A People Abandoned

I was in Baghdad in August. I emerged from the underground rail system to bright sunlight and the spirited sights and sounds of a produce market, where vegetables every color and shape were being hawked in numerous languages. The dome above city hall, black and studded with gold lines over a classical mass of stone, blinked its brilliance in the sunshine, and the street was lined with flags arranged as a monument to the accomplishments of the United Nations. As I bought a freshly baked scone and handed the merchant the bills, he happily jabbered away on his cellular phone, and I took the moment to think how wonderful and vibrant the city had become.

One might hope. In truth, the moment occurred in Baghdad-by-the-Bay, San Francisco, on the promenade built to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the UN Charter signing which occurred in the city. The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station, the market and the city hall itself were all dwarfed by the more familiar icons of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges and the hubbub around the construction of the new Giants ballpark.

However, the city's designation by Herb Caen--whether based on alliteration or resemblance--as some twin of Baghdad made me think what a contrast the real Baghdad would make: war-torn, military in the streets, the sounds of commerce subdued and conviviality scarce. Occasionally an American warplane must skirt by, but the pervading reality must be silence, for what else could be the sound of a people abandoned?

Nine years ago, the United States led a broad UN coalition in a war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. It successfully repelled the Iraqis from Kuwait and its petroleum riches. However, the war ended in a stalemate, with Saddam still (ruthlessly) ruling Iraq and no way but sanctions and air strikes to keep his regime in check. With children dying from untreated diseases and malnutrition and the Kurds existing day-to-day by the humor of Saddam's Republican Guard, the Americans expressed concern about the situation. They bolstered the program of weapons inspections, the condition for lifting sanctions. The government stated it thought inspections would go smoothly and the troops could go home.

Nine years have passed.

Today, Saddam remains in power in Iraq and Americans, often reservists, stand guard over more than half of its war-torn landscape, policing no-fly zones. Water treatment plants are not rebuilt. The economy is nonexistent, at least in measurable terms. Convoys of the few supplies that actually are ordered by the Iraqi government from the West's watchguards are often diverted, squandered or sold to those who can barely survive let alone pay for what was meant of be distributed for free.

This quagmire exists silently, it seems: bombs dropping on the plains of the world's most ancient civilizations with the cameras all gone home, the news media no longer interested. Standing on the corner waiting for a cable car in San Francisco, I wondered did anyone still know or care about the situation?

Apparently some, but the news there is also not encouraging. I returned home a week later and heard the Sept. 1 NPR "Talk of the Nation," which discussed the issue for an hour with Patrick Clawson, the director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and Rania Masri, the coordinator of the Iraq Action Coalition. "Discussed" might be a bit too euphemistic for the polite attempt to maintain any semblance of decorum that ensued. Exchanging charges of American obstinance and anti-Islamic biases with claims of Iraqi corruption and noncompliance, the guests agreed on very little except the dire state of the average Iraqi family--especially its women and children.

When children die and people suffer, both the Iraqi and American governments have blood on their hands. To argue who is more culpable--to see whether sanctions are stifling resistance to oppression or creating it--is, in the end, missing the point. The people in Iraq will suffer and die while negotiations continue back and forth. As responsible human beings, we must ask if an open-ended international game of chicken is what is best for our fellow human beings unlucky enough to live in Iraq.

If the United States declares war on a nation's leader--as Congress effectively did do by passing the Iraq Liberation Act last year--can it still work with that leader? It is probably a faux-pas beyond even the smoothest of diplomats to simultaneously vow to remove a nation's leaders and then invite them over for tea and deal-making. Perhaps this is the most important lesson from the corrosive experience of Iraq, we must be careful not to cut connections with powerful despots, for they may be our only chance to help their nation's people. As we stare into the eyes of Slobodan Milosevic today, and the leaders of Indonesia, Pakistan, North Korea or China tomorrow, we cannot overestimate the power of the peaceful solution and working through the existing channels of power.

Working with leaders who govern with a palpable tyrannical manner is, obviously, not without its faults. The failed policy of appeasement has left a long shadow: 60 years ago this month Great Britain and France learned that working with Hitler and overlooking violations of international law might mean helping to ensure their own demise. Clearly, discretion must be used to know when and how negotiation will work and when it is simply too late.

There must be a delicate balance, a distinction between being a source of international justice and merely policing based on one's own agenda. American foreign policy over the past decade, and through it the actions of the United Nations have been frighteningly stopgap, often forced to make ultimatums when a situation springs full-form onto the international stage as a crisis no longer waiting to happen.

There will be no easy answers to such a complex question. International regulation and monitoring must play a greater role, and regional organization must be empowered to resolve some of these issues on a smaller scale. The future will hold the opportunity to learn the lessons of failed policies in the world's current stalemates.

Yet to take new situations with greater wisdom does not free us from the errors of the past. There are still problems in Iraq, deepening while in our actions amount to inaction.

We must consider if the solution will lie in working with Saddam for his people and not continuing to fail to work against him. American foreign policy seems to make a choice between the battle against tyranny, terrorism and militarization, and the war against disease, infection and without concern for borders. The United States, hearkening back to the founding of the United Nations it so proudly hosted in San Francisco a half-century ago, must choose to do both, and make a priority of human life and dignity for the greatest number--with any potential partners.

Adam I. Arenson '01 is a history and literature concentrator in Lowell House. His column will appear biweekly.