Posted on 01/24/2006 7:49:41 PM PST by SmithL
KINSHASA, Congo -- The United Nations pulled its remaining peacekeepers out of the national park where eight Guatemalan peacekeepers were killed in an apparent gunbattle with Ugandan rebels, a U.N. spokesman said Tuesday.
Hans-Jakob Reichen, U.N. military spokesman for eastern Congo, said the peacekeepers were withdrawn because they had completed a two-week mission to clear Garamba National Park of rebel forces. "It was decided to pull peacekeepers out of the park since any suspected rebels had melted into the jungle," Reichen said.
The park straddles Congo's remote northeastern border with Sudan.
Monday's violence marked the second-biggest single loss of life suffered by the 16,000-strong peacekeeping mission since it began in 1999. Nine Bangladeshi troops were killed in February 2005 by militiamen further south in Ituri province.
The 105-strong special forces contingent of Guatemalan peacekeepers was added to the 16,000-strong U.N. mission in Congo because of the Guatemalans' extensive experience fighting in wet, equatorial forests and hilly terrain, the U.N. official said.
The Ugandan rebels operate mostly from bases in southern Sudan, but some fighters fled to eastern Congo late last year following pressure from Ugandan troops who have been permitted by Sudanese authorities to pursue them to their rear bases.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
This really makes me wish we would have listened to John Kerry and waited for the UN to get on board before we invaded Iraq.
Yeah, right. Something about that phrase strikes me as rather pathetic.
Guatemalan soldiers in Africa? Wow, the UN sure does inspire fear in the hearts of real fighters everywhere.
IMO, the entire concept of "peacekeepers" is a naive construct of the Left. When an army is needed to crush a foe, send an army, not a "peacekeeper". If anything, "peacekeepers" are police forces, whose primary duty (after providing a deterrent nom-de-force) is to investigate after the fact and hopefully arrest the criminals. It is a huge mistake, IMO, to mix Western concepts of law-enforcement with the current assymetrical war on insurgent Islam, as well as other assymetrical opponents. What did Tuco say...
Uh, you actually haven't cleared an area of rebel activity if they are still killing your men.
Tuco
Yeah, that too. One of my favorite westerns of all time, I might add.
Both great quotes. I loved those "spaghetti westerns" too.
Guess the U.N. Peacekeepers better learn how to fight and not be the ones that lose.
Yup, that'll scare the sh*t out of Iran.
Yeah, right. Something about that phrase strikes me as rather pathetic.
You're right. This IS pathetic. More clueless ciphers sacrificed to the pompous games of arrogant and corrupt nobodies in Manhattan.
The United States sullies itself every day it remains in this worthless brothel. The UN has been "nationbuilding" in the Congo since 1959, and look what it has accomplished. Look it up. It started with Dag Hammarskjold blaming the Belgians for leaving the Congolese with more hospital beds per capita than in Belgium itself, not to mention a functioning civil government. The Congo has been a ward of the UN and for fifty years it has been all down hill and into the barn.
There are 16,000 troops there under the UN flag, holding back some of the most horrifying marauders of this or any age. They are fighting a radical group called the "Lord's Resistance Army", a group known for being sadistic even by African standards. The chief calling card of LRA is child stealing, children are taken as child soldiers and sex slaves. Thank God for the UN for fighting evil in the places we never notice, I can think of few situations where there were such clear examples of good vs. evil, civilization vs. savagery, right vs. wrong.
The UN is far from perfect to be sure but do you see anyone else stepping up? Here are some details on the LRA,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3462901.stm
Its the UN or the guys who do this, you decide, I'll pray for the blue helmets.
"The captive children are forced to take part in combat, carry heavy loads, act as personal servants to the rebels, and, in the case of girls, serve as "wives" to rebel commanders. The children undergo a brutal initiation into rebel life: they are forced to participate in acts of extreme violence, often being compelled to help beat or hack to death fellow child captives who have attempted to escape. The rebels march their child captives to rebel base camps in neighboring southern Sudan, and many children die of disease or starvation during the march.
Those children who survive the journey are given rudimentary military training, are armed, and then forced into combat against the Ugandan army and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). In combat, children are forced to the front line and beaten by their commanders if they retreat or take cover. "
http://hrw.org/english/docs/1997/09/18/uganda1528.htm
16,000 troops... How numerous are these LRA? How well-equipped? The fact is, "peace keeping" doesn't work. What works is utterly smashing these human traffickers, not "holding them at bay", but *decimating* them, if not outright destroying them. Sub-Saharan Africa will *never* be able to even sustain itself, let alone prosper, as long as the UN doesn't put an utter end to these penny-ante warlords, and their rag-tag bands of cutthroats.
You cannot do that, while simultaneously attempting kid-glove treatment. War isn't a game, it's a serious, dirty, *ugly* matter, which *must* be fought to *win*, not to stalemate...
the infowarrior
I hear they have some openings in Canada for border guards who run away at the first sign of trouble.
LOL!
"16,000 troops... How numerous are these LRA? How well-equipped? The fact is, "peace keeping" doesn't work. What works is utterly smashing these human traffickers, not "holding them at bay", but *decimating* them, if not outright destroying them. Sub-Saharan Africa will *never* be able to even sustain itself, let alone prosper, as long as the UN doesn't put an utter end to these penny-ante warlords, and their rag-tag bands of cutthroats.
You cannot do that, while simultaneously attempting kid-glove treatment. War isn't a game, it's a serious, dirty, *ugly* matter, which *must* be fought to *win*, not to stalemate..."
You could say the same of the current US efforts in Afghanistan, the rebels are always a weaker force on paper but their very nature makes them all but impossible to destroy. Why havent we defeated all the warlords running Afghanistan outside of Kabul? Why cant we find Mullah Omar and Bin Laden? The answer is the same in Africa, they blend into the population, cross over international borders where they cant be followed, they bully the local populations into quartering them. In the case of the LRA how exactly would you "decimate" a cult army made up of kidnapped children?
The UN pulled back the Guatemalans but not the entire mission. Thats like saying we abandoned East Iraq when the token forces from El Salvador, Dominica and Nicaragua left. Peace keeping, nation building and occupation are all the same thing seen from different prespectives - its never an easy thing though, not for the UN in Congo or the US in Iraq. These missions are not done because they are easy, they are done because turning away means the deaths of tens of thousands of innocents.
Many here find it fashionable to bash *everything* the UN does, in this case they are doing something very worthwhile, they deserve our support and prayers.
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