After Checkered Past, U.N. Takes Up Peacekeeping Duties

To the surprise of many, the United Nations Security Council recently approved the deployment of two peacekeeping missions in Africa. In Sierra Leone, 6,000 out of 11,000 approved U.N. peacekeepers are disarming several warring factions to end a brutal, diamond-fueled, nine-year civil war. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a paltry 5,500 U.N. peacekeepers will try to monitor a cease-fire among the armies of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, as well as a myriad of rebel and government forces that have been fighting over the carcass of a mineral-rich country. The missions signify a new, innovative approach to U.N. peacekeeping in Africa and may even rehabilitate the international organization’s reputation on the continent.

Despite rhetorical support for the idea of “African solutions to African problems,” Western powers have been unwilling to provide the money and men to help resolve Africa’s civil wars. The U.N. refused to intervene in Africa’s civil wars after the controversies of the Congo crisis in the early 1960s, citing the difficulties of keeping peace in the shadow of a Cold War in which two ideological superpowers waged proxy wars. The end of the Cold War led to renewed cooperation in the Security Council, as Washington and Moscow worked together to manage Africa’s conflicts, which they had done so much to fuel. This led to peacekeeping successes in Namibia and Mozambique in the early 1990s, and a proliferation of other U.N. missions in Angola, Rwanda and western Sahara.

U.N. peacekeeping in Africa suffered a devastating blow on the dusty streets of Mogadishu in October 1993, when 18 U.S. troops were killed in an ill-advised hunt for a Somali warlord. The mission was to have been President George Bush’s humanitarian gift to Africa. Instead, the sight of American soldiers being dragged through the streets by mobs enraged by the killing of hundreds of Somali citizens by U.S. warplanes sparked a domestic backlash and the scapegoating of the U.N. by a jingoistic U.S. media. Operation Restore Hope quickly became Operation Run Home.

A poll-obsessed President Bill Clinton ordered the withdrawal of U.S. peacekeepers from Somalia, and other contingents subsequently abandoned Somalia. Six months later, Washington led the opposition to a U.N. response to the utterly preventable massacre of 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutus in Rwanda, in a situation that was tragically and erroneously viewed through a Somali prism.

Following the Somalia debacle, Washington placed heavy restrictions on future U.N. peacekeeping missions in Africa. Western powers, which supported African autocrats like Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko, Liberia’s Samuel K. Doe and Somalia’s Mohamed Siad Barre during the Cold War, abandoned Africa in its hour of greatest need. The United States showed more interest in the Balkans. The lack of logistical and financial support to end Africa’s civil wars was epitomized by the travails of a Nigerian-led peacekeeping force, the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group, which attempted for more than eight years to bring peace to Liberia and Sierra Leone. A South African-led effort to restore order to Lesotho in 1998 was similarly embroiled in military and political difficulties. Regional actors in Africa often became entangled in parochial political and economic agendas, even as neighbors complained about the bullying instincts of regional hegemons like Nigeria and South Africa.

Two events have contributed significantly to the recent turn away from regional peacekeeping in Africa and the apparent reassertion of the U.N.’s role as the primary body responsible for international peacekeeping: the death of Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha in 1998 and the emergence of black-majority rule in South Africa in 1994. (Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., also deserves some credit for convincing Congress to approve the new missions.)

Abacha’s death and the election of a civilian, Olusegun Obasanjo, led to the emergence of a regime in Nigeria that could no longer, unlike previous military-brass hats, brazenly ignore public opinion on the mounting costs and casualties of regional peacekeeping. Obasanjo has to answer to his isolationist public and cantankerous parliament. Nigeria’s recent ethnic clashes and continuing instability in its oil-producing region have concentrated minds on events closer to home.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela’s election raised great expectations in the West that Africa’s richest country would lead the charge to keep the continental peace. Mandela chose instead to alleviate poverty at home. Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, has championed the idea of an African renaissance. With his army now largely restructured, there are no credible alibis left, and he has promised to engage more with Africa. Mbeki also realizes that South Africa cannot refuse to keep the peace that it so eagerly brokers in Africa. Furthermore, both Mbeki and Obasanjo are widely respected leaders in the West. They have promised to contribute peacekeepers to the Congo and Sierra Leone, with the important proviso that they serve under a U.N. umbrella.

By placing mostly regional forces under the U.N. flag, the hope is that the peacekeepers will enjoy the legitimacy and impartiality that the U.N.’s universal membership offers, while some of the financial and logistical problems of regional peacekeepers can be resolved through greater burden-sharing. These new missions should also be more accountable, since the peacekeepers will have to report regularly to the Security Council.

Peace remains fragile in both Sierra Leone and Congo, where sporadic fighting has delayed deployment of U.N. peacekeepers. The two missions will be dangerous and fraught with difficulties. The number of troops for Congo is clearly inadequate for the size of the country and will have to be vastly increased. Of equal importance, the international community must provide adequate resources to re-integrate fighters into society, repair damaged infrastructure, retrain security forces, rebuild civil services and revive democratic structures. The U.N.’s credibility in Africa suffered enormous damage after its peacekeepers abandoned Somalia and Rwanda to their fates. The world body, currently led by a prominent African, now has a golden opportunity to repair some of this damage.