by Kofi Annan
Within hours of the crisis breaking, I decided to send a high-level mission of three senior envoys to the region. Rice urged me to place the mission within the 1559 framework, including Hizbollah’s disarmament, but this could never be a goal achieved during or by Israel’s offensive, no matter how long it went on. Even if Israel bombed Lebanon for months, Hizbollah would still be on the ground at the end of it and still part of the Lebanese government, and both it and its regional backers would have to be part of the solution.
Israeli prime minister Olmert initially told me he probably would not have time to meet the mission, reflecting his hubris during the early days of the conflict that he would not need a ladder to climb down from the crisis. Eventually, he met the mission, and they also visited Beirut. The envoys developed key elements of a package that could secure a cease-fire, including return of the captured soldiers, an expanded peacekeeping force to support the Lebanese government in extending its control over the south, and an international conference to endorse a delineation of Lebanon’s international borders, resolving all disputed areas, including Shab’a farms. The subsequent Council negotiations, conducted by the Americans and the French, led to agreement on resolution 1701, which was finally adopted on August 11. I was disappointed that it took a month for this resolution to be agreed to while the fighting dragged on, and felt justified in dressing down the assembled foreign ministers in the Council when the resolution was passed:
I would be remiss if I did not tell you how profoundly disappointed I am that the Council did not reach this point much, much earlier . . . [The Council’s] inability to act sooner has badly shaken the world’s faith in its authority and integrity.
But even the adoption of the resolution would not bring the fighting to an end. That task fell to me. I knew from my peacekeeping experience that the language of 1701 calling for an “immediate” cessation of hostilities was not sufficient. I had urged the Americans and the French to insert a date and time in the text. John Bolton, who for all his bravado had never been responsible for a single soldier in his life, ignored this advice.
Eventually, I finalized the cessation directly with Olmert and Siniora. The Israelis wanted another sixty hours, with Olmert assuring me that they would not use this period to take “offensive measures” but to get Israeli troops in a position to “defend themselves” given the vulnerability that any withdrawing force faces. With Rice’s help, I brought Olmert down from his sixty hours, and he agreed to a halt at 7:00 a.m. on Monday, August 14. Siniora also delivered his government’s agreement, including Hizbollah, to this deadline. I confirmed this in writing to both prime ministers, together with a list of do’s and don’ts to define what a cessation meant—essentially augmenting 1701 under my own authority by an agreement with the parties.
—
Despite Olmert’s assurance, Israel went on the offensive in those last three days, including dropping untold cluster munitions that would continue to kill Lebanese men, women, and children long after the guns fell silent. Misleading the secretary-general was not an Israeli offense alone: when I called Bashar al-Assad to urge him not to resupply weapons to Hizbollah, he said quite plainly that Syria did not supply anything to the movement. Both he and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave me their commitment to support 1701. I was under no illusion that this commitment would mean a great deal on the ground. But it was better to have a commitment they could be judged against than not to have any at all. The same applied to the Israelis.
A central element of the 1701 package was a stronger and reconfigured UNIFIL with a much tougher mandate and the right troops. The United States initially wanted to remove UNIFIL and insert a multinational force—something the Israelis had insisted on at the outset of their campaign. I knew this would never come together practically and would not work in Lebanon—and I noticed that those countries urging a multinational force were not the ones ready to provide troops. One thing on which everyone agreed was that it was the responsibility of the Lebanese, not the international presence, to disarm Hizbollah—as Rice acknowledged to me, the United States had not sought to disarm the Taliban, and had let the Afghans lead. The United States eventually accepted that a reconfigured UNIFIL was not only the right choice but the only available one. Washington rightly insisted on the strongest possible mandate, as it was clear that UNIFIL in its old guise could not respond to the situation. The lead would be taken by the French, with other Europeans contributing, but also with non-Europeans in the mix.
There was precious little confidence once 1701 was passed that the cessation of hostilities would hold or that the troops would be forthcoming. The end of the violence simply began a new phase of my work. Getting the troops pledged and on the ground, and ensuring that the Lebanese army deployed south of the Litani River, would be essential if Israel was to pull back behind the Blue Line for the second time in six years.
I pushed the Europeans hard to come up with the credible backbone of a force. To their credit, they delivered—eight thousand troops were pledged in a meeting I held with European leaders in Brussels in late August. To complement them, I reached out to Muslim countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Turkey in a successful bid to supplement the force.
—
The devastation in parts of Lebanon was immense, and I was determined to get the Israeli air and naval blockade of the country lifted as soon as possible. But the Israelis would not move until assured that appropriate internationals would be in place, while the internationals would not commit until the Israelis moved. Before I had a deal, I gambled by basically announcing that the blockade would be lifted, which generated the momentum necessary. Sometimes I had to risk failure in order to succeed.
Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni was particularly upset when I proposed to bring in Malaysia, objecting that they had no diplomatic relations with Israel. I thought this was over the top, and I went ahead—not least because I had specified that they would be deployed to a position not directly facing Israeli troops. The war drove home Israel’s vulnerability in an increasingly volatile region and ended with none of its stated goals being achieved. I appointed a German intelligence agent who eventually finalized a prisoner-swap deal under my successor, returning the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers for Lebanese prisoners still in Israel. He subsequently was asked to help out with an Israeli soldier captured in Gaza, in contacts between Hamas and Israel quietly facilitated by the UN. Such necessary negotiations are a reminder that slogans about never talking to terrorists do not survive encounters with the real world—in the Middle East or elsewhere.
Resolution 1701 put new burdens on the United Nations for the security of both Lebanon and Israel, and the region as a whole. I am proud of what we achieved in the months after the war before I left office in December. Despite incidents since, the calm along the Blue Line has held. As I look at our role in Lebanon over the years of my tenure, I can say that we helped get Israel out of Lebanon twice, Syria out as well, supported national dialogue, and strengthened our peacekeeping role.
These were all necessary steps if the Lebanese state was to begin to assert itself. But they were clearly not sufficient to ensure Lebanon’s long-term stability. While we have helped stabilize the situation, neither the Security Council’s interventions, nor my own, were able to address underlying issues. Lebanese national dialogue generated important areas of consensus but did not lead to significant progress on Hizbollah’s weapons. Syria’s and Iran’s commitment to 1701 was important, but it did not stop their rearming the movement. Our strengthened peacekeeping alongside the Lebanese army has reduced the visibility of armed players in the south, but Hizbollah remains a potent presence and exercises today a kind of veto over the Lebanese government. For its part, Israel did not fulfill its side of the 1701 bargain by moving creatively to help Siniora on Shab’a, and it continued its provocative daily overflights into Lebanese airspace. In my trip through the region
after the war and my reporting to the Security Council, I emphasized that 1701 was “not a buffet, but a fixed menu”: we had to try to advance on all the issues lockstep and not allow the parties to pick and choose. But if true stability is to be achieved, the answer lies not in peacekeeping or in crisis diplomacy: it lies in the pursuit of a genuinely comprehensive Middle East peace.
REFLECTIONS ON PEACEKEEPING AND PEACEMAKING IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Every violent eruption with which I had to contend—from the Palestinian intifada and Israeli Operation Defensive Shield to the Lebanon war and constant crises in Gaza—struck a blow at the very idea of peaceful coexistence and mutual security that is essential if the Arab world and Israel are to one day live in peace. Equally, each partially conceived or unimplemented political initiative—from Oslo to the roadmap to Gaza disengagement—eventually discredited the very concept of a negotiated peace for both peoples. The only winners to emerge from this litany of failure have been those who seek to perpetuate the conflict—militants and radicals, whether they fire rockets at or launch suicide bombs into Israeli towns, or subjugate Palestinians in the West Bank while taking their land.
The lessons are clear: the only solutions will be found in politics, not violence; and in comprehensive solutions, not partial approaches.
The challenge facing the UN in the region was—and is—to try to catalyze such solutions, in circumstances where the UN as an institution has traditionally been sidelined from the process. By initiating the creation of the Quartet, I hoped to combine the legitimacy of the UN, the political power of the United States, the financial resources of the EU, and the regional prestige of Russia into an amalgamated diplomatic force—one in which I held the gavel and acted as de facto chair. Doing so helped set a clearer international consensus on what a solution would look like, and what it would take to achieve it. Yet as I have discussed in this chapter, the failure of the Quartet to insist on the basic principles of the roadmap robbed the body of some of its vitality, limiting its ability to shift the dynamics between the parties. I alluded to my own frustration at the end of the Lebanon war, when I told the Council that “the various crises in the region must henceforth be addressed not in isolation or bilaterally but as part of a holistic and comprehensive effort, sanctioned and championed by this Council, to bring peace and stability to the region as a whole.”
—
In the years since I left office, we have witnessed a devastating Israeli offensive in Gaza against rocket attacks and a civil war playing out among the Palestinians themselves. One thing has remained largely constant: the daily creation of facts on the ground by the Israelis. The only ray of hope has been the state-building efforts of the Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, proving beyond all argument that there is at least in the West Bank a Palestinian partner ready to walk the hard road of peace.
Deeply distrustful of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Palestinians are pursuing alternative options for a political way forward—from seeking UN membership for a State of Palestine to increased popular protest against the occupation. The reflexive U.S. reaction against any Palestinian utilization of the UN showed just how charged the issue has become in U.S. domestic politics, and robs the international community of real leverage. After all, what better way would there be to give both parties an incentive to make progress than to acknowledge the importance of the Palestinian membership application and indicate that it will be taken up and decided, whether affirmatively or negatively, after a further effort to negotiate the final terms of a settlement?
If the UN route is closed off, and negotiations lead nowhere, more Palestinian voices will be heard calling for disbanding the Palestinian Authority and returning responsibility for the occupation to Israel—or even for abandoning the two-state paradigm in favor of a one-state alternative. Meanwhile, the Israelis appear to be shifting further to the right, to a point where too many seem incapable of creatively imagining the benefits of a two-state deal for their long-term security, legitimacy, and identity.
Yet only a two-state solution can respond to the needs of both peoples. The international community must at some point, sooner rather than later, take the risk of prescribing the basic parameters on which the parties would be expected to negotiate a final agreement. The Quartet should work to develop these, with the option of subsequently enshrining them in a Security Council resolution. There are risks involved in trying once more to solve the conflict and failing, but the risks of leaving the conflict to fester and explode are higher. We owe it to the Palestinians and the Israelis to help them overcome this tragic and bitter conflict before it is too late.
THE ARAB AWAKENING AND THE FUTURE OF THE REGION
Alongside the region’s unresolved conflicts, the Arab world has been held back for decades by the parlous state of its political systems. Regional leaders continually exploited the deep feelings of their people about the plight of the Palestinians to divert attention from the mix of authoritarianism, sectarianism, fanaticism, poverty, and ignorance that grew more potent in the Arab world over several decades. Indeed, one of my regular frustrations as secretary-general was the persistence of bad excuses and red herrings—from the role of Israel to the influence of Iran to the power of America—deployed to disguise the true failings of political systems in the Arab world.
Early in my tenure, I was proud that the United Nations empowered Arab voices to diagnose the problems of societies in the region with far greater insight and credibility than could come from lectures from Western leaders about democracy. In 2002, a fully Arab team of researchers drawn together by the head of the United Nations Development Programme’s Arab regional bureau, Rima Khalaf, tossed an intellectual rock into the stagnant waters of Arab public debate with the first United Nations Arab Human Development Report. This report and several successors subjected Arab societies to intense self-criticism and found that three largely homegrown gaps held them back—the freedom gap, the gender gap, and the knowledge gap. Unless Arab societies built political systems based on freedom and democracy, empowered women, and overcame their deficits in knowledge and education, the burgeoning generation now coming of age would face futures of growing frustration and lack of opportunity. Now and then, Arab leaders would grumble to me about the Human Development Reports, but they could not easily dismiss something that came in an Arab voice carrying the legitimacy of the UN itself.
The popular protest movements that emerged in the Arab world in early 2011, offering the region a chance to break the shackles of decades of misrule heaped on centuries of decline, were in many ways the Arab youth’s answer to the failings identified in the Arab Human Development Report. It was their way of saying, “We know we’re falling behind, and we know why: politics and political tyranny sustained by a false alliance of stability over progress.” Ordinary people—particularly the young, who form the bulk of Arab societies today—have shown with eloquence and courage that there is much more to the Arab world than the monarchs, mosques, and militants that otherwise have defined the global image of the region.
—
As I write this reflection, one year into the Arab Awakening, I remain optimistic about the changes under way. It would be naive to think they will provide an easy or straight path to a Middle East that is both free and stable. The economic problems and social tensions are acute. Reactionary forces will fight back. Radical forces will try to hijack what is going on. Geopolitics will not stand still. Sectarian and ethnic tensions can easily be inflamed. So we should expect a bumpy ride.
But what is clear is that the main actors who must shape this change need to come from within the Arab and Islamic worlds. Those in Cairo’s Tahrir Square expressed universal aspirations but grounded in values drawn from their own societies. Now the challenge is for Arab societies to find a new consensus for their political systems and cultural values. But the UN will inevitably be involved in many ways—witness the Security Council’s role regarding the interve
ntion in Libya; the organization’s diplomatic efforts there and in Yemen; the work of its human rights spokespersons to speak out against Assad’s brutal crackdown in Syria; or its continuing work to help countries like Tunisia and Egypt navigate their transitions. As it did with the Arab Human Development Reports, the United Nations must do what it can to empower those in the region who are committed to debating these issues profoundly and pursuing real change responsibly.
The movement for legitimacy and accountability long denied Arab peoples is not about Israel, Iran, or the United States—perhaps the first time in decades that rulers and reactionaries have been denied the chance to blame those outside forces for a stagnation far more homegrown than imposed from outside. For too long, the region had largely been politicized only by the Arab-Israeli conflict and the misdeeds of Israel and the West. The Arab Awakening has repoliticized the Arab street about the futures of their own societies.
VIII
THE WARS OF 9/11
Terror, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations at the Brink
AUGUST 19, 2003
I was half a world away when the call came. Iqbal Riza, my chef de cabinet, rang after locating Nane and me on a small island in Finland where we had gone for a short holiday. A massive bomb had struck the UN headquarters in Baghdad, resulting in many casualties, he told me. Amid the confusion in the immediate aftermath, no one had been able to locate Sergio Vieira de Mello, my close friend and special representative, who had gone to Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion to lead our mission there. Other members of his team were known to be dead and injured—just who and how many was still unclear.
