If you can’t trust the Bluehelmets, who can you trust?
At UN headquarters there is both irritation and unease over the BBC story. Irritation because officials regard the allegations of gold smuggling in the Congo by Pakistani peacekeepers as rehashed. Unease because, as the head of UN peacekeeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, put it in a letter to the BBC: “Every incident of misconduct by the Blue Helmets diminishes public confidence in our work and weakens the institution of peacekeeping.”
Fortunately, the UN has investigated itself very thoroughly and is quite confident that its Pakistani peacekeepers have done no wrong. And by wrong, they mean torturing small children over open fires.
Comment was requested of Captain Hassan Ghorani of the Baloch regiment, but his words were largely unintelligible due to the new 24-karat grill he’d had installed on his teeth yesterday.