Nato: Good piece on UN, Rwanda and Bosnia

[Said1]

The Real Reason Kofi Annan Must Go
Genocide, not oil money, is the proof of his failed leadership.

BY KENNETH L. CAIN
Monday, December 20, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST

A debate currently rages about whether Kofi Annan enjoys the moral authority to lead the United Nations because the Oil for Food scandal happened under his command. That debate is 10 years too late and addresses the wrong subject. The salient indictment of Mr. Annan's leadership is lethal cowardice, not corruption; the evidence is genocide, not oil.

As the controversy roiled over the past several weeks, I was on a research trip to the two ground-zeros of Mr. Annan's failed leadership while he was head of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations--Rwanda and Bosnia. We have heard from too many conservative commentators and Republican politicians recently--most of whom reject multilateralism anyway--about Mr. Annan's qualifications to lead. But we have not heard from enough Rwandans or Bosnians. I thought I'd talk to a few.

Before my recent return, the last time I was in Rwanda was 10 years ago; I was counting skulls. A young U.N. human-rights officer, I was tasked with collecting evidence for the U.N.'s forthcoming war-crimes tribunal after the successful genocide of Rwanda's Tutsi minority by Hutu militias in 1994. We were looking for the mass graves of mass murder. We found them in churches, schools, gardens, latrines--anywhere Tutsis had gathered seeking protection or their killers had dumped their bodies, dismembered and entangled, like life-size rag dolls. Some 800,000 bodies rotted in the African sun.

But it isn't just the stench of death I remember so vividly; the odor of betrayal also hung heavily in the Rwandan air. This was not a genocide in which the U.N. failed to intervene; most of the U.N.'s armed troops evacuated after the first two weeks of massacres, abandoning vulnerable civilians to their fate, which included, literally, the worst things in the world a human being can do to another human being.

It did not have to happen. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the U.N.'s force commander in Rwanda, sent Mr. Annan a series of desperate faxes including one warning that Hutu militias "could kill up to 1,000" Tutsis "in 20 minutes" and others pleading for authority to protect vulnerable civilians. But at the crucial moment, Mr. Annan ordered his general to stand down and to vigorously protect, not genocide victims, assembled in their numbers waiting to die, but the U.N.'s image of "impartiality."

Article

 

[rtwngAvngr]

This is so utterly sickening.

 

[NATO AIR]

a powerful, damning article.

kofi annan is a fucking piece of shit. him and all his cronies.