inside the glass house

Rebuilding post war Iraq: Who does what
NEW YORK-- For the United States, the easy part was to militarily overwhelm Iraq with all the superior firepower at its command. As the war entered its 16th day, US military forces had unleashed over 8,700 bombs, including over 3,000 missiles, and millions of rounds of ammunition, on military and civilian targets inside Iraq.

The difficult part is yet to come: how to win the goodwill of the natives, justify civilian deaths, keep the peace, avoid a costly urban guerrilla war, and rebuild a war-devastated country of about 27 million people. A tall order, by any standards.

The right wing hawks in the Bush administration, who expected the US military forces to be showered with rose petals and sweetmeats-- a traditional form of welcome in the Middle East -- are gearing themselves for the next phase in probably a largely unfriendly post-war Iraq.

The Arab news media have portrayed a far different war from the one brought into American living rooms by Cable News Network (CNN), MSNBC and Fox News.
As the New York Times pointed out last week, the Arab newspapers in Cairo, Beirut, Rabat, and even Paris and London have labelled Iraq an American "killing field".

The Times said the horrific pictures in most of these widely-circulated newspapers -- as well as in the Al Jazeera Arab tv network-- show "armless children, crushed babies and stunned mothers" triggering bitterness and anger at the United States.

These pictures are now being splashed across the Arab world juxtaposed with photographs of the killings of Palestinians by Israelis in the occupied territories.
Clearly, one of the biggest casualties in the war will be the US image in the Arab world where hatred for the Bush administration, not the American people, has intensified.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Europe last week trying to mend fences with another continent, which was largely, opposed to the US war on Iraq.

But more significant is the split in the US administration on how to run a post-war Iraq. The State Department, headed by Powell, wants the UN to play a key role but the Pentagon, headed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, is still livid that the world body refused to provide legitimacy to the US-led war.

France and Russia, two veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council who opposed the war, want a strong UN multi-national role in rebuilding Iraq and have reiterated the concept of multilateralism over US-preferred unilateralism. But rightwing hawks in the Bush administration want to minimise the role of the UN in a future Iraq.
"We expect a US role, not a UN rule in Iraq," says an unnamed official of the Bush admininstration.

Rumsfeld, who is leading the hawks, has said his Pentagon team will control every aspect of reconstruction and civil administration in Iraq, including the formation of a new government in a post-Saddam Hussein era.

If the UN agrees to work under a US military occupation of Iraq or under a US political authority, it will add legitimacy to the American military invasion which was not authorised by the Security Council.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior UN official says the UN has no intentions of working for a "quisling" Iraqi puppet government in Baghdad while the strings are pulled in Washington DC.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, one of the most ardent supporters of the war, is also making a strong push for greater UN involvement in post-war Iraq. But he did not get any firm assurances for a heavy UN presence in Iraq during his discussions with President Bush in the US last month.

The UN is offering its human resources and its political expertise in an effort to (a) provide humanitarian assistance (b) keep the peace and (c) lead the international effort at reconstructing the war-ravaged country.

Asked for his observations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the UN role in post-war Iraq "is an issue for the Security Council to decide." But he warned that Council members "do not want to see any situation where the UN is subjugated to the authority of a country or several countries.."

He also pointed out that some countries-- which he did not name -- are also concerned "about any actions that could appear to legitimise the military action after the fact."
Annan said that if the United Nations is going to be on the ground, "we will have to determine the relationships between the UN, occupied Iraq, and the occupying power."

According to preliminary estimates by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the reconstruction of Iraq could cost as much as $30 billion over a three year period. The bulk of this money has to come from the US, Japan and Western Europe. But an unnamed European official was quoted as saying last week: "Europeans are frankly not anxious to see their assistance delivered under a military flag in a war whose validity is disputed by so many of us."

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