All Peace Operations Are Political: a Case for Designer Missions and the Next UN Reform

8 | Thematic EssAys 2.1 Thematic Essays All Peace Operations Are Political: a case for Designer Missions and the Next UN Reform Ian Martin n mandating, funding and (for the most part) I managing its peace missions, the United Nations maintains a distinction between peacekeeping operations and special political missions. Five useful editions of the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations have treated peace operations as largely synonymous with peacekeeping, defining them as in-country operations that are authorized by a multilateral body, that are multinational in their composition, that have a substantial military or police component, and that are deployed in support of a peace process or conflict management objective. Yet not every peace operation deployed with a conflict management objective need have a substantial uniformed component. And every military peacekeeping operation is inherently political, doomed to stagnation or ultimate failure in the absence of an effective political process. Within the UN today, organizational divisions and relationships, funding arrangements and mechanisms UN Photo / Sagar Shrestha for mandating and accountability are dysfunctional for Maoist army weapons being registered and stored by UNMIN, with support of the rational planning and evolution of peace opera- Interim Task Force members. tions. An unduly linear approach to peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding, and thinking which consideration is given to the possibility of lighter – is boxed into separate concepts and precedents for and cheaper – options. It is time for a fundamental peacekeeping, special political and peacebuilding mis- review and reform, the centerpiece of which should sions and offices, do not adequately correspond to the be the merger of the departments responsible and diverse needs of countries in conflict or transition. common funding arrangements. They can result in the imposition of inappropriate templates, rather than operations being designed in accordance with the country-specific context. Increas- UNMIN: a DesIgNer MIssIoN ingly the large, multidimensional peacekeeping mission has become the norm and there are resis- To illustrate the potential of lighter missions – and tances to departing from its template. Insufficient emphasize the need for flexibility in designing All PEAcE OperatiONs ARE POliTicAl | 9 them – I turn to my own experience planning armies which had fought the war would be restricted and leading the special political mission in Nepal, to barracks (for what was then still very much the UNMIN (United Nations Mission in Nepal).1 The Royal Nepalese Army) and cantonments (for the mission qualified for inclusion in the Annual Review Maoist army) during the election of a constitu- of Global Peace Operations, as well as in this volume, ent assembly which would afford an opportunity on the basis of its military component. But whether for the Maoists’ republican and federalist agenda. or not a military component of 186 unarmed This agreement, which became the basis of the serving and retired military officers deployed as extraordinary people’s movement that ousted King “arms monitors” to monitor two armies totaling over Gyanendra from power in April 2006, provided 100,000 combatants qualifies as “substantial,” it was for the restricted armies to be placed under inter- an unusual - indeed a unique - mission for the UN. national supervision. In subsequent negotiations, Overall, UNMIN was sufficiently unusual for me the Maoists were required to agree, as a condition to be told with some exasperation at headquarters, for joining the interim legislature and government, in the course of mission planning, that “we don’t to storage of their weapons under UN surveillance want designer missions: we do template missions.” and monitoring. The UN would maintain around- In fact, Nepal offers a case study in the need to the-clock surveillance at eight weapons storage be flexible in tailoring a peace operation to the areas (including one where an equivalent number of particular context, and in the ability of a relatively Nepalese Army weapons were stored) and monitor light mission to make a contribution to peace 28 Maoist army cantonment sites and the hundreds process implementation no less successful than that of barracks and installations of the Nepalese Army. of many far larger operations. The need for such The Nepalese parties were adamant that they flexibility is part of the case for major changes in did not want these functions to be carried out by UN arrangements for the management, funding armed peacekeepers: when they formalized their and oversight of peace operations. request, it was for monitoring of the arms and armies That the UN was able to play a substantial role by “qualified civilian personnel.” The pride the in support of Nepal’s peace process was, first and Nepalese Army and establishment took in Nepal’s foremost, the result of low-key political engage- long-standing participation in UN peacekeeping ment undertaken by the Department of Political was reflected in reluctance to become a recipient of Affairs from 2003, after Secretary-General Kofi blue helmets. The Maoist leadership had developed Annan had publicly offered good offices to seek to some confidence in UN impartiality, but in its ranks end an increasingly bloody armed conflict between suspicion of military interventions was rife. India Maoist insurgents and the state. The UN’s in-coun- had only reluctantly come to accept the need for try involvement with the conflict deepened when, any UN role, and initially hoped that Nepal could in April 2005, the government of King Gyanen- be kept away from the Security Council. Delhi dra sought to defuse international condemnation certainly did not want to see a UN peacekeeping of both conflict-related abuses and its violations of force in a neighboring country with which it has an democratic rights by accepting the establishment in open border. Nepal of an Office of the High Commissioner for At UN Headquarters, some felt that the role Human Rights (OHCHR-Nepal). Engagement requested could only be properly performed by with the parliamentary parties, then excluded from armed peacekeepers in substantial numbers, and government, with the Maoist leadership, and with certainly by serving military personnel, not by civil society, which had lobbied for the UN’s human retired officers, as the request for qualified civilians rights role, fortified the conviction of all these actors implied. This was supported by pragmatic consider- that the UN should assist in implementing the peace ations. Outside the UN, retired military and police process which would follow once their alliance had officers have been deployed to carry out military succeeded in bringing down the king’s government. or quasi-military monitoring tasks – for example, Several factors ensured that Nepal was not a in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, Sri Lanka and candidate for the peacekeeping template. The UN’s Aceh. However, the UN itself had no precedent and key role emerged from the agreement between the no system for such recruitment. Eventually the par- parliamentary parties and the Maoists that the ties were persuaded to agree to accept a mix of active 10 | Thematic EssAys and retired officers, on the understanding that all would be unarmed and in civilian attire. In order to mount an around-the-clock presence at weapons storage sites before UN monitors could provide this, the Maoists and the government proposed the recruitment of an Interim Task Force (ITF) of Nepali ex-servicemen from the Indian Army. This further unorthodox arrangement gave rise to more nervousness at UN Headquarters, and UNMIN took no formal responsibility for the ITF. But its 111 members, selected by consensus between the two sides, became invaluable to the overall monitoring presence at the cantonments, even after the UN Photo full deployment of UNMIN’s 186 arms monitors. Signing of the agreement on the management of arms and armies, Beyond arms and armies, the broader role sought 8 December 2006. from the UN was focused on the constituent assembly election, together with a continuation of human only vague definitions in the CPA of processes by rights monitoring by OHCHR-Nepal and a more which the Interim Government would address their general request to assist in monitoring the ceasefire future: the “integration and rehabilitation” of Maoist code of conduct, later subsumed in the Comprehen- combatants and the “democratization” of the Nep- sive Peace Agreement (CPA). The UN offered to alese Army. We would have preferred to include provide technical assistance to the Election Com- technical assistance to resolving these security sector mission at national, regional and district levels, and issues in the mandate and staffing of the mission, and to deploy a team of five expert monitors to review the were told that such UN assistance would be required electoral process, independently of UNMIN, as well eventually; it was mainly Nepal’s deference to Indian as encouraging observation by others. wishes that precluded a request for any such UN role. Ensuring adequate political space and a level playing field for all political parties in the rural areas, where there had been a prolonged absence of UNMIN in PractIce an effective state, would be crucial for the credibil- ity of the election. UNMIN therefore planned for The achievements in the period for which a civil affairs component which, together with dis- UNMIN was conceived and planned, through to trict electoral

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