What Can The UN Do For Iraqis?
By Ghali Hassan
02 November, 2004
Countercurrents.orgThe preposterous and despicable decision of the United Nations to endorse and legitimise the US Occupation of Iraq has proved that the UN is the tool of Western imperialism. The UN role as an impartial international arbitrator of world peace remains always in question.
According to the recent UNICEF report, "[b] before 1990 and the imposition of sanctions, Iraq had one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East". Now UNICEF reports, "at least 200 children are dying every day. They are dying from malnutrition, a lack of clean water and a lack of medical equipment and drugs to cure easily treatable diseases".
From 1990 until the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the UN has supervised and indorsed the most brutal and genocidal economic sanctions regime against Iraq. According to Aid agencies and independent humanitarian organisations, the sanctions have needlessly killed more than 2 million innocent Iraqis, a third of them children under the age of five years old. Currently the rate is 13% of Iraqi children were dying before their fifth birthday. It is "unconscionable slaughter of the innocents" noted the UNICEF report.
Senior UN diplomats in Iraq have resigned in protest. UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Mr. Dennis Halliday resigned in 1998 in protest against the sanctions describing the policy as "genocidal", and said the sanctions were "destroying a whole society". His successor, Mr. Hans von Sponeck, resigned on February 13, 2000 because he could "no longer tolerate the suffering caused by sanctions". Two days later, the head of the UN World Food Programme in Iraq Ms. Jutta Burghardt also resigned to protest against the sanctions.
Together with the sanctions, the UN allowed the US and Britain to continue attacking Iraq from the air on daily basis, killing many innocent civilians and destroying property. The pretexts were the illegal "aggressive enforcement" of the no-fly zones.
It was the UN, which politicised the question of the threat posed by Iraq's illusive weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Since the 1991 US War on Iraq, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) and since December 1999 the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) were made into a tool of the US aggression to conquest Iraq. Despite Iraq's fulfilment of UN Security Council Resolution 687 to disarm, Rolf Ekeus, who led UNSCOM from 1991 to 1997 and his successor, the corrupt Australian Richard Butler failed to publicly acknowledge Iraq's compliance. Hans Blix who led UNMOVIC from December 1999 until the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 was not much better than his predecessors. Mr. Blix was happy to see the armed conquest of Iraq.
These UN bureaucrats deliberately twisted their language to provide pretexts for war. Their teams of inspectors were CIA spies trained to collect information for the US invasion and undermined any peaceful resolution to the problem.
It should be borne in mind that during these difficult years, support for the Iraqi people came from private aid agencies and independent humanitarian organisations, but not from the UN and the Iraqi people were aware of that.
Today, unlike Western citizens, most Iraqis see the UN as the tool of the US foreign policy. One day before the illegal and criminal invasion of Iraq, the UN supervised the destruction of the Al-Somoud missiles, forcing Iraq into a state of complete defenceless against brutal forces.
Iraq may have been a defenceless country militarily, but no one knows the UN better than the Iraqi people, and they are not meekly surrendering to this charade. The Iraqi people have exposed the real colour and purpose of the UN to the world. They have also exposed the cowardice of Western powers.
In 1990, at the time of the occupation of Kuwait by Iraqi forces, the UN immediately denounced the occupation and demanded Iraq to withdraw immediately. However, despite the brutal and violent US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the UN not only remained silent but also legitimised the occupation.
Mr. Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the UN, is happy to utter few words at the US, but failed to strongly denounce the "illegal" occupation of Iraq. He had spent his career undermining the sovereignty of various nations and serving US interests. Kofi Annan did little in 1994 to prevent the genocide in Rwanda.For Western elites, the UN is the best tranquilliser of Western citizens at home. Like Western Christianity, the UN is leading the "moral mission" to save the other parts of the world. Wars and conquests of defenceless nations by the stronger powers can be wrapped and sold to Western citizens in the UN's logo. The role of the UN is the promotion of Western colonial values at home, in the West, and abroad, preferably led by a stooge from the Developing World, such as his Excellency Mr. Kofi Annan.
The cliché available today is that the UN is a "humanitarian organisation doing work for the benefits of local people". On the surface, it is true. Deep inside it is flawed and misleading. Behind the façade of "humanitarian" cause, there is a hidden, well-defined imperialistic agenda. The UN is the go-between the powerful West and the people in the Developing World. All that is necessary is that the UN either complies with the desires of the US, or rubber-stamps them after the event, wrote the novelist Tariq Ali. The genocide of more than 500,000 Iraqi children during the sanctions didn't't register with UN bureaucrats.
The UN role as an arbitrator of peace is a fiction. Unfortunately, many people around the world do not know this fiction. Immediately after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, rather than challenge the Occupation and helps Iraqis liberate themselves from US tyranny, the UN (Resolution 1483) recognised the US and Britain as occupying powers. Despite the UN's full knowledge that the invasion was illegal and in complete violations of the UN Charter, the US Constitution, Resolution 1441, and the Nuremberg Charter, the UN began it's usual go-between task of pacifying the Iraqi population and putting the "humanitarian" face on the Occupation.
This did not go very well with the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi Resistance considered the UN a US "soft target". The attack on its headquarter in Baghdad aimed at "preventing the UN from endorsing and legitimising an illegal occupation following an aggressive war", wrote Professor B. Rajagopal, Director of MIT Program on Human Rights and Justice in Boston. The Iraqi people accurately see the UN as an accomplice to the US crimes.
The recent and first scientific study of the human cost of the US War on Iraq by the well-reputed British medical journal, The Lancet, shows that the US-British forces have murdered at least 100,000 Iraqis civilians, including 40,000 children. And that's not even counting the atrocities of the town of Fallujah. In addition, more than one thousand US soldiers have been killed and many thousands more have been permanently handicapped (wounded) as a result of the US wanton act of aggression.
The US, Britain and their allies have committed crimes in clear violation of international and domestic law. The leaders of these aggressor nations bear full responsibility for imposing an illegal war of aggression. As have been shown by many lawmakers and international law experts that those government officials and military personnel who engaged in these violations can be prosecuted under the International Criminal Court (ICC).
If the UN is to return to its original purpose, and not to be used as a tool of Western imperialism, the UN has important duty to the Iraqi people. That is to bring those who committed crimes against the Iraqi people to justice. The UN should demand the US and Britain to withdraw their forces from Iraq,
and hand sovereignty to the Iraqi people. Like it did for Kuwait, the UN should also demand that the US, Britain and their allies pay reparation for Iraq.Only then, Iraqis will be truly liberated and free to rebuild their country and their society. Only then the UN credibility in the world will be restored.
Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be reached at e-mail:
[email protected]
