The UN is the last thing the Iraqis need
straitstimes.asia1.com.sg
UNFORTUNATELY, I am a lousy tennis player. Otherwise, I would have had a great time in Sao Tome, a wonderful island off the Atlantic coast of Africa.
My friend, a United Nations employee, played every day, early in the morning and at twilight, when the temperature was bearable. The tennis courts belonged to the only five-star hotel in the capital. The rest of the hot day, he retreated into the air-conditioned hotel, where he sometimes held meetings.
I was the only 'normal' guest. All the others belonged to one UN agency or another, and I found this to be true for many of the luxury hotels in Africa. Keeping them occupied is perhaps the main contribution of UN officials to the local economies they are unsuccessfully advising.
I was amazed that as statues of Saddam Hussein were toppled all over Iraq last week, all my fellow Europeans could talk about was the importance of UN rule in the country, and the danger of a long-term American occupation.
They've got it backward. Wherever the UN goes, it tends to stay forever, and to perpetuate problems. It's been in Bosnia for eight years now, in Kosovo and East Timor for four, in the Palestinian territories since 1948. In Gaza, the UN agency running the refugee camps is the main purveyor of jobs.
I am a refugee's son myself; my father fled the territories that Italy lost to Yugoslavia in 1945. After a few months, all 350,000 refugees had found jobs, houses, new lives. There was no UN presence, which was perhaps their good fortune.
Today, there is no sign that the UN will leave Bosnia or Kosovo. No solution for Cyprus after almost 30 years. Nevertheless, 'UN' has become a magic phrase, the last redoubt for pacifists.
I was once a pacifist demonstrator, fighting against the placement of US nuclear cruise missiles in Sicily. But now, I don't mind anybody getting rid of Saddam, by any means necessary. We Italians should know: Rome invented the word 'dictator', the first modern dictator was Italian (Adolf Hitler was a pupil of Benito Mussolini) and even Mr Silvio Berlusconi, our current premier, has been called by his adversaries the model of the post-modern media dictator. Still, Europeans don't care anymore about dictators (or freedom). They rave about peace. They crave the UN.
Now, pardon my bluntness, but why should we condemn the poor Iraqis to be governed by lazy and incompetent bureaucrats? It's no secret that the UN has more tolerance than most for petty despots: Libya currently holds the presidency of the UN Human Rights Commission. The UN bureaucracy is a Gogolian monster with 65,000 employees and a budget of US$2.6 billion (S$4.6 billion) a year.
For each problem, the United Nations has set up a special agency, and in Vienna, the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime - the longer the name, the more wasteful the body) is discussing how the war on drugs is going. It's a disaster, actually. Halfway through a 10-year effort to eradicate drug cultivation, production has soared. Is the agency closing down because of this failure? No, it's asking for new funds.
When I give money for the hungry, I send it directly to the missionaries instead of Unicef or the World Food Programme or anyone else whose first-class air travel budget could feed tens of thousands. Unesco is a successful Paris job creation programme for sociologists and intellectuals, famous for overhead expenses that eat up as much as 80 per cent of some programmes. Officials of the Human Rights Commission have been sent home for allegedly trafficking women and young girls for prostitution in Bosnia.
At the UN High Commission for Refugees (yearly budget: US$740 million), four officials have been arrested for smuggling refugees. The UN apparatus has grown so much that in 1994, a new Office for Internal Oversight Services was established to keep track of everyone. It promptly hired 180 more people, at an extra cost of US$18 million a year.
Has the UN really proved its competence in dealing with Iraq? Past experience says no. Not only did the Oil-for-Food Programme allow Saddam and his cronies to pocket large sums, but an audit found the programme had overpaid US$1 million for services. UN officers are well paid: six-digit tax-free salaries, plus innumerable allowances. Most of them are decent people, frustrated by their own red tape. But why on earth should they go to Baghdad? Let them play tennis elsewhere. |
