By Sue BanerjeeThe Daily Northwestern
Americans have always perceived international law with scorn. Throughout President Bush’s two terms in office, the United Nations and NATO have been sidelined by his go-it-alone foreign policy. But today, these international bodies are coming to the forefront, tackling conflicts and trying to address many of the problems America cannot solve alone, such as the crisis building in Afghanistan. But after being ignored for years, international organizations are struggling to pick up the slack where the United States has failed.
Recent U.N. corruption scandals – such as the Oil for Food fiasco in Iraq – have threatened the international body’s ability to assist in our nation-building efforts. To complicate matters, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon has been nominated to become the next secretary-general after Kofi Annan steps down. The timing couldn’t be any worse; North Korea proudly claimed to hold its first nuclear test underground on Sunday. So now the South Korean official could potentially face a nuclear-armed North Korea, an arrogant President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran and a worsening genocide in Darfur on top of the imminent disaster in Afghanistan. And you thought Mark Foley had problems.
Meanwhile, NATO was given complete command of Afghanistan last week and has already come across major hurdles. The Taliban has grown in strength and is resurfacing in many pockets around the country. British Lt. Gen. David Richards warned that unless living conditions improved within the next six months, the Afghan people could lose all faith in their democratically elected government. The Taliban could use this opportunity to once again instill strict control of the populace and overturn all the reforms made after the invasion.
NATO’s military presence seems to be scratching the surface of Afghan troubles. There is still no centralized police force that can control the opium harvesting that provides the raw material for mass amounts of heroin. In some cases, the authorities that should be enforcing the laws are corrupt, according to the U.N.
Additionally, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is accusing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and his secret service, the ISI, of aiding Taliban extremists across the border. Rebuilding a country with the myriad external and internal problems that plague Afghanistan looks to be an impossible task, even for 31,000 NATO troops.
After years of denigrating international institutions, America is once again looking to them to stabilize a crumbling world. But by initially dismissing international organizations, have we permanently crippled the same institutions we need to clean up the mess the United States has made?
Medill sophomore Sue Banerjee can be reached at [email protected].
