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
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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.