Backstabbing for Beginners:

  British Prime Minister Tony Blair read out a similar announcement, standing next to a Christmas tree that had just been put up at 10 Downing Street. Neither of them mentioned the fact that hundreds of humanitarian workers had been left behind in Baghdad. Neither they nor Kofi Annan had focused much attention on the Oil-for-Food operation during the past year of the crisis. And yet the massive growth of our program, combined with our increasingly dysfunctional management, may well have played a critical role in Saddam Hussein’s decision to trade off the arms inspections for a period of bombing. All year, Saddam had been testing the international community’s resolve, studying the impact of his provocations right up to the brink of a showdown. On all three occasions when an acute crisis threatened to escalate, Saddam had observed that the prospect of military action had no impact on the continued expansion of the Oil-for-Food program. If anything, the crises curtailed our ability to oversee the flow of goods into Iraq or track what Saddam did with them once they came in.

  Our inability to coordinate so much as a timely evacuation in the midst of a crisis should have served as a warning sign that we simply were not up to the task that had been assigned to us. While the disputes that kept erupting between our leaders may have seemed petty, they were heavy in consequences.

  In the middle of the bombing, von Sponeck called once again, to ask Pasha for permission to evacuate the next day. It was feasible because the United States was not in the habit of bombing Iraq during the day, as darkness offered better protection to U.S. pilots. But organizing such a caravan required a swift decision from the UN in New York and reliable communication with the Pentagon to ensure that our convoy of buses was not targeted by mistake. As things stood, we didn’t even have reliable communication between Pasha and von Sponeck, much less a line to the Pentagon. And the thirty-eighth floor had yet to make a decision on whether to evacuate our staff.

  When Pasha informed von Sponeck that he was still “waiting for a decision from the thirty-eighth floor,” von Sponeck went ape shit on the phone. His staff were scared, all huddled inside the basement of the Canal Hotel, and there was no plan to get them out of there. We had no idea how long the bombing would last, and we understood that even the smartest missile technology was not error-proof. A U.S. missile once slammed into a World Food Program warehouse north of Baghdad. And no matter how advanced a bomb’s guidance system, human errors could always seep in at the planning stage, as we later learned when a U.S. plane dropped a bomb on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade.

  The journalists staying at the Al-Rasheed Hotel in downtown Baghdad had all volunteered to be in Baghdad in the middle of a bombing. Our staff had never expressed a particular interest in witnessing such fireworks firsthand. They served absolutely no purpose on the ground while bombs were raining down. But the thirty-eighth floor worried that withdrawing them might “send the wrong signal” to Baghdad. The idea was that the humanitarian operation should under no circumstances be affected by developments on the weapons front, and our staff were now hostages to that idea.

  Pasha’s reaction to von Sponeck’s outburst was to hang up, slamming his secure phone down in its box. I was standing at Pasha’s doorstep when it happened. My jaw dropped. I had come to support von Sponeck’s case for an evacuation at the earliest possible time, and all I could do now was stand there, wide-eyed, as Pasha justified his latest move as UN security coordinator.

  “Who does he think he is?” asked Pasha. “Nobody talks to me this way!” With that, Pasha walked out of his office for a trip to the bathroom. I stayed behind for a minute, transfixed by the bombing footage running on CNN. I sat down on the couch and put my face in my hands, trying to think clearly. There was only one logical course of action. A communications link needed to be reestablished between New York and Baghdad.

  I ran over to my desk and rang up Habibi, who had been Halliday’s assistant and now served under von Sponeck. My first order of business was to clarify what had just happened. Had Pasha really hung up on von Sponeck?

  Yes, that certainly seemed to be Habibi’s perception. I could hear von Sponeck shouting in the background, and Habibi sounded unsure if he was at liberty to speak.

  “Habibi,” I said, “does this mean you and I are the only line between New York and Baghdad at the present time?”

  “I guess so,” said my fellow twenty-five-year-old coworker.

  “Shit . . . so what’s going to happen now? How will you guys evacuate if they don’t talk?”

  “No idea. Hans says he’s only going to deal directly with the thirty-eighth from now on. I guess at some point we’ll just get on the buses and go,” said Habibi.

  “We should at least put out a press release . . . or something,” I said.

  The fireworks in the background started getting loud again.

  “Listen, I’ve gotta go,” said Habibi. “I’m being ordered down to the basement.”

  “Yeah. Dude, take care of yourself. . . . Try to get some sleep.”

  Ba-boom! That was a bomb in the background.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “Sorry. . . . Good luck, man. I’ll be here if you need to call . . . pass a message or whatever . . .”

  “Yeah, well, the message is pretty simple: we’d like to get out of here!” Von Sponeck eventually managed to evacuate his staff from Iraq in a chaotic caravan of buses in which luggage was lost and disputes that nearly degenerated into fistfights, erupted between smoking and nonsmoking staff members. The caravan took to the road right before the end of the four-day U.S. bombing campaign. By the time the buses reached the Jordanian border, Operation Desert Fox was all but over.

  Both sides in the conflict declared victory. The United States argued that it had “achieved its objectives,” even as Gen. Anthony Zinni kept skirting questions from the media as to what exactly had been hit in Iraq by repeating about a dozen times in the course of one press conference that “battle damage assessment is still ongoing.”

  Whether any WMDs were actually destroyed was unclear. But those of us who would have to set foot back into Iraq soon thereafter worried about the aftereffects if an actual chemical or biological stockpile had been hit. Wouldn’t that endanger the people in the surrounding area? I asked one of the UNSCOM guys. He thought about it and said, “Yeah, I guess there’s a chance of that.”

  The reason I was asking was that a building standing only a few dozen yards from our headquarters had been gutted in a massive explosion that caused windows in our own compound to shatter.

  “Oh, don’t worry. That’s their intelligence building. We don’t think they’d stockpile that kind of stuff at their own workplace.”

  I guess that took some of the wind out of the whole “we need to get into Saddam’s palaces” argument, which had been at the center of the many crises that kept interrupting our work for the past year and led Annan to undertake the most high-profile and, ultimately, unsuccessful peace mission of his career. At the onset of Operation Desert Fox, Annan made a somber declaration: “This is a sad day for the United Nations and the world.” And then he added, “It is also a very sad day for me, personally.”

  A colleague wrote a poem for the occasion:

  Happy in February, sad in December.

  Glory has slipped through our boss’s fingers.

  Smoking cigars, avoiding wars, Kofi tried to reach for the stars.

  But all he got, at the end of his trot, was a finger where he would rather not.

  Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, that’s how business goes with Saddam. . . .

  The rest of the poem got rather dirty. Not that our business with Saddam got any cleaner. Now that he had gotten rid of his greatest headache, or UNSCUM, as our Bunny Huggers called the UN Special Commission, the Iraqi dictator would be able to concentrate his energy on subverting our own mission—or UNSCAM, as the Cowboys would later refer to us. All Saddam had to do was press the right buttons, and a program that was earning him millions in pocket money would soon start earning him b
illions.

  The bombing campaign did not appear to have achieved anything. And while the inspectors were out, the Oil-for-Food program would continue to operate as soon as our staff could get back to their desks. As 1998 drew to a close, Saddam Hussein could be proud of himself. Though President Clinton had signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act, making “regime change” the official policy of the United States, chances were that nothing short of an all-out invasion could destabilize Saddam’s hold on power. While Iraq’s rebels were promised some $90 million in aid from the U.S. Congress, Saddam could rely on his smuggling and joint venture with the UN to fill Iraq’s coffers. The mere fact that he had survived another U.S. strike made him appear all the more invincible to his regional neighbors, who once again began referring to him publicly with a reverence that had been unheard of since the Gulf War. The Arab League and several members of the UN Security Council condemned the Clinton and Blair governments for attacking Iraq. Soon Saddam would be able to throw giant parties again in Baghdad and organize trade fairs that would attract twelve foreign trade ministers and some 18,000 businesspeople from forty-five different countries.

  If anybody could claim to be the “desert fox,” it was clearly Saddam Hussein.

  The UN lobby was deserted on New Year’s Eve. Pasha and I were about the last people to leave the building, walking across the dimly lit checkered floor and pausing at the glass doors to zip up before stepping out into the cold. We would be heading to separate parties, and I chose the moment to wish my boss a happy New Year.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You too.”

  “So I guess we’ll still have a job on the first of January,” I added.

  Our contracts were subject to renewal every six months, like the Oil-for-Food program itself.

  “As long as Saddam is in power,” said Pasha, “we’ll be working.”

  We shared an awkward smile. The realization that our job security was dependent on Saddam Hussein staying in power was both comforting and deeply uncomfortable.

  I thought about this as we stepped out into the frosty winter night. We split ways at the water fountain nestled at the center of the circular driveway, and I exited the UN grounds near Forty-Second Street to catch a taxi to a fancy restaurant. I had recently been promoted and had purchased a couple of brand-name suits that Pasha approved of. Checks kept filling my bank account every month, earning me as much as staff fifteen years my elder. I denied myself nothing. I was twenty-five, my career was going brilliantly, and I was headed to a great party. So why did I feel like shit?

  A yellow cab stopped at the curb. I stepped in, told the driver the address, and took my badge off my neck.

  “So,” said the cab driver. “You work for Kofi Annan?”

  “Yeah,” I said. But from the depth of my discomfort a question arose. Weren’t we, in fact, working for Saddam?

  CHAPTER 17

  The Propaganda War

  “Hypocrisy is a fashionable vice, and all fashionable vices pass for virtue.”

  MOLIÈRE

  “Um . . .” saidmy intern, popping her head into my office and sounding more worried than usual.

  “Yes?” I said, as I continued to type away at my computer.

  “There’s a priest here to see you,” she said.

  “A priest?”

  “Yeah. I mean, he’s dressed as a priest. And it’s not Halloween, so. . . .”

  “What does he want?”

  “I think he wants you to lift the sanctions or something.”

  “Oh. Well, send him in.”

  It had recently occurred to Pasha that we needed some kind of spokesman for the program, and since recruiting one would take several months, he had appointed me to the task. This meant constant interruptions from journalists, academics, businessmen, and various sorts of activists. So why not a priest?

  A few seconds later, a man with a long black gown and a thick gold pendant took a seat across from my desk. He turned down my offer of a coffee with a wise wave of the hand. The devoted smile on his face was not necessarily friendly. And his black, deep-set eyes had a shine that scared me a little bit.

  “How can I help you?” I asked.

  “It is not I who needs help,” said the priest. “It is the children of Iraq.”

  “Right. . . . Of course.”

  The priest had come prepared with explicit photographs of children lying wounded in hospitals and a stack of literature detailing horror stories “caused by the sanctions.”

  “Do you realize what is happening down there?” asked the priest.

  “I have some idea, yes.”

  “The sanctions are killing children, infants, old women. . . . Do you people have no heart?”

  “We are working to make things better,” I said, adding that we had just massively increased the amount of humanitarian goods that could flow into the country. But the priest just shook his head. He took me through some of the pamphlets he had brought with him and encouraged me to view a videotape a group of activists had shot while on a visit to Iraq.

  “Your so-called humanitarian program is just a tool to perpetuate the sanctions,” he said. In his view, children would continue to die needlessly until the sanctions on Saddam Hussein were lifted altogether. And until then, UN employees like myself would have the children’s deaths “on their conscience.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But it’s not in my power to lift the sanctions. I appreciate you coming here and sharing these documents with me. But if you want to lobby for lifting the sanctions, you need to speak to the U.S. or the U.K. . . .”

  The priest shook his head for a moment longer, then said, “I will pray for your soul.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “You can save your prayers for the Iraqi children. I’m sure they need them more than I do.”

  “I will pray for you nonetheless.”

  He rose, and I stood up to escort him out. As we walked to the elevators, we ran into Spooky in the corridor. Spooky was a devout Anglican, whose first act upon moving to New York had been to set up a shelter for homeless people at his local church. So I thought I’d introduce him to the Catholic priest, to see if two men of deep faith might come to some agreement regarding the dilemma that was facing our collective conscience. But it turned out the two had already met and did not wish to speak to each other again. This was made evident, despite their forced politeness, by the spark of static electricity that hit them both when they came in physical contact.

  Dzit!

  They both jolted; then, realizing nothing grave had happened, tried to regain composure. We had recently gotten new carpets, and there was static everywhere. Our office had become rather stylish, and we were now proud to receive visitors from the outside world. The iron desks were gone. The secretaries had comfortable booths with blue partition walls, and the electrical wires were tucked safely into discreet rubber conduits that spanned the entire office. The UN, which was normally strapped for cash, had gone on an interior design extravaganza using Iraqi oil money. Since the expansion of the program, we had become the richest operation at the United Nations. We were authorized to spend 2.2 percent of Iraq’s oil proceeds, which added up to a total of $1 billion over the course of the program. That was as much as the accumulated dues the United States refused to pay during the Jesse Helms years. In addition, we spent 13 percent of Iraq’s revenues through the UN agencies that were responsible for buying goods for Iraqi Kurdistan. This would come to $6 billion ($2 billion more than the entire sum pledged by world nations to provide relief for Asian countries devastated by the tsunami of 2004).

  No country on earth had ever paid as high a share of its national wealth to the UN budget as Iraq was doing, and it was far more than we could reasonably spend. So even with all the renovations, there was usually money left over at the end of every budget cycle (as an acting spokesperson, I was quick to point out that the UN poured any leftover funds back into the humanitarian accounts).

  After sending the priest off to lobby
the U.S. Embassy, I joined Spooky in his office for a cigarette. I resented having a cleric come into my office and accuse me of being a baby killer when all I was doing all day long was trying to help make a humanitarian program work.

  “It’s getting worse,” said Spooky, handing me an article. “Denis Halliday is now going on a tour.”

  “A tour?”

  “He’s speaking all around England and in colleges in the United States. He’s accusing the United Nations of committing genocide in Iraq.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  After resigning in a hail of glory, Halliday was spending his retirement as an anti-sanctions activist. I had to respect his decision. The guy stood up for his beliefs. But it didn’t feel so great to be accused of participating in a genocide. I hadn’t joined the UN to commit murder.

  During the years when the sanctions had done the most damage to Iraq’s civilians (1991 to 1997), few groups had raised their voice to protest what was going on. Ironically, now that the UN was doing something about the situation, anti-sanctions groups were sprouting up all over the world. They ranged from honest, well-meaning, and well-informed organizations such as the Cambridge University student group CASI (Campaign Against Sanctions in Iraq) to far more extreme groups that didn’t seem even mildly concerned by Saddam Hussein’s massive crimes against his people and that were bent on portraying us as assassins.

  The priest who had visited me was associated with a group called Voices in the Wilderness, which staged vivid demonstrations around the world insisting that Saddam should be free to import whatever he wanted. They saw this as the only solution to Iraq’s humanitarian crisis. The fact that Saddam did not want to spend as much money on food and medicine as we had recommended did not temper these activists’ zeal.