UN peacekeeping operations (catch all)

[Tom Odom]

The evidence is the operational zone Peter was killed in had been an area of Hizballah bombings and attacks. As for the thousands of landmines: yes they are there. In Peters case, they were in the middle of a road I had traveled on many times and it appeared at the time there were 2 stacked AT mines or an AT mine with a booster. Amal at the time was not targeting UN personnel; the SLA and the Israelis if the they wanted to target UN personnel used direct fire and indirect fire.

So when I lay it at Hiznallah's door step, I do so as they were the most likely perpetrator. Was it command detonated? No. Was it on a normal LOC? Yes

Was it an "accident"? NO

Best

Tom

[120mm]

The only reasons I can see for the UNIFIL "observers" remaining in the war zone in Lebanon is a) incompetence within UNIFIL. b)UNIFIL is actively siding with Hezbollah by providing "human shields" and intended world reaction when Israel inevitably targets them. or c) a combination of the above. UNIFIL was obviously not "keeping the peace" in the area.

The UN has been demonstrably anti-Israel for some time now. For sure Israel isn't pure as driven snow, but most anti-Israel UN edicts are so transparently designed to "get" Israel as to be laughable.

[Stan]

Greetings SGM !

If memory serves me correctly, the Canadian PKs in Rwanda cruising around in 113s and 114 command posts had M2HBs mounted. I don't know if they considered themselves PKOs or PEOs, but there were belts dangling from the 50's Tom and I encountered.

Just opnion, but I think they could have cared less about the differences in the acronyms considering where they were.

Tom ?

Regards, Stan

[Tom Odom]

The only reasons I can see for the UNIFIL "observers" remaining in the war zone in Lebanon is a) incompetence within UNIFIL. b)UNIFIL is actively siding with Hezbollah by providing "human shields" and intended world reaction when Israel inevitably targets them. or c) a combination of the above. UNIFIL was obviously not "keeping the peace" in the area.

The UN has been demonstrably anti-Israel for some time now. For sure Israel isn't pure as driven snow, but most anti-Israel UN edicts are so transparently designed to "get" Israel as to be laughable.

120

UNIFIL is an armed peacekeeping force in existence since 1978.

UNTSO is an unarmed military observers organization with groups in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, and Israel. UNTSO was established in 1948. UNTSO Liaison teams serve as scouts and negotiators for UNIFIL.

UN observers and UN peacekeepers are soldiers sent by the governments who agreed to do so. UNTSO has for decades included a US Military Observer Group; I was one of them 1987-1988.

None of the peacekeepers whether armed or not set policy. To ascribe to the idea that UN Observers side with Hizballah or any other group is ludicrous.

UN policy toward Israel is in a word "convoluted" and all sides--including Israel--use it to their advantage.

Tom

[tequila]

Tom Odom, I had no idea you were actively siding with Hizbullah. Shoudn't you then be posting in the "Indigenous" board?

James Dobbins writing for RAND is instructive as to the U.N. record in peacekeeping/nation building, both in terms of both faults and successes.

[Tom Odom]

Tom Odom, I had no idea you were actively siding with Hizbullah. Shoudn't you then be posting in the "Indigenous" board?

James Dobbins writing for RAND is instructive as to the U.N. record in peacekeeping/nation building, both in terms of both faults and successes.

Hmmm maybe so...I hope some day that the thugs who kidnapped Rich Higgins stand against a wall.

In many ways my service as a UN observer in Lebanon and losing friends on the ground prepared me for Rwanda and some of the failures there. It also allowed me to understand just how hamstrung a Force Commander like MG Romeo Dallaire or MG Guy Tousignant could be. Dallaire's book catalogs all of that well when discussing UNAMIR 1; Shahyar Khan--the Senior Rep for the UN Secretary General and senior civilian for UNAMIR 2--does the same for the reborn UNAMIR in his book.

As a US DATT I worked closely with both UNAMIR 2 and the new Rwandan government--especially the military. Sometimes that was much like being a UN observer in Lebanon again; both sides saw you as suspect or sympathetic to the other side. The latter was certainly true because I did sympathize with both sides and sometimes one had to choose.

In the case of Kibeho and the massacre in April 95, my role was to report what I saw as accurately as possible and report the views reported or held by all sides. MG Tousignant and I differed on casualty counts; he was reporting as a UN officer based on what he got from below. I did the same but I did my own assessment. Later when we talked, he told me that he recognized that our agendas could not always be the same. In the case of Kibeho, the divergence was one of perspective; he was the FC charged with a mandate (one defunct before his troops deployed) to protect persons at risk. That gave him an immediate perspective on Kibeho. And he rightly violated UN orders when he put troops in the middle of the camp and kept them there. The Aussies and the Zambians did the best anyone could do. My perspective was longer, predating his as I saw what was happening in Kibeho as a direct extension of the civil war and genocide. In my view what happended was tragic and largely unavoidable because it was inside Rwanda. The greater tragedy was that Kibeho heralded what was going to happen in Zaire and none of us--Tousignant, Khan, David Rawson, Bob Gribbin, and I--could get that message across or perhaps could stimulate the proper responses from the greater international community.

Lebanon is both the same and different. Conflicting agendas just like Rwanda abound and have their effects on those on the ground. The big difference is the attention that Lebanon draws routinely versus the attention that Rwanda (and the larger Congo War) drew by exception.

The RAND report is quite interesting.

best

Tom

PS

As an inveterate table of contents and bibliography scanner, I downloaded the RAND study and looked at it. My initial assessment is that it sets high goals and fails to meet them. For example:

The UN missions selected are relevant; many that were not selected are more relevant. There is no mention of UNAMIR 1 or 2; both missions were involved in nation building.

I studied the 1960s Congo operation in depth when researching and writing LP 14; the scholarship shown in this study on the Congo is remarkably shallow. Brian Urqhart and Conor O'Brien's books are not in the bibliography. Urqhart's book on UN peackeeping is seminal; he was by the way that British intelligence officer who dared question the wisdom of OP Market Garden and was relieved for "exhaustion."

I will add more as I finish the study.

[120mm]

Tom, I didn't mean to imply the observers set the policy. Perhaps it is the "convoluted" nature of the UN chain of command that required that they stay where they were, despite a full-out shooting war going on.

This thread gave me some food for thought last night. I have never been a big fan of "peacekeeping" missions. They always strike me as kind of like the guy who plugs the relief valve on his pressure cooker because it keeps going off.

[Tom Odom]

120MM,

I hear what you are saying and it is quite true: the policy chefs ignore the pot and the staff cleans up.

That aside, I often pose the question about alternatives to UN PKOs: simply who else will do it?

We struggle right now with the question of filling needs in Iraq for a war we essentially decided was necessary. Elsewhere in the world, conflicts go on most don't even hear about. I put Carl's Congo Sitreps on here because they offer insights into the insane world of MONUC--the largest PKO in history.

Darfur in Sudan continues to befuddle Western and African efforts to unravel. Faulty or not, the UN is often the only venue for action.

best

Tom

[Stan]

AllAfrica reports on the recent sentencing of former Rwandan Army Major Ntuyahaga who stood trial in Belgium over the Genocide. Ntuyahaga was sentenced to 20 Years in Jail for the killing of 10 Belgian Peacekeepers in 1994.

Bernad Ntuyahaga, 55, was convicted yesterday by a Belgian court which has been trying him. However, the court acquitted him of murdering then Rwandan PM Agathe Uwilingiyimana.

The murders, committed in front of Rwandan army officers, triggered the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers.

Belgium's prime minister told the court that had peacekeepers stayed, thousands of lives could have been saved.

International fallout

Prosecutors said Ntuyahaga took the peacekeepers from the residence of Mrs Uwilingiyimana, who they were trying to protect. He then handed them over to fellow soldiers in a military camp in the capital, Kigali, where they were beaten to death, shot or slain with machetes.

Christine Dupont, the widow of Belgian peacekeeper Christophe Dupont, said before the verdict: "It's a very important day, a day we have been waiting for the last 13 years."

It is not the first time Rwandans have stood trial in Belgium over the Genocide. Two Catholic nuns, a university professor and a businessman were sentenced in 2001 to between 12 and 20 years' jail for aiding the mass murders.

[Jedburgh]

UNDPKO, 14 Mar 08: United Nations Peace Operations Year in Review 2007

....UN peace operations have become essential instruments for the international community in maintaining international peace and security. The challenges and the numbers are unprecedented: UN peacekeeping currently maintains 20 operations on four continents with more than 100,000 men and women in the field.The budget for peacekeeping is expected to grow from US$5 to US$7 billion over the 2007-8 biennium, US$1.28 billion of that for Darfur alone. New UN political missions were also deployed to the field, even as existing operations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East faced continuing challenges in preventing and resolving conflict.

Once a mechanism for keeping the peace after a conflict had ended, UN peacekeeping operations and personnel are now being asked to deploy into still fractious environments, and are expected to protect civilians, mitigate conflicts before they widen, and keep societies and regions from further disintegration.

The growing challenges stretched the capacity of the Organization and demanded innovation: in his first year in office, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon initiated a comprehensive programme of internal restructuring, reorganizing the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, and establishing a separate Department of Field Support.This enabled a major augmentation of resources along with new capacities and integrated structures to match the growing complexity of mandated activities and to ensure unity of command and integration of effort.....