Memorandum submitted by Olivia Bosch,
former UNSCOM Inspector in Iraq
1. This brief highlights factors leading
to the decision by the Coalition Forces to use military force
on 20 March 2003 to force Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime to comply
with its obligations mandated by UN Security Council resolutions
(UNSCR) since 1991. This use of force took place after governments
of the international community were unable to settle by peaceful
means the short-term crisis arising in August 2002. Since 1991,
Iraq had failed to comply with its obligations to destroy and
dismantle its programmes related to nuclear, chemical and biological
weapons and means of delivery, generally referred to as weapons
of mass destruction (WMD). This long-term non-compliance came
to a head in August 2002, when Iraq resisted the return of UN
inspectors after a four-year absence since December 1998.
2. This brief emphasises the factors other
than intelligence information that led to this decision, though
the role of intelligence in the UN inspection process will be
referred to as appropriate. This brief does not intend to provide
a normative view as to whether military force should or should
not have been used but highlights the various actions taken by
different countries that led to the decision to use it.
3. Foremost among the factors contributing
to the decision to use military force was the demeanour of the
Iraqi regime at a time when it was obliged to verify information
about and destruction of its programmes of WMD. This was a systematic
pattern of non-cooperation that comprised deceiving the inspectors
and concealing parts of the WMD programmes; this behaviour was
well known to UNSCOM inspectors during the period 1991-98. During
the recent crisis beginning in August 2002, it gradually became
evident that the regime was again conducting such stalling techniques;
however, the degree to which the regime deceived and concealed
such information was not well understood by the public, the politicians
or the media. This is because from 1991-98 the Iraqi regime's
acts of deception were largely kept "below the radar"
so as to avoid attention and action by governments. When such
actions were deemed to be significant by the UN Security Council,
new resolutions were passed.
4. The role of the inspectors remains not
fully understood. One of their main objectives was to ascertain
the programmes of WMD, not just the weapons themselves. The latter
tended to become synonymous with the "smoking gun",
a phrase that the media in particular preferred to accentuate
as it was more journalistically appealing, but this had an effect
of distorting the role of the inspectors. Both UNSCRs 687 (1991)
and 1441 (2002) referred to WMD programmes, which included research
and development, infrastructure, and personnel as well as stockpiles
of agent and weapons. Programmes also indicated intent as well
as capability; thus when the Iraqi regime repeatedly stalled and
frustrated the inspectors' demands for transparency and information—not
just access to sites—it was prudent for governments to expect
the worst of Iraq's WMD capability. There has not yet been an
explanation of why the Iraqi regime proactively stalled on providing
verifiable information about the status of its WMD programmes.
5. While the substantive UK and US government
dossiers on Iraq's WMD programmes appeared in September 2002,
the UN inspectors returned to Iraq subsequently, from 25 November
until 18 March 2003, in accordance with UNSCR 1441. The role of
the inspectors was not "to hunt and seek" WMD but to
verify the information provided by the Iraqi regime, particularly
that recently presented in the Declaration of 7 December 2002,
regarding the status of the programmes. Indirectly, there was
a chance of information in the UK and US dossiers being corroborated
by findings of the inspectors, but this evaluation, too, could
not be done accurately or fully. According to Hans Blix, Head
of UNMOVIC, the 7 December declaration was deemed to contain omissions
and false statements. Additionally, the Iraqi regime was known
by UNSCOM inspectors to have a propensity to "squirrel away"
component parts of weapons programmes, and to remove and move
around these parts, so intelligence regarding sites that was provided
to the UNMOVIC inspectors often became outdated for operational
use.
6. The most significant indication of Iraqi
lack of cooperation with the UN inspectors, and one that indirectly
prevented intelligence assessments from being verified, was the
inability of UN inspectors to interview scientists, military engineers
and many others who worked on WMD programmes.
7. The various reports by Hans Blix and
his counterpart Mohammed El-Baradei, Director General of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the UN Security Council from 27
January to March 2003, were technical statements about Iraq's
WMD programmes and not judgments about compliance or what action
should be taken to deal with Iraqi non-compliance. The Security
Council, not UNMOVIC or the IAEA, was the entity that could make
such a determination; this reflected the political nature of such
a judgment. While Hans Blix mentioned that some progress had been
made on the inspections process, eg, that the Iraqis has allowed
the inspectors unconditional access to sites, Blix stated that
the Iraqis did not co-operate on substance, meaning that the Iraqis
provided no significant verifiable accounts of those parts of
the WMD programmes still unaccounted for. On the record, many
questions remained unresolved. These included, for example, no
verifiable account of the existence or destruction of more than
8,000 litres of anthrax and 1,000s to tens of thousands of chemical
and biological capable munitions. While some analysts of WMD argued
that the shelf-life of some chemical or biological agents might
have expired, the main concern was rather the degree to which
the Iraqis were capable of producing such agents at very short
notice. Understanding Iraq's programmes of WMD also required knowledge
of how their procedures differed from those in the West. For example,
some WMD analysts have suggested that the two suspect mobile laboratories
(10-18 more are believed to exist) discussed after the conflict
could not be for biological agent production because they had
canvas sides and thus were unsafe, but this indicates ignorance
of Iraq's disregard for safety when working with industrial and
scientific processes related to programmes of WMD.
8. The second major factor that contributed
to the decision to go to war was the strategic interplay between
the threat of use of military force to alter the behaviour of
the Iraqi regime (coercive diplomacy) and the diplomatic activity
among the members of the United Nations Security Council. From
August 2002 until the week before 20 March 2003, the threat of
use of military force was most effective in making the Iraqi regime
more cooperative, for example, by eventually allowing the return
of inspectors. The US was the only state that could credibly project
such force, but in doing so it attracted unfavourable press and
public reaction. Paradoxically, such unfavourable public reaction
would have had the effect of making the threat to use military
force more credible in the eyes of the Iraqi regime. The credibility
of the threat to use military force required mobilisation and
deployment of troops and equipment to the Gulf region.
9. France made it publicly known in March
2003 that it would veto an additional UNSCR authorising the use
of military force, as that would mean pursuing the "logic
to war". This position immediately nullified the hitherto
value of the threat to use military force—the logic to war
implies preparations to conduct military operations. Once the
French government had made its position known, further steps by
Coalition forces towards military action were perceived to be
virtually essential if the "final opportunity" and "serious
consequences" referred to UNSCR 1441 were to have meaning
and mandatory UN Security Council resolutions were to be enforced.
In future academic studies, the deployment of military capability
to the region can be seen as a classic text-book example of (the
failure of) coercive diplomacy.
10. The factors leading to the decision
to use military force were many and complex, not based solely
on intelligence. The decision was a "judgement call".
This brief emphasises primarily that the non-compliant behaviour
of the Iraqi regime alongside a momentum of coercive and negotiated
diplomatic activity led to the use of military force to make the
Iraqi regime comply with its obligations. The political objective
of the destruction of WMD programmes was thereafter intended to
be achieved through the two military objectives of: regime change
to remove the intent to pursue programmes of WMD, and physical
destruction of the component parts of the WMD programmes to deal
with capability. This second objective remains to be accomplished
when the environment in Iraq becomes secure enough for civilians
to return to conduct document searches and interview Iraqi people
previously unable to provide information about the WMD programmes.
Olivia Bosch
June 2003
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