The stuff of genocide
By Azadeh Moaveni
Hans Blix, the recently appointed head of the Security Council's disarmament
commission for Iraq, should not mind his current unpopularity. The Swedish
lawyer is only the latest in a string of distinguished global civil servants
catapulted into disrepute for failing to be as stringent with Iraq as
American foreign policy sees fit.

Just ask Denis Halliday, the former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq,
whose thankless task it was to oversee the feeding of an embargo-stricken
nation -- despite the best efforts of both the Iraqi government and the
US-led Security Council. Like all his predecessors, Halliday's tenure was
short-lived; and like his successor, Hans Von Sponeck, he was met with a
public relations assault by the American press charging him with complicity
in the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein.

One year after Iraq expelled the scandal-besmirched UNSCOM (UN Special
Committee for Iraq), the Security Council has fumbled together a new
inspection team bearing the equally inelegant acronym UNMOVIC (UN
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Committee). On the eve of the UN's
scheduled return to Iraq, Halliday talked with Al-Ahram Weekly about the
futility of sanctions, the motives behind arms inspections, and Iraq's
enduring suffering.

Even if the last of Saddam Hussein's stockpile of weapons is ferreted out;
even if "oil-for-food" begins to run as smoothly as a first-world venture
capital firm; there will still be lasting damage marring the integrity of
the United Nations. "The UN continues the sanctions regime, knowing full
well its impact," says Halliday. "Despite all those figures, and despite
Madeleine Albright's acknowledgement that half a million children have died
-- [this] is undermining the credibility of the UN."

Things have reached a point, says Halliday, where he believes there are two
radically different systems cohabiting within the UN -- that of the
secretary-general and the secretariat, and that of the member states and the
Security Council. "To me it's the member states that are corrupted and
allowed this damage," he says. "It's tragic for the Security Council to be
guilty of genocide."

If there is indeed a crisis in the ethical mandate of the UN, it is felt
particularly in the Middle East. "[The West] is in no position to criticise
Iraq, or even Saddam Hussein, who is an amateur compared to what we do,"
Halliday says, "We do so because we are Western, and there is a horrible
double standard that the Security Council maintains." As a case in point,
Halliday distinguishes the difference between the UN's resolution condemning
Israel on its occupation of southern Lebanon and the UN policies on Iraq --
a conspicuous instance of this double standard.

Americans and British insist that the moderate positions of the French,
Chinese and Russians within the Security Council is tantamount to
concessions to Iraq. Halliday maintains that little will change in the UN
without a shift in American leadership. "When Washington understands that
the UN is something to participate in, and not something to manipulate or an
extension of the State Department, we'll begin to see some change," he says.

But Albright has long been willing to endure the few timid criticisms of the
sanctions regime, and argues Saddam Hussein is more of a serious threat when
armed. Thus the never-ending cycle of invasive inspections, which the Iraqis
deem intolerable; and the consequent "missing information", which UNSCOM
deems as crucial.

Herein lies Halliday's biggest grievance. It is unacceptable under
international law, he argues, to link humanitarian support to disarmament.
"[People] cannot be held hostage to the military ambitions of their own
government," he says. "It's hard to explain how such a glaring breach can go
on, but [it's done] because basically, the [US and Britain] know most people
don't understand -- and so successfully have they demonised Saddam Hussein
that basically anything goes."

It is this image of Saddam Hussein that has underlaid all the rows with
UNSCOM, and this track record makes it unpredictable whether UNMOVIC will
fare any better in its efforts to be "firm" with Iraq. Halliday says the
latest inspection agency is a new beast altogether: Carefully selected by
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, all UNMOVIC inspectors will be UN staff
members responsible solely to Annan (UNSCOM had members on the CIA payroll).
If the new model for inspections ever gets off the ground, Halliday
suggests, it may be a significantly different one.

"Why should the Iraqis comply with the carrot of suspension when they know
the bottom line for Washington is not military disarmament but the removal
of Saddam Hussein?" Halliday asks in the end. The United States and Britain,
he says, are interested only in controlling the Middle East's oil supply for
Europe and Japan. "All this stuff about the military is just rubbish," he
says, "it's all about the strategic stuff"