The UN administered the killer sanctions for almost 13 years until President Bush the Second ordered them ended after the March 2003 invasion so that the U. S. could sell sufficient quantities of Iraqi oil to pay for the occupation. (The disruption of oil production and the bombing of pipelines by resistance forces is a major financial blow to the White House, which has already used up the billions of dollars it stole from Iraqi bank accounts to finance a portion of its war expenses.)
The sanctions were perhaps the most draconian ever applied in the modern era. So many goods were embargoed that Iraq was never able to recover from the massive damage caused by the U.S.-led war. The UN, following U.S. instructions, never lifted a finger to genuinely reduce the boundless sufferings it imposed upon the Iraqi people. The sanctions resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million Iraqi people, half of them children.
Several leading UN officials, including Assistant UN Secretary-General Dennis Halliday, who functioned as the UN's Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq until 1998, resigned in protest, but the world body continued its sanctions until Washington decided it was time to stop. In an interview just after the bombing of the UN building in Baghdad last month, Halliday stated: "We all think of the UN as this benign entity, but in Iraq it's held responsible for a great deal of suffering of the Iraqi people.... We love to talk about our good humanitarian work — there's certainly truth to that, and good people trying to help Iraqis were killed — but the Secretary General has implemented programs which are inherently incompatible with the UN Charter." Halliday believes "The UN Security Council has been taken over and corrupted by the U.S. and UK, particularly with regard to Iraq, Palestine and Israel."
In addition to regulating the sanctions, the United Nations Special Committee (UNSCOM) implemented programs to search for Iraq's supply of weapons of mass destruction, eliminating over 90% of them by the late 1990s, according to Scott Ritter. It further oversaw the frequent U.S. bombings over alleged infractions (such as when Iraqi anti-aircraft installations switched on radar to track the incoming fighter planes). At first such bombings took place only a few times a month, but in the nine months leading to this year's invasion, American and British planes pummeled Iraqi territory on a daily basis in preparation for the war — and the UN said nothing.
In 1998, the UN stood by with arms folded when President Clinton unilaterally ordered UNSCOM inspectors to flee from Iraq immediately just before a massive three-day bombing campaign that, Ritter testified, was totally unnecessary. A few weeks later it was revealed that Washington had placed spies in the UN inspection teams and that they were reporting back to the Defense Intelligence Agency on a regular basis.
Last year, President Hussein insisted that Iraq had destroyed its small remaining stores of WMD, but consented to the return of UN inspectors when it became apparent the Bush administration was fabricating "facts" about the alleged weapons to justify destroying his country. Washington assured the world the weapons were hidden there. The inspectors searched for months but found nothing, even after the U.S. reluctantly handed over its list of specific weapons sites. As the Bush administration became impatient to launch an invasion, the UN weapons inspectors asked for more time to continue their work. But when President Bush said it's time to leave, the UN pulled out the teams without a public rebuke. The U.S., desiring to search for the phony WMD on its own, will not allow the inspectors to return — and the UN says nothing. Six months later no WMD has been located.
The UN Security Council did not authorize the U.S. to invade Iraq, but it passed Resolution 1441 (threatening "serious consequences" if Iraq deceived UN weapons inspectors) that came close enough for Bush to convince the American people that it gave de facto approval, if not de jure. And despite the fact that Washington's "preemptive war" was specifically in violation of the UN Charter and unjust by all international standards for war, the United Nations did nothing to even criticize U.S. aggression, much less to aid the Iraqi people. Soon after President Bush declared victory over Iraq, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1483 (14-0, with Syria abstaining) recognizing the U.S. and its satellite, Great Britain, as the "occupying authorities" and giving Washington control of Iraq's enormous oil reserves.
President Bush and his neo-conservative cronies despise the United Nations, but use the organization whenever it can further their imperial interests, as the UN has done with increasing frequently in recent years, especially following the implosion of the USSR and the socialist group of nations. Thus, the UN was ignored when it came to invading Iraq but the White House assigned a small role to the world organization in terms of the occupation, partly to help out and partly to camouflage a reprehensible unilateral deed with the patina of respectable international support.
With President Bush's enthusiastic backing, Secretary General Annan sent De Mello to Baghdad on the basis of Resolution 1483 to become involved in Iraq's reconstruction, with special emphasis on bringing political peace to the country. His principal task was to assist Paul Bremer, who controls non-military activities in Iraq through Washington's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
De Mello's first responsibility was to help Bremer form a puppet government — a job he tackled with considerable skill. He received much of the credit for forming the 25-person Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), a collection of representatives from various religious and secular organizations that claim, at least for now, to support the U.S. invasion and occupation of their own country. De Mello also toured the Mideast to gain support for the legitimacy of the IGC from a number of Arab governments that usually kowtow to Washington but which may have had doubts about being associated with so flagrant a political fiction. He was quite successful, even though all the council members were hand-picked by Bremer and the Pentagon and the council itself cannot make a decision without U.S. approval.
Accompanying members of the IGC to UN headquarters in New York in early August, De Mello informed the Security Council that "We now have an institution that, while not democratically elected, can be viewed as broadly representative of the various constituencies in Iraq. It means we now have a formal body of senior and distinguished Iraqi counterparts, with credibility and authority, with whom we can chart the way forward." The Security Council "welcomed" the Governing Council with Resolution 1500. A week later, De Mello — on leave as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in order to act as the world organization's special representative to Iraq — died in the Baghdad bombing.
The U.S. invasion, the Baghdad bombing and the movement debate over UN involvement in Iraq have brought forward a number of criticisms of the world body.
After the bombing, former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was essentially dumped by the U.S. because he did not bend the knee with sufficient grace, told the BBC that U.S. influence has created "the perception in a great part of the Third World that the United Nations... is a system of discrimination" against their interests. In March, as President Bush was launching his war, he told the Guardian (UK), that "The United Nations is just an instrument at the service of American policy. They will use it when they need to, through a multilateral approach and if they don't need it, they will act outside the framework of the United Nations. Of course with a military budget that is equivalent to that of all the permanent members of the security council together, they can afford to."
James Petras, the long-time SUNY Binghamton professor and expert in Latin American developments, wrote Aug. 24 in an article on the bombing that: "The UN has moved very far from its original founding principles. At one time the UN stood for peace, social justice and self-determination and opposed colonial wars, pillage of national wealth and colonial rule. Given the active partisan role of the UN in Iraq, in creating a political framework compatible with prolonged U.S. colonial rulership it is not at all a mystery why the Iraqi resistance targeted the UN building just as it targets the imperial army and the oil pipelines."
On Aug. 29, Alexander Cockburn, a columnist for The Nation, wrote in CounterPunch, "These days, UN functionaries such as Annan and the late [Sergio Vieira de Mello] know full well that their careers depend on American patronage."
Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think-tank, and a progressive commentator on world events, said Aug. 21: "The UN should never have agreed to participate under the authority of [the U.S.] occupation force. To do so provides a political fig leaf for an illegal occupation.... Under the Geneva Conventions it remains the responsibility of the U.S. and UK as the occupying powers, not the United Nations, to provide for the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people.... The UN should pull out of Iraq, and refuse to return until the U.S. ends its occupation."
At this point, the liberal demand for a major UN role under the U.S. occupation is gaining strength within the establishment political system. The Bush administration, in a panic as its political-military position in Iraq deteriorates, is now willing to entertain a role for the international organization — including lending the UN's name to a multinational military force (under U.S. control) — in order to secure its rule in Baghdad. The "opposition" Democrats also appear to be jumping on the UN bandwagon, with many top politicians finally speaking out critically by opportunistically blaming the Bush administration, not for starting the war but for bungling it.
Much of the activist antiwar movement appears to remain committed to a "U.S. Out Now" perspective, postponing any UN role until after occupation troops are withdrawn. This will be the stance of the Oct. 25 mass demonstrations in Washington and other cities. Sectors of the movement, however, are pushing for UN intervention on "humanitarian" grounds, even under the Bush administration's continuing occupation. It remains possible the peace forces could split over this question, thus weakening the movement and playing into Bush's hands by covering the crimes of his ever so red, white and blue invasion with the light blue flag of the United Nations.