Betraying Bosnia With a "New Orwellian Vocabulary"

By Ian Williams

"It's not what's in it—it's what's behind it," Bosnia's U.N. Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey told the Washington Report after the latest Security Council resolution, number 836, had seemingly approved protecting the "safe havens" with air strikes. "Behind it is a clear motivation to avoid stronger action," he said, pointing to the resolution's ambiguity.

Despite the valiant efforts of the New Zealand envoy to stiffen it, 836 still leaves the actual calling for air strikes to the discretion of officials who will almost certainly only call for them when UNPROFOR troops are under attack. The resolution only "authorizes" armed action by the UNPROFOR against attacks on the safe areas, or interference with the convoys. It does not mandate such armed action.

Since the Serbs refuse to allow the U.N. forces to enter the so-called safe havens, the spurious firmness of the resolution dissolves into a soggy public relations exercise. "They're only going to call for air strikes when the UNPROFOR guys are in a 'Custer's last stand' situation," said Sacirbey.

In the council itself, his bitter speech referred to a "new Orwellian vocabulary.'' He pointed out that apart from the dubious protection accorded to the half dozen "safe areas," the resolution implied acceptance of the "non-safe" status of the rest of Bosnia, where the U.N. arms embargo presently stops Bosnian government forces from defending the Bosnian people. Ambassador Sacirbey described the Srebrenica safe haven as a "modern age lepers' colony" and "open concentration camp where disease, hunger and despair have replaced shells and bullets as the tools of genocide." Scathingly he suggested that the "Joint Action Program" should be called the "Joint Avoidance Program."

Understandably, he also is not holding his breath about the International War Crimes Tribunal which the Security Council has now approved to be set up in the Hague. "It depends who the prosecutor is,'' he told the Washington Report. In fact, the Security Council resolution does not explain how the U.N. expects to arrest and deliver the criminals when its forces to date have only stood by and watched the crimes being committed.

The charter of the court mandates that "states shall comply without undue delay" with requests for identification and arrest of suspects. Short of military occupation by international forces of Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, this seems inherently unlikely.

As White House Abdicates Leadership, Non-Aligned Nations Pick Up the Burden

Whatever action the U.N. has taken over Bosnia has been largely the result of continuous pressure from non-aligned members of the Security Council. These are Djibouti, Morocco, Pakistan, Cape Verde and Venezuela, backed occasionally by Brazil, New Zealand and Hungary, despite resistance from the Europeans—including the Russians. That is, of course, a stark contrast with the days of the Gulf war, when the corridors of the United Nations echoed to the sound of cracking elbows as the United States twisted the arms of nonaligned nations to secure an overwhelming majority for Desert Storm. The complete absence of any leadership from President Bill Clinton's White House now allows European would-be superpowers, "dressed in a little brief authority," to thwart the non-aligned moves for stronger action in the Balkans. If the tame duck president in the White House started quacking, however, there is little doubt that Paris and London would fall in line behind more effective U.S. action, probably with a collective sigh of relief from their own publics.

Security Council Adopts Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Report

As if to point out its own double standard, at the end of May the Security Council adopted the report of the technical committee on demarcating the boundary between Iraq and Kuwait, and pledged to guarantee its inviolability with the full force of Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. Somewhat disingenuously, the Security Council claims that the commission "was not reallocating territory between Iraq and Kuwait," but simply marking on the ground the exact coordinates agreed to in 1962.

In fact, the boundary, accurate to within a ludicrously precise 1.5 centimeters, is not where the British maps put it when they were ceremoniously placed before the Security Council two years ago. A lot of inspired compromises have gone into determining where the key pivot of the northern boundary is. Originally it was 1,000 paces south of the last palm tree (now deceased and disappeared) south of Safwan, on a road that is no longer in use.

While the commission has sought to be scrupulously fair, its work has not been approved by Baghdad—which is, of course, reluctant to admit that there is an international boundary, let alone that it assigns more territory to Kuwait than anyone suspected belonged on that side of the boundary. However, in completing its work by delineating the maritime boundary in the strait between the Kuwaiti island of Warbah and mainland Iraq, the commission stressed that both parties should have full freedom of navigation to their respective territories, thus guaranteeing Iraq continuing access to its port and naval base at Umm Qasr. Although they initially resisted this provision, the Kuwaitis eventually accepted the majority view and wasted no time in subsequently pushing successfully for the resolution pledging U.N. intervention to defend the frontiers.

Israeli "Chicanery" String Economies of Occupied Territories

As a consequence of the Gulf war, life in the Israeli-occupied territories became even more insupportable, as deported Palestinians returned home and their remittances no longer flowed in. Between that, the intifada, and 25 years of being treated as Israel's bantustans, the West Bank and Gaza economies are at a distressingly poor level. The amount of remedial work needed is made clear in a recent U.N. Development Program Report.

UNDP is the only U.N. agency apart from UNRWA which is allowed to work in the territories, and finds itself caught between two stools. It has to cooperate with tile Israeli authorities, as Israeli diplomat Arie Tenne made clear when he reminded UNDP's governing council in June that the government of Israel was host to the "Program of Assistance to the Palestinian people" which must "not succumb to ulterior political motivation." This was presumably a reference to the succession of U.N. resolutions telling Israel to get out of the territories.

Reading the report, however, it is clear where the real political interference is coming from. It took many years before the program was allowed even to open an office in the territories. The branch in Gaza still is waiting, after many years, for a telephone line.

On the other hand, as Palestine's observer at the United Nations, Nasser El Kidwa, stated at the same meeting, the U.N. agency is "the only feasible means of economic assistance to the Palestinians in the occupied territories." Its report was compiled by Dutch diplomat Robert J. van Schaik, who toured the West Bank and Gaza at the end of last year. In between some technical recommendations on how UNDP should operate, it also includes a very useful thumbnail sketch of the dire economic straits of the territories. (Copies of the 195-page report are available from Tim Rothermel, UNDP, United Nations, I U.N. Plaza, New York, NY 10017)

The report lists many serious problems facing any independent Palestinian state.

The report does provide some lighter moments with its deadpan recital of Israeli official comments, e.g. "Israeli military authorities presented their plea also as a moral case; in particular, as they said, since Arab funds have ceased to flow, it is their duty to help 'the Arabs' to rebuild their economy."

For the Israeli military government to talk of morals is an egregious example of chutzpah, as readers quickly ascertain. The report itself touches upon Israeli actions to cripple the development of any independent Palestinian economy which would compete in any way, internally or in exports, with Israeli producers. As the report puts it, Israeli "red tape and bureaucratic ill-will" and even "chicanery'' have delayed and aborted projects put forward by the agency.

Aside from the malice of occupation authorities, the report lists many serious problems facing any independent Palestinian state. These include water supplies, the neglected infrastructure, the crippled financial sector, and repressed and cash-starved civic institutions which would have to compete in local markets with Israeli and Jordanian special interests. Since Palestinians everywhere in the diaspora have proven themselves enterprising and economically ingenious and hyperactive, it is a testament to the negative powers of the Israeli occupation that the economies of the territories remain so stunted.

Hopes Recede for Western Sahara Referendum

On the other end of the Arab lands, other refugees also can testify to the inefficacy of U.N. resolutions. Almost 20 years after the Moroccan and Mauritanian annexation of Western Sahara in defiance of U.N. resolutions, many of the Sahrawis still are camped out in the desert, while their places have been taken by hundreds of thousands of people who arrived from Morocco in the Green March.

Three years ago the U.N. began operations to monitor a cease-fire between the Algerian-backed Polisario and Morocco, and to conduct a belated referendum on whether the Sahrawis wanted total independence or to join Morocco. At the time, the electorate agreed upon by the U.N. and the panics was the 170,000 names in the last colonial census before Spain abandoned the territory, plus any odd souls missed out in that count. When the Moroccan government realized it was likely to lose a vote on that basis, it persuaded outgoing U.N. Secretary Perez De Cuellar to open the voting rolls to almost the same number again of persons now living in Morocco who allegedly had left the Spanish Sahara before the census was taken.

Secretary-general Boutros BoutrosGhali toured the region at the beginning of June and conveyed to Polisario the latest offer on the referendum by King Hassan II of Morocco. Polisario sources told the Washington Report that the offer was "even worse than the Perez De Cuellar deal." However, with their main sponsor, Algeria, now preoccupied with domestic affairs, and with Morocco actually on the Security Council, Polisario supporters' hopes for a speedy referendum seem slim.