Sarajevo offers global peacekeeper training

Sarajevo, June 1: ''Welcome to Africa!'' This is how students are greeted as they embark on the final exercise in a unique course at a centre in Bosnia where officers are trained for peacekeeping duties all over the world.

A nation which first played uneasy host to thousands of peacekeeping troops during its own war in the 1990s is now at peace and can send officers to join multinational operations in more troubled lands.

As the training exercise plays out in the imaginary African country of Merango, peacekeepers get kidnapped. They face tough questions from authorities because soldiers killed wedding guests instead of terrorists, while others pollute a river by carelessly emptying oil from their military vehicles.

''This exercise is not run anywhere else in the world,'' said Duncan Spinner, director of Special Projects at the Peace Support Operations Training Centre.

Most students are from Bosnia and Herzegovina, which has had peacekeepers on its soil both during and after the 1992-95 war.

Some 2,500 peacekeepers are stationed there now, down from 60,000 at the end of the war.

Many trainees also come from ex-Yugoslav countries that fought each other in bitter wars through the 1990s, and the young officers are now learning how to cope with various problems as peacekeepers themselves.

''Finally we Bosnians are in a position to offer help, not only to receive it,'' said Captain Dejan Jandric.

The programme is symbolically headquartered in Sarajevo, site of the United Nations' largest ever air-lift operation, which delivered food to 300,000 people trapped during the city's 43-month siege.

Some 240 international and Bosnian army officers have already attended six 14-week courses since the centre was set up in 2005 in the base of the European Union peacekeeping force.

They learn through contact with real agencies.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR and the International Committee of the Red Cross help the trainees deal with problems of refugee camps and returns, and the office of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague teaches them about mass graves.

''Only now do I understand the role of peacekeepers,'' said Second Lieutenant Samir Sljivo, a Bosnian Muslim who lived in Sarajevo during the siege.

''I did not know what they were doing during the war.'' The lessons include dealing with local media played by Sarajevo University journalism students and upholding the ethnical standards of the U.N., whose impartiality means they are not allowed to intervene, but only assist in aid missions.

This impartiality was much criticised during the Bosnia war, when the 'Blue Berets' ended up as bystanders to the slaughter of thousands, mostly at the hands of Bosnian Serb forces.

The lessons are paying off. In a play-acting press conference during the exercise, a 'Merango local journalist' asks a provocative question about the UN's role.

The trainee peacekeeper thinks for a minute, then carefully says ''We are neutral'', to an explosion of laughter around the room.

Reuters>