Global Policy Forum

By Barbara Crossette

Now that the United States has had to concede some ground to the United Nations in the rebuilding of Iraq, it is essential that everyone involved in the task understand what the United Nations can and cannot do. There is a lot of fresh evidence to look at. In little more than a decade, the United Nations has been in the nation-building/rebuilding business all over the world: East Timor, Cambodia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and, to one degree or another, El Salvador, Guatemala and scattered pockets of Africa. Even before the first bomb was dropped on Baghdad in March, a number of well-informed American policy groups had begun to think seriously about how the United Nations could be best put to work in postwar Iraq. Not a few experts, free of the visceral contempt for the United Nations that seems to pervade the upper reaches of the Pentagon, were prescient in anticipating the chaos that has ensued since the war ended. For just a sample of these solid studies, look at Iraq: The Day After, by an independent panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations; Rebuilding Iraq: How the United States and the United Nations Can Work Together, from the U.N. Association of the United States of America and two papers from the congressionally supported U.S. Institute of Peace: Defining the "Vital Role" of the United Nations in Iraq and Establishing the Rule of Law in Iraq.

Although the experts had their differences of opinion, in general they agreed that the United Nations alone cannot administer Iraq or reconstruct the country; it simply does not have the resources. But they also agreed to one degree or another that the United Nations would be the best administrator -- often because it is the most neutral and experienced -- for distributing aid, training a professional police force and helping to create legal and governmental institutions essential to the rule of law.

Above all, the United Nations is probably the only legitimizer of a new order in Iraq. "The U.S. has overwhelming power but must seek legitimacy through alliances and high purpose," the UNA-USA study concluded. "The U.N. has no power except for that bestowed on it by its major member states, but it has great capacity to bestow legitimacy." That power of bestowing legitimacy, others noted, needs to be applied to whatever trials are held to bring justice to Iraqis who suffered decades of Saddam Hussein's murderous brutality -- or to their survivors, since so many were killed. Among international experts there is skepticism about U.S. plans to let Iraqis run their own trials without the involvement of U.N. international expertise. Down the line, the United Nations can also build internationally acceptable electoral machinery and run elections. Its experienced advisers can stay on in government ministries, for years if necessary, without looking like an occupation.

With its truly multicultural, multifaceted corps of administrators and civil servants, the United Nations has amassed considerable knowledge about revitalizing national life in ways most people wouldn't even think of. Need a national anthem that heals wounds? A flag that ethnic rivals won't shred? A culturally sensitive but legally neutral constitution? New textbooks that eliminate ancient hatreds, political propaganda and religious intolerance? A credible, humane and trustworthy prison system? Expert advice on recovering and preserving historical sites, expanding agricultural production, fostering small businesses or educating women? Training for judges, civil servants, human rights monitors and local government administrators? Assistance in creating nonpartisan professional broadcasting networks or a free press? The United Nations has lent a hand creditably in all these activities. And what about those scorned weapons inspectors? The vast archives and on-the-spot collective experience of the U.N. Special Commission and its successor, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, are unmatched anywhere. The chemical, biological and missile inspectors may be banned from Iraq for the moment, but history is more than likely to show that since 1991 they will have found and destroyed more dangerous Iraqi weapons than two U.S.-led wars and an occupation. Those inspectors need to have a good look around. They and other U.N. officials who have put years of work into Iraq know whom to trust there, too.

On the negative side of the U.N. record, the organization is notoriously slow at fielding any large operation beyond emergency responses like food relief or a rapid World Health Organization intervention in new epidemic diseases such as SARS. Recruiting enough civilian police trainers for a country with the size and volatility of Iraq could take months. Major appointments to U.N. missions are often surrounded by political bickering and long delays in raising funds. Sergio Vieira de Mello was named the interim head of the U.N. mission in Iraq in a matter of days mainly because he was the only candidate Washington wanted. The United Nations always feels political pressure from governments, including those being punished. In Iraq in the 1990s this was a constant source of annoyance for officials trying to run an effective "oil-for-food" program. Much has been said and written about the self-interested roles played by France or Russia, but Iraq itself could manipulate both assistance and international diplomacy even without other nations getting involved.

Though an outlaw regime under extraordinarily harsh sanctions, the Iraqi government had the power to approve or disapprove U.N. appointments. It was not surprising that some international civil servants bordering on sympathetic to Saddam's regime (or doing the diplomatic work of their governments back home, which is in theory forbidden) allowed Iraq to make decisions not always in the interests of the Iraqi people. Report after report by the secretary general asked, for example, why special nutritional supplements were not being ordered in greater quantities by Baghdad, or why visas for relief workers were inexplicably withheld or denied, while delegations of antisanctions protestors came and went with relative ease. Furthermore, U.N. agencies were forced to use Iraqi statistics in assessing the effects of sanctions. Top officials of the oil-for-food program said that the Iraqis had never allowed international experts to establish baseline figures against which to judge progress or failure, including on the health of children. U.N. agencies acknowledged that Iraq really did not, for propaganda purposes, want programs to ensure long-term development, more of which would have been possible as money from oil sales began to mount late in the 1990s and most restrictions were removed on a vast array of imports. Moreover, there was never a blanket ban on purchases of medicine or food, even before the formal oil-for-food program was introduced, or finally accepted by Iraq five years after the end of the war. The Iraqi regime said it had no money, yet it was rebuilding infrastructure, draining the southern marshes, running illegal oil exports and lavishing wealth on private residences of obscene ostentation.

Garbage piled up on the streets and archeological sites were looted also during the sanctions period, when the U.N. presence was pervasive. The government blamed the United States, saying that Americans on the Security Council's Iraq sanctions committee were blocking the purchase of garbage trucks for Baghdad and cars for its archeological service. Other Iraqis said that the truth was that no one would collect garbage after South Asian and African workers left the country in 1991. As for the ancient treasures, Iraqis and some U.N. officials concluded that Saddam Hussein didn't really care about them, and that his regime may have been implicated in the 1990s in the illegal sale of at least some of them abroad. The United Nations had no way to stop them. Now the United States, the reluctant nation-builder, has to confront some of the same problems and has learned quickly that Iraqis, with or without Saddam Hussein, can be short on gratitude and loathe to listen to outsiders. The United Nations, with its power of international legitimacy, and the United States, with its military and economic might, have never needed more urgently to work together, reinforcing one another's strengths, as they do now. If not, Iraq could be a crippling disaster for both -- and for the future of the Middle East.

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