AFTER the United Nations’ chief inspector, Hans Blix, delivered his testimony to the Security Council on January 5 followed by a detailed statement by Colin L. Powell, the US Secretary of State, on the same subject a few days later, it would be hard to argue that Iraq is innocent of the charges levelled against it.

Blix spoke at length about less than full cooperation received by his team of inspectors from the officials in Baghdad. Powell used the information gathered from numerous intelligence sources to argue that Iraq had something to hide. These testimonies led to two obvious questions: What was Iraq hiding? And why was it at such pains to keep from the prying view of the intelligence agencies whatever it was hiding?

In spite of twelve years of sanctions and eight years of inspections, it appears that Iraq has continued with the development of weapons prohibited by law — by the 17 resolutions passed by the Security Council since the conclusion of the first Gulf war in 1991. The question is not that any sovereign state has the right to protect itself from foreign aggression by all the means available to it. That right exists but Iraq circumscribed its options by agreeing to the terms laid down by the Security Council in 1991. It is not allowed to develop certain weapons — the weapons of mass destruction.

The point that Iraq should not be singled out as the state that must follow the letter and spirit of international law while others are allowed to defy it with impunity does not help those who oppose war. It is true that India and Israel have refused to obey the resolutions passed by the Security Council at different points in time without incurring the wrath of the international community. There is little international interest in the plight of the Kashmiris and Palestinians living in two different territories occupied through aggression and kept under subjugation against the dictates of international law. But to say that two wrongs make a right is not an argument that can win a case in any court, certainly not in an international court. To do that is a weak argument for opposing action against Iraq.

If the burden of evidence and the weight of international law supports those who want action against Iraq, why is there a strong body of opinion across the globe against any precipitous action? There is a great deal of substance in these arguments and even if they are being drowned out by the drumbeat of the coming war, it is worth making them clearly.

Those who argue against the impending US action against Iraq do so on the basis of three sets of assumptions: That this is not the time to go to war against Iraq; that war is never a good option — or, at best, should be the last option after all other means have been exhausted; and that the cost-benefit equation for making war against Iraq is weighted heavily in favour of not taking this course. Today, we will explore the first two arguments, leaving the third for a more elaborate discussion some time later.

First, the question: Is war the right response to Iraq’s defiance of international will? As an American analyst wrote after the presentation by Powell on February 5, for President George W. Bush and his aides “the answer is obvious. Iraq is in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions demanding that it destroy its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. A tough new UN inspections regimen has failed to bring Iraq into compliance. If Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were to fall into the hands of the terrorists, the results would likely be horrific. Military force is the only way left of destroying the political nexus between rogue states and terrorist groups.

For Washington, the showdown with Iraq has developed into a test of the credibility of both the United States and the United Nations. This is what the American president said in his weekly radio address on February 8: “Having made its demands, the Security Council must not back down when those demands are defied and mocked by a dictator.”

The case for war against Iraq therefore hinges on the likelihood of the country providing potential terrorists access to weapons of mass destruction. A case thus built leads to some obvious questions. Will Saddam Hussein support terrorism if he is threatened with imminent war? Is his motive to aid terrorism or protect himself? In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, a highly respected magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia University Professor Richard K. Betts argues that Hussein is much more likely to authorize use of biological or chemical weapons against American targets if he perceives that his regime is in danger and he has nothing to lose. Even if chances of such an attack are as low as one in six, wrote Betts, the risks inherent in attempting to overthrow Hussein resembles a game of “Russian roulette.”

Betts wrote his article under the title of “Suicide from fear of death,” using the characterization employed by Germany’s Bismark in describing preventive war. “Many Americans still take for granted that a war to topple Saddam Hussein can be fought as it was in 1991: on American terms. Even then they recognize that the blood price may prove greater than the optimists hope, most still assume it will be paid by the US military or by people in the region. Until very late in the game, few Americans focused on the chance that the battlefield could extend back to their own homeland.

“Yet if a US invasion succeeds, Saddam will have no reason to withhold his best parting shot — which could be the use of weapons of mass destruction inside the United States. Such an attack on US civilians could make the death toll from September 11 look small. But Washington has done little to prepare the country for this possibility,” wrote Betts. War against Iraq, therefore, could bring about a conclusion that Washington fears the most — the use of weapons of mass destruction on itself and its allies.

“If war is not the answer, however, what is? Is there an alternative that can both command enthusiastic international support and effectively disarm Saddam Hussein? The answer is yes, and it involves a plan for truly coercive inspections,” wrote Jessica Tuckman Mathews in a newspaper article published a few days ago. Mathews commands respect in Washington. She is the president of the Washington-based think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The case for coercive inspections that Mathews presents is interesting since, if adopted, it will provide not only teeth to the United Nations systems, something that many nations, including Pakistan, has sought for a very long time. More important, it will produce a counterpoint to the enormous power wielded by the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A bipolar world is always better than a world in which there is only one dominant player. It is interesting that the genius of the American political system is based entirely on achieving checks and balances among different centres of power. This principle needs to be extended to the international system.

It may take time — perhaps a long time — before other nation states gather enough strength to challenge the United States. The European Union may do that one day if it is able to agree on a constitution that gives more power to a central authority by reducing somewhat the sovereignty of the component states. But the different reaction to the US plans on Iraq on the part of “old” and “new” Europe may postpone that day.

With its economy growing at a break-neck speed, China may also acquire sufficient economic and military muscle sometimes in the future to inhibit the exercise of unilateralism by Washington. But both options lie in the future, perhaps a very distant future. In the meantime, for the health of the world political order a mechanism is needed to constrain actions by the world’s only remaining superpower. The plan proposed by Mathews could lead in that direction.

She argues in favour of a measured approach that would make it possible for the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to be given coercive powers, the types of powers all law enforcement authorities must have to enforce laws. UNMOVIC is the successor to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) WHICH was created to enforce the resolutions passed by the Security Council after the cessation of hostilities in 1991. However, the Iraqis were able to frustrate the efforts of UNSCOM which eventually led to the establishment of UNMOVIC under the leadership of Hans Blix, a Swedish diplomat who had once headed the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Based in Vienna, IAEA also has the authority to enforce international agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1964. The current inspection regime applied to Iraq is the joint responsibility of UNMOVIC and IAEA. The IAEA is headed by Mohammad ElBaradei, an Egyptian.

Under the Mathews plan, the inspection regime could be enforced by putting “the most qualified and experienced experts available” in the field as demanded by the Security Council resolution 1441 passed on November 7, 2002. That language was put into the resolution by the United States to enable the UN to bypass its practice of achieving geographical balance in its hiring. A strengthened group of inspectors — something the French foreign minister proposed in his response to the statement by Colin Powell to the Security Council on February 5 — should be assisted by U-2 planes that can, according to Mathews, “detect activities above ground and underground, and use sweep cameras to photograph large areas and zero in with high resolution.”

The international community, acting through the Security Council, could determine additional “no-fly” zones to those already being enforced in Iraq’s northern and southern areas by the air forces of America and Britain. To these “no-fly” zones, the Security Council can add “no-drive” zones to take care of the American fear that Iraq is using mobile chemical and biological factories on wheels — trucks equipped to produce weapons of mass destruction.

These mobile manufacturing facilities, along with the alleged Iraq practice of sanitizing existing factories in anticipation of UN inspectors and allowing lethal weapons to slip out, constituted the centrepiece of Powell’s case against Iraq.

These facilities could be destroyed by UNMOVIC. To do so, it need not depend on the Iraqis to take action. Instead, the inspectors would have the authority to call a UN air force or UN soldiers stationed inside Iraq to carry out these operations. For such an inspection regime to succeed, the United States and other countries that have intelligence information will be required to help UNMOVIC and IAEA.

“How long coercive inspections would take depends on how rigorously the new rules are applied and therefore how quickly Saddam Hussein gets the message that no ending is possible other than disarmament. Roughly a year is a good guess. Success will require unqualified support from a united Security Council. That could be achieved today, I believe, but it will not be easy to sustain,” concluded Mathews. Will such an approach work in place of a war that the US seems determined to use to disarm Iraq? We will attempt to answer this question as events unfold.

BETWEEN last Monday and Tuesday the western media put across what is purported to be a fresh message from Osama bin Laden. It is being read as an ultimatum of total war on the United States, and so helpfully providing the United States just the grounds it needs to launch its war on Iraq.

The link between Osama and the outside world is the Al Jazeera television network, neatly located in Qatar, a state with the best of relations with the United States. It is inconceivable that any enterprise safely ensconced in Qatar, should not be closely US-friendly if it is to stay in business and prosper.

Al Jazeera is doing famously. This television outfit has been making sensational ‘disclosures’ in the past at critically sensitive moments. Now again is one such moment. Today the world finds itself in a cauldron of the most incandescent tensions since World War II began 55 years ago.

In a dramatic reaction to the Osama scare, British Prime Minister Tony Blaire’s government ordered the most extraordinary and spectacular security measures in his country. The BBC television has shown thousands of police and army personnel deployed in and around London’s Heathrow airport. This has all the elements that add up to an elaborately worked up drama replete with sensation, charade, even war fever.

First, let us look at the Osama saga as developed all over again. It is well known that this character, not unlike Saddam, is the creation of the United States. He was, not unlike Saddam, at one stage an ardent US ally against ‘godless communism.’ Saddam was created, reared and heavily armed to act as an aggressive foil to Iran. An informed guess is that it was in that phase of torrid Saddam-US affair that Saddam may have been given some of those weapons about the awareness of which the Bush administration talks with such strong confidence.

Osama was raised, reared and commissioned to organize, train, arm and marshal the Taliban force in the United States’ war against the Soviet Union, fought on Afghan soil, with US guns fired from Afghan (Taliban) shoulders, to the ruin of the Afghan state, people and land. Soon after the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan, the US abandoned the war-ravaged Afghans, only to be reminded of old pal Osama after 9/11. And it is Al Jazeera, of all the elaborate TV networks in the world, to maintain close liaison with the real or imaginary old warrior.

Now is not too soon to wonder once again about the Al Jazeera phenomenon. How did it start on its increasingly inscrutable career? Who started it? Why was it started? Who finances it? Is it a public limited enterprise or a personal fad of some playboy Gulf sheikh? Has anybody any idea of its profits or losses? Who pockets the profits, or who takes care of the losses? What exactly is its character and credentials? How and why is it able to be so close to Osama, assuming he is still alive?

These are not idle questions. Yet nobody is asking them.

If you are reposing total trust in what the Al Jazeera sleuths occasionally churn out, it is presumed that for you its word and pictures represent the gospel truth that must be swallowed hook, line and sinker.

According to the BBC news and commentators (Wednesday), there is a section of the public in Britain that is sceptical about this whole Osama scoop by Al Jazeera. Many in Britain saw the suddenly staged security operation as over-reaction. Was it not studiously staged to endorse the US obsession about a military assault on Iraq?

The timing of this fresh series of Osama shenanigans could not be without a message. It comes in the thick of what is admitted to be the most unsettling crisis of faith within the 19-nation European defence alliance, the formidable Nato. This development has caused a deep crack in what was once a sacrosanct cross-Atlantic fraternity of the allies of World War II and later of the cold war.

One cannot help feeling mystified about the whole Osama affair from its very beginning, and now particularly the new twist. Osama has become something very like the proverbial Scarlet Pimpernel. “They seek him here, they seek him there; they seek him everywhere. He is not in heaven, he is not in hell, this damned illusive Pimpernel...” At hand or in hiding, Osama once was very useful. If anything, he is even more useful today and may only be vitally needed in the days to come — to help develop the needed case to launch a war. So the fact of his existence, or the fiction of it, must be kept alive and perpetuated by some sensational disclosures from time to time.

Evidently, the Al Jazeera has no difficulty in managing to locate him, contact him and obtain messages from him that provide the grist for some mills. These messages are to be broadcast to the whole world just when such stuff is needed by certain powers to promote their passionately pursued projects. Is it believable that the sophisticated networks available to the US and the UK intelligence juggernauts are so helpless just where the Al Jazeerah is so efficient and effective?

Tell that to the marines.

The US and its British allies have bombed Afghanistan and Iraq at will. And Afghanistan is where Osama is so strongly believed to be — alive and well and operational, too. So well indeed that he has been able to defy and survive without a scratch the US carpet-bombing in Afghanistan and penetrative military action in its neighbourhood.

So well organized indeed is Osama as to be in a position to coolly communicate to the world scalding anti-US tirades at his own convenience. And, thanks to the Al Jazeera, the world is all eyes and ears. This is more than enough to strain credibility of the innocents in the cradle.

It is not unreasonable to wonder if this latest of Osama scares is not resurrected at this moment to intensify tensions, to sweep the world off its feet and make it fall in line to endorse the joint United States-United Kingdom passion to carry war to the Middle East.

This campaign is already being seen by most people around the world to be basically in aid of Israel that has tied itself into so many knots and has to be rescued.

All this noise and fury now signifies no more than feigned concern for the lofty and noble objectives purported to be pursued so loudly and vehemently in the name of world peace. The truth lies elsewhere, and pretty far away, too.

Look at history. Whoever started war in the name of war? But war has always turned out to be war — and invariably an insane and devastatingly self-defeating enterprise. Try to recall that after signing a pact with Adolf Hitler in September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain triumphantly assured the world of “peace with honour.” Exactly one year later, in September 1939, started the most devastating war in human history. War will always be war, call it by whatever name.

Who should know this better than the United Stated? It has already fought more than 20 wars since the “war to end all wars” ended in 1945? More wars have been waged and fought during 55 years following the last Great War than ever before. And more of these by the United States than any other single power. This fact should be within the knowledge of the sole superpower of our world today.

It should know what war means and also that there is no problem sane human mind cannot solve without rushing for the gun, or the nuclear bombs. The US is the only nuclear power to have used (abuse?) them.