INTRODUCTION

Peace operations have evolved from the purposes and principles upon which the United Nations was founded. Article 1(1) of the UN Charter clearly states that the primary purpose of the United Nations is "to maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace." However, there is no explicit reference in the UN Charter to peacekeeping or peace operations.

The concept of modern peace operations and their conduct has thus emerged as a product of forty years of experience and experiment, which has been adjusted incrementally according to evolving circumstances, and which has more recently been superimposed on situations of intrastate turmoil. Dramatic and ongoing changes in the post-Cold War international security environment continue to challenge collective efforts to meet contemporary threats to international and regional peace and security through the conduct of 'modern peace operations'.

After forty years of relative clarity on the role and functions of 'blue helmets', the 1990s have witnessed a peacekeeping debate of such complexity and intensity that it is difficult for the average person to comprehend exactly what 'peacekeeping' is all about. The aim of this article, therefore, is to provide a simple and broad outline of recent trends in international peace operations. In particular, attention is focused on the expansion and subsequent contraction of UN missions, the humanitarian imperative, and the trend towards specialisation and delegation - with special reference to the emergent place and role of civilian police in modern peace operations.

POST-1988 MISSION EXPANSION

The termination of the Cold War raised new expectations that the ideal of collective security through concerted Chapter VII enforcement action would finally be realised. These expectations were soon rewarded when the UN-sanctioned coalition operation 'Desert Storm' succeeded in reversing Iraqi aggression against Kuwait in 1991. While this example of intervention in response to interstate conflict has not been repeated, the changed international security environment also opened the way to negotiated settlements to end proxy Cold War conflicts and civil wars in developing countries.

The purpose of UN peacekeeping was thus redirected towards helping to end internal conflicts. With the proliferation of such conflicts, peace operations have become a global activity. The majority of operations have been in Africa, rather than the Middle East, while Asia, the Americas and Europe have also become host to peacekeepers. The Security Council also began to react, not only to requests for assistance in ending internal conflicts, but also to international demands to intervene in a number of 'complex emergencies' which have created humanitarian crises of immense proportions: genocide, starvation, displacement and refugees.

Media images of human suffering and an unprecedented degree of agreement among the Permanent Five in the Security Council enabled the establishment of an equally unprecedented number of peacekeeping operations, which bore little or no resemblance in size, complexity and function to those of the 'classical' era. In the forty years between 1948 and 1988, thirteen peacekeeping and observer forces were set up. From May 1988 to August 1997, a further 32 UN operations were launched.

Before UNTAG was deployed to Cambodia in 1989, only 26 countries had participated in UN peacekeeping operations, but by the end of 1996, 110 countries had become involved. Since 1992, peacekeeping operations have also included personnel contributions from all five permanent members of the Security Council and some neighbouring or near-neighbouring states (such as Thailand and China in Cambodia). They have also involved the participation of powers that had hitherto been constitutionally prevented from sending their armed forces into action abroad (such as Japan and Germany).

The roles of both peacekeepers and international relief organisations in peace processes became far wider than ever before, creating enormous problems of management and co-ordination at the international level. The resources and organisational capacity of the UN were stretched to the limit in the new environment, which saw the blurring of the distinction between consensual peacekeeping and coercive action. For purposes of analysis, a broad (but not definitive or rigid) distinction may be made between 'second' and 'third' generation peace operations.

Second generation multifunctional operations have been associated with the end of proxy Cold War conflicts through negotiated settlements, in which the UN or other multinational organisations guided the adversaries to political settlements based on compromise (Namibia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Mozambique and Angola). In these cases, the peace process started with a ceasefire determined by comprehensive peace agreements, and peacekeepers deployed in the affected areas with the consent of the involved parties reflected in these agreements.¹ The UN became involved in ending internal conflicts through multidimensional processes which included activities such as:

the separation of combatants;


the disarmament of irregular forces;


the demobilisation and transformation of regular and irregular forces into a unified army;


assistance with reintegration into civil society;


the establishment of new policing systems; and


the monitoring of elections for new governments.²

Such operations brought Namibia to independence, transformed society and politics in Cambodia and El Salvador, and provided a basis for the reconstruction of Mozambique, demonstrating the utility of a broader concept of peacekeeping - a concept which combines military functions with a broad variety of largely civilian undertakings to engineer change and fulfil the objectives of the peace agreement. With the notable exception of Angola, these new functions have been reflected in the terms of a comprehensive settlement that all parties to a conflict have wished the UN to help implement, and none of them have involved a major threat to the UN preference for the non-use of force.³

On the other hand, third generation or 'middle ground' operations have been precipitated by the resurgence of more primordial animosities which had been suppressed, rather than addressed, during the Cold War freeze, and which led to conflicts marked by the most despicable abuses of human rights in the midst of anarchic conditions. 'Peacekeeping' operations have been launched where there is no peace to keep, but where there is a strong international desire to support humanitarian assistance efforts while attempts are made to find a political solution to the conflict. The efforts of such peacekeeping missions have focused on the more limited objective of providing humanitarian relief, rather than brokering a comprehensive settlement. Moreover, consent may be absent because authority has collapsed, or meaningless because of a proliferation of groups claiming authority. Peace agreements are non-existent or worthless, and international law and conventions are openly flouted.

The two most salient examples of this type of operation are those conducted in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia, while the Rwandan mission is recognised as the most obvious failure.⁴ It is this latter type of operation which has placed the most strain on the traditional concept and principles of peacekeeping. However, it was the three-year intervention in Somalia (1992-1995) that was to change the way the world felt about peacekeeping. Here the Unified Task Force (UNITAF), a multinational force set up under the direction of the Security Council and given wide power, ample resources and a limited mandate, handed over operational responsibility to UNOSOM II, which was given far less authority but a much broader mandate.

The Comprehensive Seminar on Lessons Learned from UNOSOM concluded that the operation's mandate was vague, changed frequently during the process and was open to a myriad interpretations. In August 1993, a commando force of about 400 US Army Rangers arrived in Mogadishu to hunt down Aidid. In September, three American soldiers were killed when Aidid militiamen downed a US helicopter. In October 1993, eighteen US soldiers were killed and more than seventy wounded in a fifteen-hour battle in Mogadishu. Within days, President Clinton sent reinforcements and set a pullout date for American troops. "No single event has done as much to influence peacekeeping in the post-Cold War world as the Somalia intervention. In the five years since the humanitarian mission dissolved into combat, Somalia has had a profoundly cautionary influence on American foreign policy."⁵

The seemingly ineffective nature of 'third generation' peacekeeping has led to a growing number of calls for a reinvention of the concept of UN peacekeeping. Roberts, for example, has identified a need to establish ways "of transforming an operation from peacekeeping to peace-enforcement mode; to develop a concept for UN operations which are distinct from both peacekeeping and enforcement against aggression; and generally to produce policies with some intellectual, strategic and moral coherence."⁶ Tharoor has similarly expressed a more modest hope that "the continuing process of reflection and analysis on this question will result in a consensus among [UN] member states on what peacekeeping is and is not."⁷

However, it is unlikely that such consensus will emerge in the near future. In certain circumstances, it seems as if the UN will be doomed if it does act, and damned if it does not act. At the heart of this dilemma is the apparent contradiction of pursuing both humanitarian and political goals in a single mission.

THE HUMANITARIAN IMPERATIVE

Whenever countries are stricken by war, famine or natural disaster, the UN helps to provide humanitarian aid. Part of this aid is in the form of direct assistance from the UN operational agencies and programmes, such as:

the UN Development Programme (UNDP);


the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (UNDHA);


the World Health Organisation (WHO);


the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR);


the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO);


the World Food Programme (WFP); and


the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

In addition to the UN agencies, non-government organisations (NGOs) have become increasingly important players in the humanitarian and human rights areas. Major NGOs such as CARE, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, Médecins sans Frontières, World Vision, as well as many lesser known organisations, have been in the front-lines of relieving desperate human suffering in the wake of armed conflict.⁸ In fact, in countries such as Burundi and the Sudan, a great deal of work is being done in insecure situations without the presence of peacekeepers.

While this great variety of actors compounds the problem of co-ordination within UN peace missions, humanitarian action has also become the substitute for UN peacekeeping when conditions are not perceived as right for the deployment of troops. However, international aid agencies and NGOs lack the power and organisational structure needed to conduct operations in situations of ongoing conflict. Moreover, the aid that they bring to stricken areas often becomes a resource which further serves to fuel, rather than resolve armed conflict.

During March 1997, in Zaire, for example, Kabila's rebel forces obtained the fuel needed to airlift troops for an attack on the key southern city of Lubumbashi from a depot maintained by the UNHCR in Goma. More than 15 000 gallons of fuel were seized to ferry 300 troops and their weapons southward for the successful assault on Lubumbashi on 9 April 1997. In addition to stolen aid fuel, Kabila's army also relied on stolen aid trucks for transport and stolen aid food for sustenance. Likewise, Mobutu's army hijacked UN chartered aircraft to transport weapons for its futile fight against the rebels. The planes flew into UN refugee camps, where the arms were distributed to Rwandan Hutu refugees who had become Mobutu's first line of defence.⁹

In addition to this direct negative impact of humanitarian assistance (where warring parties gain control of humanitarian resources), there is also a significant indirect impact. When international agencies and NGOs meet the needs of civilian populations, this frees warring governments and opposition forces to use their resources for war-making. Intergroup tensions are also increased when NGOs provide external resources to some groups and not others, or where they hire workers from certain groups to the exclusion of others.¹⁰ Food and money, in the absence of troops and diplomatic pressure, have become important components in the tactics of local belligerents, as the UN and other aid agencies increasingly operate in a political, military and diplomatic vacuum.

However, the future of peacekeeping will largely be determined by the collective will of member states, rather than the humanitarians. Amidst the proliferation of actors in modern-day interventions, it is still national governments that contribute the military forces and the money which remain essential to all operations aimed at ending or ameliorating the effects of conflict. And, left to the collective wisdom of member states (some of whom are more equal than others), it is unlikely that the next generation of UN peace operations will bear any resemblance to the noble but ill-fated efforts of the early and mid-nineties.

'FOURTH GENERATION' PEACEKEEPING?

Last year, the UN was unable to provide either the mandate or the means to assist in terminating a destructive civil war in the Republic of Congo. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan approached the Security Council with a plan for a force of no fewer than 1 600 to 1 800 peacekeepers, plus support units and UN military observers. He looked especially to the countries of the region to provide soldiers "to try and stabilise the situation and ensure that there is a cease-fire." However, he also made it clear that the UN would not act before there was a firm ceasefire and evidence that the warring parties were determined to seek political conciliation. With Annan still pleading with the Security Council to prepare to send in a peacekeeping force, Brazzaville fell to the forces of General (again President) Denis Sassou-Nguesso on 15 October 1997. This concluded the presidency of democratically elected Pascal Lissouba, and crowned yet another violent and unconstitutional regime transfer in Central Africa.

The Congo example reinforces the notion that international peacekeeping is in a state of crisis in terms of finances, doctrine, co-ordination, and quality troop contributions. Indeed, Kofi Annan was forced to admit (in his UN Report on Reform, released three months before the fall of Brazzaville): "The United Nations does not have, at this point in its history, the institutional capacity to conduct military enforcement measures under Chapter VII [of the UN Charter]. Under present conditions, ad hoc Member States coalitions of the willing offer the most effective deterrent to aggression or to the escalation or spread of an ongoing conflict ... The Organisation still lacks the capacity to implement rapidly and effectively decisions of the Security Council calling for the dispatch of peacekeeping operations in crisis situations. Troops for peacekeeping missions are in some cases not made available by Member States or made available under conditions which constrain effective response. Peacemaking and human rights operations, as well as peacekeeping operations, also lack a secure financial footing, which has a serious impact on the viability of such operations."¹¹

It has also become readily apparent that Boutros-Ghali's Agenda for Peace and the related definitions are no longer relevant to the realities of intrastate conflict. There can no longer be a clear conceptual distinction between 'peacekeeping' and 'peace enforcement', and the UN is reluctant to contemplate anything with a Chapter VII mandate. This reality is reflected in the declining number of UN missions and peacekeepers worldwide. While the number of troops deployed in UN operations ballooned from 10 000 in 1989 to 70 000 in 1995, this number has dwindled over the past two years to some 15 000 today, and will probably stabilise around levels more common in the eighties.

On the other hand, the dwindling statistics belie the fact that the number of non-UN 'peacekeeping' missions is increasing. Substantial and forceful missions have been conducted since 1990 by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in West Africa, and since July 1992, by Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Tadjikstan. However, it is since the 40 000-strong NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) took over from the over-extended UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in the former Yugoslavia at the end of 1995, that the idea of regional peace operations has steadily gained ground. In 1997, a 6 000-strong Italian-led multinational force intervened in the civil turmoil in Albania, with a UN mandate to deliver emergency humanitarian aid. The relative effectiveness and constraints on the use of force by NATO in Bosnia and the force of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Albania have lent credence to the argument that regional capacities for conducting peace operations would allow for multinational intervention where the UN lacks the capability or the will to act.

The UN now seems willing to hand over responsibility for peace and security to any form of 'coalition of the willing', without necessarily having any clear notion of legality, higher direction, or the concerned support of the international community. For example, the precedent was set for stretching Chapter VIII of the UN Charter to its limits in the Central African Republic, when the Security Council retrospectively authorised the 800-member Inter-African Mission to Monitor the Implementation of the Bangui Agreements (MISAB) under a Chapter VII mandate on 6 August 1997.¹² UN member states have not been assessed for any portion of the mission costs, which must be borne by participating countries.

While many multifunctional peace operations since UNTAG have included a significant civilian police component, the role of the police is now eclipsing that of the military in a number of ongoing UN operations. For example, the two most recently established missions are dedicated exclusively to issues of policing - the UN Civilian Police Mission in Haiti (MIPONHU), and the UN Police Support Group in Croatia. Of course, MIPONHU follows on two previous UN missions which were also dedicated to the professionalisation of the Haitian National Police - UNSMIH (July 1996-June 1997) and UNTMIH (August to November 1997).

The mandate of the longer standing UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995 to present) is also concerned exclusively with law enforcement activities, and it is executed by some 1 976 civilian police from forty countries (with only three military support personnel). And, while not exclusively devoted to policing matters, the UN Observer Mission in Angola (MONUA) has some 361 civilian police. With the gradual withdrawal of military personnel, the mission's police component continues to verify the neutrality of the Angolan National Police, the incorporation of UNITA personnel into the national police, as well as the quartering and occasional deployment of the rapid reaction police.

According to the UN handbook, the mission of the Civilian Police Component is to "undertake the supervision or control of local civil police in order to ensure that law and order are maintained effectively and impartially, and that the human rights and fundamental freedoms are fully protected."¹³ This is obviously easier said than done. In Cambodia (March 1992 to September 1993), for example, the UN decided that it needed people to handle some of the police work that comes with administering a country. It recruited over 3 000 professional policemen from 32 countries around the world. However, this first massive deployment of civilian police in the UNTAC mission revealed some serious shortcomings in UN civilian police, particularly with respect to training, discipline, leadership, a mutually intelligible language, and a sense of mission.

UN civilian police fared much better in the longer mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL), which was also a police, rather than military, operation. The UN Observer Mission in El Salvador was created in May 1991 as an integrated peacekeeping mission, with a Human Rights, Military, and a Police Division. While the Military Division had an authorised strength of 380 military observers, 631 civilian police were authorised for the Police Division. When ONUSAL's mandate expired on 30 April 1995, the Police Division could be satisfied that El Salvador had a new police force which, instead of inspiring fear in the general public, was a source of confidence and security. However, many crime and policing problems remained unresolved after the UN withdrawal. Members of the newly created National Civilian Police (PNC) still committed human rights violations (albeit in a much less serious and systematic fashion than in the past). These violations were attributed to insufficient training, lack of adequate leadership, delays in setting up supervisory bodies, and a concomitant lack of transparency in policing. Moreover, the end of armed conflict heralded extremely high crime levels and a destructive growth in organised crime.

The three police focused missions in Haiti have probably fared better than the mission in El Salvador. According to all reports, the Haitian National Police (HNP) is well on its way to become a capable and apolitical force which is capable of maintaining law and order while respecting human rights. Moreover, UNTMIH and MIPONHU were both mandated to focus on training at the supervisory level and the training of HNP members and units in specialised policing functions - aspects which were sadly lacking in the ONUSAL mission. When MIPONHU (with its authorised strength of 300 civilian police personnel) finally withdraws, Haiti will probably have the foundation of a good police force, and the trend towards deploying civilian police missions, no doubt, will continue.

CONCLUSION

Peacekeeping was established as a pragmatic tool, and was improvised from the very beginning. The traditional role of UN peacekeepers expanded in scope and complexity as the constraints on intrastate conflict imposed by the East-West confrontation were eroded. This created an urgent need to develop new approaches, new skills, and new ways of dealing with practical problems and situations at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. The starting-point for such development has predominantly been the concept of classical peacekeeping and its associated principles. We have therefore seen a recent and drastic decline in the number of peacekeepers deployed worldwide, and the eradication of troop-heavy multifunctional operations from the current UN mission menu.

The solution to the 'crisis' in international peacekeeping, it seems, lies in the direction of delegating the work of the large battalions to others, and the specialisation of many of the remaining activities which were undertaken under UN auspices during its brief and turbulent honeymoon with 'multifunctional' peacekeeping. The increasing recognition of the importance of reconstructing policing and justice systems as an essential part of the peace process has led, in particular, to the increasing specialisation of the UN civilian police role.

As the world commemorates fifty years of UN peacekeeping, we may find that the golden era of blue helmets is past, and that we are entering a time where the professional police officer becomes the mainstay of UN peace operations, while the military tasks are left largely to regional organisations and arrangements. Unfortunately, this does not augur well for the humanitarian actors, nor for the need to develop an 'integrated approach' to the maintenance of international peace and security.

ENDNOTES

This article is an edited version of a paper entitled The Changing Nature of Modern Peace Operations, which was presented at a seminar on The Role of Civilian Police in UN Peace Operations, 25-27 February 1998, Durban. It is published in support of Training for Peace in Southern Africa, a project funded by the Royal Norwegian Government and conducted in collaboration with the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) and the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs (NUPI).

S I Riza, Parameters of UN Peacekeeping, RUSI Journal, 140(3), 1995, p. 17.



Ibid.



S Tharoor, Should UN Peacekeeping Go 'Back to Basics'?, Survival, 37(4), 1995, p. 54.



Riza, op. cit.



M Bowden, quoted in G Constantine, Death of 18 US Troops Haunts American View on Peacekeeping, Washington Times, 22 January 1998.



A Roberts, From San Francisco to Sarejevo: The UN and the Use of Force, Survival, 37(4), Winter 1995-96, p. 26.



Tharoor, op. cit., p. 57.



J Pomfret, Aid Dilemma: Keeping it from the Oppressors, Washington Post, 23 September 1997.



Ibid.



D R Smock, Humanitarian Assistance and Conflict in Africa, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, <www-jha.sps.cam.ac.uk/a/a016.htm>, reposted on 4 July 1997, p. 2.



UN Report on Reform, released 16 July 1997, <www.un. org/reform/track2/part2.htm>



The force, which has been operating without international approval since early 1997, consists of voluntary troop contributions by Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Kenya, Senegal, and Togo. Under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, MISAB is now entitled to use force in order to implement its mandate, which includes the disarmament of rebellious factions of the CAR military.



UN, United Nations Civilian Police Handbook, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, New York, 1995, pp. 9-10.