What Is The UN Doing In The Tsunami? ........ Yep, That's About It

Thanks, Powerline, for providing a link to a blog that I wish I found sooner; The Diplomad. This guy works for the State Department and with the UN, and rightfully insults the UN, especially over the Tsunami.

Let's check out one of the Tsunami-relevant UN people, Ms. Margareeta Wahlstrom, United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-affected countries (I hope I copied-and-pasted that title correctly). So, what does this person actually do? First, she will spend a few hours making a new nameplate thing for her desk, probably made out of some valuable metal, and including her entire title (this is a guess, I have no information to support this, but it is likely). But, in the two days she will spend in the disaster-ridden area, she will "provide leadership and support to the international relief effort. She will undertake high-level consultations with the concerned governments in order to facilitate the delivery of international assistance". The US and Austrilia have already done this quite well. The US and Australia are also providing actual relief to the area, rather than merely sending bureaucrats, who stay in 5-star hotels (yep). Those bureaucrats have set up a headquarters, of sorts, in their hotel room, and have already arranged for 24-hour room service.

Meanwhile, the US and Australian militaries are airlifting supplies to isolated communities that, otherwise, would die. In fact, the USS Abraham Lincoln and its entourage left Hong Kong shortly after the tsunami, and began sending relief supplies by helicopter immediately.

Now, let me quote The Diplomad

A colleague came back from a meeting held by the local UN representative yesterday and reported that the UN rep had said that while it was a good thing that the Australians and Americans were running the air ops into tsunami-wrecked Aceh, for cultural and political reasons, those Australians and Americans really "should go blue." In other words, they should switch into UN uniforms and give up their national ones.

Apparently, the UN wants to take credit for the relief effort, though it is doing virtually nothing. And, where was Kofi Anan shortly after the disaster struck? Why, he was skiing. In fact, he enjoyed his ski trip so much, he extended it by three days. His private jet was waiting on the airport tarmac for those three days, all prep'ed and ready ("prep'ed" is slang for "prepared") for when Kofi decided to get back to work. Now that he's back at work, or at least claims to be back at work, he plans to go to conferences. Also, he plans to set up a little camp with kitchens, sleeping quarters, probably a recreation room, and the like – not for tsunami victims, no that would be logical and help needy people; the camp is for UN employees who have yet to do anything to help those who are suffering. Oh yes, the UN is trying to take credit for stuff the US and Australia have done;

Mr. Egeland: Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh. <...> In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. <...> Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh.

Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.

I provided this to some USAID colleagues working in Indonesia and their heads nearly exploded. The first paragraph is quite simply a lie. The UN is taking credit for things that hard-working, street savvy USAID folks have done. It was USAID working with their amazing network of local contacts who scrounged up trucks, drivers, and fuel; organized the convoy and sent it off to deliver critical supplies. A UN “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh? Bull! It's the Aussies and the Yanks who are running the air ops into Aceh. We have people working and sleeping on the tarmac in Aceh, surrounded by bugs, mud, stench and death, who every day bring in the US and Aussie C-130s and the US choppers; unload, load, send them off. We have no fancy aid workers' retreat -- notice the priorities of the UN? People are dying and what's the first thing the UN wants to do? Set up "a camp for relief workers" one that would be "fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything."

I hate to quote such large swaths of someone else's material. If someone can find a way to link to a specific post on Diplomad, please tell me; I seem unable to get a single post on a page, even the comments link doesn't seem to give me a copy of the post.