UN
Peacekeeping Paramilitarism
By Stephen Lendman
16 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The world community calls them
"Blue Helmets" or "peacekeepers," and the UN defines
their mission as "a way to help countries torn by conflict create
conditions for sustainable peace" by implementing and monitoring
post-conflict peace processes former combatants have agreed to under
provisions of the UN Charter. The Charter empowers the Security Council
to take collective action to maintain international peace and security
that includes authorizing peacekeeping operations provided a host country
agrees to have them under Rules of Engagement developed and approved
by all parties. At that point, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations
enlists member nations to provide force contingents to be deployed once
the Security Council gives final approval.
Once in place, Blue Helmets are supposed to help in various ways including
monitoring the withdrawal of combatants, building confidence, enforcing
power-sharing agreements, providing electoral support, aiding reconstruction,
upholding the rule of law, maintaining order, and helping efforts toward
economic and social development. Above all, "peacekeeping"
missions are supposed to be benevolent interventions. They're sent to
conflict areas to restore order, maintain peace and security and provide
for the needs of people during a transitional period until a local government
takes over on its own.
Far too often, however, things
don't turn out that way, and Blue Helmets end up either creating more
conflict than its resolution or being counterproductive or ineffective.
In the first instance, peacekeepers become paramilitary enforcers for
an outside authority. In the second, they do more harm than good because
they've done nothing to ameliorate conditions or improve the situation
on the ground and end up more a hindrance than a help. This article
focuses mostly on the former using Haiti as the primary case study example
after reviewing peacekeeping operations briefly in six other countries.
In each case, the examples chosen show people on the ground as helpless
victims of imperial exploitation (usually US-directed) with UN Blue
Helmets used by outside powers for social control and domination, not
keeping the peace.
First, a brief account of
other failed "peacekeeping" missions is reviewed after an
overview of the UN, its founding purpose and how the US dominates and
undermines the world body for its own interests.
The UN - Its Founding
Purpose and Mission
The UN was established in
1945 after WW II when 50 original member countries signed its Charter
in San Francisco. Today 192 nations are member states. Its founding
Charter states its purpose and mandate is: "to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war....reaffirm faith in fundamental
human rights....(support) equal rights of men and women....of nations
large and small....establish conditions under which justice....can be
maintained....promote social progress....practice tolerance and live
in peace (and promote) economic and social advancement of all peoples."
From its founding date till now, the world body failed on all counts
even though some of its agencies (like UNICEF, WFP, UNHCR and UNESCO)
have a history of providing important services in areas of health, education,
food assistance, aiding refugees, social development and more.
Nonetheless, the UN is hamstrung
by a serious obstacle. Its dominant member is the US that undermines
the world body's authority and effectiveness for its own imperial interests.
It does it through its Security Council veto power, by withholding dues,
disengaging from UN activities or just muscling or bribing member states
to get its way. It gets away with it by being the world's leading economic,
political and military superpower beholden to no interests but its own.
It takes full advantage, and for over half a century used the UN as
its foreign policy instrument or rendered it ineffective by inaction
or obstruction. If allowed to be a voice for all member states, the
UN could be a powerful one for global democratic governance and promotion
of social equity and equal justice. Instead one dominant nation's veto
power trumped the will of all others causing a shameful history of UN
failure and ineffectiveness. As long as a single nation's monkey wrench
can jam its works, the UN will never fulfill its founding purpose.
It's apparent in its Charter-mandated
peacekeeping role. If the UN functioned as a neutral international body
pursuing its founding mission, it would always act to establish and
maintain peace in every conflict area. It doesn't because its dominant
member won't let it. So it failed to act when Indonesia invaded East
Timor in 1975 slaughtering hundreds of thousands in a secretly US-authorized
aggression including the arming and supporting of Indonesian military
TNI forces. It stood by again after the East Timorese voted by referendum
for independence in 1999 after which TNI forces attacked and slaughtered
thousands more.
The UN did nothing during
South Africa's border wars and invasion of Namibia in the 1960s and
70s and allowed a 36 year civil war to go on in Guatemala following
the CIA fomented coup in 1954 ousting the country's democratically elected
leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. It ignored a succession of oppressive military
and civilian governments still ruling the country. It allowed them to
compile the hemisphere's worst human rights record even after the UN
brokered a Peace Accord formally ending the civil conflict mainly against
the country's indigenous Mayan majority slaughtering 200,000 of them.
It still ignores the government's shameless human rights abuses in a
country Amnesty International calls a "land of injustice."
But it happens to be one the US considers a close ally, and that's all
that counts as Washington has the final say on most everything at the
UN.
These are a few of the many
examples of UN failures to address injustice throughout the world on
every continent. It belies discredited former UN Secretary-General Kofi
Annan's standing up for the Security Council claiming it has primary
responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. It
can't even prevent human rights abuses because it's mostly a talking
shop, and the world body overall is a wholly owned subsidiary of the
nation where its headquartered. It uses it to pursue its imperial agenda
knowing no nation will dare try stopping it most often. And when the
threat arises, Washington ignores it to do what it pleases like attacking
Iraq without required Security Council approval and threatening now
to extend the conflict to Iran on blatantly false cooked up charges
that smell as bad as the WMD ones about its occupied neighbor.
UN Peacekeeping Operations
UN peacekeeping operations
began in 1948 with its first one ever UNTSO mission to monitor the Arab-Israeli
first of two brief failed truces in Israel's "War of Independence"
beginning in June, 1948. The operation is still ongoing, peace was never
achieved, the UN plays no active role, and UNTSO wastes money and takes
up space observing and reporting what it wishes selectively while Israeli
Defense Forces (IDF) have total control of everything on the ground.
UNTSO ineffectiveness shows in the way the IDF continues repressing
and assaulting defenseless Palestinians while the UN gets out of their
way functioning as little more than worthless window dressing. In 2006
it had a meager staff of 371 military and civilian observers and a budget
of $30 million, all of which could have been better spent elsewhere
on a real mission for a real purpose if there are any.
That inauspicious start was
symbolic of what lay ahead in 61 total peacekeeping missions undertaken
to date ignoring all the other conflicts it should have intervened in
but didn't. Currently 16 missions are ongoing as of year end 2006 plus
two other small special political and/or peacebuilding ones with 113
countries contributing 99,817 military troops, observers, police and
civilians budgeted for the 12 months through June, 2007 at $4.75 billion
under names like UNIFIL in Lebanon created in 1978 for the same purpose
it's still there for and now enlarged following Israel's withdrawal
from the country last summer after its horrific invasion and assault
weeks earlier.
UNIFIL Blue Helmets
in Lebanon
Israel attacked and invaded
Lebanon last July 12 following Hezbollah's cross-border incursion that
was used as a pretext to ignite pre-planned aggression against the country
and its people. The result was mass killing, crippling destruction,
and a huge refugee problem all without Israel achieving its planned
aim - to destroy Hezbollah resistance in South Lebanon. It proved too
much for the world's fifth most powerful military equipped with state-of-the-art
weaponry courtesy of the most powerful Washington-based one.
UNIFIL was established to
restore and maintain peace in South Lebanon one week after Israel's
invasion of the country in March, 1978. It's been there since including
throughout the period from 1982 when Israel again invaded and remained
until withdrawing its forces in May, 2000. Despite its mandate, UNIFIL
never established peace and security and did little more than take up
space allowing the IDF free reign to control everything on the ground
along with its proxy Christian South Lebanon Army acting as paramilitary
enforcer thugs of a largely Shia Muslim population.
"Proxy" describes
UNIFIL's current role in Lebanon that has little to do with keeping
peace and everything to do with being NATO's Israel enforcer. In that
role, it can engage Hezbollah in confrontation if it chooses and do
Israel's fighting and dying for it. It also represents a continuation
of nearly three decades of "peacekeeping" failure in South
Lebanon. The current one won't work any better than all efforts preceding
it because UNIFIL is beholden to Israel, the US and NATO and will follow
their mandate having nothing to do with peace and stability and everything
to do with imperial control and dominance. The people of South Lebanon
know all about UNIFIL's "benefits," but you won't hear them
say thank you.
UNAMIR in Rwanda
UNAMIR was set up to help
implement the Arusha Accords in 1993 to ease tensions, secure the capital,
and monitor a ceasefire and security agreement prior to the outbreak
of ethnic slaughter that began after CIA surface-to-air missiles shot
down the aircraft carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and
Burundi President Cyprien Ntaryamira in April, 1994. That "unfortunate"
plane accident made way for US-trained Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA)
Major-General Paul Kagame to take power so Washington could use the
country as a base to pursue its greater prize in resource-rich Congo
(DRC). It didn't matter that hundreds of thousands died and millions
in Congo where war subsided, but instability remains because warring
sides and Western interests still contest for control of the country's
immense resources.
Canadian General Romeo Dallaire
led a UN 400 troop contingent in Rwanda, got no additional force help,
mostly stood aside as thousands were slaughtered, and was only authorized
to act in self-defense meaning his orders were do nothing. He left the
country in August, 1994 followed by the departure of his replacements
when UNAMIR's mandate ended in 1996 long after the damage was done.
The result - a dismal mission failure in UN peacekeeping with hundreds
of thousands dead because Blue Helmets were told to ignore it.
UNIMIK in Kosovo
UNMIK was created in 1999
for war-torn Kosovo as an interim civilian administration to remain
in place until the Serbian province's fate is decided. Its stated mission
includes maintaining the rule of law, protecting human rights, coordinating
humanitarian and disaster relief, supporting reconstruction efforts,
and assuring refugees and displaced persons can return to their homes.
As always, stated goals are noble, but results shameful - another mission
failure staying longer will just exacerbate, not ameliorate.
The mission language hides
the grim history of the 1990s Balkan wars. They destroyed a nation making
its new pieces easy pickings for US and Western imperial exploitation
and control. It had nothing to do with removing a "bad guy"
Serbian leader and everything to do with installing new leadership more
responsive to Western interests - meaning unconditional surrender to
imperial authority. The US-led 1999 NATO assault was called an humanitarian
intervention. It's real aim was to finish breaking one nation into six
more easily handled ones plus deciding the fate of Serbia's Kosovo province
to be dealt with later.
In Kosovo, Washington and
NATO collaborated with Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) paramilitary thugs
ignoring their connection to organized crime. They got free reign to
commit terrorist attacks including ethnic cleansing of Serbs and other
minorities in the province. The US-led war caused massive population
displacement, not the other way around as news reports claimed. Nor
did the war bring Kosovo peace and stability. Far from it. The province
is part of Serbia, and Serbs want to keep it that way. But it looks
like they won't as Albanians in the majority have other ideas with assurance
their US ally will help them.
After the war, the former
Serbian province got semi-autonomy as a UN protectorate with its final
status nearly decided by the world body intending to make Kosovo semi-independent
because the US wants it that way. It doesn't matter what Serbs want
for territory they're about to lose. The scheme was unveiled on January
26 to the six-member contact group of major powers including the US,
UK, France, Germany, Italy and Russia all of whom approve except Russia
that remains skeptical enough to try to scuttle the plan. It supports
Serbia that rejects the deal but has little power to stop it unless
Russia vetoes it in the Security Council with final say on the matter.
That verdict isn't in yet,
but some things are clear. Whatever Kosovo's nominal disposition, Serbs
will be losers and US and Western imperial control will continue by
virtue of a proxy repressive UNIMIK/NATO Blue Helmet contingent remaining
in place for an indefinite time likely to be lengthy. It's how imperial
management works. People lose out so hegemons can win, and when it involves
the US the price paid is big and painful.
MONUC in the Democratic
Republic of Congo
MONUC began its operations
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 1999 and is the largest
peacekeeping force now in place but one hardly adequate (if it mattered)
for a country the size of Western Europe. MONUC was authorized to monitor
a ceasefire agreement between waring sides as well as be involved in
the usual kinds of things peacekeeping entails. After years of unresolved
conflict, few places anywhere need peace and stability more than DRC
in the wake of the country's long-running war taking 4 million or more
lives causing immeasurable human misery and harm.
All along, the UN was inept,
counterproductive and out of the loop. It was more part of the problem
than its solution. It knew all about legal and illegal arms trading
fueling conflict but didn't stop it because its controlling members
did the selling like they always do in war zones everywhere. In addition,
Blue Helmets weren't where most needed and didn't help when able because
direct orders said not to. Kofi Annan was part of the problem as he
was as UN head of peacekeeping in 1994 allowing Rwandans to be slaughtered
when his efforts at least might have ameliorated conditions. Instead,
he kept his mouth shut and head down, refusing to act as he later did
as Secretary-General serving imperial interests he was beholden to.
That meant ignoring desperate people in Congo and all other warring
regions.
The DRC is a major one even
though things are mostly quieted down - for now. The country's cursed
by being the likely most resource-rich piece of real estate in the world
(except for not having large oil reserves). That makes it a key target
for imperial exploitation and control with Congo's people suffering
just by being there. Sending Blue Helmets to keep peace is just a fig
leaf hiding the dark side of the conflict and who stands to gain with
US interests always topping the list and acting as guarantor nothing
interferes with what Washington has in mind.
So all parties ignore the
situation on the ground, and Blue Helmets just make it worse. The evidence
shows UN forces engaged in sex trafficking, using children as prostitutes.
They abused young girls and got away with it because MONUC officials
took no preventive action in spite of pious claims decrying it. What's
common in Congo happens everywhere with so-called "peacekeepers"
acting as thuggish enforcers for imperial powers. Their mission is "keeping
the rabble in line" with free reign to do it harshly as long as
it's kept under wraps. What happens in Congo goes on in Kosovo, Liberia,
Sudan (discussed below) and Haiti also discussed in detail shortly.
It's an ugly story of crackdown, repression or indifference hidden under
the cover of "peacekeeping."
UNMIS in Sudan
UNMIS was established in
2005 to implement the January, 2005 Comprehensive Peace Treaty between
the Sudanese government and Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army.
It ended the protracted North-South 22 year civil war killing and uprooting
millions in one of the continent's most costly wars, but not freeing
the nation from conflict still ongoing in Darfur. UNMIS has authority
to administer there once hostilities subside, waring sides allow them
entry and agree to cooperate, and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir
decides if he's willing to risk a regional occupying force hostile to
his interests. Currently a 7,000 force African Union Mission in Sudan
(AMIS) operates in Darfur that's pathetically slim for an area the size
of France in a country the size of Western Europe.
The Sudanese government is
justifiably reluctant for Blue Helmets to come knowing how they behave
elsewhere. It also knows what fuels the conflict and what interests
the US and West in the area. Like most everywhere, it's about valuable
resources, and in Darfur it's mainly oil as it is in Somalia where Washington
is involved in another proxy war with US supportive air and ground involvement
this time using an Ethiopian force to be supplemented or replaced by
other regional country contingent "peacekeepers."
The Darfur conflict is falsely
portrayed in Western media reports as atrocities committed by Arab Jan
jawid militias supported by the Khartoum government against black African
people. The truth is all parties involved are indigenous Arabic-speaking
black Sunni Muslims involved in intertribal fighting over increasingly
scare water and grazing rights in an area hard hit by draught and famine.
If Blue Helmets come in, they'll make things worse because they'll be
sent for imperial control further harming the people enduring more than
they can already handle.
MINUSTAH in Haiti
- Our Main Focus
Since European settlers first
arrived in Haiti 500 years ago, this nation experienced an almost unparalleled
legacy of colonial violence and exploitation. Even when the country
gained freedom from France on January 1, 1804, it lay in ruins. Its
plantations and sugar works were burned and large parts of its cities
were rubble from many years of conflict. It cost the nation half its
population of former slaves on top of its indigenous population nearly
exterminated by Spanish Conquistadors beginning with the arrival of
Columbus.
Things got no better when
Spain kept the Eastern two-thirds of the island in what's now the Dominican
Republic leaving the Western third for French colonization beginning
in the early 1600s. France brought over black African slaves controlling
it till after the 1789 French Revolution that inspired Haitians to wage
theirs for the same freedoms French people got briefly. Led by Toussaint
L'Overture, they prevailed establishing the first free independent black
republic anywhere on their New Years liberation day in 1804.
It was short-lived as France
regained control holding it till America took over later solidifying
its regional lock when Woodrow Wilson sent in Marines in 1915 to protect
US investments, doing it in typical US fashion - at the barrel of a
gun. Nineteen years of brutal exploitation followed with massacres like
the kinds seen in Haiti today. The worst of them was in 1929 when US
Marines slaughtered 264 protesting peasants in Les Cayes. There were
also smaller incursions, forced labor, and aerial bombing years before
the Nazis' infamous attack on Spain's Republican government at Guernica
supporting opposition fascist dictator, Francisco Franco.
Except for a decade of relief
under Jean-Bertand Aristide and Rene Preval, nothing improved for Haitians
after US occupiers left in 1934. Aristide and Preval brought hope in
spite of great Western constraint imposed on them. It didn't last courtesy
of US Marines again ending a brief grace period of relief and deliverance
for people having precious little of it for 500 years.
In its wake, MINUSTAH was
established by UN Security Council vote on April 30, 2004 two months
after the US-led coup ousted President Aristide now in forced exile
in South Africa. From inception, it's mission was flawed as it had no
right being there in the first place. Blue Helmets, in principle, are
deployed for peace and stability even though they seldom bring it. In
this case, peacekeepers have may been illegally sent for the first time
ever supporting and enforcing a coup d'etat against a democratically
elected president instead of staying out of it or coming to back his
right to office.
The US runs everything in
Haiti, and MINUSTAH became its repressive arm against Haitian people
wanting their President back and their freedoms under him restored.
The result is no surprise. MINUSTAH's mission is disastrous, disgraceful
and in violation of the rule of law including UN's own Charter as explained
below.
Before it began, the UN lied
claiming Aristide was less than democratically reelected in 2000 with
under 10% of Haitians participating. UN officials further implied his
Fanmi Lavalas party manipulated results allowing him to win. The truth
was otherwise showing Aristide won with a 92% majority and a turnout
of around 62% of eligible voters or a figure exceeding that in most
US elections. The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES)
suggested turnout was even higher, but mainstream reporting never lets
facts conflict with official US government versions of truth that hide
it when it isn't the kind it wants.
The line on Haiti came from
the US State Department's affiliated Agency for International Development
(USAID) claiming the opposition boycotted the election and Aristide
won by default with a low voter turnout. This got reported as anti-Aristide
black propaganda contradicting mass-Haitian support for a beloved leader
twice elected the country's President. Haitians demand his return but
won't get it as long as the US remains in charge. Washington will ignite
a firestorm if he tries coming setting off the kind of ugliness leading
to what happened in February, 2004 that repeated similar events in September,
1991 after Aristide's first election. The result for Haitians is nightmarish
courtesy of the Bush administration with complicit Security Council
support in the form of Blue Helmet "peacekeepers" enforcing
their kind of peace.
They're on the ground along
with mobilized death squads, otherwise known as the hated Haitian National
Police (PNH), acting as a main duel proxy force serving their masters
in Washington. They've done it by destroying all democratic freedoms
in a country subjugated for 500 years under outside authority or one
imposed on them from within. In 1990, Haitians hoped it ended when they
elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide President with 67% of the vote. He took
office in February, 1991, but his tenure was short-lived. It ended in
September by the first of two US-instigated coups removing him from
office for a more compliant military ruler beholden to Washington and
its capital interests.
Aristide returned to Haiti
in 1994 regaining nominal power through a deal Clinton officials arranged.
It included a largely US-led UN peacekeeping force remaining until 1999
to assure political and economic continuity by IMF-imposed neoliberal
structural adjustment policy diktats of privatizations, debt serving
and cuts in vitally needed social services. Under these conditions and
with little financial support when he tried going around them, Aristide
governed like a social democrat compiling an impressive record given
the constraints on him. Under Haitian law, he was unable to succeed
himself in 1996, but his ally Rene Preval ran for President and won
with an 88% majority. Aristide then ran again in 2000 winning big as
explained above.
From then until 2004, Aristide
instituted a host of important programs in areas of health, education,
justice and human rights. He did it by maneuvering around the kinds
of harsh dictates imposed on him out of Washington. It led to his second
ouster reinstituting a US-directed reign of terror with MINUSTAH Blue
Helmet proxies in the lead implementing harsh repression still ongoing
and unaddressed by a world community mindful of conditions but turning
a blind eye or playing a supportive role. Blue Helmets do this everywhere,
but it gets no worse than in Haiti. It's the poorest country in the
hemisphere, conditions continue getting worse, people are suffering,
and MINUSTAH is there to keep it that way, not bring peace, security,
stability or freedom to people desperately needing it.
It's all about the rules
of imperial management Washington forces on all nations but especially
ones with strategically important resources, markets or in the case
of Haiti cheap labor. Haiti has lots of it, and it's some of the cheapest
in the world. It's an offshore US manufacturer's paradise where many
garment and other workers earn as little as 12 cents an hour or near-slave
wages. It's far below the poverty level even in Haiti, and after transportation
and other expenses an average Haitian worker earns around $6 a week
for those able to get any work in a country plagued by high unemployment
running as high as 50% and at times much higher. During his tenure,
President Aristide alleviated this and much more in spite of great constraints
on him. He did it with scant outside help in spite of overwhelming pressures
from Washington not to do anything affecting capital interests.
With him gone and reelected
President Rene Preval hamstrung under foreign occupation masquerading
as "peacekeepers," Haitians have lost everything. Conditions
have never been worse, and it goes on daily in Haiti's bloodstained
streets patrolled by MINUSTAH, PNH and militarized gangs of enforcers
with license to kill and brutalize freely. The Western media ignore
it in a country the US controls as a de facto colony using violence
for social control just like in Iraq with its own and proxy Iraqi forces.
Guatemalan UN Special Envoy
Edmond Mulet calls it needing to "liberate" neighborhoods
from "thugs, criminals, gangs (and) drug dealers." He characterizes
indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians as "collateral damage"
with UN forces coming "under attack (from gangs in Cite Soleil)."
What he won't address is MINUSTAH'S role as enforcer to make Haiti safe
for predatory capitalism with harsh repression the method of choice
to do it. It's aim is to destroy all vestiges of democratic Lavalas
and Jean-Bertrand Aristide's influence, but it resulted in mass-people
resistance on the streets protesting their plight and demanding restitution
of their rights as free people. Their answer is armed attacks and regular
assaults.
It goes on daily with punishing
effects against helpless people. They're led by Blue Helmet thugs attacking
Haitians in impoverished areas like Cite Soleil, Bel Air, Solino and
elsewhere indiscriminately killing men, women and children. They work
with PNH enforcers incarcerating or murdering Aristide supporters and
advocates for freedom and justice, forcing many others underground or
to flee the country even after Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party was effectively
destroyed.
Before Preval's reelection
last February, MINUSTAH helped reinstitute Haiti's brutal and hated
former military that Aristide disbanded and put Haiti again at the mercy
of predatory international lending agencies. It also worked with the
so-called Interim Government of Haiti (IGH) under US-installed puppet
prime minister Gerard Latortue ending Aristide's social programs and
returning the country to capital interests with lots of infused cash
ending up in the pockets of the interim government Transparency International
(TI) called the most corrupt in the world, but not enough to bother
its US boss looking the other way and ignoring it. The IGH even locked
up dissenters and emptied prisons of real criminals for service in the
PNH. It also reconstituted Haiti's military and allowed private paramilitary
gangs to operate as brutish enforcers of their own defenseless people.
It's gone on since the 2004
coup in splendid fashion through bloody street crackdowns including
massacres against people protesting their plight in a country returned
to serfdom under repressive overlords. Haiti is short on law, order,
justice and freedom and long on paramilitary thuggishness keeping things
that way including the private paramilitary ones like the Little Machete
Army that was implicated in the July 6, 2006 Grand Ravine massacre of
more than 20 people along with burning scores of houses in an act of
pure savagery. It was after the August 21, 2005 slaughter in a Grand
Ravine soccer field in front of 5000 fans when as many as 50 people
were shot or hacked to death with machetes by PNH thugs and red-shirted
killers.
A recent horrific incident
happened in the early morning hours of December 22, 2006 in Cite Soleil
when UN Blue Helmets assaulted the community killing more than 30 people
with some reports claiming much higher numbers. It happened in random
mass shooting striking people everywhere including in their homes with
bullets easily penetrating paper-thin walls. The UN claimed it was after
a young man named Belony, supposedly the head of a kidnapping gang,
but the story is pure "baloney" like all other MINUSTAH ones.
It's UN's way to justify repression and killings saying it's targeting
bandits that are really ordinary Haitians protesting their misery or
who happen to be in the line of fire that's deliberately indiscriminate
as an added form of terror.
Disturbingly, President Rene
Preval apparently approved the December 22 operation and now has blood
on his hands to answer for. He likely knew it's purpose was to punish
an impoverished community that put 10,000 people on the streets a few
days earlier demonstrating for the return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide
and condemning a US-directed militarized occupation of their country.
Video footage and eye witnesses captured and verified the retaliatory
response on the streets with unarmed civilians shot by random gunfire
including from helicopter gunships. At first the UN denied it but finally
admitted what video footage and digital photos showed conclusively.
They also showed wounded and dying with no medical help on the scene
and people left to bleed to death on the streets or in their homes.
This assault was like an
earlier one against Cite Soleil on July 6, 2005 when UN forces attacked
the city with hundreds of heavily armed troops using M-50s and 60s mounted
on armored personnel vehicles. It also used high-powered telescopic
rifles for accuracy in singling out targeted dissenters for assassination
and a type of gattling gun firing armor-piercing bullets believed to
be depleted uranium tipped to slice through metal like butter. This
time about 70 people were shot indiscriminately from thousands of rounds
of ammunition fired. Again those hit were left to bleed to death unattended
on the streets or in their homes.
A more recent documented
incident happened in Cite Soleil on January 23, 2007 with MINUSTAH forces
again randomly shooting for hours including from helicopters while people
ran for their lives or were gunned down indiscriminately as they did.
No accurate count of casualties is known so far, and the number killed
may never be known as Blue Helmets often remove bodies to conceal the
extent of their handiwork. Another attack followed on January 24 with
MINUSTAH acknowledging it killed six people and wounded others in the
same targeted community. Haitians won't ever be free of this until peacekeepers
leave, Blue Helmet terrorism ends and people can choose their own leaders,
free from outside control, or not live under ones imposed on them.
For now, that seems light
years away, and all reports out of Haiti are grim including a January
23 one by the National Bishops' Justice and Peace Commission (JILAP),
a human rights commission of Haiti's Roman Catholic church. It reported
at least 539 people died violently in Port-au-Prince alone in the three
month period ending December 31, 2006 with the true number likely higher
as it only counted dead bodies on the streets. Most of the victims were
in impoverished communities like Cite Soleil, Grand Ravine, Martissant
and Bolosse, and the main cause of death was from gunshot wounds. JILAP
also attributed most of the violence to MINUSTAH and PNH with most deaths
just local residents in targeted areas. Other violence was blamed on
street gangs like the one led by the Little Machete Army that may have
murdered Haitian independent journalist Jean Remy Badiau in Martissant
because he "dared practice journalism in a country where the press
(today) is never free."
Sadly, Haitians have no freedom
because the extent of occupation-led terror is greater than Haiti's
ever had in its 200 year history as a sovereign state. It amounts to
collective punishment of an impoverished people living under US-imposed
police state type daily killings, massacres, rapes, arbitrary arrests,
mass incarcerations, beatings and horrific immiseration of millions
of people defenseless against it. It also includes human trafficking
of women and children for forced prostitution and men and women for
forced labor amounting to chattel slavery. Additional thousands of men
have been forcibly taken to the Dominican Republic and other regional
countries to work for wages so low they're called "sugar slaves."
Still more abuse came out
in the September, 2006 Lancet reported study conducted by Wayne State
University, School of Social Work researchers Athena Kolbe and Dr. Royce
Hutson. They exposed and documented massive human rights violations
in Haiti under the puppet Latortue government using random Global Positioning
System (GPS) coordinate sampling of 1260 households and 5720 individuals.
90.7% of them were interviewed using a structured questionnaire by trained
interviewers to learn about their experiences since Aristide's ouster.
The study findings estimated
8,000 people were murdered and about 35,000 women (over half under 18)sexually
assaulted in the greater Port-au-Prince area between February, 2004
and December, 2005. 21% of killings were attributed to the PNH, 13%
to the demobilized army and another 13% to anti-Aristide paramilitary
gangs like the Little Machete Army. Known criminals were the worst sex
offenders, but officers from the HNP accounted for 13.8% of assaults
and armed anti-Lavalas groups another 10.6%. The report also documented
kidnappings, extrajudicial detentions, physical assaults other than
rape, death threats, physical threats and threats of sexual violence
against helpless people.
The report concluded that
"crime and systematic abuse of human rights were common in Port-au-Prince"
involving criminals but also "political actors and UN (Blue Helmet)
soldiers." It also stressed an overwhelming need on the ground
for attention to "legal, medical, psychological, and economic consequences
of widespread human rights abuses and crime."
The study ended in December,
2005, but the same abuses go on daily in Haitian communities around
Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in the country. It's a picture of UN failure
and its top officials and Secretary-General corrupted and criminally
complicit with its authorized missions' worst crimes and abuses going
on everywhere. It also shows the world body as a servant of power, defiling
its founding mandate and damning the poor and weak to pay for its failure
to protect them. Nowhere are things worse than in Haiti, and nowhere
are UN representatives more culpable starting at the top where the buck
stops with its former Secretary-General Kofi Annan. His tenure ended
in December as it began - in disgrace but whose record went unreported
because he served power interests well who'll now reward him in his
new endeavors.
Haitians hoped things might
not be this way last February 7 when they reelected Rene Preval their
President in an electoral process orchestrated, controlled and rigged
by the US-installed puppet government but not enough to override the
will of the people. For the first time in two years, desperate Haitians
had reason to celebrate with a leader again in charge who once served
their needs as President. But nothing is ever simple in Haiti, and long
knives in Washington were out to undermine and destabilize Preval's
rule from its outset or simply work around him and ignore it. The result
to date is capital rules the country, and Rene Preval has little to
show for his first year in office. Haitians continue suffering, and
9,000 repressive Blue Helmets, PNH and other paramilitaries are on the
ground keeping it that way.
It affects the lives of helpless
people in ways beyond brute force and economic depravation. Blue Helmet
attacks in Cite Soleil severely damaged the community's public water
system as random gunfire hit pipelines and a water tower. It forced
area residents to walk long distances with heavy buckets for what's
unavailable close by while private speculators truck in drinking water
for sale at prices Cite Soleil's half million residents can't afford.
It's one more part of marketplace rule leaving most Haitians out of
it with no resources to participate.
The UN peacekeeping mandate
expires on February 15, but Haitians won't see the end of it. The Security
Council is about to extend the mission with disagreement over its length
that comes up for review every six months. Before leaving office, Kofi
Annan recommended a year's extension, but unanimity hasn't yet been
reached by Security Council members. When it is, it won't reflect the
peoples' will demanding Blue Helmets leave that's loudly heard on the
streets and ignored as it always is.
Protests and demonstrations
are on the capital's streets all the time, but a major one happened
on February 7 as well as in six other Haitian cities and many around
the world in solidarity. They dramatically dispelled the UN's false
assertions that Lavalas is dead. It lives, it's vibrant, and it puts
a lie to UN Envoy Edmond Mulet's claim that "the issue of former
President Aristide is not present anymore....in Haiti....and his (Fanmi
Lavalas) movement is very much divided, weakened."
The date marked the 16th
anniversary of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's first inauguration as Haiti's
first elected President in 1991 and 21st anniversary of the end of the
hated Duvalier father-son dictatorship in 1986. Tens of thousands of
Fanmi Lavalas supporters took to the streets peacefully to protest their
occupation and violence from it. They called for the release of all
political prisoners and demanded return of those in forced exile starting
with their former President deposed on February 29, 2004. Protestors
joined with them in solidarity in 53 cities around the world on five
continents against Blue Helmet massacres in an "International Day
in Solidarity with the Haitian People." On the same day, protesters
went to Haiti's UN heavily guarded Port-au-Prince military headquarters
demanding Aristide's return and confronting soldiers with shouts of
"Down with the UN." Hundreds were back the following day repeating
their chants and risking the kind of retaliation they've come to expect
before.
They got their answer on
February 9 when hundreds of UN peacekeepers again raided Cite Soleil
before dawn continuing their ritualized crackdown and retaliation against
courageous people resistance. It's made Blue Helmets a hated symbol
of imperial repression and all the terror from it. For Haitian people,
it's just the latest chapter in their 500 year struggle never losing
hope one day they'll be free at last. No people deserve it more than
do Haitians.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and tune in online to hear
The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on The Micro Effect.com
each Saturday at noon US central time.
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