The Guardian Features

What we should do now in Iraq is what we should have done in the first place. Even after the rush to war and the deceit that went into it, it would have been possible to organise the reconstruction with international legitimacy and cooperation.

Text:  The issues go back to international law. Under the Geneva convention and Hague regulations, occupying powers in occupied territory have a duty to maintain order and provide for immediate humanitarian need. They have no authority to convey sovereignty or engage in major institutional reform. UK civil servants took this very seriously. Their advice was that the military should focus on keeping order and the UN should be asked to provide for immediate humanitarian need. A security council resolution should empower a special representative of the secretary general to consult the Iraqis on the best way of bringing into being an interim Iraqi government and a process of constitution building leading to elections. The UN was fully prepared for this role and on this basis the IMF, World Bank and Asian Development Bank stood ready to advise the interim Iraqi government on a programme of economic reform and development. I had meetings in the margins of the World Bank spring meetings in March with the French, German, Scandinavian and Canadian ministers about how we might all work together on this.

But the US was in no mood to ask the UN for help. The Pentagon had pushed the state department aside and had set up the office for the reconstruction of Iraq in the Pentagon under the retired General Jay Garner. They wanted no part for the UN and were busy squabbling with the state department over who would pick the Iraqis who would form the new government. Incredibly, no responsible preparation was made for the reconstruction of Iraq while these games went on. Tony Blair, in triumphalist mood after a period of enormous tension as he worked to bridge the contradictory promises made to Bush and to Britain, had no interest in listening to the advice of British civil servants or keeping his promises to me. The one thing he understood was that a UN security council resolution would create the legal authority needed to allow the US to proceed as it wished. So the No10 entourage went into intense telephone contact with the White House and agreed a draft security council resolution that British civil servants responsible for reconstruction saw for the first time on the BBC website.

Thus the UN resolution gave legitimacy to coalition power and failed to establish a proper role for the UN. Security council members decided not to risk US wrath by resisting any further. They let the resolution through but this approach made full international cooperation impossible. The secretary general's special representative to Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was given a subservient role to the coalition in creating an interim government. This contrasts with the role of the special representative of the secretary general in Afghanistan, but even for this - or maybe partly because of the UN role in conferring inappropriate power on the occupying powers - the UN compound was bombed and Sergio and many other UN staff killed.

In Iraq the coalition should have focused on keeping order; the Red Cross was fully ready to patch and mend health, electricity and sanitation systems as it had during the war the UN, which had run the Oil for Food programme for years, was ready to resume immediately its humanitarian responsibilities. And with sanctions lifted, a legitimate Iraqi interim authority would have worked with the international community to employ the many educated and capable Iraqis to get the economy moving. The problem was that the US wanted control of the future of Iraq and was therefore unwilling to hand authority to the UN. Now the coalition desperately wants an exit strategy and is therefore promising a handover to an Iraqi government by June 2004 and elections by the end of 2005. The US is also regretting the disbandment of the Iraqi army and very rapidly building up an Iraqi police force.

Obviously the situation is now massively more difficult than it would have been if the reconstruction had been handled correctly from the start. But the real question remains, is the US willing to hand over authority to a representative Iraqi government which is likely to be anti-American and anti-Israeli? If not, the danger parallels the problems experienced with Vietnamisation. Already there is a stream of violent attacks on Iraqis who are working with the coalition.

Those who have consulted local opinion recently say that hostility to the occupation is growing and there is a real risk that the resistance will strengthen. As yet, the Shia community have not joined in significantly - their leadership fully understanding how much they have to gain from democracy. And there are varying reports about the presence of non-Iraqi fighters. But in a region boiling with anger over US support for Israel, it would be very surprising if large numbers of angry young people were not making their way to Iraq.

Thus the situation remains very dangerous and current plans for an exit strategy may not work. There is still an important role for the UK to play - if we could separate our prime minister from the neo-conservative analysis that he has swallowed so completely. If it is true that our major purpose was to relieve the Iraqi people from the suffering inflicted by Saddam Hussein, then we should hand over political authority to the UN and internationalise the support for Iraqi-led reconstruction. This would make possible the run down and replacement of US/UK troops over time and ensure that the future of Iraq is determined by Iraqis.