Perverted "peacemakers": as the Bush administration's collaboration with the UN becomes more overt, the world body is awash in scandals--from child prostitution to epic international bribery and graft.

During the Senate's debate over ratifying the League of Nations Covenant in 1919, Senator William Borah (R-Idaho) sought to disabuse his colleagues of the idea that a world "peace force" would be a blessing to mankind. An international "peacekeeping" army, warned Borah, would consist of "the gathered scum of the nations organized into a conglomerate international police force ordered hither and thither by the most heterogeneous and irresponsible body or court that ever confused or confounded the natural instincts and noble passions of a people."

Nearly a century later, Borah's prophetic words were echoed by former UN civilian "peacekeeper" Andrew Thomson, a coauthor of the new book Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures. Thomson, a physician who presently works as a medical officer at UN Headquarters in New York, has served as an aid worker in UN missions to Cambodia, Somalia, Rwanda, Liberia, Bosnia and Haiti. On the basis of his experience, Thomson offers a trenchant warning to readers: "If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs."

The world body's self-portrait as guardian of human rights is belied by the fact that "almost a million civilians [whom] our peacekeepers were supposed to protect died in two genocides," Thomson observes in the book, which was coauthored by Kenneth Cain and Heidi Postlewait. (In fact, this estimate is much too low, given that Rwandan sources estimate that as many as 1.1 million people were slaughtered in that nation's 1994 genocide.) When the Blue Helmets aren't passively abetting genocide, or actively facilitating it by disarming targeted populations, they find other ways of inflicting misery in the name of "world peace."

Several years ago, THE NEW AMERICAN described how UN peacekeepers in Cambodia--particularly those from "ex"-Communist Bulgaria--had become notorious for drunken rampages, brawls, shootouts and mistreatment of women. (See "Beasts in Blue Berets" in our September 29, 1997 issue.) In one of his contributions to Emergency Sex, Cain--who was in Cambodia as a UN election monitor--offers a tidy thumbnail sketch of the Bulgarian Blue Berets:

   Everyone hates the
   Bulgarians. The UN
   pays countries cash to
   send soldiers on peacekeeping
   missions....
   The Bulgarian government
   wanted money
   but didn't want to send
   their best-trained
   troops. So ... they offered
   inmates in the
   prisons and psychiatric
   wards a deal: put on a
   uniform and go to
   Cambodia for six
   months, you're free on
   return. All you have to
   do is stand guard and
   give away food, they
   said, the UN is not a
   real military. [And so a]
   battalion of criminal lunatics
   arrives in a lawless land. They
   get drunk as sailors, rape vulnerable
   Cambodian women, and crash their
   UN Land Cruisers with remarkable
   frequency.

It was Heidi Postlewait, who hired on with the UN as a secretary, who contributed the odd title. Much of her memoir is devoted to describing (in the most vulgar language possible) her sexual exploits as part of UN missions on three continents. The phrase "emergency sex" refers to a hasty tryst she experienced with a UN translator in Somalia following a sniper attack.

Elsewhere she describes sitting in Somalia with a small knot of locals "smoking our joints and smiling at each other.... We spend what's left of the afternoon smoking more joints and listening to [late reggae artist Bob Marley's album] Legend, over and over again." Of her descriptions of rampant drug use on the part of UN staff, perhaps the most memorable is a Cambodian vignette involving a marijuana cocktail called "The Space Shuttle."

The UN staff in Cambodia, recalls Postlewait, were like "the jet set on vacation"--although it should be pointed out that jet-setters aren't subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer. It's nice work if you can get it, at least from some people's point of view. Despite the fact that the UN threatened to punish the authors of Emergency Sex for bringing disrepute on the world body, it's tempting to speculate that the book may actually be intended as a recruiting lure for people interested in making a career out of itinerant fornication and drug use in the name of "world peace."

"Culture of Exploitation"

Those interested in tracking the movements of the Blue Berets should look for Third World communities where child prostitution and rape have suddenly spiked. A December 1996 UN study documented that "peacekeepers" had been involved in child prostitution in six of the twelve countries studied. In Mozambique, for example, Blue Berets actively recruited girls as young as 12 to serve as prostitutes.

A February 26, 2002 report by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) described widespread sexual exploitation of children at Western African refugee camps. According to that report, UN field workers and representatives from various UN-aligned non-governmental organizations have been preying on children housed in camps in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Paul Nolan of Save The Children describes such sexual predation as "widespread, quite possibly endemic and which also included people who were actually in place to provide those refugee children with the care and protection they were entitled to.... It's a problem we know has been around for some time."

The UNHCR's investigation, Nolan observed, uncovered a "fairly widespread culture of exploitation" in which "a whole range of people in a position of authority and trust were abusing these positions. All in return for sexual favors." That "culture of exploitation" continues to thrive at the UN. According to UN correspondent Thalif Deen of the left-leaning Inter Press Service, "six out of 48 UN agencies operating in the field have received reports of new cases of sexual exploitation or abuse, mostly by blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers, during 2003."

A June 6 BBC dispatch relates the story of "Faela," a tragically typical victim of sexual exploitation at UN hands. A resident of a UN refugee camp in Bunia, Congo, the 13-year-old girl, whose real name wasn't used, has a six-month-old child named Joseph. She became pregnant as a result of being raped by a Congolese militiaman. With no family to support her or the infant, the child-mother has been caught in the undertow of child prostitution, sleeping with "peacekeepers" from Morocco or Uruguay in exchange for food.

During a five-day stay in the Bunia refugee camp, commented the BBC's Kate Holt, "over 30 girls were interviewed, half of whom admitted to crossing the boundary into the UN [garrison]." One of them explained: "The UN soldiers help girls like me, they give us food and things if we go [to bed] with them."

According to Dominique McAdams, chief UN representative in Bunia, the "help" offered by UN peacekeepers sometimes involves more than mere manipulation or exploitation: "It is pretty clear to me that sexual violence is taking place in the camp." Despite her determination to prosecute those responsible, and assurances from UN spokesman Fred Eckhard that doing so is "a matter of urgency," McAdams complains: "I have not received anything from anyone."

Oil-for-Food Coverup

Neither the UN nor the Bush administration has been any more forthcoming about a monumental scare rooted in a different form of exploitation: The Oil-for-Food (OFF) scandal, also known as "Kofigate."

The OFF program was created in 1995 for the supposed purpose of providing for "the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people" during the decade-long UN embargo of that nation. UN Security Council Resolution 986 provided for "the import of petroleum and petroleum products originating in Iraq, including financial and other essential transactions directly relating thereto, sufficient to produce a sum not exceeding a total of one billion United States dollars every ninety days." The transactions were to take place under UN supervision, with payments made into a special escrow account established by Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The UN's share in OFF proceeds was supposed to be 2.2 percent of the oil sales, which would cover the expenses of UN weapons inspectors and humanitarian relief projects in Iraq. However, notes former Bush administration Defense Department official led Babbin, "evidence shows that the UN might have taken, and allowed Saddam to take, much more. The UN was acting as a fiduciary for the Iraqi people, holding that money in trust for them. That trust was violated in ways that if the UN program managers had been officers of a U.S. corporation, they would be on their way to jail."

In the seven years of its existence, the Oil-for-Food program resulted in the export of 3.4 billion barrels of Iraqi oil, with "much of the oil revenues apparently [going] to line the pockets of UN officials--possibly including Kofi Annan--and politicians around the world," Babbin continues. There is evidence that oil invoices were padded by 10 percent to generate revenues for Saddam's regime. Former program official Michael Soussan has described how bribes and kickbacks from Saddam resulted in additional illicit profits as food and aid funds were directed to corrupt suppliers, allowing Saddam's agents to buy "poor quality products at inflated prices, cashing in the difference."

Some of the money was used by Saddam to buy influence abroad. In January, the Iraqi newspaper al-Mada published a list of foreign recipients of OFF bribes totaling billions of dollars--with the largest sums being directed to Russia, our "strategic ally" in the anti-terrorism struggle. Among the individuals listed was a "Mr. Sevan"--who may be none other than assistant UN secretary-general Benon Sevan, who directed the Oil-for-Food program.

Damage Control

Earlier this year, Sevan, who was placed on administrative leave and sequestered from the press, insisted that he was the victim of a "smear campaign" and that he would "cooperate fully" with ongoing inquiries into the scandal. Three sternly worded letters sent by Sevan to potential whistleblowers suggest that he subscribes to an eccentric definition of the word "cooperation." A letter sent to the Swiss company Cotecna asserted that it "may not communicate at any time to any other person, government or authority external to the United Nations any information known to them by reason of their association with the United Nations, which has not been made public. In view of the contractual provisions referred to above and the fact that these matters relate to internal U.N. procedures for administering the Programme, we would ask that you consult with the U.N. before releasing any documentation or information."

In early May, a congressional subcommittee inquiry chaired by Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) produced a formidable wealth of documented detail describing the scandal. But the purpose of the hearing was to restore the UN's credibility, rather than build a case for U.S. withdrawal from the hopelessly corrupt body: "An institution as important to the United States and the world as the United Nations should do everything possible to remove the stain this program may leave on its reputation," Shays told the Washington Times on April 21.

Heading up the UN's "independent" probe are former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and South African jurist Richard Goldstone, who has served on UN-created international tribunals. Volcker and Goldstone are veteran internationalists who can be counted on to run a slick and professional damage-control operation. In a May 4 letter to the White House, Rep. Shays and Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) urged the administration to take steps "to insure the UN has access to all pertinent records" and to give the UN use of the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service in order to conduct its own inquiry. In this way, the congressmen claimed, the probe would be "international and credible."

In addition to cooperating with the UN's "independent" inquiry, the Bush administration is lending aid to an ongoing probe by Iraqi officials as well. "The Iraqis are more than hopping mad over the Oil-for-Food business," an international consultant with ties to White House officials told THE NEW AMERICAN. The consultant offered the following summary of the White House's take on the matter: "[The Iraqis will] take care of it, so Bush doesn't have to. Meanwhile, he'll get the Security Council resolution he wants."

However, as a June 3 Fox News report pointed out, the Iraqi probe is being handled by "the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit, a Saddam Hussein-era body.,' Ahmed Chalabi, former head of the CIA-created Iraqi National Congress (INC), had obtained extensive files on the Oil-for-Food scandal; he claims that those files were seized when U.S. and Iraqi troops raided INC offices in early June. Claude Hankes Drielsma, an Oil-for-Food whistleblower who compiled extensive files on the scandal, told Fox News that "his computer was hacked into and all its files destroyed on the same day that Chalabi's offices were raided. Drielsma describes it as a strange coincidence."

Fox News noted that many Iraqis offer a less benign view of these developments, accusing Bush administration colonial administrator L. Paul Bremer of "hindering the investigation to prevent any revelations that might embarrass the UN during the critical transition of power in Iraq."

As Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) complained in a letter to KKofi Annan, "The U.S. Congres--which provides 22 percent of the UN's budget ... should not be required to depend on media leaks for source documents" on the OFF scandal. But thanks to the Bush administration's capable help, the UN has been able to choke off all avenues of investigation it doesn't control.