Blood Oath:UN Dafur Peacekeeping Debacle

[Perknose]

They just stood watching.

Good in-depth article, the first of three:

Drawing on a massive trove of highly confidential UNAMID documents -- including thousands of pages of emails, police reports, internal investigations and diplomatic cables -- Foreign Policy will over the next three days publish a series of articles that shed light on how Darfur's combatants, particularly the Sudanese government, have effectively neutered the U.N. peacekeeping mission, undermining its capacity to fulfill its primary duty to protect nearly 2 million civilians displaced by Sudan's genocide. During the past year alone, more than 500,000 terrified men, women, and children have poured into the region's already overcrowded refugee camps.

The mission's former spokeswoman, Aicha Elbasri, provided FP with the documents to draw attention to what she sees as UNAMID's failings and unwillingness to call out Khartoum for what she views as its deliberate targeting of Darfur's civilians and UNAMID peacekeepers.

The documents -- which track the period from 2012 through the end of 2013 -- constitute perhaps the largest single leak of internal documents on an active U.N. mission in the world body's history.

[...]

The failure of the peacekeepers to protect civilians can be attributed to multiple factors. Internal UNAMID documents say that troop-contributing countries supplied their blue helmets with broken vehicles and low-grade weaponry, while more powerful foreign powers declined multiple U.N. appeals to give the peacekeepers helicopter gunships to reinforce the mostly African infantry battalions. U.N. headquarters in New York, according to the documents, has also routinely rebuffed UNAMID commanders' requests that underperforming peacekeeping contingents, or those that decline to carry out direct orders, be sent home and replaced by other troops. Sudan's government forces and militias, meanwhile, have tormented the blue helmets, hampering their effectiveness.

 

[piasabird]

Maybe the UN should quit feeding murdering savages.

 

[AViking]

Sudan actually confuses me a bit. Darfur is CLEARLY a huge problem and most would agree that there has been human cleansing there as well as other horrible atrocities. Yet leaders will not even call it a genocide and won't do shit to help them. Why? We constantly say that if there are resources available then we intervene. Oil for example. Yet Sudan has natural resources that are not being exploited. Gold, Petroleum, and probably more.

Why help Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but not Sudan? Is there some kind of threshold before it's worth helping them? Kuwait produces 5x as much oil but Sudan is producing about half a million barrels a day regardless. Libya was at 1,700,000 and today is less than Sudan. This is/was the largest country in Africa and we did nothing.

It's like Rwanda all over again. Unless a country can meet some invisible threshold of natural resources then they are not worth helping.

 

[Perknose]

"Now We Will Kill You"

^^^ Part 2 of FP's investigative report. As with part 1, it begins rather dramatically, then proceeds to delve deeply into the meat of the matter.

 

[chucky2]

Too bad not in P&N...

 

[OverVolt]

More of a tragedy than a travesty.

 

[chucky2]

Sudan actually confuses me a bit. Darfur is CLEARLY a huge problem and most would agree that there has been human cleansing there as well as other horrible atrocities. Yet leaders will not even call it a genocide and won't do shit to help them. Why? We constantly say that if there are resources available then we intervene. Oil for example. Yet Sudan has natural resources that are not being exploited. Gold, Petroleum, and probably more.

Why help Saudi Arabia and Kuwait but not Sudan? Is there some kind of threshold before it's worth helping them? Kuwait produces 5x as much oil but Sudan is producing about half a million barrels a day regardless. Libya was at 1,700,000 and today is less than Sudan. This is/was the largest country in Africa and we did nothing.

It's like Rwanda all over again. Unless a country can meet some invisible threshold of natural resources then they are not worth helping.

The problem is, the US was knee deep in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time. So TRoTW would have had to take this up as we were busy. You now know why when people get all hyped about what TRoTW thinks about US foreign policy/actions, why sane people laugh at them. The UN, that is, TRoTW couldn't find 14 helpicopters at one point for the UN peacekeepers. 14 F'ing helicopters, out of the entire world.

 

[AViking]

Well isn't that debatable? It's all about priorities. When you give a shit enough then things get done. Just look at WWII and where we had troops. Asia, Africa, Europe.

Don't get me started on the UN. However we're part of the UN and if they couldn't find 14 helicopters it says a lot about not only the organization but its members and leaders.

I travel a lot and it just shocks me how inept the world can be. Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan, and even Yugoslavia.

 

[chucky2]

Well isn't that debatable? It's all about priorities. When you give a shit enough then things get done. Just look at WWII and where we had troops. Asia, Africa, Europe.

Don't get me started on the UN. However we're part of the UN and if they couldn't find 14 helicopters it says a lot about not only the organization but its members and leaders.

I travel a lot and it just shocks me how inept the world can be. Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan, and even Yugoslavia.

What's debatable?

 

[Perknose]

Part 3: A Mission Set Up To Fail

 

[mrcharles]

I love these debates. Let's keep it going.

 

[Harabec]

It's Africa, so most nations and people don't really care. People keep trying to say this is something non-PC to say and I'll say again that this is real life not a TV show. No one cares = people keep dying.
Countries work according to their interests, helping people with no power, no money, no defined future, no trade, nothing...seems not to be in anyone's interest.

Iraq was is in people's minds because of the war, does anyone think the US gave a damn about ISIS without it? Thousands of people die in various places (a lot in...Africa) due to shit like this, most never get headlines or actual support (words are not support).