Other downplayed and denied stuff happened in the Balkans during these times. I know of for instance Swedish officers having "telecommunications problems" when ordered by home command to stand down and let a hospital be taken. They "never received" that order and stood their ground.
For those who don't know what a mess it was in the Balkans in the 90s, this should give you some idea:
- at times non-American Generals were in charge of the UN forces. So what did they do? They moved their country forces to the rear, and sent "coalition" forces into battle. The reason was that any casualties (even 2 or 3 dead) would be a political crisis at home (true across most European nations.)
- the Albanian underground had to import a 50 cal AA gun from the US. What for? To shoot at UN helicopters attacking their citizens. And guess what ... it worked - the UN stopped flying helicopters after their ground search for it failed. (Think about it for a second - who else had helicopters to shoot down besides the UN?)
- the US did an airstrike on the Chinese Embassy ... because they were relaying radio signal traffic to local forces fighting the UN. This caused a major international incident, but nobody seriously denies ... that the Chinese were involved in radio signal intercepts for locals.
- The UN agreed to cease-fires with enemy forces and allowed them to enter refugee camps and hospitals. Guess what happened next. Good on the Swedes ... there wasn't much courage going around at the time.
Kosovar Albanian rebel representatives living in the US at the time legally purchased a small number of .50 BMG rifles on the civilian market. Those were bolt-action or semi-automatic, not actual anti-aircraft guns. Then they illegally smuggled those rifles to Kosovo.
TL;DR: The Swedish military doctrine created a military culture of highly autonomous units that were expected to make task completion and decisive action their top priority, even if it meant disobeying orders. Consequently, NORDBAT 2 was highly effective in achieving their objectives, some of which they themselves decided, but you have to wonder where you draw the line between taking appropriate action based on local knowledge and simply going rogue.
This especially in the context of a UN peacekeeping mission - such missions depend on consent from the belligerents, and if UN troops are seen to become participants in a war, it is likely to make future operations harder.
Do you have a source for this? The closest I got to was this book, "Mission Abroad" http://www.csms.se/upl/files/142648.pdf
where a standoff at a hospital in Bakovici was mentioned. Stewe Simson was quoted as Platoon Commander, but there was no mention of orders from higher ups nor ignoring orders.
I have to disagree. I was taught about the Balkans, but an elementary school version where Canadians were peace-keepers. Peace-keeping used to be a source of pride in Canada, but rarely hear of it now.
The Afrikaaners (Dutch-descended colonists) already had their own states (Transvaal, Orange Free state), so it wasn't quite an "uprising".
However there was a gold rush happening in the Transvaal in the late 1800s, and the problem was that it wasn't British-controlled, so that had to be fixed.
I'm not really sure colonialism and morality really go together full stop, but that may be me projecting my modern morality where it doesn't belong, its entirely possible the average Victorian thought they were doing good, by bringing 'civilisation' to the 'savages'.
But then this isnt classic colonialism either, the Dutch Boers weren't exactly there first. This is one set of colonisers fighting another, so on one level, singling it out as immoral betrays a certain kind of bias. Yes the British invented the concentration camp to lock up the Boers, but what were they doing to the Zulus when they were at war with them?
That's what the film Zulu is based on. They followed on from one another, and on the same day, they're generally considered to be 2 separate actions though.
Anyway I wasn't even thinking about what they did in battle, I was think about how they treated the civilians, how they treated them after the war, how they treated prisoners. The Boers got off lightly, they got some (all?) of their land back after a relatively short period, the Zulus didn't.
I also remember being taught the British sent Canadians into battles the British didn't want to do - the worst battles where casualties were expected to be high.
