The Hindu : Avoid the 'peacekeeping' trap

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 23, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Avoid the 'peacekeeping' trap

FOUR MONTHS INTO their high-tech war against Iraq, the United States and its junior partner, the United Kingdom, are beginning to realise that the ground beneath their occupying boots is nothing but quicksand. This realisation is dawning on the establishments as well as the peoples of the two countries, with far-going domestic and international repercussions. American generals have begun to characterise the armed resistance against the occupation forces as "a classical guerrilla-type campaign" by Saddam Hussein. He "outfoxed one President Bush," notes the ultra-conservative columnist, William Safire, in The New York Times, "and intends to outfox and outlast another" by opting for "a war of attrition." Such assessments, even if they trivialise the nature of the patriotic resistance, reflect a ground situation characterised, on the one hand, by brutal suppression, mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war, tremendous damage to and disruption of civilian life, precarious living conditions, rampant misgovernance and a wave of crime, looting and sabotage and, on the other hand, by the broadening and deepening resistance. The number of American soldiers killed since the war began on March 20 is well over 150 — and counting. The cost of the `stabilisation' of Iraq is in the region of $ 4 billion a month. Domestically, the U.S. President, George Bush, and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, find themselves in deep political trouble for doctoring intelligence on the casus belli, the `weapons of mass destruction' the Saddam Hussein regime did not possess, and more generally for getting their countries and 146,000 American and 12,000 British troops bogged down in a costly, no-win war. The triumphalism of Messrs Bush & Blair, so in-your-face in March and April, has vanished — recalling the haunting T.S. Eliot line, "human kind cannot bear very much reality."

Against such a grim background, the Bush administration is frenetically exploring the prospect of inducting the United Nations in the task of `pacifying' and `stabilising' Iraq and legitimating, in some way, the military aggression against, and occupation of, a sovereign country. First, despite all the propaganda about a multinational enterprise in Iraq and a `coalition of the willing,' no major country — not France, not Russia, not Germany, not China, and not India — is willing to send in `peacekeeping' troops or reconstruction money without an explicit U.N. mandate. The calculation that India would, under pressure and tempted by the promise of a package of goodies, be able to send in as many as 17,000 troops, thus becoming the second largest contributor to the `stabilisation' forces, has turned out to be a mirage. Secondly, no country of consequence is willing to buy the argument by the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1483 provides enough "cover" for countries to claim an endorsement from the U.N. A study of Resolution 1483, which ends economic sanctions on Iraq, sets out the U.N.'s responsibilities in Iraq, favours the establishment of a transitional administration run by Iraqis, and, most importantly, affirms "the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq" as well as the need to "promote the welfare of the Iraqi people through the effective administration of the territory," reveals one stark truth. It is that Iraq continues to be under the two "occupying powers under unified command" — the U.S. and the U.K. — known as the "Authority." Barring some dramatic development, this "Authority" is not going to go away in the foreseeable future. As long as this ugly reality exists, India should not get involved in any "stabilisation" or "peace-keeping" adventure in Iraq — even if it is under U.N. auspices.

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