|
Some of the reasons why I think Kofi Annan and the UN is largely ineffective:
The recent events in Iraq have brought the United Nations into the spotlight more than ever before. However, if we look back at previous failures, we should not be surprised by the current display of ineffectiveness. The United Nations did little to stop the genocide in Cambodia or the actions of China in Tieneman Square. The genocide in Rwanda was ruthlessly carried out under the nose of the United Nations. In fact, Kofi Annan was the head of U.N. peacekeeping at the time and did nothing. A cable sent to Annan in January 1994 advising of the likelihood of a campaign of genocide in Rwanda got a response advising that the United Nations should "avoid entering into a course of action that might lead to the use of force and unanticipated repercussions." The use of force, at least by the U.N., was avoided and there were no "unanticipated repercussions." There were, however, the anticipated repercussions of a systematic campaign of murder and terror in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered in Rwanda. More recently, the civil war in the Congo has resulted in claims just last month of cannibalism, rape, torture and kidnapping by the rebel forces, apparently supported by Uganda. Estimates are that approximately 2 million people have died in this fighting since 1998. Uganda and the Congo are both member nations of the U.N. But Kofi Annan, rather than proposing swift action against clear and widespread atrocities, is reserving his harshest criticism for the United States.
And now the much-celebrated International Tribunal for Rwanda has become yet another UN bureaucratic disaster. Repeated UN investigations have found widespread mismanagement, wastage, incompetence, and corruption. The Tribunal has prosecuted a fraction of the Rwandan genocide suspects it holds in custody. It has even been criticized by its own Appeal Court of prosecutorial incompetence and failing to observe elementary due process considerations. Sadly, the Tribunal, which should have brought justice to the region, has instead become another multi-million dollar UN boondoggle. Srebrenica, a name now associated with one of the worst crimes in Europe since WWII or as Judge Riad of the ICTY described it, ``..... a place where thousands of men were executed, hundreds buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mother's eyes, and a grandfather was forced to eat the liver of his own grandson.'' These are truly scenes from hell written on the darkest pages of human history. The UN created a safe haven in Srebrenica and encouraged civilians to enter en masse so as to be under UN military protection. Only one condition applied--entry into the UN safe haven required Muslim fighters to surrender their weapons. This they did, hoping that if ever the need arose they would get them back. They were to be sorely disappointed on that score.
When it became apparent that General Mladic was separating the men from the women and then killing them in the nearby fields, the Dutch UN troops began pleading for UN military support. But, just like Rwanda, the UN leadership once again became paralyzed and failed. They dithered over air strikes, they refused to send in troops to help the beleaguered Dutch and in the end, just as with Rwanda, the UN withdrew their troops. This permitted General Mladic to remove an estimated 5,000-8,000 Muslims from in and around the UN compound in Potocari and slaughter them.
To this day the United Nations and no UN official has ever been held criminally or civilly liable, let alone even publicly admonished, for their massive failures in Srebrenica. All the families of the thousands of victims can do now is pick up the pieces of their broken families and attempt to restart their lives.
East Timor. In late August 1999, the UN and now Secretary General Annan, called for elections on the small island country of East Timor despite disturbing evidence that hard line elements in the Indonesian military were preparing to cause wide spread public disorder so as to disrupt the elections. The UN failed to provide adequate protection for the civilian population. Dili was burnt to the ground and East Timor was engulfed in violence. After weeks of killing and millions of dollars of damage, the Australian government sent in ground troops to restore order to East Timor; but by then, it was too late to save East Timor from UN bungling.
Sierra Leone. So bad was the UN's conduct in Sierra Leone in June 2000 that their long time supporter and friend, Medicins Sans Frontieres, felt compelled to speak out and complain. MSF complained bitterly that the UN troops fled a RUF attack on the Sierra Leonean town of Kabala.
In so doing MSF said that the UN had failed its mandate to protect civilian populations, many of whom were sick women and malnourished children in the MSF hospital.
Cambodia. There is now mounting evidence that UN Peacekeeping troops actually caused an explosion of AIDS in Cambodia in 1992. In January of last year Richard Holbrooke, the then US Ambassador to the UN, launched an unprecedented attack upon the UN during his last UTN address saying ``..... it would be the cruelest of ironies if people who had come to end war ..... were spreading the most deadly of diseases ..... it will kill more people and undermine more societies than even the most critical conflicts we discuss here.'' And despite Ambassador Holbrooke's warnings there are concerns that right now in East Timor UN staff could be causing yet another AIDS epidemic. Some things just never seem to change.
|
