The very model of a modern UN bureaucrat

I’ve never heard of Jean-Marie Guéhenno before but the editors of the New York Times like him to become the next UN ambassador to Afghanistan:

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, is currently considering three candidates: Staffan de Mistura of Sweden, Jean-Marie Guéhenno of France and Ian Martin of Britain. Of these, we believe Mr. Guéhenno has most clearly demonstrated the qualities necessary for what is a very tough job.

The next representative must be someone who can work smoothly with the top NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal of the United States, and Washington’s ambassador, Karl Eikenberry. The representative must also have an independent mind and enough international stature to challenge them if they’re going wrong, and must be strong enough to stand up to President Karzai when necessary — and diplomatic enough to work with him.

He must demand tighter accounting from United Nations development agencies. And he must be willing and able to goad Security Council members to back up their fine resolutions with additional pledges of badly needed peacekeepers, trainers, civilian specialists and long-term development aid.

Mr. Guéhenno amply demonstrated many of the right qualities when he served as under secretary general for peacekeeping operations from 2000 to 2008. He took over a discredited and demoralized department and rebuilt it. He also built a productive relationship with Washington (not easy during the George W. Bush years) and other Security Council members.

Ignoring the gratuitous verbal slap at the previous president, the Times seem to have made a case for Mr. Guéhenno. Still I question if he really rebuilt the department. You see when someone is affiliated with the UN, I wonder what his relationship is with Israel. So I did a search.

Unsurprisingly, I discovered that he was in charge of peacekeeping operations at the time of the Har Dov attack that killed three IDF soldiers.

He had in his hands an incriminating videotape of the incident that higher UN officials claimed did not exist.

Some believe the denial was intentional. They believe that UNIFIL workers in the area had prior knowledge of the kidnapping plot, but did nothing to prevent it. Hizbullah crossed through a U.N. patrolled area to get to the Israeli soldiers.

Others believe the U.N. denial was due to misjudgement and miscommunication. They claim that Jean-Marie Guehenno, the U.N.dersecretary General for Peacekeeping Operations responsible for UNIFIL, never informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the videotape existed.

At best, this could exculpate Kofi Annan and Terje Roed Larsen, but Guehenno clearly knew of the existence of the tape and withheld it from Israel. Apparently protecting terrorists (and their UNIFIL accomplices) was more important than protecting a member state.

This conclusion isn’t unfair as it isn’t only based on a judgment of his actions, he said so explicitly:

The U.N. compounded its mishandling of the event by refusing to show Israel an uncensored version of the video which reveals the faces of the Hizballah militants who retrieved the vehicles. U.N. Under-Secretary for Peacekeeping Jean Marie Guehenno defended the decision, saying at a July 6 press conference:

Showing their faces would be considered by one party as providing intelligence to another party and would certainly endanger the security of our people in Lebanon.

Lebanon has urged the U.N. not to allow Israel to view the unedited tape because the international body must maintain its “neutrality.” Yet, allotting “equal treatment” for two unequal parties–the hostages versus the kidnappers–is absurd and unconscionable. It was Lebanese terrorists who crossed over into Israeli territory and abducted Israeli soldiers.

Now here’s Guehenno, discussing Lebanon with Charlie Rose following Israel’s war with Hezbollah.

CHARLIE ROSE: Go to Lebanon then, finally. What is the United Nations doing now and what do you think are the prospects there?

JEAN-MARIE GUEHENNO: I think in Lebanon, when I look at Lebanon today and Lebanon a year ago — I mean, the force that we deployed in Lebanon; this was one of the fastest deployments in the history of the United Nations, maybe the fastest.

CHARLIE ROSE: How many troops went in how fast?

JEAN-MARIE GUEHENNO: We have 12,000 now in Lebanon. In the summer — we had 2,000 before, but 10,000 deployed very quickly there.

CHARLIE ROSE: And that over a process of .

JEAN-MARIE GUEHENNO: Over – of a few, well, the final — a few months, but in a matter of weeks we had already several additional thousand.

So that really changed the situation in a radical way, because suddenly in south Lebanon, there was a very powerful force combined with the Lebanese armed forces that had deployed all the way to the border with – with Israel. And so, there was a sense and there is still a sense that it’s very difficult now to have hostile activities, to have violence be initiated from the southern part of Lebanon where the forces deployed. So in that sense, there is a real I think success of peacekeeping there.

The real challenge that — that is still with us is that in Lebanon, as in all the other places where we are deployed, we need to have a political process. We have the Lebanese army in south Lebanon, but the Lebanese army depends on the Lebanese government. The Lebanese government has been very courageous in asserting itself, but it’s still — it’s a fragile government. And at the end of the day, the future of Lebanon very much depends on the political process in Beirut and the broader political process in the Middle East — Lebanon, Syria, Israel, how is that going to play? That’s in a way — they are factors which are not under the control of UNIFIL, of our force, but which will be decisive in making the difference between success and – and failure.

Needless to say, Mere Rhetoric has another less charitable (and more factual) description of UNIFIL’s post-Lebanon war work in Southern Lebanon:

Post-Lebanon II, UNIFIL has – either through negligence or willful collaboration – allowed Hezbollah to fully rebuild its stockpile while restricting Israeli movements. Hezbollah has been allowed – either through negligence or willful collaboration – to plant bombs on the Israeli border. And in an incident that perfectly illustrates the combination of European arrogance and incompetence that’s going to get Israeli and Lebanese civilians killed, the UNIFIL commander condescendingly told the Israelis to calm down because UNIFIL had everything under control:

Honestly, I can’t really tell you about how UN peacekeeping troops have fared elsewhere around the globe during Mr. Guehenno’s tenure. But if UNIFIL has been a model for how it has operated elsewhere, I couldn’t agree with the Times’s assessment that, “He took over a discredited and demoralized department and rebuilt it.”

But the Times doesn’t tell us about the low point in UN peacekeeping missions. That would be in 1994 when it failed to prevent genocide in Rwanda.

Perhaps the darkest chapter of Annan’s tenure came in 1994 when he was in charge of peacekeeping operations during the horror in Rwanda, when 800,000 Tutsi civilians and Hutu moderates were massacred by Hutu militants. Annan acknowledged the inadequate performance of the UN in that tragedy, but he angered many Rwandan lawmakers at the time by not apologizing for the UN’s dismal performance.

Annan later did apologize – twice – for the UN role in the Rwandan genocide. He acknowledged that the UN and its member states failed Rwanda and its people during the 100-day genocide and expressed his “deep remorse” that more wasn’t done to stop it. He also pledged to use a highly critical report to ensure that another mass slaughter of civilians doesn’t happen again.

Despite failing in his role as chief UN peacekeeper, a few years later Kofi Annan was elected as Secretary General of the UN. That’s right, in the UN, failing miserably is a prerequisite for promotion.

Here’s how the New York Times greeted Annan’s ascension to the top job at the UN:

After months of deadlock and aggravation over the selection of a new Secretary General for the United Nations, the Security Council has settled on a fine choice, Kofi Annan of Ghana. Mr. Annan, who heads the U.N.’s peacekeeping operations, is a sophisticated and mild-mannered man with a reputation for competence. His department is one of the better-run offices in the U.N. Part of his job has been to negotiate agreements for the use of U.N. peacekeepers, and those who have negotiated with him praise his skills.

Yikes! The guy was a major failure in his previous position and the Times praised him for his “competence.” We saw much of his competence during his tenure, not least was his son’s clear connection to the Oil for Food scandal.

A U.N.-appointed panel investigating corruption in prewar Iraq’s oil-for-food program delivered a scathing rebuke of Secretary General Kofi Annan’s management of the largest U.N. humanitarian aid operation and concluded that Kojo Annan took advantage of his father’s position to profit from the system.

So when the Times praises Jean-Marie Guéhenno and urges a promotion, I suspect that the truth is that he is a failure and that his work in Lebanon is indicative of whole body of work. The Times showed by its praise of Kofi Annan that it respects failure and sees it as a key to advancement in the UN. One can only assume that this is the basis for its promotion of Mr. Guehenno.

So let me add my voice to that of Times and applaud their choice. Jean-Marie Guehenno has demonstrated his fitness for advancement at the UN. I only differ in that I don’t see that judgment as a compliment.

UPDATE: Hmm. It appears that I undervalued Mr. Guéhenno’s incompetence. There was a major UN peacekeeper sex scandal under his watch.

The U.N. abuses are especially grievous in Congo, where sexual violence against women and children has been a weapon of war employed by most of the armies involved in the six-year-old conflict. Called “Africa’s world war,” it has involved militias from Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo. Despite a peace agreement reached in 2002, the fighting continues: According to the International Rescue Committee, more than 31,000 civilians are dying a month from violence, disease, and famine; tens of thousands remain in refugee camps, mostly women and children. In Bunia alone, a U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) program has treated 2,000 victims of sexual violence in recent months.

Kofi Annan has insisted on “zero tolerance” of sexual exploitation by peacekeepers, but U.N. rules apply only to U.N. employees; military personnel fall under the jurisdiction of their own governments. Only a few peacekeepers have been deported, and no U.N. staff have been charged with criminal activity.

This doesn’t change my basic judgment. Though I suppose in a perverse way failing to prevent sexual abuse is an improvment over failure to prevent genocide, failure to discharge one’s duties effectively in the UN is a qualification for more and greater responsibilities in that decrepit institution.
(h/t Meryl in the comments)

UPDATE II:

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Crossposted on Yourish.