POLITICS-UN: Sudan, Afghanistan Struggle for Response to Attacks

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 26 1998 (IPS) - The past few days have underscored to the ruling groups in Sudan and Afghanistan how difficult it will be to muster U.N. or international criticism of the United States’ Aug. 20 missile attacks against the two countries.

Although U.S. forces struck at both nations with Tomahawk Cruise missiles last Thursday, killing as many as 50 people in Afghanistan and wounding perhaps a dozen persons in Sudan, the U.N. Security Council has discussed the matter only briefly.

Diplomats on the 15-nation body said it was unlikely to issue any statement or take any action on the missile attacks. The United States, Britain and France – three of the Council’s five permanent members – supported the raids, and would likely block any criticism of them in the Council.

Security Council President Danilo Turk, Slovenia’s UN ambassador, said that the lack of formal action so far did not mean that the Council membership is unwilling to involve itself in the dispute.

However, it is clear that even among regional groups like the League of Arab States and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Sudan and Afghanistan are viewed warily and their case is only grudgingly being championed.

As a result, the United States – which, in any case, holds veto power in the Security Council – is facing little opposition to its claim, voiced last week by U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson, that the attacks were warranted by Washington’s right of self-defence under the U.N. Charter.

Washington has accused Khartoum and Kabul of aiding a Saudi financier, Osama bin Laden, whom it claims is linked to the Aug. 7 bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. The twin bombings, which occurred within 10 minutes of each other, killed at least 263 people, including a dozen U.S. nationals.

Sudan and Afghanistan have both countered that U.S. justifications for attacks against the two countries are false. Sudan, in particular, asked the United Nations this week to send a fact-finding mission to determine whether the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory – which the U.S. government claims was being used to produce a deadly VX chemical agent – was producing any unauthorised substances.

The Khartoum government, however, received only belated and lukewarm support from the League of Arab States, which this week released a statement, issued by Kuwait, calling for a special Security Council session to discuss the attacks, and for a fact- finding mission.

Some Arab League states – notably Egypt – have been distrustful of Sudan, with Cairo accusing Khartoum of involvement in an assassination attempt against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa three years ago. (Sudan denies the charge.)

The Security Council discussed the Arab League proposal on Monday, but U.S. officials quickly rebuffed the idea. U.S. Ambassador Peter Burleigh argued that Washington had “credible information that fully justifies the strike”, although he added that it might not be willing to provide all its information to the Council right now. Because of the U.S. data, he argued, “I don’t see what the purpose of a fact-finding study would be.”

The ‘New York Times’ Tuesday alleged that Iraq – which has been found by UN weapons inspectors to have produced large quantities of VX agent – had helped the Sudanese government produce VX at both the al-Shifa plant and another facility in Khartoum. Iraq’s U.N. ambassador, Nizar Hamdoon, Tuesday dismissed the entire report as false.

Prospects for any follow-up actions by the United Nations are dim, even if many states are broadly sympathetic with the arguments from Kabul and Khartoum that they were attacked before any case against them was proved.

Sudan remains unpopular even among many Arab League and Organisation of African Unity (OAU) states, with several nearby countries – notably Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea – openly supportive of rebel groups in southern Sudan who oppose Gen. Omar al-Bashir’s Islamist government. As Burleigh noted, the linkage to the Mubarak plot – although also unproven – has dogged Khartoum’s reputation.

Even so, Sudan has an easier time bringing its criticisms to the United Nations than Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban regime, which is not even recognised as the Afghan government. The United Nations continues to confer diplomatic recognition to ousted President Berhanuddin Rabbani’s government – now largely exiled to Iran and Tajikistan – even though the Taliban militias control some 90 percent of the country.

Only three countries – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan – recognise the Taliban government. Even the OIC seat continues to be held by a representative of the Rabbani regime.

As a result, Taliban leaders are unable to make their case that bin Laden, who is based in Taliban, was not involved in the embassy bombings. “He didn’t do it,” argued Laili Helms, the Taliban spokeswoman in New York. “There is no proof that bin Laden has financed the bombings, or any terrorist acts.”

The Taliban’s credibility, however, has never been high at the United Nations, which has been at loggerheads with the radical Islamist group for its restrictions against women and religious minorities and atrocities both on the battlefield and against internal critics. Notably, even the Arab League request for a Council meeting on the attacks ignored Afghanistan, even though it was the site of the only deaths from the Cruise missile raids.

As a result, one of the few criticisms of the U.S. attacks that might generate any sympathy within the Council comes from one of Afghanistan’s neighbours, Pakistan, which claims it was hit by mistake.

In a Monday letter to Ambassador Turk, Pakistani Ambassador Ahmad Kamal criticised the U.S. “unilateral action against alleged terrorist sites” which, Pakistan claims, “entailed a violation of the airspace of Pakistan”. The Islamabad government said that one Cruise missile landed at Shatinger, a town in the western province of Balochistan – although the foreign ministry clarified that the missile did not explode, and caused no casualties.

“Such action, if condoned, acts as a precedent which can encourage other countries to pursue aggressive designs against their neighbours on flimsy or unsubstantiated pretexts,” Kamal wrote of the U.S. attack.