Wednesday, April 22, 2009

The United Nations Support Collective Punishment? Believes it Affective?

All the quotes are from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19long-1.html?_r=3&ref=opinion.

The article is about how to deal with a hostage situation centered around the recent difficulties with pirates. It starts by saying that there are generally two options, negotiate or a physical rescue.

"But there might be another way — an approach that could be run through the United Nations and that would be available both to governmental and nongovernmental authorities acting for the interned seamen."

A different way. A way that both governmental and nongovernmental authorities could use.

In the first situation the UN was asked to intervene by Nairobi who had citizens being held hostage in Somalia.

"Eventually, after long and heated internal discussion, the United Nations security team persuaded the United Nations country team that the most effective approach would be to use humanitarian aid and assistance as a lever to gain release of hostages."

How exactly would they use humanitarian aid as a lever?

"United Nations assistance was withheld from the Somali clan or region by which or in which hostages were being held until those hostages were released."

Translation, they used collective punishment. More on the how soon.

"In every case there was a release, and in no case were hostages harmed or ransom paid."

Not much to explain here. The collective punishment was 100% successful at saving the hostages while not paying the hostage takers.

What exactly did they do?

"In 1995, for example, the water supply for Mogadishu, the capital, was shut off by the United Nations humanitarian agencies until a hostage who worked for another aid organization was released. On the first day of the shutoff, the women who collected water from public distribution points yelled at the kidnappers; on the second day they stoned them; on the third day they shot at them; on the fourth day, the hostage was released."

Translation, they cut off the water supply to the capital city and refused to turn it back on until the hostage was released. It took four days of a United Nations caused drought of sorts until the innocent bystanders could not take it any more. The women needed water so badly that they took hostile and violate action against the kidnappers.

This was not an isolated occurrence of collective punishment by the United Nations. The next example involves French hostages.

"After demonstrating that the hostages were alive, the pirates demanded $1 million in ransom. I responded that the United Nations would suspend all civic improvement in the region — education, animal husbandry, vaccination, water projects. The aid would resume when the hostages were released."

This actually goes a step beyond collective punishment. Collective punishment involves punishing innocents along with the perpetrators. What the United Nations did here was punish the family and friends of the perpetrators, not the perpetrators themselves.

"This drove a wedge between the pirates and their home clan, the Darod. Clan elders put pressure on the pirates. After several weeks, the Frenchmen were released to me in return for resumption of all United Nations humanitarian aid."

The plan worked as they expected it would. Punishing the clan led to the clan pressuring the pirates to release the hostages.


As is put so nicely over at http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33418_United_Nations_Hypocrisy_Writ_Large, imagine how the United Nations would react if Israel used these tactics to free Gilad Shalit. Hypocrisy?

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