Overview

Linda Polman's We Did Nothing: Why the truth doesn't always come out with the UN goes in is an eye-opening account of peace-keeping operations across the globe. In recent years our newspapers and televisions have brought us stories of the failure of the UN to keep the peace in the modern world. How often have our journalists, our politicians and charity workers turned around and accused the UN of weakness in the face of violence? During the 1990s Polman visited UN peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda to try to understand how resolutions are made and how the peace is lost. The result is this extraordinary, disturbing and utterly compelling book. We Did Nothing shows what the resolutions mean for the people who must live in these battle fields, and for the UN soldiers who are sent to bring order to the terrifying chaos. 'A small classic of man's inhumanity to man' Sunday Telegraph 'One of the most affecting pieces of writing about man's inhumanity this side of Primo Levi' Guardian 'What Michael Herr's Dispatches was to war in the era of Vietnam, this is to the peace keeping era of the nineties' Evening Standard Linda Polman has been a freelance journalist for Dutch radio, television and newspapers. Since the publication of her book in Holland Polman has lectured to government, military and academic audiences throughout the region. She currently lives in Sierra Leone.

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9780141012902

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The role of the United Nations as international peace-keeper has never been under greater scrutiny; never has the public seen at closer quarters the arm-twisting and power struggles perpetrated by a group of stone-faced diplomats and their armies of officials in the creaking edifice of the UN headquarters in New York. And yet how much do we really know about the politics of the organization, the daily battles which its staff have to fight simply to keep the organization solvent and functional? And what of the experiences of the troops on the ground, the 'Blue Helmets' dropped into some of the world's most dangerous and troubled countries, charged with keeping a peace which is often non-existent in the first place? Written by a freelance journalist with 20 years' experience, much of it in the field, this compelling account of the workings of the UN is at times horrifying, at times funny, and always fascinating. In a relaxed yet finely crafted style, she reports on the lives and experiences of the Blue Helmets on assignments in Somalia, Rwanda and Haiti, tells of the armies of camp-followers who accompany them, private contractors who do everything from building showers to providing undertaking services, and lays bare the bewilderment of the native population who live in abject poverty and fear for their lives and for whom the so-called liberation offered by these invasion forces seems almost an irrelevance. The text is cleverly interspersed with bland press reports from the UN which conceal the gross inequalities of the system - the disproportionate power wielded by the five permanent members of the Security Council, the shameful reality that the overwhelming majority of the peace-keeping troops come from the UN's poorest member states and that those western powers who are so reluctant to put troops on the ground are even more reluctant to make their financial contribution to the organization, thus ensuring that it is at best ineffective and at worst teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. In telling a story so far untold, Polman exposes the failure of the notorious peace-keeping missions of the latter years of the 20th century and highlights the rocky road which the UN faces in the future. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Linda Polman has been a freelance journalist for Dutch radio, television and newspapers. Since the publication of her book in Holland Polman has lectured to government, military and academic audiences throughout the region. She currently lives in Sierra Leone and is at work on her next book.

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