Monday, January 17, 2005
Annan?
A fascinating look at Annan, the French, and the corruption in the highest ranks of the UN. Thanks to Sed Contra for the analysis (or the anal, as they would say in NYU econ).
While I have not been generally as strongly opposed to Kofi Annan and the U.N.as some folks have, and while I have continued to consume French cheese and wine (both excellent, too), I have stumbled nonetheless across two more reasons to dislike both the Secretary General and the French.
First, Annan. I am a little surprised that this is not more generally known, but back in January 1994, about three months before Hutu extremists got their tribesmen to slaughter their Tutsi neighbors and family members at a pace that surpassed the killing of Jews in World War II, Major General Roméo Dallaire, U.N. force commander in Rwanda, received an informant from among the extremists who laid out the whole plan and told him where to find arms caches which had been stored for the fighting and slaughter.
Dallaire, a Canadian, urgently cabled off a plan to the U.N. in New York to his boss, Kofi Annan. With a few of his troops, well armed and with surprise on their side, Dalliare's plan called for raids on the caches to blow them up and forestall the planned slaughter for at least a little time.
Annan's answer was not just no, but the worst sort of ill-thought out no. Frontline reported it.
Dallaire was told the U.N. didn't agree with his plan to raid the arm caches and furthermore, he must inform the president of Rwanda what he had learned from the informant, even though it was the president's own inner circle that was planning the slaughter of Tutsis.
The rest is a very sad and bloody history. Except for the addition that early in the slaughter ten Belgian peacekeeping troops were captured by the extremists, tortured and killed, a fact which led Belgium to pull its troops which is what the extremists had wanted after all.
According to Philip Gourevitch's landmark We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, the Belgians had tried to investigate the circumstances behind the deaths of their soldiers, but not only had Annan refused to testify in the matter, he refused to let Dallaire do so.
So now it is more than a decade later. How precisely did this man move on to run the U.N.? Why didn't he resign and why didn't we demand he resign. What light does this knowledge place on his behavior in the disputes over Iraq before the war?
While I have not been generally as strongly opposed to Kofi Annan and the U.N.as some folks have, and while I have continued to consume French cheese and wine (both excellent, too), I have stumbled nonetheless across two more reasons to dislike both the Secretary General and the French.
First, Annan. I am a little surprised that this is not more generally known, but back in January 1994, about three months before Hutu extremists got their tribesmen to slaughter their Tutsi neighbors and family members at a pace that surpassed the killing of Jews in World War II, Major General Roméo Dallaire, U.N. force commander in Rwanda, received an informant from among the extremists who laid out the whole plan and told him where to find arms caches which had been stored for the fighting and slaughter.
Dallaire, a Canadian, urgently cabled off a plan to the U.N. in New York to his boss, Kofi Annan. With a few of his troops, well armed and with surprise on their side, Dalliare's plan called for raids on the caches to blow them up and forestall the planned slaughter for at least a little time.
Annan's answer was not just no, but the worst sort of ill-thought out no. Frontline reported it.
Dallaire was told the U.N. didn't agree with his plan to raid the arm caches and furthermore, he must inform the president of Rwanda what he had learned from the informant, even though it was the president's own inner circle that was planning the slaughter of Tutsis.
The rest is a very sad and bloody history. Except for the addition that early in the slaughter ten Belgian peacekeeping troops were captured by the extremists, tortured and killed, a fact which led Belgium to pull its troops which is what the extremists had wanted after all.
According to Philip Gourevitch's landmark We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, the Belgians had tried to investigate the circumstances behind the deaths of their soldiers, but not only had Annan refused to testify in the matter, he refused to let Dallaire do so.
So now it is more than a decade later. How precisely did this man move on to run the U.N.? Why didn't he resign and why didn't we demand he resign. What light does this knowledge place on his behavior in the disputes over Iraq before the war?
