Kofi Annan, looking tired and sad in the closing days of a decade as UN secretary-general, has said that average Iraqis are now worse off than they were under Saddam Hussein. He went on to say that the country is sinking into something worse than civil war. The Iraqi government’s national security adviser, Mouwaffaq Al-Rubaie, quickly and angrily rejected Annan’s assessment and accused the UN of failing his country.
It was an intemperate response. The United States has failed Iraq. Iraq’s neighbors, Iran and Syria, have failed Iraq. Iraq’s squabbling politicians have failed Iraq. It might even be said that Iraqis themselves have failed each other but it is hard to see how the UN has let the country down. Marginalized by the Bush White House in the run-up to the invasion, the UN and its secretary-general were not allowed to play the temperate and mediating role that is supposed to be theirs. Obliged to recognize the fait accompli of the occupation, the UN gave the Coalition a mandate to rebuild a secure Iraqi state with restored infrastructure.
However, the UN’s own efforts to assist Iraq back to normalcy were blown apart in August 2003 when the organization’s Baghdad headquarters were destroyed in a truck bombing which killed 17, including the UN’s head of mission, Sergio Vieira de Mello. With the benefit of hindsight, the tragic deaths can now be seen as a masterstroke by the insurgents. Annan was left with no real choice but to withdraw the greater part of the UN presence and so abandon the social and welfare programs that had been the backbone of its work. Thus the one objective voice that might have brokered a settlement and led Iraq away from a steady descent into factional violence and bloodshed was driven from the scene. To blame the UN for Iraq’s troubles is therefore wrong. Nor can it be said that the quality of life for Iraqis is now better than under Saddam. Brutal though the dictatorship was, a man could by and large protect himself and his family by avoiding any contentious actions or statements. The country was hobbled by the Baathist secret police but day-to-day life was generally safe and predictable.
Annan is, however, in error when he says that Iraq is now in something “worse” than civil war. The savagery that Al-Qaeda and Baathist insurgents began with their bombs and assassinations is now being returned in kind and with interest by militant Shiite death squads. The government is powerless and so too is the might of the US-led military and the Iraqi police and military they have trained.
But this is still an insanity that could be ended if millions of ordinary Iraqis could be given reason to believe that the men of violence in their different communities offered no long-term solution. Iraq has become a maelstrom of opportunist thugs, criminal gangs, rabble-rousing bigots and cold-hearted fanatics. Each promises his own community victory through violence. All are wrong because if their way is followed, the only triumph will be for gravediggers. The real victory that all decent Iraqis still want and long for is security and peace.
