Through such high profile cases as the murder of Ram Hari Shrestha, it is a well known fact that UNMIN turns the other way regarding what goes on in Maoist cantonments and that the Maoists are free to terrorise anyone they please with UNMIN tagged weapons. It is also an equally well known fact, which is  something even admitted to by Prachanda in the Shaktikhor tape, that UNMIN helped to inflate the numbers of supposed PLA and militia fighters. Now when the Government wants figures from UNMIN about Maoist fighters, they won’t provide this information: http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=15300 . This begs the question as to whether UNMIN officials, having failed to monitor what goes on and deliberately inflated numbers of Maoists in the cantonments, also connived with the Maoists to maintain this information gap in order to keep drawing millions of rupees in monthly salary and other benefits in the names of phantom combatants?

The UN is not new to controversy and the oil for food programme in Iraq and other scandals have shown just how corrupt this organisation is right the way to the top. Nepali people deserve better than UNMIN’s incompetence and there should be an independent investigation into whether UNMIN officials have deliberately connived to perpetuate this fraud on a poor country such as ours. If UNMIN officials are clean, they have nothing to fear and a transparent investigation is indispensible for the UN’s credibility in Nepal.