U.N. can't be trusted to do right by Iraqis
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May 5, 2004
BY JOHN O'SULLIVAN
Not for the first time, the shrewdest analyst of international affairs turns out to be the great comic novelist, P.G. Wodehouse, writing on this occasion about the United Nations. The plot may be bleaker than that of a Jeeves and Bertie Wooster novel, but the banana skin factor is about the same.
Consider: In recent weeks pressure has been building in favor of a more ''central'' role for the U.N. in Iraq. The partisans of ''multilateralism'' in the State Department, the British Foreign Office, France, Germany and the Democratic Party had been arguing that the United States would fail in Iraq without the "legitimacy" bestowed by U.N. involvement. Nor would an Iraqi government handpicked by America have any better hopes of success. Only one handpicked by the U.N. -- and by its representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister -- would enjoy the respect of Iraqis and of the world.
The Bush administration, buffeted by its setbacks in Iraq and apparently hoping that U.N. support would encourage nations like France and Germany to commit troops, capitulated. The U.N. was invited in, and Brahimi began calling the shots. He warned strongly against sending the U.S. Marines into Fallujah. (They were withdrawn to the sidelines.) And he let it be known that the new government would be very different from the governing council that the United States had recruited -- and that had taken great political risks for the last year to restore some sort of decent Iraqi rule.
At no point, however, was it suggested that the U.N. would provide either troops or money to restore public services and public order. The division of labor was clear: The U.N. would provide ''legitimacy'' and America would provide everything else. In return they would share political power between themselves -- and with whatever Iraqi government emerged from Brahimi's conversations.
Nice work if you can get it. However, in the words of Wodehouse, ''meanwhile, unnoticed in the background, fate was quietly slipping lead into the boxing glove.'' (I quote from memory, but that's the gist of it.) For several years, rumors had been circulating that the U.N.'s Oil for Food program in Iraq -- ballyhooed as the largest aid program in the world -- was mired in corruption. But the reaction of the U.N. had been to deny any wrongdoing, and largely because of the U.N.'s saintly reputation, the world moved on to other things.
But the fall of Saddam Hussein meant that Iraqi records were suddenly open to inspection. Two weeks ago, the dam burst -- and revelations of extraordinary corruption poured forth exactly when the U.N. was poised to take control of Iraq. The Wall Street Journal's Claudia Rosett, whose reporting has done much to bring the scandal to light, gives the most comprehensive account of it in Commentary magazine. To summarize it briefly here, a program that was meant to underpin sanctions against Saddam's Iraq by moderating its effects on innocent Iraqis with humanitarian aid became a joint venture by Saddam, senior U.N. officials and public figures in Security Council member-states such as France and Russia to divert billions in oil revenues into their various pockets, to bribe governments, companies and individuals on Saddam's behalf, to establish a network of corrupt cronies beholden to Saddam around the world, to build up Saddam's machinery of war and oppression in Iraq, and to do little or nothing for the ordinary Iraqis who were the poster-children for the entire enterprise. The Iraqi newspaper, Al-Mada, whose investigative reporting has also driven the revelations, found a list in the Iraqi oil ministry of 270 people in 50 countries who allegedly received oil ''vouchers'' worth millions from Saddam -- including the former French interior minister, the present Indonesian president, a number of Russian oil companies, the Russian state, and the family name, Sevan, of the U.N. director in charge of the Oil For Food program. In all likelihood, Oil for Food is the biggest financial and political scandal in world history. Nothing less.
U.N. officials at a very high level were apparently complicit in this vast fraud. Benon Sevan, the program's director and a longtime U.N. official, reported directly to the U.N. Secretary-General, Kofi Annan. U.N. officials -- whose approval was required for certain expenditures -- OKd such purchases as Mercedes-Benz touring sedans and the rebuilding of Saddam's Interior Ministry. Some will -- and should -- go to prison. Annan should at least resign since he presided, knowingly or not, over this vast robbery. The entire scandal casts a dark backward light on the U.N.'s convolutions in the run-up to the Iraq invasion -- France, Russia, the U.N. bureaucracy and the ''peace movement'' had an undeclared interest in the survival of their co-conspirator, Saddam.
Multinational organizations like the U.N. and the European Union are regularly plagued by financial scandals because they bring together three incentives for dishonesty: large sums of money sloshing around, the absence of the financial accountability built into the political arrangements of established nation-states, and a belief in their own sanctity and importance that enables them to overlook any sins they may commit. Similar scandals, admittedly on a smaller scale, flourish in almost all the places where the U.N. rules.
More worrying is what the Oil for Food scandal tells us about the political attitudes of the U.N. bureaucracy and the political elites of Europe. None of them was seriously hostile to Saddam or his brutal state -- they struck attitudes in public that their private actions belied. None of them was even slightly concerned about the Iraqi people despite their crocodile tears about the impact of sanctions -- they colluded in denying the promised humanitarian aid to them. None wanted to see U.N. resolutions enforced despite their sanctimonious rhetoric about the U.N. being the fount of legitimacy. All of them were mainly concerned with obstructing the Anglo-Americans in their campaign to enforce those resolutions and oust Saddam.
Now that these facts are known, the power of the U.N. to bestow legitimacy anywhere -- let alone in an Iraq that is the main victim of the Oil For Food scandal -- has evaporated. It has precious little legitimacy to bestow on itself. If the Bush administration, because it is hoping to hand the problem of Iraq over to someone else, grants real power to the U.N. there, it will be a betrayal of the Iraqis it intervened to liberate. And the American people -- to borrow another insight from Wodehouse -- if not actually disgruntled, will be very far from being gruntled.
Copyright © The Sun-Times Company
http://www.suntimes.com/output/osullivan/cst-edt-osul05.htmlAmerica's 'Best Friend' A Spy?
May 20, 2004
In the latest setback for a man once seen as the possible leader of a free and democratic Iraq, Iraqi police backed by U.S. troops raided the Baghdad home and offices of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi.
American soldiers and armed U.S. civilians could be seen milling about Chalabi's compound in the city's fashionable Mansour district. Some people could be seen loading boxes into vehicles. Aides said documents and computers were seized without warrants.
A senior coalition official said several people were arrested and that arrest warrants were issued for "up to 15 people" on allegations of "fraud, kidnapping and associated matters."
Senior U.S. officials told 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl that they have evidence Chalabi has been passing highly-classified U.S. intelligence to Iran.
The evidence shows that Chalabi personally gave Iranian intelligence officers information so sensitive that if revealed it could, quote, "get Americans killed." The evidence is said to be "rock solid."
Sources have told Stahl a high-level investigation is underway into who in the U.S. government gave Chalabi such sensitive information in the first place.
In addition, sources told Stahl that one of Chalabi's closest confidantes — a senior member of his organization, the Iraqi national congress — is believed to have been recruited by Iran's intelligence agency, the Ministry of Information and Security (MOIS) — and is on their payroll.
Chalabi supporters suggested that the raid was politically motivated bid to intimidate the former exile, who has become extremely vocal in his criticism of Washington.
At a press conference after the raid, Chalabi lashed out at the ruling Coalition Provisional Authority, complaining it was coddling former members of Saddam's Baath Party and treating Iraqis badly.
"I am America's best friend in Iraq," Chalabi said. "If the CPA finds it necessary to direct an armed attack against my home, you can see the state of relations between the CPA and the Iraqi people."
The raid was a symbol of how far Chalabi's stock has fallen in the eyes of U.S. officials.
In exile, Chalabi's U.S.-financed Iraqi National Congress provided intelligence information on Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Chalabi produced a string of defectors whose stories suggested that Saddam posed an imminent threat to the United States because of his weapons of mass destruction.
A key claim came from a Chalabi-sponsored defector who told U.S. intelligence that in order to evade U.N. inspectors, Saddam put his biological weapons labs in trucks.
The assertion that Saddam had mobile weapons labs was a major feature of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the U.N. on why military action needed to be taken against Iraq.
"We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile biological agent factories. Ladies and gentlemen, these are sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In fact, they can produce enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people," Powell said.
The flow of information caused Chalabi's star to rise in White House and Pentagon circles, despite some warning signs about his reliability.
For example, Chalabi, a former banker, was convicted of fraud in absentia in Jordan in 1992 in a banking scandal and sentenced to 22 years in jail. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Ironically enough, Chalabi's downfall began with an action he had enthusiastically supported: the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
No weapons of mass destruction - or mobile weapons labs - were found. As 60 Minutes reported, a postwar analysis by the government of Chalabi's defectors has found that many of them exaggerated - and that their information about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's links to Al Qaeda was wrong.
In an interview with 60 Minutes, Chalabi minimized the importance of the defector who told of the mobile weapons labs.
"What he said is that these are mobile biological labs. He did not say that they are weapons factories. There's a big difference," Chalabi said.
Chalabi, who had returned to Iraq with a private army of 700 "freedom fighters" following the invasion, began to lose favor with U.S. officials as it became increasingly clear that much of information he supplied was suspect.
Chalabi holds a seat on the Iraqi Governing Council, but he has been unable to build a base of popular support with the Iraqi people.
The New York Times and the Washington Post report that Chalabi has been feuding with L. Paul Bremer, the American civilian administrator in Iraq. The Times quoted Chalabi aides as saying the former exile's relationship with Bremer was so bad that he skipped Governing Council meetings that Bremer attended.
Earlier this week, the U.S. ended the $340,000 monthly payment it was making to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. That action was followed by the raid on his Baghdad home.©MMIV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
