/CORRECTED/IRAQ: Anything Could Be a Target

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ferry Biedermann

BAGHDAD, Aug 20 2003 (IPS) - ”We are partners with the Iraqi people in this exercise,” United Nations special representative for Iraq Sergio de Vierira de Mello had said just last week in his spacious and comfortable office at the Canal Hotel, the UN headquarters in Iraq. He was talking about restoring the country to the Iraqi people and working on rebuilding it together with them.

On Tuesday night De Mello died in the rubble of his office in the most serious attack ever on the UN. At least another 16 people, Iraqi and international staff, died with De Mello.

The UN decided in response to evacuate all its international staff to neighbouring Jordan. This is expected to seriously affect the international organisation’s operations in Iraq. It is also a blow to U.S. efforts to normalise the situation in Iraq.

The attack, a likely suicide bombing using a cement truck, fits in a pattern that has emerged lately where attackers are increasingly picking non-military targets.

Just ten days ago the Jordanian embassy was hit. Sixteen people died in that attack. In the meantime water mains and oil pipelines have been targeted. Earlier this week even a prison holding opponents of the occupation was attacked. Six people died.

Such attacks seem intended to create chaos and instability, and increase dissatisfaction among the population.

A member of the Governing Council of Iraq had squarely blamed supporters of the former regime and the Baath party for much of the violence. ”They are like Nazis,” he said in an interview last week.

Some Iraqis agree. Outside the partly collapsed UN headquarters, a distraught Iraqi woman whose niece was still trapped in the building after nightfall screamed her rage. ”The Baathists are dogs”, she kept repeating.

But no one immediately claimed responsibility. Suspects are legion.

Another Iraqi woman with family members inside the building said that the attackers picked that building because ”they knew there would be a lot of foreigners there.”

The comment indicates an inclination to identify foreigners and international organisations with the coalition occupation. Even the Red Cross has not been spared. Last month two employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross were killed.

But the UN is identified in the minds of many with international sanctions and the weapons inspections of the past. Neither measure was popular inside the country.

Ahead of the war earlier this year, UN international staff, like that of other NGO’s, was evacuated from Iraq. The organisations set up office in the Jordanian capital Amman to keep operations running long distance.

The UN waited several weeks after the war before giving its people the green light to re-enter Iraq. But Sergio Vieira de Mello himself, in a speech to the UN in June, spoke of the continuing danger to UN personnel in the country.

De Mello had hoped to create a new bond between the UN and the Iraqi people. While the Coalition Provisional Administration (CPA) is supposed to govern and run Iraq, the UN has had to take on more and more responsibilities. UNICEF, the children’s fund, has for example taken on garbage collection.

This intensive involvement came despite U.S. wariness of an increased role for the UN in Iraq.

On the morning of the bombing CPA administrator Paul Bremer dismissed talk of a UN Security Council resolution to give the UN a more active role. Such a resolution would have opened the door to participation of more countries in the coalition forces that maintain security in Iraq.

The CPA may now be hard pressed to provide the services that will suffer when the UN international staff leaves. It has still not been able to restore utilities and other essentials to the pre-war level.