Peacekeeping and peace building in Africa

Thoughts on Peacekeeping within an African background

Victor Ângelo

1.       Introduction

On 10 April 2014 the UN Security Council approved the deployment of a peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), to be known as MINUSCA. Resolution 2149 (2014) defines MINUSCA´s contextual parameters and objectives. The starting date for the mission will be 15 September 2014.

With another five months to go, that date looks far away. This is especially the case when the serious turmoil in the CAR since late 2012 is taken into account. And this timeline becomes even more problematic when repeated warnings from senior UN staff are recalled – that the situation was out of control and it was clear that the country was sliding into genocide.

A brief comment on the timing of the resolution that has just been adopted would emphasise the absurdly slow decision-making pace of the Security Council. If the premier international body responsible for peace and security – which basically means safeguarding human life and preventing severe violations of human rights – takes such an incredibly long time to respond to a not-so-complex crisis like the one in the CAR, what can we expect from the Council in more intricate situations?

“Not much indeed”, would be tempting to answer.

However, the issue is more intricate than this reply suggests. The slow response to the situation in CAR shows that there are a number of serious problems related to UN’s peacekeeping capabilities, particularly in an African setting and in a region that is not directly linked to the strategic interests of the major global powers.

This is a very serious issue that requires urgent attention. Peacekeeping must be effective, fast-moving and people-centred. The UN remains the key player in matters of peacekeeping. In the end the security question that is so often raised is the security of the ordinary citizens, in particular the most vulnerable among them.  

There is no other international or inter-governmental institution that is in a position to play a comparable role, not even the African Union (AU), notwithstanding all of efforts the African leaders have made over the last 15 years to strengthen this kind of capacity within their regional organisation. The AU´s African Standby Force (ASF) is still work in progress, even in the East African region, where the preparatory work has gone further. At this stage, it is extremely optimistic to believe that the ASF will be fully operational in 2015, as was recently recommended, in the December 2013 assessment, which further recognised the many delays this undertaking has suffered so far.

Outside Africa, NATO has been mentioned as a possible actor in the areas of peace enforcing and peacekeeping. However, the Atlantic Alliance has no vocation to play an international peacekeeping role. It could, in some cases, be used as a rapid response solution, as an entry force. But in the current circumstances, notably after the Libyan expedition and the deep-rooted tensions with Russia on the Eastern European front, it is highly improbable to have a UN Security Council request addressed to NATO. The same is true as far as the Russia-inspired Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is concerned. CSTO countries already established a peacekeeping architecture at the end of 2010. But the force is yet to be seen on the ground. To date, no operation has been assigned to CSTO. And it is difficult to foresee this organization playing any out-of-area active role in the medium term. However, both NATO and CSTO should be included in the wider debate about the future of peacekeeping.

There should be no doubt at this stage that the way forward is to strengthen the UN´s capacity to respond. As that happens, it should not be forgotten that Africa is the continent where most peacekeeping missions are deployed. Recent missions, in South Sudan, Mali and now in CAR, have been approved in response to African challenges. In this context, as the UN should address some of its key shortcomings in peacekeeping, African leaders should also be encouraged to continue strengthening their own capacities. The goal here, in parallel to the reform of the UN apparatus, is to create an African capacity to respond to violent crises within the continent´s five Regional Economic Communities (RECs). In the foreseeable future, the RECs must be able to put together their respective Standby Forces, harmonise operational abilities and develop their regional machinery to deal with peacekeeping, peacebuilding and political transitions.

But, at this stage, it is important to focus on some of the key issues related to UN´s peacekeeping, whilst taking into account African experiences and needs. What follows are some brief observations that should be considered in terms of advocating for the urgent need to sharpen the UN´s tools.

2.       Faster deployments 

UN peacekeeping deployments take too long to materialise. This has now been a key issue for the last seven years or so. This is particularly the case in Africa, but is more generally so in non-English speaking countries.

Large scale Troop-Contributing Countries (TTCs) are overcommitted, in view of the demands coming from huge missions that are still in the field in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur, Cote d´Ivoire, Liberia, South Sudan and elsewhere. Take the case of Mali, for instance. Only 55% of authorised military personnel have been deployed so far, despite the fact that the mission was established almost a year ago. Many of the troops that were fielded by the preceding African-only mission in the framework of a regional response – in this case ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) troops plus Chadian soldiers who were already on the ground before the UN military presence – could not be re-hatted and transferred to the UN because they did not meet the standards the UN requires for its contingents.

This will certainly be the same in the CAR. The 6,000 MISCA soldiers –troops from neighbouring countries belonging to the Economic Commission of Central African States (ECCAS) – will face the same difficulties in terms of their eventual re-hatting as blue berets. For many months there will be a poorly staffed MINUSCA trying to stretch itself in order to fulfil its mandate. Most likely, when the first period of the mandate comes to an end on 30 April 2015, the number of soldiers will be well below the 10,000 that the UN Security Council resolution 2149 authorised.

The same is valid for the police component. MINUSCA should have 1,800 police personnel, most of them gendarmerie. This component is critical in a mission that basically has to respond to issues of law and order in a society in chaos. However it is unlikely that the UN will be able to mobilize the required numbers. In general, states that participate in peacekeeping operations have no spare police capacity that can be made available. This is one of the big differences between police services and military forces – availability. The number of soldiers waiting for a job is much higher. And only a handful of countries have gendarmerie services. In Africa, this is the case mainly in French-speaking countries. Very often those gendarmerie forces are not fully prepared to serve within a UN mission. Like their military counterparts, their standards of training do not meet the minimum requirements for a UN assignment.

All of this has an impact on the timely fulfilment of operations´ mandates as well as the effectiveness and the image of the UN. As they try to emerge from traumatic crises and find any opportunity to make their living, people in the host nation will see many UN military convoys arriving over a long period of time, a never-ending flow of troops and highly conspicuous equipment. They will contrast this with very low levels of security operations. Before anything else, newly arrived soldiers will be busy with their own installation, building their infrastructure. This actually can easily be exploited by those in the country that are not in favour of an international military presence. Experience has shown that heavy and slow-paced deployments can undermine the political consent, which is critical for the mission.

Any crisis that is followed by a peacekeeping deployment must be able to show quick wins. And the easiest problem to turn around in the initial phase of a deployment has to do with the security environment. It might take long to address its most critical dimensions. But it is possible to improve the popular perception related to the low intensity security threats. This is where the priority should be. It has an immediate impact on the lives of the citizens. Changes to the security situation are among the first expectations. An improved situation is a winner, it terms of gaining people´s support. But doing so requires faster deployments, troops that can hit the ground running. This is not the case today, in most of the situations.

3.       Effectiveness 

The countries providing brigades and vast numbers of police personnel are generally African (Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, etc) and South Asian (Bangladesh, India and Pakistan). They are oversubscribed in terms of UN peacekeeping commitments. Very often, however, politically they do not want to recognise this, as the international assignments are an important part of their armed forces’ expectations. Rather, they tend to make promises and accept engagements without being sure they will have the capacity to deliver on time and with the necessary standards of quality. Also, the personnel they might be able to mobilise are general purpose infantry troops and street police officers. The force enablers and multipliers as well as air and ground mobility assets are generally insufficient and sometimes inadequate for the terrain in which they have to operate. Without them, the effectiveness of a field presence is very limited or even non-existent.

Complexity calls for more focussed deployments, highly trained men and women and more specialised military personnel. Missions now require many more Special Forces and intelligence officers – both for people-based and signals information collection and analysis – than just sentinels and patrolmen. The Council is still caught up in an approach that tries to respond to generic skills, poor performance and low standards by increasing the numbers of soldiers. This way of doing business needs to change.

For sure, this is an area where developed countries must be more forthcoming. During the last two decades they have been moving away from engaging troops in UN peacekeeping operations, with one or two exceptions, like the UNIFIL mission in Lebanon. It is time to see European and North American troops and police officers back in UN missions. The developed world must be a more active part of the peacekeeping equation. They must unequivocally demonstrate that global responsibility for peacekeeping is not shared out along the lines of money: those who pay for missions do not deploy and those who deploy, largely from the developing South, are paid to keep international peace. This undermines the principle of joint responsibility for world peace. It also does not take into account that the developed countries would have a greater chance to advocate for their values and interests if their soldiers could be found shoulder to shoulder with uniformed men and women coming from other regions of the world.  Moreover, richer countries have and can spare the specialised personnel so much in demand. They also have the specific, highly efficient logistics capabilities that peacekeeping operations in remote areas around the world require.  

The second move that more developed member states should make concerns training for defence and security personnel. The military training programme the EU is implementing in Mali is a good example and it should be replicated in the CAR. As it has just been decided for Mali, after a long hesitation, it must also include the gendarmerie and the police, not just the armed forces. Investing in the development of human resources and institutions is critical to help a country overcome chronic crisis. Richer nations must be much more committed to security sector reform and the development of defence, police and penal institutions in countries coming out of a deep national crisis. The capacity building packages must also include revamping justice systems –without forgetting the relevance of traditional methods of administering justice – as a means of combating impunity and contributing to national reconciliation and long-term stability.

A cautionary note though. Training national forces and reforming national defence and security institutions in a post-crisis country must be accompanied by a plan for financial sustainability. Experience has shown that African officers trained in the best US and European academies often feel a high degree of professional frustration when they return to their national army corps, because those units are underfunded. Indeed, because of lack of resources, most units are unable to go beyond a collection of “barefooted” armed men, dressed in uniforms of fortune and flea market camouflage. They have no real means to operate. They can easily become the breeding ground for the future wave of discontent and crisis, as we have seen in Mali in 2012. The issue of the financial sustainability of modern armed forces and police services in a number of African countries requires an honest debate.

4.       Strong political mandate

The effectiveness of any UN peacekeeping mission is clearly related to its political mandate. This mandate must be realistically defined.

In terms of the African-based missions, there is now a tendency to attach to mandates an array of concerns and objectives. They are certainly important but they are generally more related to long term development goals than to keeping the peace and creating the conditions for political transition and basic human security. It will be wise to strike a balance between comprehensiveness and the core objectives of peacekeeping. Focus would make the mission stronger. It would therefore increase the chances of success.

Mandates should above all aim at creating the political and security foundations on which peace building and development should rest. Actually, an area that requires greater attention, both in terms of knowledge and identification of the practical lessons learnt so far, is the one related to the connections between peacekeeping and peace building. But those links cannot be a pretext for unworkable mandates.

Next to focus, the political role of head of mission is critical for deep-rooted change, for the move from crisis to institutional, representative democracy. It is therefore indispensable to make sure the mission leadership gets the full political support of the Security Council and the relevant regional organisations (the AU, for instance, and the affected REC).

In addition, the UN Department of Peace Keeping Operations (DPKO) and the Department of Field Support (DFS) must be better prepared to exercise their respective backstopping roles. For too long, the state of mind in both departments has been inspired by the arrogant attitude and detachment that comes from working at headquarters and too far away from the realities of the daily life in the field. In particular DPKO has shown, on many occasions, to lack the skills and field experience necessary to provide the right type of advice to the missions that fall under its responsibility and to serve as a permanent channel between the field and the key countries in the Security Council. The rotation of staff between headquarters and field needs to be effectively implemented.

Leadership issues are crucial in all complex situations, particularly in countries that have gone through major national upheavals. Those issues are not only about the quality of the mission leadership or the sorts of diplomatic interventions carried out by regional leaders. Leadership is fundamentally about daring to create the domestic conditions for a renewal of the national political elites in the post-crisis situation and allowing for the right type of leaders to emerge, including at the local level. New times call for new leaders grounded on accepted political practise. Leaders with legitimacy. In this context, proper electoral processes, at the presidential, national and local levels, are critical elements of an exit strategy. They call for continued support by the best technical teams available within the international peace machinery. But they should not be considered the absolute benchmarks. To complete successful elections cannot be seen as the indicator that the mission has done its job and can leave. Nonetheless, fair elections do make the transition process more sustainable and open the door for an earlier exit of the international presence.

The emphasis on national and local political leadership cannot ignore the role of civil society. A strong the civil society is essential for stability, reconciliation and democracy. Peacekeeping missions must give the example and fully accept civil society as a critical partner in the transition process. That will send a clear message to the new political elite that will emerge after the crisis. Expertise on civil society relations must be part of the mission´s skills.

5.       Reducing costs

UN peacekeeping operations are very costly endeavours. A mission like the one just approved for the CAR might require a billion US dollars a year. This is undoubtedly a lot of money. Its financing is mandatory for the UN member states once the mission has been authorised by the Council. At a time of continued cost restraint and belt tightening, governments in key capitals, those that carry the main budgetary burden for UN operations, become very hesitant when it comes to this level of expenditures. This is a basic reason why approval of the resolution on CAR was delayed. Finance ministries have the first word when it comes to deciding about new international operations. Moreover, the Council knows when a mission will begin but has no clear idea about when it will end.  

It is therefore critically important to look at ways of containing costs. Not only should the mission objectives be clearly articulated, they should also be attainable within a reasonable amount of time. It is also imperative to build the national capacity to take over as soon as possible. The ultimate responsibility for peace and security in a country rests within its national borders, with its authorities and its citizens. Financial considerations make this principle more present than ever.

A further cost related question pertains to the exit strategy of the mission, which should be incorporated from the very beginning as a primary component of the mission design. It is essential that the Security Council asks DPKO and the head of the field mission to devise a reasonably defined plan focused on the gradual but steady transfer of responsibilities to the national and sub-regional authorities as soon as it is feasible to do so. Feasible means that peace can be sustained without direct intervention by the international community. A plan that would be both a road map to guide the peace keeping mission and serve as a blueprint for its exit strategy.

6.       Moving ahead

UN peacekeeping has achieved some notable results in the past. Sierra Leone, in Africa, and East Timor in the South Pacific, are just two recent examples of major successes in the recent past. UN peacekeeping has also changed a lot for the better over the last decade. Those who saw peacekeeping in the Balkans during the 1990s and then observe today´s operations notice that the UN has come a long way in terms of integration of different dimensions and creating a balance between the military and the civilian components of missions. There is now much greater emphasis on law and order and policing, justice, local administration and conflict resolution at the community level, as well as on gender equality and human rights. The UN has also accumulated extensive experience in terms of logistics supply and sustainment, air and ground mobility and support to humanitarian emergencies. 

But times keep changing. Conflicts are increasingly about basic natural resources and survival, differences in religious practices and faith-based behaviours, terrorism, wide spread banditry and criminality, and the collapse or limitations of state administration, living vast areas ungoverned. At the same time, violent conflicts tend to have deep and complex root causes, which necessitate time to be resolved. But the attention span of the international community has become shorter. And so many of us have acquired the fever of impatience, we live at the speed of the TV screen or even the social media, shaped by the 140-character approach. We want to see results before too long, if not immediately. Protracted conflicts tend to disappear from the public eye if they become too static or nothing happens. As they lose prominence, they receive less political and financial support. Their prolonged budgetary costs become more difficult to justify.

Sixteen missions are deployed in different parts of the world, nine of them in Africa. The defence sector has also been under review in several key developed countries, prompted by the need to adapt to contemporary threats and be prepared to respond to new international settings. This is therefore the moment to reflect again about the peacekeeping challenges as it was done almost 15 years ago, when the Brahimi report was issued.  Time and circumstances make it advisable to review and update the recommendations of that important and influential report.

It is also the time for the EU and the AU to reflect, in house and in their joint consultations, on what can be reasonably done by both parties to complement the UN peacekeeping work. This is a debate that should take place without further delay. It should be linked to the next evaluation of the EU African Peace Facility (APF) and its transformation into an instrument of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy. For Africa, the doubling of APF resources over the next three years, recently decided at the IV EU-Africa Summit, is encouraging and certainly appreciated. But there is a need to go beyond resources, as important as they are, and look at the substance of what really needs to be funded and how that can be integrated in a long-term strategy of greater African self-reliance. This about Africa´s capacity to sort out its own conflicts.

This debate would also benefit from the long experience the Norwegians have acquired in the implementation of their Training for Peace programme (TfP). The programme, funded by the government of Norway since 1995 and managed by African institutions, has been able to evolve over time. It is now particularly attentive to training in the areas of African civilian capacities and police personnel for peacekeeping, as well as focused on the need to support applied research. In this, the EU has a good source of inspiration when designing the new generation of training missions. Such missions should take advantage of the Malian experience – the EU Training Mission –, be civilian led and as inclusive as possible.  

The way forward should further consider the experience of coalitions of the willing and the role of small groupings of countries as suppliers of peace enforcing and peacekeeping tasks. But this is a discussion for another time. However, it cannot be brushed aside and ignored. Nor should China´s ambitions to support peace and security operations in Africa be forgotten. Here, the China-Africa Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Security, approved in 2012, is worth noting.

All this calls for a very direct question: Who is going to lead the debate on renovating peacekeeping? It must be an institution that is in a position to bring all of the stakeholders together, including the EU, for sure, but above all, the African institutions that have the responsibility for peace and security throughout the continent.

The answer seems obvious.

April 2014