The Purposes of Peace Operations
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2009_CIC_1.qxd:Peacekeeping_FM_qxd.qxd 1/16/09 8:29 PM Page 9 The Purposes of 1 Peace Operations William J. Durch with Madeline L. England 9 2009_CIC_1.qxd:Peacekeeping_FM_qxd.qxd 1/16/09 8:29 PM Page 10 Ever since the United Nations started asking Congo (1960–1964). There, a mixed civilian- its member states, in the late 1940s, for military military force became deeply embroiled in both officers to observe cease-fires and, in the Congolese and Cold War politics, protecting 1950s, for armed troops to monitor borders and those trying to build a new political consensus, supervise force separations, the purposes of protecting at least some civilians at risk from these activities have been dictated case by case, violence, ousting mercenary troops (albeit halt- heavily influenced by prevailing global and re- ingly) from a secessionist province, and other- gional politics and by the national interests of wise far exceeding the purposes of peacekeeping the UN Security Council—the five permanent established to that date. The new definition— members in particular. Peacekeepers have been new essence—of peace operations that this expe- deployed to act as fair witnesses (observing rience offered was rejected, however, by both and reporting the facts but without the duty or UN professionals and UN member states, and ability to alter the situation on the ground other was not regenerated until two decades later when than through such reporting); as referees of a fading Cold War tensions ushered in a whole new peace accord (judging compliance but relying generation of peace operations. on larger powers to enforce it); as “police” This chapter traces the evolution and adap- (impartially enforcing an accord through their tation of peace operations, first to the Cold War own authority and means in the short term, and then the post–Cold War environment, and using force as necessary, minimally and pro- more recently to the post–11 September 2001 portionately, but leaving the long-term verdicts era in which the ever-expanding purposes of and results to others); as statebuilders (in col- peace operations are blurring the line between laboration with the local parties, shifting pri- peacekeeping and war-fighting and threatening mary emphasis from security to development peacekeeping’s identity as a security-related mil- as circumstances and local capacity permit); or itary function that is honorably separable from as state surrogates (responsible for reconstruc- war. The chapter concludes with some reasons tion of the apparatus of governance, and for why that separation should be restored, and how governing until such apparatus, and the human this might be done. capacity to run it, can be prepared to supplant such outside support). Practical considerations and precedent— Operations Before Agenda for Peace likely traceable to UN envoy Ralph Bunche1— The first UN operations were fair witnesses. The established local consent, mission neutrality, UN Security Council authorized deployment of and nonuse of force (if there was an option) ex- the first unarmed UN military observers to assist cept in self-defense as the de facto principles of the work of the Consular Commission in moni- peace observation and traditional (border zone) toring a shaky cease-fire between Dutch and In- peacekeeping. As defining terms for peace op- donesian forces on Java in August 1947, and erations, however, these principles proved inad- authorized similar support in April 1948 for the equate for more complex peace operations like Truce Commission monitoring the armistice the UN’s involvement in the former Belgian agreements between Arab and Israeli forces.2 10 2009_CIC_1.qxd:Peacekeeping_FM_qxd.qxd 1/16/09 8:29 PM Page 11 THE PURPOSES OF PEACE OPERATIONS • 11 The term peacekeeping was not coined to de- scribe the tasks of UN-mandated troops or ob- servers, however, until the Suez crisis of 1956, and only gained some official status when the UN General Assembly established the Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations in Feb- ruary 1965, just after UN forces finished their operation in the Congo.3 Peacekeeping became a strategic tool by which the UN Security Council could help keep conflict-prone parts of the international system from shaking the stability of the Cold War stand- off. Peacekeepers were allowed to bear arms for self-defense beginning in 1956, when Lester Pearson, Canada’s minister of external affairs, imagined a force in the Middle East “large enough to keep these borders at peace while a AP Photo political settlement is being worked out”—al- Soldiers from the United Nations Emergency Forces stand guard at their though the United Nations remained averse to observation post on the Egypt and Israel border, 15 November 1957. using the arms that its forces could now bear.4 UN peacekeepers were used as “police” in the early 1960s in the former Belgian Congo, internal political settlements (as in El Salvador, but thereafter fell back to fair witness mode. Cambodia, and Angola) and referee determina- They became referees again in the late 1980s, in tions of postcolonial status (Western Sahara). Namibia (1989–1990), Central America (1988– In his July 1992 report to the Council, the 1994), Angola (1991–1998), and Mozambique Secretary-General attempted the Secretariat’s (1992–1994). The referee role worked well first working definition of peacekeeping, but so enough except in Angola, where it failed to keep tepidly that one could not guess from reading it war at bay, twice, with disastrous local conse- the momentous shifts in purpose then under quences. Greater nominal authority was given to way.5 the mission in Cambodia (1992–1993) to man- Boutros-Ghali’s Agenda for Peace thus age and safeguard processes—including elec- missed an opportunity to bind peacekeeping to tions—intended to end the country’s long civil purposes consistent with its traditional essence war and give it legitimate government. The mis- and left the Council freer than it might other- sion succeeded in part, conducting the elections wise have been to keep adding new purposes. but lacking the power to enforce the results These included remaking the Somali govern- when the governing party disagreed with them. ment over the objections of powerful local fac- tion leaders, and intervening in Bosnia on a very large scale, in an ongoing war, to mitigate suffer- From Agenda for Peace to ing—but not end it. This continued until peace- the Brahimi Report keeping failed spectacularly not only in Soma- In January 1992, the Security Council, during lia and Bosnia but also in Rwanda, failing either its first summit, asked the new UN Secretary- to anticipate or to stem the genocide of April– General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, to report on June 1994. In January 1995, the Supplement to ways to strengthen UN capacity for preventive an Agenda for Peace cataloged the new pur- diplomacy, peacemaking, and peacekeeping. By poses but finessed the discussion of their fail- that time, peacekeeping already had been repur- ure and especially the high human costs of that posed, case by case, as a tool to help implement failure.6 2009_CIC_1.qxd:Peacekeeping_FM_qxd.qxd 1/16/09 8:29 PM Page 12 12 • ANNUAL REVIEW OF GLOBAL PEACE OPERATIONS These results discredited complex UN op- justified in using force but morally compelled to erations for a time, and most peacekeepers in do so,” and should therefore be equipped with the latter 1990s deployed under the banner of “robust rules of engagement.” Conversely, the NATO and subregional organizations, not the Secretary-General and his team needed to give United Nations. It came as a surprise, then, to the Security Council the unvarnished version of the UN Secretariat in particular, when the re- conditions in the field, telling their political vival of complex UN peace operations by the bosses what they needed to know, not what they Security Council began at the largely untried wanted to hear.9 That worked for awhile, but the higher end of the peacekeeping hierarchy—as Council soon tired of hearing regularly that it “state surrogates” and “statebuilders” in Ko- was trying to force the United Nations to per- sovo and East Timor, the former with an unde- form beyond its innate capacity in places like fined political end and the latter with an ill- Darfur, Chad, or Somalia. trained population previously subject to a quarter century of Indonesian domination and four cen- turies of Portuguese colonial rule. Thus came From the Brahimi Report to unprepared new administrators to govern popu- Afghanistan and Darfur lations that were either resentful but ambitious The sentiments in the Brahimi Report, minus the (Kosovo) or dogged but unprepared (Timor). tiresome advice about brutal honesty in assess- Shortly after these missions deployed, the ing prospects for success, were embraced by the Brahimi Report revisited the definitional issue: Security Council for virtually every new UN “Peacekeeping is a 50-year-old enterprise that peace operation authorized in the new century. has evolved rapidly in the past decade from a By mid-2008, over 80 percent of the troops and traditional, primarily military model of observ- police deployed in UN-led operations were func- ing ceasefires and force separations after inter- tioning under mandates that invoked Chapter VII state wars, to incorporate a complex model of of the UN Charter (the enforcement chapter). many elements, military and civilian, working Although the Brahimi Report stressed that together to build peace in the dangerous after- “the United Nations does not wage war,”10 the math of civil wars.”7 A complex peace opera- reality of robust peacekeeping is such that the tion, according to the report, represented the institution now finds itself in situations where joining of peacekeeping with peacebuilding it must take forceful action if its robust man- (“activities undertaken on the far side of con- dates are not to be forfeit.