More here.Added to the chronic lack of resources is the UN's curiously conciliatory attitude towards the Sudanese government. In many ways Unamid was damned from its inception, undermined by the UN's willingness to appease President Bashir, making cordial relations with Khartoum its priority.
Before a single soldier set foot in Darfur, the UN had conceded to Bashir's demand that his government would dictate the terms of deployment. Unsurprisingly, the conditions set by Sudan have been so unrealistic as to render Unamid ineffective. After removing Unamid's teeth, Bashir then delayed its arrival by refusing to provide land for bases, stopping equipment leaving ports, delaying visas by six months or more, and randomly imposing restrictions on movement. Why did the UN ever agree to ask the permission of the architect of a genocide to use UN planes to investigate reports of that genocide?
Unamid: UN/African Union Hybrid Mission in Darfur
Update: I've been corrected on the meaning of UNAMID - and given the following piece of information:
"That's also another massive hamstring for this mission. The African Union is a fairly pointless organisation that has been here since 2003, achieving bugger all. The UN realised that and proposed a joint effort, which saw UNAMID formed out of the old AMIS (African Union Mission in Sudan) on 31 Dec 07. The force structure is still very heavily constrained by the requirement to maintain a majority AU manning. The agreement between the UN and GoS (Governement of Sudan) means that no more thqan 10% of the entire force can be from "white" countries. This may be why the "European" contribution is mostly staff officers working at the Force HQ trying to untangle the mess that is growing as UNAMID gets closer to reaching the target manning levels."
7 comments:
Ah, the UN...the world run by committee. A committee of the popular kids in kindergarten. NEVER a good idea. Never. Don't have the sense to pour piss out of a boot if the directions are on the heel. The UN has NEVER accomplished anything good, since their creation.
Power-hungry, greedy, incompetent, selfish megalomaniacs, in my opinion. Unamid is not the soldiers fault, in any way, shape or form. Just another disgusting display of UN idiocy.
Having worked for UN in Afghanistan for two years I can wholeheartedly agree with what KC said.
By world standards, our government is fairly efficient and uncorrupt. But it is still a bolloxing mess.
Add 200 governments together, many as corrupt, vicious and inefficient as the day is long, and look what you get.
It's like taking a reasonably well polished turd (our government), then mixing it with 200 other turds, ranging from the very well polished (Singapore) to the utterly wretched, and expecting the result to be a mouth watering lamington.
Australia has a deployment on this mission
Makes you wonder why Australia would bother with such a low-value deployment.
"The UN has NEVER accomplished anything good, since their creation."
So INTERFET was a failure?
Whilst INTERFET was a UN sanctioned operation (much like the ISAF in Afghanistan), it was not run by the UN. UNAMET, the UN mission in East Timor, were evacuated before INTERFET deployed. INTERFET was an international coalition with a UNSC resolution, but was not a UN mission and therefore not constrained by the pointless bureaucracy that cripples missions actually run by the UN. Once the situation had stabilised, and any real threat dealt with, INTERFET handed over to UNTAET.
It's like taking a reasonably well polished turd (our government), then mixing it with 200 other turds, ranging from the very well polished (Singapore) to the utterly wretched, and expecting the result to be a mouth watering lamington.
BoaB, that is the best and most highly-polished simile I have read in a long time.
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