UNreformable? United Nations drops the
ball By Alexander Casella
With the United States getting day by day
increasingly bogged down in the Iraqi quagmire and the
future role for the United Nations in that country as
uncertain as ever, the after-effects of the bombing last
August 19 of the organization's headquarters in Baghdad,
which saw the death of 23 of its staff including special
representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, continue to
bedevil the world body.
At a time when the UN is
facing its most serious crisis in its 50-year history,
the handling of the aftermath of the attack by a UN
Secretariat that appears to be increasingly disconnected
with reality and only concerned with self-preservation
is turning, in the opinion of many observers in New
York, into a saga of literarily all the ills that
bedevil the organization.
In the spring of 2000,
Secretary General Kofi Annan entrusted his present
special envoy in Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, to make a
comprehensive review of UN peacekeeping operations and
to propose measures to improve the performance of the
organization. Brahimi, who derived his credibility from
his past function as foreign minister of Algeria, was
indebted to no one and pulled no punches. In what became
known as "the Brahimi report" made public in August
2000, he outlined three main issues he felt the UN
should address.
First, the UN should not accept
unclear mandates. Second, the UN was not a meritocracy.
Staff were hired, assigned and promoted in essence on
the basis of personal and political contacts rather than
on performance. Third, as a result of the above, a small
number of outstanding officers were overburdened so as
to make up for a majority of low performers.
Ultimately, all that Brahimi did was to put on
paper what was common knowledge in New York. For all its
merit, or rather because of it, the Brahimi report was
lavishly praised and then relegated to the archives. Two
years later, the Baghdad bombing confirmed all the
deficiencies identified by Brahimi and which no one in
the UN system had ever chosen to redress.
With
the US invasion of Iraq occurring without UN Security
Council endorsement, the issue of a UN presence in the
country became a subject of major international concern.
Ultimately, all the political actors came to the
conclusion that some sort of UN presence in Baghdad was
desirable, albeit not necessarily for the same reasons.
The UN system, which had evacuated its
international staff from Baghdad in the days prior to
the US attack, was desperate to reaffirm its relevance
by a presence on the spot. The mirage of billions of
dollars in reconstruction aid, channeled through the UN
system, was an added incentive, and even more so as the
lucrative "food for oil" program was coming to an end.
For the US, a UN presence, albeit not one with a
dominant role, was seen as providing some veneer of
legitimacy for the occupation. Last but not least,
several countries that had been instrumental in denying
Security Council endorsement for the US invasion did not
wish to fuel further their already strained relations
with Washington, and thus did not raise objections to a
UN role after the invasion.
The result of these
concerns was the adoption by the UN Security Council, on
May 22, 2003, of Resolution 1483. But this was an
exercise in obfuscation. It required the secretary
general to appoint a special representative (SRSG) for
Iraq, who was given the task of coordinating the
"activities" of the UN (what these activities were
remained undefined) as well as being responsible for UN
humanitarian activities "in coordination with the
authority".
In addition, the SRSG was requested
to work "intensely" with "the authority" and "other
concerned" to establish "national institutions" and help
create an Iraqi interim administration. What working
"intensely" meant and who "the authority" was remained
officially undefined. No degree of obfuscation, however,
could obscure the fact that the UN in Iraq now had three
parallel roles.
The first was the handover to
the US Coalition Provisional Authority over a period of
six months of the "food for oil" program. The second
consisted of the implementation and coordination of a
multi-agency humanitarian program. The third required
that the UN work "intensely" with "the authority" to
establish "national institutions".
As long as
the UN had only a humanitarian role in Iraq, it was
reasonable to assume that it would not become a target.
However, as soon as it started to concern itself with
internal political issues, the picture changed
completely.
The UN bureaucracy in New York was
of course aware that, if the organization was to regain
a semblance of relevance in Iraq, it had to assume a
political role. Such a role would, however, inevitably
bring it in conflict with those forces that were against
any stabilization under coalition authority. So the
choice for the UN was simple: either confine itself to a
humanitarian role and, it was hoped, stay out of harm's
way, or assume a political role and become a potential
target.
It could be argued that the UN had no
choice but to intervene in Iraq, given that Resolution
1483 "requested" the UN secretary general to do so. In
practice, however, the UN Secretariat could either have
delayed its deployment in Iraq or at least done so
cautiously. The contrary happened. On June 2, after the
adoption of Resolution 1483, Annan, acting with uncommon
speed, dispatched to Baghdad his special representative,
Sergio Vieira de Mello, and in the weeks that followed
literary every UN agency started pouring staff into Iraq
with the task of identifying possible programs.
According to concurring sources, Vieira de Mello
was fully aware of the UN's predicament and that, having
now stepped into the political arena, both he personally
and the UN were targets. While he became increasingly
concerned about his security, he was conscious that what
was at stake was far more than the issue of the safety
of the UN office in Baghdad; it was the political role
of the UN in indirectly endorsing an invasion that had
not been sanctioned by the UN Security Council. Neither
the UN secretary general nor the UN Steering Committee
on Iraq (SCI) headed by the deputy to Annan, Louise
Frechette, appeared to have been the least aware of this
predicament. Thus the UN system blindly rushed in where
angels would have feared to tread.
On August 19,
disaster struck. In mid-afternoon a suicide bomber drove
a truck laden with several hundred kilograms of high
explosive up to the section of the UN building in
Baghdad where Vieira de Mello and his staff had their
offices, and detonated it. Among some 100 casualties, 23
were dead, including Vieira de Mello. Pandemonium
followed the attack. No contingency plans had been made,
rescue efforts were haphazard and, with staff members
moving in and out of Iraq at random, it emerged that the
UN did not even know the number and identity of all its
people in Baghdad.
As the UN pulled its staff
out of Baghdad, and as the initial shock of the attack
wore down, questions started to be raised. Should the UN
have been in Baghdad at all? Had the eventuality of the
attack been foreseen and had contingency plans been made
to that effect? Had security precautions been taken?
And, last but not least, who in the UN in Iraq was
responsible for what?
To address the concerns
raised by what had been the single most systematic and
devastating attack against the UN system as such since
the organization was created in 1945, Annan, on
September 23, appointed Martti Ahtisaari to head a panel
tasked with examining "all relevant facts" as regards
the "UN security mechanism" and to "identify key
lessons" related to the Baghdad attack.
As
former president of Finland, Ahtisaari was a respected
world leader who was indebted to no one and was known to
pull no punches. He also had a through understanding of
the UN system for which he had undertaken numerous
missions at the senior political level. On October 20,
Ahtisaari released his report. It was a damning
indictment not only of the UN security system, which was
qualified as "dysfunctional", but also of the way Annan
ran his shop. Among the deficiencies identified by
Ahtisaari were lack of proper threat assessment "in the
field and at headquarters", lack of "qualified
personnel" and lack of "attention of the UN management
to security issues". Finally, he also recommended that,
in the wake of the attack, the question of
accountability be followed up.
The report hit
the UN headquarters like a bombshell. While the
organization had been used to constant criticism by
so-called "UN haters", it never had to confront such
overt criticism, especially coming from a world figure
with the credibility of Ahtisaari, who, in addition, was
known to be well disposed toward the UN.
With
voices being raised from both within the organization
and outside demanding that the matter not be let to fade
away, Annan had to act. In July 1994, the UN General
Assembly had created the Office of Internal Oversight
Services (OIOS). Its task was both to set up a
"risk-management methodology" and to deal with issues of
misconduct, mismanagement and operational performance.
Though part of the UN Secretariat, OIOS ultimately
reported to the General Assembly through the secretary
general, which meant that its findings were part of the
public record.
Why Annan chose not to use the
services of OIOS is a matter of conjuncture. What he did
was to create, on November 10, an "independent"
Iraq-accountability panel, tasked with making an audit
of the circumstances and accountabilities surrounding
the Baghdad bombing and headed by a retired UN staff
member, Gerald Walzer.
The nomination of Walzer
to head the panel was received with gasps of disbelief
by many UN staff members. Unlike such figures as
Brahimi, Ahtisaari or weapons inspector Hans Blix, who
all had distinguished careers in their own governments
before joining the UN and were credible in their own
right, Walzer was an absolute product of the UN system
with no background either as a political operator or in
the running of large field emergencies. Many at the UN
felt that the appointment of Walzer to head the
investigation was the prelude to a whitewash. "He is not
the person to uncover what he is not supposed to
uncover," commented a UN staff member.
By a
strange coincidence, the investigator, Walzer, and the
man, Vieira de Mello, the circumstances of whose death
he was called on to investigate, came from the same
burrow. Both had their home base in the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which both had
joined in their early youth. Both were extremely
hard-working. Any resemblance between the two men ended
there.
Walzer joined the UNHCR at the age of 19
as a finance clerk. Courteous, meticulous, soft-spoken,
his world was one of figures and regulations, financial
rules and balance sheets. Slowly but steadily he worked
his way up the hierarchical ladder as a reliable
administrator on whom his superiors could count. Vieira
de Mello joined the UNHCR at the age of 21 with a master
of arts degree in philosophy from the University of
Paris. Over the years, working in the evening, he
achieved the highest French academic distinction, the
"State Doctorate", with a thesis on the 15th-century
Jewish Dutch philosopher Spinoza.
Walzer was in
essence a headquarters man. Vieira de Mello over the
years served in Bangladesh, southern Sudan, Cyprus,
South Lebanon, Sarajevo under siege, Cambodia and East
Timor. Though cautious, he knew when to take risks; in
Cambodia, as head of the repatriation operation in 1992,
he would drive himself in his Toyota Land Cruiser to the
Khmer Rouge areas to negotiate the safe passage of
returnees.
By 1996, both men had risen to
director rank at the UNHCR; Walzer as the indispensable,
albeit interchangeable, cog that no bureaucracy can do
without, Vieira de Mello as the rare, innovative
action-oriented philosopher without whom no bureaucracy
is ever inspired to reach beyond the confines of
convention and routine.
In 1993, the careers of
these two very different men came to a head. It is an
unwritten rule in the UN that some senior positions are
allocated to its more influential members. Thus, at the
undersecretary-general level, the post of director of
peacekeeping is reserved for a French citizen proposed
by his government. Political affairs is a British
preserve, and the position of head of the UN in Geneva
always goes to a Russian.
In the same vein, the
post of deputy high commissioner for refugees, which is
graded at the level of assistant secretary general
(ASG), traditionally went to an American. In 1992, the
then UN secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali
persuaded the US to give up the post, which meant that
the deputy high commissioner at the time had to give up
his position and the then high commissioner, Sadako
Ogata, had to look for a new deputy. The search for
Ogata's deputy proved laborious and, after considerable
soul-searching, an internal working group gave her two
choices: either take an outside candidate proposed by
the Danish government, or take an insider in the person
of Vieira de Mello.
In November 1993, Vieira de
Mello, who had been approached informally for the
position, was given indications that he would have the
post. But on December 2, Ogata appointed Walzer, who at
the time was financial controller, as her deputy. While
no official reason was given - or had to be given - for
her choice, there were indications she wanted as a
deputy a manager who would take over administrative
responsibilities for which she had no volition. Less
charitable voices claimed that Walzer had the added
advantage of not stressing her intelligence.
Possibly to redress a visible injustice, she
subsequently created a new post of assistant high
commissioner, also at the assistant secretary general
level, to which she appointed Vieira de Mello in 1996.
As deputy high commissioner, it was up to Walzer to
process Vieira de Mello's promotion to a rank equivalent
to his own. Concurring sources in the UNHCR claim that
he did his utmost to delay the procedure; and while
outwardly relations between the two remained
professional, the underlying surliness was palpable.
"Given their past relations," commented a UN
staff member, "the least that one can say is that it was
insensitive of the UN secretary general to choose Walzer
to investigate the responsibilities regarding the death
of Vieira de Mello."
On March 3 this year Walzer
submitted his report to Annan. It reportedly consisted
of 150 pages of text and six volumes of supporting
documents. However, unlike the Ahtisaari report, it was
described as an "internal document" and not made public.
With pressure mounting for the report to be made public,
the UN Secretariat on March 29 released a 32-page
"summary". Its gist was that while negligence and lack
of security awareness occurred at all levels, the
secretary general bore no responsibility for either.
Simultaneously, the UN announced that, based on
the findings of the report, four mid- and lower-level UN
staff members responsible for Iraq had been sanctioned
by the secretary general. The reaction, both inside and
outside the UN, went from indignation to disbelief for
what was perceived as a deliberate attempt to shield the
upper echelons of the bureaucracy by shifting the blame
to the lower ranks. No degree of obfuscation could,
however, ensure that the Walzer report would not be
branded as studiously avoiding addressing the three
substantive shortcomings of the UN system identified
years before by Brahimi.
Why was Vieira de Mello
sent to Baghdad? The Brazilian was one of a handful of
outstanding UN staff members who were constantly on call
to make up for the non-performance of others. In 1999,
while emergency-relief coordinator in New York, he was
sent on a three-month mission to East Timor. He did so
well that his stay was prolonged to two-and-a-half
years, during which he steered the country to
independence. When sent to Iraq, he was high
commissioner for human rights, and initially refused to
leave his post, arguing that the credibility of his
function would be damaged were he simultaneously to take
another assignment. Finally, pressured by Annan, who was
in turn pressured by the Americans, who were sensitive
to Vieira de Mello's hands-on approach, he accepted on
the clear understanding that it would be a four-month
mission and no more.
Brahimi warned the UN not
to accept unclear mandates. Prominent among these was
Resolution 1483. Who was "the authority" the UN was
expected to "work with" and what did this "work" entail?
What was the difference between working and working
"vigorously"? Vieira de Mello himself complained to his
staff that he did not really know what his mandate was.
While it was clear that it was precisely this lack of
clarity that enabled the governments on the Security
Council to agree on the resolution, the substance of the
matter was that the UN was now engaged on the side of an
invading force with an unclear mandate.
Last but
not least, Brahimi's comment that the UN is not a
"meritocracy" takes on its full meaning in Baghdad.
Based on Walzer's abbreviated report, the management of
the security situation on the spot was one long tale of
incompetence, bureaucratic bungling, amateurism and
neglect. Yet the same could be said of practically any
large UN operation. Even in East Timor, arguably one of
the UN's greatest successes, Vieira de Mello constantly
used to complain to his intimates about the slow
reaction time of the UN system in fulfilling the
logistical needs of the operation and the excessive
costs involved.
Where many fault the Walzer
report is in its contention that both Vieira de Mello
and the UN machinery in Baghdad were harboring a "false
sense of security". Indeed, the same report faults
Vieira de Mello for having personally intervened as
regards the selection of his bodyguards. According to
various witnesses, Vieira de Mello was intensely aware
of the risks he was exposed to. "Walzer," commented a UN
staff member, "never operated in an insecure environment
and is just not qualified to express a judgment on the
matter." What the report also fails to note is that when
Vieira de Mello arrived in Baghdad, his six bodyguards
were armed only with 9mm pistols that, by local
standards, were little better than peashooters. Requests
for better equipment were first ignored, until the UN
finally shipped in six MP5 submachine-guns from Bosnia.
On examination, three of the weapons, which prior to
shipment had been cleaned and reassembled, lacked vital
parts and were inoperative. No attempt is made in the
report to identify responsibilities in this regard.
Prominent among the four sanctioned UN staff
members was Tun Myat from Myanmar, head of UNSECOORD,
the UN security committee. In his mid-50s, Tun Myat had
spent most of his career as a program officer at the
World Food Program, and had no security background.
Those who know him describe his as a pleasant, easygoing
man who knew how to play the UN game. While his more
outspoken deputy, Diana Russler, commented in 2001 that
"no one is interested in security until it is too late",
Tun Myat was more upbeat.
Thus last May, at a UN
security management meeting, he proudly announced that
"95 percent of the recommendations made by the secretary
general in 2001 have been implemented". Whatever these
recommendations might have been, they obviously had no
impact in Iraq. "Ultimately," commented a UN staff
member, "the problem was not Tun Myat, but rather a
system that places someone like him in a position for
which he was clearly not qualified."
The same
could not be said regarding the Steering Committee on
Iraq, which had been set up by the secretary general in
November and had the ultimate responsibility for all UN
operations in the country under the chairmanship of
Frechette. The SCI included practically all the big
shots at UN headquarters, including the heads of
peacekeeping and political affairs. It was ultimately up
to them to determine the political threat level in Iraq,
a task at which they obviously failed.
Granted,
after the Walzer report, Frechette presented her
resignation to Annan, a resignation that the secretary
general refused "given the collective nature of the
failings of the SCI". Other sources in New York claim
that, as former deputy defense minister of Canada and
deputy to Annan, she was just too much of a heavyweight
for the UN Secretariat to part with.
Those
sanctioned, in addition to Tun Myat, who was asked to
resign, included the "designated officer" for Iraq, who
was demoted by one grade, and, in Baghdad, the chief
administrative officer and the UN building manager. Few
observers failed to notice that the nationalities of
those sanctioned - a Myanmar national, a Portuguese, a
Gambian and a Jordanian - made it unlikely that their
governments would intervene on their behalf.
"Had UN Secretary General Kofi Annan faced his
responsibility and accepted the blame while changing the
postings of some mid-level officers and promising to
review the system by which staff are assigned, this
would have been acceptable. But the disclaiming of all
responsibility at the upper echelons while shifting the
blame to mid- and lower-level staff is unacceptable,"
commented a UN staff member.
After the
announcement of the sanctions, UN staff took the
unprecedented step of addressing to the secretary
general a letter of protest. The reply came on April 19.
The tone was avuncular, the headmaster telling the
children that some of them had misbehaved and that,
though he valued and loved them all, the guilty had to
be chastised.
By today's standards the bombing
of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, though tragic, was an
event of limited proportions. What was less so was the
failure of the UN system to come to terms with its own
shortcomings. That failure was manifest at three levels.
Strategically, at the highest levels, the UN
Secretariat failed to comprehend that its role in Iraq
had turned the organization into a political actor, and
therefore by definition into a potential target. That
failure can categorically be attributed to the secretary
general and to his associates.
At the tactical
level, the performance of the operational staff in
Baghdad as regards security was consonant with those of
an organization where professional excellence and
qualifications are not the main benchmark for promotion.
Ultimately, security precautions, however good, are
never absolute and while better measures could have
greatly reduced casualties, perfect security does not
exist. Beyond the documented incompetence of the UN
system, it was the staff's misfortune that no allowance
had been made for an attack in the form of a truck bomb.
This was an oversight of which the UN has no monopoly.
While the above failures can be understood, if
not excused, the way the aftermath of the attack was
approached was not. Whatever his merits, one can only
with difficultly imagine someone less credible than
Walzer in appropriating blame. Indeed, blame was not the
issue, and neither was the question as to whether the
secretary general was or was not responsible. No amount
of obfuscation can change the fact that the buck stops
with him.
At issue were the lessons that the
organization would draw from the incident so as to try
to reinvent itself in order to acquire a new relevance
in a world for which it was not initially conceived. As
of today, that challenge remains unmet.
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