WORLD AFFAIRS

The prey and the predator

SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN

As the stand-off in the Gulf continues, a resolution introduced in the Security Council by the U.S. and the U.K. outlining the contours of a fresh regime of weapons inspections appears to be aimed at ultimately bringing about Iraq's capitulation.

THERE could be no deeper affirmation of faith in the law of the jungle than the quick capitulation of the prey to the predator. But where certain norms prevail, as in the relations between sovereign states, rapid acquiescence by the prey could often prevent a descent into the law of the jungle.

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP

U.S. President George W. Bush holding forth on his efforts to deal with Iraq, at a rally on October 5.

When the drumbeats of war against Iraq began resounding in the United States, much of the world recognised a curious asymmetry. The overwhelming balance of force was with the U.S., but Iraq held the trump card. Today's U.S. administration is perhaps the one held in least esteem internationally in generations. This is a sentiment that Nelson Mandela, the world's greatest living statesman, recently gave voice to. The U.S., he said, was a "threat to world peace'' and the inner circle of President George Bush's advisers were like "dinosaurs'' in their mental outlook.

Iraq, in contrast, after the devastation of the 1991 war and the slow haemorrhage of a decade of sanctions, had begun to attract considerable global sympathy, especially in the context of the impunity that Israel enjoyed in pursuing its war of destruction against the Palestinian people. The scent of disinformation was unmistakable in the 20-page report that the U.S. put out in mid-September, documenting a ''decade of defiance'' of the international will by Iraq. The 55-page dossier that the Government of the United Kingdom put out a week later, did not fare much better in terms of public credibility. It was generally accepted that the case for war would be fatally punctured if Iraq were to forget the bitter legacy of espionage and subversion that was carried out under the United Nations' disarmament mission and readmit weapons inspection teams.

Aware that its agenda for permanent war rested on a rather thin pretext, the U.S. had been working hard to preempt any such manoeuvre. Apart from intensifying its aerial bombing of southern and northern Iraq in league with the U.K., it had begun talking brazenly about "regime change'' as being its ultimate goal in Iraq. The U.S. blocked any possibility of resuming discussions on the return of weapons inspectors by insisting that there was little left to negotiate. And in July, Bush waived the long-standing ban on assassination as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy by sanctioning the elimination of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by U.S. forces in "self-defence".

JOCKEL FINCK/AP

(From left) Chief United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix, Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohammad Al-Baradei, Iraqi Ambassador Saied Al-Moussavi and head of the Iraqi delegation Amir Al Sadih, at a second round of talks in Vienna on October 1.

Although comical when seen in isolation, Iraqi Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan's suggestion that all problems between the two countries could be sorted out in a duel between Saddam and Bush, with their deputies acting as seconds, was an appropriate riposte to the absurdity of the conditions that the U.S. was imposing. If Iraq has, despite severe aggravations, agreed to submit itself to renewed weapons inspections, it is perhaps a last gesture of faith in the ability of the international community to rein in the rampant militarist clique in the U.S.

However, early omens do not suggest that this hope will be long sustained. Shortly after signalling its decision to allow the unconditional return of the weapons inspectors, the Iraqi government opened a two-day dialogue with the U.N.-designated overseers of its disarmament process — Hans Blix, executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (Unmovic), and Mohammad Al-Baradei, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Talks wound up on October 1 on a distinctly positive note. Blix announced that he had found the Iraqi side to be more receptive than ever before. Al-Baradei spoke of assurances that the inspection teams would have access to all sites. When specifically asked about "presidential sites" from where Saddam and his intimates are known to function, the Iraqi envoy Amir al-Sadi reaffirmed his country's commitment to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the U.N. in 1998. Negotiated between U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, the MoU was ratified by the U.N. Security Council in March 1998 and lays down a minimal number of conditions for gaining access to the "presidential sites".

Blix would not elaborate on the geopolitical repercussions of the agreement with Iraq, being particularly wary about any suggestion that it constituted a "rebuff" to the U.S. and the U.K. He would not be so "presumptuous" as that, since his mission was to execute a mandate of the U.N. and to report in "all humility" to the Security Council, said Blix.

There was little question that the October 1 announcement represented a shift in the balance of diplomatic advantage. This was the culmination of a process begun in March, with Iraq submitting a list of 19 questions to the U.N. Secretary-General, listing its grievances about the indefinite sustenance of comprehensive economic sanctions and the enforced stalemate in weapons inspections. Iraq also proposed technical discussions with Unmovic on means of accounting for the four-year period since 1998 when inspections have remained suspended, and on laying out a road map to complete the residual tasks of disarmament. At a series of discussions held then, Kofi Annan had acknowledged the Iraqi position that the dialogue between the two parties should be based on "international law, the Charter of the United Nations and the resolutions of the Security Council", rather than the "political agenda of any state".

In transmitting Iraq's 19 questions to the Security Council, Annan urged members to respond by April 10. But the U.S. would have none of it. The questions, said a spokesman for the U.S. Mission at the U.N., are "an attempt by the Iraqis to distract U.N. attention away from Iraq's non-compliance with... Security Council resolutions and to portray Iraq as a victim". The Security Council, he said, should not "entangle itself" with the questions and should, instead, focus on "full inspections that can demonstrate the end of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes".

At the next series of discussions in May, Blix refused to begin the technical dialogue that had been proposed. In July, once again Iraq put forward the proposal that Unmovic could resume its inspections after a review of the progress made by its predecessor body — the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) — between 1991 and 1998. The unfinished tasks of disarmament that UNSCOM had enumerated when it arbitrarily wound up its mission in 1998 could also serve as a useful point from which to initiate a further process. Annan did not have the opportunity to place these proposals before the Security Council. He was pre-empted by Blix's forthright refusal to engage in the proposed dialogue, which in his rather skewed reading of Security Council resolutions, was specifically forbidden.

KARIM SAHIB/AFP

The Radwaniya presidential palace in Baghdad. Under a 1999 agreement between Iraq and the United Nations, it remains restricted to weapons inspection.

That the same U.N. official should now speak of a positive outcome is undoubtedly a major breakthrough from Iraq's point of view. But the U.S. is still intent on playing the spoiler. Shortly after the October 1 agreement was announced, the U.S. administration roused itself from the lull into which it had slipped as a result of bitterly divided counsels within. Threatened with a prospective mid-October visit to Iraq by Unmovic officials, the State Department issued an unequivocal warning that no such commitment should be made without fresh guidance from the U.N. Security Council. "We will not be satisfied with the half-truths and lies that took us into the swamp in 1998," said U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Aware of the stakes involved, Blix quickly relented. It would be "awkward", he said, to travel to Iraq and then be told that the nature of his mission had been altered. Following a visit to Washington a day later, he came out with an explicit endorsement of the U.S. strategy to seek a fresh Security Council resolution before the inspection teams could return to Iraq.

After a few brave statements that he would be accountable only to the U.N. and not to any particular member-state, Blix has clearly learnt to recognise the enormous stakes that the U.S. has in ensuring that the pretext for war is not undermined. But the credibility deficit of the U.S. on the question of Iraq is evident from the difficulty it has had in pushing through a fresh resolution that would provide an automatic trigger for war on the slightest perception of Iraqi non-compliance.

The U.S. and the U.K., whose decades-long feast of concord is being threatened by rumblings of dissent within Prime Minister Tony Blair's party, agreed quickly on the broad contours of the resolution that should guide the fresh regime of weapons inspection in Iraq. It conceived of a tight deadline of one month for full compliance by Iraq. Within the first week, Iraq would have to disclose fully all the assets that it could potentially use to manufacture weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Following this, the U.N. inspectors would have to be allowed unconditional access to all sites in Iraq, irrespective of their sensitivity or the security implications for the top political leadership, within 23 days.

In its more specific details, the resolution introduced by the U.S. and the U.K., seeks to dress up a full-fledged armed incursion as a weapons inspection programme. It requires Iraq to allow the U.S., as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, to place its representatives in any inspection team. These teams in turn, can set up bases in any part of the country and would be accompanied by armed contingents in sufficient numbers to protect them. The inspectors would have the right to declare air and land exclusion zones, where Iraqi forces and personnel would be prohibited from entering. The U.N. could take out of Iraq any person it wishes to interview, along with his or her family, if necessary. And any false information provided by Iraq or any failure to comply with these requirements would be automatically construed as a trigger for using "all necessary means'' to establish the writ of the U.N.

France, Russia and China, three Security Council members whose assent is essential, saw things rather differently. Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rhongji emphasised that his country respected Iraq's sovereignty and would not acquiesce in any further intrusions into this domain. Russia thought that the 16 existing resolutions were sufficient to meet the requirements of Iraqi disarmament. And France was specific in its demand that a resolution if required now need do no more than reaffirm the existing position and remedy some of its lacunae. There would be no automatic trigger for war in the event of perceived Iraqi non-compliance. That would have to wait until a fuller assessment is made by the Security Council and a separate resolution is approved.

Writing in the French daily Le Monde on October 1, the French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin was categorical: "... initially it is important to agree, within the Security Council, on an inspection regime guaranteeing that the inspectors will be able to carry out their mission in full with no hindrance. In the event of the Iraqi regime violating these obligations, it would be for the Council to decide on measures to be taken. We must not cut corners. We do not want to give a blank cheque to military action, since we want to shoulder our responsibility to the end." And while adding his voice to the Western consensus that Iraqi disarmament was a mission that was yet to be accomplished, de Villepin had a few gentle words of deprecation for the U.S. agenda for the region: "France in no way condones Baghdad's activities, but any action aimed at regime change would be at variance with the rules of international law and open the door to all kinds of excesses."

As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee in the early-1990s, Colin Powell is known to have crafted the doctrine that bears his name: that the U.S. should not commit itself militarily without clear objectives, overwhelming force and an exit strategy. The first of these criteria is lacking in the current phase of military escalation. And even if the U.S. does have overwhelming force in the region, it lacks an exit strategy for the simple reason that its ultimate objective of "regime change'' risks a prolonged and widening spiral of instability in Iraq and the surrounding region.

Powell began the rhetorical warfare with the assertion that the inspections in Iraq must resume. U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, unmindful of the fact that he was undermining the top foreign policy official in his administration, soon joined in with the assertion that inspections would only bring "false comfort''. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld muddied the waters further with the assertion that "disarmament'' was the issue and not inspections. And lesser officials have kept up the chorus that the U.S. was interested in nothing less than "regime change".

Shortly after thwarting the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq, Powell came up with the latest twist in this bizarre saga. Claiming not to be deviating from the stated position of President Bush, he told a U.S. newspaper: "Disarmament is the issue. If you can get the inspectors back in... you can disarm this society. Then in effect you would have a different kind of regime no matter who's in Baghdad."

Bush's official spokesman, Ari Fleischer, denied any shift in policy, challenging everybody within earshot whether they "honestly" believed that "all these conditions" could be met by Saddam Hussein. Soon afterwards, he spoke up for regime change in the literal rather than figurative sense, with the outlandish proposition that U.S. objectives in Iraq could be accomplished "for the cost of one bullet". This was clearly going beyond recourse to assassination in "self defence", and caused considerable mortification within an administration that is not known to be easily embarrassed.

In his effort to bring his openly sceptical party on board his unequivocal backing for U.S. war plans, the British Prime Minister has had to enter a number of crucial reservations. He first spoke of a linkage between Western objectives in Iraq and the broader conflict in the region between the Palestinians and Israel at a trade union congress in September. The theme was subsequently reaffirmed at the Labour Party conference in Blackpool . "Yes, what is happening in the Middle East now is ugly and wrong," said Tony Blair: "Palestinians are living in increasingly abject conditions, humiliated and hopeless. Israeli civilians being brutally murdered."

The Palestinian leadership welcomed Blair's remarks, but the response from Israel was one of consternation. "First of all, the U.N. will not dictate to us," said a Danny Naveh, a senior Cabinet Minister from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud Party. "But if you ask me if I am disturbed by the British Prime Minister's remarks, I am disturbed," he said.

Sharon himself chose to remind Blair of the attempt to stop the Jewish colonisation of Palestine in 1939, after determined protests had prompted a reversal of the earlier collusion between Zionism and British imperialism. And the U.S., in an implied snub, effectively told Blair that no such linkage could be drawn at the present time.

The linkage, however, had been affirmed by the U.S. just days before, when it coerced Sharon to pull back from a siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah. After successfully blocking any Security Council discussion of Israeli atrocities for close to two years, the U.S. finally allowed the passage of a resolution demanding Israeli withdrawal to positions held in September 2000, on the eve of the second anniversary of the current Palestinian uprising.

Israeli indifference was met with a firmer message from the U.N., that it expected compliance. The U.S., seriously worried that its war plans would be thrown into disarray, pitched in with a stern warning to Sharon, prompting him into minimal acquiescence. The siege of Arafat's compound was withdrawn, although the campaign of armed incursions, home demolitions and assassinations continues.

Shortly afterwards, Sharon embarked on his second visit to Moscow in a year, earning praise there from Russian President Vladimir Putin for relaxing the siege of Arafat. Few other details of his discussions were available, apart from bland statements about constructive discussions on the "peace process" in the Palestinian territories. A scheduled one-hour meeting with Putin went on for over three hours and there was an equally intensive interaction with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov.

On his last visit, Sharon addressed a meeting of the Russian Jewish association and spoke of his wish to see a million new immigrants in Israel within the next 10 years. As Foreign Minister in the Binyamin Netanyahu Cabinet in 1999, he had made three visits to Russia in the space of six months, on every occasion arguing the case for fresh immigration into Israel. Those were more comfortable times for the Jewish state, with the Israeli economy booming and Russian stagnation providing a powerful incentive for Jews seeking the "right of return".

Matters now are decidedly more gloomy, with the Israeli economy in the throes of a recession and the violence of the oppression of the Palestinians permeating every segment of its society. At the same time, there are grave forebodings of a demographic crisis, with Jews likely to be soon reduced to a minority of the population between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean.

Pragmatists and realists within the U.S., even those with lifelong links to Bush's Republican Party, have recognised grudgingly the fact of a linkage between Iraq and Palestine. In a recent contribution to The New York Times, former Secretary of State James Baker, who served the senior Bush and struggled to convert the younger Bush's electoral defeat in 2000 into victory, put it rather subtly: "We should frankly recognise that our problem in accomplishing regime change in Iraq is made more difficult by the way our policy on the Arab-Israeli dispute is perceived around the world. Sadly, in international politics, as in domestic politics, perception is sometimes more important than reality".

Even this grudging admission that there may be something fundamentally askew in U.S. policy, although only in the misperception of the world, is unlikely to win favour. The younger Bush is surrounded not by pragmatists of the Baker mould, but by ideologues of the Cheney and Rumsfeld stripe, whose worldview was perhaps aptly summed up by a commentator in National Review, the tribune of right-wing extremism: when he asked whether it was for the last time that the U.S. was willing to let "an unarmed mob of illiterate malcontents half a world away dictate American foreign policy".

The dangers inherent in the current drift of thinking within the U.S.-Israel axis were highlighted dramatically in a recent statement by a group of over a hundred liberal Israeli scholars: "We, members of Israeli academe, are horrified by the U.S. build-up of aggression towards Iraq and by the Israeli political leadership's enthusiastic support for it. We are deeply worried that the `fog of war' could be exploited by the Israeli government to commit further crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing." The statement points out that the Israeli ruling coalition includes parties and individuals that speak with little reservation about the "transfer" of the Palestinian population as a solution to what they call "the demographic problem". Once talked about in hushed tones, the "forcible expulsion" of Palestinians is now discussed regularly and advocated in public forums.

Needless to say, this statement rapidly slipped into obscurity, not meriting a mention either in the Israeli or the U.S. media. But its exhortation to the world is unequivocal: "We call upon the international community to pay close attention to events that unfold within Israel and in the occupied territories, to make it absolutely clear that crimes against humanity will not be tolerated, and to take concrete measures to prevent such crimes from taking place".

Clearly, the U.S.' war against terror is rapidly acquiring the dimensions of a war of terror, one which has a long way to run before it exhausts its catalogue of atrocities.

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