Posted on 08/15/2005 11:42:47 AM PDT by the anti-liberal
UNITED NATIONS -- On July 6, about 1,400 heavily armed U.N. peacekeepers from Brazil, Peru and Jordan, backed by Argentine and Chilean helicopters, marched into a Haitian slum for an early-morning raid on the home of Emmanuel "Dread" Wilme, a gang leader who was agitating for the return to power of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Operation Iron Fist killed Wilme and at least six other gang members, according to a confidential U.N. account of the raid. But the bloody gun battle between the U.N. forces and Wilme's followers failed to dislodge the gang from its Port-au-Prince slum turf and led to the injury of dozens of civilians, primarily women and children, according to U.N. officials and an American doctor who tended the wounded.
The 12-hour U.N. operation in Cité Soleil signaled an escalation of force in Haiti, where the Brazilian-led U.N. mission had been criticized for months by the United States and others for its failure to confront Haiti's armed gangs.
It also reflected a shift in tactics for U.N. peacekeeping troops, who by the mid-1990s were going out of their way to avoid combat. Now, the blue-helmeted troops are showing a renewed willingness to use considerable firepower against armed groups that they deem a threat to peace efforts.
"There has been a fundamental shift in peacekeeping that very few people have noticed, where U.N. peacekeepers are actually taking proactive, offensive preemptive action against threats," said Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. ambassador who oversaw U.N. peacekeeping for the U.S. mission to the United Nations from 1997 to 2000. "The United States learned this when they invaded Haiti in 1994. Basically someone tried to attack them, [the Americans] blew them away and that was the end of that."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"and that was the end of that"- indeed.
I wonder if Bolton has had any influence on this, eh?
Wait till Kofi hears about this....
No. This operation was back in July.
And of course DWB rushes to conclusions about that..
Good point, and that was right at the beginning of the article too- my bad.
So when are they going to be "more assertive in Africa"?
If this is indeed a 'fundamental shift' as the article suggests, hopefully we'll be seeing more assertive action in all of their peackeeping activities. We'll just have to wait and see...
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