Test of UN's mettle in Africa

Sierra Leone was supposed to be an example of the United Nations commitment to Africa. More than 8,000 soldiers in this West African nation represent its largest military presence in the world today. And the UN is trying to beef up its forces to the mandated 11,000.

But that commitment could waver as the fragility of a peace accord signed last July becomes increasingly apparent. This past week some 300 to 500 peacekeepers and UN workers were taken hostage and several soldiers were killed. Over the weekend, conflicting reports of rebels advancing toward Freetown threw the capital into confusion. And now Africa watchers worry that even after the hostages are retrieved and more violence erupts, the world might eventually leave Sierra Leone as it did Somalia seven years ago.

Some diplomats and analysts fear that Sierra Leone could mark the international community's retreat from a continent that has hosted some of the world body's most disastrous involvements.

In 1993, the US pulled the plug on its and the UN's operations in Somalia after several soldiers were killed.

"Peacekeepers get killed in fighting. We've lost sense of that aspect of military operations," says William Zartman, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. According to the West's present approach to peacekeeping, "peacekeepers do not go in unless peace already exists, but I say that's not the [real] world."

Casualties in Sierra Leone may be inevitable, and must be something that the international community accepts and plans for in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. Zartman adds.

Just as the peace accord in Sierra Leone was unravelling, a UN delegation that included Security Council president Richard Holbrooke arrived in Congo to negotiate the deployment of UN blue helmets in this East African country, where troops of more than a half-dozen nations are fighting.

Last week the government of Congo's president, Laurent Kabila, reluctantly signed an agreement guaranteeing free access to certain areas of the country for UN officials. This could pave the way for the Security Council to send a 5,500-strong team into a country that is larger than Western Europe. However, this contingent would be mostly peace monitors rather than peacekeepers.

"The chance for a large peacekeeping force with a broad mandate in Congo is next to zero," says one Western diplomat. "If we can't handle Sierra Leone, how can we handle a country as vast as Congo and with such difficult terrain?"

"Both the Sierra Leone and the Congo operations came out in part from a criticism that there was a double standard on how the international community responds to crises and conflicts in Europe versus Africa," says Salih Booker, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, referring to NATO's involvement in the Balkans. Ambassador Holbrooke "organized the so-called month on Africa ... in part to deflect criticism of a double standard."

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