According to Sen. John Kerry, the way to bring stability to Iraq is to make the United Nations a “full partner”responsible for Iraq’s transition to a new government. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, Mr. Kerry cites the appointment of U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi as proof of the “failure” of President Bush’s Iraq policy and urges that Washington grant him far-reaching powers to come up with a formula for an interim Iraqi government. Even Mr. Bush and the Coalition Provisional Authority, now under heavy pressure to win the United Nation’s blessing for Iraq’s transitional government, seem inclined to defer to Mr. Brahimi.
But the former foreign minister of Algeria has been demonstrating why the United States should be wary of giving such authority to the United Nations in Iraq. First, he declared in a French radio interview that “the great poison” in the Middle East is Israel’s policy toward Palestinians, and he denounced the United States for supporting Israel. Then, Mr. Brahimi compounded the situation by claiming, in an interview with ABC television’s George Stephanopoulos, that Israel’s malevolent policies toward the Palestinians were undercutting his diplomatic efforts in Iraq. Mr. Brahimi also criticized American military efforts against the insurgents in Fallujah whose goal is to make Iraq ungovernable, and warned against additional coalition military operations against the terrorist forces.
Some diplomats who know Mr. Brahimi downplay the substance of his remarks. They say that his denunciations of the United States and Israel are nothing more than an effort to win more time for his diplomatic efforts from the Iraqi street.
But whatever the political intentions that lie behind Mr. Brahimi’s rhetoric, there are far more substantive problems with his performance and the U.N. work more generally in Iraq. Our view is that the best approach to take toward the factions in Iraq can be summed up as: Empower the Shias; suppress the Sunnis; and protect the Kurds. The Brahimi approach seems to go in precisely the wrong direction. For one thing, Mr. Brahimi has insisted on reversing the de-Ba’athification policies pursued by the coalition until last week. The argument for doing this is, in essence, that good, ex-Ba’athist (generally Sunni) technocrats are needed in order to provide vital services and rebuild Iraq.
The fundamental problem with gutting de-Ba’athification is that it runs the risk of alienating Iraqi Shi’ites, who comprise roughly 60 percent of the population, and who were brutally repressed by Saddam Hussein. The Brahimi policy runs the serious risk of restoring to power Sunni, ex-Ba’athist military officers who were involved in atrocities, while destroying the coalition’s relationship with Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the most powerful, if not indispensable, Shia leader in Iraq.
In short, Mr. Brahimi’s performance is providing an excellent illustration of why Mr. Kerry’s approach of entrusting the Iraqi transition to the United Nations is bad policy.
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