Posted on 01/25/2009 2:53:48 PM PST by nickcarraway
When Michael Soussan took his dream job at the United Nations in 1997, he was a young, idealistic graduate of Brown University who was intent on helping people. His position with the Oil-for-Food program, the largest humanitarian operation in the UN's history, gave him what he thought was an opportunity to do just that.
But he soon discovered that his task was complicated by the intense rivalries and bickering bureaucrats entrusted with the distribution of $64-billion petro-dollars—a figure that dwarfed the UN's own budget—for the 23 million Iraqi civilians suffering due to the devastating sanctions placed on the country after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Mr. Soussan's book, Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy, is an engaging and darkly comic first-person account of his time with the United Nations and his transition from naïve young bureaucrat whose overseas work took him to Saddam Hussein's Baghdad to becoming the whistleblower who was the first to call for an independent investigation into the humanitarian program for which he worked.
The book first takes you on Mr. Soussan's travels to Iraq where his boss, a long-time UN worker, and a hard-to-understand and gruff fellow known as Pasha leads Mr. Soussan through the ins and outs of how the UN operated in Saddam-controlled Iraq in the late 1990s. As they move around the country, Mr. Soussan explains where the Oil-for-Food Program went wrong. He writes about the complicated mess that it had become, and how hands from around the world were looking to get their share of the pie.
The United Nations' program was one of the most botched and ill-planned efforts by the world body in its history. At its best it helped provide minimal aid to some of the suffering Iraqi civilians. But at its worst it helped pad the enormous wealth of an already wealthy dictator while also lining the pockets of businesses and diplomats around the world. According to Mr. Soussan, it was a "tragic story that highlighted some of the core flaws of our international system and the frightening, corrupting power of the black elixir that fuels the world economy."
Mr. Soussan writes about the conflicting role of the UN in Iraq, as the body that authorized the debilitating economic sanctions and the organization that was running a billion-dollar economy to help counteract those same sanctions. His first-person account and his personal conflict with how the operation was run makes for a compelling tale that at times comes across as a spy novel.
As Mr. Soussan begins to understand where the petro-dollars are going, his naivety of the situation starts to evaporate. As he writes of his meeting with the Russian ambassador in Baghdad to discuss the expansion of the Oil-for-Food program, only in retrospect does he understand why the lifting of caps on the amount of oil that could be sold left the ambassador "smiling at us like a hungry wolf."
Later, as the propaganda war on the sanctions is growing in the early 2000s and world opinion is shifting towards the lifting of them, Mr. Soussan shifts to how the program is saved and continued. Inter-office politics and political wrangling become the focus of the book, but this is where it loses some of its momentum from the clear path it had followed earlier.
While the rivalries and backstabbing of office politics are likely no different at the UN than at any other large organization, their impact when dealing with billions of dollars is profound. It is this realization that appears to hit Mr. Soussan when, after meeting a young man looking to get a foot in the door, he realizes it is time for him to leave his job.
In his own words, he was "one step away from becoming a bureaucrat's version of Darth Vader. I had the ambition, I had the skill, and I had the anger. What I did not have much left of was perspective. Were it not for that kid, I might have lost it for good."
The book then chronicles the downfall of the corrupt system that enriched and emboldened Saddam Hussein, and indirectly led to the U.S. invasion in 2003. As the investigation grew and the full extent of the debacle that was the Oil-for-Food program became apparent, Mr. Soussan explains, he came to understand how the program had corrupted so many people and how he had ended up with an organization that valued employees who could "hide their eyes, cover their ears and shut their mouths in the face of gross incompetence and corruption."
Mr. Soussan's frustration with the United Nations is clear throughout the book, and he does a good job of leading the reader down the complicated and meandering path that is required to tell this story. He is a good writer and a strong storyteller whose work at the UN in the Oil-for-Food program provides an interesting view of the inner workings of an organization that is constantly under scrutiny.
His path from a young, just-out-of-college freshman bureaucrat who carries the UN charter in his back pocket to a hardened and cynical veteran who fights not to lose himself is a story that will appeal to every reader. It is this journey, where "most players ended up feeling stabbed in the back at some point or another," that makes the book a compelling read.
On the contrary, the "Oil for Food" program didn't perform as advertised, but it worked exactly as planned. It enriched the UN, politicians and crooks, but I repeat myself, all around the world. It bought France's foreign policy, leading them to throw their 200+ ally, the United States, under the bus.
What more could we expect from the UN?
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Republican Leadership ~ Loyal opposition to Democrat ideals.
Sad thing is, this isn’t the only program that didn’t perform as advertised, but worked as planned.
Woah.... $2750 per resident... I sort of remembered it as medical aid and “for the children”.
I guess they must have planned that large “slippage” on the way to the recipients.
I would say the UN's palestinian "refuge" camp program is worse.
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