Lakhdar Brahimi seemed weary just talking about his 10 days in Iraq. As the U.N. envoy relaxed for a stopover at his Paris apartment last weekend, he recalled that security problems in Baghdad had often kept him confined in the Green Zone, the heavily guarded Coalition headquarters. A lot of Iraqis “refuse on principle to go into the Green Zone,” he told NEWSWEEK. Those coming to see him often had to wait three hours to be searched. At night, mortars exploded in the zone as he slept in a makeshift dormitory in one of Saddam’s former palaces. His few trips around Iraq were nerve-racking, too. “With these rockets falling all over the place, or when you are in a helicopter and you know a helicopter was shot down the day before, it’s hard not to feel that you are in harm’s way.” The obstacles didn’t stop him from brainstorming with hundreds of Iraqis, and then announcing what he called a “simple formula” for creating a government to which the Americans could transfer sovereignty. “The situation in Iraq is not good,” he said at the time, “but there’s hope.”
Soft-spoken and blunt, Brahimi has made a career as an envoy to failed states. “I take on such cases because I’m foolish enough to accept them,” he remarked when appointed as the United Nation’s peace envoy to Afghanistan during the Taliban’s regime in 1997. “No one else will.” He quit with frank disgust with all sides, but was sent back after the American invasion and successfully negotiated a national conference that managed to agree on an Afghan constitution. He also crafted the Taif agreement that ended Lebanon’s 17-year civil war, and headed the U.N. observer mission to South Africa when Nelson Mandela was elected.
According to Brahimi’s “sketch” for Iraq’s future, the United Nations–in consultation with Iraqis and Coalition authorities–would choose a caretaker government. The positions of prime minister, president, two vice presidents and cabinet ministers would be apportioned among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and many of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council members would be dropped. This body would assume Iraqi sovereignty July 1, after which a consultative assembly would be appointed–until elections could be held next January.
President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly praised Brahimi’s efforts. American officials, who practically begged Brahimi to take on the task in the first place, didn’t bother to object to the envoy’s criticism of what he called U.S. “collective punishment” in the siege of Fallujah. “To say we needed him is an understatement,” says a senior U.S. official.
All the hopes placed on Brahimi’s proposal may be a sign of desperation. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had yet to sign off on the plan last week, and neither had Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the leading Shiite cleric in Iraq. Brahimi could meet only Sistani’s son on this visit. The envoy told NEWSWEEK the ayatollah was “really angry” about the U.S.-drafted basic law imposed last month, and also “totally immersed in this Moqtada al-Sadr business.” The radical cleric al-Sadr was in a standoff in Najaf last week with American authorities seeking his arrest; Sistani was urging calm on all sides. In such circumstances, Brahimi wasn’t sure if his plan would fly. But he had a definite answer for speculation that he might become Iraq’s U.N. administrator after July 1. “Absolutely not. Win or lose, whatever comes of this, I’m through.”
