UN and Annan Win Nobel Peace Prize.

On October 12th, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the United Nations and to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for their efforts to build "a better organized and more peaceful world." No surprise there: The Nobel Committee has awarded the coveted Peace Prize to the United Nations five times in the past. In 1954 and 1931, it was given to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in 1961 to United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, in 1965 to UNICEF, and in 1988 to the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces.

There were a few objections, however. Organizations representing the survivors of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the massacre of Bosnian Muslims were outraged that the Peace Prize could be given to a man and an organization complicit in these atrocities.

Annan was in charge of UN peacekeeping operations when Hutu extremists massacred around 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. Referring to Annan's refusal to heed the warnings of Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN forces in Rwanda, Rwandan survivor Antoine Mugesera accused Annan of having "heavy responsibility in the Rwandan genocide. It is a pity, it is unfortunate -- he should not have been awarded that Nobel Prize."

The Mothers of Srebrenica and Drina Valley association of survivors of the Serbian massacre of Bosnian Muslims, meanwhile, charged that "the United Nations and Kofi Annan are winners of the Nobel prize for genocide against the [muslims] of the Drina valley and the whole of Bosnia." Not that anyone at the UN paid any attention. Last year, survivors of the Srebrenica massacre tried to bring suit against the UN and Annan for their complicity in allowing Serbs to round up and massacre Muslims under the very noses of Dutch peacekeepers. Not surprisingly, the suit, which was filed with the UN war crimes court in The Hague, was dismissed.

As a matter of fact, most of the major wars in the last decade took place under the auspices of the UN. Besides the deaths in Rwanda and the various Balkan conflicts, we shouldn't forget the hundreds of thousands of casualties of the Gulf War, the thousands killed in Somalia during the UN occupation, and the ongoing atrocities in Sierra Leone being perpetrated even as UN forces supposedly keep the peace. We aren't sure which of the above-mentioned contributions to world peace the Nobel Prize committee had in mind, but if one grants the Orwellian premise that "war is peace," then the UN and Annan are worthy recipients.