Twisted Peacekeepers

Back in 1919, during the Senate’s debate over ratifying the League of Nations Covenant, Senator William Borah (R-Idaho) sought to talk his colleagues out of the idea that a world “peace force” would be a blessing to mankind. An international “peacekeeping” army, he warned, would consist of

“the gathered scum of the nations organized into a conglomerate international police force ordered hither and thither by the most heterogeneous and irresponsible body or court that ever confused or confounded the natural instincts and noble passions of a people.”

Nearly a century later, Borah’s prophetic words were echoed by former UN
civilian “peacekeeper” Andrew Thomson, a coauthor of the new book “Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures.” Thomson, a physician who works as a medical officer at UN HQ in NY, has served as an aid worker in UN missions to Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Bosnia and Haiti. On the basis of his experience, Thomson offers a warning to readers:

If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, RUN. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.

The world body’s self-portrait as guardian of human rights is belied by the fact that “almost a million civilians [whom] our peacekeepers were supposed to protect, died in two denocides,” Thomson observes in the book, which was co-authored by Kenneth Cain and Heidi Postelwaite. In fact, this estimate is much too low, given that Rwandan sources estimate that as many as 1.1 million people were slaughtered in that nation’s 1994 genocide. When the Blue Helmets aren’t passively abetting genocide, or actively facilitating it by disarming targeted populations, they find other ways of inflicting misery in the name of “world peace”.

UN peacekeepers in Cambodia-particularly those from “ex”-Communist Bulgaria–had become notorious for drunken rampages, brawls, shootouts and mistreatment of women. Cain, who was in Cambodia as a UN election monitor–offers a tidy thumbnail sketch of the Bulgarian Blue Berets in the book, Emergency Sex:

Everyone hates the Bulgarians. The UN pays countries cash to send soldiers on peacekeeping missions….the Bulgarian government wanted money but didn’t want to send their best-trained troops. So, they offered inmates in the prisons and psychiatric wards a deal: put on a uniform and go to Cambodia for six months. You’re free on your return. All you have to do is stand guard and give away food, they said, the UN is not a real military. [And so a] battalion of criminal lunatics arrives in a lawless land. They get drunk as sailors, rape vulnerable Cambodian women, and crash their UN Land Cruisers with remarkable frequency.

Heidi Postlewait, another contributor to Emergency Sex, hired on with the UN as a secretary, described her sexual exploits as part of the UN missions on three continents. The phrase “emergency sex” refers to a hasty tryst she experienced with a UN translator in Somolia following a sniper attack.

She describes sitting in Somolia with a small knot of locals

“smoking our joints and smiling at each other….We spend what’s left of the afternoon smoking more joints and listening to [late reggae artist Bob Marley's album] Legend, over and over again.”

Of her descriptions of rampant drug use on the part of UN staff, perhaps the most memorable is a Cambodian vignette involving a marijuana cocktail called the “Space Shuttle”.

The UN staff in Cambodia, recalls Postlewait, were like “the jet set on vacation”–although it should be pointed out that jet-setters aren’t subsidized by the US taxpayer. It’s nice work if you can get it. At least from some people’s point of view. Despite the fact that the UN threatened to punish the authors of Emergency Sex for bringing disrepute on the world body, it’s tempting to speculate that the book may actually be intended as a recruiting lure for people interested in making a career out of itinerant fornication and drug use in the name of “world peace.”

Those interested in tracking the movements of the Blue Berets should look for Third World communities where child prostitution and rape have suddenly spiked. A December 1996 UN study documented that “peacekeepers” had been involved in child prostitution in six of the twelve countries studied. In Mozambique, for example, Blue Berets actively recruited girls as young as 12 to serve as prostitutes.

A February 26, 2002 report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) described widespread sexual exploitation of children at Western African refugee camps. According to the report, UN field workers and representatives from various UN-aligned non-governmental organizations have been preying on children housed in camps in Libera, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Paul Nolan of “Save the Children” describes such sexual predation as “widespread, quite possibly endemic and which also included people who were actually in place to provide those refugee children with the care and protection they were entitled to…It’s a problem we know has been around for a long time.”

A June 6 BBC dispatch relates the story of “Faela”, a tragically typical victim of sexual exploitation at UN hands. A resident of a UN refugee camp in Bunia, Congo, the 13-year old girl, whose real name wasn’t used, has a six-month-old child, named Joseph. She became pregnant as a result of being raped by a Congolese militiaman. With no family to support her or the infant, the child-mother has been caught in the undertow of child prostitution, sleeping with “peacekeepers” from Morocco or Uruguay in exchange for food.

During a five-day stay in the Bunia refugee camp, commented the BBC’s Kate Holt, “over 30 girls were interviewed, half of whom admitted to crossing the boundary into the UN [garrison].” One of them explained,

“The UN soldiers help girls like me, they give us food and things if we go [to bed] with them.”

According to Dominique McAdams, chief UN representative in Bunia, the “help” offered by UN peacekeepers sometimes involves more than mere manipulation or exploitation: “It is pretty clear to me that sexual violence is taking place in the camp.” Despite her determination to prosecute those responsible, and assurances from UN spokesman Fred Eckhard that doing so ‘is a matter of urgency”, McAdams complains, “I have not received anything from anyone.”

Now the OFF program (Oil For Food), is a monumental UN scam rooted in a different kind of exploitation, and the Bush administration has not been very forthcoming about it.

In 1995, for the supposed purpose of providing for “the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people,” during the decade-long UN embargo of that nation, the OFF program was created. “The import of petroleum and petroleum products orginating in Iraq, including financial and other essential transactions directly related thereto, sufficient to produce a sum not in exceeding a total of one billion USD every ninety days”, was what UN Security Council Resolution 986 provided for. Under UN supervision, the transactions were supposed to take place, with payments made into a special “escrow account”, established by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

2.2% of the oil sales was the UN’s share in OFF proceeds, which would cover the expenses of UN weapons inspectors and humanitarian relief projects in Iraq. Former Bush administration Defense department official Jed Babbin notes, however,

“evidence shows that the UN might have taken, and allowed Saddam to take, much more. The UN was acting as a fiduciary for the Iraqi people, holding that money in trust for them. That trust was violated in ways that if the UN program managers had been officers of a US corporation, they would be on their way to jail.”

In the seven years of its existence, the Oil-For Food program resulted in the export of 3.4 billion barrels of Iraqi oil, with “much of the oil revenues apparently [going] to line the pockets of UN officials–possibly including Kofi Annan–and politicans around the world,” Babbin continues. There is evidence that the oil invoices were padded by 10% to generate revenues for Saddam’s regime. Former program official Michael Soussan has described how bribes and kickbacks from Saddam resulted in additional illicit profits as food and aid funds were directed to corrupt suppliers, allowing Saddam’s agents to buy “poor quality products at inflated prices, cashing in on the difference.”

Some of the money was used by Saddam to buy influence abroad. In January, the Iraqi newspaper al-Mada published a list of foreign recipients of OFF bribes totaling billions of dollars-with the largest sums being directed to Russia, our “strategic ally” in the anti-terrorism struggle. Among the individuals listed was a “Mr. Sevan”-who may be none other than assistant UN secretary-general Benon Sevan, who directed the OFF program.

Earlier this year, Sevan, who was placed on administrative leave and sequestered from the press, insisted that he was a victim of a ’smear campaign’ and that he would ‘cooperate fully’ with ongoing inquiries into the scandal. Three sternly worded letters sent by Sevan to potential whistleblowers suggested that he subscribes to an eccentric definition of the word “cooperation”. A letter sent to the Swiss company Cotecna asserted that it

“may not communicate at any time to any other person, government or authority external to the United Nations, any information known to them by reason of their association with the United Nations, which has not been made public. In view of the contractual provisions referred to agbove and the fact that these matters relate to internal UN procedures for administering the Programme, we would ask that you consult with the UN before releasing any documentation or information.”

In early May, a congressional subcommittee inquiry chaired by Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) produced a formidable wealth of documented detail describing the scandal. But the purpose of the hearing was to restore the UN’s credibility, rather than build a case for US withdrawal from this hopelessly corrupt body. “An institution as important to the world as the United Nations should do everything possible to remove the stain this program may leave on its reputation,” Shays told the Washington Times on April 21.

Heading up the UN’s “independent” probe are former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who has served on UN-created international tribunals. Volckner and Goldstone are veteran internationalists who can be counted on to run a slick and professional damage-control operation.

In addition to cooperating with the UN’s “independent” inquiry, the Bush administration is lending aid to an ongoing probe by Iraqi officials, as well. “The Iraqis are more than hopping mad over the Oil For Food business,” an international consultant with ties to White House officials said. The consultant offered the following summary of the White House’s take on the matter: “[The Iraqis will] take care of it, so Bush doesn’t have to. Meanwhile, he’ll get the Security Council resolutions he wants.”

The most intrigueing development in this whole story is the following: On June 3, Fox News report pointed out, the Iraqi probe is being handled by “The Iraqi Board of the Supreme Audit, a Saddam Hussein-era body.” Ahmed Chalabi, former head of the CIA-created Iraqi National Congress (INC), had obtained extensive files on the Oil for Food scandal; he claims that those files were seized when US and Iraqi troops raided INC offices in early June. Claude Hankes Drielsma, an Oil-for-Food whistleblower who compiled extensive files on the scandal, told Fox News that “his computer was hacked into and all its files destroyed on the same day that Chalabi’s offices were raided. Drielsma describes it as a strange coincidence.”

Fox News noted that many Iraqis offer a less benign view of these developments, accusing the Bush administration colonial administrator L. Paul Bremer of “hindering the investigation to prevent any revelations that might embarrass the Un during the critical transition of power in Iraq.”

As Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill), complained in a letter to Kofi Annan, “The U.S. Congress-which provides 22% of the UN’s budget…should not be required to depend on media leaks for source documents” on the OFF scandal. But, thanks to the Bush Administration’s help, in this instance, the UN has been able to choke off all avenues of investigation it doesn’t control.