LAK
Remember Rwanda? Remember the wailing that "the U.N. did nothing" about the massacre of all those people? Well, it serves a purpose; every time the U.N. "fails", the clammering for it to get some real teeth grown stronger.
And .... count one, two, three, hey presto!
morph!
And according to the NYTs, it has been morphing for ten years ...
"It may look like war but it's peacekeeping" - Lt. Gen. Babacar Gaye of Senegal, the force commander in Congo.
Right
-----------------------------------------
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/23/news/congo.php
After failures, UN peacekeepers get tough
By Marc Lacey The New York Times
TUESDAY, MAY 24, 2005
NAIROBI The United Nations, burdened by its inability to stave off the mass killings in Rwanda in 1994 and by failed missions in Bosnia and Somalia, is allowing its peacekeepers to mount some of the most aggressive operations in its history.
The change has been evolving over the last decade as the Security Council adopted the notion of "robust peacekeeping" and rejected the idea that the mere presence of blue-helmeted soldiers on the ground helps quell combat.
It is most obvious in Congo, which commands by far the largest deployment of UN troops in the world. Peacekeepers in armored personnel carriers, facing enemy sniper attacks as they lumber through rugged dirt paths in the eastern Ituri region, are returning fire.
Attack helicopters swoop down over the trees in search of tribal fighters. And peacekeepers are surrounding villages in militia strongholds and searching hut by hut for guns.
"The ghost of Rwanda lies very heavily over how the UN and the Security Council have chosen to deal with Ituri," said David Harland, a top official at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York.
A turning point came in 2000 after rebels in Sierra Leone killed some peacekeepers and took hundreds more hostage. The United Nations commissioned a review, headed by Lakhdar Brahimi, the former foreign minister of Algeria, which called for troops to be deployed more rapidly in peace operations.
"No amount of good intentions can substitute for the fundamental ability to project credible force," the Brahimi report said.
Recently a commander in eastern Congo, a Bangladeshi colonel named Hussain Mahmud Choudhury, pointed at a huge map in his office in Bunia, the regional capital, to show a reporter where his troops had been chasing the militias.
"Here, here, here," he said, banging on the map.
"If we hear they are somewhere, we move in," he said. "We don't get them all the time, but they have to run. Their morale is shattered, and from a military point of view, that is everything."
Peace missions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Burundi and Ivory Coast all have their own rules of engagement. But they have also moved well beyond the traditional notion of peacekeeping in which blue helmets occupy a neutral zone.
Nowhere do war and peace seem as cloudy as in Congo, where peacekeepers received a stronger mandate from the Security Council in 2003, and where at least one human rights group has complained of civilian casualties.
"The trend over the last decade," said Margaret Carey, an Africa specialist at the UN's peacekeeping office, "is that you deal with many factions, factions that don't always have a political agenda and that are not always committed to peace. Ituri is an extreme example."
The operation in Congo began as a modest observer mission in 1999. It has mushroomed, now commanding 16,500 soldiers - but is still regarded as understaffed by UN officials in New York.
After the failed missions of the 1990s, Western countries began contributing significantly fewer troops overseas. In 1998, about 45 percent of peacekeepers came from Western armies. The figure is now less than 10 percent; most now come from the developing world.
In Congo, most of the peacekeepers are Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Nepalese.
As they root out the insurgents that prey on Ituri's population, UN soldiers have at their disposal tanks, armored personnel carriers, Mi-25 attack helicopters, mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, all of which are getting heavy use.
"It may look like war but it's peacekeeping," said Lieutenant General Babacar Gaye of Senegal, the force commander of the largest and most robust of the 18 UN peacekeeping operations around the world.
Their opponents are tribal fighters who ignored the UN deadline of April 1 for disarming.
As the United Nations has become more aggressive, many tribal warriors have disarmed. Of the 15,000 fighters that the UN estimates once operated in Ituri, nearly 14,000 have turned in weapons.
The holdouts are fierce, and show no signs of surrendering. In February, militia fighters ambushed a group of Bangladeshi soldiers on a foot patrol around a camp of displaced people. Nine peacekeepers were killed, then mutilated.
Just last week, another Bangladeshi patrol was ambushed. This time, six were wounded and one was killed. At a memorial service for the soldier, Dominique Aitouyahia-McAdams, the top civilian in the UN operation in Bunia, said the death would only embolden the operation in its quest for peace.
UN peacekeepers in Congo were not always so aggressive. For years, they were criticized for huddling in their camps as atrocities recurred in the countryside. Now, some critics condemn them for being too aggressive.
Justice Plus, a human rights group based in Bunia, lamented that when the peacekeepers raided a market, some civilians "paid with their life while the mandate of the United Nations was to protect them."
Mahmud, the Bangladeshi colonel who is Gaye's commander in the east, grimaced at the suggestion that his troops have been cavalier. He accused the militias of sending waves of women and children out front as human shields during their attacks.
But he cited two wars to illustrate his men's caution in peacekeeping.
"What about the Americans in Iraq or the Americans in Afghanistan - no collateral damage there?" he asked. "We've been more rational, more sensible."
Making contact with the militia fighters is risky. But sympathizers - former fighters who have turned in their guns but whose loyalties remain with their compatriots in the bush - offer a sense of their thinking.
"They think they're good fighters," a former militia fighter, an ethnic Lendu, said of the peacekeepers. "But they hide in their armored cars. We fight in the open air. We don't fear them."
Another former fighter said he might pick up his gun again if he did not get a job.
Not far from Bunia, awful things continue. Villagers are on the run. Men with guns and machetes chase them.
In the midst of it, heavily armed UN soldiers are trying to extend their reach. They engage in something shy of war. But it is a long way from peace.
