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PEACEKEEPING, AFRICA AND THE EMERGING GLOBAL SECURITY ARCHITECTURE
Introduction
The changes in the division of labour in global security evident in the post-September 11, 2001 world are accelerating and becoming clear. The two initial factors that lie at the heart of this are the cumulative effect of the end of the Cold War and the subsequent unprecedented global military and economic power of the US. The reaction in Africa to this, and more recently to that of global terrorism was, justifiably, to fear its marginalisation. Despite the fact that the largest UN peace mission is in Africa (in Sierra Leone), the long-established trend of western troop disengagement in favour of alternative pragmatic solutions, dubbed ‘African solutions to African problems’ by non-Africans, is evident.
‘New doctrine’
The national security concerns of a single country, the US, now lie at the core of global security and insecurity. In September 2002—a year after the terror attacks on Washington DC and New York—Washington released its ‘new doctrine’. This includes the proposition that failed states are more damaging to the US’s security interests than victorious ones. It is an approach that some speculate may have played a part in ending the war in Angola and is presently pursued most vigorously in the Sudan where the US, as part of a troika that includes Norway and the UK, is pressurising Khartoum and the SPLMA/M to make a comprehensive peace settlement. The Bush national security plan specifically refers to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Nigeria as key countries with which the US would co-operate ‘aggressively’ to manage the crisis of shadow networks of terror.
But the same document is explicit in its view that Africa will not see US troop deployment as part of international peacekeeping. In a world where the US faces new threats (such as al-Qaeda) and is marshalling its military resources against new enemies (such as Iraq), the motivation to find alternative recipes to traditional multinational peacekeeping is mounting. The result is an increasingly utilitarian approach that emphasises the re-establishment of order. Washington wants to hold someone accountable for what happens in any given piece of global real estate and this implies that order must be restored to contested areas, such as Sudan and Somalia, where Osama bin Laden stayed and where al-Qaeda has residual networks of supporters and sympathisers.
The present US administration is clearly convinced that the threat of global terror requires a military response while others, particularly a number of European countries, argue in favour of a preventive and curative response—draining the water in which the fish swim. It is further evident that the unilateral and militarist tendencies of the US will not change under the present administration.
Having unsuccessfully pushed its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) partners for years to increase their defence expenditure, the US finds that its key NATO allies cannot serve as effective partners. Only the US has the military capacity to undertake global operations and Europe’s ability to assume military leadership for larger ‘out of area’ peace enforcement is almost non-existent. In one sense America has reduced the military role of its European allies in NATO to that of its strategic reserve, to be used where the job is relatively easy, requires less capable forces, and where such tasks require a longer-term commitment of troops and peacebuilding rather than war-fighting duties. This does serve to increase US military flexibility in the short term, but only at the longer-term cost of reduced political, and therefore strategic, space. Inevitably the global anti-US insurgency campaign that is being ignited will require a political rather than a military response, including pressure on Israel towards a settlement in the Middle East and a re-engagement with the global issues, such as rules of trade, that fuel this war. But we are not there yet.
Capacity constraints
The decline in western troop contributions to peacekeeping in Africa and the search for alternative approaches also stems from severe capacity constraints following military downsizing that has seen traditional peacekeeping contributors such as Canada disappear from the UN scene. As modern armies become more capital intensive, personnel numbers shrink and the pressure towards more flexible engagement of shorter duration, outsourcing and the use of private contractors increases. For example, at the time of the Gulf War, the US had 780,000 army troops. Today there are 480,000. Most western governments have also adopted broad policies that favour privatisation and outsourcing of government services for cost-efficiency reasons. Prisons are run as public–private partnerships, police stations serviced by private consortia and military logistics provided by the deployment of corporate civilian technicians operating on the battlefield.
Involvement in Africa
In Africa, the former colonial powers now intervene on their own terms, for limited duration, or where their intervention is uncontroversial, cheap and largely symbolic. Following several years of building African military capacity at national and sub-regional levels to contribute to stability on the continent, the stated desire for greater African engagement is palpable.
The implications of the new division of security tasks for Africa were first illustrated by the British decision to deploy a parallel mission into Sierra Leone, rather than to commit troops to UNAMSIL. In the absence of US, French, British or other first world troop contributors in Africa, Ghana, India, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Pakistan, Ukraine and others stepped into the breach. In the process, peacekeeping (especially in Africa) has become dependent on third world troop contributions beyond symbolic western commitments to traditional missions such as the UN observer mission along the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Ironically the effect of western troop disengagement on Africa has generally been positive—leading, for example, to the massive commitment demonstrated by South Africa in bringing peace to the continent. Despite declining development indicators, increasingly ineffective militaries and poorer levels of training, equipment and lesser logistic capacity, African ownership of peace missions has increased. This essential ingredient—generally described as ‘political will’—has improved even as the limits to African capacity to enforce or even monitor a ceasefire have been brutally exposed in Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic (CAR). Following the start of the rebellion in Côte d’Ivoire on 19 September 2002, it would be several months before the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) made progress towards implementing its decision to deploy a 2,386-strong force to monitor the ceasefire line between the ever-increasing number of rebel forces and those of President Laurent Gbagbo. Even the advance party that was deployed to Abidjan could only do so with US assistance, while 2,500 French troops held the ceasefire line, eventually engaging in direct military action during December 2002 to halt the advance of the rebel forces ahead of the ceasefire with a second group that was concluded the following month. Rather than rely on his bitter Anglophone rival, Nigerian president Olusagun Obasanjo, ECOWAS chairman Abdoulaye Wade turned to France to lead the diplomatic initiative during January 2003. With France, and not Nigeria, serving as lead nation, ECOWAS’s much vaunted regional security architecture degenerated into squabbles about the leadership of the peace process, command and composition of the peacekeeping force, capability and most important of all, costs.
The Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) has fared little better in the CAR in its efforts to end that long simmering conflict. At its summit of 2 October 2002, ECOWAS decided in favour of a 350-strong force to protect CAR president Ange-Felix Patasse, to restructure the armed forces and to monitor the common CAR/Chad border (and, of course, replace the controversial Libyan contingent deployed in CAR as a presidential protection unit). Three weeks later, on 25 October, forces loyal to the former CAR army chief of staff, General Francois Bozize, launched an abortive coup against Patasse, gaining control of the northern part of Bangui for several days before being forced to retreat by the joint actions of Libyan troops and rebels from the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo (MLC), the latter apparently more intent on plunder than combat. Only at this stage, spurred on by the deteriorating situation, would an advance team of 15 CEMAC officers (from Gabon) arrive in CAR aboard a French aircraft. By the end of 2002, only Gabon had deployed its contingent of troops and the CEMAC intervention had ground to a halt, although the situation had improved by the end of January 2003. During his New Year message on 1 January 2003, President Patasse plaintively called on France to send troops to help CEMAC keep the peace, restore the territorial integrity “as it was doing in Côte d’Ivoire”—and to enable CAR to exploit its oil-rich northern area.
In both ECOWAS and CEMAC donor pressure and the provision of funds, equipment and logistics support were vital for progress towards the goals set by the two regional organisations. In Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), only the willingness and ability of South African president Thabo Mbeki to support peacemaking with troop deployments could make a difference.
While African ownership has clearly increased in the aftermath of events in Rwanda during 1994, when the UN Security Council stood by during the genocide in that country, these developments also demonstrate the limits of African peacekeeping and the importance of lead nations—such as South Africa, or, more prominently, France, Britain or the US—acting through sub-regional organisations. Therefore, in Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire the role of Britain and France have been key determinants in the military response to the conflict. In Burundi and to a lesser extent the DRC, South Africa’s persistent mediation, backed by its limited ability to contribute troops, was similarly decisive. But the similarity stops there.
Even the regional superpower in the South does not have the means to support more than token peacekeeping or enforcement, given the deleterious state of its military. South Africa relies on donors such as Belgium, the Netherlands and the European Community (EC) to cover its deployment costs in Burundi and rapidly called on donor contributions to cover the proposed African force that would now also include troops from Ethiopia and Mozambique. Elsewhere the EC covers the mediation costs between the CAR and rebel forces, and the CEMAC peacekeepers are equipped, supported and transported by France.
Whereas progress in Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire was possible through the role of Britain and France, MONUC lacks the support from a western lead nation—reflected in the symbolic size of the peace mission and distorted space to troop ratios in that country.
Clearly bilateral, rich-nation enabling engagements, such as the provision of transport, training, funds and equipment, that circumvent traditional multinational peacekeeping through the Security Council has increased and will continue to do so as part of the global division of labour. This is not new.
Through Operation Focus Relief the US sought to support peacekeeping capacity building in ECOWAS for deployment in Sierra Leone using, among others, a private military contractor for much of the job. Following the deployment of paratroopers to give UNAMSIL backbone after a series of humiliations at the hands of the Revolutionary United Front, Britain (initially through Short-Term Training Teams and thereafter through the nominally multinational International Military Advisory and Training Team) began a dedicated programme to transform the Sierra Leone Army into a force capable of assuring national integrity after the departure of the UN. Elsewhere South Africa’s creative peacemaking efforts in Burundi and the DRC appear to have circumvented the dogma that requires a comprehensive ceasefire before the deployment of peacekeepers.
Conclusion
Africa is therefore experiencing a revival of the belief that peace enforcement can best be conducted outside of the UN framework by regional groupings of the willing. But it is dependent for this on ever increased levels of foreign support.
The UK peace and security plan that has been developed to support the G8 action plan on Africa even talks of enabling Africa to deploy a brigade including its civilian and police component in the field for 18 months by 2010. By definition such efforts will focus on the capabilities of key countries, most notably South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia—a choice reflected in the US National Security Strategy.
These countries and others will require dramatic efforts to fill the peacekeeping supply side of the equation on the African continent, despite the nominal capacity demonstrated by CEMAC in the CAR.
In the longer term much more will be required than the paltry capacity building efforts by countries such as the US, France and Britain given present trends on the continent. These could either be capacity building programmes that go substantially beyond the symbolism of recent years, or by an acceleration of the trend towards the privatisation of ancillary peacekeeping functions—also requiring massive western engagement. If anything, a war on Iraq and western preoccupation with the global anti-terrorism agenda will reinforce these trends.
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