Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 1999, pages 51, 135

United Nations Report

Ethnic Cleansing Thwarted in Kosovo; Standoff in Iraq; and a Swiss Case of “Stockholm Syndrome”

By Ian Williams

The war over Kosovo was finished with Security Council Resolution 1244. Passed on Thursday, June 10, it is a remarkable document. Depending on which way you look at it, it represents either a tremendous step forward for the international community and international humanitarian law, or a hugely retrograde step undermining the United Nations and international law. It is in fact the former, and one could only wish that the Palestinians and other victims could rely on such resolution and such a resolution.

In its own odd way, 1244 demonstrates the indispensability of the United Nations—states can start wars without it, but they need the U.N. to end them. Disguised under the diplomatic gingerbread is the complete surrender of all Serb power in Kosovo. Many of us doubted the effectiveness of an air war in stopping Slobodan Milosevic, and the jury is still out on whether his capitulation was caused by the air raids, or by the increasing signs that a ground war was now on the agenda. In any case, it is indeed a famous victory. The terms of the resolution mean that the refugees can return home in relative safety.

However, there is little room for the triumphalism of the Clinton administration. They blundered into a war in which the allies announced right from the beginning that there would be no use of ground troops. Of course, no one wants to risk lives unnecessarily, but the combination of that message of pre-emptive weakness was what emboldened and allowed Milosevic to try to complete the ethnic cleansing.

Even the air sorties were hampered by restrictions on their heights. Am I being very cynical in thinking that Bill Clinton was more worried about the political effects of U.S. casualties than he was about the troops themselves?

In the end, the message that we were prepared to kill for the Kosovars, but not to die for them, almost certainly prolonged the war, and increased the suffering of the civilians on the ground. But not as much as letting Milosevic have his way would have done. Although the resolution makes diplomatic concessions—by not mentioning NATO in the main text, for example—the references to the other agreements give it much of the teeth that were missing from earlier resolutions over Bosnia (or, for that matter, on the Palestinian question!).

Muhamed Sacirbey, the Bosnian ambassador to the U.N., suggests, however, that the real difference is not in the wording, tough as it is, but in the people who will implement it. And he wryly points out that the British, French and others whose commanders did so much to frustrate Security Council resolutions during the Bosnian wars, are now the best guarantors of a robust interpretation and implementation since their change of governments.

Perhaps nowhere was that shown more starkly than in the determination to maintain the bombing until Milosevic actually began to deliver on his promises. Since his record as an oath-breaker is as long as his record as a serial ethnic cleanser, it was no surprise that he continued murders, expulsions and shellings of villages for a week after agreeing to quit the province. But after watching the antics of U.N. commanders for the last nine years, it was a pleasant surprise to discover that some of them, at least, had been learning from their experience and kept the screws on until he stopped.

The Standoff in Iraq

There is a much lower learning curve a few thousand miles away, where the standoff in Iraq continues. The war in Kosovo disrupted any diplomatic efforts to deal with the knotty questions of disarmament and sanctions. Following the reports back from the various committees set up by the Security Council to find a way out of the impasse, the British and Dutch produced a resolution than in some small ways actually wrung grudging concessions out of the Americans, who are now prepared to countenance increased outside investment in Iraq.

One thing everybody is agreed on is that the present policies are not working. Since the beginning of the year, there has been no monitoring or control of the Iraqi weapons efforts. On the other hand, the sanctions, whose only rationale was to enforce the disarmament elements of Resolution 687, are at once ineffective and disastrous. The regime and its hangers-on are surviving and thriving, but the sanctions are crippling the Iraqi economy and hurting the civilians there. And yet paradoxically, under current quotas, the limitation on food purchases under the oil-for-food program is the amount of oil Iraqi pumps can deliver to the terminals. The problem now is that using oil revenues to buy food from abroad does little to regrow the economy.

The Anglo-Dutch resolution tried to bridge the gap between the Russians and the Iraqis on one side, and the Americans on the other. The Russians have entirely rational reasons for wanting Iraq released from supervision. They want the money Baghdad owes them.

However, Washington is in its traditional foreign policy bind. It has consistently sent the message that it will prevent sanctions being lifted while Saddam Hussain is in power. It is perfectly understandable that reasonable people would do all they could to unseat him (or Milosevic, or Netanyahu for that matter). But the clinging to sanctions has alienated many people who would otherwise look benignly on those efforts, and insofar as it hijacks a resolution intended to do something else, it causes immense harm to American multilateral diplomacy.

In fact, one cannot help feeling that sanctions, like so much of what passes for American foreign policy, are maintained because no incumbent wants to go to the AIPAC convention and tell the assembled delegates that they have been lifted. And to be fair, nor does the regime in Baghdad seem eager to allow any form of weapons inspections, even if sanctions were to be lifted.

“Uniting for Peace” in Palestine

As we have mentioned before, NATO could have had earlier U.N. validation of its air campaign against Serbia if it had gone to the General Assembly under the “Uniting For Peace” procedure designed to bypass vetoes in the Security Council. However, Washington would not do so in case it legitimized the Palestinians’ current use of the same procedure to get past the American veto of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement activities.

Swiss “Stockholm Syndrome”

As meek diplomatically with the Israelis as they have been strong with the Serbs, the U.S. is fighting a rear-guard action against the reconvened conference of signatories to the Fourth Geneva Convention, called for July 15 under the “Uniting For Peace” general assembly. The U.S. may be getting clandestine help from the Swiss, who have been held hostage by the Israeli lobby in the U.S. until they settle Israeli claims regarding Nazi gold. As allegedly happens with hostages, the Swiss seem to be suffering from “Stockholm syndrome,” wherein the hostages eventually identify with their tormentors, à la Patty Hearst.

At this point the Swiss definitely are trying to marginalize the conference, according to Palestine’s U.N. ambassador, Nasser Al Kidwa, who predicts a “very serious battle,” over the issue.

Al Kidwa accuses the Swiss, who are the formal depositaries of the Convention, of going around the mandate for a formal conference by trying to downgrade it into an informal meeting. The Swiss had provided a non-paper raising many questions about the conference, which suggested, for example, that the General Assembly resolution did not provide a legal basis for a formal, decision-making conference, and that, even if the meeting were formally convened, then any high contracting party could, in effect, veto the proceedings.

The latest Swiss excuses suggest that the change of government in Israel, for example, makes the original intention unnecessary. They also claimed that they could not find the rules of procedure for such a conference, but did not seem grateful when the Palestinians managed to excavate a copy. The Swiss had also moved the venue for the consultations on the conference from New York to Geneva and formed a “Group Of Friends” to help them in their consultations.

While everyone officially welcomes the “Group of Friends,” the Palestinians and the Non-Aligned are politely wary that Switzerland will try to use the group to thwart the full convening of the event. However, honesty compelled the Swiss to report that “a large majority” of “High Contracting Parties” to the Convention had supported convening the conference, one had expressed reservations, and two were firmly opposed. There are no prizes for guessing who the two are, nor for connecting pressures from them to the Swiss recalcitrance.

Western Sahara Post-Baker

In May, former U.S. Ambassador Bill Eagleton was appointed to head the U.N. operation in the Western Sahara. Eagleton has survived well over three decades as an Arabist in the U.S. foreign service. His previous service with the U.S. ranged from South Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Iraq to Morocco, with a six-year spell as deputy commissioner general of UNRWA before taking over as U.N. special coordinator in Sarajevo. He trained in Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute language school in Morocco, so he should have fun helping interview the thousands of people Morocco has put forward as honorary Sahrawis for the referendum which for the last nine years has always been just over the horizon. Just before the Eagleton appointment the U.N. extended the operation on the basis of pledges of full cooperation. Unfortunately, if history is a guide, such pledges have a very short shelf life.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations and the author of The U.N. for Beginners, available from the AET Book Club.