Peacekeeping: Are there Rules of Engagement?

By Andrew Thomson

 

Former United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold once said that peacekeeping was one of the organization’s “Chapter Six-and-a-Half” functions. He meant that the exercise combines two aspects of the UN Charter’s response to conflict: Chapter Six, which deals with peaceful means such as mediation and fact finding, as well as the military measures found in Chapter Seven. Yet despite its reputation as an integral function of the UN, no specific clause in the 1945 Charter mentions the word “peacekeeping.” Each mission since then has had its own mandate and goals.

UN peacekeeping operations have multiplied over the years despite the absence of clear rules. Since the first troops descended on the Sinai Peninsula in 1956 to defuse the Suez crisis, over 50 armed UN interventions have taken place at a cost of nearly US $30 billion. Forty-one of those missions have been created since 1991.    

For all this participation in areas ranging from Cyprus to East Timor, there are still questions about the UN’s ability to continue in peace operations, especially because of its perceived “overreaching” during the 1990s. As missions became more numerous and complex in nature, the stereotype of peacekeepers as nothing but “social workers with guns” came under attack.  They no longer protect buffer zones or borders between nations that have stopped fighting.

In recent years the blue-helmets have intervened in ongoing civil conflicts to “enforce” peace, and many experts say the UN needs more forceful missions to meet these non-traditional situations. Various proposals for achieving this reform have been suggested, including improving rapid-reaction capability and giving more power to smaller countries.

There was a worldwide growth in missions during the early 1990s to halt civil and ethnic conflicts that featured no clear borders or respect for ceasefires. This changed the rules of engagement governing traditional peacekeeping, according to David B. Carment, associate professor at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. 

“It’s more of the norm today to see ad-hoc militias or warlords who may or may not agree to the rules of the mission,” Carment says. There are several well-known instances of this occurring: the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Sierra Leone to name a few. Many of the missions were regarded as failures from both humanitarian and financial perspectives.

But a small country in East Africa provided the clearest example of how UN officials put a tremendous strain on resources by promoting such a wide array of post-Cold War peace operations.

When a horrific genocide began unfolding in Rwanda, 70,000 peacekeepers were posted on 17 missions around the world. Responsibility for these various activities fell on a staff of a few hundred at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) in New York, headed in 1994 by current Secretary General Kofi Annan. According to a 2001 Atlantic Monthly article by Harvard University’s Samantha Power, this office didn’t have the resources to cope effectively with every crisis. Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright, then the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, describes the department’s response problems: “The global nine-one-one was either busy or no one was there.”

The head of the UN’s peacekeeping mission in Rwanda was a Canadian, Maj.-Gen. (Ret.) Romeo Dallaire, who commanded about 2,500 troops. In a recent speech at Carleton University, he said a force twice as large could have deterred the mass killings that left over 800,000 dead in the spring of 1994. However, the international community did not respond to his pleas. Dallaire added that in a country where radio was the primary mode of communication, his mission did not receive the funding for a small station that would at least have told Rwandans they were there to promote peace. Nor were they able to destroy or jam the signal of a Hutu extremist station that was inciting the genocide.

The inability to stop the killings in Rwanda left Dallaire with a much-publicized case of post-traumatic stress disorder. He says that recent UN peacekeeping policy, especially the refusals of richer countries to commit more resources, has been based on “a fear of casualties, and different reactions and investments in countries that are strategic…you have to wonder if there is a new scale of human life.” 

Placing the burden of the world’s collective security on the UN was an unrealistic goal, according to Carment, who specializes in conflict resolution. He says peacekeeping has evolved so much that regional bodies such as NATO, the Organization of African Unity, or the European Union should play active roles in future missions.

“There’s no reason for the UN to be the only factor engaged in peacekeeping,” Carment says.  “Partnerships with regional organizations would add more legitimacy for everyone involved.” Right now the UN maintains 13 peace missions around the world, composed of nearly 40,000 military and police personnel. However some of these are observer missions that work with UN, such as NATO in Kosovo.

            In response to the difficulties of the 1990s, Annan ordered a large-scale review of UN peacekeeping policy. The resulting Brahimi Report of August 2000 made several recommendations, including restructuring of the DPKO and clearer mission mandates. Another of the report’s proposals was to focus on "coherent, multinational, brigade-sized forces" that could be rapidly deployed to zones of conflict by the UN.

For now, there are two main initiatives regarding rapid deployment. The first is the UN Stand-By Arrangement System, which is a databank of nearly 150,000 military, police, and civilian personnel maintained by 87 member states. These are trained officials that can be called on to form either a “traditional” peacekeeping mission within 30 days or a response to a civil conflict within 90 days. A criticism of this program has been that none of the various countries train or co-ordinate their military forces prior to being deployed.

The second initiative has tried to address this problem. In 1996 Canada along with six similar-sized countries formed SHIRBRIG (Stand-By High Readiness Brigade), designed to provide the UN with a ready-made integrated force that coordinates procedures and equipment. To maintain its flexibility all missions are restricted to a maximum of six months. In November 2000 Canadian, Dutch, and Danish SHIRBRIG units were sent to help establish a UN peacekeeping mission between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Carment is skeptical of SHIRBRIG’s future as a UN peacekeeping tool, saying it’s neither cost-effective nor supported by major powers.

“Big states prefer their own coalitions,” he says, adding that the United States is especially wary of giving away any of its command and control capabilities.

Still, there are those who support the notion of giving more peacekeeping authority to middle-sized powers. Dallaire says a stronger Canadian presence would give “bigger powers room to breathe” instead of being “dragged into wars.” Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Lewis Mackenzie, the Canadian who commanded UN troops in Bosnia during the early-1990s, wrote in a 2001 Washington Post article that the U.S. should focus on being a deterrent force, leaving peacekeeping to Canada and other smaller but developed countries. Mackenzie wrote one year later that the Canadian Forces would have to adapt to these new realities of peacekeeping by becoming more “light, lethal, strategically mobile, and sustainable.”

The UN’s relevance to international peace operations could take another blow in an American-led postwar Iraq.  Perceived U.S. frustration with the UN in recent months means that the organization’s role may be restricted to humanitarian assistance instead of performing security or governing functions.

Despite these challenges, Carment says the idea of peacekeeping is not dead. He believes its changing nature and lack of a true definition in the UN Charter shows there is room for future creativity.

“I’m optimistic the UN will find a reason for maintaining peacekeeping operations, even if its ordinary observer missions to a conflict.”