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Bomb-Maker Reveals Legacy of United Nations Terrorist Support

Fri, 10 May 2008 20:37:14 GMT

posted by normandoi
Awad al-Qiq was the headmaster at the Rafah Boys' Preparatory School, a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) run elementary school for boys in Gaza. At night the headmaster, who doubled as a science teacher, worked as the lead rocket builder for the Palestinian terrorist group, Islamic Jihad. This news was revealed after the Israelis struck a weapons factory in Gaza last week and killed al-Qiq. Israel has long accused the UN of empowering Palestinian terrorists. Below, we detail several links between the UNRWA and terrorism.

The links to terrorism by the well-respected teacher come not only from Israeli Intelligence but the terrorists themselves. According to a Reuters report Hamas hailed him as a martyr who led the Saraya Al-Quds brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad. The family of the teacher/terrorist have denied any connection between terrorism and Awad, but his house was found decorated with Islamic Jihad posters. In the funeral procession, Qiq's body was covered in an Islamic Jihad flag.

The UNRWA was established in 1949 by the United Nations to provide assistance to the Palestinian refugees. The UNRWA's mission is to provide education, health, relief and social services. In 2003, the UNRWA employed a staff of 24,000, with 90% coming from the Palestinian refugee community. While the UNRWA asks local governments in several countries to review employment applications for criminal or terrorist connections, the Agency has no system in Gaza or the West Bank.

The UNRWA offered the following explanation of how they ensure that they do not employ terrorists, "Unlike governmental bureaucracies, UNRWA does not possess the capacity or the mandate to conduct background security checks on prospective staff. It therefore relies on its staff rules and regulations to ensure that relevant standards of staff integrity, independence and impartiality are met." In other words, the UNRWA does no screening and can ignore "suspected" associations of potential employees.

Avi Beker discovered some early UN terrorist connections in an article from the International Herald Tribune, "In October 1982, UNRWA released a comprehensive report, which described in great detail how the “educational” institution at Sibliun near Beirut, which was under UNRWA supervision, was in reality a training base for PLO terrorists. This report noted that for the previous two years the camp had been under the total control of the PLO which, completely contrary to UNRWA’s official policy, had turned it into a military installation complete with arms warehouses, and that it had been used in supplying military training in the use of weapons and explosives to the members of the camp".

An Israeli National News report revealed UNRWA connections to terrorism throughout the year of 2002:

In February, Ala Muhammad Ali Hassan, a Tanzim member, confessed to having carried out a sniper shooting from the school run by UNRWA in the al-Ayn refugee camp near Nablus. He also told his interrogators that bombs intended for terrorist attacks were being manufactured inside the UNRWA school's facilities.

In August, Nidal Nazzal, a Hamas member and ambulance driver employed by UNRWA, confessed to transporting weapons and explosives in an UNRWA ambulance. He said he had taken advantage of the freedom of movement he enjoyed as part of his UNRWA job to transmit messages among Hamas members in various PA-controlled towns.

In September, Nahd Attala, a senior official of UNRWA in Gaza, revealed that in June-July 2002, he used his UNRWA car for the transportation of armed Fatah members on their way to carry out a missile attack against Jewish communities. In addition, Nahd said he used an UNRWA car to transport a 12-kg. explosive charge for his brother-in-law, a Fatah member.

In December, an Israeli intelligence report indicated that numerous UNRWA facilities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza had been used by Palestinian terrorists as meeting grounds and for weapons storage.

Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), the ranking Democratic member of the House Committee on International Relations wrote a letter in 2002 to the Secretary-General of the UN expressing a number of concerns over the UNRWA. Passages from the letter include these statements:

Terrorists based in UNRWA refugee camps have engaged in a systematic and deliberate campaign of terror aimed at inflicting as many casualties as possible on the Israeli population. As a result of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, for example, it has come to light that the Jenin camp alone has produced 23 suicide bombers responsible for the deaths of 57 Israelis and the wounding of some 1000 others. Camp-based terrorist activity reportedly includes the production of bombs, storage of weaponry, and recruitment of personnel.

Over the years, you have stressed, and the UN Security Council has affirmed, the importance of maintaining the civilian and humanitarian nature of refugee camps and the danger of permitting armed elements into refugee camps. UN Security Council Resolution 1208 (1998) affirms the "unacceptability of using refugee camps and other persons in refugee camps...to achieve military purposes." UNSCR 1296 (2000) calls upon the Secretary-General to report to the Security Council situations where "camps are vulnerable to infiltration by armed elements and where such situations may constitute a threat to international peace and security." I am not aware that any such report has been filed regarding UNRWA camps.

Your report to the Security Council dated April 13, 1998 concerning violence in Africa (UN Document S/1998/318) appropriately urges that "refugee camps...be kept free of any military presence or equipment, including arms and ammunition" and that "the neutrality of the camps...[be] scrupulously maintained."

Your reasoning in this regard is unassailable: "Not separating combatants from civilians allows armed groups to take control of a camp, and its population, politicizing their situation and gradually establishing a military culture within the camp. The impact on the safety and security of both the refugees and the neighboring local populations can be held hostage by militias that operate freely in the camps, spread terror, press-gang civilians, including children, into serving their forces....(B)lured lines between the civilian and military character of camps expose civilians inside to the risk of attack by opposing forces where camps are perceived to serve as launching pads for renewed fighting."

I am very concerned that UNRWA officials have not only failed to prevent their camps from becoming centers of terrorist activity, but have also failed to report these developments to you. Under the circumstances, it is difficult to escape the painful conclusion that UNRWA, directly or indirectly, is complicit in terrorism.

Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), chairman of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare prepared a report in 2002. This report documented how "buildings and warehouses under UNRWA supervision are allegedly being used as storage areas for Palestinian ammunition and counterfeit currency factories." The Task Force's 2002 report also noted that UNRWA hosts summer camps in martyrdom for young terrorists-in-training.

A letter to a Fatah official contained the following statement: “(Jenin refugee camp) is characterized by an exceptional presence of fighting men who take the initiative (on behalf of) the national activity. Nothing will beat them and nothing worries them. Therefore, they are ready for self-sacrifice with all the means. And therefore, it is not strange, that Jenin (has been termed) the suicide capital” (A’simat Al-Istashidin, in Arabic).

Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ.) has lobbied for increased scrutiny of UNRWA funding, which has been used to publish anti-Semitic textbooks and posters in schools that "glorify homicide bombers and the slaughter of innocents." A UNRWA school hosted a Hamas rally where a UNRWA employee praised homicide bombers, proclaiming: "The road to Palestine passes through the blood of the fallen, and these fallen have written history with parts of their flesh and their bodies."

The U.S. General Accounting Office discovered a number of disturbing failures in 2003 about the UNRWA and its connection to terrorism. During a field visit to Gaza, the Israelis informed the U.S. officials that at least 16 UNRWA staff members had been arrested for various security-related crimes. Three UNRWA staff had recently been convicted of crimes including, throwing fire bombs at a public bus, possessing explosives material for bomb-making and transferring chemicals to assist bomb-makers.

In 2003, the House International Relations Committee expressed its outrage over credible reports that UNRWA facilities had been used for terrorist training and bases for terrorist operations, with little attempt by the UNRWA to stop or oppose such attacks or alert relevant law enforcement authorities about such terrorist activities. The committee went on to express deep concern over the textbooks and educational materials used in the UNRWA educational system that promote anti-Semitism, the denial of the existence and the right to exist of Israel, and that exacerbate stereotypes and tensions between the Palestinians and Israelis.

In 2004, Peter Hansen, Commissioner-General of the UNRWA told CBC TV, "Oh I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another".

In 2004 a Reuters reporter captured the Palestinian terrorists committing an act of terrorism and using UN ambulances to escape out of the area. The terrorists in the film murdered six Israeli soldiers.

Michelle Malkin reported additional information about the use of UN ambulances, "According to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (CSS), senior UNRWA employee Nahed Rashid Ahmed Attalah confessed to using his official U.N. vehicle to bypass security and smuggle arms, explosives, and terrorists to and from attacks. He was in charge of distributing food supplies to Palestinian refugees. Nidal 'Abd al-Fataah 'Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist, worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver and admitted he had used an emergency vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists."

Researcher Arlene Kushner made the following discovery in 2004, "The overwhelming predominance of Hamas-affiliated individuals within the population of teachers hired by UNRWA is particularly troublesome because of their potential influence on an entire generation of refugee children, i.e., descendants of refugees".

Certain members of Congress have not kept their head in the sand and have demanded action from the State Department only to be met with a "wait and see" attitude. On May 4, 2006, Congressman Kirk, along with Tom Lantos (D-CA) introduced H.R. 5278, the UNRWA Integrity Act. This bill calls for an outside independent audit of UNRWA's $400 million annual budget, a fourth of which is contributed by the United States. Congressman Kirk revealed that UNRWA does not check to determine if recipients of humanitarian aid are terrorists, and that there has never been an outside audit of UNRWA's finances.

Representatives Mark Kirk (R-Ill) and Steven R. Rothman (D-NJ) are greatly concerned with American taxpayer funds being allocated to the UNRWA. On September 27 of 2006 the Congressmen sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice voicing their concerns over the financial controls of the UNRWA. They point out that the UN's auditors have found that the UNRWA has failed to account for nearly $100 million dollars allocated to the Agency every year. These funds are specifically funded by U.S. taxpayer support.

The UNRWA has shown complicitous behavior when a former Agency teacher, Saeed Seyam ran and won the Interior Minister position as a Hamas candidate during the 2006 election. Mr. Seyam gave this quote, "The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation." In the same Reuters report Seyam said, "Saeed Seyam did not come to the government to revive any security cooperation or to protect the occupation and their settlers. I came to protect our people and their fighters, to protect their trees, their properties and their capabilities."

The Israeli Defense Force captured video of a mortar attack in 2007 that used a UNRWA Gaza elementary school as cover:

The 2007 UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Koning AbuZayd admitted to not checking the names of those who receive financial aid against any terrorist watch lists. This act is in direct violation of U.S law which demands that organizations certify that all possible measures are taken to ensure that U.S. contributions are not furnished to any refugees who belong to a terrorist organization or have engaged in terrorism themselves. When asked why the UNRWA was not in compliance AbuZayd said that it would be too difficult because Arab last names sound so familiar.

The U.S. House International Relations Committee in June of 2003 provided the following facts about the financing of the UNRWA: The United States has been the world’s leading donor to UNRWA, having provided over $2,500,000,000 to UNRWA from 1950 to 2002. The United States contribution to UNRWA is nearly 10 times that of the entire Arab world.

In 2007, the U.S. Government contributed $154.15 million to UNRWA, including $90.65 million for UNRWA’s General Fund and $63.5 million for its emergency appeals for Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza. The U.S. State Department announced a 2008 pledge of $148 million dollars to the UNRWA.

In 2006, UNRWA was the largest UN operation in the Middle East, with over 25,000 staff members. Does anybody believe that the UN will pull the plug on this operation no matter how much damage it has done? Given the problems of the UN and the "Oil for Food Scam" that rocked the organization last year, it is not hard to imagine how many UN staffers and their families have personally benefited from the budget of the UNRWA. The real problem is how long will the U.S. government continue to draw money from its taxpayers to pay terrorists? How does the U.S. government make claims of fighting terrorism only to be the largest donor to a corrupt organization with significant ties to a terrorist group that has actually killed Americans? How long will the American people stay silent while the our government funds a "Terrorist Welfare System"?

Congressman Lantos (D-CA) sums up many of our concerns when he questions the UN, "Beyond this, I am frankly baffled as to why, more than fifty years after the founding of the State of Israel, there continues to exist a UN agency focused solely on Palestinian refugees. Why has an agency that was established on a temporary basis evolved into a permanent institution that is outside the administrative and policy jurisdiction of the other UN voluntary agencies? Why have UNRWA's responsibilities not been folded into the operations of the U.N. High Commission for Refugees? Why is UNRWA the only UN agency that reports directly to the General Assembly rather than to the Secretary-General? No other refugee problem in the world has been treated in this privileged and prolonged manner."

United Nations Should Be Accountable For Peacekeeper Crimes

Sun, 28 Apr 2008 03:23:35 GMT

posted by BossKitty

The UN has covered up claims that its troops in Democratic Republic of Congo gave arms to militias and smuggled gold and ivory, the BBC has learned.

UN troops ‘armed DR Congo rebels’

The allegations, based on confidential UN sources, involve Pakistani and Indian troops working as peacekeepers.

The UN investigated some of the claims in 2007, but said it could not substantiate claims of arms dealing.

UN insiders told the BBC’s Panaroma they had been prevented from pursuing their inquiries for political reasons.

an 18-month BBC investigation for Panorama has found evidence that:

- Pakistani peacekeepers in the eastern town of Mongbwalu were involved in the illegal trade in gold with the FNI militia, providing them with weapons to guard the perimeter of the mines.

- Indian peacekeepers operating around the town of Goma had direct dealings with the militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide, now living in eastern DR Congo.

- The Indians traded gold, bought drugs from the militias and flew a UN helicopter into the Virunga National Park, where they exchanged ammunition for ivory.

The UN looked into the allegations concerning the Pakistani troops in 2007.

It concluded that one officer had been responsible for dealing in gold - allowing traders to use UN aircraft to fly into the town, putting them up at the UN base and taking them around the town.

But the UN decided that “in the absence of corroborative evidence” its investigators “could not substantiate the allegation” that Pakistani peacekeepers supplied weapons or ammunition to the militia.

UN insiders - close to the investigation - told the BBC they had been prevented from pursuing their inquiries for political reasons.

The BBC’s Martin Plaut says that in short, the Pakistanis, who are the largest troop contributors to the UN in the world, were too valuable to alienate.

These are not the only allegations to have been brought against peacekeepers in DR Congo.

In December 2006, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Moroccan troops had been involved in widespread sexual abuse.

“There have been crimes such as rape, paedophilia and human trafficking,” he said, shortly before leaving office.

Now and then there would be a story about UN Peacekeeper crimes. These were treated as isolated and rare cases by the news media. BBC has gone the extra mile to pursue the terrible allegations about Palistani Peacekeepers trading arms for gold and ivory. Until now this was taboo because Musharraf may have played a role in supressing investigations. Why are more Pakistani UN troops than other countries?

UN PEACEKEEPERS EXEMPTED FROM WAR CRIMES PROSECUTION - 2003

SECURITY COUNCIL REQUESTS ONE-YEAR EXTENSION OF UN PEACEKEEPER

IMMUNITY FROM INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

Why is the UN exempt from war crimes?

Report on Abuse Urges DNA Tests for Peacekeepers

UN Peacekeepers and the Abuse of Children

‘The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo’ Illuminates and Devastates

As underreported as the horrific genocide in Darfur, Somalia, has been, it’s front-page, headline news compared to the untold, unbearable and far vaster suffering of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Civil war began there in 1997 and has never really ceased. Further fueled by neighboring rebels from Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda, this is the deadliest conflict since World War II, with four million killed in a decade of fighting and an estimated more than 250,000 women and children raped.

In the words of UN Peacekeeper Colonel Roddy Winser, “There is no doubt that rape is a method in this environment to create a continued instability and dominance… This is without question the worst environment that I have seen.” Classic British understatement.

The rebels aren’t the only ones guilty. Members of Congo’s own military are culpable, too, and even some of Winser’s 17,000-member United Nations peacekeeping force have been accused of trading milk and eggs for sex with girls as young as ten.

Where armies go, there will be crimes. Armies watching armies will take advantage of the disenfranchised as a matter of course. There are few restrictions because fellow soldiers will remain silent, no one listens to the victims anyway. Soldiers fall into the mentality of ‘I am protecting you, so you owe me’. Oversight is negligible until they are caught ‘red handed’ by some brave reporter with a camera. Officials distance themselves from crimes, only after there is no where to hide. Soldiering is dangerous, but soldier criminal recreation should always be held accountable by a world court. Why are laws and human rights such an expendable commodity?

"A WAR OF UTTER FOLLY"---HANS BLIX: FORMER UN WEAPONS INSPECTOR

Wed, 20 Mar 2008 18:29:00 GMT

posted by CORKSPHERE

Iraq: Five years on
A war of utter folly

Responsibility for this spectacular tragedy must lie with those who ignored the facts five years ago

Hans Blix, former UN weapons inspector.

The Guardian,

Thursday March 20 2008

This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday March 20 2008 on p41 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00:15 on March 20 2008.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a tragedy - for Iraq, for the US, for the UN, for truth and human dignity. I can only see one gain: the end of Saddam Hussein, a murderous tyrant. Had the war not finished him he would, in all likelihood, have become another Gadafy or Castro; an oppressor of his own people but no longer a threat to the world. Iraq was on its knees after a decade of sanctions.

The elimination of weapons of mass destruction was the declared main aim of the war. It is improbable that the governments of the alliance could have sold the war to their parliaments on any other grounds. That they believed in the weapons' existence in the autumn of 2002 is understandable. Why had the Iraqis stopped UN inspectors during the 90s if they had nothing to hide? Responsibility for the war must rest, though, on what those launching it knew by March 2003.

By then, Unmovic inspectors had carried out some 700 inspections at 500 sites without finding prohibited weapons. The contract that George Bush held up before Congress to show that Iraq was purchasing uranium oxide was proved to be a forgery. The allied powers were on thin ice, but they preferred to replace question marks with exclamation marks.

They could not succeed in eliminating WMDs because they did not exist. Nor could they succeed in the declared aim to eliminate al-Qaida operators, because they were not in Iraq. They came later, attracted by the occupants. A third declared aim was to bring democracy to Iraq, hopefully becoming an example for the region. Let us hope for the future; but five years of occupation has clearly brought more anarchy than democracy.

Increased safety for Israel might have been an undeclared US aim. If so, it is hard to see that anything was gained by a war which has strengthened Iran.

There are other troubling legacies of the Iraq war. It is a setback in the world's efforts to develop legal restraints on the use of armed force between states. In 1945 the US helped to write into the UN charter a prohibition of the use of armed force against states. Exceptions were made only for self-defence against armed attacks and for armed force authorised by the security council. In 2003, Iraq was not a real or imminent threat to anybody. Instead, the invasion reflects a claim made in the 2002 US national security strategy that the charter was too restrictive, and that the US was ready to use armed force to meet threats that were uncertain as to time and place - a doctrine of preventive war.

In the 2004 presidential election campaign, Bush ridiculed any idea that the US would need to ask for a "permission slip" before taking military action against a "growing threat". True, the 2003 Iraq invasion is not the only case in which armed force has been used in disregard of the charter. However, from the most powerful member of the UN it is a dangerous signal. If preventive war is accepted for one, it is accepted for all.

One fear is that the UN rules ignored in the attack on Iraq will prove similarly insignificant in the case of Iran. But it may be that the spectacular failure of ensuring disarmament by force, and of introducing democracy by occupation, will work in favour of a greater use of diplomacy and "soft power". Justified concerns about North Korea and Iran have led the US, as well as China, Russia and European states, to examine what economic and other non-military inducements they may use to ensure that these two states do not procure nuclear weapons. Washington and Moscow must begin nuclear disarmament. So long as these nuclear states maintain that these weapons are indispensable to their security, it is not surprising that others may think they are useful. What, really, is the alternative: invasion and occupation, as in Iraq?

· Hans Blix was head of UN inspections in Iraq in 2003 secretariat@wmdcommission.org

Inside Story - Global food crisis - 03 Jun 08 - Part 1.

Tue, 4 Jun 2008 15:29:49 GMT

posted by sheltercrow

Will a UN-backed summit in Rome help curb growing food prices and shortages? From: AlJazeeraEnglish

Welcome to our blog about United Nations

Thu, 22 Dec 2006 00:22:13 GMT

posted by The_Zimbio_Team
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