Britain has about 270 troops in a decades-long peacekeeping operation in Cyprus, and is now shifting its attention to Africa.
Re "New Role of Guard Transforming Military" (front page, Jan . 24: With an Army of half a million full-time professional soldiers, is it necessary for members of the Army Reserves and the National Guard to be sent on long overseas peacekeeping missions, like the one in Bosnia?
The Marine Corps could also be asked to share long-term peacekeeping duties, which traditionally have fallen to the Army.
The long-standing peacekeeping force in the country was boosted last year by 3,000 troops from various African countries, and was given the mission of actively fighting the rebels.
One was the physical revival of Beirut from a bomb-scarred wreck to a gleaming magnet for tourism; another the brave popular uprising of 2005, which forced neighbouring Syria to pull out its long-overstayed "peacekeeping" troops.
But it worries whether it could even do that, and get out again within the six weeks it talks of, rather than find itself drawn in as a long-term peacekeeping force.
One of Washington's fears is that American troops involved in disarming the rebels would get caught up in other tasks, which could lead to deeper involvement, including long-term peacekeeping.
Director: Geeta Gandbhir, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy / Country: Pakistan, US In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, three Bangladeshi policewomen joined a unit of 160 travelling to the country for a year-long UN peacekeeping mission.
In the latter case, one operation could be a long-term peacekeeping mission and the other a short war; they would not both last longer than six months or involve prolonged combat.But since 2006 Britain has run two protracted and often intensely violent operations.
ABU SUROUJ, Sudan — As Darfur smolders in the aftermath of a new government offensive, a long-sought peacekeeping force, expected to be the world's largest, is in danger of failing even as it begins its mission because of bureaucratic delays, stonewalling by Sudan's government and reluctance from troop-contributing countries to send peacekeeping forces into an active conflict.
