those who can, do, while the UN organizes meetings.

While the United Nations appears to be adept at having meetings, the organisation is hopeless on the ground say career foreign service officers in tsunami-affected regions.

As news media are increasingly dominated by footage of US, Australian and regional military forces actually delivering aid to stricken survivors of the Boxing Day tsunami, UN officials are carping about housing in major cities far removed from the front lines and passing around elaborate business cards.

Organising to organise seems to be the word of the day for the UN, say career US foreign service officers anonymously, who fault the international organisation for taking credit where none is due and proving hopeless at actually delivering relief.

A blog (The Diplomad) run by "career US Foreign Service officers" -- many serving in what they call the "Far Abroad" as a eupehmism for what appears, often, to be Sri Lanka -- is loading the internet with accounts of UN ineptitude in the wake of the tsunami disaster.

In one instance, the bloggers laud efforts by nations that have used military resources to deliver aid in an efficient -- and highly effective -- manner:
Aussies and Yanks continue to carry the overwhelming bulk of the burden, but some other fine folks also have jumped in: e.g., the New Zealanders have provided C-130 lift and an excellent and much-needed potable water distribution system; the Singaporeans have provided great helo support; the Indians have a hospital ship taking position off Sumatra. Spain and Netherlands have sent aircraft with supplies.
But, they say, the UN has shone only in its willingness to send bureaucrats with grandiose titles and patently unrealistic missions to the devastated areas.

The blog says: "Just today the city's Embassies got a letter from the local UN representative requesting a meeting for 'Ms. Margareeta Wahlstrom, United Nations Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator and the Secretary-General's Special Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Tsunami-afected countries'" -- an astonishing title that seems to hold great administrative power. But, the blog says, what Ms Wahlstrom wanted from her short (January 4-5) visit was to arrange "high-level consultations with the concerned governments in order to facilitate the delivery of international assistance" and to thereby "provide leadership and support to the international relief effort."

The UN is also lying by taking credit for things others are doing. While military personnel from several nations are working hard to deliver much needed supplies and medical care, the UN is more interesting in establishing catering and rest facilities for their "relief workers."

Going back to statements from the UN on 1 January, in which controversial Under Secretary General Jan Egeland said:
"Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh. <...> In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. <...> Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh.

"Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.

Diplomad notes that USAID officials said the statement completely distorted the authorship of the actions. Thge authors of the blog say they showed the claims to USAID officials working in Indonesia and their heads nearly exploded. The first paragraph is quite simply a lie. The UN is taking credit for things that hard-working, street savvy USAID folks have done. It was USAID working with their amazing network of local contacts who scrounged up trucks, drivers, and fuel; organized the convoy and sent it off to deliver critical supplies. A UN “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh? Bull! It's the Aussies and the Yanks who are running the air ops into Aceh. We have people working and sleeping on the tarmac in Aceh, surrounded by bugs, mud, stench and death, who every day bring in the US and Aussie C-130s and the US choppers; unload, load, send them off. We have no fancy aid workers' retreat -- notice the priorities of the UN? People are dying and what's the first thing the UN wants to do? Set up "a camp for relief workers" one that would be "fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything."