Friday, September 05, 2003

US rider on UN

BY PV VIVEKANAND

PV Vivekanand

IT IS NOT surprising that US President George W Bush has agreed to accept an increased United Nations role in post-war Iraq although he has attached a condition that a UN-authorised military force in the counrty should be placed under American command.
The Bush administration's initial projections went wrong in Iraq, and now, nearly five months after a US-led military force toppled Saddam Hussein in war, Washington has come to realise that it is indeed slipping into a deeper abyss as every day passes with increased attacks on American soldiers and growing unrest among Iraqis that bode ill for the occupation authorities.
There would be backlashes in Washington and some heads might roll, particularly of those pro-Israeli hawks who orchestrated the war with predictions that Iraqis would be eternally grateful to the US for having ousted the Saddam regime.
That is indeed a problem for Bush and his people and we would be seeing its manifestations sooner than later
From the vantage point in the Middle East, Bush's change of mind was expected although he had all but ruled out any effort or a new Security Council resolution that could give a UN umbrella for hesitant countries prompted to contribute troops to keep peace in post-war Iraq. His advisers have come to appreciate the reality that it is impossible to keep Iraq under the US feet for long without facing the risk of the toes being blown away.
The conservative Financial Times of London commented this week: “Facing resistance by forces they have yet to identify with any conviction, the US-led occupation authorities are unable to control the roads or the borders, the water or the electricity supply. It is now increasingly clear they are also unable to defend the allies and institutions they need to rebuild Iraq.”
Few people in the Middle East and Asia needed to be told of the analysis that it was only a matter of time that the US strategists would realise the enormity of the task in Iraq and would want a face-saving formula, and that is what the Bush administration is trying to do by securing a UN resolution that would alleviate the risks that the US and allied forces are currently facing in Iraq.
According to the New York Times, the administration has already drawn up a draft resolution that has only been shown to the British government. Details of the draft are not available yet, but it is believed to contain language that clearly grants the US the overall command and authority to take important decisions on its own.
However, France and Russia, among others, might not want to grant that kind of authority to the US for several reasons, the first being of course allowing the US to have a largely free hand in Iraqi affairs under a UN umbrella. They are also aware that a UN-mandated force with majority American participation and under American command would not be accepted by many Iraqis who would find little difference between the Blue Berets and the American-led now occupying Iraq.
According to Ellie Goldsworthy, a military expert at London's Royal United Services Institute, Washington wanted to appear willing to compromise, while keeping military control.
"There is no solution that anyone will leap at," she told Reuters, but argued that even opponents of the US-led war recognised that Iraq could not be allowed to spin out of control.
"It's in everyone's interest to see internationalisation," she said. "It spreads the emotional as well as the military burden and would alleviate the political pressure on Bush and (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair."
India, Pakistan and Turkey are three countries which have adopted a position that their contribution to a military force would come only under a UN umbrella; all the three governments face bitter opposition to sending troops to Iraq even under a UN resolution.
The International Crisis Group, a body of experts in various aspects of governance, military affairs and international politics, has recommended a division of labour between the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the United Nations and the interim Iraqi Governing Council.
Under the proposal, the CPA should keep control of military security, law and order, and restoring basic infrastructure; the UN would oversee the Governing Council and the constitutional process, organise elections and coordinate humanitarian aid, among other responsibilities.
The council would take on day-to-day governance of Iraq, including a role in reconstituting the police and armed forces.
According to the group, only such a balanced approach could help resolve the problem of who governs Iraq during the occupation.
Regional experts say that an enhanced UN role with full authority in shaping post-Saddam Iraq is an absolute necessity in order to change the perception that Iraq has become an American colony.
Some analysts argue that Iraqis have lost faith in the UN: They believe that although the Security Council did not explicitly authorise the US to go to war, it is seen to have led the US into it.
The UN is seen by many Iraqis as being responsible for the sanctions imposed in 1990, which is said to have cost the lives of half a million Iraqi children. The Iraqis see the UN as responsible for the humiliating weapons inspections, which disarmed the country and delivered it up defenceless to the American attack. By setting up deadlines on non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the UN helped provide the excuses that the Bush government desperately needed in order to sell the war to the American public.
And now the world boy has legitimised the US occupation of Iraq. That is how some commentators see the Iraqi mindset.
This week, a contingent led by Poles and including brigades that are commanded by Ukrainians and Spaniards replaced a US Marines unit in southwestern Iraq.
Other countries which have sent troops or have agreed send troops to post-war Iraq include Japan, Bulgaria, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Thailand.
At present there are 150,000 American, 11,000 British and 10,000 other soldiers in Iraq.
Apart from the human cost of occupying Iraq -- at least 67 American soldiers have been killed since Bush announced a formal end to combat in Iraq in May -- Washington is burdened with spending $125 million a day in the country, according to some accounts.
Bush's decision to go for a UN resolution came after several rounds of intense meetings with his advisers and key cabinet official.
"While not unexpected, it was a tacit admission that the current American-dominated force is stretched too thin," said the New York Times. "It also amounts to one of the most significant changes in strategy since the end of major combat in Iraq."
A Congressional study has showed that the US Army lacked the active-duty troops to keep the current occupation force in Iraq past March, without getting extra help from either other services and reserves or from other nations, or without spending tens of billions to vastly expand its size, according to the Times.
The New York Times also quoted a senior official as saying that Bush's national security team hopes to start withdrawing the majority of American forces now in Iraq within 18 months to two years, and "making this peacekeeping operation look like the kind that are familiar to us," in Kosovo, Bosnia and other places where the United Nations has taken the major role.
Another senior administration official told the paper that Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell had discussed "ways to persuade the Security Council members to create such a force, and added that Mr. Powell "is going to be working with our colleagues and allies to talk about language that can bring maximum, effective resources to bear" in Iraq.



According to a US Congressional study, if the Defence Department pushed ahead with its plan of rotating active-duty army troops out of Iraq after a year, it would be able to sustain a force of only 67,000 to 106,000 active duty and reserve forces. A larger force would put at risk the military's operations elsewhere around the globe, according to the study.
It said the Pentagon did not have enough personnel to keep the troops fresh and still conduct operations in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Korea.
The study was requested by Democrat Senator Robert C. Byrd, a critic of the Iraq war, after the Bush administration refused to discuss the long-term cost of a sustaining the occupation force in Iraq.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., also a Democrat, said recently: "We're 95 percent of the deaths, 95 percent of the costs, and more than 90 percent of the troops.
"The costs are staggering, the number of troops are staggering, we're seeing continuing escalation of American casualties, and we need to turn to the UN for help, for a UN-sanctioned military operation that is under US command."
The congressional study also analysed the financial cost of the occupation. It said the US could maintain in Iraq a force of up to 106,000 if it uses Marine Corps units, Army Special Forces groups and National Guard combat units. Such units have generally not been used for peacekeeping, and the budget office said using them would bring the cost of the occupation to $19 billion a year compared with the $46.8 billion projected by the Pentagon.
According to the study, if the Defence Department stuck with its present plans of using army unit, then recruiting, training and equipping two new divisions would require an up-front cost of up to $19 billion and take five years; it would cost an extra $9 billion to $10 billion a year to put the units in place in Iraq raising the total cost of the occupation force up to 129,000 troops and cost up to $29 billion a year.
Byrd used the report to argue that the Bush administration failed to inform the nation of the true costs of invading Iraq, and said the United States must now get support from the international community to sustain the occupation.
Evidently, the Americans have not heard the last about the issue from Byrd. Come election time next time, every "shortcoming" of the Bush administration would be used to its full strength.

The pro-Israeli camp, or the so-called neoconservatives, in Washington might be feeling heat of the situation, after having stood firm on their suggestions that occupying Iraq was not a risky proposition. After all, Bush is coming to grips with the realities of the situation on the ground in Iraq and should be turning around to ask who pushed him into it.
"It reflects a reality check for the neo-conservatives, who now feel exposed," said Jonathan Stevenson, a security expert at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
"The post-conflict situation is proving much more fraught than the United States anticipated, but the Pentagon is still less inclined than the State Department to yield real authority to the United Nations. They are not ready to capitulate." Stevenson told Reuters.
The hawks who pushed Bush into invading Iraq on easy assumptions are believed to include
Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfovitz.
"The neo-conservatives had certainly followed the belief that Iraq would fall easily, the Americans would be welcomed as liberators and Iraq would become a democracy," according to Gareth Stansfield, an Iraq expert at Britain's Exeter University,
"The Americans are now trying to identify the least worst solution," Stansfield said. "They are looking for an exit strategy by internationalising the situation."
Worse still, reports from Washington indicate, the neoconseratives convinced Bush before the war that the UN was a teethless tiger and the US had the ability to take and implement unilateral US action.
It was under their advice that the UN would condemn itself to "irrelevance" unless it endorsed military action. But now Bush has to go back to the UN, and that is not something he would like to forget in a hurry.
According to Dana Allin, a senior fellow for transatlantic relations at the IISS, , returning to the UN represented "a defeat for the idea that the US can do this more or less on its own, without seeking a compromise on the Security Council on defining the legitimacy of the US occupation of Iraq."
But that view is not shared by the hawks in the Bush administration who are seen ready to expose the US to more risks in order to achieve their strategy of transforming the Middle East into an area that serves Israeli interests and propel the Jewish state as the dominant power in the region at American expense. They need a puppet regime in Iraq that would be ready to use as brutal force as that was employed by the Saddam regime; for them, the well-being of the people of Iraq is not a priority at all.
As such, a battle is brewing within Washington circles for and against granting the UN real authority in Iraq. That posts a key question: Could Bush's pointman Powell be able to work out a deal that pleases everyone now, but increases the risks for foreign troops landing in Iraq at a later stage?
Equally important is the question how "aggressive" would the proposed UN force be?
Given the presence of groups hostile to foreign presence, notably American, in post-war Iraq, the UN force might not be able to pursue a pacifist approach. Would than mean the Blue Berets storming houses and suspected hideouts with their guns blazing as the Americans are doing today?