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Backstabbing For Beginners: My Crash Course In International Diplomacy (2008)

by Michael Soussan(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1568583974 (ISBN13: 9781568583976)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Nation Books

review 1: A pretty funny if self-serving description of the shenanigans that went on at the UN around the Iraq oil-for-food programme in the 1990s. It's a great case study of how the UN is sometimes asked to take on an insoluble problem for which it was never designed and then, after everything collapses in shit and derision, is asked to bend over while the people responsible for giving it the task line up to kick its bottom. That isn't to say that the UN isn't a dysfunctional bureaucracy, and Soussan describes in loving and sometimes very funny detail how the game is played. Behind all the posturing, power-grabbing and infighting over absurdities, however, lie kids dying because the drugs to save their lives aren't available, watched and wept over by the very people responsible for... more their deaths. It's a grim picture, not much relieved by the hilarious portrait of the central figure, the "Pasha", Benon Savan, the man responsible for administering the programme and apparently for helping himself off the top. He's still around, living in Northern Cyprus, from which, since it doesn't officially exist, he can't be extradited. Funny old world, isn't it?
review 2: Michael Soussan joined the UN as an idealistic young man at the age of 24 on the newly created Oil-for-Food program, which was intended to use Iraqi oil money to buy essential supplies for the country's population at the time of crippling sanctions against Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime.Throughout his time at the UN, he discovered gross incompetence, often emerging as a result of an organisational culture in which people were in such fierce competition against each other that they were completely incapable of working together effectively. This, allied with a striking lack of accountability generated by bureaucrats who were always passing the responsibility for decisions onto someone else, created a situation in which it would be extremely difficult for the UN to manage to Oil-for-Food program effectively. The UN's role, in essence, was supposed to be to make sure Saddam Hussein and his cronies were unable to manipulate for their own gain the program's goal of alleviating the suffering of the Iraqi people. But the incompetence described above eventually became combined with such systematic corruption that the Oil-for-Food program effectively negated the effect of the UN Security Council's sanctions on Iraq.One way the Iraqi government bought support was by allocating oil, sometimes millions of barrels, to people who were allowed to sell it on the market at personal profit. Hussein's regime also systematically overpaid for goods (by between 10 and 30%) imported under the program in return for some of this 'surcharge' being refunded to the Iraqi leadership itself. Through these two methods, Saddam Hussein bought support in order to strengthen the anti-sanctions lobby and divide the international community, as well as enriching himself personally, using the money illegally to upgrade his palaces and buy arms.The invasion of Iraq brought documents to light that showed literally thousands of companies had paid kickbacks to the Iraqi government. It was found that Saddam Hussein had profited by over $10 billion from the Oil-for-Food program. It was revealed that the countries most vehemently against the sanctions and the subsequent invasion of Iraq (France and Russia) were profiting the most from the corruption. The head of the Oil-for-Food program himself was found to have accepted bribes. The author even takes aim at the big boss himself, Kofi Annan, who Soussan argues prioritised protecting himself right from the start by distancing himself as far as possible from the running of the program.To read of such a high-minded organisation operating so dysfunctionally, so far from its lofty ideals, was shocking and deeply saddening. Despite this, the book was not without humour, especially in the caricatures - we can only hope they were caricatures - the author paints of his colleagues at the UN, a bunch of paranoid individuals each constantly trying to stab everyone else in the back to gain some traction in their ongoing turf wars.Reading about the incompetence of the UN, the abuses of Saddam Hussein, and the often-less-than-principled anti-war lobbying (often funded by Saddam himself) taking place in the run up to the invasion of Iraq caused me for the first time to re-evaluate my opinions on the war itself and of its chief sponsors, George W Bush and Tony Blair. I never imagined this would happen. I couldn't put this book down. I read until 2am, then got up the next morning and continued reading over a coffee before going to work. Possibly the best thing I've read all year. Fantastic. less

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