Robert Fisk: UN pays price for Bush occupation

COMMENT

What United Nations country would ever contemplate sending peacekeeping troops to Iraq now?

The men who are attacking America's occupation Army are ruthless, but they are not stupid. They know President George W. Bush is getting desperate, that he will do anything - that he may even go to the dreaded Security Council for help - to reduce United States military losses in Iraq. But yesterday's attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad has slammed shut the door to that escape route.

Within hours of the explosion, we were being told this was an attack on a "soft target", a blow against the UN itself. True, it was a "soft" target. True, too, it was a shattering assault on the UN as an institution. But in reality, yesterday's attack was against the US.

For it proves that no foreign organisation - no NGO, no humanitarian organisation, no investor, no businessman - can expect to be safe under America's occupation rule.

The US proconsul, Paul Bremer, was supposed to be an "anti-terrorism" expert. Yet since he arrived in Iraq he has seen more "terrorism" than he can have dreamed of in his worst nightmares - and has been able to do nothing about it.

Pipeline sabotage, electricity sabotage, water sabotage, attacks on US troops and British troops and Iraqi policemen and now the bombing of the UN ... what comes next? The Americans can reconstruct the dead faces of Saddam's two sons, but they can't reconstruct Iraq.

Of course, this is not the first indication that the "internationals" are in the sights of Iraq's fast-growing resistance movement.

Last month a UN employee was shot dead south of Baghdad. Two International Red Cross workers were murdered, the second of them in his clearly marked Red Cross car. When he was found, his blood was still pouring from his car door.

Who is safe now? Who will feel safe at a Baghdad hotel when one of the most famous of them all - the old Canal Hotel which housed the UN arms inspectors before the invasion - has been blown up. Will the next "spectacular" be against occupation troops? Against the occupation leadership?

The reaction to yesterday's tragedy could have been written in advance. The Americans will tell us this proves how "desperate" Saddam's "dead-enders" have become - as if the attackers are more likely to give up as they become more successful in destroying US rule in Iraq.

The truth is that the Iraqi resistance organisation now involves hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunni Muslims, many of them with no loyalty to the old regime.

Increasingly, the Shiites are becoming involved in anti-American actions.

Future reaction is equally predictable. Unable to blame their daily cup of bitterness on Saddam's former retinue, the Americans will have to conjure up foreign intervention. Saudi "terrorists", al Qaeda "terrorists", pro-Syrian "terrorists" - any mysterious "terrorists" will do if their supposed existence covers up the painful reality: the occupation has spawned a home-grown Iraqi guerrilla army capable of humbling the greatest power on Earth.

The UN flag was supposed to guarantee security. But in the past a UN presence was always contingent on the acquiescence of the sovereign power. With no sovereign power in existence in Iraq, the UN's legitimacy was bound to be locked on to the occupation authority. Thus could it be seen - by America's detractors - as no more than an extension of US power.

Bush was happy to show his scorn for the UN when its inspectors failed to find any weapons of mass destruction and when its Security Council would not agree to the Anglo-American invasion. Now he cannot even protect UN lives in Iraq.

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Herald Feature: Iraq