PEACEBUILDING MISSIONS :
THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR A LASTING PEACE
12 Décembre 2006
Montréal
À l'occasion d'une session de formation destinée à ses membres, l'Association internationale des avocats de la défense avait invité notre secrétaire, l'ambassadeur Serge Marcoux, à être leur conférencier lors d'un dîner organisé au restaurant Les Pyrennées. Voici le texte de son allocution (en anglais seulement) :
Good evening ladies and gentlemen and thank you, Mrs Robert for this nice introduction.
I must confess that it is always somewhat intimidating for a diplomat to appear before such an impressive gathering of lawyers. Probably because diplomats, such as myself, are dealing with the world as they would like it to be, a world as it is dreamed in the corridors of the UN in New York and Geneva, whereas you have the difficult task of dealing with the world as it is, often being obliged to deal with the results of diplomats’ mistakes, and defend people who have fallen victims of their blind faith in some misguided politicians.
Many of these mistakes in the recent years had to do with what is usually referred to as “peace keeping missions”, even if, as we will see, the term is often misleading. Peace operations conducted in the last twenty years have been the result, by and large, of the most commendable intentions. Yet, if some, like the one in Sierra Leone proved to be a great success, some others like the UN mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ended up in appalling failure. Why?
Based on my own experience as first Canadian ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina after the signing of the Dayton agreement, I would like to outline four conditions which, in my mind, are essential to the success of such missions. But in order to understand these conditions, we will compare essentially two missions, one unsuccessful, the UN mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina before it was entrusted to NATO, and one very successful, the UN mission in Sierra Leone and in doing so, we will try to clarify the concept of “peace operations”.
In 1989, Yugoslavia, this unique country which Marshal Tito like to describe as one country with two alphabets, three religions, four official languages, five nationalities and six republics, was fighting for its survival. The nationalist forces, which Tito had tried to suppress since the end of the Second World War, were resurfacing, stronger than ever. If Slovenia succeeded in leaving the Federation peacefully in 1991, the same was not true of Croatia and Serbia whose nationalist leaders, Franco Tudjman and Slobodan Milosevic, shared a common ambition: the dream of achieving a Great Croatia and a Great Serbia. This could only be done by dividing Bosnia and Herzegovina and annexing part to Croatia and part to Serbia.
I will not go into the details of this war which, in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone made 142 000 dead, 151 000 injured, not to mention 2 millions displaced persons, that is more than half the population. Let me simply remind you that the siege of Sarajevo was the longest siege of the last 400 years of our history and that the airlift put in place between Zagreb and Sarajevo carried twice as much food and material all through 1993 and 1994 than the airlift organized by the Allies for the survival of Berlin after the Second World War.
While the European Community was doing its best to bring the belligerents to agree on a cease-fire, Boutros Boutros-Gali, the then UN Secretary General appointed Cyrus Vance as his own negotiator. In February 1992, Vance was able to recommend to the Security Council the deployment of a force, called UNPROFOR, comprising 12 000 men to ensure that the three United Nations Protected Areas in Croatia where large numbers of Serbs were living, be demilitarized and that all persons residing in them be protected from armed attack. It was the most important force of its kind since the beginning of peace keeping operations in 1956 during the Suez crisis. In June 1992, as the conflict intensified and extended to Bosnia and Herzegovina, UNPROFOR’s mandate and strength were enlarged in order to ensure the security and functioning of the airport of Sarajevo and the delivery of humanitarian assistance to the city. This United Nations protected areas concept was used again in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the towns of Sarajevo, Žepa, Bihać, Goražde and Srebrenica where, in 1995, the Dutch troops protecting the town, let the Bosnian-Serb General Mladic enter, round up the 8 000 men who had sought refuge there and massacre them.
Dispersed on too large a territory, without instructions as to the “rules of engagement” or how military personnel should answer an enemy’s attack, without a unified command, these same UN peace keeping forces, which had been a success in Croatia, proved to be an appalling failure in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
So much so that, when Sarajevo’s main market was bombarded on February 5th, 1994, with 68 persons killed and 199 injured, the United Nations felt obliged to request NATO’s assistance to put an end to the shelling. In a few weeks, NATO succeeded where the UN had been failing for almost two years. Following what, the UN requested NATO to take the command of UNPROFOR under its umbrella. It was the first time that the UN was entrusting to a regional organization the command of one of its own operations.
So, why is it that NATO succeeded where the UN had failed until then?
And why is it that the UN failed in Bosnia and Herzegovina whereas it had been a success in Croatia?
In order to answer this question, we must first start by defining the very concept of peacekeeping. There is indeed a tendency among some governments to apply the term “peace-keeping operations” to all missions, thus blurring the distinction that must be made between them.
As described by the United Nations, peacekeeping is “a way to help countries torn by conflict to create conditions for sustainable peace”. Thus, operations presently run in Afghanistan can not be called peace-keeping operations: there is indeed no peace to be kept, nor a will between the different parts to the conflict to come to an agreement. They should rather be called “peace enforcement”. These missions have largely been avoided in the past and the few examples we have were not very successful. The best example, and some of you are probably still working on its consequences, are the 1994 events in Rwanda where several Belgian soldiers were forced to watch the ongoing massacres and were ultimately killed without being allowed to engage. These operations were and remain risky, since inability to use force is combined to an unwillingness of nations to enter their forces in potentially “hot” conflicts which would not otherwise involve them as we have seen during the last NATO summit. The present rules of engagement used in Afghanistan not only do not prevent killing the enemy, but make it an end in itself. It is usually during these kinds of missions, when the concepts of “good” and “bad” are blurred, that crimes are committed, which will ultimately come before international tribunals.
The second category of operations is the peace making missions. This is the type of operation conducted by NATO in Bosnia and Herzegovina. After four years of war, local populations were unable to fight anymore. They were hungry, they were cold, they had neither arms nor munitions anymore, and they resented the nationalist leaders who had imposed this war on them. NATO attacks on Serb positions after the shelling of the Sarajevo market succeeded in convincing both the Croat and Serb presidents that neither Europe, nor America, would agree to partitioning Bosnia and Herzegovina. So, when President Clinton suggested that the three presidents met on an airbase in Dayton, Ohio, and, like for a pope election, not to leave the base before they had come to an agreement, they reluctantly agreed. There existed therefore a will among the different parties, if not to establish peace, at least to stop war. And after Dayton, there was a signed agreement to monitor. Only a few months were necessary to implement the military aspects of the Dayton agreement. At which point a new phase could begin.
At this point, we can really speak of peace keeping mission. Peacekeepers monitor and observe the peace process in post-conflict areas and assist ex-combatants in implementing the peace agreements they have signed. Most of these operations are established and implemented by the United Nations itself with troops serving under UN operational command although, more and more, the Security Council authorizes regional organizations such as NATO, the African Union or perhaps in the future the Organization of American States (I am referring to Haiti) to undertake peacekeeping tasks.
The final stage is the peace building mission. Once peace is implemented, it remains necessary to rebuild the country and make sure that renewed fighting will not compromise progress made so far. Usually, societies emerging from long periods of instability need assistance in building new infrastructures and implementing new structures of government. Such assistance comes in many forms, including confidence-building measures, power-sharing arrangements, electoral support, strengthening the rule of law, and economic and social development. Accordingly, UN or other peacekeepers can then include soldiers, civilian police officers, and other civilian personnel. It is not likely that you will be called upon to work on cases originating during this phase.
The United Nations operation in Sierra Leone, called UNAMSIL, may serve as a model of both successful peacekeeping and peace building missions. Over the course of its mandate, the mission disarmed tens of thousands of ex-fighters, assisted in holding national and local elections, helped to rebuild the country's police force, and contributed towards rehabilitating the infrastructure and bringing government services to local communities.
The United Nations also helped the Government stop illicit trading in diamonds and regulate the industry used during the war to buy weapons which had fuelled the conflict.
UNAMSIL assisted the voluntary return of more than half a million refugees and internally displaced persons. It helped the Government restore its authority and social services in areas previously controlled by rebels, trained thousands of police personnel, and constructed or reconstructed dozens of police stations.
UNAMSIL monitored and trained Sierra Leoneans in human rights and was instrumental in setting up the Special Court for Sierra Leone to try those most responsible for war crimes. The mission also assisted the Government in setting up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, tasked with healing the wounds of war by bringing together perpetrators and victims of atrocities.
We can now draw some conclusions as to the necessary conditions for a successful peace keeping or peace building missions.
Based on my experience, the first condition will always be that the fighting parties must be willing to lay down arms and start talking with one another. Peace building requires national ownership, and must be home-grown. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, nationalist leaders would have preferred to continue the war since none of them had achieved his own goals. But they realize that, if they did not put an end to the fighting, they would be abandoned by their own people. Thus they reluctantly agreed to sign the Dayton agreement. It is very sad to say, but there is little that the international community will accomplish in Darfour as long as the government and the armed rebels will not be convinced that it is to their advantage to put an end to the fighting.
The UN or other regional organizations may play the role of catalyst for parties in search for peace. It can play a useful role if the parties are willing to participate in this effort. But the bottom line remains that there can be no peace-keeping operation if there is no peace to be kept.
The second condition has to be addressed by the outsiders who want to be of help in such situations. In the words of Kofi Annan: “Know where you are going!” In other words: “Do not get involved in a conflict about which you know nothing, simply because the president of a country located south of your border asks you to do so.”
A good example of this is the Canadian involvement in Somalia during the 1994 and 1995 civil war. This operation started when the UN wanted to come to the rescue of civilian populations taken hostages by war lords and driven to starvation. Started with the best intentions, this operation soon became a nightmare.
Canada never had a diplomatic or military presence in this part of Africa. Never before had our soldiers to face a situation where they were confronting not one army or enemy, but several war lords, each of them having their own objectives, controlling their own area of the country and recognizing no other authority than their own.
If, unfortunately, the international community was extraordinarily slow to act in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by the time NATO got involved, it was familiar with all aspects of the conflict. Every day, television was bringing us pictures of this war which was going on not only in Europe, but among people whose culture was fairly similar to ours. We had had a presence in the Balkans for many years; we knew the geography, the history and the culture of the parties at war.
The third essential condition is strict neutrality between the different parties to the conflict. And this is why the present operation in Afghanistan is bound to fail unless there is a drastic change of direction. As in Somalia, in a mountainous country like Afghanistan, where war lords are the sole masters of their own valley, as soon as you take side with one of them, you alienate all the other ones.
Let us remember that Afghanistan is divided between four main ethnic groups: the Pashtuns forming 38 percent of the population, the Tadjiks (25%), the Hazaras (19%) and the Ouzbeks (6%), plus about thirty other small clans representing a few percents of the population. As soon as the United States favoured Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, who was bound to win the elections simply because his clan was the largest, they alienated the other ones who however, taken together, form the majority of the population.
And when you alienate the population, you quickly loose the status of “liberator” or “protector” and you acquire the dubious reputation of “invaders”. This is easy to understand. Remember the Anglo-American war of 1812 and its effect on Canada.
On that year, the United States, at war with Great-Britain, decided to “liberate” those poor Canadians victims of the atrocious British domination. So, the Congress decided to send American troops to “liberate” Canada. American leaders had assumed that Canada could be easily overrun. Former President Jefferson optimistically referred to the conquest of Canada as "a matter of marching." The United States Secretary of War, John Armstrong, Jr., sent his troops, late in 1813, to capture of Montreal. How did Canadians, French speaking as well as English speaking, reacted? They joined forces with the British against the invader and soon drove the US forces back to Washington where, in retaliation against the destructive American raids into parts of Upper Canada, they burned down the White House, the Treasury and some other public buildings. I am sure that President Bush would have labeled these actions “acts of terrorism”. But one’s terrorist is always somebody else patriot or martyr. During his official visit to the Congress in 2003, Tony Blair officially apologized for the unfortunate gesture of the British troops. Until now, I am not aware that our own Prime Minister did the same; on the other hand, I am not entirely convinced that Mr. Harper knows about this little known and even less publicized fact of our history.
Finally, when you have helped solving the military conflict, do not start a political one by trying to impose your own political system and your own cultural or moral values on populations whose culture often goes back thousand of years before your own, a culture which is usually not better, nor worse than yours, but simply different.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the international community made two fundamental mistakes. The first one was to believe that so-called democratic elections solve all problems. But in an ethnically divided country, free and fair elections always end up in imposing the domination of the ethnic majority on the minority or minorities, something we have seen again in Iraq. The second one was to do things in the wrong order. Before there can be meaningful elections, there must be respect for the law, and some shared understanding of what the result will mean and how power will be distributed. According to Clausewitz, peace is only the continuation of war by other means; in Bosnia, nationalist leaders tried their best to continue scoring points for their own ethnic group before, during, and after successive elections, the result being that, ten years later, the civilian aspects of the Dayton agreement are still not fully implemented.
Then, before there can be full economic liberalization, there must be some social stability. To introduce policies which cause high short-term unemployment while large numbers of people still have weapons, and little or no stake in the peace-time economy is a sure recipe for disaster. And before the international community disengages, there must be a growing economy. It should be no surprise that in the poorest countries, with little or no economic growth, like Haiti and East Timor, peace processes failed and conflicts lapsed back into violence.
The last condition derives from the previous one. Nearly half of all peace agreements collapse within five years. Others fall into a sort of limbo of no war, no peace. Hard-won agreements on human rights and the reform of justice are often eroded once domestic and international attention diminishes. In Haiti, there had been a peacekeeping mission in the mid 1990s and a new police force. And then, the UN left, along with other international institutions, before a viable peace had taken root. They are back now, but much of what had been achieved before had been swept away.
How should we conclude this brief review of the necessary conditions for successful peace keeping operations?
With the deployment of a force in Lebanon, in Timor and in Darfour, there are almost 140 000 blue helmets in the world. “Peace enforcement”, “peace making”, “peace building” and “peace keeping”, the number of terms used to describe different kinds of peace operations is growing and reflect the fact that each conflict is unique and that there is no universal solution of the kind: “one size fits all”. While at the beginning, the United Nations were alone to put together such missions, we are now seeing an increasing number of operations led by NATO, the African Organization, and, hopefully soon, the Organization of American States.
From this point of view, it is worth noting that the Security Council has, last week, authorized the establishment of an African protection and training mission in Somalia to help defend the troubled country’s Transitional Federal Institutions. The new force will be set up by the African Union. This new involvement of the African Union is a much welcome development. Because regional organizations are the ones which know best the nature of the conflicts and the geography of the countries involved. In spite of its weakness and the very low level of support granted by other countries, the African Union is progressively gaining experience. It is the only way for the organization to work constructively at solving other conflicts which impede Africa’s economic development.
Peace missions, either conducted by the United Nations or other regional organizations, are a relatively new attempt by the international community to address conflicts which, more and more, are ethnic and regional in their background, cultural and religious in their expression. Two phenomenons will profoundly modify the geo-political situation and international relations in the coming decades. The first one is the decline, abrupt in the case of Russia, more gradual but nonetheless real of the United States, the two super-powers which have dominated the world during the cold war. The second is the emergence of two new superpowers, China and India, which need for their tremendously quick economic development a continuous flow of raw material coming from countries located near the equator, be it in Oceania, in Africa or in South America. And this is precisely the region where most conflicts requiring peace missions occur nowadays.
The concept of peace missions is certainly a valuable one, but we must gradually acquire a better understanding of the conditions necessary for a lasting peace if we want to achieve more successes than failures in this field.
