternatives, say several diplomats in New York.
"Judging by what's going on in Iraq, I don't
think it is safe for the United Nations to be used as a
political pawn by the United States," an Asian
representative told IPS. "The Bush administration needs
the United Nations primarily to get out of this
quagmire," he added.
The bitter reality,
according to Naseer Aruri, chancellor professor
(emeritus) of the University of Massachusetts, is that
the US is in serious trouble, "waiting eagerly for
Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan to rescue an endeavor
that went sour".
"America's political program,
focused on the Iraqi Governing Council, as well as its
security plan, which is an Iraqi brand of
'Vietnamization', have both failed miserably," said
Aruri, author of Dishonest Broker, the US Role in
Israel and Palestine.
Sadly, for the
president, any UN intervention in the prevailing
circumstances, and in the context of such a confused and
contradictory US policy, would not only compromise the
integrity of the world organization, but also expose its
staff to mortal danger, Aruri told IPS.
"Had the
United States decided to transfer real sovereignty to
Iraq, and had it planned to affect a genuine military
withdrawal instead of keeping Iraq as a base for its
military forces and corporations, the United Nations
would certainly be the logical body to dispatch a peace
force to oversee the withdrawal and to help shape a new
future for the war-ravished Iraq," he added.
"Instead," Aruri said, "the United States would,
in effect, be dumping an explosive Iraq on the United
Nations, which might not be able to deliver, even if it
accepted the undesirable assignment."
Hiro said
there is also a misconception that since Brahimi had
achieved a lot in setting Afghanistan on a path to
democracy, he could also work miracles in Iraq. "But
Iraq is not Afghanistan. Iraqis are imbued with Iraqi
nationalism, Afghans with ethnic loyalties," he added.
"Every Iraqi male has had three years of
military training, and the country is awash with small
arms and ammunition. There is also a religious fervor.
Iraq is the site of the shrines of six of the 12 Shi'ite
imams, and of two leading Sunni religious figures," he
pointed out.
