How It's Used

“Salahuddin [Rabbani, the eldest son of the president of Afghanistan] said he had hoped that the U.N. would not attempt to impose a disarmament process, and in fact that possibility had been left out of the final text of the Bonn agreement.  ‘What do you think,’ Salahuddin said, ‘that the Blue Helmets would be able to come and say to the people, “Give me your gun”?  The gun is more than about power and survival; to Afghans having a gun is a source of pride.  You can’t just take them away.  So this is impossible in Afghanistan.’”

—Jon Lee Anderson, “City of Dreams: A peace of sorts comes to Kabul,” The New Yorker, December 24 and 31, 2001, p. 57.

"[Dominique] De Villepin wants power to pass from the Pentagon to the U.N. Security Council before it winds up in the hands of Iraqis, and while he clearly has a vested interest in taking such a stance, he also has a point. Keep in mind, first of all, that no Security Council members—not even the French—want to turn the military part of the occupation into a purely blue-helmet affair; some would like to see U.N. peacekeeping forces play a role in Iraq, but nobody has a problem with keeping them (or any other nation's troops or security forces) under the unified command of the United States."

—Fred Kaplan, "Give Iraq to the U.N. (Sort Of): How to share power during the occupation," Slate, September 17, 2003.

Links

Related on eAlmanac
The Five Permanent Members of the U.N. Security Council

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on Peacekeeping
The United Nations Peacekeeping official website
Slate article "Where's My Blue Helmet? How to become a U.N. peacekeeper"