After the War Was Over, Everybody Sat Down and Lied

By Ian Williams

On June 30, with a sigh of relief, Hans Blix retired as head of UNMOVIC, the U.N. team charged with verifying the disarmament of Iraq. Possibly, Washington will now rediscover its earlier enthusiasm for the U.N. inspectors moving into Iraq—which will be a big relief to the British, who have been very embarrassed at the irrationality of their American allies.

Some in the Bush administration still have not forgiven Blix for being right about Iraq's lack of weapons, and righteous in his refusal to produce expedient findings that would justify the U.S. move to war. On arrival back home in Sweden, the government there immediately sent Washington—or at least some people there—an unwelcome message,reaffirming its confidence in Blix by appointing him chair of an international commission on disarmament

Perhaps the curmudgeons in Washington also were peeved that world-wide polls attested to Blix's immense credibility, compared with the equally immense, and growing, skepticism greeting American pronouncements. It is difficult to see what rational grounds the Pentagon civilians/chickenhawks had for disliking Blix, but it seems to have been a longstanding grudge. John Bolton, Rumsfeld's plant in the State Department whose frequent flier miles to Israel and back must have really accumulated since he took office, had called upon the CIA to investigate Blix. Doubtless, like the CIA's later messages about the lack of evidence for Iraqi weaponry, its clean bill of health for Blix was unpalatable to—and dismissed by—the ideologues.

For the rest of the world, however, Blix's record speaks for itself. He had taken over a completely new organization, which, even if it had inherited the functions and files of the previous Anglo-American-dominated UNSCOM, was completely revamped to avoid any stigmata of dancing to Washington's tune.

UNMOVIC inspectors were drawn from a much wider range of countries, they had sensitivity training on how to avoid upsetting tender Iraqi sensibilities—and for two years they cooled their heels waiting for a stubborn Saddam Hussain to let them in.

In the end, with thousands of U.S. and UK troops deployed to the Iraqi borders, and an overt threat of war, Saddam Hussain complied. Pretty much every hoop the Iraqis were asked to jump through, they did—although they usually managed to do it with just enough gracelessness to keep alive all the suspicions harbored by even their best friends.

Then, after just a few short months, the inspectors were withdrawn in March, in the face of the Anglo-American war ultimatum. To the not inconsiderable amusement of observers who specialize in blood and irony, the victorious allies, whose main excuse for going to war was Baghdad's refusal to cooperate with the inspectors, banned those same inspectors from entering Iraq. Irony, however, is not a quality much appreciated in the Bush administration—perhaps because there is so much of it around, unconscious though it may be, that it has been devalued.

Washington's perverse irrationality can be judged from its different treatment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose head, Mohamed ElBaradei, was, if anything, far more overtly disrespectful of American claims. Following its "victory," the Pentagon found it did not have the expertise and experience of Iraqi nuclear sites to evaluate their safety after the looting. (Indeed, the Americans had proved that by allowing the looting and vandalism to begin with.) So they called upon the U.N. inspectors to determine any loss. Out of sheer reflexive habit, however, the U.S. restricted their movements in a way that would have had the cruise missiles flying in against Saddam Hussain had he tried it.

Now that Blix has gone, it is possible that Washington may turn yet again to the U.N. inspectors. In the seemingly unlikely case that they find anything, a U.N. team would have far more credibility worldwide than an expedient discovery by U.S. forces under pressure from the White House to justify the war. And it would at least give them a scapegoat to blame for the continuing failure to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) so piously promised by Messrs. Bush and Blair.

But where are the weapons?Enough evidence is emerging now to suggest that the WMDs were both a figment of Washington's imagination anda twinkle in Saddam Hussain's eye—or, rather, a virtual program in the minds of Iraqi scientists.

Despite the mantra from both Bush and Blair that the weapons will be found, it is increasingly likely that they are not there. Indeed, Blair's spin doctors already have modified their confidence from certainty that Iraq had weapons 45 minutes from use, to confidence that weapons programs will be found. It seems that Saddam Hussain's son-in-law Kamal may have been speaking the truth when he defected and said that the weapons programs had all been destroyed.

So what happened? When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell performed his otherwise utterly unconvincing show-and-tell at the United Nations Security Council to prove Iraqi possession of WMDs, the only part that lent verisimilitude to an otherwise padded and unconvincing narrative was his challenge on the interviews with Iraqi scientists. If there was no program, why weren't the scientists lining up to be interviewed?

A clue might lie in the recent discovery of nuclear centrifuge equipment, long buried and possibly even forgotten, in a nuclear scientist's backyard in Baghdad. This may also explain the regime's reluctance, beyond its standard paranoia, to allow its scientists to be interviewed, and certainly the refusal to allow them abroad.

It does seem likely that the weapons program was a virtual one: to keep the expertise and know-how alive until such time as the sanctions were over, the spotlight moved on, and the scientific teams could be reassembled and the labs reopened.

It is difficult to see how the U.N., the U.S., or the UK could counter such a program—which may have evaded the spirit of the disarmament resolutions, but probably is close to permissible in the wording.If British and Americans were Ba'athists, they could have just executed all Iraq's biological or nuclear scientists—but this would be frowned upon by most people outside, even more so than internment in Guantanamo Bay. In the end, one cannot "outlaw" knowledge, no matter how pernicious. Moreover, since so many of the techniques used in weapons production are common to industrial processes, it would be impossible to ban them and still run a functioning modern economy.

This hypothesis certainly explains the Iraqi regime's hypersensitivity about the interviews. Sadly, it does not meet the British and American political need for more tangible evidence to justify their invasion, so they will almost certainly keep on looking.

Borderline Sane

On Thursday, July 3, the Security Council voted unanimously to close down the UNIKOM, the Iraq-Kuwait border peacekeeping force, by this Oct. 6, and to end the demilitarized zone that reached 10 kilometers into the Iraqi side of the frontier and 5 into Kuwait. The force had been two-thirds paid for by Kuwait since the border was charted and marked in the days after the first Gulf war.

Kuwait originally seemed to want to keep the force there as a bulwark against a potential revanchist Iraq, but the council responded eagerly to a suggestion by Kofi Annan that the peacekeeping force be wound up after 12 years. It was an opportunity not to be missed when looking at the missions in the Sahara, Cyprus, Kashmir and Middle East that have tended to become permanent fixtures over the decades.

Although the force was supposed to repel armed attacks from either side of the border, Kofi Annan withdrew it shortly before the Allied attack on Iraq—even though its last reports included the incursions by American troops into the internationally declared demilitarized zone.

Secretary-General Annan reported that much of the force's property and installations on the Iraqi side had suffered the fate of public property there in the aftermath of the war—i.e., it was looted and vandalized. On the Kuwait side it was discovered that "Coalition forces had occupied some United Nations premises and made unauthorized use of United Nations property."

Some of what remained, in the way of generators and trucks, was trundled up to Baghdad to assist the new U.N. special representative, and much of their logistics equipment will end up with the U.N. agencies.

Those agencies have been very busy indeed. With little or no notice from the American media, the U.N. has provided the bulk of the humanitarian aid to Iraq, especially food and medicines. While Washington has been jealous in sharing authority or contracts, it still naively expects the rest of world, unrequited, to share the burdens of occupation both militarily and financially.

Large sections of the American forces that were supposed to be withdrawn have been kept in the face of Iraqis' increasing resistance. For his part, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has demanded a report on needs in Iraq and wants other countries to contribute more. "The more there are, the fewer U.S. troops we have to have," Rummy told a Pentagon press conference.

Of course, the assumption that other countries will be prepared to put their sons and daughters at risk of life to consolidate American control of Iraq stands in stark contrast to Washington's traditional reluctance to commit U.S. troops to U.N. peace-keeping operations—especially if they may be at risk. "Ask not what the U.S. can do for you, but what can you do for the U.S." is the new working principle—which seems to be working.

So far, 24 countries allegedly have offered contingents, and another dozen are in discussions—or under pressure. Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Lithuania, Romania and New Zealand will provide a combined 5,000 troops to serve under British command, and others include Hungary, Bulgaria, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Spain, Ukraine, Slovakia and Denmark, who have varying degrees of enthusiasm for the project, not least because of domestic opposition.

India and Pakistan both have been asked for large contingents and have governments eager to please Washington—but both have large domestic constituencies that would be very reluctant, indeed very angry, at such a deployment. In Mid-July, India seems finally to have balked at a request for 17,000 troops.

And, of course, occupation costs money, so State Department sources reportedly are asking the Gulf states to pony up for an international fund to pay for the troop contributions from countries like Pakistan.

Resolution 1283 did invite countries to make such contributions, but without giving an explicit U.N. mandate to them, and certainly without approving the invasion and occupation. All that troop contributors get is the slight hope that the U.S. will remember them kindly in the future, and the earnest hope that Washington will not retaliate should they refuse. Perhaps it is time for the Palestinians to volunteer some of the numerous security forces they have had. At the very least, it would be interesting to see Rumsfeld's reaction. Gratitude is unlikely.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations.