Apolitical Staples

The Congo UN mission - which has been hit with rape and abuse allegations throughout its mandate - is primarily staffed by troops from Pakistan, Nepal, and I believe, Morocco (not a democratic stalwart among them).

A better question to ask might be this: why are there no EU, US or other such experienced peacekeepers from democratic nations? Or, why is the UN mission in Congo equipped with junk military hardware and poor command & control? Or, why are there less than 10,000 UN troops for a country about the size of Europe?

It is easy to blame the UN when things don’t work out as planned. However, all UN peacekeeping missions are approved and authorised under Security Council mandates.

Surely, before blaming UN bureaucrats (who are as a group probably no more or less competent than any other bureaucracy), some attention must be directed at those who direct them, or more specifically, the political masters who tell their UN ambassadors what to do.

If UN “peacekeeping” has indeed morphed into “deathwatching”, then the permanent-5 have been the principal authors of that tragic spiral.

Should add: the primary source for the UN troop composition (which also includes South Africa) was a July 28 NY Times column by a British documentary film maker Aidan Hartley entitled “Congo’s Election, the U.N.’s Massacre” posted overnight.

Other accounts of rape and abuse allegations in Congo have been featured in several news stories over the past year.

The failures of various peacekeeping missions (and there have been many failures) can be blamed on geopolitics as much as the intransigence of the local players. The concept of peacekeeping, which must change to adapt to today’s evolving warfare, remains sound. It is almost always the political leadership that fails the peacekeepers, rather than the other way around.

Peacekeeping by the UN is useless, the risk to troops is not justified. Canada should pull its troops out of UN operations. Dallaire should be ashamed of himself(likely he is, he knows he’s a big screw up, therefore the mental difficulties thing).

Dallaire and his tiny force of peacekeepers saved thousands of lives in Rwanda. Do you conservatives actually know anything?

Robert, why do you insist on using the term “you conservatives”. There is no monolithic block. If you feel the need to correct or engage me go ahead but in no way are you challenging the conservative movement. It is just little ‘ol me. And hundreds of thousands of people died in Rwanda. It was a genocide. No one argues that. Thousands saved, hundreds of thousands died. That is a failure by my thinking.

It was a failure, Greg, but it was not Dallaire’s failure. Philanthopist’s comments are ignorant and unpleasant.

And then there’s Gen. McKenzie who’s version of UN peacekeeping was to say “Stop, or I’ll start shooting within the hour” - seems to have worked.

He learned this from a previous UN mission failure where when asked by the news media he replied “What am I supposed to do? Stab them with my ballpoint pen?”.

This is probably why the man got no recognition in Canada. Well, at least he got the Order of Canada this week.

General, you are fighting the good fight and, personally, I think you should be Governor General.

The Ghana troops saved thousands of Rwandans by telling the UN to go to hell and disobeying UN orders. Or weren’t you aware of that, Robert.