United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was an inspection regime created by the United Nations to ensure Iraq's compliance with policies concerning Iraqi production and use of weapons of mass destruction after the Gulf War. Between 1991 and 1997 its director was Rolf Ekéus; from 1997 to 1999 its director was Richard Butler.
Summary
United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was an inspection regime created with the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 in April 1991 to oversee Iraq's compliance with the destruction of Iraqi chemical, biological, and missile weapons facilities and to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency's efforts to eliminate nuclear weapon facilities all in the aftermath of the Gulf War. The UNSCOM inspection regime was packaged with several other UN Security Council requirements, namely, that Iraq's ruling regime formally recognize Kuwait as an independent state and pay out war reparations for the destruction inflicted in the Gulf War, including the firing of Kuwaiti oil supplies and destruction of public infrastructure. Until the UN Security Council saw that Iraq's weapons programs had been aborted and Iraqi leaders had allowed monitoring systems to be installed, the UN's aforementioned sanctions would continue to be imposed on Iraq.
The commission found corroborating evidence that Rihab Rashid Taha, an Iraqi microbiologist educated in England, had produced biological weapons for Iraq in the 1980s. The destruction of proscribed weapons and the associated facilities was carried out mainly by Iraq, under constant supervision by UNSCOM.
Inspectors withdrew in 1998, and disbanded the following year amid allegations that the United States had used the commission's resources to spy on the Iraqi military. Weapons inspector Scott Ritter later stated that Operation Rockingham had cherry-picked evidence found by the United Nations Special Commission; evidence, he says, that was later used as part of the casus belli for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The successor of the United Nations Special Commission was the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
History
The United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) was headed by Rolf Ekéus and later Richard Butler. During several visits to Iraq by the United Nations Special Committee (UNSCOM), set up after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait to inspect Iraqi weapons facilities, weapons inspectors were told by Rihab Rashid Taha that the al-Hakam germ warfare center was a chicken-feed plant. "There were a few things that were peculiar about this animal-feed production plant," Charles Duelfer, UNSCOM's deputy executive chairman, later told reporters, "beginning with the extensive air defenses surrounding it."
1991–1995
The powers given to UNSCOM inspectors in Iraq were: "unrestricted freedom of movement without advance notice in Iraq"; the "right to unimpeded access to any site or facility for the purpose of the on-site inspection...whether such site or facility be above or below ground"; "the right to request, receive, examine, and copy any record data, or information...relevant to" UNSCOM's activities; and the "right to take and analyze samples of any kind as well as to remove and export samples for off-site analysis".
Acceptance of the intrusion of the UNSCOM's inspectors on the part of the Iraqi regime was slow coming. But with the threat of punitive military action looming from the international community, and particularly the U.S., Saddam Hussein begrudgingly allowed UNSCOM's inspectors into the country to begin their work.
From August 1991 the U.S. government made a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft available to UNSCOM. The imagery was analysed by U.S. analysts, but the volume of imagery exceeded analysis capacity. With UNSCOM authority, Scott Ritter and some other UNSCOM weapons inspectors also regularly took Lockheed U-2 imagery to Israel for analysis. Iraq protested about the supply of such information to Israel.
Between 1991 and 1995, UN inspectors uncovered a massive program to develop biological and nuclear weapons. A large amount of equipment was confiscated and destroyed. Iraq by and large refused to cooperate with UNSCOM and its inspections as mandated by UN SC Res. 687 until June 1992, ten months after deadline, at which time the Iraqi government submitted "full, final and complete reports" on all of its weapons of mass destruction programs. These reports, however, were found to be incomplete and deficient, and at the same time UN inspectors were subjected to harassment and threats on the part of the Iraqi regime.