the withdrawal, quartering and demobilisation of UNITA forces;

the collection and storage of UNITA armaments; and

the movement of government forces (FAA) to barracks.

It is because of the failure by the parties involved to comply with these critical elements of the UNAVEM mandate that the FAA and UNITA remained ready to transform the ‘not crime-not war’ environment into one of open armed conflict, and to make a mockery of the international community’s seven-year investment in the Angolan peace process.

No one succeeded in protecting the civilian victims of this tragic conflict, and the humanitarian and human rights crisis is now worse than it has ever been. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, human rights abuses by both government forces and UNITA troops are continuing unabated — including sexual slavery, rape, summary executions, looting, starvation, and the indiscriminate planting of landmines.⁵

SOMALIA

By 1992, approximately half of the nine million people of Somalia were threatened with starvation, severe malnutrition and related diseases. An estimated 300 000 people actually died from disease and acts of violence, while some two million people were displaced from their home areas in an attempt to flee the suffering.

In March 1992, the warring parties eventually agreed to a cease-fire, to be monitored by UN observers. They also agreed to the deployment of UN security personnel to protect assistance agencies responding to the humanitarian disaster. The subsequent UN Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) had an authorised strength of 50 military observers to monitor the cease-fire, and a 500-strong infantry unit to provide escorts for UN convoys that aimed to provide food and non-food supplies to some 1.5 million people immediately at risk, and to help an additional 3.5 million people with food, seeds, drinking water and basic health supplies.

In the absence of a government capable of maintaining law and order, relief organisations experienced increased hijacking of vehicles, looting of convoys and warehouses, and the detention of expatriate staff. On 3 December 1992, the Security Council was moved to welcome a United States offer to help create a secure environment for the delivery of humanitarian aid and authorised, under Chapter VII of the Charter, the use of "all necessary means" to do so. The US responded with a decision on 4 December to initiate Operation Restore Hope, under which it would assume the unified command of the new operation in accordance with Resolution 794.⁶

By March 1993, the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) had deployed a total of approximately 37 000 troops in southern and central Somalia, covering approximately 40% of the country’s territory. Although UNITAF had a positive impact on the delivery of humanitarian assistance, incidents of violence continued. There was still no effective functioning government in the country, no organised civilian police and no disciplined national army. On 3 March 1993, the Secretary-General submitted recommendations to the Security Council for changing the UNITAF mission into UNOSOM II which, endowed with Chapter VII enforcement powers, was to establish a secure environment throughout Somalia.⁷

Attempts by UNOSOM II (which took over from UNITAF in May 1993) to implement disarmament measures led to increasing tensions which culminated, on 5 June 1993, in a series of armed attacks by Somali militia against UN troops throughout south Mogadishu. In these attacks, 25 Pakistani soldiers were killed, 10 were reported missing and 54 were wounded.

UNOSOM II subsequently initiated military action on 12 June 1993, conducting a series of air and ground operations in south Mogadishu. The objective of the action, according to the Secretary-General, was to restore peace to Mogadishu so that the political reconciliation, rehabilitation and disarmament process could continue to move forward throughout Somalia.

In support of UNOSOM’s coercive disarmament programme, the United States deployed Rangers and Quick Reaction Forces (under US command and control) in Mogadishu. On 3 October 1993, the Rangers launched an operation aimed at capturing a number of key aides of General Aidid who were suspected of complicity in attacks on UN personnel and facilities. During the operation, two US helicopters were shot down by Somali militiamen. Eighteen United States soldiers lost their lives and 75 were wounded. The bodies of the American soldiers were subjected to public acts of outrage, and the humiliating scenes were broadcast around the world.

Within days, President Clinton sent reinforcements and set a pullout date for his troops. According to Bowden:

"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."⁸

By 28 March 1995, the complete withdrawal of UN peacekeeping troops had been effected, with few of the mandate objectives of UNOSOM II achieved.⁹ But, October 1993 marked the watershed with respect to international peacekeeping in Africa. From this date on, there has been little stomach in Western circles for the notion of intervening to protect civilians in African conflicts through the judicious threat or use of military force.

RWANDA

Nowhere was the so-called ‘Somalia effect’ so dramatically and tragically demonstrated as in Rwanda. After nearly three years of fighting, and a number of broken cease-fire agreements, a comprehensive peace agreement between the government of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was successfully concluded on 4 August 1993. Both parties called for a neutral international force to assist with implementing the agreement.

On 24 September 1993, the Secretary-General recommended to the Security Council that a UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) should be established for the purpose of "contributing to the establishment and maintenance of a climate conducive to the secure installation and subsequent operation of the transitional Government." The mandate of UNAMIR envisaged a 16-month, four-phase plan which included the demobilisation and integration of the various armed forces and gendarmerie, and concluded with monitoring democratic elections and the installation of a new government.

Despite the UNAMIR deployment, the security situation in the country deteriorated steadily until, on 6 April 1994, an aircraft carrying President Habyarimana of Rwanda and President Ntaryamira of Burundi crashed (or was shot down), killing all those on board. This sparked a civil war that led to countrywide massacres of the Hutu opposition and intelligentsia, as well as members of the Tutsi minority and other RPF supporters. Within two weeks, tens of thousands had been killed. Victims of the violence included ten Belgian members of UNAMIR. Following the murder of the Belgian soldiers and threats to Belgian nationals, the government of Belgium unilaterally decided to withdraw its battalion from Rwanda.

By the end of April 1994, it had become patently obvious that the much-weakened UNAMIR had neither the mandate nor the strength to take effective action to halt the continuing massacres, and would be unable to protect threatened people in Kigali if a new wave of massacres were to start. UNAMIR had been reduced, by 13 May 1994, to 444 personnel in Rwanda. The Secretary-General recommended to the Security Council that it provide a new mandate to create UNAMIR II, consisting of 5 500 troops to support and provide safe conditions for displaced persons and other groups in Rwanda, and to help with the provision of assistance by humanitarian organisations.

By 1 August 1994, however, UNAMIR had fewer than 500 soldiers deployed. The RPF had established military control over most of the country, and about 1.5 million (mainly Hutu) Rwandans had sought refuge in Zaïre out of fear of retribution. It is estimated that, of a total population of approximately seven million, as many as 500 000 had been killed, three million had been internally displaced, and more than two million had fled to neighbouring countries. As the UN Secretary-General at the time observed, the international community’s delayed reaction to the genocide in Rwanda "demonstrated graphically its extreme inadequacy to respond with prompt and decisive action to humanitarian crises entwined with armed conflict."¹⁰

ZAIRE

The humanitarian crisis which captured the international media limelight during 1996 clearly had its origins in the Rwanda genocide of 1994 and the subsequent exodus of hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees and militia when the RPF took control of the country. However, once UNAMIR had withdrawn from Rwanda, the focus shifted squarely onto Burundi, where signs of a potential genocide led to US efforts to create an African Crisis Response Force to resolve the problem. Although it had been patently clear that the entire Great Lakes region remained highly volatile, and that the refugee camps in Zaïre were one of the principal causes of instability, the international community was unable to take any concerted action to ease the plight of refugees or to avert the eight-month civil war which raged through Zaïre from October 1996 to May 1997.

The problem was not one of a lack of warning, but of a lack of political will among those with the necessary capacity to organise a coherent and effective multinational response, and to accept the sacrifices that this would entail. When help was eventually offered, it was not from ‘newly empowered’ African peacekeeping nations; it was a Canadian proposal to lead a multinational force with the limited humanitarian objective of ensuring the peaceful repatriation of refugees to Rwanda. Although the proposed multinational force proved to be too little and too late, it did highlight some of the weaknesses of relying on Western-led ‘coalitions of the willing’ for dealing with African crises.

The envisaged operation involved the insertion of armed forces into an area where the parties were still engaged in combat. Perhaps largely because of the potential for involvement in combat operations, almost all troop contributing countries, including Canada, made the presence of US ground forces a precondition for their participation.¹¹ Given the stipulations of US Presidential Decision Directive 25, this meant that the planned intervention could only occur in pursuit of the US national interest.¹² While Canada and the US continued to wrangle over the exact timeframe and mandate of the mission,¹³ the issue was decided by default — in the form of attacks by the elements of the Rwandan army on the positions of Zaïrian government forces and refugee camps that were thought to be sheltering Hutu militia who had been involved in the 1994 genocide.

The attacks by (soon to be president) Laurent Kabila’s surrogate forces from Rwanda on refugee camps near the border led to the precipitous return to Rwanda of some 600 000 refugees. Requests by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for military forces to assist in an operation to rescue the hundreds of thousands of others who fled westward into the forests of Zaïre, remained unheeded. Together with other humanitarian organisations, the UNHCR was left to its own devices in searching and rescuing refugees, often inside conflict zones. Access to refugees was frequently limited, obstructed or denied, and makeshift refugee sites were subjected to attacks and other atrocities by the military forces of both Mobutu and the agglomeration of forces loyal to Kabila’s Alliance des forces démocratiques pour la libération du Congo (Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo — ADFL). Although aid workers managed to help with the evacuation of some 250 000 Rwandans, many others perished either of starvation, disease, or at the hands of the belligerents.¹⁴

LIBERIA

The inability of the international community to cope with humanitarian crises precipitated by armed conflict, is often explained in terms of a lack of political will on the part of third parties to become embroiled in someone else’s civil war. The perceived solution has been to move away from UN missions and to rely on committed neighbours to terminate such wars. The precedent for devolving ‘peacekeeping’ responsibilities in Africa was set when the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)¹⁵ intervened in a conflict which began in Liberia in late 1989, when a small force of Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front for the Liberation of Liberia (NPFL) invaded from Sierra Leone to try to bring down the country’s president at the time, Samuel Doe.

This incursion soon degenerated into a many-sided factional war, which split the country into fiefdoms with no overall government control. By early 1990, several hundred deaths had already occurred in confrontations between government forces and fighters of the NPFL. The civil war subsequently claimed the lives of between 100 000 and 150 000 civilians and led to a complete breakdown of law and order among the country’s approximately 2.3 million inhabitants. The fighting displaced thousands of people, both internally and beyond the borders, resulting in some 700 000 refugees in neighbouring countries.

From the outset of the conflict, ECOWAS undertook various initiatives aimed at a peaceful settlement — including the creation of a Military Observer Group (ECOMOG) in August 1990. ECOMOG was mandated to keep peace in Liberia by separating the warring factions, as a precursor to further diplomatic initiatives aimed at a resolution of the crisis. The force was also tasked with the provision of humanitarian assistance and with the creation of a security zone around the capital city of Monrovia. The co-operation of the belligerent factions was assumed and expected.¹⁶

Armed with a peacekeeping mandate, ECOMOG forces landed in Monrovia on 24 August 1990, only to be met by fierce gunfire from the forces of Taylor’s NPFL. No cease-fire was in place and the refusal of a major party to the conflict to accept the impartiality of ECOMOG meant that the force found it extremely difficult to execute its peacekeeping mandate.¹⁷

ECOMOG initially comprised about 4 000 troops from The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone (as ECOMOG became drawn into the fighting, the force was later to reach a maximum strength of nearly 12 000). The force initially managed to secure the greater Monrovia area, allowing it to act as a safe haven from the fighting upcountry, but was never really able to establish its authority in the hinterland.

It took ECOWAS five years to broker a thirteenth peace agreement in August 1995, which was widely believed to have a real chance of success. It was the first accord to involve all the factions (by this stage there were nine major belligerent parties), and also had the support of other political and civic organisations.¹⁸ However, on 6 April 1996, Monrovia erupted in bloody conflict when police attempted to arrest Roosevelt Johnson, a former leader of the United Liberation Movement of Liberia (ULIMO-J) faction. The carnage involved civilians and children, and forced the evacuation of virtually all humanitarian relief workers from the former safe haven for up to one million people. ECOMOG stood by helplessly as warlords looted their offices and supplies. When ECOMOG troops eventually managed to separate the armed factions and gain a measure of control over the city in June 1996, health workers recovered more than 1 500 bodies from shallow graves.¹⁹

IS PHYSICAL PROTECTION POSSIBLE?

Given the record of multilateral interventions in Africa, it is reasonable to ask if it is at all possible to protect civilians in armed conflict. Certainly, this aspect is addressed in typical ‘can do’ manner in Western military manuals. For example, the NATO manual AJP-3.4.1 Peace Support Operations includes a section on The protection of humanitarian operations and human rights and one on The establishment and supervision of protected or safe areas. However, it is not very specific on how these jobs are to be done. The NATO doctrine simply states that:

"Should the situation be such that humanitarian operations require wide spread protection and human rights abuses are endemic, then a [peace enforcement] profile will be more appropriate [than a peacekeeping profile]. The foremost task for the military force may be to restore the peace and create a stable and secure environment in which aid can run freely and human rights abuses are curtailed. Specific protection tasks may include Non-combatant Evacuation Operations (NEOs) but will more normally apply to the protection of convoys, depots, equipment and those workers responsible for their operation."²⁰

This encapsulates the full spectrum of possible military tasks in support of humanitarian goals — from guarding and escorting to the stabilisation of a whole area of operations. However, the manual does not indicate exactly how these tasks are to be accomplished. For example, on the task of establishing and supervising protected or safe areas, the NATO manual observes that:

"Unless those within the safe area are disarmed, it may be used as a base from which to sally out and conduct raids. Clear guidance should be given, therefore, as to what is demanded of any force that is tasked with establishing and supervising a protected or safe area ... The first stage in any [peace support operation] designed to protect or make an area safe is to demilitarise that area and this in itself may require enforcement actions."²¹

However, safe areas have proven notoriously unsafe in practice (for example, Monrovia and Freetown with regard to ECOMOG operations), and one of the aims of doctrine based on lessons learned is to help military forces get things right the next time round. Western doctrine is strongly influenced by experience with multinational operations in Yugoslavia — including the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) mission that created safe areas in Bihac, Gordaze, Tuzla, Sarajevo, Srebrenica and Zepa. However, the UN Security Council ignored the Secretary-General’s pleas for more soldiers, and failed to authorise sufficient troops to do what the UN had promised. Most of these enclaves were captured — including the Muslim ‘safe area’ of Srebrenica, which was overrun in July 1995 by Bosnian Serbs who then systematically killed thousands of the town’s men and boys.

The record is certainly no better in Africa. Monrovia and Freetown have already been mentioned as examples of ‘safe’ havens that have been overrun by rebels with catastrophic consequences for civilian populations. In Somalia, with nearly 40 000 peacekeepers deployed, it was impossible to ensure a safe environment for the Somali people. Here, and elsewhere in Africa, peacekeepers have not even proven proficient at protecting humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). In 1995, for example, the UN had to hire two battalions of Zaïrian soldiers to provide military security to its refugee camps in Rwanda.²²

According to a Brown University study on the crisis in Rwanda, the national military contingents of UNAMIR proved an unwieldy humanitarian instrument because of their preoccupation with ‘force protection’. Of all the humanitarian functions fulfilled by international troops, they were least available for, and least effective in providing security (which was precisely their area of comparative advantage over the other humanitarian actors). Moreover, the military were not free agents, but had to subordinate their potential efficacy to political decisions, priorities and timetables.²³

In Somalia, certain national contingents refused to carry out what they considered to be dangerous operations. When assigned such dangerous tasks, contingent commanders attempted to circumvent the chain of command by turning to their national governments for clarification — thereby effectively paralysing the operation concerned.²⁴ Aid agencies and NGOs were often forced to enlist the services of armed Somali gangs in an attempt to ensure their security. The privatisation of the security function for humanitarian workers has already become common practice in a number of other UN missions worldwide, perhaps reflecting a broader trend towards the privatisation of the humanitarian function itself.²⁵

However, privatising the provision of physical security to aid workers is no solution to the problem of protecting entire civilian populations from death or injury. At a higher level of analysis, the problem is not so much that of security (defined in terms of an enabling environment for the conduct of a specific task such as providing humanitarian aid), but one of stability, which is a condition in which a whole variety of tasks can be executed as part of daily life, without undue threat to life and limb.

The need is clearly for military support for the creation of ‘humanitarian space’ — not narrowly defined, but largely writ. The term ‘humanitarian space’ has become increasingly popular, without agreement over its precise meaning. Originally, the term was linked to the notion of a consensual space for humanitarian workers to operate in. However, there is increasing recognition of the need to broaden the term according to real needs on the ground. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), for example, has acknowledged that:

"the role of armed forces ... is to provide security and freedom of movement for all, such as keeping airports and roads open, and carrying out mine clearance."²⁶

Nevertheless, ‘mainstream’ peacekeeping doctrine focuses increasingly on elusive entry criteria and utopian endstates, rather than immediate stabilisation needs. This is really wishful thinking, as the means available to interventionists will always fall far short of desirable endstates — especially where Africa is concerned.

Even if some or most of the entry and exit criteria can be met, as long as no Western power feels threatened by African conflicts, the prospects of outside intervention remain weak. This is morally indefensible and potentially subversive of the idea of enforcing general human standards under multilateral authorisation, and it clearly contravenes the legal obligation of governments to deal with acts of genocide. But it serves no purpose to bemoan the situation and await the dawning of a new era of international moral rectitude. The focus should rather be on what can (and cannot) be done under these circumstances.

The fact that actual interventions continue to be shaped by non-rational and non-universal criteria (such as perceived national interests) does not mean that Africans should remain content with this type of ad hocracy. It is, after all, at least possible to develop and articulate a concept, based on (albeit imperfect) experience, for terminating violent struggles and for protecting civilians in armed conflict.

LEARNING FROM AFRICAN EXPERIENCES

Although not articulated or presented as such, some basic tenets of African doctrine for peace support operations are emerging from the West African region. This has not been a deliberate construct of ECOWAS — it is rather a by-product of the involvement of members of this organisation in ECOMOG operations over the past nine years. Within this relatively short timespan, ECOMOG has been forced to go the full cycle of peace support operations — from peacekeeping and peace enforcement in Liberia, to ‘restorative intervention’ in Sierra Leone and Guinea Bissau.²⁷

Former ECOMOG force commander, Brigadier-General Mitikishe Khobe, categorised the type of peace operations conducted under the auspices of ECOWAS as: intervention missions; peace enforcement missions; and peacekeeping missions.²⁸ According to Khobe, ECOMOG intervention missions involve combat action against insurgents or factions that resist the authority of the de facto government of a country which is suffering from a complex emergency caused by armed violence. Such intervention missions are aimed at securing a cease-fire, creating an atmosphere conducive for negotiations, and protecting non-combatants through the establishment of safe havens for civilians under direct ECOMOG protection. Although such intervention missions should be premised on the consent of the conflicting parties, it is accepted that the situation prior to an intervention operation will often preclude securing the agreement of all the parties in the conflict.²⁹

This description of ECOMOG operations roughly parallels (or indeed precedes) developments in NATO doctrinal thinking. In fact, it goes quite a bit further than extant NATO doctrine in that it provides for ‘intervention missions’. Although these are not explicitly ‘humanitarian interventions’, ECOWAS can lay equal claim to such motives as NATO did with its humanitarian bombardment of Serbia and Kosovo. After all, ‘humanitarian intervention’ may be simply defined as "military intervention in a state without the approval of its authorities, for the purpose of preventing widespread suffering or death among its inhabitants."³⁰

Whether or not such tenets of ECOMOG operations will or should find their way into an African doctrine for peace support operations remains a matter for debate and consultation. Observations and statements by former force commanders do not constitute an eloquent and integrated doctrine for African peace support operations. There is obviously room for much refinement and adjustment and a need for broader acceptance of such principles in Africa and abroad. However, the important issue is not to discard such important ‘doctrinal statements’, based on real experience, as being extraneous to the ‘peacekeeping’ debate.

Indeed, progress in the evolution of West African doctrine for peace support, as in the case of NATO in the Balkans, has evolved less from academic reflection and the deliberations of ‘experts’ than from the harsh experiences of force commanders and peacekeepers on the ground. The gains made must therefore be credible. The difference is that the ‘lessons learned’ from the ECOMOG operations have not been as widely analysed, and they are certainly not as well packaged as those that have emerged from the Balkans.

Moreover, the contemporary debate on multifunctional peace missions, ‘new peacekeeping partnerships’, entry and exit criteria and endstates, among others, has shifted the focus from the real problem at hand. ECOMOG experiences in West Africa (from which the bulk of African ‘lessons learned’ can be drawn) indicate the need for a concept of operations that will result in the quick termination of potentially ruinous and protracted conflicts that inflict inordinate suffering upon civilian populations.

The primary aim of such operations should be to stabilise the situation in order to stop the killing and maiming of civilians in the shortest possible time. This requires acceptance of the fact that a multilateral military intervention may aim to alter the internal balance of power, thereby allowing a sufficiently decisive military victory to get all parties to the negotiating table. It implies the possible rejection of the traditional notions of neutrality and consent as a basis for intervention. After all, the UN report on the capture of Srebrenica "breaks new ground by effectively damning the diplomatic nicety of trying to remain neutral and above the fray in civil conflict."³¹

An unambiguous intervention policy has both military and political advantages that elude the consensual peacekeeping approach. At the political level, taking sides from the outset enables the intervening actor to sidestep the difficult task of protecting the neutral image of the intervention force, and facilitates the co-ordination of field activity and diplomatic bargaining. Outcomes depend more on the leverage of those who intervene than on attempts to create proposals based on broad appeals intended to generate voluntary compliance by diverse conflicting groups. Direct, partial intervention also allows the military to concentrate on military and security objectives with a clarity of purpose which is absent in impartial peacekeeping.³²

The notion of partial intervention may not find much favour among humanitarian organisations. As the UN Secretary-General noted in his 1998 report on protection for humanitarian assistance to refugees and others in conflict situations:

 "humanitarian organisations have been concerned that the use of the military for humanitarian activities, particularly in the context of Chapter VII operations, compromises their impartiality and neutrality, affects their ability to assist victims on both sides of the conflict and, at times, even leads to increased violence against United Nations and other humanitarian personnel."³³

 However, Annan also provides a solution to the dilemma of humanitarian actors during enforcement operations. In his report, he goes on to add that:

"In the context of Chapter VII operations, therefore, the withdrawal or temporary suspension of activities by humanitarian organisations cannot be ruled out."³⁴

He also recognises that:

"the provision (and protection) of humanitarian assistance ... will not always be viewed by the parties [to the conflict] as ‘neutral’ ... In such cases, the operation must have sufficient coercive capacity to ensure the implementation of its mandate ..."³⁵

The decision to intervene in order to terminate an internal armed conflict would require a Faustian bargain, struck by the authorising organisation. It involves accepting a need to choose between the lesser of two evils, in terms of both the parties to the conflict and the degree of force that would predictably be necessary for restoring a measure of stability while minimising the number of civilian casualties. It may mean, for example, the provision of assistance to a beleaguered de facto government in forcing the opposition into submission. But this assistance, in turn, must be predicated on that government’s willingness to submit to the terms and conditions set by the multilateral organisation that authorises the intervention.

At the operational level, the idea would be to construct a minimum winning coalition consisting of the favoured army and the multinational conflict termination force. The ultimate aim is to regain a monopoly of military force, in order to bring armed violence under central control and to induce all belligerents to the bargaining table. This basic precondition for starting a viable peace process has consistently been ignored in African conflicts, from Angola to Sierra Leone. As Mackinlay has noted:

"Unless a monopoly of violence can be achieved, any attempt to disarm will expose the vulnerable, law abiding element of the community to local gangs, who are certain not to disarm."³⁶

Recentralising the power within a broken state is thus the key challenge, and this necessarily involves the application and systematic monopolisation of military force.

As with all types of forceful intervention, this kind of operation would need to be legitimised. Multilateralism in itself implies a commitment to the principles governing the conduct of relations among states, as stipulated in the UN Charter. Inasmuch as it reflects a commitment to international principles, multilateralism tends to confer legitimacy on the military actions of nations. But African multilateral organisations need to clarify their legal status with respect to the maintenance of regional security — and the use of force in stabilisation operations clearly demands Security Council authorisation.

The Security Council itself will be more positively disposed to grant such authorisation when member states and regional coalitions present it with a clear and comprehensive doctrine for intervention that amounts to international law enforcement and emphasises the protection of civilians in armed conflict. As Whitman has argued:

"What is required is not a legal or quasi-legal empowerment of states to assert that their interventions are undertaken on behalf of the international community, but a range of measures (including intervention when appropriate) which are collectively determined, sanctioned and controlled. In other words, not expediency and pragmatism, but law enforcement."³⁷

Whether or not Africans will have to conduct their own law enforcement operations is peripheral to this argument, but as McDermott has observed:

"the presumed objective of UN peacekeeping and humanitarian interaction and intervention in the decades of conflict to come is effectiveness, and making the circumstances of violent situations better, not worse."³⁸

It is this type of thinking that should underpin deliberations on how to protect civilians in armed conflict. The acid test is whether or not an intervention is effective — from the point of view of the host population. Thus the cry of ‘no more UNAVEMs’ should now resonate as loudly as the cry of ‘no more Somalias’ did in the peacekeeping debate of the mid-1990s.

CONCLUSION

The record of peacekeeping in Africa (as elsewhere) provides little evidence of the ability of peacekeepers to provide physical protection to civilians in armed conflict. Indeed, the contemporary preoccupation in military circles with ‘force protection’ has clear precedence over the issue of protecting innocent civilians and those providing aid in turbulent times. This sad state of affairs is symptomatic of a need that has long been evident, but which few dare to express — the need to reinvent the notion of peacekeeping, or third-party intervention into armed conflicts.

Doctrinal thinkers have hitherto been preoccupied with questions of consent, hence the quarrels over Chapter VI or Chapter VII. But this is essentially a non-issue. On the one hand, everyone knows how to undertake Chapter VI peacekeeping (within a benign security environment, of course). Everyone wants to do this kind of peacekeeping, even with its new-found ‘multifunctionality’ and problems of co-ordination. Indeed, a whole industry has developed around ‘new generation’ peacekeeping with its attendant ‘civilian component’ and notions of ‘new peacekeeping partnerships’.

On the other hand, no one really knows how to protect entire civilian populations at risk in armed conflict, or how to execute stabilisation operations. And, no one really wants to undertake these operations — unless, of course, there are very strongly perceived own interests at stake. The concept of peace enforcement therefore remains an extremely underdeveloped area of military doctrine — even though it is perhaps the most needed. What was needed in Rwanda in April 1994 was clearly some kind of effective ‘humanitarian intervention’ which, as is evident from NATO doctrine, means ‘peace enforcement’.

The articulation by Africans — either at the continental or the subregional level — of a clear and unambiguous peace support doctrine that includes intervention and peace enforcement operations is clearly a sine qua non for meaningful ‘peacekeeping’ capacity-building. Training must be informed by relevant doctrine that also provides clear guidelines for mission planning and for the command and control of operations. This will ultimately save many lives — those of the intervening troops, but most important, those of the civilian population placed at risk by the conflict.

NOTES

This article was originally presented as a paper at a UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Assistance/Institute for Development Studies (OCHA/IDS) humanitarian policy workshop on The protection of civilians in armed conflict: African perspectives on humanitarian issues, Harare, 13-15 March 2000. It is published in support of the Training for Peace in Southern Africa project, which is sponsored by the Royal Norwegian government.

J Mackinlay, International responses to complex emergencies: Why a new approach is needed, International Peacekeeping News 2(5), 1996, p 36.



M Sayagues, No war, no peace, no Angola peace, no Angola solution, Mail & Guardian, 3-9 July 1998.



Ibid.



Security Council Resolution 976 (1995) on the establishment of the UN Angola Verification Mission III, paragraph 16.



Report quoted in Angola: Human rights abuses, IRIN-Southern Africa, 16 December 1999.



Quoted in United Nations (unofficial document), United Nations Operation in Somalia I, <www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/unosomi.htm>, 25 November 1997.



Ibid.



M Bowden, quoted in G Constantine, Death of 18 US troops haunts American view on peacekeeping, Washington Times, 22 January 1998.



J Chopra, Å Eknes & T Nordbø, Fighting for hope in Somalia, Peacekeeping and Multinational Operations 6, p 2.



This chronology of events is summarised mainly from Rwanda — UNAMIR, an unofficial record of events prepared by the United Nations Department of Public Information, September 1996.



J Apathurai & R Lysyshyn, Lessons learned from the Zaïre mission, unpublished report, June 1997, pp 2-3. Although respectively members of the Canadian department of national defence and the department of foreign affairs and international trade (and former members of the interdepartmental task force to co-ordinate Canada’s participation in the Zaïre crisis), the report was written in their personal capacities and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Canadian government.



In May 1994, the Clinton Administration’s Presidential Decision Directive 25 (PDD 25) decreed that the US would not intervene in future crises unless American national interests were clearly at stake, and the mission had clear and limited objectives, including a well-defined exit strategy.



The mandate of the mission — dubbed Operation Guardian Assistance by the US military — was never clearly articulated as a concept of operations for the troops on the ground. Because the creation of the envisaged ‘humanitarian corridors’ would have potentially brought the force into direct conflict with hostile factions, the severity and complexity of the situation was downplayed. For example, the US and British governments argued that there were ‘only’ 50 000 refugees to be repatriated, and that many of these may have been Zaïrian internally displaced persons. See S Greenway & A J Harris, Humanitarian security: Challenges and responses, paper presented to the Forging Peace Conference, Harvard University, 13-15 March 1998, p 26.



Excerpts from a Statement by Mrs Sadako Ogata, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, to the Third Committee of the General Assembly, New York, 3 November 1997.



ECOWAS membership comprises Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.



S V L Malu, Political control and guidance of peace support operations in Africa: An ECOMOG perspective, paper presented at an international workshop with the theme Towards a Global Consensus on Peace Support Operations: The African Dimension, hosted by the ISS and the Institute for International Relations (Prague), Pretoria, 21-23 October 1999. Major-General Malu is a former ECOMOG force commander and is presently Chief of Army Staff, Nigerian Army.



E T Dowyaro, ECOMOG operations in West Africa: Principles and praxis, paper presented at the ISS/IIR workshop, 21-23 October 1999. Brigadier-General Dowyaro is currently serving at Nigeria Army Headquarters as Commandant NACAS.



Liberia: More US support needed, Washington Office on Africa, 22 October 1995, <www.sas. upenn.edu/Arican_Studies/Urgent_Action/DC_2210.html>.



Liberia: WOA update/alert, Washington Office on Africa, 29 July 1996, <www.sas.upenn.edu/ African_Studies/Urgent_Action/DC_2210.html>



NATO, AJP-3.4.1 Peace Support Operations, 2nd study draft, 1999, pp 6-7



Ibid, pp 6-8.



D R Smock, Humanitarian assistance and conflict in Africa, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, <www-jha.sps.cam.ac.uk/a/a016.htm>, reposted 4 July 1997, p 5.



L Minear, Humanitarian action and peacekeeping operations, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, <www-jha.sps.cam.ac.uk/a/a024.htm>, posted on 4 July 1997, p 6.



M Rupiah, Peacekeeping operations: The Zimbabwean experience, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, <www-jha.sps.cam. ac.uk/a/a061.htm>, posted on 25 February 1996, p 4.



P Walker, Chaos and caring: Humanitarian aid amidst disintegrating states, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, <www-jha.sps.cam. ac.uk/a/a020.htm>, posted on 13 October 1996, p 3.



International Federation of the Red Cross, World disasters report, 1997, section 1, chapter 2.



Dowyaro, op. cit.



M M Khobe, ECOMOG operations in West Africa: Principles and praxis, paper presented at the ISS/IIR workshop, 21-23 October 1999. Brigadier-General Khobe was the Chief of Defence Staff, Sierra Leone Military Forces at the time of this presentation. He passed away on 19 April 2000.



ECOMOG did not succeed in carrying out military reform because of the determination of the NPFL, which won the general elections, to exclude other armed groups from the military.



A Roberts, NATO’s ‘humanitarian war’ over Kosovo, Survival 41(2), Autumn 1999.



B Crossette, UN details its failure to stop ‘95 Bosnia massacre, New York Times, 16 November 1999.



J Rudolph, Intervention in communal conflicts, Orbis, Spring 1995, p 271.



United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General on protection for humanitarian assistance to refugees and others in conflict situations, S/1998/883, 22 September 1998, paragraph 24.



Ibid.



Ibid, paragraph 25.



Mackinlay, op cit, p 37.



J Whitman, A cautionary note on humanitarian intervention, Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, 15 September 1995.



A McDermott, The UN and NGOs: Humanitarian interventions in future conflicts, in A McDermott (ed) Humanitarian force, PRIO Report 4/97, Oslo, 1997, p 91.