The UN Mission (UNMIS, UNAMID & UNMISS ): Incapability and Gluttony
versus Recompense
BY: Gen. Thoon Anyar Ayiwen, RSS
SEPT. 25/2011, SSN; This piece is based on my personal experience and
understanding of the policies and operations of the so-called
Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO), the foster of the
UNMIS, which turned to UNMISS (United Nation Mission in South Sudan),
following the independence of South Sudan on 9 July 11.
The reasons for creating UNMISS among others is to keep the peace in
the new born nation. But alas! creation of jobs bamboozles the
indigenous populace for the advantages and sponsorship of the so
called unemployed surplus in their developed world took the upper
hand.
The following facts justifies this allegation - in the evaluation of
the employment benefits and remuneration below.
UN STAFF
UN International Staff
UN National Staff
Salaries
$ 7000 Dollars Minimum
$ 45,000 Dollars Maximum
$ 500 Dollars Minimum &
$ 2000 Dollars Maximum
Transport
Allowed to keep UN Vehicle 24/7, usually used in the night clubs
misbehavior, and sex sellers picking up.
Not allowed to use UN Vehicle during and after working hours, unless
tasked for specific service in favor of the so called International
staff
Leaves
Rest & Recuperation (R&R) Leave every six (6) weeks, CTO Leave, Family
leave, RTO and annual leave, etc
Only two and half days per month leave.
Accommodation
They are accommodated in the Mission erected facilities, secured and contented
Majority resides in the further margin of the town, not allowed to
stay inside MSA Camp, even when no accommodation available.
Trainings
They seize all the opportunities for trainings abroad, simply for the
concern of allowance gluttony
Only allowed to attend some bogus short term training, in their duty stations.
Education Grand
Accorded education grand for his/her children.
Denied.
The above comparative table only shows some few of the numerous short
comings and discriminatory and biased approach of the UN Missions to
the local populace; however they labor fraudulently to convince locals
with the false statements and persisting echoes about ethics of rights
and privileges, justice and equality, fairness, and professionalism
and peace.
PEACE> Let me begin from the word peace, the term peace for the UN
Int. Staff means peace of their own self, because people are perishing
everyday in hundreds around the south Sudan states of Unity, Jonglei,
Lakes, Western Bahr el Ghazal, and Upper Nile states. The Mission
ended up reporting only the incidents after collecting preliminary
information from the national sources swiftly to New - York HQs to
justify their salaries and to a large extend “extension of mission
mandate”.
But the reality is that the so-called “Internationals” are doing
unproductive work; there is no any thorough and visible sustainable
support technique being adopted, neither any pragmatic training nor
capacity building project being undertaken during all the preceding
CPA period to show-case except the “shoe boxes in Tongping” that are
used as office spaces as well as staff accommodation.
Most of the previous tentative projects were unsuccessful, yet the
Mission were quick to point fingers at the host government as
responsible when situation becomes tough, with the common excuse that
the security and delivery of services are the responsibility of the
host government. What is the difference between this mission and the
UN missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone? Those two missions have done
some excellent serve to the people of Liberia and Sierra Leone – they
built roads, schools including mosques and churches.
If they are here for employment and cashing fat salaries and
allowances, the government of the Republic of South Sudan should show
them the door.
Troops contributing Countries (TCC)> The bulk of the forces under
UNMISS were chosen from some of the poorest counties in the world who
couldn’t protect and feed its own people, leave alone to protect other
nation. The simple reason for choosing those countries is that they
were “cheap paid labor” and dictated to South Sudan by the foe (Sudan)
through DPKO blessing. Is it not time to review the status of these
troops to suit the new context?
As a consequence of this rammed down troops, many setbacks transpired.
For example in the recent violence that erupted in South Kordofan,
criticism was directed at UNMIS. The Egyptian contingent in Kadugle
was alleged to have colluded with SAF against the very citizens they
are there for. They were accused of raping six women who took refuge
in the “protected perimeter” next to UNMIS Headquarters.
Egyptian peacekeepers are complicit in the attacks by SAF in the
state, Egyptian peacekeepers turned away civilians who sought refuge
and even handed over some of them to SAF who killed them on spot
revealing doubts on its role, especially that its history in the
region shows that they are not straight and have abnormal and criminal
tendencies, but yet they are allowed to function.
In Abyei, the Zambian battalion failed for the third time to protect
civilians there, when SAF attacks commenced. The TCC confined
themselves inside their locked camp while the Arab Missiriya and SAF
were slaughtering, raping and looting Dinka Ngok communities outside
the Mission gate in broad day light. The coward TCC were peeping from
inside and sending panicking flash reports to Khartoum UNMIS HQs with
idiotic justification that they can’t move out of the camp, because
their APC (Armored Personnel Carriers) were too thin to protect them
from Anti Tank mortars. Imagine such lame excuses by UN Peace Keeping
force. What Nonsense!
Why bring such unreliable and cripple TCC into that known volatile
contested area in the first place? Those who usually conveyed false
assessment reports to New York should answer these question and they
should be held accountable for failing their duties obligations. Has
the SRSG have the backbone to get rid of these failures? We see them
entrenched in the new mission – UNMISS in Juba.
The other frustrating TCC Battalion was/is that one in Equatoria
Region (Sector One), the Bangladesh Army. These are the most useless
army I have ever came across in my live with zero capability to
protect civilians. Imagine the whole six good years of the CPA, BAN
BAT did nothing tangible to be proud of. They did not repair or build
a single road within Juba town or any of the counties within Greater
Equatoria State. Moreover they were provided with all the required
equipments for that purpose - from tractors, loaders and Water
tankers, name them……
Generally what they do best is eating, taking shower four times a day
sleeping fifteen hours a day and worships their Officers, to the
detriment of others. May I know why our government of the Republic of
South Sudan is still maintaining these good for nothing soldiers? If
RSS is not aware of this situation, this is it. Please give them their
‘marching orders’ back to their country.
United NATION Military Observers (UNMO)> These were the most
prejudiced and opportunistic military personal who keep blind eye in
all the evils of Khartoum regime. They played it blind when they
allowed the arming of the Arab Nomads by SAF, and troops build up
within the boarders of Abei, Kordofan, Blue Nile and the North West
upper Nile, which consequently caused immense lost of lives and
properties; and displacement of thousands civilians from their areas.
Had the so called observers carried out any proactive steps, those
catastrophes could have been averted. But they only kept on reporting
like media staff, with some sort of uncertainty in order to retain and
keep days and gains rolling. The culture of these guys is “waiting for
reports from National monitors and language assistants”, then they
take what will grantee their continuation in the Mission and delete
whatever they assume bring frictions with New York or Khartoum. The
question that begs answer is: what is the importance of UNMO in the
UNMISS, and what are they going to observe or enforce? Time up go
home.
United Nation Police (UNPOL)> The UNPOL mostly came down here not
knowing their exact and distinct job descriptions, or they are
unwilling or not serious to implement what is suppose to be attained
by them. usually they talk of South Sudan Police reformatting program
and capacity building of the SSPS, but to my surprise they seem more
interested in journalistic tasks, whereby every morning the UNPOL
rushed to various police stations just to copy what ever information
they got in the case log books and vector that information back to
bureaucratic reporting line in the Mission.
Moreover the SSPS are lacking basic police training, infrastructures
and necessary equipments to effectively discharge their duties. Yet it
is in the very country “South Sudan” where there are hundreds of
Mission UNPOL, with decent UN Salaries Scale, doing almost nothing
rather than ferrying with the UN Vehicles to and fro around Juba Town,
and usually pretending to be so engaged and busy through out the day,
but in reality all those pretend and steady stare at the computer
screen was spurious.
United Nation International Security Officers> The Security Officer,
are part and partial of UN Civilian Staff, their role turn out to be
to advisory in superficial subjects rather than effective operational
task, their main concern as put by their job description was
protection and safety of UN Staff member, regardless of national and
international.
But to my irritation, when and where ever any case of detention,
arrest, accident or incident was brought to the notice of any UN
Security Officer, the first question they generally asked is: whether
the person who was involve in that situation was national staff; or
International Staff, if the answer is National, he will take his time
to respond to the scene of incident or accident and if that was around
evening he/she will assert that it should be done tomorrow or send a
national Supervisor.
In a nutshell the bulk of the entire task was done by the national
staff, either in the Investigation, operational or Guard Force
Section.
The so called international Staff were doing nothing specially in the
Guard force which accommodate more than twenty international officer
doing nothing at all, since they can’t open and close the boom gate,
they can’t also log vehicles going in and out in the log book, they
can’t handle any insecurity situation at the main gate, thus usually
they resort to the local supervisors to handle that for them and later
on sending quick incident report under their bold name mentioning that
the situation under full control and return to normal.
Then my question is what are they doing in South Sudan for God sake? Nothing!!!
Why drain such a bulky budget and expanses on unwanted employees, more
over what they pretend to do can be handling by national staff, in
more effective approach, and the slash in the Security budget can be
geared to other most needed developmental project.
UN Civilian International Staff> Civilian Staff includes all those
sections of civil affairs, rule of law, gender, transport, engineering
etc.
These Sections accommodated large number of the so called
International Staff they were also suffering from what to do, because
the nationals were the one almost executing most of the work and the
function of the international staff revolve to be only supervisory
then conveyance of reports giving priority to their own interests
which leads them to provide erroneous and biased reports and
unfortunately the decision making bodies in the UN HQs New York base
their resolutions on these reports.
As a matter of facts most of the general service jobs can be perform
by the nationals, for that reason some units supposed to be handle by
either two or three International Staff, but not all that cluster of
aliens.
Some of the so called Internationals in other Sections can not even
write a report, it means illiteracy, but they where bestow with some
phony and amusing job fashioned titles in their I.D Cards, for example
like, a heavy duty driver expertise, Cable specialist, Network
Specialist, Individual Contactor Experts and a lot of other funny
titles etc.
I don’t think preparing duty roster, driving heavy truck, dumping of
Garbage, cleaning of compound and cutting of grasses need an
international to do for us in South Sudan.
The conspiracy against local populace was still thriving recently they
start advertising about vacancies for International Individual
contractors (IIC), from neighboring countries of South Sudan, that is
another discrimination, thus they are going to treat them specially
from the national IC, Why IC from outside is required moreover some
locals are jobless?,
The government of South Sudan should not tolerate or allowed such step
to take effect, neither except permit for foreigners to occupy NGOs
within SS, since it couldn’t be allowed in other countries why South
Sudan.
Finally my opinion to the Senior Management of UNMISS is that they
should speed up the implementation of the capacity building programs
for the nationals and introduce more chances of training and
employment for the local people, rather than importing additional
international staff which is not crucial currently.
Oh! God Bless South Sudan
By General Thoon- Anyar Aywien; The writer lives in Juba, South Sudan
and can be reached at [email protected]
Comments received:
UNMISS just nothing but money collectors Dear brother Gen Thoon Anyar.
Thanks a lot for your decent article. This article is full of the
facts about what's so-called UNMISS. To be honest with you and those
who may can come across my comment, I've to say international staff
got the meaning of international staff and national staff damn wrong.
The term national staff simply refers to people working for
humanitarian projects or NGOs within their own country. They're also
known as ‘locally employed staff’ and in this case international staff
got it wrong again by thinking that local recruited staffs are to come
and respect them by worshiping them. This is the lack of cultural
diversity within the organizational level. They enjoy very much when
they see the word 'international staff' appearing on their ID cards
and in any written document; but simply the term international staff
is the foreign worker who's hired by the NGOs to came and work in
another country. They aren't here to be respected by the national but
to render the services that they're called for. Basically, they really
failed to meet the task force that people expect from them. In South
Sudan, the locals know that UNMISS is more of money making one way or
the other. International staff should stop pretending by saying that
they're part of Peace keeping rather than being murderers because
pretenders are far worse than murderers, e.g. like Abyei incident, as
my compatriot puts it. It's really so shameful for Zambian
peacekeepers to lock themselves in a well-fenced UN compound and leave
those who can't even help themselves to be slaughter by their enemy of
peace in broad daylight. These people called international staff are
nothing but money collectors. Government must do something about this
to address the situation on the ground otherwise national staff are
going to be exploited severely by the international staff. Dominic
Dut, South Sudan.
UNMISS: Unproductive and exploitative Dear brother Thoon Anyar, I am
really moved by your article on how the so-called UNMIS/S have been
unproductive to and exploitative of our people. Alas! Someone is
watching the actions of these international thieves who feed and
thrive on the misfortunes of the World's destitute and deprived
people. While our journalists should have been the leading eye in
detecting these misgivings and unacceptable conducts by the UNMIS/S,
they are busy and fully pinned down in dividing our people along
tribal lines and bad-mouthing our leaders and the SPLA.
I am not downplaying or denying in anyway the well documented cases of
corruption by some senior SPLM/A leaders but alluding to the fact that
our journalists did nothing in alerting us about these abuses by the
UN staff. United Nations civilians and peace keeping staff are badly
needed for the common good of our people but that does not give them
the right to abuse their roles and responsibilities.
To conclude, my appreciation goes to Thoon Anyar and editor of SSN for
publishing this eye-opening article. If the UN International staff
aren't providing whatever service they are paid to our people, why
should they stay in RSS only to keep feeding us with biased reports on
how bleak the future of our country is? Thumbs up, brother, it's the
only constructive article out of South Sudan I have read in a while.
Let us allow nobody to take our people for a ride. Yaak Barach,
Australia
Exploitation of Locals is fully a responsibility of RSS Government.
Dear editor, allow me to appreciate Gen. Thoon Anyar for his exposure
of UNMISS practices in South Sudan. In fact, UNMISS behavior is not
very different from the experiences of UN STAFF in other places all
over the world. It is a known fact that they undermine, underpay,
underperform, exploit, misbehave and carelessly misuse all the
resources at their disposal. The point is that the host government
must be aware of such shortcomings and should put in place workable
policies and strategies to protect its citizens. So, Gen. Thoon,
please, blame the Government of RSS for all UNMISS failures not the
UNMISS Itself. Deng Deng, RSS
COMMENTS, PLEASE CLICK HERE
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