Evolving Attitudes to Peacekeeping in ASEAN David Capie
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111 Evolving Attitudes to Peacekeeping in ASEAN David Capie This paper provides an overview of evolving attitudes towards peacekeeping among the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Created in 1967, ASEAN is an extraordinarily diverse regional group that brings together some of the world’s richest and poorest countries; nascent democracies and authoritarian regimes.1 Despite this diversity, there is a growing interest in peacekeeping among almost all member states. They include longtime and substantial contributors to UN missions (such as Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines), states that have contributed since the end of the Cold War (Thailand and Singapore) and three new participants (Cambodia, Brunei and Vietnam). As of November 2014, only Myanmar and Laos have not partic- ipated in any UN peacekeeping missions. Drawing on extensive interviews, the paper discusses the changing place of peace- keeping in national foreign and defence policies across Southeast Asia. As well as summa- rizing the broad trend in favour of peacekeeping, it highlights two important recent developments. First, in 2012 Indonesia declared the goal of dramatically increasing its commitment to United Nations peacekeeping missions with the aim of becoming a Top 10 Troop Contributing Country (TCC). Second, in 2014 Vietnam decided to break with its historical opposition to sending its troops abroad and embrace peacekeeping as part of its strategy of comprehensive global integration. Following constitutional changes, Vietnam sent its first two officers to UNMISS in South Sudan in June 2014 and is planning new deployments. It also recently opened a Peacekeeping Training Centre—the sixth in Southeast Asia. The paper discusses the motivations behind the growing interest in peacekeeping and considers how Southeast Asian states are likely to contribute to PKOs in future. In addition to changing national perspectives, the paper also discusses the place of peacekeeping as a focus for bilateral and multilateral cooperation in the region. The idea of an ASEAN peacekeeping force was raised for the first time by Indonesia in 2003, but it was opposed strongly by some other members. Despite this, peacekeeping has remained on the regional agenda through the goal of an ASEAN Network of 1 The members of ASEAN are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. 112 New Trends in Peacekeeping: In Search for a New Direction National Peacekeeping Training Centres. Peacekeeping has also been a focus for wider regional cooperation through the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) processes. The paper concludes by exploring how these multilateral arrangements are likely to evolve in future and discusses obstacles to greater involvement in peacekeeping. Background Southeast Asia’s connection to peacekeeping dates back to some of the United Nations’ earliest missions. Indonesia first sent peacekeepers—its so-called “Garuda contingent”—to Egypt in November 1956. In the decades since, it has deployed the Indonesian National Armed Forces (TNI) more than 30 times, including to UN missions in the Congo (UNOC) from 1961-63, the Middle East (UNEF II) 1973-1979, Iraq (UNIIMOG) 1988-90, Asia (UNTAC) 1992-93, Latin America (MINUSTAH) and Europe (UNPROFOR and UNMIBH). Its largest deployment has been to Lebanon (UNIFIL), which is currently a battalion-sized contribution. As of September 2014, Indonesia was the largest contributor in ASEAN and the only regional state in the top 20 troop contributing countries, with a total of 1,832 personnel deployed (including 170 police and 27 military experts).2 Malaysia is another long-time supporter of UN peacekeeping within ASEAN. It has been a contributor to UN PKOs since the Congo mission in 1960 and deployed more than 1,400 troops to that mission at its peak.3 Malaysian troops served as part of UNPROFOR in the former Yugoslavia, as observers on the Iran-Iraq border and also notably in Somalia in the early 1990s. Closer to home, the Malaysian military made a substantial contribution to the intervention in Cambodia (UNTAC) in 1992-3. It provided a smaller deployment to the Australian-led force in East Timor (INTERFET). Jurgen Haacke argues this was because Malaysia was perceived by Timorese forces as being “on the side of Indonesia,” although other accounts suggest it was because Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir was unhappy that a Thai officer was made Deputy Force Commander.4 Subsequently Malaysia did provide a unit 2 http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/contributors/2014/sept14_2.pdf. 3 Alistair B. Cook, “Southeast Asian Perspectives on UN Peacekeeping” Journal of International Peacekeeping (forthcoming 2014) p. 169. 4 Jurgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture: Origins, Development and Prospects (London: Routledge, 2005) p. 248, n. 15. Cf. Ian Martin and Alexander Mayer-Rieckh, “The United Nations and East Timor: From Self-Determination to State-building” International Peacekeeping, vol. 12, no. 1 (2005) pp. 125-145, p. 132. Evolving Attitudes to Peacekeeping in ASEAN 113 of 125 police to UNMISET in 2003 and later sent troops to help the Timor-Leste government respond to a mutiny in 2006. In 1995, Malaysia established the first Peacekeeping Training Centre in Southeast Asia, with support from the US State Department’s Enhanced International Peacekeeping Capabilities (EIPC) programme. As of December 2012, the Centre had trained 2,114 military officers, 17 police and 28 civilians from 51 different countries.5 The Philippines, ASEAN’s third largest contributor, first sent troops on MONUC in 1963. It has increased its contributions since the late 1990s, with the INTERFET mission to East Timor marking its largest single deployment with more than 600 Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) troops involved. Other missions include Liberia (UNMIL), Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Golan Heights (UNDOF). The latter operation involved controversy when in March 2013, 21 AFP troops were abducted by Syrian rebels but released following mediation by the Jordanian government. In late August 2014, AFP troops reportedly broke the chain of command by refusing to surrender their weapons to an al-Qaeda-related rebel group and instead “repositioned” themselves, something described by their Indian force commander as “an act of cowardice.”6 The Philippines has approximately 700 troops in the field, and it also ranks in the global top 10 contributors of police and military experts.7 In addition to these three larger contributors, Singapore has sent more than 1,500 troops on UN missions since first taking part in Namibia (UNTAG) in 1989. According to its Ministry of Defence, because it has “limited resources and manpower, Singapore’s approach is to focus our contributions in niche areas where the SAF has expertise and which our international partners find useful.”8 Since 1997 it has also had a UN Standby Arrangement in place. Singapore has been wary of supporting peace- keeping closer to home, however, and blocked discussion of an Indonesian proposal for a regional peacekeeping force in 2004 (see below). Like Singapore, Thailand did not begin to participate in UN peacekeeping missions until the end of the Cold War. The first deployment was to the demilitarized border between Kuwait and Iraq 5 Cook, p. 166. 6 Camille Diola, “UNDOF Commander: Filipinos’ Defiance Unprofessional” Philippines Star, 4 September 2014; Camille Diola, “Recalled UNDOF Official Returns Home” Philippines Star, 14 September 2014. 7 Noel Morada, “Contributor Profile: the Philippines” http://www.providingforpeacekeeping.org/ wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Philippines-Morada-15-December-2013-Final.pdf. 8 “Overseas Operations” Singapore Ministry of Defence website, www.mindef.gov.sg (accessed 20 October 2014). 114 New Trends in Peacekeeping: In Search for a New Direction (UNIKOM) in 1991. In 1993, Thailand sent 705 military engineers to neighbouring Cambodia, where they were engaged primarily in construction and demining work. In 1999, Thailand made its largest contribution to date, sending 1,581 troops to the Australian-led force in East Timor (and subsequently 925 to UNTAET).9 Since the completion of a Thai deployment to Darfur in 2012, Thailand has only made a minor contribution to peacekeeping. This has coincided with a period of significant domestic political turmoil in the country. As Sorpong Peou notes, “the extent to which the political crisis has negatively affected Thailand’s commitment to peace- keeping is difficult to assess, but some observers note that domestic problems have kept the government preoccupied.”10 At one level, then, five Southeast Asian countries have shown a strong if uneven commitment to peacekeeping for several decades. However, I argue that in the last ten years there have been three changes that suggest a significantly more positive attitude to peace operations. The first is the emergence of new, formerly reluctant states, as contributors to peacekeeping operations. The second is the desire of Indonesia to play a much larger role in UN operations and its advocacy for the creation of a regional peacekeeping capacity. Third, peacekeeping has emerged as an important area of bilateral and multilateral security cooperation and seems likely to only become more important in the future. That said, ASEAN states still have concerns about certain aspects of inter- national peacekeeping and there are constraints with regard to how far they are prepared to