The sixth anniversary since a bomb of August silenced the United Nations voice in Baghdad is a moment for commemoration of and tribute to the twenty-two people who lost their lives, and the approximately 150 who were wounded. It is also more: for the horrific truck-bomb attack of 19 August 2003 on the Canal Hotel which served as the UN headquarters in Iraq is now a key moment in history.

Johanna Mendelson Forman is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC, in both the Americas Program and the William E Simon Chair of Political Economy. Among her publications is Investing in a New Unilateralism: A Smart Power Approach to the United Nations (CSIS, January 2009)

Also by Johanna Mendelson Forman in openDemocracy:

"Things Kofi Annan can do now" (17 April 2003)

"We cannot afford to fail" (23 July 2003) - with colleagues from the Iraq Reconstruction Assessment Mission

"From the ashes: a multilateral mission?" (22 August 2003)

"The UN in 2003: a year of living dangerously" (18 December 2003)

"The nation-building trap: Haiti after Aristide" (11 March 2004)

"A 21st century mission? The UN high-level panel report" (25 November 2004) - with D Austin Hare

"In Larger Freedom: Kofi Annan's challenge" (23 March 2005)

"President Bush discovers the world is flat" (19 September 2005)

"Open veins, closed minds " (7 May 2009) - with Peter DeShazo Inside the United Nations headquarters, the event is considered the organisation's equivalent of 11 September 2001. For the UN, the terrorist bombing - four months after the United States-led military coalition had after a three-week campaign toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein - marked a turning-point in its ability to work as an agent of collective security in a changing world. It led to a re-examination of the UN's role, embodied in the then secretary-general Kofi Annan's document In Larger Freedom; this ultimately resulted in a new manifesto for the institution, presented in the general assembly's sixtieth-anniversary summit on 14-16 September 2005.  It also contributed to a new awareness of the vulnerability of humanitarian workers in conflict-zones, symbolised by the inauguration on 19 August 2009 of a World Humanitarian Day.

The Iraqi vortex  

The Baghdad attack robbed the United Nations of fifteen fine and potential-rich servants, as well as taking the lives of others tragically caught by it; they include two NGO representatives, a diplomat, a translator, a contract worker, and the human-rights lawyer Arthur C Helton (also a co-writer of an openDemocracy column into refugee and displacement issues with his close colleague Gil Loescher, who was badly wounded in the blast).

Also among those who died was one of the greatest humanitarian civil servants, Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was courageously leading the UN effort in Iraq. His death represented the loss of a vital interlocutor between the US-led coalition and the international community at a critical moment in relationships between the US, the UN, and the rest of the world.  Indeed, his very international stature - including his role in helping to oversee the independence of East Timor from Indonesian rule, explicitly cited by al-Qaida as part of the twisted logic that justified his murder - had arguably made the UN in Iraq an even more visible and vulnerable target for terrorists. 

In his brief period in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello had pleaded for greater understanding of the Iraqi street and its voices amid the chaos of post-war administration. These were ignored, and the silencing of this voice of reason marked the beginning of a bitter insurgency and civil war that raged in Iraq until 2005-06. It took a long time before much-needed shifts in Washington's military policy and thinking filtered through to better policy on the ground; even after six years, the security situation remains unsettled and the establishment of working relationships with Iraqi leaders have proved tough. How much of a difference Sergio Vieira de Mello would have made here is one of the many unanswered questions of this violent period (see Samantha Powell, Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World [Penguin, 2008]).

The destruction of the Canal Hotel also marked the nadir of multilateralism, and an awful symbol of how the George W Bush administration's foreign-policy "exceptionalism" had destroyed the promise of international cooperation. The leading officials of the administration in effect relegated the UN to the trash-heap of global institutions, opting instead for an approach to international relations that in the end served no interest but to wreak more death and destruction on the "liberated" citizens of Iraq. This posture had started to shift by the time the Bush administration neared its end in 2008-09, but the damage wrought by the events in Iraq was enduring.  

The American military forces in Iraq - amounting to 130,000 troops - have as of 30 June 2009 officially withdrawn from major urban centres, as part of the process scheduled to lead to a final exit of troops by December 2011. The situation on the ground is now the responsibility of the Iraqi government's security forces, which have assumed the role of a state-security sector. There are signs of progress, including the existence of an elected government (and the prospect of another round of parliamentary elections in January 2010); progress in advancing the sovereignty of the Iraqi state, and in judicial and other institutions; the development of the Iraqi economy; and greater participation of its citizens in governance. 

But violent attacks continue, as in Baghdad itself on the 19 August anniversary; the potential for further outbreaks persists (in contested cities such as Kirkuk, and elsewhere); and many Iraqis who fled abroad during the nightmare years are reluctant to return. It has been a longer and much more painful road than might have been travelled if wiser policies had been followed.

Out of the rubble

The perspective of six years also highlights the importance of the improved relationship between the United States and the United Nations that are the result of the election of Barack Obama in November 2008. The new US president has outlined "a new era of engagement" in US foreign policy of which multilateralism is a cornerstone. It is a change that has profound implications for the UN, and is worth considering on this anniversary.   

Some remarks by the US's permanent representative to the UN, Susan Rice, are in this respect a revealing indicator of the future direction of US diplomacy:

"When the United States joins others to confront these challenges, it's not charity. It's not even barter. In today's world, more than ever, America's interests and our values converge. What is good for others is often good for us. When we manifest our commitment to tackling the threats that menace so many other nations; when we invest in protecting the lives of others; and when we recognise that national security is no longer a zero-sum game, then we increase other countries' will to cooperate on the issues most vital to us...We build will by pursuing pragmatic, principled policies and explain them with intelligence and candour. And in the broadest sense, we build will when others can see their future as aligned with ours...All of this helps explain why so many of America's security interests come together today at the United Nations."

The UN general assembly will convene for its sixty-fourth session on 15 September 2009. President Obama's address will be an opportunity to reaffirm both the US's renewed support for multilateralism and the continued vitality of the ideals of 1945: commitment to a strong international legal order, and to the universality of UN membership as the key source of legitimacy of the whole organisation's decision-making power. These commitments are both right in themselves and in America's own best interests, a combination that reflects secretary of state Hillary Clinton's emphasis on the need for the US to pursue a "smart power" approach.

Indeed, US and UN interests are set to align in the 2009-12 period on a host of issues: among them threats to peace and security, climate change, global health concerns and managing humanitarian operations. That alignment will be reinforced if the US takes a leadership role in promoting reform of the UN where it is most needed, including in improving the secretariat and its agencies.

A principled and effective multilateral policy by the Barack Obama administration is crucial to United States's rebuilding of its reputation in the community of nations, at a time of great fluidity and complexity in international relations. A strong US-UN relationship will be a vital part of this effort. As both institutions seek to match the needs of this challenging new era, the best of the tragically brief first UN mission in Iraq - the willingness to listen and as well as the need to be heard, the emphasis on cooperation, the instinct to engage - can be an inspiration.

The bomb attack on the headquarters of the United Nations operation in Baghdad on 19 August 2003 which killed the UN special representative in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, injured more than 100 and killed at least eighteen other people. Among the dead was Arthur Helton, the co-columnist of openDemocracy’s humanitarian monitor.

The other half of this openDemocracy partnership, Gil Loescher, was critically injured in the blast, and has been transferred to hospital in Germany; at the time of writing he is in a critical condition.

Arthur’s death is a dreadful loss to his family, friends and colleagues. Our thoughts and condolences are with them. We are with Gil and his family in spirit too.

This tragedy impacts heavily on openDemocracy. Arthur was a good friend of this enterprise and one of the people who made it what it is. He and Gil first approached us with a project and a vision that chimed with what we wanted to do: to facilitate serious, constructive global conversation on key issues of our time. We built up a strong working relationship from which we never ceased to learn new things.

Arthur was a serious, indefatigable scholar with extraordinary range. He was warm and humorous too. I (Caspar Henderson) will not forget his kindness when I visited him in the grand premises of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York earlier this year, and the touch of irony with which he showed me a photographic tribute to his work in the hallway of the Pratt house. In contrast to the pictures associated with many of his colleagues, which mainly showed important guys in suits and ties shaking hands or dramatic shots of military situations, Arthur’s picture showed a refugee mother and child. “The token soft-power guy around here”, he joked.

Arthur and Gil’s humanitarian monitor combined expert understanding of the many dimensions of humanitarian crises – legal, political, logistical, military, historical – with a willingness to think beyond current models. This search for complex and changing truths led them to interview many of the key figures in the field – from government ministers and UN administrators to refugees and asylum-seekers at the sharpest end of policy.

Because of their true seriousness and refusal to posture, their column reached out to and was read by influential actors and thinkers across a range of bodies and ways of looking at the world, including the military and academic communities, international institutions and activists. Sergio Vieira de Mello was an enthusiastic reader of their work on openDemocracy, recommending it warmly to others (according to reports, Sergio and Arthur were meeting together when the bomb went off).

Arthur and Gil’s columns for openDemocracy on Iraq were only part of their concern with crises of human displacement, food insecurity, health and shelter deprivation – and how these problems are dealt with (usually inadequately, and often without taking to heart the lessons of the past) by state, humanitarian and other organisations. There was huge and important work to be done here, and for openDemocracy’s global membership to engage with. We had hardly begun.

We salute Arthur Helton. We will miss him very much. We commit ourselves to building on his work and helping to make real the better world to which he dedicated his life. There is much to do.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of horrifying events that are known to few, denied by some, and exploited for political gain by others. Twenty years ago, on 16 March 1988, Iraqi bombers dropped chemical agents on the town of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan, killing several thousand civilians. The attack laid the precedent for the tactical use of poison-gas against the Kurdish countryside on the first day of every stage of a five-month counter-insurgency campaign that followed shortly afterwards (this was codenamed Anfal, an Arabic word meaning "spoils of war"). These chemicals killed a few hundred and achieved the intended effect of flushing terrified villagers into the arms of Iraqi armed forces, who transported them to transit centres, sorted them by age and sex, and carted off tens of thousands to execution sites in the country's western deserts, far from Kurdistan, where they have laid buried underneath a thin layer of sand until this day.