Peacekeeping

Mark is traveling with President Clinton, who is visiting his Clinton Foundation Projects on the continent.

Monrovia, Liberia: The United Nations is everywhere. As we touched down at the Roberts International Airport here a half dozen UN helicopters rested on the tarmac next to two small UN Humanitarian Air Service Planes. We were picked up in UN-marked shuttle buses, and hundreds of peacekeepers and UN police from the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) lined the road from the airport to the city. En route we passed the headquarters of the Ghanaian, Indian, and Nigerian battalions. We also saw a number of signs designating UNMIL "Quick Impact Projects." As the name would suggest, these are UNMIL-sponsored construction jobs meant to garner good will and show some positive results for the peacekeeping mission, which numbers around 15,000. The majority of UNMIL's uniformed personnel are police. At a small market in town, I had the chance to meet the operational commander of the famous Indian Female Formed Police Unit. (Pictured here meeting President Clinton.) We've reported on this experimental unit on Dispatch before, and seeing them operate in person, I can say that they stand shoulder-to-shoulder -- and AK-47 to AK-47 -- with their male counterparts.

Back at The Seminal, Alex Thurston, citing UN peacekeeping missions' struggles in places like Darfur, Ethiopia-Eritrea, and Somalia, last week opined that "criticizing the UN sometimes feels like the equivalent of beating up a cripple." Well, he's right in that many commentators -- including himself, on occasion -- do often take up the chance to criticize the UN, using it as a convenient scapegoat for Member States' own individual failures. When a complex problem arises, and the international community's response is decried as insufficient, the simple answer is to toss the UN under the bus and look the other way. Not only is this tactic a deplorably crass -- and self-defeating -- oversimplification, but it also frequently distorts the facts under which the UN is operating. Take the example of the recently shut down mission in Ethiopia-Eritrea. If the UN is "crippled" in its position straddling this contentious border region, it is only because the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea decided to cripple it, flouting international agreements and depriving it of fuel. In Darfur, too, the host government has persistently made UNAMID's effective operation a practical impossibility. Are peacekeepers to be expected to take on host governments with force? In both of these instances, fault lies with the offending obstructionists -- as well as with the individual member states that allow such manipulation to occur unchecked.

Today, the Security Council is poised to re-authorize the UN-African Union Mission in Darfur. The Council had split over the issue of the International Criminal Court's potential indictment of Sudanese President Bashir, a step opposed by ICC opponents -- and Sudanese allies -- like Russia, China, Libya, and South Africa. Interestingly, though, the U.S. -- traditionally wary of the ICC, but which, along with the other 14 Council members at the time, allowed ICC jurisdiction back in March 2006 -- stood with countries like Great Britain and France in pushing for the ICC's operations in Darfur not be tied to the mandate of the peacekeeping mission there. It appears that a compromise has been reached, and today's report will simply make note of the African Union's recent appeal for the Council to suspend ICC jurisdiction. This still leaves open the option of suspension -- pending adequate Sudanese follow-through on its commitments -- but also rightly separates the imperative of protection from the work of an independent prosecutorial body.

When we last reported the status of the United Nations Mission to Ethiopia-Eritrea (UNMEE), we cited intelligence that the mission, facing the expiration of its mandate on July 31, could be transformed into a smaller observer contingent. Now it appears that even that option is off the table, and that the mission will be closed down entirely.

The U.N. Security Council voted on Wednesday to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border between Eritrea and Ethiopia after Eritrea forced out most of the U.N. troops. The mandate for the 1,700-strong force expires on Thursday. The council unanimously approved a resolution drafted by Belgium that calls for the mission to be terminated and all peacekeeping personnel to be withdrawn.

On one hand, the disbanding of UNMEE--without even a compromise force to replace it--is unfortunate, as it leaves an already tense border region with no objective peacekeeping presence whatsoever. While Ethiopia and Eritrea are not technically at war, their armies, according to the International Crisis Group, are "less than a football pitch" apart in certain areas. More realistically, though, sending peacekeepers home from Ethiopia-Eritrea simply makes official what had been a de facto termination of the mission since Eritrea decided to deprive it of necessary fuel supplies. The all-important "peace to keep" for UNMEE was little more than ostensible, as both sides -- Eritrea through this denial of fuel, Ethiopia by continuing to place troops in an area that an international border commission awarded to Eritrea -- have recklessly flouted UN authority and hampered the mission's effectiveness. UN peacekeepers cannot be expected to stand between two armies and prevent the return of full-scale war. If Ethiopia and Eritrea are serious about resolving their dispute, they will have to work out -- and abide by -- their own peace agreements. Leaving UNMEE there without a corresponding level of commitment from both sides only encourages the unreasonable expectation that peacekeepers alone will be able to defuse this crisis.

What do you do if you're a "blue helmet" without a blue helmet? Some enterprising members of the UNAMID force have had to resort to wrapping their helmets in blue plastic bags, according to a report released by the Darfur Consortium (hat tip FP Passport). The lack of helmets is just the tip of the iceberg. The Consortium:

The failure of world leaders to keep their promises on peacekeeping has condemned millions of Darfurians to more fear and suffering, without protection from violence.

Need I say more?

Writing in Tuesday's International Herald Tribune, three German scholars -- and authors of a forthcoming study on "UN Peace Operations and Organizational Learning" -- provide an accurate summary of the challenges facing UN peacekeeping and its new chief, Alain Le Roy. What makes this op-ed so compelling is its authors' careful and consistent specification that member states -- not the amorphous collections of these member states, such as the "UN" or the "Security Council" -- are responsible for both the struggles of UN peacekeeping and their potential solutions. An example of this simple, but so frequently ignored, distinction:

UN member states have neglected making crucial investments in the support infrastructure for an expanding network of large peace operations with increasingly complex tasks, from protecting civilians to rebuilding defunct institutions in post-conflict states. [emphasis mine]

Far too often, the convenient shorthand "UN" replaces this specification, and the entire body is unjustifiably branded for the failings of specific countries to follow through on their words and commitments. This is why I was disappointed to read one particular word in the op-ed's subsequent sentence:

As a result, the UN apparatus is severely overstretched, exhibiting increasingly serious pathologies ranging from sluggish deployments to shocking sexual abuse scandals.

These are not pathologies. For one, the sexual abuse scandals, while indeed "shocking" and certainly unacceptable, are the deviations of a relatively small number of peacekeepers, not the symptoms of a systemic disease in UN peacekeeping. And as specified elsewhere in the piece, slow deployment should be chalked up squarely on Member States' insufficient offers of troops and political pressure. Yet the use of the word "pathologies" suggests that these blemishes -- manifestations of Member State shortcomings -- are somehow endemic to UN peacekeeping. This is one minor slip-up, and goes against the tone of the piece as a whole, which I strongly encourage you to read, as it also offers welcome insight into the pressing -- and dangerously increasingly ignored -- stipulation that UN peacekeepers should only be deployed where there is a peace to keep.

Senator Bill Nelson is holding a hearing today on UN Peacekeeping. UN Dispatch got a peek at of one of his props.

The blue and red lines on the second chart denote the what the United States is assessed in peacekeeping dues and the administration's budget request for peacekeeping, respectively. Clearly, the trends elucidated in these two charts are simply unsustainable in the long run; the United States cannot keep approving mission after mission at the Security Council and then underfund the entire enterprise. Check back for updates from the hearing throughout the day. [The hearing was yesterday]

This bad news out of Darfur puts an exclamation point on the danger of attempting to keep a non-existent peace in increasingly hostile territory.

A peacekeeper serving with the joint African Union-United Nations force in Darfur (UNAMID) was killed today while on patrol in the strife-torn region, just one week after seven blue helmets with the mission were slain. The peacekeeper was killed in Forobaranga in West Darfur state, according to preliminary information received by UNAMID, the mission said in a press statement.

The UN has insinuated that the attack last week was the responsibility of the Sudanese government, and at least one Security Council member is pushing a resolution officially condemning the attack (albeit not explicitly identifying Khartoum as the culprit). While no official word has come out of Forobaranga, I can't help but fear that this attack may be tied to the government's anger that its president has been recommended for indictment by the ICC. At any rate, the mission courageously keeps plugging on (though non-essential staff are being evacuated as a precaution):

UNAMID said its troops have been continuing to conduct patrols in the region on Sudan's western flank, despite the violence and instability, with 16 patrols conducted today. Humanitarian activities are also ongoing and a Chinese engineering company is due to join the mission tomorrow.

Whether the Sudanese government, militias, rebels, or armed bandits were responsible for this latest killing is immaterial. Whatever the reason, attacking those whose job is to protect displaced innocents is reprehensible, and UNAMID peacekeepers should not be treated as sitting ducks in a reactionary game of global politics.

According to the official Xinhua news service, China is sending a new deployment of 315 military engineers to Darfur.

With a third group of Chinese peacekeepers sent to Sudan to replace their predecessors, China has sent more than 10,000 peacekeepers to participate in 18 UN peace-keeping missions. At the request of the United Nations and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, China decided to participate in a hybrid force of the United Nations and the African Union. China promised to send a 315-member engineering unit to Darfur. So far, the first group of 143 engineers has been dispatched to Darfur, where it is at work.

I'm not entirely sure how Xinhua came up with the claim that China has sent "10,000 peacekeepers to participate in 18 UN peace-keeping missions" as China is only the 13th largest (pdf) troop contributor with nearly 2000 military and police in the field. Still, China's stepped up participation in the Darfur - African Union mission is certainly welcome. Welcome too would be Beijing using its diplomatic suasion with Khartoum to help lift restrictions on the Darfur mission. Meanwhile, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations announced a French successor to Jean-Marie Guehenno, the very capable Undersecretary General who headed peacekeeping operations since 2000. Alain Le Roy, who cut his teeth in the Balkans, will succeed Guehenno.