Mending Broken Fences

So as of yesterday, 24Jun, I have been the acting sector commander, being the deputy that is what you do when the sector commander goes away. It has been interesting. My first full day and I had to deal with us, the UNPOL's, getting banned from going to the local police station. If we can't go there we cannot do what we came here to do. And of course the local commander knows this and uses it as a tool of influence.

It all stemmed over the local police being able to use the UN flights to travel or not. It takes days to get anywhere in this country by car and I could see how it would be of benefit to them. The problem is when some are allowed and some aren't then it gets a little tricky and it really has nothing to do with UNPOL because we don't set UN policy but we sure take the brunt of the backlash.

So we get banned this morning, almost like being BCR'd (band council resolution) off an Indian reservation in Canada but less formal and way more political, possibly international implications. Our headquarters in Khartoum finds out about it, rather quickly I might add, and the phone starts ringing. Everyone wants to know what sort of ship the new guy is running.

Thanks to a couple of very dialed in Arabic UNPOLs and some fancy foot work by our Acting Head of Office ( the civilian boss in each sector) we were able to mend the fence that the neighbour's kid broke. So we are back in action, today went really fast. Not very exciting stuff, just another day.