Thread: Is Peacekeeping extinct?

Originally Posted by exported_kiwi

I'd agree with the SapperSgt, keep your men alive comes first in this situation. As for my solution, kill em both, shows impartiality as the UN should do and also shows that we're not gonna take their Sh*t any more so settle the hell down.......

You're thinking of the phrase, "Kill em all and let God sort em out". However satisfying that might be, it's not really practical. You also could just let them kill each other but maybe that's why you're there.

Some advocate the "Indiana Jones" approach. That's where you surprise everyone by shooting the most vocal of the agitators. That eliminates the the motivators and shocks the hell out of the crowd. This could backfire and make you the focus of both groups anger. This could make it tough for you to get out without any casualties.

Negotiations have failed. Maybe you shoot over their heads and try to intimidate them? Remember they have guns too. Disarming the groups could be problematic. Insinuating yourself between the groups is dangerous. Escorting one of them out danger (temporarily) has the same problems.

Whatever you decide to do you need to keep mutually supporting and clear fields of fire between your men. You need to assign individuals to target those people who are armed with orders to take them out if the situation degenerates.

Most important of all you need to be able to "get the hell out of Dodge", have a plan (and a path) to retreat. You are in a bad spot that could get worse and it just may be that there are no good decisions. Your only choice may be which choice is least bad. This is why you get the big money.

Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers

If you search this scenario, you will find the answer.

Situation: Your section of 12 comes across a village where you have one bunch of people ready to slaughter another bunch. The surrounding bunch has a few AK-47s but mainly machetes to do their work. You see one pregnant teenage mother with a baby on her back ready to machete another teenage pregnant mother with a baby on her back. You try negotiation but situation is tense and as soon as that teenage mother strike, you know the slaughter would begin.

What are you going to do?

I'm not a soldier, and nor to I pretend to be, so I can't reasonably answer that because I've never been in a situation like that.

Point taken though.

I have merely briefed through some of the more recent material on this so here goes. While I would like to believe that peacekeeping is not extinct it is an unfortunate fact that in its truest form it has only led to unnecesary deaths on all sides including the UN toops.

By crushing both sides?
That's not really what the UN is about.
And let's face it, if two groups want to fight each other to extinction (Serbs and Bosnians, Communist rebels and Corrupt Capitalist Governments, Sudan's various factions etc) what can you do about it?

By the way Irish operations with the QRF in Liberia are not peacekeeping they are peace enforcment which means if the local warlords refuse to be peacful then it will be enforced for the greater good of the civilians who suffer as a result of their blind greed and stupidity.
This should have been used in so many places so many times before but was not. Kosovo is not as said already UN, and is more akin to peace enforcement in its organisation and mandate.

But instead we should just kill everyone who's fighting anyway, huh

this is a remarkebly uninformed opinion I'm afraid. While we cannot fix or help everything those who need to be put down to safeguard inoccent lives should be. I would like to see you maintain this frame of mind were you a hostage in a bank for example wating for the wing or some other unit to rescue you. By the way think 1930's - 1940's and ask yourself where would we be today had Neville Chamberlines early way of conducting foreign policy had prevailed for too much longer.

Sgt,

I would like to welcome your voice again to this forum and I hope your son's little cries for his daddy can at least lessen the nightmares of what we had to do.

Originally Posted by sappersgt

As you (quickly) go down the list of options running through your mind one thing springs to the fore. Don't get YOURSELF (and your men) killed!

That would not be the way the Indian UN contingents would take action.

Our own lives is the last thing that one would worry about.

The task would have to be done.

That is why Jetley was honest enough to tell it as it was. No PC.

He had hell to pay from the international media and the UN.

Likewise, if it ever came about that Indian troops and their officers worried about themselves and not the task, then they could kiss their promotions goodbye.

In such a situation as the Colonel has painted, the side that did not listen to the UN officer would face the ire. The task is to enforce peace. The UN signifies that. The side which does not obey the orders, will have to buy it.

By the way Irish operations with the QRF in Liberia are not peacekeeping they are peace enforcment which means if the local warlords refuse to be peacful then it will be enforced for the greater good of the civilians who suffer as a result of their blind greed and stupidity.
This should have been used in so many places so many times before but was not. Kosovo is not as said already UN, and is more akin to peace enforcement in its organisation and mandate.

I am glad Kosovo happened and also Somalia as a lesson to those, especially those vociferous individuals who debunk the UN and who think peace enforcement or peace keeping is as easy as pinching a baby's bottom.

Oh yes, many an excuse will be trotted out with glib overflow for Somalia, but the truth is that it is no easy task. Even see Iraq.

So, before debunking the UN operations, tarry a while and think!

UN operations have failed with much less resources, NATO has failed with greater resources and will as a comity of a group of Nations and even the mightiest military of the US has failed in Iraq! And the nations of the Coalition of the Willing (COW) are quietly deserting the sinking ship that they had boarded with stars in their eyes! If it were so easy, then success would be axiomatic and the those deserting the ship would have instead been playing the band!

So, it is not easy.

Sir,

In the actual situation, a Nigerian section came upon just this scene. They failed to stop the butchering.

The problem, Sir, is that unless EVERYONE knows that they have orders to intervene, then intervening is a danger to the entire mission. Intervene here will invite retribution somewhere else where the UN contingent would not be expecting it. Stop the butchering here through force and the Captain who's negotiating at the other side of the mountain is now dead meat.

A section leader does not have that kind of authority to institute policy at such a wide level.

If that authority is given, as in the case of Gen Jetley, then the policy is to shoot the biggest bastard with an AK47. If that does not stop the butchering, shoot the mother with the machete.