UNITED NATIONS, July 18 -- The murder by Afghan National Forces of UN Security officer Louis Maxwell last October is supposed to now be investigated by the Hamid Karzai government.
Inner City Press has learned that the Karzai administration has yet to do anything, and now that the UN is only half heartedly following up, for reasons of “cultural sensitivity,” as UN Security chief Gregory Starr told Inner City Press -- or cynical political accommodation, as diplomats close to the case put it.
Asked about the Maxwell case on July 14, Starr told Inner City Press, “The problem is, in many cases you're asking the Afghans to really follow up on one person. How many thousands of Afghans have died? So you've got to be sensitive culturally.”
Other UN Security personnel since interviewed by Inner City Press have expressed concern. “He's supposed to represent us,” as one put it, asking that his name not be used for fear of retaliation. “He's not supposed to accept the cover up of the murder of a UN staff, to suck up to the Afghans - or to the Americans.”
A UN Board of Inquiry report, still be withheld from the public and Mr. Maxwell's family, calls on the Afghans to identify the individuals who killed Maxwell long after an attack on a UN guesthouse, which Maxwell fought off.
When Inner City Press asked UN peacekeeping official Susana Malcorra for any progress, she said that the head of the UN Department of Safety and Security Gregory Starr had traveled to Kabul, and to ask him. But Mr. Starr has yet during his tenure to hold a press conference.
On July 14, Inner City Press waited outside the UN's ECOSOC chamber to ask Starr about the case. After six o'clock he emerged, and to his credit agreed to answer some questions from the Press. He said:
“There's a joint investigation by the American FBI and the Afghans. We know Louis was killed after the attack. The circumstances of that are still under investigation. I spoke to the minister of the interior of Iraq [sic] myself and they are looking into it. I hope ultimately to find all the circumstances. There is the video. The problem is interpreting what really happened in that video. We're not an investigative agency. We've turned it over to the proper investigative authority.”
Significantly, Starr added as a concession, “I think there is a momentary glitch. The Minister of Interior was dismissed.”
After a pause, Inner City Press asked Starr about (non) answers it got on June 30 from UN envoy to Afghanistan Staffan de Mistura (video here) and from then Security Council president Claude Heller of Mexico, who'd led the Council's trip to Kabul (video here). Inner City Press concluded, it seems like the issue is falling off the map.
Staff considered it, then said, verbatim: “The problem is, in many cases you're asking the Afghans to really follow up on one person. How many thousands of Afghans have died? So you've got to be sensitive culturally.”
Not only other UN Security officers but also diplomats and non UN military personnel since interviewed by Inner City Press have expressed deep concerns. “They are covering up the death of this guy, because the UN and US want good relations with Karzai,” one said. “So if they go to Somalia, if the TFG [Transitional Federal Government] or Ugandan peacekeepers kill a UN staff, they'd cover that up too?”
Perhaps Mr. Starr, and Ms. Malcorra's deputy Tony Banbury who asserted there was no cover up, but then ducked questions, will now provide more answers, including to the Maxwell and UN family. Watch this site.
And see cell phone video, here, esp. at Minute 1:01 to 1:04And see, www.innercitypress.com/un5maxstarr071810.html
