Tevita Vuibau
SUVA (The Fiji Times / Pacific Media Watch): The Fiji military has started selection of soldiers to replace the 45 Fijian peacekeepers who are captives of Islamist militants in the Golan Heights on the demilitarised zone between Israel and Syria.
And Republic of Fiji Military Force (RFMF) commander Brigadier-General Mosese Tikoitoga says there is no shortage of Fijian soldiers willing to replace them.
During a press conference, Brig-Gen Tikoitoga said Fiji remained committed to the United Nations peacekeeping mission.
“In fact, yesterday, we started selection of the next 44 to go and replace the 44 that are now in captivity,” Brig-Gen Tikoitoga said, giving this figure before militants stated that 45 had been captured.
“If it happens that they’ve gone through some traumatic experience and need to be returned home, we have 44 ready to replace them.”
All Filipino peacekeepers trapped by Islamic militants on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights were safely evacuated, it was reported last night.
But nothing is known of the location of the Fijian peacekeepers captured by Al Nusra militants on Friday.
Best guess
Brig-Gen Tikoitoga says their best guess is that the 44 will be used as leverage in negotiations with the UN.
“We can only now guess what they want and the closest that we can come to is they will probably use our guys as leverage for something.
“But I don’t think it’s anything more than that. They know Fiji can’t offer anymore than what we have, soldiers on the ground.”
The RFMF commander was pragmatic about the effect this approach would have on the al-Qaida linked Al-Nusra faction.
“Do they get political mileage for this? Maybe they do,” he said.
“But sooner or later they will be very unpopular because the whole world will come down against them.”
Meanwhile, as families trickled in to the crisis centre at the Officers Training School in Vatuwaqa for news of their loved ones, unverified photos of the captured 44 were making the rounds on social media.
The photos, one a group shot (pictured) and the second a photo of the peacekeepers’ ID cards, were allegedly posted by Al-Nusra.
Stop Press: Agency reports cited by The Fiji Times later today said the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda had acknowledged that it had captured 45 UN peacekeepers in southern Syria, saying it was retaliation for what the group called the UN failure to help Syria's people during the country's civil war.
The group, the Nusra Front, also accused the peacekeeping force, which has monitored the demarcation line between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights since 1974, of protecting Israeli-controlled territory while doing nothing to stop the killing on the Syrian side.
Tevita Vuibau is a Fiji Times reporter. He is a graduate of the University of the South Pacific journalism school and a former editor of Wansolwara.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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