U.N.able

Posted in political on September 15th, 2006
The year is 1993, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriot Front (RPF) and the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government (the Tutsi and Hutu are African tribes) have just signed a U.N. sponsored cease-fire. Unfortunately, neither side has any intention of honoring it. Both sides are hoping to gain advantage while the other is idle. The U.N. has approved resolution 872 which creates UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda), their goal was to put troops between the warring sides to give peace a chance. They committed 2,500 troops to do the job, it would not be enough.
Without solid commitments from any one country (notably the U.S.) to assure the 2,500 troops would be in place immediately, the bickering and diplomatic efforts of the U.N. took over 5 months to reach that level, it was not soon enough. In April of 1994, the president of the Rwandan government, Juvenal Habyarimana, was assassinated, sparking one of the worst genocides the world has seen. In 3 short months, between 500,000 and 1 million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were exterminated. The U.N., lacking the troops or the ability to quickly muster more, stood idly by as the carnage exploded. It was but one example of the failings of U.N.
Now fast forward to the year 2000, the fighting in and around the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been raging for 2 years. With deaths now reaching nearly a thousand people a day, the U.N. has finally decided to act by sending in a multi-national force of 11,000 people to quell the fighting. Four years later, the ineffective force has done nothing to stem the killing, and an estimated 3.8 million men, women and children have died.
That isn’t even the worst of it. Some members of the international force, shielded by U.N. law leaving them free from prosecution, started raping, and photographing Congolese children. By the time the U.N. could not ignore the problem any longer, hundreds of babies were born to underage Congolese girls impregnated by U.N. officials and troops. One of the sickest aspects of these perverse acts was that U.N. officials would use food and medicine to blackmail them into these acts.
Now let’s move on to present day. In the war torn country of Sudan, in the region of Darfur, millions of black Sudanese have been driven from their homes by the Arab-controlled Sudan government. The Janjaweeds, (government backed Arabs), have been for the last couple of years, systematically killing all the male black Sudanese they can find. And it’s easy to find them. Without any food or water, they make their way to U.N. camps where, under cover of darkness or if they wander too far, they have their arms cut off if they’re not outright killed. The U.N. has sent troops to protect them and passed several resolutions condemning the Sudanese government but to this very day the killing continues.
So why is the U.N. so utterly ineffective? Picture that you have an oganization who’s goal it is to stop drug dealing in your neighborhood, now picture that not only do you have to let the drug dealers sit in on your discussions, but they get to vote on your methods. How effective do you think you would be? There lies the problem. Nations that are being investigated for crimes against humanity or for attempting to procure weapons of mass destruction get to sit in on, and vote on, the methods used to stop them. Does that make any sense? Of course not. Now add to that the fact that these nations can turn to the “Veto Nations” (think France or Russia prior to the present Iraq war) and bribe them with oil, money, or resources to put an end to any possible action, and you have a recipe for failure.
Is the U.N. completely worthless H.C.? No, I would say they have some use as a diplomatic tool, but that’s all. We did have some success in Bosnia keeping the Serbs under control, but that was one of the rare examples where Europe stood united. Don’t expect that to happen often. I would be in favor of us starting another, more pragmatic organization of Nations that would stand up militarily against groups like the Janjaweed. But getting Europe, or anyone else, to commit troops is always going to be the problem. If we can’t find figure out a way to get the rest of the world to stand up and take a solid moral stand against groups that only want chaos in the world, it may be time for the U.S. to decide if we can handle the problems alone, or move toward isolationism. H.C.