A Coyote armoured recon vehicle in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2001. Photo by Brian Walsh.
It would probably please Robert Fowler to hear that Canadian soldiers may go from fighting in Afghanistan to a more “traditional” UN peacekeeping mission in Africa after 2011. You remember the more “traditional” peacekeeping missions, don’t you? Watching scores of people get slaughtered while standing behind United Nations barricades with strict rules of engagement.
But then again, deploying our military to where it can be least effective in curtailing human rights abuses seems to be what pleases Canada’s “troops out” crowd the most. Canada’s military just finished a 19-year deployment in Bosnia-Herzegovina with little fanfare back here at home. Indeed, you would be hard pressed to find Canadians who actually knew that Canada was involved in a UN/NATO mission in Bosnia at all.
If you’ll recall, Canada’s forces were part of UNPROFOR, the UN peacekeeping force in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men were still unable to prevent incidents like the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the second genocide in as many years under a UN command. Yet Canadians are urging our military to return to missions like these. [For the record, Canadians didn't fail to prevent the massacre. The UN botched the mission by declaring Srebrenica a "safe area" under UN protection in 1993, but a 400-strong contingent of armed Dutch peacekeepers wasn't enough.]
Now the military is quietly looking at the command of the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission in the Congo. The Congo mission is a nice, safe job for Canada, where there are already has 20,000 international soldiers from 50 countries on the ground. There’s no nasty insurgents to root out, or enemy positions to strike, or IED’s to roll over. A perfect place to station our troops where they can be least effective.
The United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) was established in 1999. It is described as having “entered a peace enforcement phase of operations.” This sounds like a perfect fit for Canada’s mushy middle, who understand the need for having a military, but don’t want to see any soldiers actually get killed in combat.
According to the UN website, “human rights are abused with impunity, corruption is endemic (and) heavily armed rebels continue to challenge state authority in the east.” Jeez, it sounds almost exactly like Afghanistan, but that point will likely escape most of the “troops out” crowd. Another objective is to improve the lives of the civilians there and stop the “widespread rape of young women and girls.”
Well, as we leave Afghanistan’s young women and girls to the Taliban threat, I’m sure they’ll take great comfort in the fact we’ll be trying to help women in the Congo. Besides, we’ll be much less likely to try and and “colonize” the Congo, and we won’t need to pay the “blood and treasure” required to make us feel good about the belief we’re helping people in a country far away that we don’t otherwise give a damn about.
You make a compelling argument but the only thing the Afghani’s fear in the sand is scorpions frankly. Conservatives will be treading water in Quebec as long as we are on the front lines in Afghanistan and not somewhere else doing a baby sitting job.
Yeah, I guess sitting in a hut in the Congo will make everybody talk about tortured combatants a lot less.
“U.N. Blue Beret Peacekeeping” Gig in the then “Belgian Congo,” circa early 1960′s? That’s fifty years ago, and it’s still going on. Stanleyville, Leopoldville, Simba Rebels; Been there, done that. As it was then, so is it today – one large CROCK.
“Peacekeeping” as imagined by many of today’s bright lights, has been, in fact, nothing more than putting troops in harm’s way; mere window-dressing – as toothless, unarmed/disarmed observers. Unarmed and improperly tasked, mandated KEEP the peace,yet not having the authority nor the means to succeed.
War is indeed hell. So too, is what we consider “peace keeping.” Both have serious casualties. On all sides.
Peacekeepers contend with personal demons, nightmares of lives destroyed, as we, weaponless, keep the butcher’s tally. Take it from Senator Dallaire.
If we be peacekeepers, then we need better definitions, better mandates, better and more effective guidelines.
“…sitting in a hut in the Congo…” Most uncharitable, misinformed mischaracterization – nobody I served with ever sat around in huts in the Congo.
“… will make everybody talk about tortured combatants a lot less…” extremely doubtful.
If there are so many peacekeepers in Africa, why is there still so much war and killing.
Look but don’t touch seems to be the thinking.
Ah Africa.. now that is a fubar place. We have been fixated on the middle east for decades but what about Africa? I hear the Chinese are moving in big time.
Mary T.:
For possible answers to your Q?
Try reading Ret. Generals Lewis Mackenzie and Romeo D’Allaire. Find out about, and try to make some sense out of the UN apparatus and politics, to find out about who is REALLY in charge of so-called “peacekeeping” ops. Grim stuff.
Lew tells of what he did in Yugoslavia, in spite of some orders – he saved lives rather than watch. D’Allaire was is a similar predicament, but was not at all able to intervene. The “chain of command” had been changed.