United nations

On Today this morning, Nick Robinson said that Tony Blair would point to improvements in infant mortality and the like. Today then cut back to the studio where a reporter analysed this claim. The reporter disputed the validity of this claim and said that sanctions had ‘skewed’ the numbers. But the sanctions were a consequence of Saddam being in power. As long as he was there, there were going to have to be sanctions to contain his ambitions. Dennis Halliday, a UN official who resigned over sanctions, said that four to five thousand children a month were dying because of sanctions. There are intellectually respectable arguments on both the pro and anti-war sides. But to claim that the containment status quo was cost free is simply not accurate.

Whitehall has turned into the lobby of the UN General Assembly, as dignitaries gather to give NATO’s Afghan campaign renewed impetus. Will it all amount to much? It depends. In this piece for the magazine E!Sharp I set out my stall: '[if the conference] is to achieve anything more than fill out the evening news, the gathering must have only one aim: to help Hamid Karzai begin reaching out to insurgents and fence-sitters, drawing them into a negotiation that can drain the insurgency of all but the religiously-committed warriors.' Part of this will involve giving money, jobs and security guarantees to foot-soldiers, as I recommended in a report back in 2008. But now this will probably not be enough.

Coffee House readers sometimes complain that we do not talk enough about Muslims and Islam. I have certainly shied away from the subject, fearing that emotion and prejudice, rather than argumentation and empirical data, would dominate the debate. I don’t write about Christians, Jews or Buddhists, so why focus on Muslims? At any rate, I don’t like talking about collective groups, much as I prefer not to be talked about based solely on my heritage. But now a new study called Muslims in Europe allows for an empirically-based debate about sentiments across a number of Muslim communities. Based on interviews and surveys in 11 European cities, it presents some interesting facts. It does not tell us what Muslims think, of course, but gives a statistically-relevant sample of views.

New York The reaction of the Obama administration to the discovery of a secret, underground Iranian nuclear plant strongly suggests, as the Washington Post points out, that the administration has given up on engagement. Attempts to engage with the Iranian regime were always likely to be futile. But Washington had to show the international community, and the American public, that it had tried. The criticism you can make of the administration is that its effort took too long, nine months when the Iranian nuclear clock might have as little as 18 months left on it.  Now, the focus turns to sanctions. Can the UN pass sanctions that block gasoline imports, a vital first step in increasing the pressure on the regime? Russia appears to be taking a tougher line on Iran.

In the midst of all the doom and gloom coming from Afghanistan, the UN has published a report saying that there had been a 22 percent decrease in poppy cultivation in the country and a 33 percent reduction in Helmand alone. The number of “poppy free” provinces has also increased from 18 to 20. The UN called this “undeniable progress” and a “dramatic turn. Desperate for good news, the FCO welcomed “this progress” and credited Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal for giving “people a real alternative to drugs and the Taliban.” No doubt Governor Mangal did his best, alongside Gul Agha Sherzai of Nangarhar province, which in the past used to be one of the country’s main opium hubs.

Go to any international think-tank conference and you will hear one complaint repeated ad nauseam: the intenational system, built after World War II - and incorporating the UN, NATO, the IMF, WHO etc. - is no longer fit for purpose. It needs to change to accomodate new threats, like climate change, and new powers like India and Brazil. The last point is particularly oft-heard. If India provides the majority of UN peacekeepers, should Delhi not have a permanent say on the UN Security Council? Now that China has become a pillar of the global economy, should the Beijing government not have more votes on the IMF board? The limited representation of these states is thrown into relief when compared with the over-representation of European states like Britain and France.