June 03, 2007

DEVELOPING nations are often found protesting over the structure of the United Nations. The very existence of a permanent status and the veto power awarded to five nations reeks of impartiality. Certain elements, mostly with totalitarian ideologies, have a rejectionist stance towards the United Nations; they see the UN as the United States’ lapdog. Eric Shawn also agrees with the dismal performance of the UN but as far as calling it a lapdog of the US goes, he says it is quite the converse. The UN is a buckhound that is constantly playing on the security of the US, writes Shawn in his book The UN Exposed.

Had the charges in the book been against a third-world state organisation, it would not have been a big issue. But the accused here is the world’s largest international organisation. It has become a giant elephant with no auditing and accountability whatsoever. The diplomats of its member-states, be it the communist China or poor Yemen, are allotted a posh residence in Manhattan — New York’s economic hub. One meticulous diplomat utilised the ‘diplomatic discount’ with his UN card by rebating a sales tax of 60 cents for a $6.83 cheese burger. Worst of all, the UN’s ineffective working doesn’t make it to the media. And why? This, Shawn believes is because the UN has its own Correspondents’ Association (UNCA) whose journalists are paid for what they report. ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’

Despite the fact that America pays the most as compared to the other members of the Security Council, it still has to face tough resistance in the forum. The author has an extreme take on France, Russia and China — the so-called allies are “all lies”. The writer, by one way or the other, gets to the UN’s Oil-for-Food programme, a humanitarian programme initiated by the UN in 1996 to buy Iraqi oil for medicines and drugs to save malnourished Iraqi children. This was not an all-together Oil-for-Food programme but an Oil-for-Money, Palaces, and even Weapons programme, he says. The Saddam regime gained time in the Security Council with the resistance shown by the so-called “allies”. The Iraqi Survey Group’s Duelfer Report agrees. Several companies and individuals of favoured countries were given contracts and paid millions of dollars. Even the UN-appointed head of the programme was found guilty. The writer questions the supply of the French-made Ronald SAM (surface-to-air missile) to the Iraqi military which were fired at American bomber pilots during the Iraq invasion.

The UN is presented as a mart where selling and trading is common. Such behaviour forces states to overlook world events like France’s invasion of the Ivory Coast in 2004; the US’s invasion of Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003 — without the UN’s consent. But while the former two were digested by the UN, Bush’s aggression is branded as “unjust”. Shawn questions this hypocritical behaviour. He does not put his trust even in the humanitarian and development projects of the UN and questions the materialisation of the programmes being carried out by UN-affiliated agencies in Africa and Iraq. “Much,” he says, “goes into the accounts of the corrupt rulers of the recipient countries. There has been no change in the health and economic conditions of the people.” Worst of all, the UN peacekeeping forces in Africa are found to be involved in what the writer calls “Sex-for-Banana”. The aid is often disbursed without a quality check; in Iraq, the importation of tainted blood led to the death of as many as 180 Iraqi children with HIV/Aids. Only recently, much to our shame, Pakistani troops representing the UN peacekeeping force in Congo were found involved in gold trafficking for guns.

As an American, Eric Shawn has every right to question the role of the UN in securing his country from present-day threats — terrorism and nuclear proliferation, above all. There is no single definition of terrorism, instead it was divided into ‘good terrorism’ and ‘bad terrorism’. For Shawn, there must be a criteria for selecting states to make a committee or else the UN would remain a forum where a “terrorist would sit next to his victim”. He has rightly questioned the validity of ‘resolution 1267’, which asked for Osama-bin-Laden from the Taliban and that of 1441 that warned Saddam of “serious consequences” in case of no cooperation. Clearly, such resolutions were not paid heed to — neither by the targeted state nor the UN. The passivity of the UN provokes the US into action. It was America’s Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), and not a UN agency, that curbed the A.Q. Khan network and stemmed Gaddafi’s ambitions. Even America’s Red Cross was awarded an A-grade for its effectiveness and transparency, dispersing the UNICEF which was graded C.

Eric Shawn is a senior correspondent of Fox News and therefore a conservative writer. For Democrats, the first UN-US tussle started when the Republican John McCarthy doubted the loyalty of US citizens employed by the UN; a jury to inquire into this matter instigated UN-US distrust. Shawn misses it out. But the book should not be dismissed as neo con propaganda. No one can deny that the UN serves as a fine place for officers eager to gain panache in their careers: a diplomat of today could be an employee of the UN tomorrow — if he could just make available the references highlighted in his CV. Its exorbitant expenditure also goes un-checked often. The concerns of the writer are justified.

The truth is that despite being an internationalist organisation, the UN has people void of internationalism. The rules of one country does not apply, rather different countries sit together and make them. The writer is uneasy about the UN because professional ethics in his country are worthier than those of the UN.

According to a survey, it has been found that foreign diplomats are an exact copy in transparency on a foreign land as is their country’s ranking — a Scandinavian diplomat is more mannered as compared to a least transparent country. Likewise, the misuse of authority by the peacekeeping forces is not committed by the UN as a whole; it is an act of an individual. But Shawn wants results, for he has every right to ask where his money goes.