Judean People's Front Crack Hostage Squad
Perhaps this is why the French so admire UN peacekeepers -- their ability to surrender in a flash.
As the Bad Idea of the week wears on, keep in mind these inglorious incidents from U.N. peacekeeping files:
Following the NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb positions on 25-26 May, Bosnian Serb forces shelled Tuzla on 27 May and continued to take UN peacekeepers hostage throughout the weekend. The Serbs clashed with French troops in Sarajevo the next day and had taken between 320 and 350 UN soldiers captive by the morning of 29 May, among them Czechs, Egyptians, and Ghanaians as well as Serbia's traditional allies: British, French, and Russians. At least three men have been chained to potential military targets, and at least six more are being used as human shields to deter further NATO air strikes. The Serbs say the men will be freed only when Pale has complete assurance there will be no more air attacks, international media reported. A UN spokesman said the Serbs were behaving like a "terrorist organization."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan returned to New York a day early Thursday for a closed-door Security Council session focusing on the increasingly tense situation in Sierra Leone, where a rising number of United Nations peacekeepers have been taken hostage....UNAMSIL is due to reach its full strength of 11,100 by July, when it will be the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation in the world. Its mission is also to oversee disarmament and demobilization of an estimated 45,000 fighters ahead of elections planned for early 2001. [emphasis mine]
UN peacekeepers are a danger to themselves -- bumbling incompetents taken prisoner by the bad guys they are supposed to be guarding / monitoring / disarming -- and a greater danger to the world community -- by allowing the thugs to carry out their missions of genocide / weapons procurement / slaughter while the multilateral organizations fiddle.
