Issue No. 608
Opinion
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17 - 23 October 2002 Issue No. 608 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
More than meets the eye
The US has far-reaching ulterior motives for a military campaign against Iraq, argues Hassan Nafaa*
The repercussions of a US-led war against Iraq will be felt far beyond the borders of the two countries. Iraq, as the target, will suffer the most immediately perceptible drastic damage. However, a military campaign against Iraq will trigger a series of chain reactions that will -- in either the short or long term -- critically affect the global and regional balances of power. Above all, if the US puts its hands on Iraqi oil, it will be in such a position of international dominance as to be able to reconfigure the regional political map to ensure uncontested control over the area's resources.
Many regional and international powers harbour such deep suspicions of Washington's intentions and motives that in spite of the disparity in their own goals, they are united by a shared interest in preventing the US from using the Iraqi crisis to enhance its global hegemony by monopolising control over Gulf oil. At the same time, however, these forces are keen not to be seen as siding with a reckless and arrogant regime whose record is so difficult to defend. Consequently, the movement to check US schemes for Iraq is, to a large extent, determined by Baghdad's behaviour and its ability to comprehend the contours of the current regional and international configurations that have changed considerably since the early 1990s.
The gap between Washington's declared aims towards Iraq and what seems to be on its hidden agenda has become increasingly visible. The US has repeatedly asserted that its sole aim is to disarm Iraq of weapons of nuclear destruction. True, Washington has made no secret of its desire to topple the Iraqi regime. However, it justifies this desire in terms of its declared aim. It is impossible to disarm Iraq while President Saddam Hussein remains in power, the US claims, because it will not truly cooperate with international arms inspectors, but instead attempt to deceive them. Still, large segments of the public throughout the world, especially people from more objective political and intellectual quarters, remain unconvinced, particularly in view of the fact that the US has so far failed to furnish convincing evidence of its claims. Indeed, as the crisis escalates, proponents of this view have become increasingly convinced that Iraq no longer poses a security threat to anyone, even if they still doubt that Iraq has completely rid itself of weapons of mass destruction. These forces are also more inclined to believe that the US agenda has more to do with domestic considerations, on the one hand, and imperial aspirations, on the other, than it does with Baghdad's arsenal. In the Arab world, the public appears more certain than ever that the US aims to redraw the political map of the region in a manner that is consistent with its interests and more responsive to Israeli conditions for a peace settlement.
Because the US's campaign against Iraq derives its primary impetus from the hawks in the Bush administration, it contains a considerable degree of arrogance and provocation. It was, thus, not surprising that this camp insisted, initially, that the US had the right to use all available means, including military force, to overturn the regime in Iraq without having to seek a new mandate from either the Security Council or Congress. Naturally, this presumptuousness triggered such an outcry, both in the US and abroad, that the White House was forced to make a tactical concession. It would seek Security Council and Congressional approval for its plans without altering the substance of their strategic objectives.
Thus the US president dedicated his entire address to the UN General Assembly this year to the Iraqi crisis. Iraq, he proclaimed, posed a unique peril, not only to the security of the US and the security of Iraq's neighbours, but to peace and security the world over. He urged the Security Council to rise to the level of this challenge. Yet, the fact that the charges he leveled against Baghdad went far beyond the realm of weapons of mass destruction to include everything from human rights violations to the theft of Kuwaiti property, served to furnish observers with evidence that Washington's primary goal was to oust the Iraqi regime.
Against the backdrop of growing suspicion over US designs, the international community moved to capitalise on Washington's recent retraction of its position with respect to the UN. It thus began to press for the acceptance of two important principles. First, weapons of mass destruction should remain the primary criterion for international intervention and, second, recourse to force against Iraq, in the event that it refuses to comply with the demands of weapons inspectors, would require a second UN Security Council resolution expressly for that purpose. Certainly, Baghdad's declaration that it was prepared to unconditionally accept the return of UN arms inspectors and its subsequent efforts to reach an agreement with UN negotiators towards this end, took the wind out of the sails of the hawks in Washington -- at least momentarily.
If Baghdad's efforts bolstered the position of those forces that seek to forestall the prospect of war and restrain, if only temporarily, the rage of the American bull, warmongers in Washington were not about to throw in the towel that easily. Using every means at their disposal, both legitimate and otherwise, they sought to undermine attempts to restrict the focus on Iraq to weapons of mass destruction. Since there is no fundamental difference between doves and hawks in the current extremist administration in Washington over its strategic aims, they redistributed roles. The so-called doves have been assigned the task of pursuing the formal measures necessary to secure the gloss of legitimacy necessary to accomplish the goals the hawks had already defined.
Using such ploys, the US administration has scored a number of 'successes'. It succeeded, firstly, in prevailing upon the UN to postpone sending the inspection team to Iraq, in spite of the agreement Baghdad signed with the chief arms inspector and the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and, in accordance with which Iraq agreed to all conditions necessary to guarantee the thoroughness and accuracy of the inspection process. There was no legal basis for this deferment. Second, it appears that the US managed to alter Hans Blix's position. Following a meeting with senior US officials, Blix announced that he supported the issuing of a new Security Council resolution. Merely to have issued this statement was an unethical breach of his office; as a UN employee, Blix should receive instructions from no one but the UN secretary-general. The US administration succeeded, thirdly, in securing an almost unanimous Congressional mandate to wage war on Iraq -- without making this contingent upon a UN Security Council resolution. Needless to say, the Congressional decision constitutes a flagrant breach of international law and a deliberate provocation of the international community. Moreover, Congress exacted a heavy bribe for its cooperation. In exchange for Congress's mandate, Bush signed a bill requiring that he deal with Jerusalem as the undivided, eternal capital of Israel. The very currency used in this exchange furnishes the ultimate proof that Arab and Muslim sensitivities are the last considerations the US administration takes into account. All this has paved the way for the resolution on Iraq that now only awaits a Security Council vote. If granted this resolution as it stands, the US will be given complete and sole authority to handle the Iraqi crisis as it wishes.
The draft resolution before the Security Council represents, not an equitable response to a threat to international peace and security, but a flagrant attempt to impose Washington's will on the international community. The UN has thus been presented with a dangerous challenge that could lead to its entire collapse if it fails to counter it effectively.
The resolution is deliberately worded to provoke Iraq to defy it and betrays the US's determination to strike the Gulf country come what may. It not only calls upon Iraq to furnish all information it possesses on illegal weapons and weapons programmes, but also on "programmes it claims are for purposes that have no bearing on the production of weapons or their materials". In other words, the onus for proving that Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction falls not upon the inspection committee but upon the government of Iraq. Should Iraq supply false information, overlook information or fail to comply with the committee on any portion of the resolution, this will justify the use of force as stipulated in Paragraph 10.
Baghdad is further required to allow the inspection team to interview any officials, scientists or other personnel involved in Iraq's armaments programmes. The committee has the right to obtain the names of all people involved in these programmes and the interviews it requires can take place in Iraq or abroad and without the presence of Iraqi officials. These paragraphs (three and four) give credence to the rumours that the US intends to drain Iraq of its scientists and technicians and appropriate them for its own after granting them US citizenship.
Iraq is expected to accept the presence of UN forces to accompany the inspection team. These forces are to be given unrestricted access to any site, including the presidential palaces, without advanced notice. They are also to be accorded the right to declare no access zones and to use various forms of aircraft. Iraq, in other words, must bow to inspection under the threat of arms.
To add insult to injury, the resolution states that any of the permanent members of the Security Council has the right to be represented on the inspection team, with full rights accorded to the rest of the members of the team. This paragraph (five) is a legal and ethical scandal as it obscures the boundary between the powers and functions of the permanent members of the Security Council and the powers and functions of the experts appointed by the secretary-general to carry out Security Council resolutions. Should the resolution be passed in its current form, the US will have succeeded in securing for itself the right to plant a delegate -- read spy -- to report directly back to Bush rather than to Kofi Annan.
The US military machine is closing in on Iraq -- with or without a US-tailored new Security Council mandate. Confronted with this prospect and the current balances of power, the international community can do little but refrain from issuing a resolution that would sanction what is tantamount to naked aggression. Unfortunately, the pressures are such that Washington's fellow members on the Security Council will find it difficult to use their veto. It also appears that the most that Arab governments will be able to do is to refrain from participating in or offering logistical support for a strike. Yet there are already indications that some Arab governments -- if they do not plan an active role in combat -- will offer, voluntarily or under duress, facilities to US forces.
What options, then, are open to Iraq in light of current circumstances? It really has only two choices. It can fight, with all the power and resources it possesses, in the hope, perhaps, of moving the battlefield into the cities, where the enemy would suffer sizable losses, and holding out until Arab, Islamic and international pressures build up sufficiently to alter the political balances of power influencing the war.
The other option is for the regime to step down, in the interests of the safety and future of the Iraqi people. However, in so doing, it should stipulate international -- not US -- supervision over free and fair elections, so as to guarantee handing over the reins of power to a government that represents the Iraqi people and not one that is a proxy government for the US.
The advantage of the first option is that it would give rise to circumstances conducive to a powerful Arab-Islamic mass resistance movement. Such a movement might form the appropriate, if not the only, platform for breaking US arrogance and rescuing the region from a long and dark epoch of US-Israeli domination. The advantage of the second option is that it would spare the energies of the Iraqi people for a battle yet to come.
In both cases, the Iraqi regime must demonstrate as much flexibility and self control as possible. It must sidestep all attempts to provoke it into inciting the people against Arab governments, including those that it knows are inclined to favour the US position. The Iraqi government will gain nothing from such attempts. In any case, the people are fully aware of the positions of their rulers and they will not forgive their governments for directly or indirectly aiding an unjustified US-led aggression. The people, alone, must shoulder the responsibility for bringing their governments to account. This is no longer the age where the masses are goaded into action by blaring microphones. People are moved by much more complex considerations. It is sufficient to recall, in this regard, that the death of Mohamed Al-Dorra stirred the feelings of the world far more powerfully than Palestinian speeches and rhetoric ever had.
Above all, at this crucial time, the Iraqi regime must base its decisions on precise and sober calculations. It must not succumb to idle dreams or false hopes. Simultaneously, whatever that regime decides, this will not absolve the international community, Arab governments and the Arab peoples from assuming their responsibility in the event of war.
* The writer is professor of political science at Cairo University.
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