U.N.'s Pistol Best Kept Knotted
BY BENNY AVNI
March 7, 2005

One of the first objects visitors encounter as they enter the United Nations campus is a large sculpture of a pistol tied up in a knot, symbolizing the organization's opposition to the use of deadly weapons and war as means for settling disputes.
This lofty principle has been echoed in the halls of the U.N. since its inception. The fierce debate on the eve of the Iraq war, for one, was informed by the notion that conflicts with bad guys should be solved by reason and diplomacy rather than battle.
Last week, however, Turtle Bay officials sounded very much like spokespersons at a Pentagon briefing after a high-casualty battle in Iraq, or like an Israel Defense Force general trying to convince hostile reporters that even in Israel the words force and defense are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
The U.N. had to account for last Tuesday's killing by its peacekeepers of at least 50 men and women in Congo. Well-armed and backed by attack helicopters, the primarily Pakistani blue helmet force suffered no casualties of its own as it engaged in a fierce battle with an armed militia in the northeastern Ituri province. According to initial unconfirmed reports, now being checked by human rights organizations, civilians were killed as well.
The battle occurred after a vicious militia, the Nationalist and Integrationist Front, killed, at point-blank according to a U.N. spokesman, nine Bangladeshi peacekeepers. In order to arrest these militia that killed their men, military measures had to be taken, reasoned Congolese government spokesman Henri Sakanyi. These militia are murderers and they must pay.
Secretary-General Annan quickly denied suggestions this was a shift toward more confrontational U.N. policies. I don't think there is a deliberate show of force, he said. It was really an attempt to defend themselves, and a determination to fulfill their mandate as effectively as they can.
The mandate of the force in Congo is to keep peace as tribal wars rage on unabated. The troops, operating under a U.N. charter provision known to diplomats as chapter seven, which is as belligerent as the U.N. ever gets, increasingly find themselves in messy situations where they need to take a stand.
The fence-sitter dilemma was best portrayed by Humphrey Bogart's Rick, who early in Casablanca declares neutrality by stating I stick out my neck for nobody, but ends up joining the fight, taking sides with the good guys, and forming a beginning of beautiful friendship with a French ally against the Nazis. The U.N., as Mr. Annan indicated, is far from that transformation point. But would we want it to start sticking its neck out?
Officials at the peacekeeping department I talked to last week sounded very much like any decent but enraged military commander who had just lost good soldiers in a battle against fierce enemy forces, and now urges the politicos to toughen their stance against that enemy to prevent losing more troops in the future.
Today Mr. Annan will address a special meeting of the Security Council to call for urgent action on another African flash point, Sudan. He will ask the council to move quicker to address the killing in Darfur. According to his aides, however, he will not urge the formation of a blue helmet mission with a minimally adequate 10,000 troops and a mandate to enforce the return of villagers to their homes. Such necessary solutions will not happen at the U.N., where they still hope to end the killing by engaging Khartoum diplomatically.
Perhaps this is all for the better. The Congo peacekeepers that drew blood last week are currently best known for sexually abusing and raping local minors. Their commander, William Swing, was rumored in press reports last week to be the next one fired by Mr. Annan. However, after the two met in New York on Friday, Mr. Annan announced that to avoid further turmoil Mr. Swing, who has his hands full, will be kept on for now.
As the sex-for-food scandal he presided over demonstrates, however, the U.N. is far better at preaching rules of war to others than supervising a disciplined army itself. Besides, siding with the good guys is not always guaranteed at Turtle Bay. This one, in other words, is a gun better kept knotted.
Mr. Avni covers the United Nations for The New York Sun.