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Africa: West
UN force kills Congo militiaman
2003-08-22
South African peacekeepers with a newly toughened United Nations mandate have shot dead a Congolese militiaman in a skirmish, a UN spokesman said. The force in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo faces a key test of will, with a French-led emergency force pulling out of the town of Bunia after stopping massacres that UN troops had failed to prevent.
Why would they want to prevent them? No massacres, no jobs...
The shooting of the militiaman, some 270 kilometres south-west of Bunia, was the first since the UN force got a tougher overall mandate from the Security Council at the end of July. UN mission spokesman Hamadoun Toure said the South Africans were on patrol when they saw three militiamen kill a civilian hostage. The fighters shot at the UN troops, who responded, killing one and injuring another. "There will be zero tolerance for attacks on civilians," Mr Toure told Reuters in Kinshasa.
Ain't that a switch...
Tribal Mai-Mai militia attacks have been escalating in eastern Congo since the gradual withdrawal of Rwandan-backed rebels under a peace deal to end a war that has left millions dead since 1998. Although the Mai-Mai and the rebels are officially represented in Congo's new power-sharing government, many Mai-Mai factions feel left out. A French-led European force flew into the town of Bunia after hundreds of civilians were killed in tribal massacres that UN troops were unable to prevent. The French are due to be replaced by a bigger, tougher UN force next month.
The Frenchies were the bigger, tougher force that replaced the Uruguayans.
Posted by:Fred Pruitt

#5  Wait, let me get this straight........the UN actually let a peacekeeper put a bullet in a weapon...........and shoot it............at someone......

My gosh, what is the world coming to, Oh the Horror, the humanity!!

Will the UN convene a committee to investigate this tragic loss of life, this senseless violence, this violation of lunatic fringe hatefulled nut job sovreignty???

And to top it all off, it was a Frog. Amazing. there was a time when I was in the military, that we all thought the French Foreign Legion was the baddest of the bad@$$es, I mean no one but no one screwed with them. There was a time when the French would have shot first and asked for ID's later....and rebels and insurgents pissed themselves and ran in all directions at the thought of the FL coming to town to restore order.

Now, it is front page news that a French soldier in a UN peacekeeping force cracked off a little AK-47 wielding genetic defect. It should be old news, wave an AK at a blue helmet and you die. Screw with the civilian population with a blue helmet around, notify your next of kin.

The UN has stood around and let some ghastly atrocities happen...."Uh, we're here to keep the peace, not shoot people....Sorry"

THIS is the big reason, the US should NOT let the UN get anywhere near Iraq.

The UN will stand around with their fingers up their butts and let the Baathists and the Terronutjobs blow everything to smithereens and kill anyone that knows where St. Louis is and then say "Boy, the US really made a mess of this, we're leaving....." and then the Baathists return and it is business as usual. Iraqi Oil for Food money lining French, German and Russian pockets and Kofi Annan's pockets.
Posted by: SOG475   2003-8-22 8:54:53 PM  

#4  SA is on the continent and probably can
summon more sense of national interest in
African peace-keeping/peach-making missions.
Don't know how good their forces are after
Apartheid though?
Posted by: J.H.   2003-8-22 11:18:52 AM  

#3  Wasn't there a story a while ago that SA troops couldn't shoot straight because they were depressed? Or something like that. Nothing like a field trip to cure what ails you.
Posted by: Raphael   2003-8-22 7:55:41 AM  

#2  Then they'll be accused of Human Rights violations, be sued in a foreign court room of a 3rd-world country, and recieve condemnation from the UN for shooting someone dead who had killed half a dozen people a week ago.

Anybody want to visit Belguim?
Posted by: Charles   2003-8-22 1:57:53 AM  

#1  I'm amazed: 1) the SA troops pulled the trigger -- good on them 2) the SA troops are seen as "bigger and tougher" than the French. That's a wet fish across the face of Chirac!

Let's hope the SA troops really do drop the hammer on each and every idiot milita thug that brutalizes civilians.
Posted by: Steve White   2003-8-22 12:39:51 AM  

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