UNITED NATIONS: U.N. Peacekeeping Easy Target for Looters

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 18 1996 (IPS) - The United Nations has become an easy target for petty thieves and looters who are robbing its peacekeeping operations blind.

The U.N. Observer Mission in Liberia — the latest casualty — has lost all its communications equipment, its furniture, and its fleet of vehicles, following the outbreak of fighting in the embattled West African nation.

“All reports indicate a frenzy of looting,” U.N. spokeswoman Sylvana Foa said here.

The United Nations already has lost millions of dollars’ worth of property in a rash of robberies in its peacekeeping operations in Cambodia, Somalia, Mozambique, and the former Yugoslavia.

Foa said Wednesday that the situation in Liberia was “absolute anarchy”, and that one faction was “out to kill anybody wearing a United Nations uniform.”

“It appeared that communications equipment and anything that could be ripped out and carried away was going,” she said.

The United Nations has also complained of “wanton looting” of all of its agency offices, including the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Foa said she had no clear estimate of the losses, but efforts were being made through each agency to establish some numbers of losses. The UNHCR, however, has reported that eight of its vehicles have been stolen.

The London-based Save the Children relief agency reported that its entire fleet of 17 vehicles were stolen early this week along with computers and communications equipment.

“This is deeply, deeply frustrating, deeply disappointing,” Bart Wittezeen of Save the Children said.

Most of the international aid workers have pulled out of Liberia. The factional fighting that broke out last week has shattered the 13th peace accord in the country’s ongoing six-year civil war.

“The situation has spun out of control — far beyond the imagination of those who started it,” U.S. Ambassador William Milam was quoted as saying.

U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has said Monday he was “shocked by the grave developments in Liberia”, and he condemned “the continuing escalation of hostilities, the killings, the taking of hostages, the ransacking and looting of United Nations and other properties.”

In January, the United Nations lost all its computers, military vehicles and electronic equipment even as its peacekeeping operations were winding down in the former Yugoslavia.

The rash of robberies with the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) had an added political twist, since some of the missing laptop computers contained data on human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia. A total of 616 U.N. vehicles were stolen from troops serving with UNPROFOR.

The United Nations also lost millions of dollars in cash and equipment in some of its earlier peacekeeping operations in Cambodia, Somalia, and Mozambique.

The largest single robbery took place in April 1994, when 3.9 million dollars in cash was stolen from the U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia. Although the money has still not been recovered, the United Nations has hinted the robbery may have been an “inside job”.

The U.N. peacekeeping operations in Cambodia suffered a spate of robberies amounting to millions of dollars in stolen trucks, cars, cellular phones and computers. A total of more than eight million dollars in equipment was stolen from the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) during 1992-93.

The stolen equipment included three million dollars’ worth of vehicles, 2.5 million dollars in communications equipment, 1.5 million dollars in laptop computers, half a million dollars in prefabricated accommodation, and 453,000 dollars in generators.

The United Nations was also forced to write-off about 3.6 million dollars’ worth of vehicles, photocopiers, fax machines and prefabricated accommodation.