In Mali, Shootout in Kidal After Ladsous Stonewalled Press, Serval Leaves UN Out, MINUSMA Responds

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 8 -- When the MINUSMA mission of the UN in Mali was being created, Inner City Press repeatedly asked UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous about the MNLA rebels and their strong-hold Kidal. Ladsous refused to answer, April 25 video here; part of video compilation here.

  Now despite an agreement reached in Burkina Faso -- credited to Blaise Campaore, with little UN involvement -- there's been a shoot out between the UN in Kidal and “armed attackers.”

  Inner City Press on July 8 put questions both to MINUSMA and to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky in New York. Video here, from Minute 21:50.

  While Mali's army has been quoted about rock throwing crowds, Nesirky read a statement from MINUSMA about a shootout which left one UN staff with a gunshot wound to his leg.

  Online, MINUSMA on Sunday Tweeted a link to an article about biometric cards for the election still scheduled for July 28. Once clicked, the article was from the French army's Serval server, and didn't mention any UN role in the distribution of the cards or in the process.

So the Free UN Coalition for Access, interested in the responsiveness of UN agencies and missions, asked through its new @FUNCA_Questions twitter feed about the UN role.MINUSMA to its credit responded, with a link to a press kit with a photo of envoy Bert Koenders wearing noise suppressant headphones on a UN helicopter.

  The response was appreciated between as noted, Ladsous refuses questions, his four spokespeople have not answered a simple questions about the DR Congo for nine days, and Koenders is, well, like Ladsous. 

  But someone in MINUSMA understands that the UN should respond to inquiries. Will Ladsous and Koenders try to shut it (and other Missions' responses) down? 

 Then again, Ban on Monday named as one of Koenders' two deputies the humanitarian David Gressly, noting he went to school in Arizona. That's a bit like Mali, at least the weather, right? Watch this site.

  

In South Sudan, UN Says It Can't Protect from Lord's Resistance Army, Doesn't Monitor Tanks

By Matthew Russell Lee
www.innercitypress.com/lra1unmis091209.html

UNITED NATIONS, September 12 -- A week after the UN claimed that the chief of its Department of Field Support was misquoted as saying that the UN Mission in Sudan would need a change of mandate to effectively protect civilians from the rampaging Lord's Resistance Army rebels, its regional coordinator for South Sudan David Gressly offered the same analysis of UNMIS' insufficient mandate, in some detail. Video here, from Minute 20:57 to 28:23.

By video link from Ethiopia, Gressly told the Press that the worst period for South Sudanese with the LRA was in 2005 and 2006, not now. Inner City Press asked Gressly to respond to reports that, after the failed attack on the LRA in December 2009 involving troops from the UN Mission in the Congo, the LRA now also kidnaps child in South Sudan, and that its young and vicious forces speak not only the Acholi language of northern Uganda but also Arabic. Gressly acknowledged that for those where the LRA now attacks, things are no better.

Gressly said that until August 2005, with the Government of South Sudan set up its capital in Juba, the LRA controlled the area. Once driven out, the LRA closed roads and slaughtered civilians until its April 2006 ceasefire with the GoSS.

That led to the peace talks, which stalled when LRA leader and indicted war criminal Joseph Kony demanded assurances the International Criminal Court warrant against him wouldn't be executed. Now the LRA has become more titled toward the Central African Republic, the Congo and South Sudan, where some of its fighters speak Arabic.

Inner City Press asked Gressly about what Ms. Malcorra was quoted, or supposedly misquoted, as saying, that the current UNMIS mandate doesn't allow it to offer protection from the LRA.

Gressly said that UNMIS has a Chapter VI mandate, weaker than under Chapter VII of the UN charter, and as such offers protection only to its own observers. We don't have the equipment or man power or mandate, Gressly said, to protect South Sudanese from the LRA.

So it sounds like what Ms. Malcorra was quoted as saying is true, even if as UN Headquarters quickly claimed, she was misquoted.

Footnote: Referring to the now rarely mentioned incident in which Somali pirates seized a ship of tanks in boxes marked "GoSS," Inner City Press asked Gressly if the GoSS has tanks, what he thinks of the reports of weapons coming in through Kenya. Gressly said that yes, the Goss has tanks, but "we were not monitoring that aspect." Video here, from Minute 28:23.

But if UNMIS is not protecting civilians and only monitoring, why is it not monitoring the influx of arms into South Sudan? Watch this site.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/lra1unmis091209.html