Nowhere Near Good Enough
By Charles Bird Posted in War — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The abrupt resignation of Kofi Annan's chief of staff, a Pakistani named Iqbal Riza, is an interesting sign for the UN. Also leaving are Undersecretary-General for Management Catherine Bertini and Controller Jean-Pierre Halbwachs (a Mauritian), the Associated Press reports. Bertini is the highest-ranking American and was reportedly "fed up", while Halbwachs is leaving under the cloud of the UNOFF scandal. I won't be satisfied until Annan quits or is fired from his job. He has the wrong vision, the wrong judgment and his formula as UN Secretary-General has been nine parts "secretary" to one part "general". The UN's legitimacy is draining away, in no small part because of Annan's actions and inactions. Riza's "retirement" is a positive step, but the UN needs a football stadium's worth.
From the New York Sun:
Mr. Riza, 70, who has been chief of staff since January 1997, is considered the most influential policy adviser to the secretary-general, and many feel he was a leader in a policy that is perceived as adversarial to Washington, especially on issues related to Iraq and Israel. A U.N. insider said Mr. Riza leads a group of advisers who have called on Mr. Annan to take a hard line, urging him to refuse to share information with the congressional oil-for-food investigations.
Riza may have preferred the adversarial approach to the United States, but Annan had a choice, too, and he followed his chief of staff's suit. Riza also played a part in the UN employees' union's no-confidence vote against Annan:
Mr. Riza has raised the ire of the U.N. staff union recently at a meeting in the aftermath of allegations against the head of the U.N.'s internal investigative arm. Some said that the chief of staff had worked to squash the investigation into allegations of abuse of power. When the union voted for a resolution that expressed no confidence in Mr. Annan's senior management, many privately said this was directed at Mr. Riza.
Annan's judgment is further called into question because Riza is a longtime Kofi sidekick and shared in Annan's disastrous role in the Rwandan genocide:
Earlier, Mr. Riza, who was Mr. Annan's lieutenant at the peacekeeping department under Secretary-General Boutros Ghali, ignored cable messages from a U.N. commander in Africa, Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire of Canada, rather than passing them along to higher-ups in the organization and to the Security Council. General Dallaire had repeatedly warned that mass murder was being planned in Rwanda.
There is more here on the Rwandan genocide. The drumbeat won't stop for Annan. Rwanda and Bosnia should be reason enough for him to lose his job, so writes Kenneth Cain, a self-proclaimed liberal multilateralist.
What are the solutions? For me, a new UN Secretary General who will be more like Tony Blair and less like Jacques Chirac in terms of working with the United States. The second solution is a Democracy Caucus or a League of Democracies. We provide 22% of the UN's budget. Allocating 11% over to a real representative international body such as the Democracy Caucus will send a clear message that the United States stands behind organizations with moral authority and that we side with those who will spread freedom and democracy.
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Nowhere Near Good Enough 4 Comments (0 topical, 4 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
has the UN done to stifle "change and justice" that you're most concerned about? What type of growth do you think an international organization ought to foster, and with what power invested in it to do so?
Thanks for your thoughts--
power of it's own? none.
I had thought the UN was designed to serve as a method more than as an institution.
It would be convenient for the powers to have 'viceroys' in close proximity to ease unreasonable fears.... eg. military exercises against FARC may cause fear in Quito or Caracas, but with everybody being close at hand (in NY) the Colombian and US ambassador could gurantee borders against violent shifting. And likewise the British Ambassador would do something similar in the context of Pakistan and India, the Chinese in the context of Laos and Viet Nam etc. (speaking of the 'old days' of course.)
As to change and justice.... the only affirmative duty of the nations of the UN is to prevent genocide, and yet the UN staff orders peacekeepers out of areas where genocidal conflict is imminent time after time. ( Israel, Rawanda, Bosnia, to name the most prominent).
Whether it is providing funding to terrorists by providing them with day jobs in areas once claimed by Egypt or disarming minorities in Bosnia the UN has pretty much made a practice of encouraging tyrannical despotisms or genocidal aggresssion. So the change being stifled would be from oppressed Muslim minority in Bosnia to self-determination for ethnic groups in Former Yugoslav areas as well the removal of genocidal/racist barriers to normal international relations in Israel and the physical security of minority populations in all three areas I have mentioned.
As for justice: Instead of functioning as forum for nations to come to agreement on a minimal set of rules of conduct, the UN functions as a 'stamp' of international approval for the horrors each member chooses for it's own people. The world knows 250 people every day were murdered by Saddam Hussein, it doesn't know how many were murdered by North Korea's dear leadership, and it refuses to count the numbers dead from poverty caused by corrupt dictators there and elsewhere. Instead the UN has become a forum for dictators to hector the free world for its lack of humanity when it withholds material support for mass murder.
I'm not in favor of it. We're a permanent member, and it may be a useful vehicle for us at some point. I am in favor of severely slashing our subsidies to them until they institute major reforms and bring in new leadership.
The US should stop funding the UN immediately.
The US should veto everything that comes before the Security Council except a motion to disband the entire organisation forever.
The UN is a tool of the status quo. It functions to stifle change and justice in the name of stability and order. Stability can be good and so can order, but there is no danger of a 'flashpoint' leading to all out thermonuclear war these days. The US should get behind an international congress that supports growth not stability.