Oil for Food, Money for Kofi
ROSETT, CLAUDIA
Oil for Food, Money for Kofi A U.N. program that has outlived its usefulness. BY CLAUDIA ROSETT IT'S HUGE, OPAQUE, PERVERSE, run by the United Nations, and about the last thing a postwar Iraq...
...At any given time, the program oversees billions in Iraq's money, awaiting the sludge-slow U.N...
...The only real solution is, somehow, to privatize Iraq's oil riches, cutting the state out of the loop...
...But after a short pause, the oil for food program is with us once again, revived last week at the urging of France, and with the backing of president Bush and prime Minister Tony Blair...
...An estimated 60 percent of Iraqis depend on oil for food rations, and going ahead for a brief spell with a U.N...
...BY CLAUDIA ROSETT IT'S HUGE, OPAQUE, PERVERSE, run by the United Nations, and about the last thing a postwar Iraq will need...
...in 1995 as a "temporary measure" tied to Saddam, not meant to outlive him...
...It is, in practice, a scaffold for dictatorship, erected and maintained by U.N...
...united Nations secretary general Kofi Annan had suspended the program at the start of the war—leaving all concerned to contemplate $2.8 billion in oil for food funds left in limbo, plus $10.1 billion worth of goods contracted for but stuck in the pipeline...
...oil for food program is spectacularly ill-suited— with its sorry history and large vested interest in whatever it can retrieve of the Saddam setup...
...Inside Iraq, the U.N...
...With higher revenues (until interrupted by the war), the scope of imports has also expanded, subject to a distribution plan inside Iraq that the U.N...
...has basically been in the business of shoring up a prime source of Saddam's control—his command-economy state dole...
...Perhaps unsurprisingly, the U.N...
...were in mortal danger of going sour...
...rules to hand over 13 percent of his oil proceeds, but, thanks to U.S...
...One might argue that with Saddam removed from the helm, oil for food will revert to a more benign aid arrangement...
...coffers...
...And, having supplied all the money, the government of Iraq gets to draw up a shopping list, and propose, subject to an okay from the U.N., who among its citizens will get what...
...According to a gruesome report in Sports Illustrated, Uday has tortured athletes who disappoint him with beatings and amputations...
...That mission has by now turned into one of the most Byzantine, distorted, and massive "relief" efforts ever devised...
...is bankrolled by the very government it is supposed to be monitoring...
...In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq—where Saddam has been required by U.N...
...When Annan's Oil-for-U.N.-Jobs program comes up for renewal in May, let's pull the plug...
...It bears noting, though the U.N...
...Along with the usual meals and medicine, oil for food last year introduced such items—approved by Annan this past December—as $4 million for air conditioners, phones, and vehicles to support the workings of Saddam's so-called Ministry of Justice...
...In other words, the U.N...
...The unique twist of oil for food, the feature that makes it supreme among the world's lousiest aid schemes, is that it depends for all its funding, including its administrative budget, on the revenues of Iraq's state oil monopoly...
...More recently, it diversified the funds—currently totaling some $13 billion—among a handful of banks...
...playing a peripheral role, if any at all...
...The U.N...
...report does not do so, that the person infamously in charge of Olympic sports in Iraq has been Saddam's son Uday, long known for his sadistic ways...
...This program was crafted by the U.N...
...It might also have the dubious virtue of helping Tony Blair demonstrate to his more muddled constituents that, yes, he can do business with the U.N...
...oil for food is not a program designed merely to deliver food and medicine, neither is it arranged so as to promote the development of a healthy society...
...has greatly expanded the oil for food program, in 1998 raising an initial ceiling on Saddam's oil sales, and in 1999 removing it entirely...
...process of allocation and disbursement...
...The only revamping thorough enough to fix these drawbacks will require tearing the whole thing down and starting fresh—with the U.N...
...That will need creative thinking and deep devotion to democratic principles...
...bureaucracy...
...For all that, simply scrapping oil for food would have been the wiser move...
...and British overflights, has had no real jurisdiction these past 12 years—local folks have fared much better than in the rest of Iraq...
...Beyond that, if you like Enron-style transparency, you have to love oil for food...
...And tapping into Iraq's state monopoly oil income to help rebuild the country is a plan that leaders of the coalition now fighting for a free Iraq have also been considering...
...To cover its administrative costs, the U.N...
...for food may have averted the distraction of more hysteria from the Russians and French, whose contractors have been among the top suppliers of Saddam, and whose done deals via the U.N...
...explains is "prepared by the Government of Iraq and approved by the Secretary General...
...Since the program began operating in December 1996, the U.N...
...Their job has been to ensure that distribution takes place in keeping with the plan drawn up by Saddam and approved by Annan...
...Another intriguing item approved by Annan last December was $20 million earmarked for "a project of Olympic sport city," complete with a sports hotel and $10 million worth of "sports supplies and materials...
...Is this what American and British troops are now giving their lives to clear the way for...
...For anything even approaching such a project, the U.N...
...But even for the allies, maintaining a central oil monopoly to fund a vast public dole would be a risky tactic—more likely to perpetuate a command economy, primed for the next dictatorship, than to foster a free society...
...Annan also signed off on $50 million to supply Baghdad's totalitarian Ministry of Information "with television and radio studio systems, mobile broadcasting vehicles, television, and radio transmission equipment"—all for the use of the same Saddam propaganda machine that coalition troops have been risking their lives to knock off the air...
...provides no bank statements to the public, does not disclose the names of the banks, and won't even say what countries they're based in...
...collects a 2.2 percent commission on Iraqi oil sales, a setup that over the course of the program has generated more than $1 billion for U.N...
...has shepherded about $64 billion in Iraqi oil sales, and more than $39 billion in relief purchases, plus billions more for projects such as compensation to foreign victims of the first Gulf War...
...How about some genuine relief...
...And, at a moment when Bush and Blair are urgently busy fighting a war to free Iraq, temporarily extending oil Claudia Rosett is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal Europe and opinion-journal.com...
...Iraq is home to the world's second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, and despite the degradation of its petroleum industry under Saddam, there's been enough production to make oil for food the U.N.'s single largest program in terms of Kofi Annan's say-so over cash flow...
...has just given a somewhat modified oil for food plan a 45-day lease on life, subject to renewal...
...Never mind that Iraq's problem has been the lack of liberty, stifling of private enterprise, and gross misappropriation of resources by Saddam...
...has for years been content to serve in Iraq chiefly as conduit and trustee for Saddam's selling, buying, and distributing...
...program now revamped to bypass saddam might help in rushing relief, already paid for, to hungry Iraqis...
...The plan was to continue sanctions against Saddam's regime, while trying to funnel basic necessities—via Saddam's Trade Ministry—to the Iraqi people...
...Auditing is an in-house affair, conducted by government employees of a rotating trio of member states, chaired this year by France...
...But the U.N...
...So the U.N...
...perhaps it was simplest to press on for a few more weeks with this monstrosity of a program, which in recent years has turned the U.N...
...parked the cash in a French bank, the Banque Nationale de Paris...
...With saddam deemed no longer viable as a contracting party, the U.N...
...into chief comprador for Baghdad, overseeing oil deals on commission for Saddam Hussein...
...has had nine of its alphabet-soup agencies implementing the oil for food program, employing in recent times some 900 expatriates and 3,000 locals...
...The sums of money involved are enormous, both for Saddam and the U.N...
...For the first few years the U.N...
Vol. 8 • April 2003 • No. 29
