AFRICA: United Nations Is Cutting and Running, Diplomats Say

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 1995 (IPS) - U.N. peacekeepers pulled out of Somalia last March and Mozambique a month later. The U.N. Security Council is warning it may now withdraw its peacekeepers from Western Sahara and its small observer force from Liberia.

What’s the connection? U.N. officials would say they are all examples of places where U.N. forces are no longer needed, or where sluggish peace processes have failed to produce results.

But African diplomats say quite another thing. All four missions, they note, are in their continent.

So was the ill-fated U.N. Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM), which pulled out of Angola when rebels returned to war in 1992, and only recently has begun to return to full strength.

And so was the U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), which was reduced last year to a token force at the height of that nation’s genocide. Perhaps one million people were killed while U.N. troops remained unable to halt the fighting.

For many Africans, the recent U.N. record in Africa attests to the lack of will in the U.N. Security Council to solve that continent’s most bewildering crises.

“The Security Council picks and chooses its crises,” one African diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. “In Bosnia, they can keep a force for years. But in Africa, they cut and run.”

Many diplomats have privately criticised the Council for allowing the end of the Somalia mission, even though that country remains as divided among warring factions, and as lacking of a central government, as when the U.N. troops entered in 1993.

The main foci of African worries are the two peacekeeping missions that are in the greatest danger of extinction now: the 300-member Western Sahara force, called MINURSO, and the small 70- member U.N. Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL).

Both missions were extended last week by the Council, but both face uphill battles if they are to last even beyond this September.

MINURSO must report to the Council every two weeks about its progress in preparing a referendum to determine Western Sahara’s sovereignty. If the reports fail to convince the 15-member Council that progress towards a referendum is continuing, it may not be extended past Sep 30.

Similarly, although the Council voted to extend UNOMIL until Sep 15, it warned that last week’s renewal could be the force’s final one.

U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright was particularly emphatic: “We have been patient. We have extended UNOMIL for over a year now, each time with sterner warnings to the Liberian factions. But patience must have a purpose.”

In this case, Albright warned, unless Liberia’s eight warring parties agree to a cease-fire and an interim State Council by mid- September, UNOMIL will end.

Nigerian Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari, who also sits on the Council, has objected to giving Liberia’s mission so quick a hook. He has argued that, for Africa to be convinced of its value to the United Nations, troubled African missions should receive as much patience as the beleaguered peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia or the Middle East.

“The withdrawal of U.N. troops (from Liberia) will mean for many African nations that the United Nations is not interested in that conflict,” agreed Victor Toko, acting head of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) office at the United Nations.

But more importantly, Toko warned, the United Nations must not become discouraged against African peacekeeping simply because of its complexity.

Noting U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s warning that Liberia is like a patient that won’t take medicine and sickens, Toko argued, “It is when a situation becomes worse that a doctor should call other colleagues to join him.” But, he added, a doctor should never abandon a patient to die.

At the OAU summit last week in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the continent’s heads of state supported a regional resolution requiring the Security Council “to reconsider its intention to withdraw U.N. troops from Liberia by Sep 1995.”

Toko said that the current OAU Chairman, Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi, would drive that point home to Boutros-Ghali when the U.N. chief visits Ethiopia this month.

But the Council may be a harder sell. Albright, discussing the need to quit Western Sahara if the peace process remains stalled there, explicitly tied in her country’s opposition to African missions to the penny-pinching mood in Washington.

“In the current budgetary climate, neither we nor the United Nations can continue to pour resources into operations for which we can see no end,” she said. “Each time we vote to create or extend a peacekeeping operation, we must consider whether that use of resources is justified or whether the limited funds available should be spent elsewhere.”

But some Africans argue that the scarce U.N. peacekeeping resources already are committed “elsewhere” — that is, to Bosnia, not Africa.

The world body currently maintains more than 40,000 soldiers throughout the former Yugoslavia, more than two-thirds of the roughly 60,000 peacekeepers deployed worldwide.

Notably, the Council’s decision last week to warn the Liberia and Sahara missions of their imminent demise followed just weeks after the body approved sending more than 10,000 British, French and Dutch troops to Bosnia.

Ironically, the excuse for each action was the same: the violence on the ground was raging unabated, endangering the U.N. troops sent to help.

But the Bosnia war continues to attract world attention. For Africa, however, there is only Boutros-Ghali’s warning last week about Liberia: “The United Nations will pull out … and they can continue to fight each other. This has happened in Beirut, in Mogadishu, and may happen in other different places if there is no political will.”