UN chief rues Rwanda genocide response

ABC News Online ^ | Saturday, March 27, 2004. 11:49am (AEDT) | BBC

[tomball]

Last Update: Saturday, March 27, 2004. 11:49am (AEDT)

UN secretary-general Kofi Annan (File photo) (Reuters)

UN chief rues Rwanda genocide response

The United Nations' secretary-general, Kofi Annan, has admitted he and the international community could and should have done more to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Mr Annan was speaking at a memorial conference, attended by survivors, to mark the 10th anniversary of the massacre.

A decade after Rwanda's genocide, the UN has admitted that it was to blame for failing to stop the slaughter.

The method of killing, by machetes and clubs, was horrific. It was murder on a nightmarish scale.

Children were not spared, women were often abused in front of their families before being hacked to death.

At the time, the head of the UN's small and pitifully powerless force in Rwanda, Lieutenant General Romeo Delair, complained that he had the will to act, but lacked the men and backing of the UN hierarchy.

Mr Annan was then in charge of peacekeeping.

--BBC
 

[tomball]

Ten years later, the U.N. responds.

[maro]

All you Kofi Annan fans, remember--this is the man who had the responsibility and power to stop the brutal killing of hundreds of thousands of human beings, and did nothing. This, apparently, is how one rises to the top of the heap at the UN.

[cyborg]

Guilty conscience can be a beotch.

[secret garden]

Do you really think he could have stopped that genocide? How? By sending in the blue hats? Remember who makes up the majority of the UN countries - dictatorships.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

Why did they even bother?

Apology NOT accepted.

[maro]

Yes. He had the power to focus the world's attention on what was happening. He could have shamed the West into sending peacekeepers. It's happening again in the Sudan. We have to do something. There should be a simple rule: any government that conducts genocide will be bombed into oblivion.

[inkling]

You know those million people who died?

My bad!

[OldFriend]

Guess he saw all those wet kisses Clarke was getting for his smarmy apology and Kofi thought he'd give it a try.

[LimitedPowers]

Do you really think he could have stopped that genocide? How? By sending in the blue hats?

I'll make a fool of myself and throw out what I (think I) remember: those better informed can correct away....

I believe the UN was in-country, specifically the French. They had the task of disarming the future victims, the Christian faction. Once their mission was accomplished the butchery could commence.

Or was that another UN atrocity? They all just become a blur after a while.

[Calvin Locke]

Why did they even bother?

Kofi heard how great the Clarke "apology" went over, and he thought he'd capitlize on the lamestream's media fawning.

[Imal]

Hey, nice they got around to it. Ten years later, and I hear stirrings of remorse. Fabulous.

So the U.N. actually thinks genocide is bad? Could have fooled me.

I'm sure he has a similar speech prepared for Israel in the event that they decide to trust the U.N.

I wonder how his requiem for a U.N.-controlled America reads?

[madison10]

To Annan: No kidding. Kinda late now.

[StopGlobalWhining]

The United Nations as the World's Peacekeeper

[secret garden]

I disagree. I think he is a completely ineffective leader of an outdated, incompetent and useless group that should have disbanded twenty years ago. I do agree that intervention should occur before any more killings occur in the Sudan. I just don't think the UN should be the one to call the shots.

[ConservativeNewsNetwork]

I believe the UN was in-country, specifically the French. They had the task of disarming the future victims, the Christian faction. Once their mission was accomplished the butchery could commence.

The French were in-country, but their force wasn't connected to UNAMIR, the UN 'peacekeeping' force in Rwanda. The French force (a battallion, iirc) was assigned strictly to protect a community of European expatriates. Though they, and the Belgians, also trained the Rwandan government forces.

Part of the Arusha peace agreement, which the UN was enforcing, called for the French to leave. They did, and UNAMIR took over their duties, stretching the small force even further. UNAMIR never had near enough men or materiel to do its job, and the quagmire (sorry, couldn't help myself =D) was only made worse by apathy and incompetence from the UN and the West. For example, the Belgians had sent a large number of troops to UNAMIR, but their rules of engagement were so restrictive that they were almost useless.

I'm not entirely sure if the situation could've been defused without a massive force commitment, but the UN certainly didn't help things. An example: As part of the Arusha peace agreement, the town of Kigali was supposed to be a weapons-secure area, except for small units of soldiers for both sides. At one point the UNAMIR commander received and verified intelligence that the RGF, the governmental forces, were building arms caches in the town and were planning on distributing them to extremist militias. The same intelligence source told the UNAMIR commander that the civilian UN staff in-country had been compromised, so the UNAMIR commander went over their heads and directly contacted the UN in New York, telling them that he wanted to seize the arms caches. The UN in New York sent back a scathing reply, telling him that he was not authorized to do such a thing, and that, in the interests of transparency, he should inform the RGF of the arms caches. The letter was signed by none other than Kofi Annan.

I think the only thing that could've stopped the genocide was a force at least four times as large as what was sent with at the very least adequate materiel, and much less armchair quarterbacking from UN-ocrats in New York. I don't think that would've ever been possible for a nation such as Rwanda, populated mostly by non-whites with no valuable resources and no national security concern for any first world nation.

I'd suggest reading Shake Hands with the Devil by Romeo Dallaire (who was the UNAMIR commander) if you want to learn more about the unpleasantness in Rwanda. I've never had a very high opinion of the UN, but the level of incompetence and stupidity described greatly exceeded what even I would expect of them. It's a good read, even if a person only wants ammunition to use against people that think the UN is good at anything other than parking dozens of black Mercedes in opulent palaces built in the midst of starving third-world slums and issuing the occasional condemnation of the Zionist Entity(TM).

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Kofi Annan, has admitted he and the international community could and should have done more to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide.


Proving once again the uselessness of the United Nations

[ConservativeNewsNetwork]

If Annan worked for a private company he would've been fired.

In the UN, he gets a promotion.

[secret garden]

Now that's what I'd call an informative post. I love Free Republic!

[inquest]

this is the man who had the responsibility and power to stop the brutal killing of hundreds of thousands of human beings, and did nothing.

Wrong. He did worse than nothing. General Dallaire (not "Delair", as misspelled in the article) sent Annan a telegram in January of '94 informing him that the Hutu government was stockpiling weapons that were likely going to be used for genocide. Not only did Annan refuse to allow the general to make a raid on the arms caches, he actually ordered him to share the information with the Hutu government that he was reporting on. This no doubt jeopardized the life of the Hutu informant who told Dallaire about the stockpile to begin with, and made it more difficult for the UN forces to gain access to further information that would have been useful for stopping the genocide.

I recently attended a forum about the Rwandan genocide, and the overarching theme was that the UN failed, but should be given more power as a result. Nowhere was the question entertained that the UN was part of the problem (for example, for having disarmed Tutsi civilians who wound up getting slaughtered). The Rwandan genocide was apparently very politically useful to the UN.

[inquest]

I think the only thing that could've stopped the genocide was a force at least four times as large as what was sent with at the very least adequate materiel....

Or at least armed Tutsi civilians, which the UN was busily turning in to disarmed civilians. In the interests of "peace", of course.