Disappeared News: Leaked UN document reveals plan for UN / NATO occupation of Libya, forced elections

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Leaked UN document reveals plan for UN / NATO occupation of Libya, forced elections

by Larry Geller

A leaked document obtained by a UN watchdog organization, InnerCityPress.org appears to outline plans for a UN takeover of Libya with support from NATO and involvement of the World Bank.

A longer report states that it is not intended to “offer prescriptive solutions for Libya” but goes on for 44 pages of background analysis. This report details the extent of Libya’s oil wealth and its expected disposition.

The UN Secretariat is proposing up to 200 Military Observers, to begin with a Multi-National Force led by two member states, up to 190 UN Police, and additional elections and other civil staff.

The report estimates that Gross Domestic Production could decline as much as 47%. It puts frozen Libyan assets at $150 billion, and recommends that many of the assets not be sold and quickly returned to Libya (Paragraph 136).

[Inner City Press, On Libya, Leaked UN Report Sees 200 Military Observers, NATO but Not AU Role Given by Ban Ki-moon: Exclusive, 8/26/2011]

Another report on the leak refers to an internal UN dispute on which representative would be sent to Tripoli with the plan:

Inner City Press' sources describe a fight inside Ban Ki-moon team as to which official would be sent to Tripoli, Martin or Al Khatib? It's said that Martin is winning, and the Al Khatib may simply withdraw.

Like Martin, Al Khatib jumped the gun and went to Benghazi with an already made plan: a five person structure, two from the rebels, two from Gaddafi, one from neither. It was rejected.

[Inner City Press, Amid Opposition to Leaked UN Plan for Libya, UN Refuses to Answer, 8/29/2011]

Al Jazeera’s reports that elections would be imposed. Keep in mind that Libya has none of the institutions we associate with a sovereign country, democratically ruled or otherwise. Everything we would call “government” derived from the edicts of a single military ruler.

The document also outlines plans for UN-assisted elections in the next six to nine months.

"It's a very detailed plan really spelling out [roles for] military observers, UN, police; it says things like NATO has an ongoing role and there's some things the UN can do without a mandate from the Security Council," Matthew Russell Lee, who runs the Inner City Press website, told Al Jazeera.

"So that's what seemed so extraordinary about [the report].

"It doesn't set forward something like here's four different scenarios and let the Libyan people choose; it very much says lines like 'we have developed principles for the transition in Libya'. And you have to ask yourself, on behalf of whom and to benefit whom?"
…
It also calls for the deployment of 61 civilian staff who will also be stationed in Libya in the first three months, both at a headquarters in Tripoli and at an office in Benghazi.

[Al Jazeera, UN 'plan for post-Gaddafi Libya' leaked, 8/29/2011]

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African nations can be expected to strongly resist the imposition of a United Nations peacekeeping regime after bitter experiences at the hands of UN troops in recent history. The UN peacekeepers have been implicated in mass rapes and sexual abuse in the countries they have been assigned to, with little or no corrective action by the UN itself.

This report is from 2004 when allegations were beginning to surface about UN abuses of the population in the Congo. UN personnel tried to suppress allegations of child prostitution and rape by U.N. peacekeepers:

The report documents 68 cases of alleged rape, prostitution and pedophilia by U.N. peacekeepers from Pakistan, Uruguay, Morocco, Tunisia, South Africa and Nepal. U.N. officials say they have uncovered more than 150 allegations of sexual misconduct throughout the country as part of a widening investigation into sexual abuse by U.N. personnel that has plagued the United Nations' largest peacekeeping mission, U.N. officials said.

[Washington Post, U.N. Sexual Abuse Alleged in Congo, 12/16/2004]

Although the crimes of UN peacekeepers are well-known in the countries where they have operated, the commercial press has not been good at reporting them, and the UN itself has not moved effectively to counter the illegal acts of what amounts to its occupying forces. This website outlines the situations that occurred in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, The Democratic Republic of Congo, and in Haiti.

Many cases of UN Peacekeepers raping women and children, running human trafficking rings, and doing everything that they tend to accuse others of have come to light in the past, but these cases so often get swept beneath the carpet and the perpetrators are left to continue with their crimes unhindered by little considerations like the Rule of Law.

[phillipbrennan.net, UN Peacekeepers just as guilty of Child Rape as everyone else in Africa and the Caribbean, 8/27/2010]

More on the accusations against the UN in the Congo appeared on the WorldNetDaily website here. From that article:

With the United Nations already under fire for the Oil-for-Food mega-scandal and other corruption, sensational allegations of rampant sexual exploitation and rape of young girls and women by the U.N.'s so-called "peacekeepers" and civilian staffers in the Congo is dragging the global body's reputation to an all-time low.

The article lists up some specific accusations, which would, of course, represent only the tip of the iceberg.

Human rights activist Matthew Lee claims the UN has already drafted a document that would ensure its future presence in Libya.

“In some places this ten-page plan says things like, ‘we can do this without getting a new mandate from the UN Security Council, we can move peacekeepers from missions that already exist and put them in there, we can send military advisers’,” the founder of Inner City Press reveals.

“There is one line where they just say it is not controversial at all. They say the Security Council’s protection of civilians mandate implemented by NATO does not end with the fall of the Gaddafi government and therefore NATO will continue to have some responsibilities,” Matthew Lee says.

Why are UN Peacekeepers so badly equipped for modern conflict? (independent.co.uk)
Never Forgive, Never Forget (dalitskerala.wordpress.com)

If it gets the go-ahead, the UN mission to Libya will be the 64th peacekeeping operation the UN has run, or the 65th if a mission to South Sudan is launched first. In fact, the first mission, the 1948 UN Truce Supervision Organisation to monitor the Arab-Israeli ceasefire, is still active more than 60 years later.

Despite the apparently unending nature of some of the missions, and allegations of corruption and even child sexual abuse that have blighted recent missions, peacekeeping has grown into an $8bn (£5bn) business worldwide, employing more than 120,000 soldiers, police and contractors mainly from developing nations such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Nigeria, with just over 5 per cent from the European Union and the United States