Posted on 12/11/2002 9:54:22 AM PST by Fishmonger
http://www.nyopinion.com/outrage.html
Bougainville Blues By Joe Pappalardo
If the U.N. can’t disarm a tiny island, what hope does it have in Iraq?
Last week, in a meeting unattended by any members of the press, the U.N. Security Council met to grapple with the latest setback in their quest for world tranquility. The international crisis, with war and peace hanging in the balance, wasn’t centered on Iraq, or Eriteria, or even Ireland. It was the virtually meaningless island in the Solomon Sea called Bougainville, home to less than 200,000 people – and a secessionist war.
Bougainville could be a composite third world country: ravaged by war, pocked by ravenous mining and crippled by internal dissent. If that’s true than the United Nations operation to clean up the island is the quintessential example of the U.N.’s clumsy, half-hearted efforts to help. It’s too early to declare Bougainville a failed mission, but for such a tiny place to cause such big problems should be a lesson in the limits of the world body’s capabilities.
The meeting was held to discuss setbacks in the disarming of Bougainville, reeling after a decade of revolutionary war. The U.N. team there was witnessing “a slow in the momentum of the peace process” and needed another year to build the island nation. This would be the second such extension of the mission, which was supposed to last a single year. The press gallery was empty and even the representatives on the Council seemed bored and spoke in robotic deadpan.
The history of Bougainville is a lesson in international diplomacy gone awry. Australia occupied the island during the Great War, and administered the nation after it (as part of New Guinea) became mandate territories of the League of Nations. It was invaded by Japan during WW II and liberated by American Marines, and after the war Bougainville was once again put under Australian administration, this time as a U.N. Trust territory.
A lot of good that did it. Australian miners plumbed the place for its vast amounts of copper, damaging the island without a second thought. When New Guinea voted for its own independence from Australia in 1975, Bogainville tried to gain status as an independent nation. It appealed to the U.N., which did nothing, and New Guinea claimed it as its own.
The violence started in the late 1980’s and by 1990 the Bougainville residents had declared independence and ran off most of the Papua New Guinea military. The country put the rebel island under blockade until they were ready to invade again. An estimated 10,000 islanders died.
By 1994 people had fought themselves to exhaustion and a cease fire was called. U.N. diplomats again stepped in, but by 1996 Papua New Guinea’s army had launched a new offensive. The fighting was as unpleasant as ever, so by the middle of 1997 another truce was signed. The U.N. stepped in before the ink dried, and four years later a formal peace accord was signed. Meanwhile the island has become an anarchic wreck.
The U.N. has a grand plan for Boigainville’s future. Like all U.N. plans, it comes compartmentalized in stages, putting off the major conflicts to a more peaceful, controlled future that usually never comes. Bougainville is small so it was only three stages: a truce, a disarming and a referendum. Stage One is done: it was just words and written commitments, diplomatic fluff that precipitates real action. The U.N.’s Political Office in Bougainville (UNPOB) is currently bogged down at stage two, making Stage Three a dream.
Seated at the center of the horseshoe seats of the Security Council Chamber, UNPOB Secretary General Kieran Prendergast briefed the members on the troubles in Bougainville and the setbacks in their plan to take all weapons from combatants and lock them away in containers, a task supposed to be completed by Christmas Eve of this year.
It seems some local yahoos have been breaking into the U.N. weapons containers and stealing weapons back, Prendergast said, and the U.N.’s mandate needed to be extended another year. Only 1,500 weapons had been seized, and now more than 200 were missing. It seems not everyone in Bougainville wants to see the election happen after all.
Faced with a lack of roads, UNPOB relies on its one helicopter to get around. The aircraft is grounded every time it rains, and in Bougainville it rains a lot. UNPOB staffers spend their time coordinating local pro-democracy groups, making sure the committee drafting a constitution doesn’t fall apart, and trying to kickstart the shattered economy. The U.N. spends about $2 million annually on its program in Bougainville. How Lip Cheng, delegate from Signapore, noted that this is less than the daily budgets of most other U.N. missions.
The setbacks in Bougainville are another disheartening reminder of the U.N.’s good intentions being hobbled by weak funding and diplomatic double talk. When so much time is spent talking and building fragile agreements, a handful of dissenters with crowbars can derail the effort. Again it seems the U.N. was quick to jump into a stalemate and prolong it, allowing Papua New Guinea to wash its hands of the whole blood-stained island as copper becomes less marketable.
And already, as if the stages were all on track, talk of further mission creep was brought up and endorsed. After the elections the U.N. needed to stick around to make sure the government got off to a good start. Also, Bougainville’s destroyed economy needed to be fixed.
“The early reintegration of former combatants and their engagement in gainful employment should be addressed,” said Jagdish Koonjul, Council representative of a place called Mauritius. Talk like that ensures that the U.N., despite all its stages, timetables and exit strategies, will never leave. The same world body expected to enforce sanctions against hostile nations can’t even enforce their internal deadlines and mandates.
Now think: the U.N. can’t disarm Bougainville. What hope does it have to disarm the infinitely more clever, entrenched, and resourceful Iraq?
In both cases the lack of money is not the central issue, it’s the lack of credibility. The U.N. has a long history of getting involved in places and situations it simply cannot control. Its tiny budget does not jibe with its compulsion to be the Third World’s welfare agency. The U.N. can’t follow through on its commitments but that doesn’t stop it from getting involved.
This is especially true in the face of the U.N. shadowy nemesis, war. When violence threatens, the typical U.N. diplomat naturally sees any other option as the best option. Central questions of national character are never answered, issues are left unresolved, and nobody emerges as a victor to set and enforce new standards. Imagine the USA if someone had mediated our Civil War? We’d still be holding hearings on slavery as human beings toiled in the fields of Virginia.
The U.N. is only as strong as its illusion of relevance. It can’t insert troops without a cease fire, can’t provide aid without private groups and government handouts, can’t raise an army without donations, it backs away from and fails to enforce sanctions. The U.N. loves to get involved, hates to fund its self-imposed priorities and can’t break away from the diplomatic gridlock it causes. It’s become a mouthpiece for world redistribution of wealth, and little else.
Anyone who feels comfortable with the U.N. taking the lead on handling Saddam Hussein, North Korea should remember Bougainville, and the handful of men there laughing over their the pile of machine guns they stole back from the U.N.
I’m sure they have a unique opinion on the world body’s august track record on disarmament.
(Excerpt) Read more at nyopinion.com ...
- Jimmy Carter 10 December 2002
Including Mr. Saddam Hussein? Just curious...
Generally, though, I agree with you.
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