Farewell to the Secretary General
E. Ablorh-Odjidja

For generations to come, and especially for Africans, the name secretary general will perhaps apply mostly to one person, Mr. Kofi Annan. His term in office, after ten years as the boss of the UN, ended on December 31, 2006.

Whether historians will recognize Mr. Annan as one of the greatest secretary generals of all times or not remains to be seen. But those around today should note immediately that none experienced half the difficulty that faced him during his term.

Mr. Annan’s was the most turbulent period in recent UN history– from wars to natural disasters. But he saw it all with the calmness that some said was the centrality of his character.

Before the Iraq crisis, Mr. Kofi Annan was a very popular world citizen; even with the current US administration. He was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2001. But soon things began to change for him.

A key difficulty during his term was the “Oil for Food” scandal and how he almost fell victim to it. Some opponents, who were not deterred by the glowing tributes he garnered during his first term, used the scandal as a retrospective excuse to call for his immediate resignation.

Those who read The Wall Street Journal editorial of November 17, 2004  - “(A) United Nations that allowed Saddam Hussein to embezzle at least $21.3 billion in oil money during 12 years, with the great bulk of that sum--a staggering $17.3 billion--pilfered between 1997-2003, on Mr. Annan's watch…”  - knew when the die for his ouster was cast.

A Dr. Nile Gardiner, writing for the Heritage Foundation’s web site said that Mr. Annan’s “failure of leadership relating to the U.N.’s administration of the Oil-for-Food program .. cast serious doubt over his suitability to remain in office while the scandal is investigated.”

Meanwhile, scenes for his immediate departure had been written by the media at various press conferences long before Dr. Gardiner wrote his piece.

Of course, the case against Mr. Annan was staggering for those who wanted a scapegoat instead of a serious look at a flawed concept that the UN Security Council hatched, namely the “Oil for Food” program.

The program had its beginning in 1991, some five years before Mr. Annan was appointed the secretary general. It came when the UN got apprehensive about the worsening humanitarian situation in Iraq after Gulf War I.

Under the “Oil for Food” program, Iraq was permitted to sell some oil to meet pressing humanitarian needs. A major portion of the revenue, 59% to be exact, was to go to the government of Iraq for essential supplies.

“It was the basic assumption that Iraq – not the United Nations – would choose its (Iraq) oil buyers,” said the Volcker committee, which was appointed to look into the scandal, in a report in October 2005.

Assumption or not, Saddam Hussein manipulated the program to his advantage. The result, as the Volcker committee said, was that he “selected oil recipients in order to influence foreign policy and international opinion.”

The report, unfortunately, did not ask why the UN Security Council allowed itself to commit such a blunder. Or why it designed a chicken coop and chose a fox like Saddam to guard it!

The fault, clearly, must lie at the Security Council for approving the program, if not the design. But, for some, it was sufficient to assume that Mr. Annan designed, and badly administered it; that he dreamed up the whole venture for his benefit, and perhaps those of a few cronies.

Mr. Annan fault, however, came from another direction. As a chief spokesperson for the UN, he expressed a strong anti-war sentiment close to the presidential elections of 2004 and as a result became a fodder for US ideological warfare. Soon, the bad press started rolling and the intensification of the cries for his resignation started in earnest as the “Oil for Food” crisis became the retrospective excuse.

Why a UN Secretary General should not want war would be an oxymoron question to ask. But by implication, some did ask that very question in their criticisms of Mr. Annan. Surprisingly, somebody forgot to point out to them what the UN stood for.

However, whether you were for war or peace, the secretary general, in this case Mr. Annan, should be allowed to wage peace. That was his role. And by definition, the waging of peace ought to be the litmus test for all secretary generals of the UN.

The UN organization was set up after WWII to prevent conflicts among nations. The fact that there have been several wars since has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the secretary general’s office. It is just the nature of nations. No matter how much nations profess peace, there are bound to be differences at the UN.

But there is the Security Council, a small body of nations inside the UN body, with the power to override any decision. For many times, the acts of this body have been crippling to world peace. Exemplar cases are the ongoing conflicts in Somalia, Darfur, Sudan and this “Oil for Food” program under which Mr. Annan has just been crucified.

Mr. Annan was criticized for the failings of a program that was flawed from the beginning; the same that the powers on the Security Council approved. Some of these powers, France, Britain, and Russia, all nations that are permanent members, had entities that aided Saddam in his effort to hoodwink the UN. Ironically, they have been spared the blame.

In truth, Mr. Annan spoke of the usefulness of the “Oil for Food” program as “the only humanitarian programme ever to have been funded entirely from resources belonging to the nation it was designed to help.” He said so in a statement to the Security Council on November 20, 2003.

As a description, he was right. But he also added that the program was “an almost impossible series of challenges." Perhaps, he should have gone further to explain how flawed it was.

Long after the Volcker committee had cleared Mr. Annan of wrong doing, there was a Dr. Gardiner writing his piece. Could the whole scandal have been an attempt to deny him a glorious legacy after such an exemplary first term?

Many statesmen, looking at Mr. Annan’s career and his relationship with the UN, portray him as a skilled bureaucrat and a believer in the UN system. The BBC in a profile about him must have found his business philosophy when it reported Mr. Annan’s claim that the “UN should act on behalf of not just the major powers but all states.”

Such was the strength of his belief that Mr. Annan held on to it to the end.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Washington, DC, January 3, 2007


 

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