Being a peacekeeper, especially if one is an UNMO (UN Military Observer) the mantra is: – “Tolerance”; even if most of the time things have bitter taste.
Back in 1992-1995, in UNPROFOR (Bosnia), the peacekeepers had tolerated just about everything and everybody on the literal sense. The verb “Tolerate”, in its original Latin form – “Tolerari” – means “to suffer in silence”. That was just what the Military Observers in particular had done for three and half years. They were true Peacekeepers, unarmed, in the middle of the battlefield, suffering in silence their own casualties and trying to get some sense into the Former Warring Factions, to stop the killing.
The men and women of UNPROFOR military contingents had been tailored to do peacekeeping, assuming there was Peace to monitor in Bosnia; but there wasn’t. They stood their ground and endured the most dangerous war in Europe after the Second World War, with a poor mandate and restrictive Rules of Engagement. By the end of 1995, when Peace had been finally signed in Paris (Dayton agreements), the politicians were sending NATO, with its big guns and attack helicopters … to monitor the Implementation of the Peace Agreements.
It seemed things were twisted!
Furthermore, the new “Peace Guardians”, the ones who could actually pull the trigger, looked at the blue helmets with a despising countenance, as if they were incompetents because they were not able to stop that war. An unfair judgement because UNPROFOR soldiers had their hands tied … and if they hadn’t been there, the end state of that war would have been much worst; and the peacekeepers paid a high price for that.
Since the beginning of the Yugoslav Crisis, in 1991, UNPROFOR had suffer 213 KIA fatalities, of which 198 were military from international contingents; six were UNMO officers; three were police agents from CIVPOL; three were civilians from the International Staff; and another three were local contracted civilians.
Only on that year of 1995, 329 UN vehicles were stolen/hijacked and 54 blue helmets had died in Bosnia or Krajina’s conflict. That was half of the deaths of blue helmets in all the UN missions put together in 1995.
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