DATE=5/10/2000
TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP
TITLE=U-N ROUTED IN SIERRA LEONE
NUMBER=6-11813
BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS
TELEPHONE=619-3335
CONTENT=
INTRO: The United Nations peacekeeping effort in the
West African nation of Sierra Leone is in jeopardy.
An insurgent guerilla force has captured hundreds of
U-N troops and Westerners are fleeing Freetown, the
capital.
In the United States, there is worry and consternation
in the newspaper editorial columns over what is seen
as yet another U-N peacekeeping effort gone awry. We
get a sampling now from ____________ in today's U-S
Opinion Roundup.
TEXT: The situation is increasingly dangerous in
Sierra Leone, where British paratroopers have flown in
to help evacuate Western diplomats, their families and
others, as fighting nears the capital. U-N
peacekeeping troops appear to be in disarray, unable
to keep order or prevent the rebels from advancing
further.
In the U-S Midwest, The Milwaukee [Wisconsin] Journal
Sentinel laments that the basic problem in Sierra
Leone is that that where was "No peace for [the] U-N
to keep."
VOICE: The U-N peacekeeping effort in Sierra
Leone, undertaken last summer in the hope of
ending atrocities that shocked the world, has
all but collapsed. Unless the country can be
pacified, the United Nations will have no choice
but to abandon it. As many as 500 U-N
peacekeepers have been taken prisoner by Foday
Sankoh, the leader of a ragtag group of rebels
and diamond thieves. The kidnapping touched
off, or was part of, a wider pattern of violence
that has engulfed much of the country, forcing
Britain to send some 700 troops to rescue
trapped citizens. The United States offered
transport planes, but no troops. ... Right now,
the U-N operation in Sierra Leone is achieving
nothing. In fact, its impotence in the face of
the defiance of [Mr.] Sankoh and other rebel
leaders has generated scorn from many people in
Sierra Leone. /// OPT /// If the United Nations
stays in Sierra Leone, it may provoke further
violence and come under more intense siege. ...
the international body's experience there has
taught a down-to-earth lesson: Peacekeepers can
keep peace, but they cannot produce it. To
believe otherwise is wishful thinking that can
end in violence and failure. /// END OPT ///
TEXT: Newsday, on New York's Long Island, has come to
a similar conclusion:
VOICE: Here's some cynical advice for the
United Nations: Don't send peacekeepers where
there is no peace to be kept. If you do, be
prepared for disaster, such as the one in Sierra
Leone, where a brutal civil war has resumed,
leaving at least four U-N peacekeepers murdered,
300 taken hostage and 200 missing. ... This is
not the first time that U-N peacekeepers have
been caught unprepared in bloody conflicts they
were deployed to prevent. /// OPT /// It has
happened in Somalia, Bosnia, Angola, East Timor.
It may happen next in Congo [Editors: The
Democratic Republic of Congo/Kinshasa.] /// END
OPT /// True, international peacekeeping
missions are working reasonably well in Bosnia
and Kosovo. Why? They are both NATO missions
and those troops are armed to the teeth,
[Editors: slang for "heavily armed"] number in
the tens of thousands and -- most important --
are backed by the might of a robust military
alliance that could retaliate instantly to any
threat. But how is the U-N retaliating to the
threat to its troops? By wringing its hands, by
saying the troops were never expected to use
significant force and by begging for help.
TEXT: The Sun in Baltimore feels what is happening is
that the rebels are "Calling the U-N's bluff, and the
newspaper says the results could be far-reaching.
VOICE: Anarchy in Sierra Leone is a threat to
larger Africa. By taking hundreds of United
Nations peacekeeping troops hostage, ragtag
rebels supporting Foday Sankoh have undermined
the chief tool the world community and African
leaders have devised for dispute resolution on
the continent. ... A petty tyrant has called the
world community's bluff, and is getting away
with it.
TEXT: Suggesting a concern for increased Western
involvement, however, The Los Angeles Times says
Sierra Leone is, principally, "a Job for Africa,"
although the United States could, it feels, offer
logistical support.
VOICE: Washington soured on peacekeeping in
Africa after it failed to unseat Somali warlord
Mohammed Farah Aidid in 1993. But that does not
mean the United States should do nothing while
Sierra Leone descends into another calamity and
the credibility of U-N peacekeepers is tested.
[President] Clinton rightfully offered to throw
political and financial support behind the
effort of Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo
to reinforce U-N troops in Sierra Leone with a
West African regional strike force. ... The
strike force must have the power to enforce, not
just police, the peace agreement, and the
Nigerian soldiers should be paid U-N
peacekeeping rates to discourage them from
looting. Success is worth the cost.
TEXT: Taking a wider view, today's St. Petersburg
[Florida] Times winces at the seemingly endless
troubles infesting the continent.
VOICE: There seems to be no relief for the pain
in Africa. Famine in Ethiopia, floods in
Mozambique, AIDS everywhere, violence in
Zimbabwe, civil war in Congo, more civil war in
Sierra Leone. The acts of God -- too little
rain, too much rain -- are somehow easier for us
to deal with: It's no one's fault. But the man-
made miseries demand a different, more
difficult, sort of attention. A reassessment of
priorities, perhaps; a time to decide just what
the United Nations stands for in the world. ...
It's a pity that it took so long for the United
States and Britain to notice that Sierra Leone
was about to collapse. If the West had been
more proactive, not necessarily sending its own
troops, but helping fund the personnel from
Jordan, India and neighboring African nations,
perhaps Foday Sankoh, the leader of the R-U-F
[Revolutionary United Front] and a genocidal
megalomaniac, would not now be the de facto
dictator of Sierra Leone.
TEXT: The Chicago Tribune is also disappointed at
this latest debacle involving United Nations
peacekeeping forces.
VOICE: ... the U-N has mounted extensive,
expensive peacekeeping missions in a number of
African trouble spots in recent years, including
Angola, Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and,
incipiently, Congo. Sadly, regrettably, the
record of success is almost uniformly dismal,
and Sierra Leone offers as good an example as
any of why. Quite simply, peacekeeping is
failing there because there is no peace to keep
and, on the part of at least one key actor, no
disposition to make genuine peace. ... To send
lightly armed, poorly organized and ambiguously
commissioned U-N peacekeepers into such a
situation is to ask for just the sort of thing
that now has happened. To persist in such a
mission in the face of what has happened is to
commit folly -- or worse.
TEXT: That concludes this sampling of U-S editorial
reaction to the U-N peacekeeping mission in Sierra
Leone.
NEB/ANG/JP
10-May-2000 13:32 PM EDT (10-May-2000 1732 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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