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| International-UN-NGOs |
| UN: Fecklessness, meet corruption |
| 2005-02-06 |
| Some in the MSM get it. But what will they do about it? Muslim villagers in the Darfur region of Sudan--that is, those not yet murdered with the approval of their government--got some wonderful news last week. A United Nations commission concluded that while they surely are being slain at a systematic clip, that doesn't constitute "genocide." One imagines a grateful leader of the victimized villagers telling a cluster of terrified fellow survivors: "This just in! A UN report says we are being killed, raped, tortured, kidnapped and driven from our homes. It says most of the attacks are `deliberately and indiscriminately directed against civilians.' It even says Sudanese officials may have acted against us `with genocidal intent.' But a UN investigation finds no genocide here in Darfur. Isn't this great? Our government's henchmen, those vicious Arab Muslim militias, they must not want to kill us all!" The Bush administration hasn't been so squeamish. It loudly calls the killing of the Muslims what it is, genocide, and has implored the UN to stop the killing. A finding of genocide by the UN would push the rest of the world to act. But placing international sanctions or embargoes on Sudan isn't on the agenda of China or France, which have oil interests there, or of Russia, which sells Sudan weapons. How, then, could the so-called "world body" deflect noisy U.S. demands that it halt the bloodshed in Sudan? Easy: The UN commission recommended that the UN Security Council refer the Darfur slaughter to the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The Bush administration has wanted nothing to do with that court because of its potential for politically motivated acts aimed at Americans. With their limp recommendation of court action, the UN diplomats can tell themselves they have addressed the killing in Darfur--while not doing anything to stop it. The likes of China, France and Russia don't have to veto a resolution the Security Council doesn't even consider. In similar fashion, a decade ago, the UN averted its eyes from the madness in Rwanda. So too, during the 1990s, did the feckless UN pepper a murderous Saddam Hussein with righteous resolutions it had no intention to enforce. Late in 2004 a different UN report, this one on the organization's future challenges, admitted it was hamstrung by "an unwillingness to get serious about preventing deadly violence." But more than "unwillingness" was at work in Iraq. Last week an interim report by investigators probing the UN's oil-for-food program charged that Benon Sevan, the former head of the program, had repeatedly made improper requests for oil from Iraqi officials. In short, a top UN official who was supposed to be riding herd on Hussein and helping the starving Iraqi people was helping a friend obtain contracts to sell Iraqi oil. The report suggests that Hussein's flunkies were happy to help Sevan obtain oil because, as Iraq's former oil minister told investigators, "He was a man of influence." At the time, Hussein needed friends to help him skirt, and perhaps end, international sanctions against his regime. Last week's report asserts that because of porous auditing under oil-for-food, the dictator was able to avoid detection when he received illicit kickbacks from companies with which he was doing business. The complex investigation of oil-for-food is proceeding on many fronts. One involves whether a company that employed the son of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan improperly got a major contract to inspect goods bound for Iraq under the $64 billion program. Annan's chief of staff described him as shocked and dismayed by the report. If so, Annan may need a deep well of shock and dismay: Five U.S. congressional committees, and a federal prosecutor, are probing corruption on his watch. Not until oil-for-food is fully autopsied will the answer to the larger question here come clear: Which is more likely to speed the UN's race to utter irrelevance--its inability to see the mass killings of human beings as a reason to do something, or the corruption that tarnishes its noble-sounding yet so often meaningless words? There is no resurrecting the dead. There are, though, other lives that could be saved, although that now is a dwindling hope. In Sudan--as happened in Rwanda and Iraq--a gutless UN speaks for a world that would rather not interrupt the slaughter. |
| Posted by:Spot |
| #3 Fred, this could use a picture: "Mr. Feckless meets Mr. Corruption". Lots of uses. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-02-06 9:09:35 PM |
| #2 Maybe the Chicago Tribune and the Guardian can battle it out. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2005-02-06 4:07:17 PM |
| #1 More on Sevan and "our" U.N. officials from an April 2002 item: "In the interview, Mr. Goldberg said when he spoke with Mr. Sevan about the oil-for-food program, Mr. Sevan quickly let him know that he was 'unmoved' by the demands of the Kurds. Mr. Sevan went on and said, 'If they had a theme song, it would be Give Me, Give Me, Give Me. I am getting fed up with their complaints. You can tell them that.'" http://www.kurdmedia.com/reports.asp?id=840 |
| Posted by: Tom 2005-02-06 2:45:54 PM |