From today's presentation at the U.S. Institute of Peace by Jan Egeland, the former UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, comes this enlightening statistic:
The amount of money that the United States has contributed to the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) -- whose successes include calming a decade of civil war, bringing a former dictator to justice, and ushering in a democratic government that elected Africa's first female leader -- over the past four years is equal to the amount that it spends in ten hours in Iraq.
This statistic is sobering, but it is not surprising. After all, the amount of money that the U.S. spends in just three days in Iraq is equivalent to our entire yearly contribution to all UN peacekeeping missions. And while the conflict in Iraq roils on, many war zones in which the UN has been engaged are emerging as valuable success stories. In addition to Liberia, Egeland cited Ivory Coast, East Timor, South Sudan, Sierre Leone, and Kosovo as examples in which UN engagement has led to substantially freer and more stable societies -- all at a fraction of the cost of the U.S.'s operations in Iraq.
Egeland stressed that the key to improving U.S.-UN relations is to convince the U.S. government just how good of an investment UN peacekeeping missions are. As Mark has emphasized before -- and as even U.S. government studies have proven -- UN peacekeeping missions are consistently more effective and more cost-efficient than comparable U.S.-led enterprises. For these and other reasons, supporting UN peacekeepers is strongly in U.S. interests, even if this year's budget request doesn't reflect this priority.
The collapsing peacekeeping mission along the Eritrean/Ethiopian border is obviously not on most people's radar. But those of us who care about war and peace should be paying attention, because war might be on the horizon.
Facing a fuel shortage engineered by the Eritrean government, the mission was forced to redeploy across the border to Ethiopia, but was prevented from crossing by the Eritrean Defense Force. The mission, which is about 4,000 strong, was then forced to regroup in Eritrean capitol, Asmara. But even getting there proved to be a problem. According to a new report by the Secretary General, Eritrean Defense Forces turned a number of the trucks back--and even stole some of their fuel.
This all portends poorly for other missions around the globe--particularly for the two missions in neighboring Sudan. Governments can take a look at how Eritrea successfully harassed UNMEE out of its mission, and take notes.
More immediately, though, one has to wonder if Eritrea's decision to obstruct UNMEE means that Asmara is seeking a military solution to its border dispute with Ethiopia. If so, the resumption of war along the border could be devastating. From 1998 to 2000, trench-warfare between Ethiopia and Eritrea claimed 70,000 lives and displaced millions. Without UNMEE watching the border, it will undoubtedly be easier for war to resume. At this point, to avert that outcome, the Security Council has to force Eritrea to let UNMEE fulfill its mandate so a diplomatic -- not military -- solution can take hold.
UPDATE: Reader MY writes in: [Your post] neglects to mention the fact that a UN-backed final and binding verdict in regards to the border between the 2 countries was announced back in 2002. The peacekeeping mission was located entirely in Eritrean territory and its mandate expired in conjunction with demarcation. The reason it was not implemented on the ground was due to Ethiopian obstruction. Because of this obstruction, the demarcation body known as the EEBC was forced to demarcate based on coordinates, and thus deemed their work complete. So the question is, will the United Nations Security Council put sufficient pressure on Ethiopia to withdraw from sovereign Eritrean territory?
A very fair point. In previous posts I've made clear that Eritrean actions stem in large part from frustration over Ethiopia's unilateral decision to simply ignore binding arbitration that gave certain disputed territories to Eritrea. Both sides are not without reproach. This helps explain--but does not excuse--Eritrea's actions.
(Photo from Wikipedia)
According to Reuters, some of the helicopters so desperately needed by peacekeepers in Darfur have been offered by a somewhat unlikely source:
Russia is proposing to supply some of the helicopters the United Nations has been urgently seeking to back up the U.N./African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, Moscow's U.N. ambassador said on Wednesday. "The most likely scenario of the use of Russian helicopters would be Russia supplying the helicopters with crews from other countries," said envoy Vitaly Churkin. The United Nations has for months been seeking six attack and 18 transport helicopters to support the planned 26,000-member UNAMID force, which is starting to deploy in the violence-torn Darfur region of western Sudan.Churkin was murky on the details, not specifying the number or type of helicopters that Russia will provide, and the solution of outfitting Russian choppers with foreign crews is far from an ideal option. Nonetheless, combined with the four attack helicopters offered by Ethiopia last month, this is a start. Unfortunately, even as Darfur peacekeepers seek to receive some much-needed aerial support, they still face crippling shortages on the ground. U.S. special envoy Rich Williamson was right to caution that "we're wrong to obsess about the helicopters," but only because there is so much else to obsess about as well. There are still only 9,000 troops that have been deployed, and the state of these largely African units -- underfunded, undersupplied, and insufficiently trained -- is even worse than many had assumed. In addition, the 105 Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) that arrived from Canada over two years ago are apparently outdated and in need of repair. So, to the international community, if helicopters aren't your thing -- how about some new APCs?
This image -- the Darfurian town of Abu Surouj, after it was burned to the ground by Sudanese government and proxy militia forces last month -- is a sobering reminder that the genocide in Darfur is far from over. The photo accompanies another intrepid piece of reporting by the irreplaceable Lydia Polgreen, who provides stark proof that, in the chilling phrase with which she begins her article, "the janjaweed are back."
The tale of this town's -- as well as multiple others' -- recent destruction provides a stark rejoinder to those who contend that the active military campaign in Darfur largely ended in 2004. As Polgreen reports, the uncompromising counter-insurgency tactics employed in the early years of the genocide have been resuscitated with little compunction:
Such brutal, three-pronged attacks of this scale -- involving close coordination of air power, army troops and Arab militias in areas where rebel troops have been -- have rarely been seen in the past few years, when the violence became more episodic and fractured. But they resemble the kinds of campaigns that first captured the world's attention and prompted the Bush administration to call the violence in Darfur genocide. Aid workers, diplomats and analysts say the return of such attacks is an ominous sign that the fighting in Darfur, which has grown more complex and confusing as it has stretched on for five years, is entering a new and deadly phase -- one in which the government is planning a scorched-earth campaign against the rebel groups fighting here as efforts to find a negotiated peace founder.These attacks deeply exacerbate the already precarious situation of displaced Darfurians, cutting them off from aid, forcing them still further from their land, and sharply reawakening the fear in which they must constantly live. Sudanese government spokesmen defend their army's activities as necessary to secure areas from bandits and rebels, unabashedly affirming that "there is nothing abnormal about a government doing this." While the rebels are also intimately responsible for Darfur's deteriorating security situation, surely there is little "normal" about a government bombing its own civilians. Both rebels and government forces need to immediately accede to the rapid deployment of UN peacekeepers, for any meaningful peace accord is unsustainable without their active civilian protection.
February 29th marked the fourth anniversary of President Jean Bertrand Aristide's departure from Haiti. Since that time the United Nations' seventh peacekeeping mission (MINUSTAH) has been on the ground ensuring that Haiti's transformation to a more secure, stable and capable state is on track. Progress has been made since 2004, thanks to the UN, the leadership of Brazil in peacekeeping, and the support of donors, the U.S. and Canada. Successful national elections in 2006 gave Haiti a democratically elected president, Rene Preval. It also ushered in an unprecedented period of consensual politics, where a broad range of political parties have engaged in the rebuilding institutions, and more important, the Haitian state. Finally, on-the-ground security has also improved since last year. MINUSTAH, with the full agreement of the Government of Haiti, launched a very aggressive gang eradication program that has reduced violence and kidnappings in Port au Prince. But the clock is ticking.
An important step toward entrenching a bold new international norm to prevent mass atrocities, as reported by the UN News Centre:
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Edward Luck of the United States as his Special Adviser with a focus on the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Currently Vice President and Director of Studies of the International Peace Academy and Director of Columbia University's Center on International Organizations, Mr. Luck will serve at the Assistant Secretary-General level on a part-time basis.
Agreed to by world leaders in 2005, the responsibility to protect holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide and other major human rights abuses and requires the international community to step in if this obligation is not met.
Mr. Luck's appointment represents a crucial first step in shifting the paradigm that allows abusive regimes to massacre their own populations. While R2P was adopted unanimously by the General Assembly, it still faces stiff opposition in practice, and Mr. Luck will have an uphill battle toward implementing it. He must assure skeptics that R2P does not simply provide a carte blanche for intervention while simultaneously ensuring that the doctrine possesses sufficient teeth to change dictators' behavior. With his background working on issues of peacekeeping and UN reform, Mr. Luck seems to understand the need to balance the interests of individual Member States with the imperative of broad international goals. The importance of the responsibility to protect cannot be understated, and Mr. Luck deserves our full support in his efforts to make this bold new theory a reality.
Reader Marian Houk in Jerusalem takes exception to a point made in yesterday's post on UNMEE
I would agree with UN Dispatch that "the crisis facing the UN mission there is one of the more disturbing developments facing UN peacekeeping a long while." But I am more than surprised -- I am perturbed -- at the suggestion...that "Flagrant violations of the accepted rules of peacekeeping cannot be allowed to go unpunished." How does UN Dispatch suggest that any such violations be "punished", exactly?A fair question. "The UN", as an institution, does not have the authority to punish or sanction member states. The Security Council, however, does have that power--and I am suggesting that it use the threat of sanction or other punitive action to respond to this flagrant harassment of peacekeepers. The actions of Eritrea are so disturbing because it shows the rest of the world that peacekeepers can be bullied out of their job by a member state. The Security Council needs to push back, and demonstrate to the world that that there are consequences to this kind of behavior. And yes (neccesary caveat) the Security Council should be doing more to press Ethiopia to abide by the ruling of the Hague Court of Arbitration that awarded the disputed town of Badme to Eritrea.
A day after another U.S. primary, and as the partition of northern Kosovo becomes more likely by the hour, the collapse of the peacekeeping mission along the Ethiopia-Eritrea border is understandably getting scant attention. This is unfortunate, because the crisis facing the UN mission there is one of the more disturbing developments facing UN peacekeeping a long while.
What happened is this: For weeks, the government of Eritrea has made it increasingly difficult for the mission, UNMEE, to access diesel. With its fuel stocks dangerously low, the mission decided to relocate to the Ethiopian side of the border. The Eritrean military, however, has blocked them from reaching the border. Two flatbeds carrying APCs and a number of personnel are currently being detained and harassed by Eritrean militia in a remote border crossing. Meanwhile, the rest of the 1,400 strong UNMEE has decided to "regroup" in the Eritrean capitol, Asmara.
Ethiopia is not with out reproach. The Eritrean hostility toward UNMEE stems in large part from an Eritrean perception that the international community is not doing enough to force Ethiopia to abide by binding arbitration which awarded a disputed border town to Eritrea. Nevertheless, nothing can justify this kind out outright harassment of UN peacekeepers. The international community must come down hard against this kind of behavior -- the precedent that it sets for other peacekeeping missions is frankly dangerous. Flagrant violations of the accepted rules of peacekeeping cannot be allowed to go unpunished.
Justin Rood of ABC News reports on the critically important, yet often overlooked story of American arrears to UN Peacekeeping.
On the eve of President Bush's trip to Africa, his administration has decided to drastically cut money for United Nations peacekeeping missions in war-torn countries there. According to White House figures quietly released this week, more than $193 million for U.N. troops would be cut for missions in Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d'Ivoire and elsewhere. A State Department official who would not be named confirmed to ABC News Monday that the cuts could be even worse. "America's reputation and standing are not helped when we call and vote for -- but don't pay our fair share of -- new and bigger U.N. peacekeeping operations in places like Darfur and Chad," Deborah Derrick, executive director of the Better World Campaign, told ABC News. "Great nations pay their bills."Amen to that! (The Better World Campaign is the sister organization to the UN Foundation, which sponsors this site.) Since the start of the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United Nations has quietly assumed responsibility for managing a growing number of conflicts worldwide. The flare-up in Haiti in 2004, the July 2006 fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, and the situation in Darfur, are just a few of many conflicts managed by the UN with little direct involvement by the United States. In fact, most Americans would be surprised to learn that of the 76,000 UN troops currently deployed to 20 missions worldwide, only eleven are American service members. At the heart of this arrangement is an implicit deal: The UN will go to places where the United States cannot or does not want to so long as the United States picks up a little over a quarter of the cost of each mission. At least, that is the way it is supposed to work. In reality, the United States, as a veto-wielding member of the Security Council, has approved mission after mission while falling behind on its payments. This arrangement is clearly not sustainable. If promoting democracy abroad and ending genocide are as much of a priority as the White House proclaims, then surely somewhere in the $3.1 trillion budget they can find spare change to fund Peacekeeping.