Farewell to the Secretary-General

E. Ablorh-Odjidja

January 03, 2007

For generations to come, and especially for Africans, the name Secretary-General will perhaps attach mostly to one person, Mr. Kofi Annan.

He served as the Secretary-General of the United Nations and retired after his ten-years term on December 31, 2006.

Whether historians will recognize Mr. Annan as one of the greatest Secretary Generals of all times or not remains to be seen. But those around today should note immediately that none of his predecessors experienced half the difficulty that faced Mr. Annan during his term in office.

Mr. Annan’s term was the most turbulent – from wars to natural disasters. But he saw it all through with the coolness that some said was at the core of his character.

First, there was the Iraq crisis of 2003. Before this, Mr. Annan was deemed by most as a very popular world citizen. And even with what seemed like a hostile US President Bush administration in office, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2001.

But soon things began to change in Mr. Annan’s orderly world.  The key difficulty during this time came under the guise of the “Oil for Food” scandal and he almost fell victim to it.

The “Oil for Food” policy” was in place in 1996, and was supervised by the UN to allow defeated Iraq to sell some of its oil for food.

By mid-May 2004, the food program’s supervision had become a full scandal. 

Mr. Annan’s opponents in the US administration at the time, who had grudges against him for opposing the 2003 war with Iraq at the start, were not deterred by the glowing tributes he had garnered so far.  Instead, they chose to use the food scandal as a retrospective excuse to call for his immediate ouster.

The Wall Street Journal editorial of November 17, 2004, read as follows:

“(A) United Nations that allowed Saddam Hussein to embezzle at least $21.3 billion in oil money during 12 years, with the great bulk of that sum--a staggering $17.3 billion--pilfered between 1997-2003, on Mr. Annan's watch…”  

The Wall Street editorial must have known when the die for his supposed ouster was cast.

A Dr. Nile Gardiner, writing for the Heritage Foundation’s website, said that Mr. Annan’s “failure of leadership relating to the U.N.’s administration of the Oil-for-Food program .. cast serious doubt over his suitability to remain in office while the scandal is investigated.”

 Of course, the case against Mr. Annan was staged by those who wanted to punish him for his reluctance to go along with the effort to oust Saddam Hussein from power.  So, instead of a serious look at a flawed concept that the UN Security Council had hatched, namely the “Oil for Food” program, Mr. Annan became the scapegoat and the target.

The program had its beginning in 1991, some five years before Mr. Annan was appointed the Secretary-General.  It came when the UN got apprehensive about the worsening humanitarian situation in Iraq after Gulf War I.

Under the “Oil for Food” program, Iraq was permitted to sell some oil to meet pressing humanitarian needs. A major portion of the revenue, 59% to be exact, was to go to the government of Iraq for essential supplies.

“It was the basic assumption that Iraq – not the United Nations – would choose its (Iraq) oil buyers,” said the Volcker committee, which was appointed to look into the scandal, in a report in October 2005.

Assumption or not, it was Saddam Hussein who manipulated the program to his advantage. The result, as the Volcker committee said, was that he “selected oil recipients to influence foreign policy and international opinion.”

The report, unfortunately, did not ask why the UN Security Council allowed itself to commit such a blunder. Or why it designed a chicken coop and chose a fox-like Saddam to guard it!

Instead of blaming the UN Security Council, it became sufficient for Mr. Annan’s detractors to assume that Mr. Annan was the designer in chief of the program for his benefit, and perhaps those of a few cronies.

In reality, the intent to prosecute Chief Annan had a different origin, one that in cases like this was not openly mentioned.

As a chief spokesperson for the UN, Mr. Annan had come out against the pending 2003 Iraq war, with a strong anti-war sentiment that was too uncomfortable for the Bush administration because it was close to the presidential re-election of 2004.

Mr. Annan’s anti-war expression went against the political sentiment of an administration that was anxious to punish Saddam for the 9/11 crime, for fame and for possessing "weapons of mass destruction.

And soon, the bad press started rolling and the intensification of the cries for his resignation mounted in earnest.  Mr. Annan became fodder for the US ideological rivalry.  The “Oil for Food” crisis was the retrospective excuse.

Why a UN Secretary-General should not want war would be an oxymoron question to ask. But some did ask. Surprisingly, somebody forgot to point out to them what the UN stood for.

The UN was established to resolve conflicts between nations.  Whether for war or peace, the Secretary-General, in this case, Mr. Annan, should be allowed the flexibility to wage either.  

How a Secretary-General came out of any situation of such belligerence, either for peace or war, ought to be the litmus test of his success or failure in office at the UN.

The mess and the lies exposed, of the Bush administration after the Iraq war, ought to show that Mr. Annan was rather prophetic and wise for going against it and for promoting caution.

No matter how much nations profess peace, there are bound to be differences at the UN, some pushing for war and others for peace.  But there is the Security Council within the UN, with the power to override any proposal for war or peace; that often have had crippling effects on world peace.  

Exemplar cases are the ongoing conflicts in Somalia, Darfur, Sudan, and this “Oil for Food” program under which Mr. Annan has just been crucified.

Instead of looking to the Security Council for blame, Mr. Annan’s opponents wanted to put it on him.   

The same permanent powers at the Security Council who had approved the handling of the “Oil for Food’ program - France, Britain, and Russia - had supported entities that aided Saddam to hoodwink the UN.

Yet the same wanted to blame Secretary-General Annan.

In truth, Mr. Annan affirmed the usefulness of the “Oil for Food” program as “the only humanitarian programme ever to have been funded entirely from resources belonging to the nation it was designed to help.”  He had said so in a statement to the Security Council on November 20, 2003.

He also added that the program had “an almost impossible series of challenges."  He was right in his description.  But perhaps, he should have gone further to point the blame at the Security council.

Significantly, Mr. Annan was spared by the Volcker committee.  Could the whole scandal have been an attempt to hurt the glorious legacy he had achieved during his first term?

Many statesmen, looking at Mr. Annan’s career and his relationship with the UN, portray him as a skilled bureaucrat and a believer in the UN system.

The BBC in a profile about him must have found Mr. Annan’s core belief when it reported Mr. Annan’s claim that the “UN should act on behalf of not just the major powers but all states.”

Mr. Annan was right.  And with the strength of character, he held on to this belief to the end of his official term.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher, www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, January 03, 2007.

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