The strangest aspect of the United Nations’ “no-fly zone” war over Libya is the involvement of the United Nations itself. While Congress’ approval was all but an afterthought, the Obama administration devoted intense diplomatic energy to winning the approval of the United Nation’s Security Council. No one asked: Why the U.N. is in the business of approving military actions at all?
The United Nations, created to end wars, now prolongs and enlarges them. It is time to take a hard look at the U.N.’s war-ending, peace-making record. After all, the promotion of peace is supposed to be its main duty.
In the wake of World War II, political leaders looked out on a devastated world. They saw in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas new graveyards spring up filled with millions of young men. In the richest parts of Europe and Asia there were bombed and burnt cities. Fearing that another global war would spell the end of civilization, they built a global institution that was supposed to stop small wars from getting big and end big wars altogether.
The U.N. bureaucracy lost its way. The U.N. has sanctioned two wars against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and now has approved the aerial bombardment of Libya.
Whatever the merits of these wars, they are wars. And the U.N. approved them, as opposed to stopping them. It has morphed from a war-ending mission to a war-sanctioning vote. Of course there already are legislative bodies to declare wars: the U.S. Congress and the parliaments of various nations.
Duplication aside, there are good reasons that the U.N. should not be in the war-approving business.
Declaring war is an intimate act between a people and government, a solemn decision that weighs the lives and fortunes of its citizens against the state’s interest in securing the safety and trade of its citizens. In any democracy, this balancing act produces a lively debate. Most U.N. representatives represent nothing more than the ruling cliques, which are unelected or elected dishonestly. The people who are going to pay for or fight in these U.N. approved wars have no way to hold U.N. representatives accountable and too many of the war-making discussions at the U.N. are held in secret.
More insidiously, the U.N. fuels and funds the small conflicts it is supposed to end. Its scandalous administration of the “oil for food” program extended a lifeline to Saddam Hussein, perpetuating his power and the dangerous instability he represented, while corrupting scores of officials at the U.N. and in governments around the world.
Or consider the case of the world’s longest-running and most pointless war between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Polisario Front, a ragtag group of rebels residing in an Algerian slice of the Sahara. The war has raged, on and off, since 1975–with the U.N.’s acquiescence.
The U.N. created a body called MINURSO that has utterly failed to end conflict or resettle the some 200,000 refugees now eking out a spare existence in a scattering of mud-brick hovels without running water or continuous electricity. I visited the rebels’ refugee camps in 2010 near Tindouf, Algeria. The people call themselves the Sahrawi and they yearn to return to their homeland in southern Morocco.
While tens of thousands of them disappear into the desert every year and often reappear in the newly prosperous southern reaches of Morocco–where the king and his government have spent more than $15 billion since 1975 to build roads, hospitals, airports and apartment buildings–many more are trapped in the Polisario refugee camps either afraid to make the dangerous trek or afraid of retribution from the Polisario if they try. Those that don’t run to Morocco, run into the arms of al Qaeda’s North African offshoot.
Some attend al Qaeda’s paramilitary training camps and serve in the growing army of al Qaeda in the Magreb (AQIM). The group specializes in taking European tourists hostage and carrying out attacks on army and police forces across North Africa. Other Sahrawis act as desert guides for AQIM or operate supply depots for it. As AQIM becomes bigger and stronger, it could pose a real threat to American interests in the region.
The Sahrawi’s have good reason to run. There are no jobs in the camp and food is scarce. Young men cannot marry because they cannot afford to pay a traditional dowry. And the camps are essentially a one-party dictatorship. The Polisario claims to represent the Sahrawi people, but its elections are East German-style single-candidate rubber stamps. Thousands have fled the rebel refugee camps for a better life in Morocco.
In short, the Polisario is holding the Sahrawi hostage in the hopes of bargaining themselves into running a country they can rule while the camps become havens for al Qaeda affiliated terrorists and drug smugglers. As the situation worsens, the U.N. holds more meetings.
Yet the U.N. has leverage. The rebels survive on aid from the United Nations, grants from local European governments (mostly Spanish regional bodies run by leftists who feel guilty about Spain’s colonial post in Southern Morocco) and by facilitating illegal trade in guns, drugs and women. In the past, the Polisario’s leaders have been covertly aiding Al Qaeda’s North African affiliate and depositing their loot in European banks. If the U.N. leaned on European governments to close the Polisario’s bank accounts and cut its aid, the Polisario would be more likely to accept the King of Morocco’s offer of amnesty and re-settlement of the refugees in their now prosperous homelands.
While the rebels are unable to win on the battlefield–Morocco built a 2,000-km wall of sand sensors and military bases to block cross-border raids–the Polisario fights on with endless motions before various U.N. bodies.
Indeed, the U.N. (and the media) are its primary battlefields. And without the U.N., there would be no war.
Meanwhile, the U.N. maintains a special envoy who is conducting yet another summit conference in New York.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon came in pledging to reform the institution. He could begin by closing down MINURSO and the Special Envoy’s office. Without the U.N., the parties would have every incentive to settle their differences. Without the U.N., there would be peace.
That is quite an indictment of the world’s biggest peace-making body.
Richard Miniter is an investigative journalist and bestselling author whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, New Republic and National Review. His latest book is Mastermind: The Many Faces of the 9/11 Architect, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.