The situation has become "too difficult" in Iraq and the peace process aimed at rebuilding the country is not working, warns Lakhdar Brahimi, former special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

He was on campus March 2 to give the Bartels World Affairs Fellowship Lecture, hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell.

Brahimi, also Algeria's former minister of foreign affairs, was for more than 10 years the U.N.'s top envoy in such hot zones as Haiti, South Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq. He was appointed special adviser to Annan in 2004. As the 25th Bartels World Affairs Fellow, he addressed a nearly full Call Alumni Auditorium in Kennedy Hall, despite wintry conditions outside.

"If the object of the exercise is to seek a solution for the problems in Iraq, common sense demands that the discussion should focus on the future, not on the past," said Brahimi. In seeking a solution, he added, only Iraq's problems and interests should be considered. "If a bicycle is not running and if you want to fix it, you can't just look at the beautiful paint, you have to look at all the pieces that make the bicycle run."

Brahimi reported that in 2004, a lot of Iraqi citizens were determined to rebuild their country and establish a workable democracy. However, he said he also saw disturbing signs at the time that could take the country down a more slippery slope, possibly toward civil war. His concerns led him to discuss matters with influential religious leaders of the region.

"The religious leaders were not as dismissive as most politicians," stated Brahimi. "But, I'm sorry to say that they didn't do as much to prevent what is happening today."

By February 2005, little was being done to defuse the situation in Iraq. "I was not saying [in 2005] that a civil war was possible," he said. "I was saying a civil war had already started."

Brahimi spoke critically of the U.S. media, which, he said, often report on the U.S. involvement in Iraq as it affects the nation's political agenda, while paying little attention to the problems of "real" people in Iraq. He claimed, for example, that the press ignores stories of Iraqis being held for ransom and that there is little coverage of the suspected torturing of Iraqis in secret detention centers or of Iraqi police involvement in a large number of sectarian killings.

Brahimi said that a prominent Shiite leader recently told him that there are many fears and distresses in Iraq: Kurds are afraid they will lose the substantial gains made from 10 years of near independence; the majority Shiites are afraid they will lose their perceived right to rule the country; and the Sunnis fear they will have to pay for Saddam Hussein's sins, because he is a Sunni.

Brahimi insisted that the Iraqi situation requires a sustained flow of national communication, efforts to have people talk of their fears and to trust in each other, so that every party is assured that making the required compromises will end up serving the interests of all. That's what Nelson Mandela did in South Africa, said Brahimi, but unfortunately "there is no Mandela in Iraq."

The Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellowship was established at Cornell by the Bartels, Class of 1948, in 1984 to foster a broadened world perspective among students by bringing distinguished international public figures to campus.

Graduate student Sandra Holley is a writer intern at the Cornell News Service.