Peacekeeping missions put the life of peacekeepers at risk. Rebel group attacks on peacekeepers are relatively frequent, and over the past 30 years, 3,096 men and women involved in various United Nations-led missions have been killed. This article examines whether a perceived lack of impartiality of peacekeepers vis-à-vis the host government affects deliberate attacks against UN personnel of a particular country. Assuming that rebels attack peacekeepers as an intermediate strategic goal to undermine incumbent regimes, I argue that rebels are more likely to attack peacekeepers from countries with an alleged pro-government-bias. Rebels resort to this strategy as close economic and military linkages between the country contributing peacekeepers and the rebels’ home country increase strength of the government and thus decrease the rebels’ balance of power against the incumbent regime. In targeting representatives of the main supporters, i.e. peacekeepers of the supportive foreign government, rebel groups intend to weaken their home government. I test these hypotheses using a country-year sample on attacks against peacekeepers in sub-Saharan peacekeeping missions between 1991 and 2009. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression estimates provide preliminary empirical support for the role of economic linkages which is robust when controlling for mission-specific characteristics.