The latest UN peacekeeping failure took place earlier this year in Kosovo, when ethnic Albanians rioted throughout the region, burning churches and other buildings to the ground. Nineteen people died in the process, despite the presence of a UN peacekeeping task force designed to provide security and stop violence before it gets out of hand. Now a German police report criticizes the German troops making up that UN KFOR unit for cowardice, according to tomorrow's London Telegraph:

German troops serving with the Kfor international peacekeeping contingent in Kosovo have been accused of hiding in barracks "like frightened rabbits" during the inter-ethnic rioting that erupted in the province in March.

A hard-hitting German police report sent to the Berlin government last week criticises the troops for cowardice and for their failure to quell the rioting in which 19 people died and about 900 others were injured. ...

"Despite continuous appeals for help from Kfor, nobody from the military appeared to back up the police," the report said. "Kfor proved to be incapable of carrying out the duties to which it has been assigned."

Further damning evidence, based on interviews with Unmik officers, Serb church leaders and unnamed UN officials in Prizren, was published in Der Spiegel magazine. The magazine concluded: "The German soldiers ran away and hid like frightened rabbits in their barracks. They only reappeared in armoured vehicles after the Albanian mob had wreaked its havoc and left a trail of destruction."

The commanding officer of the German KFOR unit objected to this characterization, explaining that his rules of engagement did not allow his men to use their weapons unless they needed to defend themselves. This certainly appears to be similar to a previous Balkans peacekeeping failure in Srebrenica, when Dutch troops stood by and watched Bosnian Serbs slaughter thousands of Bosnian Muslims in what was supposed to be a UN "safe zone". In the earlier case, confusion about the rules of engagement combined with a lack of will to employ force except for unit defense to create the perfect recipe for chaos and anarchy.

These incidents provide the best tactical reason that the UN should not ever be in charge of "peacekeeping" -- the UN, by its nature, lacks the will to employ deadly force to save lives. Most times, they refuse to even put themselves in position to intercede, as Srebenica and Kosovo both show. To expect them to maintain order in a hot zone like Iraq would be to invite dozens more Srebrenicas as Sunnis and Shi'a took advantage of the power vacuum the UN would create. Without the deterrent of significant firepower and the will to use it, which the UN lacks under its own command, places like Iraq would spin into civil war and create interminable 'transitions' that go nowhere.

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