The Management of Arms in Conflict Resolution Processes

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Published in Monograph No 42: Small Arms in Southern Africa, November 1999

Intrastate and social conflict in the 1990s is not characterised by the kind of struggle that led, for example, to the peaceful political changes in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. Instead, it is principally determined by the ready availability and use of small arms either by warring factions, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Democratic Republic of Congo, or by the public at large, as in Albania and Liberia.1

The ready availability of light weapons and, more particularly, of small arms, although not a new phenomenon in itself, has become a critical component of conflict in the 1990s. This is a direct result of the glut of weapons, contained politically by the realities of the international context of the Cold War, that was freed from its constraints in the context of the changing international environment.

Thus, at the end of the Cold War, the world was faced with extensive stockpiles of unused weapons, and even greater stockpiles of weapons that were used and then circulated by secondary or tertiary actors to other conflict areas in ever-widening circles of distribution.2 Furthermore, financially strapped countries in both the North and the South seemed reluctant to restrain an arms and ammunition industry that provides revenue and employment for many. The ready availability of small arms and the more competitive pricing of these weapons, coupled to an upsurge in illicit small arms-trafficking activities world-wide, have not only sparked an increase in criminal activities, but also the violent resolution of internal conflict and the accompanying humanitarian crises. The latter makes it necessary for the international community to face decisions regarding the imposition of peace or the management of ‘peace’ processes that must seriously look at possible controls of small arms availability both as preventive measures to reduce the potential for escalation of violent conflict, and as part of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction.3 Thus, failure to consider all possible mechanisms available for reducing the numbers of small arms in circulation and in use, can, and does, have a negative impact on the success of ongoing multinational peace and humanitarian efforts, the consolidation of peace in post-conflict societies, and the prevention of future conflict.

Experience gleaned from United Nations peacekeeping operations since 1989 demonstrates that, if multinational efforts must be undertaken to support the resolution of internal conflict, these must be equally divided into three facets: peacebuilding negotiations between warring parties; humanitarian and infrastructure tasks to support local populations; and the disarming and demobilising of combatants. Although the success of peace operations since 1988, for the most part, has been patchy, it can be said that the first two facets are generally addressed in a multinational operation, whereas, at worst, the last is left out of the process, or at best, badly implemented.

The problem with a mission’s failure to take disarmament and demobilisation seriously when it is engaged in a multinational operation, is that weapons not collected or destroyed in a timely manner, and combatants not adequately reintegrated into civilian society will threaten the emerging democracy in such a country and will destabilise regional security by providing easy access to the tools of violence, as well as to the people who can use them.4

For this reason, peace and stability are unquestionably linked to disarmament during and after conflict resolution processes.5 In the same manner, disarmament and effective arms management during a peace process must be seen as part of a wider political process aimed at resolving underlying and structural sources of conflict. The truth is that, although no conflict can be resolved through the implementation of a disarmament process alone, no conflict resolution process can be completed without serious intent to manage and reduce weapons. And yet, this realisation still has to be fully appreciated by the international community.

From 1988, the international community, through the UN, became involved in 26 peace support operations world-wide. This constitutes an increase of almost 45 per cent in the past ten years, with only fifteen operations established in the previous forty years since 1948. International violence today occurs primarily at substate or intrastate level, as is illustrated by the fact that 22 of the peace operations after 1988 were mandated to support peace efforts in intrastate wars. Of all these peace support operations, only seventeen were the result of wars between states. Of these, five operations have continued from the Cold War era to the present day.6

The Cold War politics that for so long succeeded in crippling the Security Council have gradually shaped the response of the UN in conflict resolution. Mirroring international conflict resolution, the UN often applies the same principles to peacekeeping in intrastate and failed state situations. Thus, every belligerent party to a conflict is treated on equal footing and elevated to the same degree of status, irrespective of its representation or past.7 The position of authority that the UN should build for it to be able to manage a peacekeeping operation is thus seriously undermined from the outset.

Authority is gained by a UN engagement in the field with clear guidelines for the role that peacekeepers will play vis-à-vis the population, and the authority they will command vis-à-vis the warring parties. These guidelines must be constructed, based on the peace agreements, particularly when the agreements are brokered by the UN and/or are then taken up in a Security Council resolution that mandates such an operation. In operations where there is clarity about UN authority, the possibility of sustaining adequate arms management controls (as seen in Cambodia) is greater than when either the mandate or the peacekeepers are unclear over the nature and power of their presence in the field (as in Somalia).8

When the UN fails to establish authority over and above that of the parties to a dispute, it reduces its chances at promoting peace; it makes any disarmament and demobilisation component of the mission hostage to the whims of the belligerents; and it seriously reduces the security of the population and the peacekeepers themselves, as happened in Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and Liberia

It must be said that the establishment of UN authority, when undertaking a peacekeeping mission, should not be considered a bonus, but a necessity. This is particularly important in ‘second generation’ peacekeeping operations where the boundaries between peacekeeping and peace enforcement are blurred. By becoming involved in conflict prevention, and in early resolution of conflict, the UN has not always considered a formal cease-fire as a precondition for its intervention. Similarly, there have been numerous occasions where an agreed upon cease-fire has broken when peacekeepers were already deployed.

The establishment of UN authority is therefore essential, not only because it will allow for the necessary freedom of action, but because it can assist in resolving some of the operational nightmares that emerge while monitoring tenuous cease-fires, difficult disarmament chores and intense demobilisation needs. Conversely, if the UN does not have or does not manage to establish authority in the field, the situation does not only imply operational problems but, more often than not, produces a political impasse. Peacekeepers are left in the dangerous position of having to monitor a fictitious situation and being unable to do anything to revert to the status quo ante.

Nevertheless, although the UN Security Council continues to be quick in taking the opportunity to impact upon an ongoing crisis and to ensure that the peace agreement and the mandate contain the elements needed to deflate the situation, it still does not provide its peacekeepers with the necessary authority to ensure that the terms for peace are respected and implemented as originally agreed. As Cox indicates:

"[I]n [the] current peacekeeping environment the United Nations is all too often held to ransom by factions whose non-compliance with agreements which they have previously signed goes unpunished. Until the United Nations finds a way between the hollow invocations of Chapter VII to which the Security Council is now prone, and acceptance that any recalcitrant party can sabotage a mission by withdrawing its consent, the frustration of complex United Nations peacekeeping operations, especially in regard to disarmament, is likely to continue."9

Yet, experience shows that there are ways in which ‘hollow invocations’ can be given content to support disarmament and demobilisation tasks more effectively. In some major peacekeeping operations undertaken under both Chapter VI and Chapter VII mandates, there have been instances of successful application of an enforcement capability to ensure compliance with agreed conditions (as seen in some cases of Sector West monitoring by the UNPROFOR10 mission, and some of the tactical decisions taken by the UNTAC11 commanders, among others). This might lead to the conclusion that the enforcement of weapons control at the tactical level, when there is strategic and operational consent, is possible. But for this to happen consistently in situations pertaining to the slippery rope between Chapter VI mandates and Chapter VII-type actions in the field, the element of establishing a UN authority over and above the parties, and the willingness of the mission to engage in permanent consent-promoting techniques between belligerent parties, becomes mandatory.

Since 1988, only four ‘second generation’ peacekeeping missions succeeded in establishing this type of authority: UNTAG (Namibia), UNTAC (Cambodia), ONUCA (Central America) and ONUSAL (El Salvador).12 All of these were mandated and implemented between 1988 and 1992. From then onwards, very few peacekeeping operations have established the same norm. Thus, a lack of authority seems to have become a standard for UN operations since 1993. Not surprisingly, a lack of established authority early on in the process has also conditioned the approach of deployed personnel in the first crucial months of an operation, whether it was mandated under Chapter VI or VII of the UN Charter. This lack of authority13 has led to the development of a timorous approach by peacekeepers in the field which has ultimately damaged the credibility, evolution and future of whole operations. This was clearly seen in UNOSOM I, UNPROFOR, UNAVEM II and III, ONUMOZ and UNOMIL.14 All of the above contained some disarmament or demobilisation components that ultimately became the first casualty of their respective missions.

The lack of a clearly established authority has repeatedly undermined the power of the UN in engaging in consent-promoting techniques between the belligerent parties, a sine qua non of successful disarmament and demobilisation needs. To have both the authority and the ability to build consent as the mission progresses,15 is the single most important factor in disarmament operations because "... to implement their mandated tasks, peacekeeping and multi-function missions unlike peace enforcement operations rely on having the consent of the belligerent parties, at least at the strategic and operational levels."16

From the above, it can be gauged that disarmament and demobilisation components in a ‘second generation’ peacekeeping mission are difficult to implement, whereas, at worst, they are prone to fall by the wayside should the mission fail to command authority and build consent. Despite this, the Security Council repeatedly mandates operations that carry such disarmament and demobilisation tasks. This begs the question: Does this happen because the UN has understood the importance of disarmament and demobilisation in securing lasting peace, or because the UN sees disarmament more often as an unavoidable item in the peace agreement rather than a precondition for a lasting settlement?

From 1956 (the Suez crisis) to the watershed year of 1990 (UNTAG, ONUCA and ONUSAL), each individual peacekeeping mission has been different. The mandates of operations such as those of Suez, Congo, Cyprus, Southern Lebanon, Namibia and Central America have all varied in terms of needs, objectives and the interpretation of mandates. More than forty years of experience in undertaking these operations has also led to a de facto multitasking of military components, sometimes creating the impression that the UN, at times, was talking of new tasks for new forces.

As indicated by Sutterlin, the reality is that, since their inception, peacekeeping operations have always contained myriad possibilities restrained only by the political context of troop contributors and by regional imperatives.17 Thus, until now, all of the missions that have passed as peacekeeping operations, in reality, have had a mix of peacekeeping, peacemaking, peacebuilding, and peace-enforcing tasks. The real challenge has always been to know when to apply each task in each operational and tactical level at the right moment.

‘Second generation’ peacekeeping operations have now recognised the multitude of tasks open to them. These are no longer the exception, but the rule. Among these tasks, the following stand out:18

Each of these tasks includes a multitude of related chores and skills. Thus, under disarmament one could divide the chores needed as recognition of weapons and weapons systems, mine awareness, movement control (checkpoints, blockades), cordon and search operations (urban and rural), patrolling (standing, foot, vehicle and air), ordnance disposal, destruction and/or immobilisation of weapons and weapons systems, information-gathering and interpretation, search for caches, control of depots and storage points, marking and registration of collected weapons, and transportation of weapons, among others.19

Although much has been written about the conceptual and operational differences between ‘first generation’ peacekeeping missions (prior to 1989) and ‘second generation’ missions,20 the role and tasks of peacekeepers are less of a novelty than are the mission sizes and their non-military mandates.

It could also be said that the evolution and changes in peacekeeping operations have not ceased with the division between pre and post-1989. In the analysis of operations from 1989 to 1997 for example, another difference is beginning to emerge aside from size, task and non-military mandate: that of a continued effort by the Security Council to gain greater specificity on disarmament issues in the mandates for each operation.

Here it is important to note that elements of a mandate can appear in three different documents: the peace agreements, the Secretary-General’s reports (which recommend mandates for peacekeeping operations) and the Security Council’s resolutions.21 Thus, although some aspects of disarmament and/or demobilisation were present in most mandates (or in documents mentioned in the mandate) between 1989 and 1992 (i.e. UNTAG, ONUCA, ONUSAL, UNTAC, UNPROFOR22), it is only since 1993 that a more comprehensive and specific mention of disarmament and demobilisation components has become commonplace (i.e. UNOSOM II, UNOMIL, UNAMIR, UNMIH and UNAVEM III). It is therefore rather surprising that the far-from-perfect, but acceptable record of disarmament and demobilisation tasks attributed to most of the missions in the first category, can rarely apply to those in the second one, despite the fact that the latter had more specific mandates to impact on disarmament.

This seems to point to one of two explanations: either the UN embarked on too many large operations without the proper planning, resources, co-ordination and capacity to undertake disarmament and demobilisation tasks properly; or disarmament lessons from each operation – which should have informed and corrected other missions – have never been applied.

Perhaps one of the best ways to look at the way in which disarmament components have been applied in several UN peacekeeping operations in the 1990s, is to take cases representing a successful UN operation (ONUMOZ), a failed one (UNAVEM II), and an ongoing operation (UNAVEM III) and trace the consistency with which disarmament and demobilisation have and are being applied from the peace agreement to its implementation.

The Bicesse Accords of 1991 provided the basis for the mandate of UNAVEM II which was passed under UN Security Council Resolution 696 of the same year. The Bicesse Accords provided an explicit disarmament component which included the following measures:

The disarmament component demanded three crucial activities: the cantonment and demobilisation of forces; the disarming of the parties and storage of weapons; and the integration of the armed forces.23 A joint verification military committee was set up between the parties to monitor the implementation of this component. Unlike ONUCA, the UNAVEM II observers were mandated only to monitor the Angolan monitors. The main weakness of this UN mandate was that it failed to indicate what UN observers could do to get the process back on track should they notice the Angolan monitors not fulfiling their obligations. In more ways than one, as one analyst has indicated, the UN observers were dealing with a ‘do nothing’ mandate. Problems soon made even this task difficult.

Of the 82 locations in which the joint Angolan verification observers were operational, UN observers could cover only 62. Aside from this manpower shortage (as happened in UNOSOM), it was clear that UNAVEM II was never totally sure of the situation in UNITA locations.24 UNAVEM military observers monitored the cease-fire, made efforts to investigate reported cases of violation and also helped to resolve problems within the Angolan monitoring groups. Like ONUSAL, mediating between the parties was a discretionary role which was technically beyond the specifics of their mandate, but was to become the central calling of UNAVEM II when the cease-fire and the peace process collapsed.

While the cease-fire held – even though there was always sporadic fighting at one location or another – the UN monitors concentrated their efforts on observing the way in which forces were cantoned and disarmed. It was soon apparent that, because of the uncertain situation, both sides attempted to delay demobilisation and disarmament as much as possible. Six days before the date for elections, only sixty per cent of government troops and 23 per cent of UNITA soldiers had been cantoned. UNAVEM was unable to rectify accusations and claims from both sides because of the manpower shortage of the mission.

A second role of the UNAVEM observers was that of monitoring the monitors on the collection and storage of weapons. Since UNAVEM was not present in all the collection and cantonment sites (unlike ONUCA), this was impossible to accomplish. The mission was jeopardised because it lacked a specific force structure tailored to support the disarmament process, which was a fundamental part of the peace agreement. Moreover, some of the UNAVEM contingents had not been exposed to any prior specialist training for the disarmament-related duties they were to perform. For example, both sides were allowed to keep minimum weapons for security, but each side arbitrarily defined its own minimum security needs without input from the UNmission. When most weapons collected at assembly points proved to be old or unserviceable, UNAVEM suspected that both sides were keeping extensive caches of useful weapons. But they could not prove this since, aside from being crippled by insufficient manpower, the mission never had the type of effective verification facilities and technology to find weapons caches.25 Furthermore, the original agreement and the ensuing mandate had specified that collected weapons should not be stored close to the assembly areas. This was never done because of the lack of transportation facilities required to move the weapons away from the assembly areas and the lack of manpower and requisite logistical teams available to UNAVEM.

With no proper disarmament and only partial demobilisation, any possibility of creating a unified national army or of reaching elections under secure conditions was precluded. The enormity of the task and the international pressure to hold free and fair elections as soon as possible without first implementing prior obligations which related mostly to disarmament and demobilisation chores (a mistake repeated later in ONUMOZ), made for the disaster that ensued.

With only 400 electoral observers, UNAVEM II could not physically secure the 6 000 election points. Nevertheless, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General declared the elections to have been free and fair. The weakness in UNAVEM monitoring left enough room for controversy, therefore assisting UNITA in disputing the eight per cent margin by which the MPLA claimed electoral victory. UNITA returned to war and the mandate of UNAVEM II become obsolete.

Instead of withdrawing, the UN commenced mediation efforts to restore peace but discovered that the gulf separating the parties was as wide as ever.26 The good news, however, was that both sides wanted to secure greater – not lesser – UN involvement for the future. Even though this was the case, the situation on the ground and the concerns of troop-contributing countries led to a substantial reduction of the UN presence in Angola. By 1994, there were only fifty military observers left in Angola.

At this point, it is interesting to note that, even though the UN Security Council had in fact given a non-involvement mandate for UNAVEM II, instead of withdrawing its presence entirely after the breakdown of 1992, the Security Council consistently encouraged the peacemaking efforts of the UN team on the ground, even as it reduced the number of personnel involved. Thus, the mandate of UNAVEM II was extended ten times between October 1992 and June 1994. As one analyst puts it:

"This left no doubt about the importance attached by the Security Council to the restoration of the peace process. Unfortunately, the same level of concern was not evident in the original conception of UNAVEM II in terms of helping the Angolans find peace in 1991 and 1992."27

Within this frame of reference, it must be noted that the UN understood the importance of the disarmament issues in the Angolan case. On 25 November 1992, the Secretary-General reported to the Security Council that a root cause of the deterioration of the situation in Angola had been the incomplete fulfilment of key provisions of the peace accords. In particular, he pointed to the less than effective demobilisation and disarmament, the delay in forming the new defence force, the delay in establishing successful administration in large parts of the country and the failure to set up a neutral police force. Meanwhile, fighting in Angola continued and the Lusaka Protocol to obtain a peace agreement was not signed by both parties until October 1994.

With the Lusaka Protocol in hand, the UNSecurity Council authorised the establishment of UNAVEM III in February 1995. This mission again included demobilisation and disarmament components as follows:

Up to 7 800 military and police personnel were deployed by the UN and the mission was to last for one year.28 From July 1995 to the end of 1998, the mandate of UNAVEM III has been extended many times. Of the 70 000 people quartered since 1995 in the cantonment areas, forty per cent had deserted or been reported absent without leave by early 1997, and only fifty per cent of those in quartering areas arrived with their weapons. Of the nearly half a million firearms that the Angolan government distributed to the population of Luanda at the start of the 1992 war, less than 5 000 have been recovered to date. Of those demobilised, very few have been retrained and reintegrated to civil society (as happened in ONUMOZ), because most of the soldiers were illiterate, there were few employment opportunities, there was disparity in remuneration, and the whole demobilisation plan was dependent on foreign donors. Meanwhile UN humanitarian and development agencies (as happened in Liberia) continued to be unable to work in the provinces and rural areas due to the lack of a secure environment in the country.29

With no effective disarmament and demobilisation in Angola, the most obvious economic opportunities for former soldiers lie in crime and illicit activities – ivory, diamond and weapon-smuggling. Banditry, robbery, assault and other types of violent crime increased. In rural areas, this took the form of ambushes and armed gang operations. The Angolan police indicated that this was directly linked to the failure of the demobilisation process, as well as the inability of the armed forces to account for weapons issued to soldiers.30 With regard to the collection of weapons issued to the civilian population, no progress was made; although the UN civilian police was responsible for overseeing this component, the actual task had to be executed by the Angolan National Police.

At the completion of this mission, it is now certain that some of the most important causes for the failure of UNAVEM II were repeated in UNAVEM III. The UN was not able to do much to force UNITA to comply with the Lusaka Protocol and was thus unsuccessful in removing the weapons of war from society. The hundreds of thousands of weapons in Angola continued to upset the peace process and led to renewed armed conflict (as in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Liberia). But, even if tenuous peace eventually succeeds in taking hold, these same weapons in the hands of impoverished, unskilled and unemployed people could become devastating to the prospects for development and stability of both the Angolan post-conflict reconstruction process, as well as the regional development of Central and Southern Africa where these weapons invariably end up if they are not used at home.

Repeated sanctions against UNITA for not complying with the Lusaka Protocol merely led to an increase in the barter of guns for goods. Weapons of Angolan sourcing are now fuelling the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and finding their way to other destinations for criminal use, such as by the gangs in Cape Town.

The Angolan experience is a good example of how the maintenance of weapons, lack of disarmament and ineffective demobilisation during an international peace process can perpetuate internal conflict and even war. It was one of the principal reasons for the resumption of war in Angola in 1992, and it has led to a similar situation again.

From the outset, UNAVEM II was given a mandate to observe the cantonment of armies in certain areas and to verify the surrender of weapons by both armies. They were not responsible for searching out hidden weapons caches or for penalising parties for non-compliance. The same constraints fettered the UNAVEM III mission.

The importance of disarmament to the overall success of UNAVEM II was unequivocal. In Angola, the level of mutual distrust was such that a successful election could not have been possible while both sides remained in control of their weapons. The same considerations can be applied to UNAVEM III operations. It seems almost incredible that the Security Council again mandated a mission that replicated the recipe for failure of the previous one.

If the illegal flow and use of small arms have the capacity to destabilise national governance processes, they also influence multinational and global governance initiatives. The case of the UN peace mission in Mozambique (ONUMOZ) is one such an example. The lack of an effective disarmament and demobilisation component in the ONUMOZ peacekeeping operation, and the fact that collection did not necessarily lead to destruction of existing weapons stocks, have put national stability and regional peace in peril. Similar circumstances have jeopardised peace processes themselves in a number of cases, including Somalia, Liberia, Angola and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Although the peace process in the case of Mozambique was successful, weapons collected and not destroyed have spawned a number of illicit operations regionally, which have ultimately increased levels of internal violence and criminal activity in Swaziland, Zambia, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

On 4 October 1992, RENAMO and FRELIMO signed a General Peace Agreement (GPA) establishing the modalities for the achievement of peace in Mozambique after a protracted war which had started in 1977, internally displacing 3,2 million people, exiling a further 1,5 million and killing one million people due to fighting, disease or hunger.31 The GPA provided the basis for ONUMOZ’s mandate, as contained in UN Security Council Resolution 797 of 1992. Unlike UNAVEM II, ONUMOZ’s mandate had a comprehensive disarmament component derived from the provisions of the GPA. The disarmament component made provision for ONUMOZ to supervise, monitor and verify the following measures:

In terms of UN Security Council Resolution 850 of July 1993, ONUMOZ’s mandate was enlarged, and ONUMOZ was appointed to chair the Joint Commission for the Formation of the Mozambican Defence Force (CCFADM), which was charged with supervising the formation of the new Mozambican Defence Force (Forças Armadas de Defensa de Moçambique – FADM).

The respective armed forces of the two parties would separate in an effort to reduce potential conflict and report to locations to be agreed upon between themselves and with the concurrence of the UN. Those not joining the new integrated national army of Mozambique, the FADM, were to be demobilised and re-enter civilian life. ?

The UN was responsible for establishing guidelines to select and construct assembly areas (AAs) and for ensuring that these requirements were satisfied. However, whereas health, safety, and logistical considerations influenced the UN in establishing its criteria, military considerations were the overriding factor in guiding the parties in their selections.32

The first reconnaissance of an AA occurred in January 1993, with the last being approved in February 1994.33 In June 1993, ONUMOZ had approved six AAs (representing one RENAMO and one government AA in each of the three ‘regions’) and declared them open.34 However, no one came to these assembly areas. Unlike some other peacekeeping operations, such as the one in Cambodia in which UN blue helmets escorted combatants to the cantonment sites, the parties were responsible for reporting to the AAs on their own in ONUMOZ. It was obvious that the delays were being caused by the fact that neither RENAMO, nor the FAM, were prepared to forego the military option

Initially, there were discrepancies between the number of soldiers reporting to the camps and the number being officially declared as having registered. This created some tension between the parties and the UN. The parties’ overwhelming preoccupation with simultaneous proportionality concerning demobilisation made them extremely hesitant to adhere to their commitments without being assured that the other side was doing the same. Fearful of being unable to supply the permitted number of troops – and thus that their side would appear weaker or less committed than the other – each party withheld its lists with details of soldiers registered at the AAs who would demobilise and who would join the FADM. Without these lists, the UN could not issue the demobilisation certificates and begin transporting former combatants to the destinations where they would establish their new lives as civilians.35

Although it was not the intention of the drafters to do so, they created, in effect, a situation whereby the parties could hold the UN hostage, in a manner of speaking. The ‘simultaneous’ process was contingent upon the receipt of lists detailing which units would report to the FADM and which would not. Without these lists, the process could not proceed.36

As had been the case in UNAVEM II, ONUMOZ fully understood that the parties were even less enthusiastic to disarm than they were to demobilise.37 Not every registered soldier arrived with a weapon, as was envisioned. Similarly, the numbers of arms collected from paramilitary troops were also below expectations. Furthermore, the munitions that were submitted, were deemed to be generally of poor quality. It was felt that those of better quality were being held in reserve. There were also several instances when the parties denied ONUMOZ permission to collect and disable weapons at non-assembly areas. Even though the GPA stipulated that all collective and individual weapons should be stored in warehouses under UN control, both parties at first objected to any such arrangement. However, in light of the deteriorating security environment at many AAs, the parties eventually allowed ONUMOZ to transport all military equipment in excess of 200 arms from each AA for safekeeping. For this purpose, the UN established three regional arms depots (RADs) at Nampula, Chimoio and Matola. Responsibility for guarding the RADs rested with ONUMOZ armed infantry battalions, which would oversee the transfer as well.38

ONUMOZ knew that the registered weapons represented only a small percentage of those in the parties’ possession.39 And, of that amount, very few of the arms and ammunition recovered and registered were destroyed. Weapons and equipment stored at the RADs were classified into three major categories: operational, reparable and beyond repair. Working through the CCFADM, the Cease-Fire Commission (CCF), responsible for overseeing this process, channelled equipment deemed to be essential to the training of the new army to the FADM. Material deemed to be ‘beyond repair’ was to be destroyed. In the end, all equipment at the RADs was not destroyed, but transferred to the FADM.

It was thus that disarmament during the ONUMOZ operation, which at first had been the prerequisite to the holding of the elections, eventually became little more than an afterthought. As Potgieter indicates:

"The operation’s great failing lies with the fact that it did not also make disarmament a priority. Granted, it was a Chapter VI operation. Granted, the Government was a Member State of the United Nations in good standing and possessed a sovereign right to possess weapons. Granted, there may have been more pressing issues. However, whereas creative responses were developed – and the money found – to support supplemental reintegration programs, additional food for the assembly areas, and a separate trust fund for RENAMO, to keep the process on track the disarmament train was allowed to derail."41

By 1997, the FADM stood at only a shadow of its former separate entities and not even half of its authorised strength. The weapons and ammunition that ONUMOZ recorded and returned, were enough to arm the FADM many times over. Moreover, what ONUMOZ recorded, is known to represent only a small portion of what the UN and the average Mozambican know is in existence in barracks and warehouses and in caches hidden under the ground. Since the extent of the ONUMOZ success, or failure, depends to a large degree on the proportion of weapons that the mission managed to secure on a permanent basis, ONUMOZ’s explicit disarmament components must be seen as a failure.42

The proliferation of weapons, particularly small arms, has become a significant problem in post-settlement Mozambique. Many members of the new armed forces have deserted the FADM since December 1994, taking their weapons with them. Some senior members of the armed forces have also been implicated in illegal arms deals involving weapons from state armouries, because of low salaries in the new armed forces, inadequate discipline, low levels of morale and a ready market for weapons in South Africa and other Central and Southern African countries.

Erstwhile collection points of weapons under ONUMOZ coincide with place names now known as illicit small arms-trafficking source points (i.e. Matola and Nampula). These developments have certainly contributed to the proliferation of weapons in Mozambique, and in neighbouring countries like South Africa, Zambia, and Malawi. By 1998, Mozambique constituted the largest single source of supply of small arms for the South African domestic market.43

In a series of studies conducted by the UN between 1994 and 1996,44 a number of UN (and non-UN) peacekeeping operations since 1989 were analysed to determine the way in which these missions had undertaken disarmament and demobilisation activities. The results of this study shed light on one main dilemma in the management of arms during peace processes:

"[I]n contemporary intra-state peace missions, warring parties and paramilitary forces refuse to be disarmed, cantoned and controlled by peace forces even if consensus for doing so has been agreed to by the belligerent factions at the strategic level ... although most peace operations studied had strategic consent and had mandates to undertake disarmament and demobilisation missions, [this dilemma partially explains why] they normally failed to implement them as originally envisioned."45

The UN study then undertook an exploration of the various decision-making levels associated with the creation, implementation and termination of multinational peace operations in order to identify the causes of the more severe problems that had compromised the disarmament missions in the field. Three principal categories of problems with disarmament emerged:

"The first category focussed on those problems common to all cases irrespective of the organisation or group of nations that ran the peace mission. The second category, largely related to the first one, concerns the problems common to UN operations only. The third category delves into more detailed issues emerging from the two previous ones."46

The study showed that the problems in tackling disarmament and demobilisation tasks during UN peacekeeping operations spanned successive layers of decisions and levels within the operation. Peace agreements often mentioned disarmament needs, but when these same agreements were cited as part of UN mandates establishing an operation, they were perceived as diluted for operational purposes (as in UNAVEM II). By the same token, even if mandates specified the disarmament needs of an operation, problems in the interpretation of these needs emerged in successive levels of command (from the strategic to the operational and, finally, tactical levels, the rules of engagement had a propensity for change (as in UNPROFOR).

One of the principal problems that was detected, had to do with personalities, lack of continuity and the composition of different contingents. Where these issues became critical were in moments when peacekeepers – rotating every six months – were tested by warring parties and the local population on their determination and intent (as in UNOSOM and UNPROFOR). A mandate, correctly interpreted and implemented by one contingent during its stint, would at times become perverted by incoming forces that had no memory of what had been negotiated and applied in the field before their arrival (as in UNPROFOR and UNOSOM). Here, a significant drawback was the psychological weight of the mission on peacekeepers themselves. More often than not, as mandates diluted disarmament and demobilisation tasks, or as rules of engagement suffered changes down the line of command, a peacekeeper on the ground had an awareness of what he was not supposed to do rather than what he had to do to ensure the success of the mission. This alone can explain why some UN missions mandated under Chapter VII operations of the UN Charter were dealt with as if they had been normal Chapter VI operations (as in UNOSOM). Conversely, the lack of clarity in the peacekeepers’ mandates and rules of engagement, and the lack of co-ordination between military and civilian components and between different contingents sometimes led to Chapter VII activities during Chapter VI operations (as in UNTAC and UNPROFOR).

With these issues in mind, the UN studies on disarmament during peacekeeping operations concluded that the focal problem areas in need of correction to ensure adequate implementation of disarmament and demobilisation needs were those that focused on operational and civil-military co-ordination, training, and information-gathering, all of which were key areas that could be improved in the struggle to avoid corruption of a mandate with negative impacts on disarmament and demobilisation tasks.

The studies also showed that disarmament and demobilisation efforts during a peacekeeping operation had a greater or lesser chance of successfully taking root in direct relation to the way in which neighbouring countries shared and supported the peace process that was under way (as in ONUCA, ONUSAL and UNTAG). All successful UN operations during the 1990s have shared one common feature: they had the support of the region. In terms of disarmament and demobilisation, this support is crucial.

Authority and the provision of a secure environment for the people and for the peacekeepers; the use of consent-promoting techniques; obtaining effective regional support; and ensuring the willingness of the peacekeepers to do their job as mandated all the way down to the tactical level, seem to create the right environment for disarmament tasks to flourish during peace processes.

The improvement of disarmament components during peacekeeping operations conducted by the UN will assist in one type of control of small arms and will diminish the magnitude of the problem of illegal weapons flows considerably; but this is not enough. Neither is it the only mechanism for effective action, because inadequate disarmament as part of such operations is not the sole source of the secondary and tertiary redistribution of existing stocks.

It is at regional levels – levels that the UN is increasingly more interested in working with – that the greatest number of control mechanisms may be applied, particularly during post-conflict reconstruction processes, to begin to put an end to the problem of the proliferation of existing stocks; in other words, it is a question of "... what existing regional mechanisms and structures might do to control and reduce the damage already set in motion by the increased availability of light weapons across borders."47

Increasingly, regional organisations are taking decisions to address the short and long-term problems associated with small arms proliferation.48 In 1997, the Organisation of American States (OAS) approved the Inter-American Convention Against the Illicit Manufacture, Traffic, Sale and Transfer of Firearms, Ammunition, Explosives, and Other Related Materials. Also during 1997, the European Union approved its EU Programme for Preventing and Combating Illicit Trafficking in Conventional Arms and established a Joint Action Plan in 1998 to deal with this situation, whereas the Southern African region started to consider since 1998 an Action Plan for Developing Controls on Arms and Illicit Trafficking in Southern Africa that has led to the establishment of a SADC working group on small arms control during 1999, as well as increased attention to this issue by the Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Co-ordinating Organisation (SARPCCO). The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) have both expressed their concern at the extent of the proliferation of small arms and their effect on the populations in different regions of the world. The OAU has further announced in 1999 that it would hold a continental conference on this issue by the end of 2000. Finally, the UN established a UN Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms which issued its recommendations during 1997 and again in 1998. The Panel has called for an international United Nations conference on the issue of illicit small arms-trafficking and associated problems in 2001.

At subregional levels, there has also been much movement among affected countries. Thus, for example, South Africa has established bilateral agreements with Swaziland, Namibia and Mozambique to engage in information-sharing and co-operative efforts to reduce crossborder smuggling of goods, including firearms. South Africa and Mozambique have co-operated in a series of operations in Mozambique to identify and destroy arms and ammunition caches left over from the war.49 The most recent of these operations took place in early 1999. Small arms recovered and destroyed so far number in the thousands. The South African Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1994 and 1999, Alfred Nzo, called for an international conference to formulate an action plan to combat the proliferation of these weapons, based on the experiences of indigenous regional approaches. This call was taken up by various countries and culminated in the OAU decision mentioned above. The focus of such an international action on small arms and light weapons should be on the curtailment of illicit transfers and the control of legal transfers.50

Such a regional action plan has been informally workshopped during 1998 by government representatives of member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the EU. Based on the recommendations of the abovementioned conference, elements of a Southern African Regional Action Programme on Light Arms and Illicit Arms Trafficking would comprise the following action areas:51

Combating illicit trafficking

strengthening laws and regulations to combat illicit trafficking;


strengthening operational capacity to do so;


improving systems to trace illicit arms flows; and


improving information exchange.

Strengthening regulation and controls on the accumulation and transfer of arms

strengthening controls over civilian possession of firearms;



enhancing restraint and controls over the accumulation and transfer of light arms and associated military equipment; and



improving capacity to monitor and trace light arms possession and transfers.

Promoting the removal of arms from society and the destruction of surplus arms

collection, removal from circulation, and destruction of surplus military arms;


removing confiscated and unlicenced weapons from circulation;


voluntary weapons collections and exchange programmes; and


reversing cultures of violence.

Enhancing transparency, information exchange and consultation on arms in Southern Africa

enhancing public transparency; and


information exchange and consultation.

As countries in post-conflict regions struggle to develop in harmony with one another, there is a growing realisation that the negative impact of multinational peace support efforts, which had inadequate disarmament components and ineffectual demobilisation programmes, are taking a toll on human and financial resources needed for post-conflict reconstruction. The increase in armed banditry and organised crime, on the one hand, and the continued political violence in some sectors of society, on the other, as well as an increase in corruption patterns, are undermining safety, security, governance and democracy at large.

In relatively calm regions such as Southern Africa, governments acting alone and in conjunction with others are now addressing these new threats to security. A principal pivot of regional and governmental strategies has to do with the management, control and reduction of illicit weapons flows. Five major areas to enhance and improve regional action have been identified in the case of Southern Africa; four relate to the need to enhance capacity and resources to combat illicit arms, and one to rethink demobilisation issues. On the need to combat illicit arms, the following areas have been identified:

the need to train police and defence forces in disarmament and collection techniques, as well as to improve co-operation between themselves on these tasks;



the need to look at national arms holdings with a view to destroy surplus stocks (South Africa, in particular, has already commenced such destruction efforts);



the need to consider ways of improving accountability and the security of army and police weapons depots (due to the loss and theft of arms); and



the need to improve co-operation and action measures for the control of mutual borders with regard to illicit transborder operations.

The one area of demobilisation that is currently being discussed in Southern Africa is that of rethinking the training and integration of demobilised soldiers. The examples of past demobilisation retraining and reintegration efforts in Southern Africa have by and large been negative. It has been customary for international and government agencies assisting in the process of demobilisation and reintegration to look at this issue as if it were a minor correction rather than a major overhaul of society. More often than not, soldiers and paramilitary forces have been battling each other for decades: many men-at-arms who need to be demobilised, have been soldiers since they were eight or nine years old, they know nothing else but combat and the only skill they have is the use of arms. For this reason, it is misleading to talk of demobilisation and reintegration: there was no prior mobilisation, nor a prior role in society for these military men and women. The training of demobilised soldiers must therefore be much more comprehensive than what has occurred so far to cover for the total lack of schooling, general education or skills that often characterise these people. By the same token, their integration into society must be very well structured: conventional wisdom simplifies the issue of reintegration as one where healing and reconciliation are prioritised as if the demobilised soldier had been removed from a viable society, thus creating a vacuum that can be filled with his/her return. More often than not, there is no place in society for these people except as bandits or criminals, because they do not come back to a niche left open when they took up arms. Issues of education, long-term skills training, and programmes for the improvement of entire communities, so that there are places open to demobilised soldiers in this new community pattern, must become part of the new thinking on demobilisation and reintegration.

The needs for disarmament and demobilisation correction are so great in post-conflict reconstruction that precious resources are often taken away from the development and socio-economic needs of emerging societies. To provide but one example: South Africa and Mozambique have had to undertake four major transborder operations to search for, locate and destroy weapons and ammunition caches left over by the war in Mozambique. Each one of these operations yielded substantial results and yet they were paid for entirely by the government of South Africa, with no international or national finance available for these tasks. Many other crossborder operations to stop illicit trafficking in Southern Africa are planned but never implemented, because of financial constraints in the countries involved in such planning. It is important to remember that the resources used by countries to undertake these recovery and destroy missions would have been much more efficiently used in other sensitive areas of society, such as education, health and development.

For all of these reasons, the international community should review its assistance to post-conflict development in more ways than one: by ensuring that disarmament and demobilisation is not just a cosmetic issue in conflict-resolution processes and by assisting emerging societies with continued disarmament, the integration of former combatants, and the provision of safety and security (i.e. assistance in training and providing support for the creation of an effective and democratic police service and by assisting in the creation or reform of the criminal justice system).

The burden of arms in post-conflict societies has become a major component of regional action on many continents. The nature of illicit arms flows and patterns means that the control and reduction of these flows can only be partially undertaken as a national initiative; the brunt of the effort must be borne by regional mechanisms for co-operation, and the lead agency for such co-operation should be the police supported by defence forces.

In summary, disarmament processes during peace support operations are best served by co-ordination between the international mission and the region immediately bordering the stricken state. Regional powers and immediate neighbours should be aware of what is happening in their vicinity and deny the use of their territory, resources or facilities by any of the warring parties which have agreed to enter a peace process. If the multilateral peace mission is under the auspices of the UN, the region where the UN is operative should support this endeavour in order to close loopholes that will lengthen the resolution process and endanger disarmament and demobilisation components. If the region becomes part of the problem and not part of the solution in conflict resolution, the chances that the conflict will eventually spill over to the rest of the territories in the region are very great. Thus, it is in the interest of regions to control situations when they are in a position to do so.

By the same token, in post-conflict reconstruction processes such as that of Mozambique, it is in the interest of neighbouring states to provide every assistance for continued disarmament and arms control operations, as well as to ensure efficient demobilisation and integration of former combatants. If this is not undertaken, those weapons and the men who use them become a crossborder threat to the peace and stability of the region.

Although the operational brunt of these actions rests with regions, the international community can assist by ensuring that its part of the responsibility for disarmament and demobilisation is better implemented during a multinational peace process and that arms and former combatants become key focus points for post-conflict reconstruction assistance agendas. The key here is to remember that the greater the number of weapons actually collected and destroyed, the lesser the need for massive operations aimed at recovering and destroying weapons in future.

CONCLUSION

Multinational peace processes have not often been accompanied by either comprehensive disarmament or the adequate control of weapons by the appropriate authorities; nor have they benefited from comprehensive and far-reaching demobilisation and integration programmes for former combatants.

The absence of a well-planned and well-funded demobilisation and reintegration programme for former combatants may result in renewed conflict or lead to increased banditry52 among unemployed and dissatisfied former combatants (as in the case of ONUCA and ONUMOZ).

The increase in armed banditry is inextricably linked to alternative employment opportunities (or the lack of these) for former combatants, and to the availability of weapons, which is, in turn, a consequence of ineffective arms control and disarmament at a time when these were both possible and crucial to the well-being of an entire region. As a result, literally millions of weapons are now relatively free to change hands because they are no longer required or controlled by parties to the civil wars. More often than not, inadequate demobilisation provides both the user of and trafficker in these weapons. In most cases, these arms have either been used to restart intrastate conflicts (as in the case of Angola and Liberia), or have found their way into the illegal arms market in neighbouring countries (like in the case of Mozambique, Angola and Liberia), thereby contributing to the problem of arms proliferation at regional level.

The problem has acquired such proportions in the post-Cold War era that the UN would do well to review the way in which it manages disarmament and demobilisation components during multinational peacekeeping and peace support operations world-wide. Among the issues that could make a difference in both the approach and implementation of disarmament components, the following stand out:

When embarking on a large peacekeeping or peace support operation, the UN must not only create a special disarmament component for such an operation, but should provide the resources needed to carry out this component to its final conclusion. By the same token, a disarmament component should not be allowed to become a victim of the peace negotiations or the political situation: it must become a central part of the mandate and its implementation must be pursued at all costs. If the disarmament component becomes a victim to realities on the ground, the UN must be willing to withdraw itself from the field rather than sacrifice the disarmament component.



When an operation is being planned, and it carries a disarmament component, contributing countries must provide the necessary manpower and financial resources to ensure the adequate implementation of this component. But there must also be a specific effort to analyse the new mission, taking into account all the lessons learned on disarmament and demobilisation processes from past missions, in order to avoid the repetition of mistakes.



The Security Council must not view disarmament as an optional item in a peace agreement, but as a serious and central component of any peacekeeping operation.



If the Security Council views disarmament and demobilisation seriously; if the resulting mandates confirm this appreciation by prioritising these tasks and providing them with the necessary resources to ensure correct implementation; and if lessons of past disarmament experiences are taken into account in the planning; then the UN must also ensure that it gains authority for itself from the very first deployment in the field. Authority and the provision of a secure environment for the people and for the peacekeepers, the use of consent-promoting techniques, and ensuring the willingness of troop-contributing countries to mandate their peacekeepers to do their job as mandated all the way down to the tactical level, are key recipes in a successful disarmament and demobilisation component.



Lastly, the region where such a mission is taking place must do all in its power to support the peacekeeping and peace support operations under way, even if this is achieved by denying the use of territory in the region by belligerent forces to continue on the path of violent conflict. It is repeatedly seen that the success of a UN mission is largely dependent upon the effort and support of the regional actors who are the only ones who can ensure that preventive measures are taken, such as denying military support or haven to warring parties; denying the use of their territory for re-equipment of the war effort; and making sanctions enforceable (situations where this was the case were ONUCA, ONUSAL and UNTAG – all relatively successful operations). But, the region must also sustain its responsibility in prioritising the disarmament and demobilisation components not only of conflict resolution processes, but in post-conflict reconstruction. In the end, it is the region itself that will benefit from these actions.

By judging the impact of imperfect disarmament and demobilisation on the evolution of peace processes and their aftermath, it seems logical to suggest that there is an urgent need to improve the mechanisms within existing UN operations so that every mission can start with

"a clear understanding of what disarmament means for a particular operation, as distinct from demobilisation ... to have a clear ... position on the destruction of weapons; to [have] received the financial resources to cover the costs of effective disarmament; and to ... address the existence of weapons caches."53

What is needed, is to prioritise arms management processes during conflict prevention and resolution missions so that disarmament and demobilisation become vital and comprehensive components of a mission from the outset, and are not kept hostage by the timings and political manoeuvres of warring parties which are less than serious in their bid for lasting peace. Although the principal responsibility to achieve these objectives clearly lies with the Security Council when mandating peacekeeping operations, it also lies with troop-contributing countries in the way they implement the mandates which they receive.

Finally, UN peacekeeping operations seldom occur in states that are islands. For this reason, a special effort must be undertaken by the countries neighbouring the area where the peacekeeping operation is taking place. Without regional support to UN missions, the latter will find its operations all the more difficult to sustain and implement. By the same token, regional co-ordination and assistance must accompany post-conflict reconstruction processes. Nevertheless, the international community also has a major role to play in assisting countries to sustain disarmament, arms control and demobilisation efforts well beyond the end of a UN peace operation.

It is in burden-sharing and sustaining the long-term objectives of disarmament and demobilisation during conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction that both regional and international goals can meet to produce lasting peace.