In the dispute over Iraq there is always Plan C
13.03.2003
By PAUL BUCHANAN*
Distance often offers the best perspective on a subject. From this relatively safe vantage point I have been wondering how we have come to the point that the future of the United Nations, United States-European relations and the very structure of the international community hinge on arguments about the future of one petty despot in a region with a history of despots.
Moreover, in seeing the increasingly personalised and vicious nature of the debate between the US and Britain on the one hand and old Europe on the other, I am left to wonder if there is not a compromise to explore before the world changes for the worst.
As it turns out there is, and although it will not please everyone involved (least of all Saddam Hussein), it is offered for consideration as Plan C.
Plan A called for weapons inspectors to find and dismantle Iraq's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons arsenal, if it existed. Slowly, painstakingly, grudgingly, under the pressure of a growing military presence on its borders, Iraq is bit by bit offering up its weapons programmes to the UN inspection teams.
But this is not enough for the US, which believes that only with Saddam's removal will Iraq be pacified and pose less of a risk to its neighbours and the world at large.
Thus Plan B called for a pre-emptive war on Iraq by the US and its "coalition of the willing", with or without UN backing. This has sparked the unpleasantness in the Security Council.
The US wants regime change in Iraq as much if not more than it wants it to disarm, whereas for most of the UN and world community peaceful disarmament, not forcible regime change, is the objective. Hence the impasse and increased levels of tension.
But as things stand the issue is posed as a great dichotomy: there is either war or there is no war. While such thinking is elegant in its simplicity, it precludes exploration of middle positions that involve aspects of both. What is clear is that neither the policy of inspections nor the war planning enjoy universal support. Enter Plan C. It is a mix of the coercive and the diplomatic.
With more than a quarter of a million troops massed on Iraq's borders but with UN inspectors asking for months more to complete their mission, Plan C envisions this: Under a new UN resolution tabled in place of the one being proposed by the US and Britain, coalition troops would be authorised to occupy Iraqi territory under the no-fly zones established in the north and south of the country by previous UN edicts.
By extending the mandate, these would become no-parking zones for Iraqi military forces, which are already subjected to daily bombardment in the air suppression campaign leading up to an invasion.
Iraqi forces would be invited to retreat back to the territory between the no-fly zones with guarantees they would not be attacked (which would allow them to reposition in and around Baghdad).
Coalition military forces would take control of the oil-fields in the north and south and reopen them under UN supervision, with a charter to redistribute oil revenues to the people most needing them.
Vast development aid (budgeted by the US to the tune of US$300 million) would also be channelled to those regions. This would provide urgent humanitarian help to people left in misery by over a decade of UN embargo and Saddam's disregard for their general welfare.
Autonomous local governments, including Kurdish control of Kurdistan, would be established under UN authority with coalition forces providing the security in which to do so for the short to medium future (which is part of Plan B).
As a bottom line, many civilian lives would be spared under this arrangement since large-scale conflict would be avoided.
With coalition ground forces controlling the no-fly zones and able to search for and destroy forbidden weapon caches located there, UN weapons inspectors could concentrate their efforts on the territory still under Iraqi administration. This would shorten the task of the Plan A team and focus attention on the Iraqi regime and its co-operation with the UN.
With US and UN aid pouring into the liberated zones, the contrast between the plight of those still living under Saddam's rule - as opposed to those who do not - would weaken his claim to power. This would increase the pressure on him to go into exile.
This, in turn, would allow the international community to begin the process of brokering a post-Ba'ath coalition that included both exiled and resident political groups interested in a democratic solution to the Iraqi tragedy.
Saddam would leave with his life intact, and the process of rebuilding Iraq in a new mould could begin free from his overt interference. Pan-Islamic sentiment could thereby be somewhat assuaged and increased conflict between the Muslim world and the West avoided (or at least not exacerbated).
It is clear that only the threat of force has moved Saddam to accept the UN inspections regime. It is also clear that a pre-emptive war without UN backing in pursuit of regime change in Iraq would leave the US and Britain isolated from world opinion and, worse, would leave the UN a powerless debating society devoid of any multilateral security functions (since the Security Council would, effectively, be destroyed by such action).
Thus the compromise offered by Plan C allows the Security Council to authorise the restrained use of force in an extension of existing UN resolutions authorising its limited deployment in defined areas.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But of such dreams Plan C is made. For New Zealand, a country with a record of peacekeeping and independent thought in international affairs, perhaps the compromise is the solution to what otherwise could be a nightmare in the making.
* Paul Buchanan is a former US Defence Department analyst who lectures at Auckland University
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