Even as humanitarian organisations scale back their work in Iraq owing to security concerns, the Bush administration is reluctant to send more American troops
The Economist, 26 August 2003.
MORE than a week after a massive truck bomb devastated the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, killing more than 20 people, the attack continues to have grave repercussions for efforts to rebuild Iraq. On Sunday August 24th, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that it is cutting back its operations in the country. The decision follows warnings that the group could be targeted for attack. Its Baghdad staff, who help distribute medicines to hospitals and care for injured combatants, will be reduced to around 50. The organisation said it would have to cut services further if its staff remained vulnerable to attack. The pull-back is seen as particularly worrying because the Red Cross is typically one of the last humanitarian organisations to flee conflicts. Its vote of no confidence in the security situation in Iraq is expected to cause other agencies still active in the country to rethink their operations there.
Kofi Annan, the UN’s secretary-general, has said that last week's atrocity will not force his organisation to leave Iraq. But it is already clear that the attack—the biggest ever to hit the UN—will cause fundamental changes to the main international organisations in Iraq. The UN has been doling out food aid, helping to fix electric lines and encouraging democracy; it cannot continue to do all these things without improved security. The organisation has temporarily suspended operations in Iraq and is expected to trim its staff there. On Tuesday, the UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that calls for attacks against UN and humanitarian workers in conflict zones to be treated as war crimes. But the resolution will do little to improve security in Iraq, where a number of humanitarian bodies are reviewing their movements. This week Oxfam announced that it was pulling its foreign workers out of Iraq. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which had small staffs based in the UN building, have put their work on hold while their wounded are treated.
With attacks on non-military targets mounting—the UN atrocity followed big attacks on water and oil pipelines in Iraq, and on the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad—pressure is rising on America to improve security quickly. America has around 140,000 troops in Iraq, and other countries have contributed some 20,000 more (around half of whom are from Britain). Calls to deploy more troops are mounting from congressmen on both sides of the aisle. John McCain, a Republican senator who was in Iraq at the time of the UN bombing, said that “at least another division” (up to 20,000) was needed. Joseph Biden, a prominent Senate Democrat, has put the number at up to 60,000 more troops.
But the Bush administration continues to reject such calls. On Monday Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, told a veterans group in San Antonio that America had enough troops currently on the ground in the view of his military advisers. Still, in a tacit admission that more manpower would be welcome, the administration is now considering proposing a new UN resolution to encourage other countries to send more troops to Iraq. Up to now, President George Bush has shied away from the UN, perceiving it as too slow to act against Saddam Hussein. But he has found it difficult to persuade other countries, including potential big contributors such as India, to commit troops without a UN mandate. The trouble is, as France, Germany, Russia and Mr Annan have all pointed out in recent days, such a resolution is unlikely to pass unless America agrees to cede some decision-making powers—including on military matters—to the UN.
After meeting America's secretary of state, Colin Powell, on Thursday, and Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, on Friday, Mr Annan acknowledged that diplomats were discussing the possibility of agreeing a multinational force to guard UN sites and staff, with a separate command structure but in some way under the influence of the American military. However, the attack on the UN headquarters may have cost America another contributor of troops: Japan appears likely to delay sending soldiers to Iraq, fearing that the security situation is too uncertain.
America is also trying another tack: encouraging Iraqis to play a bigger part in security. With guerrillas determined to target pipelines, soldiers and international organisations indiscriminately, local manpower would clearly help. America is rushing to train Iraqis in ordinary policing tasks in order to free American troops up for more specialised duties, such as guarding the UN and hunting Saddam and his henchmen. Thousands of Iraqis have also been dispatched to guard softer targets such as oil pipelines. But even this brings problems of its own: militants have been targeting Iraqi “collaborators”.
They are also increasingly targeting high-profile Iraqis, presumably in an effort to destabilise the country's internal politics. The latest sign of this was the assassination attempt on Grand Ayatollah Seyed Mohammed Said al-Hakim, a leading Shia Muslim cleric, in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf on Sunday. The cleric survived the blast at his office with minor injuries, but two of his bodyguards and a driver were killed. One Shia official said the prime suspects for the attack were Saddam loyalists hoping to stir up trouble between Shia and Sunni Muslims, but others think the attack may be linked to a power struggle within the Shia community. Some Shias have criticised Ayatollah Hakim for co-operating with America.
With the security situation worsening, difficult choices lie ahead for the Bush administration. So far, Americans have broadly supported the occupation, despite the near-daily deaths of soldiers at the hands of guerrillas, the non-appearance of weapons of mass destruction and the high price of occupation—$3.9 billion per month, plus reconstruction costs of “several tens of billions”, according to Paul Bremer, Iraq's top administrator, in an interview with the Washington Post. But television images of the wreckage of the UN building, and suggestions that rising numbers of Islamist militants are slipping into Iraq from countries such as Syria and Saudi Arabia, have served as a graphic reminder of Iraq’s current fragility. Whether America is up to the giant task of stabilising the country remains to be seen.
Citation: "Iraq's Security Void," The Economist, 26 August 2003.
Original URL: http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2018876