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POLITICS: Despite Setbacks, U.N. Peacekeeping Will Focus on Africa

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2003 (IPS) - The United Nations has earmarked nearly 60 percent of its just-approved 2003/2004 peacekeeping budget for a continent in perpetual political and military turmoil – Africa.

Of the 2.17 billion dollars which the world body plans to spend on peacekeeping in the new financial year beginning Jul.1, more than 1.3 billion dollars has been set aside for five peacekeeping operations in Africa.

But non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in promoting African causes are sceptical over the short-term and long-term efficacy of peacekeeping missions in the troubled continent.

"U.N. peacekeeping operations have always had mixed results," Bill Fletcher of the TransAfrica Forum told IPS.

He singled out the current U.N. Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) – created in Nov. 1999 – as an example of an African peacekeeping mission which has failed to show tangible results.

"The troops originally deployed (about 4,500) were too few in number and had such a limited mandate that they could do very little," he said.

"What will be necessary is the combination of a sufficiently large ground force, the proper mandate in order to fight back if attacked, and cooperation with national reconciliation efforts," Fletcher said.

Last month, the U.N. Security Council decided to send a second 1,400-strong, multi-national rapid deployment force – led by France – to restore order in the Congo, a country facing an ethnic conflict of genocidal proportions.

But the new force, which will have at least 1,000 French troops, has a limited three-month mandate that ends in September.

David Malone, a former Canadian ambassador and currently president of the International Peace Academy in New York, questions why industrial nations refused to participate meaningfully in MONUC, which consisted mostly of troops from developing nations.

"Nobody believes that a three-month deployment (of the new rapid deployment force) will do more than induce the killers to wait out this faint-hearted Western effort before the slaughter resumes," he added.

Of the five peacekeeping missions costing 1.3 billion dollars during 2003/2004, four are in sub-Saharan Africa: the U.N. Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL); the U.N. Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE); the U.N. Mission in Cote d’Ivoire (MINUCI); and MONUC. A fifth peacekeeping mission in North Africa (MINURSO) is based in Western Sahara.

The U.N. mission in Congo accounts for the largest share of the total peacekeeping budget amounting to about 608.2 million dollars followed by Sierra Leone costing about 543.4 million dollars.

Responding to the spreading crisis in Liberia, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week urged the Security Council to deploy a new multi-national force in a country threatened with civil war.

Annan has implicitly called on the United States to lead the proposed new peacekeeping force in Liberia. But U.S. President George W. Bush, who has asked Liberian President Charles Taylor to step down, has refused to make any commitments.

Liberia, whose capital Monrovia is named after former U.S. President James Monroe, is a country with longstanding historical relations with the United States.

Annan said: "What is important is we need a country with capacity, a military capacity, that can deploy a robust force" in Liberia.

"Many are expecting the United States to lead that (peacekeeping) operation in Liberia. Several countries, members of the United Nations, have also appealed for that. The Liberian population is also asking for that," he added.

The situation in Liberia is so grave that a delegation of ambassadors from the U.N. Security Council, currently on a peace mission in West Africa, cancelled its visit to Monrovia at the eleventh hour. The proposal for a peacekeeping mission in Liberia is expected to be discussed by the Security Council when the delegation returns to New York next week.

Expressing disappointment, Annan told reporters in Geneva Tuesday: "I would have preferred an urgent reaction (from the Security Council)".

In a report to the Security Council early this year, Annan listed a string of "peacekeeping successes" in 2002, including the establishment of provisional self-governing institutions in Kosovo; delimination of the Ethiopian-Eritrean border; the birth of independent East Timor; elections in Sierra Leone; progress towards a settlement in the Democratic Republic of Congo; and the work of the U.N. mission in Angola and the assistance mission in Afghanistan.

But Daniel Volman of the Africa Security Project said that in the past, U.N. peacekeeping operations have had "a very mixed track record, with a number of disastrous failures – Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Somalia – with a few noteworthy successes, such as Mozambique."

"Limited effectiveness of past operations has generally been due to the failure of the permanent five members of the Security Council (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia) to provide adequate funding or manpower, as well as the limited mandates issued to U.N. peacekeeping forces," Volman told IPS.

But he admitted that the U.N. mission in Ethiopia/Eritrea has generally been a success – "at least as far as preventing further warfare and making it possible for a settlement to the border dispute to be achieved".

The mission in Sierra Leone, he said, has also been largely successful, although this has depended upon the leading role of British troops operating under their own mandate.

"The situation in the Congo remains unclear, but I see little prospect for a real settlement of the various conflicts going on in that country unless the Security Council takes more decisive action," he added.

"But the longstanding peackeeping mission in Western Sahara (created in April 1991) is, unfortunately, a perfect example of how little the United Nations can achieve, beyond maintaining the ceasefire – unless members of the Security Council are willing to take strong action," Volman said.

The new U.N. budget will finance 14 active peacekeeping missions based in Kosovo, Indo-Pakistan border, Cyprus, Georgia, Syrian-Israeli border, Lebanon, East Timor, Golan Heights, Iraqi-Kuwait border, Cote d’Ivoire, Western Sahara, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Ethiopian-Eritrean border.

As of the end May, there were 34,941 military and civilian personnel from 89 countries serving in these U.N. missions.

The peacekeeping budget has remained in the red primarily because the United States owes more than 500 million dollars in past dues.

Still the U.N. peacekeeping budget of 2.17 billion dollars is described as "measly" compared with the staggering 350 billion U.S. military budget for this year.

The Pentagon has estimated that U.S. military spending for 2004 will be in the region of about 390 billion dollars, rising to a projected 400 billion dollars in 2005.