U.N. missions painted as booze-soaked orgies

NEW YORK — A book by three current and former U.N. employees about peacekeeping operations portrays wild parties with alcohol and drugs, and convicts and mental-asylum inmates passing as soldiers.

Embarrassed U.N. officials have threatened firing or other disciplinary action against two of the authors, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson. U.N. rules bar employees from writing about their work without approval, which had been denied in this case.

The third author, former U.N. employee Kenneth Cain, works full time as a writer.

The book, “Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Matters,” covers the authors’ experiences during the mid-1990s in Cambodia, Somalia and Haiti and paints unflattering pictures of the operations and the peacekeepers. It is due out on June 1.

The U.N. peacekeepers sent to Cambodia in 1993 to restore normalcy and supervise open elections, resembled “the international jet set on vacation,” writes Mr. Cain, a Harvard law-school graduate.

The writers describe sex parties in “a villa” in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, that was “well-known for its Friday night parties,” where alcohol and drugs were commonly used.

A favorite drink among the U.N. personnel at the parties was the “Space Shuttle.” It was made “by distilling a pound of marijuana over a six-week period with increasingly good quality spirits. It is a work of love, and the final product is an amber-colored liquid that tastes like cognac. We drink it with rounds of Coke.”

In another section, the authors say the “peacekeeping troops” sent to Cambodia by Bulgaria were not really soldiers.

They write that the Bulgarian government, starved for hard currency, actually cut a deal with inmates, offering them pardons if they accepted the U.N. assignment. Bulgaria, in turn, received financial compensation from the United Nations for its troops.

“The Bulgarians wanted the money, but didn’t want to send their best-trained troops. So … they offered inmates in the prisons and psychiatric wards a deal: Put on a uniform and go to Cambodia for six months, you’re free on return,” the book says.

Scores of criminals accepted the offer, were given uniforms and became U.N. peacekeepers, the authors say.

Mr. Cain describes the Bulgarians as “a battalion of criminal lunatics [who] arrive in a lawless land. They’re drunk as sailors, rape vulnerable Cambodian women and crash their U.N. Land Cruisers with remarkable frequency.”

The Bulgarian Embassy yesterday denied all accusations of wrongdoing in connection with its dispatch of peacekeepers to Cambodia.

“It is totally untrue that the mission was made up of prisoners. Its members were reservists, and they were led by military commanders. Our regular army units were forbidden by law from undertaking foreign assignments at that time,” Ambassador Elena Poptodorova said.

On the charge that Bulgaria undertook the job because it needed hard currency, she said, “U.N. compensation for our expenses came much later.”

Story Continues →