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CIAO DATE: 12/06
Interview with Brian Urquhart
Brian Urquhart *
Interviewed by Robert Sedgwick
Editor, Columbia International Affairs Online
November 2006
RS: Let’s start at the beginning. In 2003 Colin Powell went to the UN and declared Iraq to be in violation of Resolution 1441 (passed Nov. 2002). A subsequent resolution was drawn up authorizing the use of force but was withdrawn when it became evident that three of the permanent members of the Security Council were going to veto it. The United States then went to war without the support of the Security Council in what many have condemned as a flagrant violation of international law. Were you at the time and are you now at all concerned about the legal consequences of the invasion and what kind of precedent it may have set?
BU: Well I think anybody who thinks there has to be some form of multilateral, international machinery to deal with all the problems the world has now--everything from climate change to nuclear proliferation--would have been upset by that and also anybody who cares about international law. After all the most important provision of the UN Charter is the agreement by all the member states not to use force to invade another country. The only way you can do that is either in self defense or in pursuit of some common goal that has been annunciated in a resolution by the Security Council. And that’s why I think people were so upset about the whole notion of preemptive war. Because if everybody starts doing that there won’t be much left. Practically everyone has neighbors who are doing something they’re nervous about. And I think that was a very big concern about Iraq, because there were a whole number of UN provisions in there that could have been exhausted long before they ever got to invading Iraq and in particular those that pertained to the UNSCOM inspectors. As it now turns out they had, in fact, been instrumental in getting rid of both the chemical and the nuclear weapons in Iraq, all of which had been virtually destroyed by the end of 1993. A lot of people said that at the time, but unfortunately no one believed them.
And that’s what was so grotesque about Powell’s speech. He’s a very convincing fellow and I actually believed him until I saw those little drawings of the mobile biological weapons laboratories which looked sort of like tinker toys. And of course they had nothing to do with laboratories at all. But that was a very convincing speech and it got a lot of people extremely nervous, because Powell after all is a rational person and nobody believed he’d say something he knew wasn’t true. But it actually turned out to be completely untrue, the whole speech. And that was very damaging for the reputation of the United States, probably the single most damaging thing except for the actual invasion.
Also, I think that people in the UN who know that area were extremely uneasy because it was impossible to know what the Americans had in mind to do after they won the first battle, which of course no one doubted they would win. And some of us, including myself, knew a certain amount about the British disaster in Iraq in 1919 and didn’t want to see a replay. I mean this was a major disaster for the British. They got caught up with all the same problems the United States is now having: they ran out of money but most importantly they ran out of an argument for being there.
RS: I’d like to refer to an article you wrote two years ago for World Policy Journal entitled “The United Nations Rediscovered?” In talking about the UN brokered transfer of power in Iraq in 2004 from the Coalition Provisional Authority to an interim governing council less than a year after President Bush had dismissed the UN as being irrelevant, you make the following statement: “This is quite a switch in U.S. policy and, quite possibly, the mother of all poisoned chalices for the United Nations.” What did you mean by that?
BU: What I meant at that time was that the UN was extremely unpopular in Washington with the administration for having opposed the whole expedition in the first place. Then it seemed all of a sudden the United States was asking the UN, in a sense, to help bail it out. There was a great effort at one point among some people in the administration even to have the UN take over the military side, which was manifestly impossible because we couldn’t have gotten any soldiers anyway. But they [the UN] did take over the process of putting together the Iraq Interim Governing Council. The trouble with the American authority was they couldn’t very well speak to all the Iraqis because not all the Iraqis liked the occupation. So the Secretary General of the UN sent one of his many trouble shooters, an Algerian named Lakhdar Brahimi--a most extraordinary person in my view-- who had done a similar kind of thing in Afghanistan for some years trying to put together indigenous groups of people who could actually take over the government. So they sent him to try and find people who could be helpful and also representative in the interim governing council.
The other thing that the UN did that the US couldn’t do was to organize democratic elections, which again I think they did rather effectively. A great number of people voted both for the provisional government and for the current government (there were two elections if you remember). The UN has a lot of experience running elections and they are rather good at it. Most importantly though, I think that ultimately the UN will play a constructive role in the exit strategy. But as long as the US won’t talk to the neighboring states, Iran and Syria, pullout is problematical.
RS: In your view, was there any way the U.S. could have kept the lid on the insurgency and prevented the country from spiraling into what increasingly appears to be civil war?
BU: Well, I think it would always have been a gamble, because Iraq is one of those many British creations which have spawned a host of virtually insolvable problems. What you have in Iraq are three completely incompatible communities, and everyone saw this in 1919. I don’t think the British realized that if you tried to put the three together you’d have trouble. And as Saddam Hussein once said to somebody it takes a very strong and ruthless person to run this country because if you aren’t completely ruthless you’ll have a civil war. And whatever you think about Sadam Hussein he was right about that.
I think if the Americans had had enough troops to undertake a serious initial occupation and if they had not abolished the army and ruled out any member of the Ba’th Party from taking part in the government, and if they had had a serious reconstruction policy, it is perhaps conceivable they could have avoided the current crisis. But even then I tend to doubt it because inevitably once you remove the dictatorship and install a democratic system, the Shi’ites, who had never had power before, would win all the elections and the Sunnis, who no longer control the oil, would fight against it. This was the most absurd reading of the situation.
And of course putting the army onto the street unemployed with no pension and no future, an army that had been controlled by the Sunnis, was a huge mistake. They also did nothing to collect the huge ammunition dumps which were all over Iraq so that any insurrection could just arm itself by practically bicycling down the road and picking up whatever it needed. It seemed totally insane. I’ve never seen the State Department Report on this called The Future in Iraq, but it seems to me that if someone in the Pentagon had bothered to read it they may have possibly gotten some idea of what the problem was.
RS: Many people are concerned that the current conflict could spread to neighboring countries, especially if the United States withdraws. Should the U.S. engage diplomatically with Syria and Iran to make sure they stay out of the conflict, especially if the U.S. leaves?
BU: I think the U.S. should have been engaging with Syria and Iran all along. I think this notion of not talking to people you don’t like or don’t agree with is ridiculous. The current situation with Iran should be a grisly reminder to all of what happens when you don’t communicate with these countries. I don’t think there’s been a high level visit to Iran since the embassy hostages, except for that rather farcical occasion with Oliver North going over there with a cake and a bible signed by President Reagan. This thing of no contact is a disaster because you build up a huge demonology on both sides: the US is the Great Satan and Iran is the Axis of Evil.
With regard to Iraq and its neighbors, you have a terrible problem because of the sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi’a, which create a very peculiar undercurrent. Compounding matters are the country’s large oil deposits—the second largest reserves in the world—and people are not just going to walk away from that. And so you have some very nervous neighbors. It’s only been 15 years since Iran and Iraq ended one of the nastiest wars of the 20th century. The Arabs still do not trust Iran. And the Arab World itself is in a potentially very explosive state, because you have on the one hand these established non-democratic governments, many of whom are allies of the United States, and then you have the legions of the discontented—the middle class young men who can’t get jobs, many of them being exploited in a religious way. That is why you get these terrorist movements. People are very dissatisfied with the status quo.
A failed state spiraling into civil war, where quite a large number of people from other Arab countries are actually engaged, is a pretty big obstacle to overcome. So it is very worrying. And that is of course the reason why the first President Bush and people like Brent Scowcroft did not go any further with Desert Storm. And they were right because they knew what would have happened.
RS: Some policymakers, most notably Senator Joseph Biden, argue that the only way to solve the current crisis is to divide Iraq into separate regions for Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds, and then to withdraw U.S. forces. Is partition a viable option in your opinion or would this only serve to make matters worse?
BU: I think by now it’s likely to make matters worse, because the trouble with that is you leave the Sunnis without any oil. And that creates a very serious problem because they will fight to retain control over it. And people now forget—OK Saddam Hussein was a monster—that Iraq was a secular and extremely modernized country, and in fact the only Arab country that had quite a big and prosperous middle class. And if you lose those people, who are the ones with enough money to get out of Iraq, you’re going to left with a warring rump state of all the people left behind. And that’s not going to make the peace. I think inevitably because of the oil, other states are going to get muddled up in it. I don’t see how you can avoid that.
RS: Do you support the phased withdrawal idea proposed by Senator Carl Levin and others?
BU: Well, I think that depends on the United States and whether the administration is prepared to say that we failed, and that we’ve realized that, and we’re leaving. Bush is always saying we have to win the victory. I think that’s a mistake. There’s no question of winning a victory. I mean we went into Iraq ostensibly for benign purposes, to get the country going again. Unfortunately the opposite has happened. If we were to withdraw now, regardless, the country would lapse into failed state civil war. And inevitably neighboring states would get drawn in, and that means Saudi Arabia and Jordan not to mention Iran and Syria. I don’t know what Baker’s team is going to recommend, but it appears that the neighbors should have been brought in actively long ago. I think we manage to demonize countries like Syria and Iran to a such as extent, that people in Washington think they’re dealing with the Devil, but I think if they actually got to talking to them, they might find that-- just like the United States--they have their special interests. They have absolutely nothing to gain from the destabilization of the Middle East as a whole. And certainly the Saudis, I think, and probably the Syrians also are extremely worried about it.
RS: Has the Iraq War demonstrated the limits of American power? What are the lessons here for future administrations here?
BU: Well I don’t know about the limits of American power but I think the real lesson, which I thought we had learned in Vietnam, is that no country no matter how powerful can deal indefinitely with a national insurgency that is comprised of a very large number of people. That is the lesson that everyone should have learned by now. People like General [Anthony] Zinni have been saying that for years.
The other thing, I think, that people in Washington don’t seem to understand is that this part of the world is very old. And they don’t necessarily regard us as the repository of all wisdom. After all, these are the people who invented mathematics and astronomy when the United States didn’t exist and when Europe was in a very primitive state. And they remember all that. We simply do not have the kind of historical memory that they do. I mean the Crusades to them is a month or two ago, and they’re flagellating themselves over the martyrdom of Imam Hussein who died in the seventh century. And also a very important part of life in that part of the world is humiliation and not being humiliated. Being treated like juvenile delinquents, which is the way they’re talked about in Washington, is a great humiliation and after a while it drives them to very extreme states of mind. And I don’t know why we haven’t learned that. You have to learn their history and learn their customs and not humiliate them.
I don’t know why President Bush didn’t write a reply to the letter sent from the president of Iran. It was a wonderful opportunity that the United States missed. I mean Ahmadinejad is the president of a very old country that’s about to acquire nuclear weapons. That’s not important enough to break your silence?
RS: You said previously that the UN could play a role in the exit strategy. Can you elaborate a bit on that?
BU: What the UN has tried to do so far is to look very realistically at the situation in Iraq, which it did not support. And then they tried desperately to help the United States to more or less legitimize the situation. In terms of an exit strategy, you could certainly use the secretary general and the UN members to get Iraq’s neighbors going in one direction on this. The situation is particularly dangerous for them. I think somebody has got to find a way of immobilizing the militias inside Iraq. I don’t think the United States can do that. Possibly somebody with an Arab or Muslim background could find a way to convince a person like Muqtada al-Sadr to get rid of his 30 thousand man militia or at least to immobilize them. You need someone who really understands the history and the culture and the religion. I don’t think it makes sense to send a European in there to lecture them on good behavior. I’m not sure what will happen to Iraq’s oil reserves but I think in some context, the oil could be an extremely important bargaining chip if you could find some way to facilitate some kind of reasonable division.
I also think you really have to get Russia and China in on this. Russia has an interest in Iraq because of its southern border, and China, of course, has a huge interest in the oil reserves. Neither one of those countries wants to see the region destabilized.
EndnotesNote *: Brian Urquhart is a former Undersecretary-General of the United Nations. His books include Hammarskjøld, A Life in Peace and War, and Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey. He also is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. Back
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