UN, Arab League and Iraq
Irrespective of the terrorist attack against the UN HQ in Baghdad last August in which Sergio Vieira de Mello the Head of the UN envoy and other 22 including Iraqis killed, the Iraqis feel strong bitterness from the UN as well as the Arab League (AL). Both are nonchalant and careless about the Iraqis as a people.
I don't like to elaborate about the recklessness of the AL regarding the suffering of the Iraqi people and its silence about the atrocities of the previous tyrant regime but to point out briefly to some of them. Indeed the bureaucratic and rusty AL was born handicapped in a time which is different from the present time. In one word it is a league of the non-elected dictator Arab governments. It has no activity about human rights at all.
The AL sent a delegation team headed by Ahmed Bin Helli in Dec 2003 to Iraq for verification of facts (according to the AL statements). That was the first and last team arrived after the overthrown of the tyrant regime. Amrou Mosa (President of AL) before the war was strongly supporting Saddam's regime and he strongly refused to carry the initiative of Sheikh Ziad Bin Saltan Al Nihian of the UAE which requested Saddam to leave to avoid destructive war to the country.
The AL role in the UN was strongly calling for a justice to the dictator . After the war the AL refused to recognize the Iraqi governing Council. They said because the GC is not elected and they forget that none of the Arab governments are elected. The other cause according to the AL that the GC was appointed by the US, but they forget that the AL indeed had been established by the British in 1948! After its establishment it recognized all the Coup de tat governments which came by tanks, then kept silent about their atrocities.
Few months ago more than 1000 Iraqi intellectuals signed a document requesting the withdrawal of Iraq from the AL until it correct its biased attitude and modernise itself to be compatible with the modern time but the GC tried to leave doors opened.
Only after pressures from the US and international community the AL reluctantly recognized the GC!
The AL under pressure and condemnation from different sides decided to send its verification team to Iraq. Of course for us (the Iraqis) we know this is nothing but a puff. It is just another failure for the AL, but we let it be there so that the Iraqis may verify the AL attitude and not the opposite! Now we got our verification about the AL from their own report about their mission which was recently published in the AP and other press. In summary the AL after their difficult delivery they gave birth into a rat! They said in their report that the Coalition forces led by the US are a serious threat to the security of Iraq and the region by giving powers to the Shiite and Kurds! This is their first sneeze! The second sneeze sent a droplet of AL Flu viruses by warning that the Shiites and Kurds are dangerous for the unity of Iraq. This may be why the Shia all over the Arab world are oppressed community including in Egypt the location of the AL and the Gulf states. In KSA, 57 top clergies recently signed a statement calling all the Sunni Muslims to volunteer for Jihad in Iraq against the Shia? Any way the AL considers democracy and the differences in ideas as a threat to the unity and the best thing to keep unity is by oppressing and preventing the Shias and Kurds from expressing their ideas.
The role of the UN is bitterer than the AL in Iraq. Saddam was oppressing the Iraqis and on the same time the UN was applying its harsh sanction and humiliation on them.
France, Russia, China and some others tried their best to keep Saddam in power and on the same time benefiting from oil for food programme to sale their sh** to the Iraqis. They tried to get the sanction lifted so the sale of that sh** will increase and the Iraqis will stay under the killing terror of Saddam on the same time the UN keeps iron fist over the Iraqis at any moment. It was not only France, Russia and China plus others but on the level of individuals the attitude was same. For example Hans Blix the former UNMOVC was so happy to get a job bringing him from post retirement life to a new VIP life therefore he wished to keep it as long as possible irrespective of the suffering of the Iraqi people under sanction and tyranny.
France and Russia fought desperately to keep the US from ousting Saddam. When the war finished they pushed for the UN to join in the reconstruction process not to give it legitimacy as they announce but they like to get a piece of the cake. Now when the reconstruction hindered by the security situation they pulled themselves far away as if nothing is happening there! Is this not strange thing!
When the UN is mentioned the first thing strike in the mind of any Iraqi is the sanction, the humiliating process of the inspection and the lack of the sovereignty by that process plus Saddam as a dirty dictator accepting such thing to happen to the people. He was unable to protect that sovereignty. Any one other than him with little dignity will quit the chair but being another Arab dictator only death or force will take him from that bloody chair. The Iraqis regret that the US haven't ousted Saddam in 1991 but we think that GWB did a great job to finish it 12 years later rather than leaving it for more death and recklessness to come. It is therefore the US not the UN which helped the Iraqis to regain their sovereignty which was taken by the UN. The real occupiers were the UN inspection teams.
The UN was not only failed in Iraq but many other parts of the world. His team after the last terrorist attack against the UN HQ has not been pulled temporarily but escaped in front of the terrorist attack.
When Saddam was in power Kofi Annan was insisting for the inspection teams (the real occupier of Iraq) to go back to resume their occupation! Now his delegate Mr Lakhdar Ibrahimi in a news conference in Baghdad kept every thing gloomy and in disarray . The only thing that he makes clear is his concern about civil war, as if he came to study the possibility of a civil war! This is exactly like the position of the AL which is like putting on the wounds of the Iraqis, salts and acid. We haven't heard that the Iraqis complained to Al Akhdder Ibrahimi about civil war. In all circumstances we think that his mission is a failure at least because his UN escaped from the terrorist attacks.
The world today is different from the world after the cold war era and as the UN replaced the United League before a new international body should replace the UN during this new time. The basis for this organization is there but it needs the courage to call for it. Same thing applied for the AL but here the situation is more difficult because the Arab people are unable to express their will and ideas due to multiple and complex causes one of them is the lack of freedom and human rights.
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