Bringing the UN in, taking the training wheels off? (22 May 2004)

Published in Labour Left Briefing (June 2004)

The horrific abuse of Iraqi prisoners has left the US in a position of unparalleled weakness within Iraq. The first of the torture pictures emerged less than seventy days before the formal handover of power to Iraqis, scheduled for 30 June. After the massacre at Falluja, and amidst the ongoing sieges of Najaf and Karbala, those pictures ensured that not even the few remaining pro-American Iraqis could defend the presence of US troops inside the country. Iraqi political parties know that it would be political suicide for them to sign up to governing a country after 30 June that is still within the grip of such a blood-stained foreign army: they know that Iraqis would blame them for the almost inevitable future misconduct of US forces.

So the US has been left without anyone willing to take on the role of being its native surrogate in Baghdad. The response of the White House has been to do something that some within the anti-war camp have long argued for: it has brought the United Nations in. Suddenly, the responsibility for creating a new Iraqi government fell upon UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. Washington has now given full authority to Brahimi to select Iraq's interim president, two vice-presidents, prime minister and 26 ministers, all by the end of May. The new government will arrive fully formed "as from the brow of Zeus", one State Department official commented recently to the New York Times. So, problem solved (thinks Washington): the new government will be internationally and internally legitimate, and its flaws will reflect badly only upon a fading Algerian diplomat, not upon the President of the United States in the midst of an election campaign.

But, unsurprisingly, that's not all there is to it. Across the US administration, from the traditional nationalists like Cheney to the neocon ideologues like Wolfowitz, they know that there has been only one real winner out of the Iraq war: and that is Iran. With its regional rival shattered as a military and political power, Number Two on the axis of evil now exercises dominance over the Gulf area, the most prized resource base in the world. Iraqi society has already been permeated over the past year by Iranian influence, funds and client militias. Over the last few months, Pentagon officials have been accusing British administrators based in the south of Iraq of using their position there to cosy up to Iran. But in this case at least there has been little alternative, given the extent of Iran's new power in the region. After all, the biggest demonstrations in modern Iraqi history occurred when an Iranian who speaks poor Arabic - Ayatollah Sistani - called upon Iraqis to protest at Coalition plans for the country.

If there is one thing that the Bush administration knows it can't allow to continue, it is to let the Iranian Ayatollahs gain control over Iraq. If there were fair elections, any new government would likely need to make its first alliance with Tehran, not with Washington. So, however much Bush's election strategists would like to leave Brahimi to take the responsibility and hence the flak, they just can't keep their hands off. That is why the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority has spent the last few months creating supposedly independent commissions, which have its members appointed by Washington, but which take over the main roles of many of Iraq's ministries. Thus, the Board of Supreme Audit will have the authority to investigate any uses of Iraqi public money. The Office of the Inspector General will look into allegations of corruption in any sector. The Communications and Media Commission will have the authority to license or to shut down broadcasters. All of these bodies are creations of the US, and their members will probably be chosen because of their willing to work in close cooperation with the new US embassy in Baghdad. Future Iraqi governments will find it almost impossible to interfere with these bodies without drawing down the wrath of Washington. President Bush has spoken of how his new strategy in Iraq is "to take the training wheels off", but this seems to be a bicycle on which the cyclist can't reach the handlebars.

And Brahimi has himself been sucked through the Bush grinder. He has been given a US minder - Robert Blackwill, a member of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's team. The periodic assaults of Brahimi's character by people close to the US administration are enough to demonstrate to him that if he takes a false step (as the US perceives it), all of America's guns will be blazing at the UN. One middle-ranking UN official has speculated that the vigour of the current US probe into alleged UN corruption over the oil-for-food programme for Iraq, reportedly involving Kofi Annan's son, will depend on how closely Brahimi follows Blackwill's line.

A UN fig leaf rarely manages to do much hiding. Iraqi opponents of the occupation already know this. Take 'Abd al-Jabbar al-Qubaysi, who heads a nationalist grouping that has supported attacks on US forces. In mid-May, he said: "The US need new, clean faces for their occupation administration. So they asked the UN and Brahimi to save the situation for them. They are trying to build a new façade. But the people know that they are cheating. UN and Brahimi are nothing else than political agents of the US." If that view is as widespread as it now seems to be, all the UN will be offering to Iraq if it engages more substantially in its current role will be more targets for the violent resistance to hit at.

Author: Glen Rangwala

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