The man who when employed by the UN as a weapons inspector, found the quickest trip back to UN Plaza in New York was sometimes via Tel Aviv, to share acquired knowledge.

March 8, 2006

The former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, reinvented as man of peace, writer, commentator; a professed Christian and US patriot would surely not intend to mislead but he surely has some crossed wires in his: 'The Insurgency: Advantage Ba'athists'


Ritter ranges across a broad canvas with near myopic tunnel vision, ploughing forward with absolutes rather than introspection or analysis. Starting with personal memories of the former UN Headquarters at the Canal Hotel, on the outskirts of Baghdad, he advances to the 'insurgency', political morass of Iraq and the premise that the wicked, desperate Ba'athist 'insurgents' , started by blowing up the Canal Hotel, killing the country's UN Head, Sergio De Mello and sixteen others, was a premeditated act, to prevent the only body capable of overseeing and putting Iraq together again, setting it on its brave journey to democracy, from doing so. Putting aside this touching belief in a UN, hand wringing at every near apocalyptic world event, with a Secretary General with a one-word vocabulary: 'Unfortunate', a few of the premises Ritter advances and their context may be worth addressing.

Ritter writes of the 'deeply personal' tragedy of seeing 'the very office spaces' he and colleagues worked from in his 'home from home' the 'sanctuary' of the Canal Hotel, the 'safe haven', where he and others returned 'exhausted and frazzled' for 'a quiet meal in the UN Cafetaria ... barbecue ... drinks in the UN bar.' The Canal's 'status as a symbol of the international community, made it an ideal target for the Ba'athist resistance ' killing also 'the hope and promise of the international community emerging as a force of mediation and reconciliation ...' in Iraq.

Baloney. The Iraqis and those of the international community killed and maimed in the Canal bombing is another unspeakable tragedy which lies at the feet of the US and UK administrations who illegally invaded a country, whose 'sovereignty and territorial integrity' was guaranteed by the same flaccid, impotent, silent UN, Ritter so lauds. 'Unfortunate....' Further, the UN in Iraq, responsible for the most draconian embargo over which it had ever presided, was seen by Iraqis as the source of all their bewildering, tortuous ills, where even childhood had been snatched from their children. Books, blackboards, pencils all embargoed, as was paper. Before borders became leakier and some toys (impossibly expensive for most) reappeared, even a consignment of ping pong balls and children’s bicycles were vetoed. Two years into the embargo, most cancelled birthday parties, Eid and Christmas celebrations. There was no money for presents, celebratory foods, new clothes.

Further, whilst Scott Ritter and his pals, barbecued and drank at the Canal, Iraq paid. In a country 'bombed back to a pre-industrial age for a considerable time to come', according to the UN Special Rapporteur who visited in March 1991, Iraq paid for the UN there. Whilst cable for telephones was vetoed, bricks, glass (factories bombed) car parts vetoed (cars became death traps) computers, access to the outside world in fact, the Canal was indeed a haven for the 'frazzled'. The car park abounded with row after row of gleaming white vehicles, with blue UN logo. The vast communications mast could be seen from miles away, connecting the Canal's privileged across the globe. Lights glimmered and shimmered, state of the art computers dinged and whirred, as Iraqi children strained their eyes by lamp and candle and re-wrote their lessons between the lines on paper re-used, again and again. Doctors did the same with notes, prescriptions. And for the life of the UN personnel in Iraq, Iraq paid for every last item. The entire bill was withdrawn, by the UN, from Iraq's frozen accounts - and the UN also charged Iraq for those transactions. One very senior UN official told this writer that : 'Our operation in Iraq, is worth more to the UN than all others across the globe.' Here on earth if others withdraw moneys from someone else's bank account, a prison sentence might be expected to follow. Not, apparently, in the parallel world of UN Plaza, NYC.

I wonder if Ritter and colleagues ever pondered on a little cabinet on the wall, on the right hand side of the door into the 'cafeteria'. It contained the monthly food ration for Iraqis. A pitiful bowl of lentils, rice, small container of oil, tiny bags of sugar, tea .... Through the door was the vast refrigerator, stuffed with champagne, fine wines, beers. behind the bar was every spirit drink known to man, fronted by a spread of mouth watering dishes - made by Iraqi staff, desperate for the pittance in hard currency they received - whilst their foreign counterparts not only lived, free, high on the hog, on vast salaries, but were paid hefty additional danger money for being in Iraq.

Iraqis though, guarded the Canal, day and night. Love the UN or hate them, they were (although imposed) guests in the country and honor meant they must be protected. When US 'Viceroy' Paul Bremer arrived in Iraq in May 2003, he did two things, fired the entire army, a contingency of which had guarded the UN building with integrity, whatever their personal feelings - and requested that his friend, Sergio de Vieiro de Mello, head the UN in Baghdad.

The 'Ba'athists' Ritter now blames - Ba'athism is the concept of socialist Pan Arab Nationalism; under the regime of Saddam Hussein it was necessary to sign as a supporter to get most paid employment, thus, believer or not, signature was survival - protected him and his colleagues. It is strange also that writing of a tragedy so intimately close to his heart as Canal bombing, he cites it as 'November 2003'. It was attacked on 19th August 2003.

Ritter's thesis is that the 'chaos and anarchy' in Iraq 'is a direct result of the Canal Hotel bombing' which demonstrates a sinister brilliance by Ba'athist remnants bent on a goal to 'create divisions in Iraqi society ... ethnic and religious.' Oddly, until the invasion and the terminology of the invaders mindspeak, which divided the nation in to boxes of Sunni, Shi'a, Kurd, Christian, for centuries, Iraqis had simply been Iraqis. Divide and rule, writ large, not Ba'athism, Sunni-ism or any other 'ism’.

In a quantum leap towards attacking Iran, a sinister Ba'athist plot (including of course, that elusive Scarlet Pimpernell, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi) forges Iraq with 'the theocracy in Tehran' and this 'seems to have been the goal and objective of the Ba'athists all along'. Breathtaking. The one eyed Mullah Omar on his motorbyke and Osama Bin Laden can surely not be far behind.

Ba'athism under Saddam Hussein was fiercely secular, hence the rigid, indeed often brutal, curbing of the more fundamentalist Shi'a elements. As US and British spokespersons trumpeted that pilgrims were finally allowed to come in to Iraq to the holy cities from across the region (actually they had been coming in for some years) since they knew neither language or culture, they simply, unlike the former regime, had no idea who they were letting in. Additionally, in their puppet government, many with foreign passports, they installed those closer to Tehran than Baghdad. An ongoing joke in Iraq is that the dominant language in 'government' is not Arabic, but farsi. The pro-Iranian government now in Iraq 'serves as a defacto extension of the Iranian government', writes Ritter. Indeed. And marching relentlessly on he notes: ' ... Ba'athist manipulation ...helping to facilitate ... a radical pro-Iranian government in Baghdad ' has '.. set in motion ' conflict between the 'United States and ... the Islamic Republic of Iran.' Another oil grab for the fifth largest stocks on the planet. Words truly fail.

The 'Ba'athist insurgents' Ritter has 'little doubt' were also responsible for the attack on Samarra, the golden domes, marking the Ali Al Hadi Mausoleum and the Al Askari Shrine. That this is a largely Sunni town and the Mosque especially holy to Sh'ia, has been guarded and revered by the population for a thousand years, that the townspeople, young, old, male, female, rushed to collect and are still collecting, day and night, every last vestige of the Mosque, in order to rebuild from the original - something Iraqis are well used to doing - escapes Mr. Ritter. 'The explosive demolition of the golden dome, was professionally done, with charges being set into holes drilled into each of the four pillars holding the dome up', he notes from thousands of miles distance. Hardly the work of the 'dead enders' he refers to. Agent procateurs comes to mind, since the 'liberators' have walled the town in and strict check points exist.

Talking up the 'slow burning civil war', which bewilders Iraqi commentators and whose scholars and religious leaders have prayed together, marched together and spoken together in solidarity, he concludes that : '... the quickest path home from Baghdad ... being a trip through Tehran (which) might become too tempting' for the US Administration.

The man who when employed by the UN as a weapons inspector, found the quickest trip back to UN Plaza in New York was sometimes via Tel Aviv, to share acquired knowledge (Endgame, Scott Ritter, Simon and Schuster) should know about circuitous routes -geographically and linguistically. Another new career move? Creative writing?

-My Year in Iraq: the Struggle to Build a Future of Hope; L. Paul Bremer; Simon and Shuster.

--Felicity Arbuthnot lives in London. She has written and broadcast widely on Iraq, one of the few journalists to cover Iraq extensively even in the mid-1990’s during the sanctions. She with Denis Halliday was senior researcher for John Pilger’s Award winning documentary: Paying the Price - Killing the Children of Iraq. She is also the author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of recently published 'Baghdad' in the educational Great Cities Series for World Almanac Library.