13 - 19 September 2001
Issue No.551
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551 |
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Appetites for destruction
Tension is rising again between Iraq and the United Nations' Security Council following Baghdad's most recent expulsion of UN personnel, writes Salah Hemeid
Iraq has accused a total of eight United Nations staffers of spying for the United States in recent weeks and ordered their expulsion. In a letter to the UN, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry justified the move against the UN employees saying that it was "due to their activities that infringe on the national security of the Republic of Iraq ó activities that were inconsistent with their assigned responsibilities."
The details of the charges against the UN officials ó four Nigerians, two Argentinians, one Dutch national and one Bosnian ó were not immediately released, but Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations Mohamed Al-Douri later said that UN staffers had been "spying for another country ó the United States. Otherwise, they would not have accused them of jeopardising national security," he said.
Benaon Sevan, the director of the UN's oil-for-food programme, which employs five of the expelled staffers, meanwhile, denied the spying charges and demanded that Iraq produce evidence for its allegations.
The UN has some 900 staff members in Iraq engaged in activities including overseeing the oil-for food programme, administering health care projects and removing land mines. These eight expulsion orders are only the latest manifestation of the conflict between Baghdad and the UN bureaucracy in Iraq that has repeatedly resulted in the swift departure of UN staffers.
In 1997, the UN withdrew six American weapons inspectors after Iraq accused them of being spies. The move sparked a crisis that eventually forced the remaining UN arms experts dismantling Baghdad's weapons programme to withdraw from the country leaving their mission unfinished. Last year a staff member from New Zealand was forced to depart the country after being accused of planting locust eggs to harm Iraq's agriculture. Another staffer was withdrawn after he was charged with smuggling whiskey into the country. This April, as UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida disclosed, Iraq expelled two members of the UN force monitoring the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border (UNIKOM) after claiming that they had violated standard operating procedures by taking pictures inside Iraq.
By undermining UN programmes, the government of President Saddam Hussein is sending a powerful political message to the United States which Iraq blames for prolonging the economic sanctions that were imposed after its troops invaded Kuwait in August 1990. "Obviously it [the oil-for-food programme] can't succeed if its staffers are being harassed and intimidated," said James Cunningham US ambassador to the UN, after the announcement of the latest round of expulsion orders.
As Baghdad takes a hard line with UN staffers, Washington appears to be opening a new front in its protracted war of attrition against Iraq. On Sunday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Iraq is growing increasingly dangerous as Hussein's regime pursues the development of weapons of mass destruction in the absence of international monitoring.
"They have an appetite for weapons of mass destruction," Rumsfeld told Fox television. "They have been, throughout the period since they were able to get the inspectors out of there, working diligently to increase their capabilities in every aspect of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile technology."
Rumsfeld did not provide any evidence to back up his claims that Iraq is becoming "somewhat stronger," but continued to warn that its strength will increase over the next decade and that its biological weapons capacities are particularly worrisome. Asked whether Washington will step-up air strikes or take any other military action against Iraq, Rumsfeld said, "that's a call for the president and the coalition partners as to at what point it would be appropriate."
Hussein appears to be following a strategy of gradually eroding UN sanctions and breaking the isolation imposed on his regime since 1990. So far he has been doing well. UN weapons inspectors are no longer in the country, the embargo is collapsing and Iraq is again enjoying regional and international support. For the first time since the end of the Gulf War, Iraq has shown that it is capable of striking back at the US by downing two American spy planes and seriously endangering the lives of the US pilots enforcing the two "no fly zones" in Iraq. Yet its small tactical victories are unlikely to cause Iraq to forget that the Gulf War is far from over.
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