I posted another story below this about the UN screwing the pooch on Afghanistan as well, when they sacked Peter Galbraith for speaking truth to power about the elections there.
But the real star of this post, is the UN and their criminal work in the Congo. I say criminal, because to sit there and allow these rapes and murders to happen, while standing there with a gun in your hand and calling yourself a peacekeeper, is beyond just incompetence–it is criminal. What happened to the Responsibility to Protect? How do you allow this to continue and say that it is ok, while in the same breath calling yourselves peacekeepers? Some heads need to roll on this one, and some top leadership needs to be held accountable. Or better yet, hire some professionals to do the job right, or don’t do the job at all.-Matt
——————————————————————
UN’s Congo operation under scrutiny
By Harvey Morris at the United Nations
Published: October 18 2009 23:15 | Last updated: October 18 2009 23:15
The strategy of the United Nations’ biggest peacekeeping force is under scrutiny following reports that government forces it is supporting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have used wide-scale rape and murder as weapons of war.
Abuses committed in a campaign against rebels in the east of the country have been extensively catalogued by human rights organisations. They have now come to the fore with a claim by one of the UN’s own experts that the results of an 8-month UN-backed offensive have been “catastrophic”.
“Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, thousands raped, hundreds of villages burnt to the ground, and at least 1,000 civilians killed,” Philip Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said in a statement last week after a 10-day visit to the DRC.
What Mr Alston termed the “nightmare situation” in the eastern Kivu region underlined the dilemma of peacekeepers required to conduct increasingly robust and proactive mandates handed to them by the UN Security Council with what their commanders often complain are inadequate resources.
In the case of Monuc , the 19,000-strong UN force in the DRC, that has meant cooperating with the frequently badly-trained and undersupplied forces of the government’s army, the FARDC. Many of them are former members of a plethora of rebel movements in the country.
Current operations are aimed at combating the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Hutu force formed among those who fled to Congo after perpetrating the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
In a Security Council debate on Friday, Ileka Atoki, DRC envoy to the UN, acknowledged that government elements had been among those implicated.
He said he had been warning the Security Council for a decade about the phenomenon of armed groups in the east using systematic rape, infecting women and child victims with the HIV/Aids virus.
Mr Alston said in his statement that in a recent assault FARDC troops surrounded a camp and shot and beat to death at least 50 refugees. “It also appears that some 40 women were abducted from the camp. A small group of 10 who escaped described being gang raped, and had severe injuries; some had chunks of their breasts hacked off.”
Alan Doss, the British official who is the UN’s special representative in the DRC, reported progress in the so-called Kimia II offensive in a statement to the Security Council. “There is now a real prospect that the conflicts that have long blighted the eastern Congo can be ended,” he said.
But he also noted the challenges facing a UN force, responsible for civilian protection as well as for preventing abuses in an area the size of California and with insufficient air support. “It is oibviously not possible to protect everyone, everywhere, all of the time . . . so, inevitably, the question arises: should Kimia II be halted?”
He said a suspension now would only strengthen rebels “who might well draw the conclusion that attacks against civilians will force the government to give in to their demands”.
The Security Council last November mandated 3,000 reinforcements for the Monuc force to help protect the lives of more than a quarter of a million civilians displaced by war after rebels led by Laurent Nkunda, a renegade Tutsi commander, seized territory in the east of the country.
Security Council members, rethinking peacekeeping strategy in the context of controlling an annual budget that has risen to $8bn a year, have acknowledged the pressure on resources.
Susan Rice, US ambassador to the UN, said earlier this year Washington would examine ways of increasing its assistance to UN missions, including Monuc, “to better protect civilians under imminent threat of physical, including sexual, violence”.
Story here.
——————————————————————
‘Victim’ of UN Afghan power struggle
By Alastair Lawson
BBC News
2009/09/30
Peter Galbraith, the senior UN official in Afghanistan who has been removed from his post following a row about the country’s presidential election, is a well connected and influential diplomat.
He counts former US President Bill Clinton and the US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, as his friends. A former US diplomat, he has been second in command of the UN mission in Afghanistan.
Yet despite his connections, Mr Galbraith appears to be the loser in a power struggle with his boss in Afghanistan, UN special envoy Kai Eide.
The Harvard and Oxford University educated Mr Galbraith was at loggerheads with Mr Eide over how to handle voting irregularities in last month’s elections.
Mr Galbraith took an aggressive and outspoken line towards fraud in the 20 August vote, whereas his Norwegian counterpart favoured quietly lobbying behind the scenes.
The two men quarrelled over the issue, reportedly disagreeing over the extent to which vote recounts were necessary. The dispute led to Mr Galbraith’s temporary departure from Kabul earlier this month because of differences over “style”.
Mr Eide acknowledged there had been a row but told the BBC two weeks ago it had been resolved and insisted Mr Galbraith was due to return to Kabul.
“He’s a valuable deputy and I do hope that we can re-establish a good team and work together,” Mr Eide said.
He added it was important to “avoid any impression that there is foreign interference” in Afghanistan’s election.
Former ambassador
The two men initially insisted they were old friends – they served together in the Balkans – and Mr Eide is even reported to have introduced Mr Galbraith to the Norwegian anthropologist who became his wife.
But Mr Eide is said to have lobbied behind the scenes to stop Mr Galbraith’s appointment as his deputy in March.
There is perhaps no coincidence between reports emanating from Washington and London over the weekend that they would recognise President Karzai as the winner of the vote and news of Mr Galbraith’s permanent departure.
Such a decision would make Mr Galbraith’s position untenable given his trenchant criticisms of the way the vote has been handled.
What Mr Galbraith does now is unclear.
As a professional staff member for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1979 to 1993, he is an expert on Iraq and the Kurdistan question and has written books and academic papers on the subject.
In 1993 he was appointed by President Clinton as the first US ambassador to Croatia and later served with the UN in East Timor.
He has indicated more recently that he is interested in a political career – there was speculation last year that he might run for the governorship of Vermont.
Story here.