Posted on 06/12/2003 9:38:26 AM PDT by knighthawk
It's not easy or satisfying writing critically about an old friend. Unfortunately, the announcement that the United Nations Secretary General has appointed recently retired Chief of Defence Staff General Maurice Baril as an envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) causes me to undertake this somewhat distasteful task.
In 1993, while filming a documentary on the UN, I had the good fortune to conduct a long interview in a Washington, D.C., hotel room with Richard Thornberg, ex-attorney general of the United States and ex-governor of the Pennsylvania. A year earlier Mr. Thornberg had been tasked by then-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to conduct an "efficiency review" of the UN with a view to enhancing the effectiveness of the UN's relatively small, yet bureaucratically paralyzed, staff. Mr. Thornberg submitted his comprehensive report on time and below budget. His primary conclusion was that there was an "old boys' club" that dominated the UN and that it posed an insurmountable obstacle to anything approaching real efficiency.
International civil servants and diplomats from developing countries, appointed by their parent countries on a rotational basis, frequently lacked the qualifications demanded by the UN's job description. More often than not they were successful in obtaining lucrative New York appointments as a direct result of their personal ties with their nation's leader. On arrival at the UN, their self-interest motivated them to perpetuate the system that rewarded those within their inner circle. Within two weeks of Mr. Thornberg's enlightened report landing on the Secretary General's desk it was shredded -- having been declared much too controversial! I have one of the few surviving copies.
General Baril's recent appointment by Secretary General Kofi Annan to try and organize a national army in the Congo is a vivid reminder that the UN's "old boys' club" is alive and well -- and doesn't just recruit from developing countries.
Tragically, General Baril and Kofi Annan were at the very centre of the UN's two most disastrous failures in its history -- the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and the embarrassing and futile attempt to resolve the refugee crisis in Eastern Zaire (now the DRC) in 1997.
Much has been written about General Roméo Dallaire's inability to mobilize enough interest within the Security Council so that members would have provided the modest forces necessary to thwart the Rwandan genocide he was predicting. General Dallaire had no previous experience within the UN's dysfunctional command structure, a severe handicap that would have disqualified him from his command role if the disaster in Rwanda had been foreseen. That being the case, it automatically fell to Annan, then the UN's Undersecretary for Peacekeeping, and Baril, military advisor to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to coerce the Security Council into providing the additional troops on his behalf. There was nothing unique about this challenge and a number of options were available. Dallaire's pleadings from the epicentre of the slaughter received little attention at the UN. Boutros-Ghali's presentation to the UN, presumably prepared by Annan and Baril, offered the Council three options -- one of which was to reduce Dallaire's force by 50%! To his credit this was not the option recommended by Boutros-Ghali; however, it provided the Security Council with an easy way out, which it selected with unnerving haste. Annan and Baril were mute on the subject when timely leaks to the media, concurrent with the lobbying of member nations' permanent representatives, could have highlighted Dallaire's dilemma. Up to 800,000 innocents were slaughtered while the UN turned a blind eye.
Four years later, on a Sunday afternoon while watching TV at his Harrington Lake cottage, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien discovered there was a refugee crisis in Eastern Zaire -- the direct result of the earlier genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. The Prime Minister convinced the UN that Canada should organize a rescue mission to alleviate the refugee suffering. General Baril, then the commander of the Army would lead the operation.
Failing to notice that the desperate situation was unfolding at the collision point of the old French and British colonial empires in Africa, the lead elements of General Baril's hastily organized mission never even reached the crisis area and ended up cooling their heels hundreds of miles away at the airport in Entebbe, Uganda. Landing rights in the area were denied. General Baril was permitted to visit close to the crisis area for a photo op, but during a short walking tour was unable to find any refugees and declared the emergency over. Non-governmental agencies, including Doctors without Borders, hollered from the rooftops that he had gone in the wrong direction and that the crisis was indeed continuing if he cared to find it. The General went home and the NGOs stayed and dealt with the suffering.
When commenting on his recent appointment, General Baril said, "having lived what I have lived in that region you just can't say no."
An advisory job to the Secretary General at UN headquarters in New York during the Rwanda crisis, and a short visit to Zaire during a botched UN mission, do not uniquely qualify someone for a challenging and critical job in the current DRC crisis.
One is more inclined to conclude that the "old boys' club" of the Rwandan genocide and the "bungle in the jungle" a few years later in Zaire refuses to acknowledge its disastrous role in those two monumental failures. On the contrary, the failures are offered up as qualifications for taking on key roles in the current crisis in the same area. Seems to me there are plenty of experts on that area of Africa who would be eminently qualified to take on General Baril's challenging task.
Is it just me or is the UN proving completely incapable of arresting its downhill slide into irrelevance on issues of international peace and security?
Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN; troops during the Bosnian civil war of 1992.
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