A Special Twist to Peacekeeping

The United Nations Security Council recently approved a 6,000-person peacekeeping force for Sierra Leone and a preliminary observer group for Congo. Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke has arranged that during his tenure as Security Council president this month, the main focus will be on Africa.

This reverses a trend, led by the U.S., to abjure U.N. military involvement in Africa’s conflicts since the disasters in Somalia and Rwanda. During this same period, while conflicts with terrible atrocities raged in Congo, Sierra Leone and Sudan, the U.S. led the Security Council to approve more than $600 million in U.N. peacekeeping in Bosnia post-Dayton. Pressing the U.N. into a massive Kosovo operation, which will cost nearly $500 million annually, finally rendered this neglect of Africa politically untenable.

This restoration of balance is welcome. but the danger is that the U.N. will be led into undertakings that are ineffective and will eventually fail. This is true because the knee-jerk reaction to how the U.N. should be involved is to appoint a U.N. envoy and send in U.N. peacekeepers. There is a fundamental difference, however, between U.N. peacekeepers and those from NATO or the Australian-led force in East Timor. U.N. peacekeeping does not contain the threat of force behind it. U.N. peacekeeping forces are neither structured nor mandated to take serious military action against one or another party to a conflict.

That is clearly different from NATO’s role in Bosnia and Kosovo. The U.N. is already experiencing serious problems in Sierra Leone. Even more important, the U.N.’s influence overall in a conflict situation is only as strong as the strength of its key members behind it. Without such political backing, sending a U.N. envoy to solve a serious conflict is like sending one naked into the wild.

If the U.N. is to be able to play a significant role in Africa’s conflicts, as it should, it requires a much more concentrated political strategy, for which U.N. peacekeepers are but one element in the endgame. The model is the U.N. role in bringing about the independence of Namibia, solving both the war with South Africa and indirectly the presence of Cuban troops in Angola. The U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, acting as the “Contact Group,” undertook to bring about implementation of the basic Security Council resolution on Namibia. It took more than 10 years before the solution was achieved and U.N. peacekeepers and administrators could enter the territory.

But in the end, the U.N.’s role in Namibia is considered one of its great success stories. The U.N.’s successful Cambodia operation came about largely in the same way, i.e., on the back of sustained major power work to bring about the context in which U.N. efforts could operate successfully.

The situation in Africa is different today, however. African countries are less subject to outside influence, and they are more directly involved militarily and otherwise in the various conflicts. While these are often termed intrastate conflicts, every one of those mentioned above features significant involvement from neighboring countries. But African countries alone will have difficulty bringing these conflicts to an end. They lack the resources to support a significant peacemaking or recovery effort. And they do not control noncontinental entities, particularly the lucrative arms trade that fuels these conflicts.

Thus there must be a partnership between influential Western powers and African countries with a stake in these solutions. For the U.S. and its Western partners, it means a high-level, sustained commitment to the process, not less than that which was devoted to Namibia and South Africa. It means setting aside the outdated aspects of competition between the U.S. and France, for neither alone has any more the clout or capacity to control events on the African continent. It demands a recognition that forging the requisite political framework for settlement of some of these conflicts, in particular in Congo, may take several years, for the future power relations of much of Africa hang in the balance.

The U.N. should provide the framework resolutions that guide the process and on which authority the partnership operates. It should be the locus for a much stronger enforcement mechanism for the sanctions on arms shipments. It should be prepared to provide the peacekeepers, administration and other elements of implementation once an agreed peace structure has been negotiated.

In sum, the U.N. is the centerpiece of the effort, but reliant on the active involvement of the U.S., as its strongest member, together with other key countries, to enable it to carry out the mandate. Without that backing, its renewed foray into the conflicts in Africa risks becoming yet another prescription for U.N. failure. This is something neither the U.N. nor Africa can afford.