18 - 24 October 2001
Issue No.556
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 18 - 24 October 2001 Issue No.556 |
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Ignoble Nobel?
The award of a Nobel peace prize to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has upset some. Gamal Nkrumah writes.
This is the second time that a United Nations secretary-general has won the controversial, though much-coveted, Nobel Peace Prize. Dag Hammarskjold, of Sweden, first won the prize in 1961 -- a year before Annan joined the UN. Annan, this year's winner, joined the world body in 1962 as a 24-year-old administrative officer at the UN affiliated World Health Organisation. He is the first UN chief to rise from the ranks.
Kofi Annan
The position of UN secretary-general was very different in Hammarskjold's day. Then, the world was divided between the United States-led NATO alliance and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Today, pax - and bellus - Americana reign. When Hammarskjold won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Cold War was at its height and anti- colonial and national liberation wars were in full swing. Hammarskjold eventually lost his life during one of those very wars: the Congo crisis.
The Congo remains a vexation for Annan today. But he, at least, no longer needs navigate the uncertain waters separating rival superpowers.
There are other differences from Hammarskjold's day. The UN now boasts 189 member-governments, and 50,000 employees: far more than Annan's Swedish predecessor could count on. But in some ways, Hammarskjold would recognise the troubles that vex the current secretary-general. Keeping an often angry chorus of nations happy is a task that would daunt even the most steadfast CEO. In today's world, keeping all nations happy is an impossible, and largely unrewarding task.
Annan has largely pitched in his lot with the superpower. His tenure has been marked by a steady improvement in the UN's relationship with the US. Only last month, prompted by the 11 September attacks and after years of foot-dragging, the US at last paid $580 million in arrears to the UN. It still owes the organisation an estimated $1 billion.
This amity has inevitably made others less content. Although Annan served for long stretches in the Middle East, in Egypt and Lebanon especially, many regard him as unsympathetic to the Arab cause. Annan is viewed by many Arabs as acting as a rubber stamp for Washington: where the security of Israel takes precedence over all. Annan's record on Iraq is hardly better liked. The UN has prolonged the sanctions regime. Now, Annan's staunch support of the US strikes in Afghanistan, widely seen in the Arab world as harming innocent civilians already suffering famine and political repression, is unlikely to win him further friends from the Arab world. When bombs struck Red Cross shelters and various UN agency headquarters in the Afghan capital, Kabul, without a word of demur from Annan, his stock fell yet further.
By giving Nobel prizes to Annan and to Trinidad-born author V S Naipaul, whose book "Among the Believers" discomfited many Muslims, the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee and its Swedish counterpart have this year chosen personalities unpopular in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Given the impossibility of pleasing everyone, some reward is appropriate for a UN secretary-general. Opprobrium attends much else of a UN chief's career: it is right that the burdens of the task be somehow acknowledged. But the award of a Nobel prize reinforces the sense that the committee is as partisan as the UN has become. While Annan is infinitely more diplomatic than the belligerent Naipaul, both men are seen as basing their careers on support of Western powers and scorning the interests of Arabs and Muslims. And both of them, whatever their intentions, have found willing audience in the West.
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