Читать книгу Understanding Peacekeeping - Alex J. Bellamy - Страница 50

As it turned out, the UN’s members did not provide peacekeepers with sufficient resources to accomplish the increasingly ambitious mandates authorized by the Security Council in environments where peace and ceasefire agreements were often precarious. This left those responsible for managing peace operations with an awful dilemma: whether to soldier on, making do with the limited resources, authority and political support, or advocate withdrawal. This is precisely how Boutros-Ghali (1994: §45) described the dilemma facing UNPROFOR in 1993: ‘the choice in Croatia is between continuing a mission that is clearly unable to fulfil its original mandate in full or withdrawing and risking a renewed war that would probably result in appeals for UNPROFOR to return to restore peace. Given such a choice, soldiering on in hope seems preferable to withdrawing in abdication.’

Although the UN received much of the blame for what happened in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda – some of it rightly – its member states played crucial roles. It was member states, not the UN Secretariat, that crafted mandates and determined resources. Moreover, the bungled ‘Blackhawk Down’ operation in Mogadishu in October 1993 that marked the beginning of the end of UNOSOM II was conducted by US soldiers (not UN peacekeepers); the DPKO had warned the Security Council that without adequate resources the so-called safe areas in Bosnia would be vulnerable to attack; and the decision to stand aside during Rwanda’s genocide in 1994 was taken against the advice of the UN’s force commander on the ground. Nevertheless, it was these four missions that provide the crucial context for understanding the retreat from UN peace operations in the late 1990s.

The first signs of major UN failure came in Angola in 1992. Following UNAVEM I’s success in overseeing the withdrawal of Cuban forces, in May 1991 the Security Council established UNAVEM II to oversee the demobilization of ex-combatants and monitor national elections. To accomplish this task, the mission was afforded 350 military observers and 400 civilian election observers (Anstee 1996; Howard 2008: 37). Earlier missions of this size, such as UNGOMAP, UNAVEM I, UNIIMOG and ONUCA, had succeeded primarily because the belligerents were themselves deeply committed to the peace process. This was not the case in Angola, and UNAVEM II lacked the capacity to operate without high levels of cooperation. Although it succeeded in creating an efficient monitoring and verification system (Fortna 1993: 402), UNITA rebels and the Angolan government used the lull in fighting to regroup and rearm rather than disarm and demobilize. When in September 1992 UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi, lost national elections by a clear margin, he declared them fraudulent. Fighting broke out the following month, most likely initiated by the government (Lodico 1996: 121). Having failed to disarm the belligerents before the election and unable to influence events afterwards, UNAVEM II was forced to stand aside as the fighting claimed the lives of up to 300,000 people. In what was the most intense fighting of the decades-long civil war, Boutros-Ghali (1993: 5) reported in September 1993 that a thousand people were being killed each day. Diplomats from the US, Portugal and Russia attempted to broker new agreements, while UNAVEM II soldiered on amid the violence. In early 1995, the parties reached a new ceasefire agreement, and UNAVEM II was replaced by a much larger mission – UNAVEM III.

UNAVEM III was given a broad and ambitious mandate, including monitoring the ceasefire and verifying the withdrawal of combatants, cantoning, disarming and demobilizing combatants, collecting UNITA arms, verifying the movement of government troops, establishing a new national army, clearing mines, coordinating humanitarian activity and overseeing the presidential election. To accomplish this it was provided with 7,000 troops and around 750 civilians (Howard 2008: 39). Once again Savimbi refused to cooperate, first by not cantoning his forces and then by holding back his specialist force from cantonment and refusing to surrender weapons. UNAVEM III lacked both the military capability to disarm UNITA forcibly and the civilian capability to assist the government in building state capacity in UNITA-held territory. Thus, when UNAVEM III was wound up on schedule in 1997, it had not come close to completing its mandated tasks. There were, it should be said, some successes. Around 70,000 UNITA soldiers were disarmed and 11,000 were integrated into the national army, humanitarian coordination was improved and shaky coalition government was established (ibid.: 39–40). In the same year, however, UNITA demonstrated its military capacity by intervening in Zaire/DRC in support of Mobutu Sese Seko (Jett 1999: 167) and a year later Angola was plunged back into civil war.

UNAVEM II was the first of the UN’s 1990s missions to lack the capacity and mandate to hold a peace together in the face of resistance from belligerents. The mission was unprepared to prevent post-election violence from descending into all-out civil war. The loss of life was probably higher than that of the whole Bosnian war, and its successor, UNAVEM III, failed to disarm UNITA and prevent the war reigniting in 1998. The failure of UNAVEM II comprised elements typical of later disasters in Somalia, Bosnia and Rwanda: peacekeepers given ambitious tasks without the mandate, resources or political will necessary to fulfil them and sent into an environment where the consent and cooperation of belligerents was shaky at best. Given all this, it is perhaps surprising that the outbreak of violence in 1992–3 did not produce an international outcry and that Angola is not typically listed as one of the UN’s ‘great peacekeeping failures’ of the 1990s. This was because UNAVEM II did not attract international media attention and the Security Council’s engagement with Angola during this period was characterized by ambivalence (Howard 2008: 37; Lodico 1996: 123).

The same cannot be said about the international mission deployed to Somalia less than two months after Angola’s descent into violence. The US experience in Somalia marked the beginning of the world’s (temporary) disengagement from UN peace operations. In January 1991, the so-called United Somali Congress – a loose coalition led by Mohammed Farah Aidid and Ali Mahdi – drove the government of Siad Barre out of the capital, Mogadishu. Soon afterwards, the former allies turned on each other and Somalia descended into anarchy. Attacks on the civilian population and the destruction of food sources compounded droughts and caused a massive famine that killed up to 350,000 people in 1992 (Wheeler 2000: 174; Weiss 1999: 78). Although international actors belatedly responded by despatching large amounts of emergency aid, without armed protection a significant proportion of it was looted and thus failed to reach the intended civilian recipients. In response, the US deployed over 30,000 soldiers in December 1992 to help secure the delivery of aid and assist UN peacekeepers.

Relations between the US, the UN and various Somali leaders were strained, especially when the peacekeeping mandate was enlarged to include the disarmament of armed militia in addition to securing the delivery of humanitarian relief. On 5 June 1993, militia loyal to Mohammed Aidid killed more than twenty Pakistani peacekeepers who were inspecting a weapons dump as part of the disarmament process. In the face of such a serious challenge to the credibility of UN peace operations around the world, within days the Security Council issued Resolution 837, which authorized the use of force against those responsible for the attack. The United States’ troops in Somalia thus became preoccupied with bringing Aidid to justice. Throughout the summer of 1993 the US conducted numerous combat operations against his supporters, killing hundreds of belligerents and Somali civilians. Matters came to a head on 3 October, when US troops raided what they thought was a gathering of tribal elders sympathetic to Aidid at the Olympic Hotel. Over 500 Somalis, eighteen Americans and a UN peacekeeper were killed in the ensuing battle. Shortly afterwards, President Clinton announced that all American troops would be withdrawn within six months (Hirsch and Oakley 1995; Lyons and Samatar 1995; Clarke and Herbst 1997).

The White House also adopted a much tougher line on peace operations, announced by President Clinton at the 1993 General Assembly (see box 4.4). As the then US ambassador to the UN, Madeleine Albright, put it at the time: ‘we are coming to the day when countries in need will call the global 911 and get a busy signal’ (The Times, 13 May 1993). The administration’s thinking was later codified in Presidential Decision Directive 25 (May 1994). This identified failings in the UN itself as the main reason for the US failure in Somalia and outlined seventeen conditions that would have to be met before the US would take part in a UN operation (Weiss 1997: 223). Since then the US has placed troop contingents under UN command as part of only one mission – the preventive mission in Macedonia (UNPREDEP; see chapter 6). As it turned out, the country in need of the global 911 that got no response would be Rwanda.

This US-led retreat from peace operations had a massive impact on the UN’s response to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, not least through the US insistence that any UN mission deployed to Rwanda be small and cheap and its repeated argument in favour of terminating the hapless UNAMIR force once the genocide was under way. In what can only be described as a ‘grave accident of timing’ (Melvern 2000: 79), the question of what sort of peace operation was required to oversee the implementation of the recently concluded Arusha Accords for Rwanda came up in the Security Council only a week after the eighteen Americans were killed in Mogadishu. Not surprisingly, the US was disinclined to despatch any new mission to Africa, but it was persuaded by European and African governments to consent to a peace operation on the condition that the force be given a narrow monitoring role and costs be kept as low as possible (Melvern 1997: 335).

The US was not alone in its scepticism towards peace operations. Following the murder of ten of its peacekeepers by extremist militias at the start of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Belgium reversed its earlier strong support for UNAMIR and withdrew the remainder of its contingent on the grounds that there was no peace to keep and consequently little point placing its soldiers in harm’s way. Echoing US sentiment in Somalia, the Belgian government argued that continued participation in the UN mission was ‘pointless within the terms of the present mandate’ and exposed its soldiers to ‘unacceptable risks’ (Wheeler 2000: 219). The large but generally unhelpful Bangladeshi contingent quickly followed suit. In response, Major-General Roméo Dallaire recommended the reinforcement of his mission in order to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. The Security Council, however, decided instead formally to reduce the UN’s presence in Rwanda. Downgraded to a skeleton staff and volunteers, UNAMIR was unable to prevent the genocide, protect the civilian population or punish the perpetrators. In one hundred days, approximately 1 million Tutsi and Hutu moderates were slaughtered – a rate of killing higher than that of the Nazi Holocaust.

Things did not go well in Bosnia either. UNPROFOR was one of the UN’s largest and most complicated missions, not least because, as Yugoslavia dissolved, it had to straddle several newly recognized states (Koops et al. 2015: ch. 30). In February 1992, UNPROFOR peacekeepers were initially mandated to monitor a ceasefire agreement between Croatia and Serbia, which saw the creation of UN protected areas (UNPAs) in the Serb-held regions. The UNPAs were to be free from armed attack by the Croats but were also to be demilitarized by the Serbs. UNPROFOR was positioned between the armies to supervise compliance with the ceasefire agreement while political leaders sought a lasting settlement. Within six months, however, the UN confronted a humanitarian catastrophe in Bosnia because the Bosnian Serb strategy of ethnic cleansing created approximately 1.5 million refugees and would result in around 250,000 deaths. UNPROFOR was extended into Bosnia and tasked with assisting the delivery of humanitarian aid. The basic problem was that all the belligerents – but the Bosnian Serbs in particular – attempted to control the flow of aid around the country. Roadblocks often obstructed aid convoys, and international lorries carrying aid became prime targets for looting and destruction. However, UNPROFOR lacked both the means and the mandate to enforce aid delivery. Its mandate stipulated that peacekeepers could use force only in self-defence, and even if a commander decided to interpret this broadly – as several contingents tended to do – the UN lacked the resources to follow through on such a policy. UNPROFOR was confronted with a Faustian dilemma: bargain with the warlords and deliver some aid or refuse to bargain and deliver much less. Most UNPROFOR commanders chose the first option.

Map 4.1 Bosnia and Herzegovina

As disquiet began to grow in the Western media and among peacekeepers about the UN’s failure to halt the bloodshed, questions were raised about giving UNPROFOR a mandate to use force, and the Security Council gradually expanded the mission’s mandate still further (see table 4.2). In spring 1993, UNPROFOR entered a crucial new phase when the Security Council created ‘safe areas’ in Srebrenica, Sarajevo, Goražde, Žepa, Tuzla and Bihać. The safe areas were all major towns or cities held by the Bosnian government but besieged by Bosnian Serb forces, which systematically targeted civilians with shells and sniper fire. The Security Council demanded that civilians be ‘free from armed attack’ and authorized UNPROFOR to deter such attacks. Importantly, the UN Secretary-General advised that the safe areas policy would need UNPROFOR to be reinforced by 34,000 additional troops. However, the Security Council opted for a ‘light option’ and authorized only 7,600 additional soldiers (UN 1994: 2). As a result, the Secretary-General noted, ‘the effective implementation of the safe-area concept depends on the degree of consent by the parties on the ground’ (ibid.: 3). In other words, the success of the safe areas policy depended upon the Bosnian Serbs.

Nor was UNPROFOR authorized to use force to ensure delivery of humanitarian supplies. Besieged towns such as Srebrenica were therefore dependent for supplies on (scant) Bosnian Serb goodwill. Malnutrition and disease set in. A by-product of creating so-called safe areas was that most of Bosnia became a hostile region in which UN peacekeepers had very little power. When, in summer 1995, the Bosnian Serbs decided to overrun the safe areas, UNPROFOR had neither the capability nor the mandate to prevent them from doing so. In July 1995, Bosnian Serbs seized the safe area of Srebrenica from a small contingent of Dutch peacekeepers, massacring more than 7,500 civilians as they did so (Honig and Both 1996). The Dutch commander in Srebrenica, General Herrimans, requested air strikes to repel the Serbs – as he was entitled to do under Resolution 836 (4 June 1993), which permitted UNPROFOR to ‘deter attacks against the safe areas’. But UNPROFOR’s commander, General Joulwan, and the SRSG, Yasushi Akashi, feared that substantial air strikes would take UNPROFOR across the ‘Mogadishu line’ into peace enforcement and so blocked the demand. The Bosnian Serbs seized the safe area and massacred its male inhabitants virtually unimpeded by the UN.

Table 4.2 UNPROFOR’s changing mandate

Council Resolution	Date	Purpose
713	25 Sept 1991	Arms embargo against former Yugoslavia
743	21 Feb 1992	Establishes UNPROFOR to monitor a ceasefire in the UNPAs in Croatia
757	30 May 1992	Imposes sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro
758	8 June 1992	Increases UNPROFOR mandate to include Bosnia and the safe delivery of humanitarian supplies
764	13 July 1992	Empowers UNPROFOR to secure Sarajevo airport and its environs
770	13 Aug 1992	Demands access to all refugee and prisoner of war camps
776	14 Sept 1992	Enlarges UNPROFOR mandate to include the protection of convoys
781	9 Oct 1992	Creates a no-fly zone over Bosnia
787	16 Oct 1992	Deployment of observers to Bosnia’s borders to enforce compliance with sanctions
816	31 Mar 1993	Gives members the right to enforce the no-fly zone
819	16 April 1993	Designates Srebrenica a ‘safe area’ which should be ‘free from armed attack’
824	6 May 1993	Designates Sarajevo, Tuzla, Žepa, Goražde and Bihać as ‘safe areas’ and authorizes the strengthening of UNPROFOR by fifty military observers
827	25 May 1993	Creates the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY)
836	4 June 1993	Gives UNPROFOR the task of ‘deterring’ attacks on the safe areas including the use of air strikes
913	22 April 1994	Gives UNPROFOR responsibility for collecting and storing belligerents’ heavy weapons around Goražde
998	16 June 1995	Welcomes the creation and deployment of the NATO Rapid Reaction Force
1035	21 Dec 1995	Authorizes the deployment of IFOR

The fall of Srebrenica was followed by the fall of Žepa and the near collapse of Goražde and Bihać. Srebrenica was Europe’s worst massacre since the Second World War, and it stimulated a dramatic rethink of Western policy towards Bosnia. The result was a shift to peace enforcement led by a NATO air campaign (Operation Deliberate Force) against the Bosnian Serbs and a more open strategy of providing military support to the Muslim and Croat armies on the ground. In place of the UN, Western states chose to employ force through NATO. Britain and France deployed a NATO rapid reaction force. On 30 August 1995, NATO launched Operation Deliberate Force. Supported with artillery from the Anglo-French rapid reaction force, Deliberate Force was a sustained air campaign against the Bosnian Serbs. Within four months the Bosnian war was over, the Dayton Accords were signed, and the NATO-led IFOR was deployed to assist in their implementation (see chapter 8).

The political will of member states to mandate and contribute to UN peace operations is related to the operational effectiveness of the organization itself (Berdal 1993: 5). It is not surprising, therefore, that the repeated failure of peace operations between 1992 and 1995 encouraged member states to curb their earlier enthusiasm and limit their commitment. The disasters in Angola, Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia partly caused (in the case of Somalia) and were partly caused by (in the case of Rwanda) a retreat from peace operations as dramatic as the triple transformation that began between 1988 and 1993. The change in sentiment at the UN can be seen in the words of the Secretary-General in 1994 and 1995 (box 4.1).

One obvious consequence of this retreat was the reduction in the number of UN peacekeepers – from over 70,000 in 1993 to fewer than 20,000 in 1996. UN member states, particularly those in the West, were reluctant either to support renewed engagement with the world’s trouble spots (Somalia, Afghanistan, Zaire/Congo, Burundi) or to place their troops under UN command and provide the global institution with the resources it needed. Thus, the 20,000 UN peacekeepers were augmented by a further 40,000 working under the command of regional arrangements (McCoubrey and Morris 2000). Within this context, the Security Council displayed a growing reluctance to authorize new missions, with the largest UN mission deployed in the second half of the 1990s being UNAVEM III in Angola. Between 1995 and early 1999, the Security Council created only three new (and small) missions in regions where the UN was not already active (UNSMIH/UNTMIH, UNOMSIL and MINUGUA). The largest of these was the UNSMIH mission in Haiti, which comprised 1,500 civilian and military personnel, though this was soon reduced to 250 when it handed over to UNTMIH in August 1997. UNOMSIL in Sierra Leone and MINUGUA in Guatemala were both limited to approximately 200 personnel.

In February 1995, before the Srebrenica disaster, Boutros-Ghali published a supplement to his An Agenda for Peace in which he outlined a far less ambitious future for peace operations. In it he argued that the experience of the previous three years had damaged the credibility of the Security Council and the UN as a whole, because the Council had adopted decisions that could not be carried out since the necessary troops were not forthcoming. In addition, a lack of funds imposed ‘severe constraints’ on the UN’s ability to deploy the troops that had been offered (Boutros-Ghali 1995a: §§98–9).

By conservative estimates, around 1.5 million civilians were killed while peacekeepers were present in Angola, Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. The failures, the deliberate killing of peacekeepers and the comparatively high financial costs of these missions prompted many states to temper their earlier enthusiasm both for the UN as the primary agent for maintaining international peace and security and for peace operations. On the one hand, states reluctant to place their troops under UN command began to make greater use of regional arrangements or to act unilaterally. On the other hand, for most of the latter half of the 1990s, states were reluctant to authorize, fund or participate in peace operations, despite the continuation of violence in many parts of the world. The final part of this chapter asks what lessons were learned from these experiences.