The CBW Colloquium:
The Death of UNSCOM
moderated and reported by Stephen Black
BCSIA Library, Littauer 369, 19 January 2000. Mr. Charles Duelfer, acting Executive Chairman of the United Nations Special Commission, presented a history of the Special Commission, with comments on the difficulty of the initial task and some reasons for the failure of the UNSCOM regime. The following is a summary of Mr. Duelfer's views.
In December 1998 the United States and United Kingdom used force against Iraq because of its noncompliance with UNSCOM. Yet one year later, both countries voted to eliminate the Special Commission in favor of a totally new organization. The reasons for this change can be found in the history of UNSCOM and Council / Iraq relations.
The basic task of the Commission, the forced disarmament of Iraq, was impossible from the start. The history of the investigation of Iraq bears this out. At the start of the disarmament process the Council was united and created the oil embargo to force Iraq to comply. But the Council also suffered from the mistaken perception that Saddam's regime would not last long after such a defeat and that the regime would value the sale of oil on the open market more than its WMD capabilities.
Soon after the resolutions creating the embargo and disarmament regime were passed the unanimity of the Council began to soften. It was a case of a unitary actor, Iraq, facing an uncertain coalition.
The work of the Commission between 1991 and 1993 was a “focus on the obvious.” The inspection process addressed those issues that were clearly important and evident. As soon as March 1992 the Iraqis began to argue that the disarmament task was complete, they had done everything required for the lifting of the oil embargo. This is a theme they have maintained to the present.
In 1994, following Iraq's acceptance of long term monitoring and the Commission's establishment of an ongoing verification infrastructure, Baghdad began to press the Council and its members for a commensurate relaxation of sanctions. Also at this time some Council members began to request monthly briefings from UNSCOM on the status of disarmament.
At the start of 1995, a key year, the Commission was focused on the then still undeclared Iraq biological weapons program. Iraq had been constructing ludicrous explanations for many of the Commission's investigative concerns. In one case, the Iraqis claimed that their huge growth media purchases was a mistake. Several of the Iraqi managers had made the mistake of thinking that if the purchase of 1 kg of media was good then an order of 10 kg would be even better. After several iterations, involving progressively higher levels of the Iraqi bureaucracy, this resulted in multi-ton orders.
In the late spring of 1995, Tariq Aziz and then Executive Chairman Rolf Ekeus, came to an agreement. If UNSCOM would report positively on the CW and missile investigations, then Iraq would divulge more information on its biological weapons program.
This arrangement troubled a number of the Commission's investigators. Just two months earlier, UNSCOM personnel had interviewed General Waffiq Al Sammarrai, the former head of Iraqi military intelligence, who had recently defected from Iraq. Sammarrai had made a number of assertions that conflicted with Iraq's descriptions of its WMD programs. For example, Sammarrai claimed that Iraq had a VX nerve gas program, something that Baghdad had consistently denied.
The June 1995 UNSCOM report to the Security Council did indeed put a good face on the CW and missile investigations. On 1 July 1995 Iraq disclosed that it had in fact had a widespread program for the production of bulk BW agents. However Iraq claimed that no weaponization had taken place and that all bulk agent had been unilaterally destroyed.
In August Hussain Kamal, the former head of the Iraqi WMD programs, departed Iraq for Jordan. Just after his departure the Government of Iraq released hundreds of thousands of pages of WMD related materials. Kamal's flight also cause Iraq to admit that its WMD programs were more advanced than declared, that illegal WMD activities had continued even under UNSCOM's long term monitoring effort, and that documents related to the weapons programs had been hidden by Baghdad.
The Hussain Kamal event also proved to UNSCOM that Iraq had an organized systems for dealing with UNSCOM, a “concealment mechanism.” The revelations of 1995 earned the Commission a short halt in pressure to conclude its work. The new information also sparked a new investigation specifically focused on the `concealment' system.
In addition to the new information and new Commission activities the summer of 1995 was a “subtle inflection point” for UNSCOM. Originally, Iraq had the burden of proof, it was required to provide evidence for its declarations. Yet after 1995 it was UNSCOM that had to prove its case.
The Concealment investigation had two purposes. First it was intended to be such a `painful' regime that Iraq would relinquish its retained WMD assets. Second the Concealment investigation would gather additional proof that Baghdad was not declaring all of its WMD activities and materials. The concealment inspections caused a great deal of friction in 1996. Yet these inspection crises did not advance the Commission's position. While UNSCOM had successfully designed and implemented a system that allowed the inspectors to `observe the Iraqis reactions', at the end of the day the Iraqis had the guns, not UNSCOM. By not allowing the teams access to suspect sites, the Iraqis succeeded in preserving “a shred of ambiguity”.
By 1996 the sanctions regime was significantly affecting Iraq. Also, US - Russian relations were deteriorating badly. Iraq capitalized on both situations. Security Council language used to condemn Iraqi noncompliance steadily eroded over the next two years. From this point, Russia took a preeminent role in being the Council's go-between with Iraq.
In 1998 a crisis arose over UNSCOM access to so called `Presidential Sites'. In reality the issue was access to facilities collocated with palaces, but Iraq managed, after years of trying, to use the crisis to draw the Secretary-General directly into the disarmament process.
As an example of how far the burden of proof had shifted, Duelfer recounted the Commission analysis of an Iraq claim that it had used about 10 trucks to move WMD materials to a hide site near Tikrit. Historical imagery of the site showed not 10 trucks but more than 130. In reaction to this evidence,, one member of the Council suggested that perhaps the Iraqis were just `having a picnic.'
In Duelfer's view the Security Council no longer cared about the disarmament of Iraq; they just wanted the issue settled. In August and again in November 1998, Iraq blocked Commission operations. In December 1998, the US and UK carried out military strikes, but stopped, after just four days, at the start of Ramadan. Duelfer believes that the brevity and timing of the attack communicated a lack of resolve to Iraq and the world.
Finally, Duelfer noted, there were significant domestic politics motivations, unrelated to disarmament, for all of the Security Council members. These are the factors now driving Iraq disarmament policy.
Note: These CBW Colloquium meetings are held approximately 2 - 3 times each month. This year they are being organized and moderated by Stephen Black, who had held the title of Historian for UNSCOM for his 6.5 years with that organization. Steve ensures the Colloquium remains dynamic, informative, and authoritative. His guests are the CBW newsmakers and/or the authorities across this field.
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