Last night I watched the film “The Siege of Jadotville”, about an actual event which happened in 1961. 155 Irish soldiers were sent by the UN to a remote village in the Congo called Jadotville. They were supposedly stationed there to protect the town from the “Katanga”, which was one faction of a Congo civil war that was occurring at the time. Everything about the mission was a disaster. The Irish troops were immediately surrounded by a force of 3,000 Katanga soldiers and mercenaries led by a former French Legionairre named Rene Faulques. The Irish troops managed to hold off their repeated advances for six days, killing hundreds of the Katanga soldiers, all the while being bombarded with artillery fire and air strikes. Somehow none of the Irish were killed, but they eventually ran out of ammunition, food, and water, and had to surrender. Their repeated requests for reinforcements and supplies were declined or ignored by their general. After the Irish soldiers were released from a month’s imprisonment as POWs, they were apparently treated like shit by the Irish government for surrendering, which makes no sense to me as they had absolutely no hope of holding their position and their own leadership did not assist them properly.
Numerous times during this film, I found myself wondering why the Irish soldiers had no air support. At one point a UN helicopter arrives to evacuate a wounded man (and promptly crashes.) Why was the UN unable to send a fast fighter jet to drop bombs on the Katanga troops, who were massed outside the village and would have been an easy target? Were there simply no UN-affiliated aircraft anywhere near the area that could be dispatched? If so, why the hell not?
The UN doesn’t have any fighter planes, or soldiers for that matter. They’re all loaned by governments for a particular cause, and it’s likely there were no combat aircraft in the area that could help.
Unlike ground forces offensive aircraft have to be provided by another military and they fly under their own countries flag as opposed to the U.N. blue banner. IIRC none of the countries under the UN brought any fighter aircraft with them since they didn’t want to be seen as too aggressive.
According to Wikipedia the UN forces available locally tried and failed to break through and relieve the besieged soldiers.
I’m not saying this wasn’t historically a mess and that the soldiers involved weren’t unfairly treated in the aftermath, but relying entirely on a movie to learn about any historical event is not good idea.
I’m fairly certain he means the obviously criminal actors in the UN who purposefully didn’t allow combat aircraft to help those men. Similar to a recent embassy attack.
Indeed. I was referring to the fact that (an often tragic) lack of air support happens sometimes and if we locked up the leadership every time it happened we’d have no leaders in any war.
Pretty much always the UN contingent is undergunned and outnumbered. Which is one of the reasons the major powers don’t put too many folks on blue helmet duty. Minor powers do it because they get paid by the UN more than it costs them in salaries & consumables. The fact a few squaddies often come back in a bag is immaterial.
The pious hope of the UN is that the presence of blue-helmet troops implies that most of the rest of the world is standing behind them somewhere. So any force doing harm to the UN troops is risking the wrath of the rest of the planet. As events have shown from 1950 onwards, this has most often been an empty threat and so now in 2017+ is pretty much assumed to be an empty threat.
Which is why UN troops get slaughtered or get defeated while being ignored by their supposedly infinite reserves.
“Retraining” the bad guys will require a few instances of Thor’s Hammer annihilating the bad guys at the first shot fired at a blue helmet. One is not holding one’s breath.
Deep breath. Yeah this is a sore point for me. Back in 1993 when Pakistani peacekeepers got killed in Mogadishu, we were posted at the same base from where the unit which suffered the casualties (10 Baloch), was from. What I remember is the next day they began a major move to reinforce the troops there. IIRC, they sent an Armoured Regiment, and two Armoured Infantry Battalions. Knew the kids of some of the guys killed. Bad times.
My Dad’s unit was not sent , but the Corps Commander ordered him and a couple of other officers to accompany the reinforcements and sent a report on conditions. My Dad and others recommended that Air assets be sent and that the reinforcement be under national; rather than UN, command. Which is why in the “BlackHawk Down” battle, you see them in National not UN uniform and helmets.
My Dad and his brother officers recommended that’s for any deployment of troops of a brigade and above, AirPower should be sent.
In Somalia, they sent Cobras, Armed Hueys and briefly Fighter Bombers. In Sierra Leon, Cobras. In the Congo, Huey’s and now Fennecs. The Indians always send Hinds now. Which is why DR Congo was not as much of a cluster fuck, despite the plethora of groups and the huge size of the country. Unfortunately Bosnia was still a disaster.
From what my Dad and others have told me the problems are.
U.N. HQ in NY tends to live in la la land and refuse to act unless it’s too late.
For U.N. peacekeepers taking action can have downsides . If they do and there are local casualties, the entire U.N. HQ is going to blame you and throw you under the bus. So you don’t take action unless you are sure that your national authorities will back you up,
With so many different types of force and equipment, coordination is very difficult and is therefore often skipped.
UN types are very hesitant to permit “offensive” weapons to be used. Arty and AirPower used to be a no no. Until Somalia. Even now, they usually only acquiesce to Helicopter gunships.
Yeah I just finished a book on the Bosnian Wars and the UN requirements for authorization of air strikes on targets was incredibly strict. Basically during an actual battle between UN forces and Serbs (or whoever else was attacking the UN at the time) the local Commander had to literally call the head of the UN or some other very high-up UN person for authorization, the UN person they called would then discuss it with the heads of other countries involved in the conflict and then afterwards they would send a decision back. This meant it would take several hours for the air strike authorization to be sent back and by then it would almost always be too late. During the entire time this policy was followed (which was a year and a half) only 3 air strikes actually occurred out of hundreds requested.
Ultimately the goal of UN peacekeeping efforts is not to resolve a conflict. Instead its to freeze it. If people aren’t dying violently, that’s good enough. Despite festering racial or political resentments, destroyed economies, rampant disease, and all the rest of war’s consequences. If there’s no shooting today, then today was a success. That’s as complex as it gets: shooting = bad; no shooting = good.
Given that goal, the UN fails the moment it authorizes its own troops to shoot back. And even more so when it authorizes counterattacks, air strikes, artillery, etc., all of which are rather scattershot moves. Especially when applied to a festering civil war where the various factions don’t really control fixed territory or have dedicated facilities to attack. You’re just firing on towns and villages and people who’re more or less likely to be actual troublemakers.
Why does the UN only have the goal of placating the alligators rather than draining the swamp? Because the rest of the world is usually not all on one side. (Simplified caricature ahead) In Bosnia the Americans were backing the Croats and the Russians were backing the Serbs. The UN “winning” that war means one of USA or Russia was going to be sorely disappointed. So the UN was not allowed to win. Or to do much of nothing beyond gum up the gears of the larger battle. Which they often did by being bullet sumps.
The UN is much better than nothing. But given the geo-political realities of the great powers’ (and their allies’) spheres of influence and overall approach to statecraft, the UN troops will often be asked to mushily accomplish the improbable against all logic while facing insurmountable odds.
Whom? The UN? Fighter planes? Soldiers? Governments?