Man of peace forced to go to war

The role of secretary-general of the United Nations is a strange and often thankless task, a sort of cross between a secular dalai lama and a global fall guy.

Among many other functions, the headline job is to keep the peace.

But as Kofi Annan knew on taking up the post in 1997, not only is that  a fiendishly difficult undertaking, sometimes it means going to war.

Before Annan became secretary- general, he was assistant secretary-general in charge of peacekeeping operations. Under his watch, Somalia’s warlord-created famine, the Rwandan genocide and the Srebrenica massacre took place, and on each occasion a UN peacekeeping force was powerless to prevent the carnage. In the case of Rwanda, Annan specifically ordered the local UN commander not to take offensive action to protect the embattled Tutsis.

Read more on the website of the Daily Mail