Pirate's Cove

Oops

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) — U.N. peacekeepers from Pakistan trafficked arms for gold with a militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, human rights groups said Wednesday, adding a U.N. inquiry into the affair was deliberately slowed.

The United Nations denied any arms were handed over and said an inquiry under way for more than a year would be completed in three weeks. Pakistan rejected the accusations as malicious and distorted but said it was investigating.

The allegations threaten to strike another blow to the image of the 17,000-member peacekeeping mission in Congo, credited with guiding the vast central African country to historic polls last year but repeatedly plagued by scandal.

The accusations are from late 2005, when Pakistani peacekeepers were stationed in the mining town of Mongbwalu in the eastern Ituri district, where fighting between ethnic militias continued after the official end of a 1998-2003 war.

"Pakistani officers were involved in illegal smuggling of between $2-$5 million in gold out of Ituri. We have very solid information on this," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.

Just another example in a long list of UN screwups (to put it mildly).

And, in Lebenon

NEW YORK — The U.N. agency that oversees the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, the scene of three days of battles between Lebanese troops and Muslim militants, said yesterday it had been aware for months that heavily armed foreigners were moving into the Palestinian enclave but were helpless to stop them. 

The extremists of Fatah Islam, who local reports say hail from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bangladesh, apparently entered the camp, just north of Tripoli, several months ago. They are thought to have arrived in a group, not individually. 

Officials of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) could not say how a large band of foreigners carrying what has been described as mortars, rockets, explosive belts and other heavy weapons were able get past the Lebanese army soldiers stationed outside the camp.

And they alerted who? That part seems to be missing, especially since we heard zero about this over the past several months. A heads up might have been nice.

UNRWA couldn’t do anything because the United Nations is not responsible for policing or administering the camps, only their own installations inside them," Mrs. AbuZayd said.

Based on what has happened inside the UN camps, and by their employees (and let’s not forget inside the UN building themselves!), they aren’t capable of policing themselves.