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The day after Inner City Press asked both US Ambassador Samantha Power and UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric about the UN Mission in South Sudan giving automatic weapons to warlord James Koang, who killed civilians, a new UN outrage was brought to the attention of Inner City Press and after its publishing and asking about it (video here), was confirmed by the UN.
Since the UN covered up its arming of South Sudan warlord Koang, and refuses to answer written questions including about its use of public funds, we published this report on this we'll follow up:
The UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, UNAMI, under the authority of the UN Department of Safety and Security (DSS), have "lost" 25 weapons from their armory in their base in the Green Zone in Baghdad.
The loss includes 18 Glock 9mm pistols, 5 G36 assault rifles, and 2 G36 sniper rifles. Sources say that 10,000s of thousands of rounds of ammunition are also missing.
DSS only discovered or internally acknowledged this months after the fact and cannot account for their loss. The UN's Fijian Guard Unit have had to start patrolling inside the base.
Source: Inner City Press
Related: Small Arms Survey Sudan [PDF]
Washington Post: Report: U.N. gave arms to South Sudan rebels later implicated in massacre
(Score: 2) by n1 on Wednesday December 21 2016, @08:16PM
Just because it's not the largest weapons theft in history doesn't mean it's not relevant or important.
I'm not OK with saying it's acceptable or should be seen as inevitable that the UN of all organizations to have lower standards of security and inventory control than a small business does with it's stock of staplers.
When the weapons markets are full of old and poorly maintained soviet surplus, a few well maintained rifles and good quality ammunition is valuable. Unless of course we're acknowledging coalition forces routinely 'lose' and 'mis-allocate' large amounts of weapons in the region to level the playing field. And the more direct cases of 'arming the rebels' through allocations to Libya and Turkey.
10k rounds isn't a lot when they're being used at a shooting range or whatever, but in countries like Iraq and Sudan that are quite literally in the midst of civil war... The people who do end up with these weapons and ammunitions are not going to be using them for sport.
If the peace-keepers of the world lose a pickup truck load of weapons every so often, it's something that should be reported on. There should be more effort to hold the UN accountable and place their operations under scrutiny rather than the framing that they are an overly-bureaucratic organization that has some reasonable intentions in their mission statement. They do make actions and those actions have consequences, like bringing cholera to Haiti, which coincidentally killed 10,000 people without using any ammunition.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 21 2016, @08:42PM
Unless of course we're acknowledging coalition forces routinely 'lose' and 'mis-allocate'
I agree that drives the story, if this is one armory once, vs if it happens every month at every site.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday December 22 2016, @03:23AM
Ooga-boogas aren't exactly accurate or precise warriors. They spend ammo like they spend their EBT and welfare -- all up-front and as fast as they can. If they get their ashy hands on a full-auto capable rifle and ten goat-horns* full of ammo, they're gonna use full-auto and run through all ten goat-horns just to take down one or two dudes at close range, and just waste all their ammo without any kills at medium range.
* "Cuernos de chivo" in Mexican