New Delhi: Indian soldiers are caught in the crossfire between rebels and government forces in war-torn Congo.
An Indian army Lt-Colonel was injured when his armored personnel carrier came under rocket attacks from Tutsi rebels.
The escalating conflict means that the seventeen thousand strong UN peacekeeping missions in Congo is in danger of getting directly involved.
This could prompt the Indian government to pull back its four thousand five hundred soldiers and nine IAF helicopters from the mission.
India has the largest number of troops in MONUC, followed by Pakistan with 3,551 soldiers. India, of course, has been one of the largest troop contributors to UN peace-keeping missions around the world, with 8,896 soldiers currently deployed in six UN missions, which range from Congo, Lebanon and Ethiopia-Eritrea to Sudan, Golan Heights and Ivory Coast.
Indian Army battalions look forward to UN assignments since it gives them the opportunity to earn handsome UN allowances in dollars, coupled with respite from debilitating counterinsurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir and North-East.
The huge participation in UN missions, which are by and large not considered perilous, also strengthens India's case for a permanent UN Security Council seat.
India, however, has pulled out from UN missions in the past. The 3,000 troops stationed in Sierra Leone, for instance, since mid-1998 were pulled out in December 2000 after a complicated situation arose following change in mandate from peace-keeping to peace-enforcement, apart from strong disagreements between the Indian and Nigerian force commanders there.
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