Few international figures are less deserving of an honorary knighthood bestowed by the queen of England than former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who received Britain’s highest honor for a foreign national last week. It is hard to see how Downing Street’s decision to recognize a figure who worked feverishly to undermine Britain and the United States over the Iraq war and the fight against Islamic terrorism, and was embroiled in the massive Oil-for-Food scandal, serves the British national interest. The knighthood should though come as no surprise considering Annan received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 after presiding over U.N. peacekeeping disasters during both the 1994 Rwanda genocide and 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

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Annan’s ten years at the helm of the U.N., as well as his period as undersecretary general for Peacekeeping Operations were a monumental failure, and he left behind an institution whose standing could barely be lower and a legacy that is a testament to appeasement, mismanagement, corruption, and anti-Americanism. He was probably the worst secretary general in the history of the United Nations, a staggering achievement considering the intense competition, and without a doubt the most weak-kneed.

Lord Mark Malloch Brown, Annan’s former chief of staff and recently appointed U.K. minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, almost certainly played a pivotal role in the decision to award a knighthood. Malloch Brown, who was unremittingly hostile towards both U.S. and British policy while serving at the UN, now sits on one of the most important portfolios at the British Foreign Office, and with his considerable experience in international affairs he is already overshadowing the much younger Foreign Secretary David Miliband. It is inconceivable that such an award would have been made under the premiership of Tony Blair, who frequently clashed swords with Annan, but under Gordon Brown, the winds of change are beginning to blow through the Anglo-American special relationship.

Considering the fact that Britain is still fighting a major war in Iraq alongside the United States and other allies, the decision to recognize Annan with a ceremony at Buckingham Palace is an affront to the brave servicemen and women who are putting their lives on the line every day. Annan was fiercely opposed to the U.S.-British-led liberation of the country, and famously declared it to be “illegal” in an interview with the BBC. While the Baathist regime ruled Iraq with an iron fist, Annan ignored the suffering of the Iraqi people. As Iraq’s then defense minister Hazem Shaalan remarked a year after the invasion, “where was Kofi Annan when Saddam Hussein was slaughtering the Iraqi people like sheep?” Following the liberation of Iraq, the U.N. Secretary General consistently undermined coalition efforts to rebuild the country, and in 2004 tried to intervene to halt a major counter-terrorist operation. Annan called on U.S. forces to pull back from taking the insurgent-held city of Fallujah, urging “a new chapter of inclusiveness and national reconciliation.” The secretary general, who had barely lifted a finger to help the people of Iraq, was now calling on them to embrace the terrorists who had sowed death and misery across their country.


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