The New Republic

"...it is a story of the blue helmets standing by while unspeakable and rapacious violence was being done to the vulnerable and undefended...." From the article (a section that Peretz didn't quote): "...The Indian peacekeepers at the base nearest Luvungi, in Kibua, about 11 miles away, said that they started hearing reports of an attack on the following Sunday, but that they had been tricked many times before. Often, truck drivers claim a certain area is under attack, the peacekeepers said, when in fact they simply want a United Nations escort to the next town to ensure that no one steals their minerals. Because there is no cellphone service in the area or electricity, it is not always simple to know when there is an attack. The United Nations, which has around 18,000 peacekeepers in Congo, is now trying to install solar-powered high-frequency radios in some villages...." Which provides rather a different perspective on this specific attack.... It's certainly true that there have been lots of problems and failures with MONUC, for reasons that Gettleman enumerates. Simple question, then, for Peretz and other UN-haters: in this humanitarian catastrophe, are you ready to have American and other Western troops deployed in eastern Congo to do something about it?

- SMacEachern2

October 4, 2010 at 4:19pm

"The United Nations, which has around 18,000 peacekeepers in Congo, is now trying to install solar-powered high-frequency radios in some villages...." From SMac's quote. That will help all the rape victims in the Congo. Another quote from the same SMac: " "...The Indian peacekeepers at the base nearest Luvungi, in Kibua, about 11 miles away, said that they started hearing reports of an attack on the following Sunday, but that they had been tricked many times before." Poor babies, we was shot at and we was afraid to help anyone.....

- jdyer

October 4, 2010 at 8:01pm

It took the United Nations more than eleven years to realize there was no electricity or cellphone service in the area? Who is in charge of these missions? http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/monuc/ "Helping bring peace and stability in the DRC" July 1, 1999-June 30, 2010 http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/monusco/ new mission as of July 1, 2010: "Protecting civilians and consolidating peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo" "...The new mission has been authorized to use all necessary means to carry out its mandate relating, among other things, to the protection of civilians, humanitarian personnel and human rights defenders under imminent threat of physical violence and to support the Government of the DRC in its stabilization and peace consolidation efforts." "all necessary means" should include some form of communication... what a world. ok, I finally watched the film "2012" last night - and when they reveal that the African continent had risen above the sea levels with the earth crust shift, all I could think of was the various armed maniacs were going to be waiting for the arks full of survivors... Where are those South African mercenaries from "Blood Diamond" - they knew how to clean up? wow, just saw Linda's new ad questioning Blumenthal's truthiness - followed by the DSCC revenge on Linda ad. what a world.

- K2K

October 4, 2010 at 8:41pm

Oh dear ... the usual, UN-bashers are out, and as usual, they miss the real travesy. The simple question is why is it that the MEMBERSHIP of the UN has offered up ONLY 18,000 troops (or however many - certainly nowhere near the numbers necessary). And a secondary question is why is it that the MEMBERSHIP of the UN offers up incompetents to run the missions. The UN as such does not have a military command structure; UN troops do not have any combat authority, as such. Ask not what the UN can do for you; ask what the members of the UN - members of the International Community - are willing to do for one another. The problem with Marty's carping - and the usual "UN is incompetent" crowd - is that the dumping on the UN as an organization misses entirely the real problem with the international system; and, what is more, it does not offer up any solutions. Get rid of the UN then; will Germany, France, the Netherlands, Russia, China, Iran, the US or India suddenly offer up the several hundreds of thousands of trained and professional soldiers, and the hundreds of millions of dollars, necessary to pacify the Congo? And, of course, Marty thinks that NATO is useless as well. So no international system; no alliances; Marty proposes that American soldiers be sent to fight and die in the Congo now?

- icarusr

October 5, 2010 at 10:36am

"Oh dear ... the usual, UN-bashers are out, and as usual, they miss the real travesy." The real "travesy" is on the parts of those who offer us an impossible vision of a UN that functions as a real humanitarian institution rather than as the real travesty of that vision which is the actual case.

- jdyer

October 5, 2010 at 11:07am

malahat/jdyer/K2K: I suggest that you read the actual article, instead of the sound bites that Peretz provides. (1) The first question that Gettleman raises is when they even heard about the rapes in the first place. (2) If MONUC was providing convoy protection to mineral extractors, it would not be able to do anything else at all. (3) The UN certainly knew that there was no electricity or phone service in the area: the problem is that (a) the nexus of fighting has moved around in an area that is larger than much of Western Europe and (b) UN governments (including the American government) has not funded MONUC to the extent that it could electrify or provide phone service to all of eastern Congo. This would be, one might note, a much larger infrastructure project than American has contemplated in either Iraq or Afghanistan. As icarusr notes, if folks on The Spine don't like UN or NATO operations, then they should suggest an alternative. You'll get your wish in Afghanistan soon enough, as NATO countries tire of being colonial auxiliaries for American policy and pull out. Much good may that do you.... perhaps Peretz could raise a Spine Corps from all the tough talkers on this site, who could go over and replace those troops.

- SMacEachern2

October 5, 2010 at 11:48am

SMacEachern2 "malahat/jdyer/K2K: I suggest that you read the actual article, instead of the sound bites that Peretz provides." I read the whole article, and I was responding to the sound bites you posted.

- jdyer

October 5, 2010 at 12:35pm

"As icarusr notes, if folks on The Spine don't like UN or NATO operations," I said nothing about NATO, it is the UN I am crtitical of. I suggest you read each post separately and stop lumping three or more individual posters together.

- jdyer

October 5, 2010 at 12:36pm

We are not the lumpen-poseterariat.

- jdyer

October 5, 2010 at 12:39pm

malahat: "...UN peacekeepers not investigating a mass rape going on for four days 11 miles away?..." According to the time-line that Gettleman gives, the rapes started on a Friday, the UN troops heard about it on Sunday and responded on Monday - whence the four days. The delay in response between Sunday and Monday may be unconscionable, but it may well also have to do with fragmentary information and preparation for movement off-base - that delay is certainly within the time-frame of investigation of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. In general, you're assuming Western standards of communications and transportation: cell phones everywhere, good roads, maybe a Starbucks for a quick coffee along the way. I worked in 1999 in an area of southwestern Chad where a 30-mile trip by 4x4 on the roads that existed would take 8 hours of hard driving, and where no phone service existed. I certainly would not have known what was going on in a village 11 miles away, unless someone specifically came to tell me.

- SMacEachern2

October 5, 2010 at 2:55pm

malahat: Of _course_ it's a searing embarrassment - what else would it be? You'll note the term I used was 'unconscionable'. But Gettleman does not say that the MONUC force knew that the rapes were going on for four days and did nothing about it, which is what both you and Peretz imply. If you want a force that can provide comprehensive protection to the population of eastern Congo - a perfectly good goal - than all UN states, including the Western ones, will have to provide forces much larger and better-equipped than MONUC. Are you ready to have Canadian or American troops there, for example?

- SMacEachern2

October 5, 2010 at 4:42pm

"Are you ready to have Canadian or American troops there, for example?" As peace keepers? Absolutely.

- jdyer

October 5, 2010 at 5:18pm

malahat: Let's take Afghanistan for a moment, shall we, now that you've mentioned it? There are what, about 120,000 ISAF troops in Afghanistan, trying with distinctly variable success to contain an insurgency. There are on the other hand about 19,000 troops in eastern DRC, an area _half again as large_ as Afghanistan, with a correspondingly large population and with opposing guerrilla forces that are at least as well-equipped as the Taliban (in part because, like the Taliban, they have state support in the region). Moreover, MONUC has almost none of the more technological capabilities of ISAF forces in Afghanistan (helicopter lift, ISTAR resources, drones and etc) - because none of the Western countries that have such capabilities have offered them. Can you square the particular circle of how MONUC is supposed to provide the coverage that you apparently expect, given this disparity in resources? I'd love to hear how you think this is supposed to work..... As for the comparative importance of the two regions: the lowest estimate of civilian deaths through warfare in DRC over the last 20 years is a million, the highest estimate is five million. Estimates of civilian deaths in Afghanistan over the same period are between a third and a fifteenth of that. If you're interested in preventing civilian deaths, where would forces best be invested?

- SMacEachern2

October 5, 2010 at 5:53pm

jdyer: And, for once, we agree on something....

- SMacEachern2

October 5, 2010 at 5:54pm

malahat: As in all such cases, there are a number of questions. Was there a terrible failure of the peace-keeping mission in this incident? Yes, there was - although it seems to me not necessarily to involve cowardice or even incompetence. Does that failure of itself invalidate the mission as a whole, or UN peace-keeping in general, or the UN in general*? No, no more than the recent reports of atrocities by a particular American unit in Afghanistan of themselves invalidate the entire campaign in Afghanistan. And was MONUC set up to fail? It depends what you mean... I'm not sure how the UN is supposed to 'investigate itself' when the simple issue is that countries do not contribute the resources necessary to make particular missions work. (The USA, for example, is in default $700 million on funds committed to UN peacekeeping.) The simple fact is, in 2010, protecting the lives of black Africans through peace-keeping missions is not a priority for Western countries, especially if it means putting their own soldiers on the ground. They will put a little money into it, but the troops will be Indian, Uruguayan, Ghanaian and so on. That has certainly _helped_ in Congo - the death rate in the Ituri over the last 5 years would certainly be worse without MONUC - but there are not the resources to enforce peace there. * It is to be understood that Martin Peretz's indignation is not directed at the deaths of Africans - there's no evidence that he gives a shit about Africans, except as rhetorical tools - but rather at the UN, and that it's tactical in nature. This may be dressed up as criticism of MONUC, but his real target is UNIFIL.

- SMacEachern2

October 5, 2010 at 7:51pm

jdyer: "We are not the lumpen-poseterariat." I just HAD to throw an attaboy your way clever boy.

- jacko

October 6, 2010 at 8:01am

malahat: I think that the questions you raise are fairly easily answered, and have to do with the reluctance of member countries to contribute resources to missions. At that point, the choice is between an under-resourced mission that will not be fully capable of peace enforcement, and no mission at all. It's notable that these are exactly the same issues that have confronted the countries involved in both Iraq and Afghanistan: the line between peace enforcement and counterinsurgency is pretty permeable, and both require a lot of people and resources. Beyond that, UN member countries, including Western ones especially, have been very resistant to the idea of a UN military general staff, or forces seconded permanently to the UN, both of which might make for more effective blue helmet missions. Imagine rhetoric one would hear in America about black helicopters if that was ever brought up....

- SMacEachern2

October 6, 2010 at 10:44am

"I just HAD to throw an attaboy your way clever boy." Jackson has his moments, especially after, like good wine, he has chilled for a while ...

- noga1

October 6, 2010 at 3:05pm

"The simple fact is, in 2010, protecting the lives of black Africans through peace-keeping missions is not a priority for Western countries, especially if it means putting their own soldiers on the ground." "Beyond that, UN member countries, including Western ones especially, have been very resistant to the idea of a UN military general staff, or forces seconded permanently to the UN, both of which might make for more effective blue helmet missions." These are the critical issues surrounding the failure of the "UN" or, more accurately, the UN system, to deal with many instances of international lawlessness, mass murder and outright genocide. The utopian vision of the UN is not mine, but that of the founders, and it failed within three years of the founding the UN. The UN did not function as envisaged for much of its life, but that says nothing about the UN as an organization (highly dysfunctional) or the vision behind it (utopian and unrealistic), but rather, its member states (largely, and rightly, self-interest; and mostly, and wrongly, cynical). The problem with the sniping on the part of Marty is that, 1) it targets the wrong problem, and 2) it potentially causes even additional problems by inadvertently killing, yet again, a multilateral organization aimed at coordinating global action for global ends. As noted above, the problem with much of the dysfunction of the UN is not the UN as an organization or even as a concept, but the failure of its member states to respect their own ideals and obligations in setting up the UN. But let's say you get rid of the UN. Then what? The need for concerted action to deal with, for example, hazardous wastes, or chemical pollution, or CFCs, or international protection of intellectual property, or exchange of information on the weather, or the protection of historical sites, or the universal postage system, or coordination of international action on pandemics will not go away. You will have to recreate organizations to deal with all of these all over again. As for humanitarian action - well, what can one say? The blue helmets were a Canadian invention to deal with a specific problem (Suez); and they stayed on because they were better than the alternative (nothing, or armies of occupation). Soldiers are people, no matter what the colour of the helmet is, which means that the UN army is as likely to be cowardly, unprofessional, violent and so on as the next, with the added disadvantage that they are not fighting for home and hearth but usually for better pay and occasionally higher values. If the world, the Western world, is serious about humanitarian intervention, they would deploy their armies and risk the lives of their sons and daughters; if we are not willing to do that - and I suspect that for the most part, we are not - we have to pay poorer countries to do so, and this is what we are doing. And where they are slower or less effective than we are in responding to problems, surely the problem is not in the organization that makes the coordination possible, but in us, in ourselves, in our willingness to turn away.

- icarusr

October 6, 2010 at 6:44pm