Violence Threatens To Unravel UN Iraq Plans

by Thalif Deen

(IPS) UNITED NATIONS -- Growing military attacks on foreign civilians and the violent uprising against the U.S. military occupation are threatening to unravel a UN plan for nationwide elections in Iraq and to jeopardize a proposed role for the world body in stabilizing the country.

The situation in Iraq has deteriorated so far that the United Nations is refusing -- primarily for security reasons -- to provide specifics of any meetings being conducted by a UN team now holed up in the nation.

The group, led by UN Special Adviser for Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi, is consulting with academics, human rights advocates, religious leaders, trade unionists and members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) over proposed elections scheduled for January 2005.

"The Brahimi team will not provide details in advance of its meetings," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters Thursday.

"The security situation is of concern," he added, "but Brahimi has nevertheless been able to conduct meetings with a wide spectrum of Iraqis."

The ongoing fighting between Iraqis and U.S. military forces has claimed the lives of over 100 Iraqi civilians and more than 40 U.S. soldiers in the past week. The U.S. bombing of a mosque compound in Fallujah on Wednesday killed 40 Iraqis

"On this day we must mention, with great pain and extreme sorrow, the bloody events which we are witnessing in various parts of Iraq," Brahimi told reporters in Baghdad on Thursday.

The United States is dismissing the insurgency as the work of "terrorists and thugs," but reports from Iraq suggest a broad uprising that involves Iraqis of all ethnic and religious groups.

Since Shia and Sunni Muslim groups are moving towards coordinated attacks against the occupying power, the only "safe haven" for U.S. forces is apparently the autonomous Kurdish region bordering Iran.

A senior UN official, speaking on condition of anonymity, admitted that UN plans for elections are obviously up in the air. "But we have to work on the assumption that things would get better, come January," he added.

Salim Lone, former spokesman for the late UN Under-Secretary-General, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in a bomb blast at the UN compound in Baghdad last August, advises against UN participation in Iraq in the current environment. "I do not think that any UN staff should be in Iraq now," he told IPS.

Lone, who was injured in the Baghdad blast, said it would be a "terrible mistake" to send UN staff back to Iraq "when the security situation is infinitely worse than it was last August, and when there is now public criticism of the United Nations, even from mainstream Iraqi public figures, including from Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani."

Prior to the August bombing, the United Nations had more than 650 international staff in Iraq, all of whom were soon after withdrawn and relocated in neighbouring Jordan and Cyprus. UN operations are now run by about 2,000 local employees.

Al-Sistani, one of the most powerful Shiite clerics, has expressed disappointment that the United Nations refused to support his proposal for nation-wide elections by the end of June.

A UN team that visited Iraq last month concluded it was not logistically feasible to hold elections under such a short deadline.

The UN Electoral Assistance Division is now preparing a plan of action that will spell out the logistics of the proposed elections, including details of the number of staff required to conduct the polls nationwide.

"I think that the inability of the United Nations to play even a small role as a mediator in arresting the current spiral of violence reflects the acute crisis UN Iraq policy is in," Lone said.

"We are widely seen to have aligned our involvement in the country with the (U.S.-run) Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Iraqi Governing Council, both of whom are now clearly seen by most Iraqis as part of the problem," he added.

Many Iraqis also resent the United Nations for hardships caused by 13 years of economic sanctions. Although the measures were imposed by the 15-member Security Council, the average Iraqi saw the UN Secretariat as an instrument that helped enforce the sanctions.

Lone said the perception that the United Nations invariably does U.S. bidding intensified when the organisation was seen to have supported Washington in its dispute with al-Sistani over the polls.

The United States argued, and President W George Bush still maintains, that it will hand over power to a still undetermined body -- even without elections -- by Jun. 30.

U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that Washington has still not finalised a proposed new UN resolution aimed at legitimising the transfer of power from the CPA to Iraqis.

"I don't think we have any reservation whatsoever about giving the United Nations the primary role when it comes to facilitating the political transition and helping the Iraqis organize their elections, if that's what the Iraq government and people would like," he added.

Lone warned that the United Nations "must take very strong measures, including through communications, to convince Iraqis that we are in fact impartial, so that we can offer to be a partner in their desire for peace, democracy and reconstruction."

Several U.S. senators have warned that it would be premature for Washington to exit Iraq by June because of deteriorating security, which suggests the possibility of a civil war. But Bush, who is facing re-election in November, has said he will stick to his deadline.

"We're about to give over authority to an entity that we haven't identified yet, knowing that whatever that entity is, there's going to be overwhelming turmoil between Jun. 30 and January, when there is supposed to be an election," U.S. Senator Joe Biden, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the 'New York Times' on Monday.

Iraq, he added, is being pulled apart by two factions -- "one saying 'we're going to keep it under our tent' and another faction saying 'let's give it to the United Nations."