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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:28
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6066952.htm
quote:
Congo observers slaughtered after unanswered pleas
By SUDARSAN RAGHAVAN
Knight Ridder Newspapers
BUNIA, Congo - For six days, two terrified United Nations military observers phoned their superiors - as many as four times a day - begging to be evacuated from their remote outpost in northeastern Congo.
They were receiving death threats, they said. They were alone and unarmed in Mongbwalu, a former gold-mining town ruled by the cannibalistic Lendu tribal militias. A U.N. helicopter from the town of Bunia could have retrieved them in 35 minutes.
But the United Nations, handcuffed by its own rules and bureaucracy, never sent a chopper. On May 18, 10 days after the two peacekeepers made their first distress call, the United Nations finally flew some armed peacekeepers to Mongbwalu.
They found the mutilated bodies of Maj. Safwat al Oran, 37, of Jordan, and Capt. Siddon Davis Banda, 29, of Malawi.
Their decomposed corpses had been tossed into a canal and covered with dirt, according to those who saw the bodies. They were shot in the eyes. Their stomachs were split open and their hearts and livers were missing. One man's brain was gone.
The murders laid bare the challenge of bringing peace to one of the world's complex and resilient wars and exposed the limits of the United Nation's efforts to do so.
The U.N. mission in Congo (MONUC) has been criticized by many, including some in its own rank-and-file, for being disorganized and naive. Now, its critics charge, it's also partly responsible for the deaths of the two observers.
"Why didn't they rescue them? They had armed troops here, who could have saved them," said one U.N. observer in Bunia, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"They killed them."
Col. Daniel Vollot, the MONUC sector commander in Bunia, said all U.N. employees here work in dangerous, unpredictable conditions and that MONUC isn't responsible for the deaths of Banda and Oran.
"We can't feel guilty," said Vollot. "Certainly, if we had arrived two or three days before, they would be alive. It's difficult, but I don't feel guilty about that."
The murders were a serious setback to U.N. operations in Congo's Ituri province, where some 50,000 people have died in fighting between Hema and Lendu tribal armies since 1999. After the killings, the United Nations pulled out all its military observers and sent them to Bunia, Ituri's largest town.
Now little is known about what happens even a few miles outside Bunia. Aid workers and human rights observers fear that vast human rights abuses are taking place across Ituri province.
MONUC is "a long, bad story," said Francois Grignon, the Central Africa director for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research agency.
Details of the killings in Mongbwalu - one of the most horrific acts of violence against U.N. employees in the international body's 58-year history - are still emerging. The U.N. is investigating what happened.
But in separate interviews with Knight Ridder, five U.N. military observers with knowledge of what happened to Oran and Banda said their murders could have been avoided. In fact, they said, only luck prevented tribal fighters from butchering more helpless military observers trapped in other remote areas.
All five spoke on condition of anonymity because they worried about the repercussions they could face from the United Nations and their own countries.
Vollot acknowledged that Oran and Banda for several days had asked U.N. officials in Kisangani to be pulled out of Mongbwalu.
When asked why U.N. troops weren't sent to pick up the two observers, Vollot said his command's Russian-made Mi-26 helicopters were piloted by civilians. The Russian and Ukrainian pilots were afraid to fly there, and the United Nations didn't want to put their lives at risk, Vollot said.
And under U.N. rules, the ruling Lendu militia had to give permission to land a helicopter in Mongbwalu. It also was unclear which Lendu militia was in charge of the town, he said.
So his soldiers had to wait for clearance from the Lendu chief, and only MONUC headquarters in Kinshasa, the capital, could authorize a rescue operation.
"These are the rules of the United Nations," said Vollot.
The question in many minds is this: Why were the observers sent in the first place?
For years, Mongbwalu was a volatile, violent place in the most volatile, violent province of Congo. Six Red Cross workers were brutally murdered in Ituri in 2001.
Neither Oran nor Banda spoke French, Swahili or any local language. There were no armed U.N. peacekeepers in the area, and the observers were sent with no weapons.
It was Oran's first mission. He had little experience in Africa, let alone in a complex conflict such as Congo where military allegiances often switch day to day, said those who knew him.
"They were so at risk. It was not prudent for two milobs (military observers) to be sent with no force protection to a place which was known to be violent for years," said Nigel Pearson, the medical coordinator in Bunia for Medair, a relief agency.
"It was naive of MONUC. They weren't fully aware of the complexities of the situation."
The U.N. military observers agree. Several were sent in teams of four to other remote parts of Ituri at the same time as Oran and Banda in April. They were urged to go quickly with little preparation, they said. And after they arrived they received little attention from MONUC officials, they said.
"After we got there, they forgot us. Nobody told us what we had to do there," said another U.N. military observer. "I didn't even know which group was Hema and which was Lendu."
At the time, MONUC needed to have a strong presence in Ituri, said the observers. The Ugandan army, which occupied the province, was leaving in accordance with a multinational peace pact. MONUC was expected to fill the security vacuum.
"The U.N. was very pressured to find a solution to the Congo war," said a third U.N. military observer. "They sent observers too soon to a situation where we can't do our work."
On May 8, that became clear. With the Ugandans gone, clashes between Hema and Lendu militias had broken out all over the province. Oran and Banda called MONUC's offices in Kisangani asking to be evacuated, said a fourth U.N. military observer.
But it was unclear who was responsible for the observers. For the next four days, phone calls were exchanged among Kisangani, Bunia and Kinshasa about getting clearance to evacuate Oran and Banda.
"There was a lot of confusion," said the U.N. military observer.
Meanwhile, other U.N. military observers in other parts of Ituri also wanted to be evacuated. Many had to wait several days, too. Some ended up escaping on their own across the Ugandan border. Lendu militias intimidated other observers for days and accused them of spying for the Hemas.
In one instance, an observer had a gun pointed at his head. Armed fighters surrounded other observers, threatening to kill them.
"What happened to the two observers could have happened to me," said one observer, shaking his head.
The last telephone call from Oran and Banda was on May 13.
That was the day the United Nations believes they were killed.
"Everyone is to blame, starting from the guy who planned the operation," said the fourth U.N. military observer.
On Wednesday, MONUC held a memorial service for Oran and Banda in Kinshasa. Senior representatives of all 15 members of the U.N. Security Council, who are here on a fact-finding mission, attended the ceremony.
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Hopeless.
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MRT144
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Seattle Washington
Oct 2002
time: 21:28
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can we nuke the DRC yet?
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The Mad Monk
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of Ice Cream
Mar 2000
time: 23:28
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I believe the closest thing we have to this was ten years ago in Mogadishu. At least there we tried to do something -- but nowhere near enough.
Last edited by The Mad Monk on 14-06-2003 at 08:21
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:28
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quote:
Originally posted by The Mad Monk
...and people wonder why we balk at putting our troops under UN command. I, for one, will never find fault with one of our soldiers who refuses to wear the powder blue target. |
If he's given orders from his superiors, he'd better ****ing go, end of story. You're not given the option to pick and choose whether you like orders. In fact, in combat situations, you may damn well receive orders where it's highly probable that you get killed.
In Vietnam and earlier wars, it happened all the time - you put guys out on LP at night, knowing that if the **** hits the fan, it would hit them first, but they'd buy a little time for you to get the rest of your forces in fighting order. Nobody says when you join up that you're guaranteed to like the orders you're given.
As for Colonel "I don't feel guilty" hopefully some other troop won't feel guilty about fragging that ballless REMF. What the UN needs, if it wants to play peacekeeper, is to act like an intelligent civilian national government - set overall policy goals, then get the **** out of the way and let professional warfighters (not deskborne ranger REMFs like Col. "I don't feel guilty") execute the mission.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:28
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That's a command decision - IMO, all peacekeeping missions should be configured as warfighting missions, with enough hardware and enough gung-ho forces to put the fear of God into the original combatants. Then, for whatever political/aid/what have you non-military aspects, you can have some aid people and bureacrats do that job, instead of your knuckledraggers.
Commanders should be proven combat commanders, or at least the closest thing to that you can get from among the primary force providers, and you should have clear delineation of authority between the knuckledragger and pansy sides of the mission, and a clear chain of command.
From his name, Col. "I don't feel guilty" sounds like a Frog, but they've got to have some better commanders around, especially in the Legion.
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Q Cubed
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t3h y3ll0w p3ril
Apr 1999
time: 23:28
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the un has its share of problems. in fact, more than its share. the one time it has ever worked was over fifty years ago, when the ussr walked out and let the un do its job.
in this particular case, there apparently was no clear chain of command, no accountability, and everybody in power had their heads so far up their asses that their two holes merged... and it ends up with this tragic fvckup.
punish daniel vollot, since it happened on his watch.
and for chrissake, send people who are a) knowledgeable about the situation, and b) capable of speaking in at least one lingua fraca for the area...
so it fvcks up more than it ought to. that doesn't mean we need to chuck an international organization. what it does mean is that the organization itself needs to be reworked.
now, i don't know whether the un charter itself allows for amendments strong enough to rework its institutions, but it's become painfully evident in recent years that this reworking is critically needed to have a viable international organization and for the un to actually be able to perform what it wants.
that's why i love it how so many people, particularly conservative americans, hate the un so. i haven't run into many foreigners who hate the un (however, i will admit that my experience with foreigners are limited to expatriates in the us and koreans), nor have i run into many liberals who exhibit such vitriol towards it.
it is often these same people who refuse to empower the un, and then turn around and complain that the un is a worthless, toothless organization which cannot carry out anything it sets to paper.
it is a natural consequence: when a body is incapable of carrying out its edicts, more often than not, its edicts will be ignored.
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Jack_www
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Anther example of how useless the UN is and how those peacekeepers could never do anthing, even to protect their own troops let alone the suffering people!
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14-06-2003 07:05
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