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Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Eugene Rogan, and as director of the Media Centre,

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it is my great pleasure to welcome you all in person and online for the Reza Hussein Memorial Lecture.

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This is an event which we have long looked forward to hosting because of the ways in which events in the U.N. compound in Baghdad 20 years and a bit

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ago so affected those whose lives were dedicated to trying to restore peace and order to post-invasion Iraq and those who from the academic community,

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as well as the diplomatic community,

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were caught up in events that no one had anticipated and were to prove so transformative to the lives of all involved,

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none perhaps more so than to our colleague Arzu Hasan.

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Arzu is a director of the Invisible East program here at the University of Oxford.

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She actually has her offices here in the Middle East Centre.

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This is a team focussed project that looks at both documentation supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council,

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Council and the Go Local project, funded by the European Research Fund,

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which involves a study of documents of literary sources and material culture from Afghanistan and from Central Asia.

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Arzu, before joining academic academia, had served as a U.N. peacekeeper in the Balkans, in Timor-Leste and other hotspots around the world.

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So the shift to academic life was following on a career with the United Nations.

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She received her dphil here at Oxford, after which she co-directed the Arts and Cultural Heritage Project, funded by the Living Trust.

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Arzu was a lecturer in medieval history at the University of Birmingham from 2013 to 2019.

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She is an author of several works that derive directly from her original research.

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Her first book, Sacred Landscapes of Medieval Afghanistan, was published by Autry in 2013,

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and she co-authored for both annotated translation with commentary Introduction of the Oldest Surviving History bulk in Afghanistan.

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This event would not have happened had it not been for our initiative,

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and I would like her to come to the podium to explain more about this special event today.

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First place. First of all, thank you so much, Eugene, for this very kind introduction.

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Thank you so much to all of you for coming to this event.

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Thank you so much for agreeing to attend.

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I'm really touched.

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I have in this room, I'm looking around and I see friends from Oxford, local friends, academics, scholars who know me as a medieval historian.

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And in the corner, friends and colleagues who I worked with at the United Nations in East Timor and Iraq.

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In Geneva. In your family?

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My sister just walked in fashionably late. And so it's it's a real, really special, very special moment for me that we are here together.

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And I really thank you from the bottom of my heart, Eugene, really for for agreeing to do this,

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which is a little bit different, I think a little bit unusual.

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And I wanted to tell you a little bit about me only in relation to this afternoon.

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This lecture is named. And I wondered if we could have a picture.

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No, I don't think you can. And keep. That's fine.

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That's actually I can sure scream. It'll be interesting. Now, don't worry.

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We might show you a picture. But he was. He was a wonderful man.

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And I'm actually wearing a scarf that he gave me 20 years ago.

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And Reza and I, we met in Timor, where we worked with Sergio Vieira de Mello at the U.N. and was at that time was working with IOM,

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the International Organisation for Migration,

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which at that time was not part of the United Nations in West Timor, which was still part of Indonesia, was still part of Indonesia.

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And then he managed to get an international posting because he had come from Iran, where he was an Iranian,

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he was born in Iran and he had managed to come to West Timor as a local staff in Iran who was given the chance to be international for three months.

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And then he managed to go to East Timor, where he worked for the IOM, as I said,

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and then eventually he ended up going to Baghdad to join my colleagues here and DeMello and other colleagues in Iraq in 2003.

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Well, we will hear a lot about what happened that day and what has happened since.

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So I, I will skip that. But I just wanted to say that obviously two years have passed.

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On August 19, it was the 20th anniversary.

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Um, and there have been books written about what's what happened that day and what's happened since.

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There have been movies produced, Netflix movies, and there's been a lot of thinking about what happened in that room.

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But I thought and of course, it was a real reality check, I think,

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for the West in terms of its its interference if you want to intervention interventions, but also for the U.N.,

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I mean, the U.N., I think I see not I mean,

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we we were we thought we were untouchable in the sense that we were in a safe space and this would not happen to us, of course.

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It wasn't the first time. It wasn't and it's not the last time that the U.N. has been attacked, but it was never attacked in such a major way.

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22 colleagues lost their lives that day. Colleagues, many dozens of colleagues were injured, some severely injured and still bearing the scars.

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I think we were at an event 20 years ago in August for the 20th anniversary of Geneva,

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and there was a very moving talk by somebody, I think, who spent ten years really recovering, going from hospital to hospital.

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So it's still very alive for the survivors.

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But for today, the purpose is to offer I think I wanted to offer students, faculty, but also friends,

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a moment to reflect a little bit deeper on what happens when we intervene in these countries.

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We, the West, intervene in these countries.

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But I wanted to come as a personal account.

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So Professor Solomon, who will be properly introduced to you shortly, is I mean,

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I couldn't have thought of a better person to invite as our inaugural speaker for this lecture which series which we want to be.

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I want it to be a lecture series that will run every year.

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Um, Selam is not only an academic, but he's also.

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A field worker. He was in Iraq himself when the bomb struck and he had met himself.

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So I couldn't think of a better person to to invite.

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And I think I'm going to leave it at that.

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And just again, thank you very much for coming.

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And I really look forward to this lecture and I look forward to what I think this lecture does that I haven't yet heard in my 28 years.

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Now that I've been in Oxford,

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which is really linking the past of the Middle East to the present of the Middle East and and bringing these sort of academic worlds.

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Together and also hearing very personal stories.

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Hence the subtitle of the series, which are stories to connect.

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Because I think when we hear personal stories, we connect to the events.

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Even if they were 20 years ago or even hundreds of years ago, we connect to them better.

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And so we want to have lectures where sometimes we hear modern subjects,

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sometimes we hear historical subjects, and where it's more historical, we hear it through documents.

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So texts that were written by normal people, not necessarily by the.

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By the rules and so on. So we want to really bring in this voice.

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If you want from the ground. And with that, I'm going to leave you and I will pass back to our speaker.

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Thank you. Thank you, Arzu.

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And yes, thanks for giving a context within which to understand why we're holding this event today.

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We're grateful to you for bringing this to us.

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We're also grateful for the opportunity this has given us to invite an old friend to the Middle East Centre.

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Back to the Middle East Centre after far too many years.

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I remember the last time we met. We both had dark hair, as some indicated.

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His Excellency Professor Hassan Salameh, Professor of international Relations at your school in Paris,

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and the founding Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs.

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From 2000 to 2003, he served his country, Lebanon, as Minister of Culture in charge of National heritage and the arts.

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He was political advisor to the U.N. mission in Iraq fatally in 2003 as senior

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advisor to the United Nations Security General from 23 to 25 and again in 2012.

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He served as vice chairman of the Board of the International Crisis Group and sits on the Board of the Open Society Institute.

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Institutions that have made such material contributions to trying to bring democracy and and the attention of the world

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through well-informed research to the crises that challenge democracy and the freedom of the seas and of the individual.

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He was given the Phoenix, the Adelphi and the ADC Awards, as well as the May Day of the Academy's concerns in 2003.

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He was made in 17 of the Legion d'Honneur in 2004, and in that same year was named the Arab Cultural Personality of the Year.

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With such strong accolades, to his credit, to have a sense that I'll be returned to Oxford to be honoured,

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I would say any speaker tonight is truly one of those pleasures and honours that makes one's life as an academic exciting and fun.

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Welcome back. Thank you for being here tonight.

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It was a very hot day that. But it's not the fact the lady was representing.

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One of the Iraqi minorities came to visit us at the mission.

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And Sergio was not very keen, but she insisted on having it for.

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So we pleaded that he comes to see her.

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Please don't take her in my. Which he did.

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And then all of a sudden he didn't look at her too much, but he looked at a big map of the East.

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And he was in love and he was thinking of a honeymoon.

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So he started looking at looks, etc. When he wants to go, you know, she'll sit.

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And. The second point is that I want that my son in my office.

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You don't need. I said, it's all yours.

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So he took off his shoes. Well, he threw the chair and started right and removed the mat.

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I went as well to help him, but it was very strongly attached to that.

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So I said, you know, I badly need this map and if I don't have it, what do you think of exchanging our offices?

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Because there was also another map, you know, quite detailed.

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He also showed. I said, okay.

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He was half joking. But if we had traded our places, they would have in.

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Because my office was on the floor. The building was like giving you my office word on the floor.

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And his office was on the road with this huge amount of.

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So I didn't know exactly, but I saw a number of like groups that.

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I remember we had two or three who I love myself and two bodyguards.

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Two of the bodyguards were allowed to remain on the site.

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So. So Farhad, who was assisting me then.

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I took my jacket. And my phone.

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And we started taking the rubble with our own hands, the three of us and the first came back, one of the NFL players.

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So that was about that. August 19th, a few minutes before 430.

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That day was supposed to end. There's one famous quote, obviously the.

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Too poor to know what he should do with the food.

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And when Sobel tried to explain to him that the dinner could not take place.

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It took him some time to understand how serious the situation.

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I think that that day was probably the birthday of guys.

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Well, we discovered later that some of the Army officers who used to come and see me.

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Have been the founding or some of the founding leaders of that organisation.

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And in fact, after us, is there a recovery group who probably did it, did a number of other big attacks and they did it against Jordanian and the.

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But that. So that was an important day that went way beyond the Canada Day where we have to.

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And here comes the first question. Why were you there?

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We were there because we have decided that we didn't want to be within the Green Zone because we thought

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that the U.N. should remain independent from the occupying force and not to go and little by force.

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So it was a very noble reason.

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But it was a very risky. Iraq.

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Iraq is very important to understand how the international system is.

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I would like to see how. If you look at what happened, you will see that you had a war against Iraq led by a gentleman named Bush in 1990.

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That was the target after Saddam Hussein.

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And in the year 2003, you had another war against Iraq that also a certain Mr. Bush.

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Some. Although the leader of the coalition in both cases was the same country.

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Also, the president of that country was the Bush in two cases, although the target was the same country, Iraq.

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Nothing could be more different than the difference between they might be like the war and the Jews who fell.

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And this tells us a lot about the evolution of the international system.

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In the year 1990. That is the year when the Cold War ended.

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And for the very first time of its history, the United Nations was given an opportunity to implement its basic mission,

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which is to be an organisation for collective security.

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And it worked that way. 66 countries, including countries like Egypt or Syria, joined in the coalition to extract Saddam from Kuwait.

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But. More countries were ready to join.

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And the Security Council for the first time operated the way it should always look at it with unanimity,

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although the Arab representatives did not participate in the.

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But unanimity China, Russia and the U.S., the two others voting.

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And if you look at the register of the U.N. Security Council resolutions, you start with Resolution 660.

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It was taken the very day of the invasion and then five days later, Resolution 661 and then a dozen other resolutions.

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You you'll find that it is a textbook example of the collective security organisation.

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Everything. The sanctions, the humanitarian, everything was discussed and decided unanimously in the Security Council.

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And the coalition operated according to the rules.

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And one of the rules was that it was a war to liberate Kuwait, not to attack Iraq in Iraq.

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And therefore, yes, the coalition did not follow the Iraqi troops into Baghdad.

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Look at 2003. Security Council entirely divided.

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Two countries, UK and the US supporting the war.

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Three other countries Russia, China and France for opposing that war.

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Not to mention other members of the Security Council like Germany.

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Add to that the Pope himself was entirely against the war.

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A war of choice, not legitimate.

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Well, think of the general who said once on BBC that it was an illegal war and they didn't report it.

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Kofi Annan. It's the war that had the same phobia led by another Bush.

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But then it completely different. And I would say.

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That the so-called post-Cold War era of the international system started with the first Iraq war and somehow ended with the second.

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And I will try to explain. That's why Iraq is important.

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The two wars in Iraq and the big opposition between the two wars, despite the superficial similarities.

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Is this. The first war.

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Basic intention was to re-establish the sovereignty of a country that has been invaded and annexed by an.

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So it was in full contradiction with the Department for Torture, and it was against international law.

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The 2003 war had a number of justifications, and the more the wars sort of evolved and the post-World War,

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you were looking for new justification for it because it had no real legal foundation.

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Therefore, you need to produce justifications.

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But the basic idea was regime change. And the very first lesson we can learn from that war has to do with regime change.

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There is an illusion that you can change regimes in a very innocent way.

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You can look. And white.

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Because you have. Regimes in that part of the world, at least,

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that are so intertwined with the state bureaucracy that the moment you change the regime, the regime collapses.

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Yes, the state disintegrates in the same gesture.

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So the regime change brings the state deconstruction, but the state reconstruction brings something else that is much worse is social decomposition.

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The society implodes. Why?

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Because the regime was holding the state and the state was somehow holding the society.

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So what we learn from Iraq is that once you think you are changing the regime, like you are changing your necktie in the morning.

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You don't understand anything about that part of the world or you do not want to see.

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How these regimes operate. So to say that I am doing a regime change can mean and often means I'm starting a civil war and becomes

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the target because the regime change brings us to the state position and the regime change is important.

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Another reason? When you have regime change.

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You better think of the death. There were 25 volumes in the State Department on the day after.

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But nobody of those we used to meet in Baghdad at random or knowing what is in there was in them,

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for example, who should go and guard the National Museum because looting will take place.

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Nobody that left alone. You should not really go into against anybody who has been in the Baath Party for some important reasons.

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I've come back. They did exactly that on May 15.

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The first decision taken by. In fact,

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the regime and the state were so intertwined that it was very difficult for you

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to push your career up in the system unless you were a member of that party.

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So it was like. Almost compulsive to be part of the.

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At some point, the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, sent me to Washington to explain how this applies to education,

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because I had told him in one particular governorate of Iraq then that.

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The co-chairs to the building of the Education Directorate that became the head of the

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directorate because all the top people had been members of the Baath Party and were excluded.

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And they took a militiaman who was guarding the building.

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And so I went to the Pentagon because Kofi Annan insisted that I tell this particular story,

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and I explained it to the then deputy secretary of Defence.

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You just left me out after heard that story.

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I wanted to tell him that the regime and the state are too intertwined and other places in the health hospital, for example.

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It was very difficult to have the hospital work unless you keep the director and deputy director, etc., of the hospital.

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Of course, they were in the vast part, of course.

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But do you want the hospital to operate in this situation?

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For all we want punished to punish someone because in order to get promoted, he accepted the part.

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So the de-Ba'athification story. Well, but there is a saying in French that says that experience is like the toothpaste.

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It serves only once. We repeated the same stupid thing in Libya.

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They issued the legislation in Libya in 2003 that says who ever was serving in the regime?

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Well, I was doctor. I was a lawyer. I was the.

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I mean, I cannot hold an official position in Libya.

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And Libya was deprived of its best people by technocrats because they did exactly the same error.

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And that is based on the conceptual misreading, the idea that the regime is something you can extract innocently from the state and from the society.

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This is the first lesson I want to. Drew from.

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Iraqi experience. The second is a proposition.

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And. You are not necessarily in agreement with this position.

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But let me tell you that very often, while in Baghdad, I thought that the future of the country could go differently despite.

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Were it not for the way the country was handed after.

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Which was even worse than the war itself.

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I remember seeing people moving around in the Green Zone with books on how Germany and Japan went by in 1945.

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So it was useless to tell them this is neither Japan nor Germany.

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But those who were in the famous CPA had one obsession.

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By the way, I don't want to be nice in particular to the U.K., but the U.K. representative then was not of that opinion.

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He supported us. The idea that we need to have a big Nuremberg minimum.

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That's the idea. Hey, this is not the story here.

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You had the Iraq-Iran war and then you had the war for Kuwait.

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The two wars had produced plus 2003.

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Hundreds of thousands of widows. And those widows had a point.

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They wanted if paper recognise that their husband has passed away not only for the inheritance or for a potential new marriage,

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but that this was a very legitimate thing.

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So we kept telling Americans what you need is a judiciary to decide for these hundreds of thousands of widows to give them the paper they need.

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You know, we need, in judicial terms, the root of that.

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We need to bring Saddam Hussein, put him for that and condemn him.

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Of course, he should be condemned. And the last man to defend him, I always have refused visits to Baghdad as long as it did.

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But that was not the needs of the society at that point.

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I'm giving the example of the I can say the same about private property.

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You could see people getting killed before our own eyes.

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You remember. So because the same piece of land has been disputed by various owners.

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From the regime, from after the regime, etc. You needed a judiciary for that?

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No, we wanted a big movement in order to judge Saddam Hussein.

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So the second thing I would like to say is that if you go into this kind of intervention,

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you should put ideology aside and look for competent people and look for also people who are ready to see the situation as it is.

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There. And that's what the Iraq war.

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So that is why I tend to believe that the work would have been somehow digested by the Iraqis were it not for the way it was ruled in the immediate.

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Which was a bush.

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A incompetent. Insensitive.

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And. Another example that is somehow more dramatic.

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I used to receive a number of officers in my office of the U.N. from the Iraqi army.

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The Iraqi army had been dissolved almost the same day the Baath Party was installed.

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But as officers of the Iraqi army, they had contributed for 15, 20, 25 years.

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Part of their monthly salary for their retirement.

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So they had contributed from their salaries. So when the army was dissolved.

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They were told you can't have in.

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It's okay, but at least give me back the money I contributed.

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If you don't want to pay me as a retiree. And.

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I took this personally and I went like ten times after they came to see me.

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Generally, I mean, not. At the very end.

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One day, Mr. Brennan told me, You are right.

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You are going to give them something, the country like that.

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$100 for the gym. $80 for the cover.

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80. 70 for the captain and the yacht.

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Not like 50. So I they came.

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I told them, well, that's what I would snatch for you. I can promise you.

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I said, Look. Two days later, we saw a statement saying it's a one time contribution.

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It's not a new salary. It's a one time contribution.

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So imagine somebody who has spent like 30 years of his life in the Iraqi army giving $100.

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Once and for all. So they came back and they told me, Thank you, you have done what you can, but we don't want this 100 votes.

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And I looked at one of my assistants. Then I told him I saw bullets in their eyes.

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They never came back. When I. Goodbye.

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They said,

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if tomorrow you hear that on the highway between Baghdad and then a number of military officers have stopped the cars and robbed the people.

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It's going to be tough. We are going to do that.

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Later, I learned that one of them was one of the founders of that bank.

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That is a conceptual mistake at the beginning.

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The idea that you can.

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Just go and operate according to your ideology rather than what is true.

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The third lesson I have in mind is to ask ourselves.

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What kind of regime we want when we.

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This is a big question. The easy answer is a democracy.

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The reality is never like that. No.

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In fact, here again, that is a conceptual mistake.

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And the big one. If you decide that you have friends and enemies in any country, you try to punish your friends,

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to punish your enemies, but you also tend to be kind with your friends.

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My two other friends. Very often.

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You brought them with you from abroad.

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And they could not get into power by their own means.

298
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So they use American tenants for that. And then what?

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Do you lose them? They become your allies against that.

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The war on terror. Started in Iraq in the year 2003.

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And ended up. Producing kleptocracy in many countries with the West found people who were ready to be on his side in the war on terror,

302
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and nobody was asking them what they are doing with the money they are.

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Or Steve. In the case of Afghanistan, there is a joke concerning the famous Thursday evening flight from Kabul to Dubai,

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because usually they took all the money and put it in Dubai on Friday and then get back to Kabul.

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In Libya, you can't imagine the creativity of the kleptocrats.

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And I want to remind everybody that in my country, Lebanon, there are a few of them as well, who destroyed the whole banking system.

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So we should ask ourselves, Yeah, we don't want terrorists.

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We don't want autocrats, a lot of them.

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But do we really want thieves through these countries, or do we need to be equally regarding in the behaviour of those who are there?

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Well, Iraq is a country that is being plundered before our eyes to be plundered.

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London, Libya is being plunged.

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The building had been planned. The joke I used to use in Libya was that Lebanese were stupid enough to commit suicide with the other people money.

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But you were even more stupid because you are committing suicide with your own money.

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Well, these countries are being plundered, so we are building up the new networks of terrorism that is inspired by the behaviour of

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the political class we are imposing in those countries where we are fighting terrorism.

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And while we need to fight terrorism, we also need to look at the political behaviour of the political class.

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We consider our. On July 14th.

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2014. What is it then?

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The city of Mosul. Fell. In a few hours in the hands of a few hundred people from Dallas.

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11,000 Iraqi soldiers were in the city that day.

321
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So what kind of army did we build between 2004 and 2014 so that it was defeated by a few hundreds,

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possibly a few dozens of Daesh militants in one night and moved into some.

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These guys who are in the Iraqi army probably think that it's useless to die

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in order to protect the political class that doesn't deserve to be protected.

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So they left that positions. And you could see that in many a country.

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Therefore, regime change is something that I'm ready to consider.

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If you tell me what kind of regime you have in mind, if this is the kind of regime you have in mind.

328
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I'm not sure what spaces. Then what about the society?

329
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And this is another lesson of this lesson. And studying plural societies like Iraq and.

330
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Syria, other societies like that.

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There are various schools and it's not in Oxford that they need to impede that because some of them have been produced in this place.

332
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One way is to say, in plural societies, civil wars happen and they happen.

333
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And that's where the various schools differ from each other.

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Some one school says it's engine hatreds.

335
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They hate each other from time immemorial. So there is nothing that can be done to.

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Separate them in different countries if you can put them in air conditioned buses and send them to somewhere else because it's like a motor fever,

337
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it comes back, it keeps coming back. So there is nothing that can be done.

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We call the school the primordial school.

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Those who believe that differences are basically intractable and unbridgeable.

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But there are other schools. One of them says it doesn't happen by accident, that plural societies have long periods of peace,

341
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civil peace, or in the marriage of partnership in the bazaar.

342
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So why do they fight against each other in some parts of their long history?

343
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It's something that needs to be studied, but it is not based on history.

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Otherwise, ancient history should inspire them to go into a permanent civil war, which is not the case.

345
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They can live for decades and decades of civil peace. So this second school says there are civil war entrepreneurs who at a certain time use the

346
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differences between people for their own purposes in order to mobilise on sectarian lines,

347
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for example, or ethnic lines, and in order to impose themselves as leaders of that country.

348
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This is a second school that is different. That's more optimistic somehow.

349
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So you need to isolate this war enterprise and you need to address the civil society in general in order to have it on your side.

350
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On the side.

351
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I don't want to give you a class on civil wars, but what was clear in Iraq in 2003 was that those who occupied the country will pay mortgages.

352
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And whenever they met an Iraqi, you could see from Bremmer to the Ottoman posts on the ground.

353
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Hello. What's your name? Ahmed. Oh, Brett Bachmann.

354
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And he was Sunni. Shia. So Ahmed would say, well, let me tell you, my father is Sunni, but my mother is Shia.

355
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However, my father, he divorced my first my mother and married one who is good and but my cousin is married.

356
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I don't want to hear all that. Tell me, are you Sunni, Shia or good?

357
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I accused the occupying powers of having hate and the sectarian feelings of the Iraqi.

358
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Because the whole city of Baghdad was full of people intermarried, business partners, etc.

359
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And by being primordial, again, it conceptual.

360
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It conceptual. It's not the practical, operationally a conceptual mistake and the way you look at the society that led to basically ethnic cleansing.

361
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Three years later in Baghdad. But that is very different today.

362
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And to Baghdad, then the Baghdad north of Saddam Hussein declared that the sea level.

363
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Well for many centuries now that is very sectarian in the in the colour of its neighbour is.

364
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And it did not happen on its own.

365
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It was held by. That is a lesson I would like to draw.

366
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That has to do with zero. Which is more related to the international system than to the Iraqis itself.

367
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You know,

368
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it is not an accident that we teachers of international relations have been completely unable to give a name to the era in which we live now.

369
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So we call it not because we are lazy, but because we are not creative enough.

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We call it the post-Cold War era. The Cold War has ended, my friends, 23 years ago and didn't find a name to call the period we are in.

371
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So there should be a reason for the reason for that, in my view, is the fact that what's happened since the end of the cold.

372
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Is a mixture of contradictory terms that prevent us from saying this is the paradigm through which we need to look at the international system today.

373
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A paradigm has not appeared that is constant enough and strong enough to define the period.

374
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So end of history was dead.

375
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One or two years after the clash of civilisation appeared and passed away and other paradigms were offered, they didn't survive.

376
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Why? Because since the end of the Cold War, there is a lot of uncertainty on power distribution in the world.

377
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We don't know if the system is unipolar, bipolar, multipolar.

378
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We don't know for West who how many great powers do have?

379
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Three, four, five, six, seven. Only one. You have a huge debate going on about all these issues.

380
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But one thing, Iraq played an important role. If you look at this post-Cold War era that started in the 1990 and we are now in 2023.

381
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You see that it is, in fact divided into two quite different.

382
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You have the post-Cold War era between 1998 and 2003.

383
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And you have the international system since 2003 and the period between 1990 and 202,003.

384
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You certainly had the number of civil wars in the Balkans, in Africa.

385
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But the force was to a large extent regulated when used by the great.

386
00:51:32,440 --> 00:51:38,440
And I suppose. The big question then was the following.

387
00:51:39,730 --> 00:51:45,060
Do we intervene in the Balkans in order to help save the Bosniaks or the.

388
00:51:47,240 --> 00:51:52,010
Kosovar or we don't intervene. That was the question.

389
00:51:53,000 --> 00:51:56,659
And you had two lines in Washington, two lines in London, Two lines.

390
00:51:56,660 --> 00:52:03,240
That is a. But nobody was rushing to intervene.

391
00:52:04,770 --> 00:52:11,130
There was some reluctance, especially after Somalia. Well, some reluctance to intervene.

392
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On the other hand, you had a number of good news for those who want to regulate force.

393
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First, the number of nuclear warheads went down from like 40,000 for each of the two superpowers to less than 5000 for each.

394
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Then all the conventional forces of the Soviet Union disappeared from.

395
00:52:36,740 --> 00:52:42,830
Then you had an agreement in order to freeze any nuclear tests.

396
00:52:44,210 --> 00:52:47,870
Then you had a prorogation. Probation?

397
00:52:47,870 --> 00:52:57,170
Yes. Of the extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1995, forever.

398
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:06,230
And all non-nuclear powers simply say they conceded that forever they will not try to have a nuclear bomb.

399
00:53:06,650 --> 00:53:11,900
Then you had the International Criminal Court in 1999 through the Rome Treaty.

400
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So you had a number of agreements that regulate the force.

401
00:53:21,830 --> 00:53:33,050
And when force was used with the exception of was the one I feel like mine, no great power would return to it without first asking the authorities.

402
00:53:35,970 --> 00:53:43,770
In 2003, a new era of 70 years started, which I call the era of giving the nation the force.

403
00:53:45,300 --> 00:53:49,980
Not only the war itself was not allowed, but the Security Council.

404
00:53:51,170 --> 00:53:58,100
But it was emulated by other powers in 2008 and Asia at Dr. Georgia.

405
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:06,200
Then in 2014 attacked Ukraine, 2015 in Syria.

406
00:54:07,310 --> 00:54:13,670
Then other countries, mid-sized powers like Turkey, intervened in Djibouti,

407
00:54:13,880 --> 00:54:19,910
Libya and Syria and Iraq and keeps intervening like Iran, intervening in many countries.

408
00:54:20,360 --> 00:54:23,360
So there was a huge invasion force.

409
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:28,430
And China thinks of intervening possibly against Taiwan.

410
00:54:31,930 --> 00:54:35,860
That is why this period is divided into two.

411
00:54:37,210 --> 00:54:44,140
Before the war in Iraq and after the war before the war in Iraq, deregulation of course,

412
00:54:44,140 --> 00:54:50,600
was dominant but not dominant to the point of having all these wars stopped.

413
00:54:50,770 --> 00:54:53,950
Some little civil wars still took place left and right.

414
00:54:55,080 --> 00:55:01,050
But after 2003, the great powers did not hesitate to use force.

415
00:55:01,770 --> 00:55:04,860
And they didn't ask the Security Council for authorisation.

416
00:55:05,460 --> 00:55:10,570
And when the Security Council met, they used the need to sort.

417
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:18,010
Doesn't allow them to or compel them to stop the intervention.

418
00:55:18,820 --> 00:55:24,220
So Iraq is important for that as well for our reading of the international system,

419
00:55:24,850 --> 00:55:37,660
because the war in Iraq in 2003 divides that era of 33 years into two, 13 years of promising and 20 years that are much more problematic.

420
00:55:37,760 --> 00:55:45,080
And what is happening in my part of the world today is not something that would contradict this.

421
00:55:47,450 --> 00:55:51,740
Deregulation will force. Finally.

422
00:55:52,850 --> 00:55:59,700
That is a lesson that concerns the. When.

423
00:56:04,120 --> 00:56:09,350
The first three resolution of the post-war was adopted by the Security Council Resolution four.

424
00:56:12,160 --> 00:56:24,180
Was adopted. The British government and a few other governments, the Spaniards as well, because they were part of the coalition that.

425
00:56:25,260 --> 00:56:31,590
And the few other countries insisted on a role for the U.N. in the post-war Iraq.

426
00:56:39,380 --> 00:56:50,840
So if you read that resolution, you will discover in paragraph in the introduction that considering that the Council has

427
00:56:50,840 --> 00:56:58,630
decided to give the United Nations and quoting a vital role in the reconstruction of Iraq,

428
00:56:58,910 --> 00:57:10,950
vital role in the reconstruction. And then comes Article eight of that famous resolution that details what the U.N. can do.

429
00:57:11,340 --> 00:57:18,300
And in fact, it says the U.N. should do everything in cooperation with the occupying power.

430
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:26,170
So on the one hand, the U.N. was given a vital role.

431
00:57:27,460 --> 00:57:35,300
On the other hand, the U.N. could do nothing without coordinating with the occupying power.

432
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:48,750
The contradiction was clear. I'm not going to name names, but senior advisers to Kofi Annan then said, You better resign than implement that.

433
00:57:51,300 --> 00:58:00,870
Why? Because the United Nations should not operate in a situation where legally you are saying that it's a military occupation.

434
00:58:01,110 --> 00:58:08,100
Legally, it's not something it's not the sort of polemical, the attribution.

435
00:58:08,370 --> 00:58:15,000
Legally, you are saying it's an occupation with rights and duties for any occupying power, according to international law.

436
00:58:15,990 --> 00:58:20,490
The U.N. should not insert itself into this kind of situation.

437
00:58:24,780 --> 00:58:33,540
When I arrived in Baghdad, I discovered that every day before going to bed, I was asking myself the same question.

438
00:58:34,230 --> 00:58:38,850
Was it right or not right for the U.N. to be present?

439
00:58:41,250 --> 00:58:49,650
Because there were days where you felt that you are useless.

440
00:58:51,000 --> 00:58:58,740
What a mission of 30 or 40 guys would do in a country that is ruled by its are

441
00:58:59,370 --> 00:59:07,990
living in Saddam's own residence and given powers that even Saddam didn't get,

442
00:59:08,170 --> 00:59:17,140
didn't have. And an army look paying army of 140,000 people at his service.

443
00:59:17,560 --> 00:59:25,750
What a group of 30 or 40, even if they are creative minds we thought we were out of.

444
00:59:27,330 --> 00:59:31,590
Uh, what could they do in a situation like that?

445
00:59:32,640 --> 00:59:37,110
So it's a challenge. So there were days when you thought.

446
00:59:39,100 --> 00:59:42,550
There is something wrong with this. Like, for example,

447
00:59:43,090 --> 00:59:51,370
this famous resolution 1483 says that the occupying power cannot spend a single

448
00:59:51,370 --> 00:59:59,860
penny without the monitoring and advisory board made of four institutions.

449
01:00:00,370 --> 01:00:05,200
You know, the IMF, World Bank, the Arab Fund in Kuwait and the United Nations.

450
01:00:07,300 --> 01:00:14,320
Well, while we were in Baghdad, Mr. Bremer spent $7 billion without asking my advice.

451
01:00:18,780 --> 01:00:25,350
So when you have this and Sanju was very, very, very nervous about this issue, very nervous.

452
01:00:26,670 --> 01:00:38,520
He considered that if we fail in that and that role as advisory and monitoring and custodians basically of the Iraqi money, we're custodians.

453
01:00:40,360 --> 01:00:49,920
If we fail in that we cannot succeed in other. So these were the days where you thought that it was a mistake.

454
01:00:50,670 --> 01:00:54,930
And that senior adviser to Kofi was right in saying we should not.

455
01:00:57,350 --> 01:01:01,400
But there were days where really useful.

456
01:01:03,920 --> 01:01:07,850
Ayatollah Sistani would not talk to the Americans, but he talked to us.

457
01:01:10,830 --> 01:01:18,330
The former regime officers would not talk to the Americans because the Americans would not talk to them.

458
01:01:19,740 --> 01:01:31,860
But we were ready to talk to them. And if we were given enough power, we would probably have prevented them from moving into the Islamist opposition.

459
01:01:34,650 --> 01:01:51,870
There were days where we were able to introduce a communist non-sectarian against Mr. Bremmer views into the transitional governing institutions.

460
01:01:54,070 --> 01:02:04,360
So we were happy because he was not sectarian, it was murder and he was communists, but he was not.

461
01:02:04,360 --> 01:02:15,310
The communists didn't like it. But when we had some complicity from even the idea that.

462
01:02:23,170 --> 01:02:27,760
The Iraqis should recapture their sovereignty as soon as possible.

463
01:02:28,670 --> 01:02:35,880
It was something that said Israel was very, very formidable and that we developed across the country all the time.

464
01:02:35,890 --> 01:02:39,550
In fact, the day famous day, we were bombed.

465
01:02:42,020 --> 01:02:45,950
We were preparing for the following day, a visit to Mosul.

466
01:02:45,950 --> 01:02:54,950
In order to preach that idea, the power to be returned to the Iraqis as soon as possible.

467
01:02:56,000 --> 01:03:00,620
That was that was theological for saying that it should take place now.

468
01:03:00,990 --> 01:03:06,140
Anytime it would an occupation should stop as soon as.

469
01:03:08,320 --> 01:03:13,350
So we felt then useful. For example.

470
01:03:15,570 --> 01:03:24,000
Sistani had the fatwa, his first things, but it was against one law firm in New York writing the Iraqi.

471
01:03:26,510 --> 01:03:35,180
So I remember we were visiting it was a Saturday and we were visiting and there's a.

472
01:03:37,270 --> 01:03:41,590
Sergio and myself and the translators and.

473
01:03:44,450 --> 01:03:47,700
I remember he had long fingers said.

474
01:03:48,710 --> 01:03:57,380
If the Constitution is not written by elected Iraqis, I would raise [INAUDIBLE] against them across the country.

475
01:04:01,030 --> 01:04:07,390
I said, Are you going to issue a fatwa? He said, I have already written.

476
01:04:08,990 --> 01:04:21,230
I said, And when I want to issue this, he said, This guy, he named 1 million famous lawyers because he wrote books about it in New York.

477
01:04:23,700 --> 01:04:29,959
And he said, I am told that he would give the draft to the State Department.

478
01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:33,710
So he was informed, uh, next Wednesday.

479
01:04:33,720 --> 01:04:36,830
So I issued a fatwa on Tuesday, and it was Saturday.

480
01:04:38,630 --> 01:04:46,440
So we went back to our cars was setting. So he said, okay, that was a fine day.

481
01:04:46,450 --> 01:04:52,760
We met happy. Then I suddenly then had to be out of the club.

482
01:04:53,990 --> 01:04:57,890
Uh. Uh, but the meeting, Mrs. Daniels.

483
01:05:01,110 --> 01:05:07,520
And the festival was for Tuesday. So I thought, we better not pull back.

484
01:05:08,790 --> 01:05:16,560
Let's go and tell. But he better put constitutional graft in his job.

485
01:05:17,670 --> 01:05:22,540
Otherwise, you are. He said, okay, that's good.

486
01:05:24,700 --> 01:05:31,430
We went to see them. So Sagittarius to be explained.

487
01:05:34,240 --> 01:05:38,650
You have to listen to me.

488
01:05:39,460 --> 01:05:48,550
This guy has a few million behind it. So if he issued a fatwa against you, you will have them in the streets before the office.

489
01:05:49,630 --> 01:05:58,030
So you better listen to him and put that constitutional draft written by lawyer and into.

490
01:06:00,430 --> 01:06:04,810
What is this Pharisee old guy telling me?

491
01:06:05,970 --> 01:06:12,040
Yeah, I said, You better listen to that old guy when he talks to you.

492
01:06:12,640 --> 01:06:16,600
And he called us to Niger in order, I think, to convey that message.

493
01:06:16,990 --> 01:06:18,130
So you better listen to.

494
01:06:19,680 --> 01:06:28,470
So sometimes there were days where we were very useful because he retracted and that constitutional draft was thrown into the bin,

495
01:06:28,920 --> 01:06:35,700
which is a good thing. So there were days when we thought that the U.N. was doing a useful.

496
01:06:39,490 --> 01:06:42,840
And there were days where we had doubts.

497
01:06:42,940 --> 01:06:53,260
Says, you know, I have doubts. The other members of the mission had also doubts about mediation under occupation.

498
01:06:53,410 --> 01:06:57,790
That's what we were. It was not mediation in abstract.

499
01:06:58,390 --> 01:07:08,430
It wasn't the nation under occupation. That day 19th of August 2003.

500
01:07:12,020 --> 01:07:22,760
Half an hour before the explosion I was sitting with was reviewing our visits the next day and also doing something else.

501
01:07:24,770 --> 01:07:30,120
Reading again, a draft column he had written for The New York Times.

502
01:07:31,530 --> 01:07:36,480
That was his first book. First time he wrote something.

503
01:07:37,450 --> 01:07:47,040
And that draft still exists. And he was defining the role of the UN because we were at the end.

504
01:07:47,040 --> 01:08:00,400
It was almost a daily battle with the. So he was trying to say that we lacked strength and power, but we have.

505
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:07,130
An exception. Source of strength that is, without us.

506
01:08:08,090 --> 01:08:11,240
There is no legitimacy for whatever is being done in Iraq.

507
01:08:12,230 --> 01:08:20,100
That was the gist of the article. This article was never published.

508
01:08:21,220 --> 01:08:25,230
Was that after an interview? Was. And the explosion.

509
01:08:26,650 --> 01:08:37,180
And at the end of that very long day after finding probably the last bullets you see, they went back to the hotel one.

510
01:08:41,030 --> 01:08:49,180
I asked myself. All that. So there is a lesson.

511
01:08:51,940 --> 01:09:17,230
In Iraq 2000 and. Thank you. Professor Salami.

512
01:09:17,650 --> 01:09:23,350
I don't say just out of politics, but you have given this audience,

513
01:09:23,350 --> 01:09:31,960
without doubt the best analysis we have heard of the consequences of the American invasion on Iraq itself.

514
01:09:32,450 --> 01:09:37,149
We've had no end of conversation with people who are intimately involved.

515
01:09:37,150 --> 01:09:44,950
But you've just told us things. You've given us a cold sighted analysis that I think, you know,

516
01:09:44,950 --> 01:09:52,000
looking at my own notes and imagining what you've all taken from it will make us rethink the events and the historic significance.

517
01:09:52,450 --> 01:10:04,510
And then your positioning of yourself, of Sergio, obviously, of Reza as well, of all those who were in what was to prove such an impossible mission.

518
01:10:05,140 --> 01:10:08,590
You asked earlier in your talk, you know, what were we doing here?

519
01:10:09,880 --> 01:10:15,220
And in a sense, I was waiting for the analysis you gave in your final lesson.

520
01:10:16,450 --> 01:10:25,570
What are we doing here? Not so much outside of the Green Zone where we were vulnerable to attack, but what was the United Nations doing?

521
01:10:27,160 --> 01:10:32,710
Cleaning up a mess made by America without the UN's consent?

522
01:10:33,460 --> 01:10:41,440
And I think that in talking about the ways in which the U.N. was able to actually make a difference, even under those constraints,

523
01:10:41,830 --> 01:10:49,090
you can see what would motivate people, high minded people, people with values to commit to such a mission,

524
01:10:49,120 --> 01:10:54,669
even when you knew at some very deep level that it was an illegitimate mission,

525
01:10:54,670 --> 01:11:01,899
that the resolution that defined your mission was one that actually was not really

526
01:11:01,900 --> 01:11:05,260
in keeping with the terms of the charter or the mission of the United Nations.

527
01:11:05,980 --> 01:11:12,820
And so with that, I think we come away with a sense of redoubled sense of tragedy in the loss on that day,

528
01:11:14,110 --> 01:11:26,439
but also a redoubled sense of admiration for all of you who took on this failing hope of being able to turn around a regime

529
01:11:26,440 --> 01:11:38,530
change that was in the process of decomposing the Iraqi society into what would prove to be the birthplace of many,

530
01:11:39,610 --> 01:11:42,610
a nihilistic movement like the one you keep invoking.

531
01:11:44,470 --> 01:11:52,210
I will ask one question before I open to your audience, but I don't recall ever learning who was responsible for the bombing.

532
01:11:53,880 --> 01:11:57,480
Well, what do I answer now? Yeah, if you would.

533
01:11:57,480 --> 01:12:06,840
And just to set it in the context, if the bombing was in some sense a response to the legitimacy problems the UN mission faced in Baghdad,

534
01:12:06,840 --> 01:12:14,639
I mean, that was the communique that was issued by Al Qaida for four people from a guy arrested.

535
01:12:14,640 --> 01:12:17,860
I think one of the leaders was Egyptian, I think.

536
01:12:18,870 --> 01:12:30,540
And he he he had been he had been a ball boy in a golf club in Milan, and he was mistreated by the club.

537
01:12:31,200 --> 01:12:38,700
So he radicalised and joined Al Qaida. That's the story we we heard like a month or two later.

538
01:12:39,690 --> 01:12:55,770
And four people were arrested. But later, when ISIS was created in 2005, I would say the founders, many of not all, not all,

539
01:12:55,920 --> 01:13:03,060
but many of the founders were former officers of the Iraqi army who had gone through a

540
01:13:04,950 --> 01:13:10,140
sort of transition and radicalisation because of the way they were they were treated.

541
01:13:10,710 --> 01:13:18,560
I should I wasn't clear enough in what they said. These officers were ready to cooperate with the Americans,

542
01:13:18,570 --> 01:13:28,170
but I need to say that they were they wanted to remain in the army even if the country was occupied.

543
01:13:29,040 --> 01:13:39,060
They, they said, okay, we defeated, the regime has collapsed, but we are ready to remain in the army and to serve our country.

544
01:13:39,750 --> 01:13:44,650
And they were rejected. So it was it was point for them.

545
01:13:44,670 --> 01:13:52,649
It was accepted. They couldn't understand why they show that level of cooperation and they are rejected.

546
01:13:52,650 --> 01:14:00,600
And that allowed me to say if the after war had been handled differently, the war would have been disastrous.

547
01:14:01,320 --> 01:14:07,560
Let me put another question to you, though, because you talked about those that come on the bandwagon of the occupying power.

548
01:14:08,490 --> 01:14:10,860
The Americans didn't come to Iraq on their own.

549
01:14:11,310 --> 01:14:18,360
They took the lessons on what they would find and what they would do, largely from the Iraqi National Council for an Iraqi National Congress.

550
01:14:19,520 --> 01:14:27,599
Yes. And I. I wonder whether there's not part of the analysis that also must go to the wilful distortion of how the

551
01:14:27,600 --> 01:14:34,380
Iraqi people would respond to liberation that was being peddled by Ahmed Chalabi and those around him,

552
01:14:34,770 --> 01:14:36,389
and that the Americans,

553
01:14:36,390 --> 01:14:43,860
given the choice of listening to people like you or listening to people like them, felt they were the people they knew and were in that way,

554
01:14:43,860 --> 01:14:53,910
drawing down a pathway towards de-Baathification, trying to promote people who came from the mahajot, from, you know, despotism over the diaspora.

555
01:14:55,380 --> 01:15:00,810
Look, I we shouldn't look at these people in there and put them in December.

556
01:15:02,970 --> 01:15:11,790
I can say that the two main Kurdish leaders of that time were really, really, I mean.

557
01:15:13,580 --> 01:15:19,460
Enslavement near Halabja. Talabani was something in.

558
01:15:21,650 --> 01:15:25,300
It'll be a left hook that's old or something. Not then.

559
01:15:25,350 --> 01:15:29,900
So I won't say this way out of the game on the.

560
01:15:30,290 --> 01:15:40,370
I mean, they were helped by the Americans. They were helped by other European countries, but they really represented.

561
01:15:41,350 --> 01:15:50,410
They really represent the constituencies, really. The big surprise was the others.

562
01:15:53,130 --> 01:16:11,020
You named Ahmed Chalabi? Ahmed tried to steal the show very early on by organising a big sort of caravanserai in what's the name of the city.

563
01:16:11,770 --> 01:16:20,469
What went on with the whole Ahmed? I built the city on the leave.

564
01:16:20,470 --> 01:16:32,150
That was not really necessary. So he told everybody it was just starting to get interested in Iraq, then said, Seriously.

565
01:16:33,160 --> 01:16:37,270
So I heard it from everybody that you see like.

566
01:16:38,910 --> 01:16:47,130
Sea of Iraqis coming to Nasiriya to upload Ahmed Chalabi as the next prime minister.

567
01:16:49,130 --> 01:16:53,270
There were 2000. 2000.

568
01:16:55,030 --> 01:16:58,150
So this is different. It's a puzzle. This is different.

569
01:16:59,110 --> 01:17:07,840
This is. And in fact, that's the day the Americans decided that we must be permanent because he failed.

570
01:17:08,710 --> 01:17:16,090
That's what they told us. They don't want to be. They told us that they discovered that the misjudge.

571
01:17:17,860 --> 01:17:33,970
But there were leaders with so many leaders, there were people where in politics and the post-war politics who would not even when they were doing it.

572
01:17:34,780 --> 01:17:39,610
Americans are giving us the country and you are here and I need to.

573
01:17:40,940 --> 01:17:44,629
Defending on rights and all these things is none of your business yet,

574
01:17:44,630 --> 01:17:51,380
though there is one will be prime minister later who refused to see us until we were excluded.

575
01:17:52,550 --> 01:18:01,370
He was the only one of the 25. He used to see us and one other who was very famous.

576
01:18:01,370 --> 01:18:06,800
I will not name the names wanted to deal with, said you.

577
01:18:07,550 --> 01:18:16,190
And they sentence had you almost killed for a power generation plant in the north of the country that was built by the UN.

578
01:18:16,320 --> 01:18:24,380
Be finished. They wanted to buy it for like $200 or something like that from the NDP.

579
01:18:26,030 --> 01:18:31,120
So this kind of things and. So these are not serious people.

580
01:18:32,390 --> 01:18:37,360
So I would not put everybody in the same basket at the end.

581
01:18:38,410 --> 01:18:46,570
Who would represent that minority? We couldn't find anything and find a way with us.

582
01:18:47,590 --> 01:18:57,420
John So-and-so was representing the founding lady who was the British before he joined the intelligence and the intelligence of your country.

583
01:18:57,430 --> 01:19:00,580
But it was then that the British premier.

584
01:19:01,480 --> 01:19:06,520
But it ten times more sense of the race to be fair lunch for the whole bar.

585
01:19:09,460 --> 01:19:19,740
So someone's discovered the lady and she had put in her see me to represent that minority, that she cooks them better.

586
01:19:24,370 --> 01:19:28,120
By the way, this was the lady we met on that morning.

587
01:19:29,900 --> 01:19:33,430
Did you test her? I mean, this is her credential on her CV.

588
01:19:33,440 --> 01:19:34,060
Did you at least.