The Congo:
Might This Be the Re-birth of True UN
Peacekeeping?
By JONATHAN
POWER
July 21, 1999
LONDON- After the Congo peace agreement, nothing but an
eerie silence. Will they? Won't they? President Bill Clinton
made a post Kosovo speech only a few weeks ago promising
immediate U.S. intervention the next time lives are at risk.
Yet the silence continues. Mention the word Congo and
whether it be in Washington, London or Paris, you can hear a
pin drop.
Is Washington now prepared to turn the clock back to
where it was before the 1993 Somalia debacle when in the
flush of good feeling following the end of the Cold War UN
peackeeping was not only to be given a new lease of life and
a rush of new mandates but more robust guidelines for
military engagement? It was all dramatically undermined by a
great American panic after 18 U.S. rangers were killed in a
firestorm of guerrilla bullets in Somalia. Today it is not
so much a question of whether the U.S. should commit its own
troops to a new UN African operation- that was probably
never a good idea- but whether it will effectively veto a
move involving other countries, as it did at the time of the
mass genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda five
years ago, or simply opt out of the financial
responsibility.
These are today's pertinent, unanswered questions. One
speech does not a summer make and there is not much sign,
anymore than there ever has been with this Administration,
of it devoting its energy to educating, wooing and winning
over Congressional and public opinion on UN matters. So far
the White House has said that, if asked, it would take part
in any "internationally recognized" peacekeeping effort for
the Congo. Without Congressional support this is just
wishful thinking. Where there should be an active, even
fervent, policy there is just a grey hole. If nothing is
soon done all the patient work of African leaders to resolve
Africa's most important and potentially destabilising war
will come to naught.
To be fair, there is a case for caution. The UN's last
Congo peacekeeping operation, in the early 1960s,
immediately following on a rushed granting of independence
by an irresponsible Belgian government, is the darkest hour
in the annals of the UN. It nearly tore the UN asunder, it
claimed the life of the UN's greatest Secretary-General, Dag
Hammarskjold and it resulted in the beating into
unconsciousness of Brian Urquhart who was to become head of
peacekeeping.
In the end the UN did bring peace to the Congo, in the
sense that it ended a civil war fought over the secession of
the mineral-rich province of Katanga and provided an
alternative to what was in danger of becoming an East-West
grab for influence that threatened to turn the Congo into a
major Cold War battleground. It succeeded because the
disorganized, drunken, pot-smoking Congolese troops and
their gung-ho European mercenary back-up were relatively
easily put in their places by the highly professional
(mainly Indian) soldiers of the UN contingent.
Nevertheless, the operation also revealed the tensions
implicit in peacekeeping operations. Various national
contingents wanted to use force. At one point the Swedes
even took off to start bombing in retaliation for the death
of an Italian airman, only to be thwarted by bad weather.
Urquhart later wrote in his autobiography, "They simply did
not want to understand either the principle involved or the
bottomless morass into which they would sink if they
descended from the high ground of a non-violent
international peacekeeping force...The moment the UN starts
killing people it becomes part of the conflict it is
supposed to be controlling and therefore part of the
problem. It loses the one quality which distinguishes it
from, and sets it above, the people it is dealing with."
Since the end of the Cold War there has been immense
pressure brought to bear for the UN to forgo its traditional
reticence about the use of aggressive force. Yet a more
robust peacekeeping, besides being a contradiction in terms,
is in danger of undermining its own purpose. In Somalia this
robustness ended in alienating the local population and,
later, in defeat. The field was simply abandoned. In Bosnia
the UN ended up being pushed aside to give way to Nato,
having become along the way, with the use of tanks and
cannon, a very different kind of peacekeeping force than
traditionally deployed.
Political opinion, nevemind public opinion, is largely
confused about both the nature and pedigree of peacekeeping.
Peacekeeping was "invented" by Dag Hammarskjold as a way of
bipassing a big power veto on the activating of Chapter 7 of
the UN Charter which permits the UN to use military
"enforcement" to preserve the peace. It was a brilliant
piece of improvisation, working under the more restrained
rubric of the Charter's Chapter 6 that allows for mediation.
Over many years of practice, from the Middle East on, it
achieved a life of its own, demonstrating in trouble spots
as varied as Cyprus, Namibia, Cambodia and El Salvador that
UN soldiers were adept at keeping the peace ONCE the
antagonists and their backers (in the old days usually the
superpowers) had decided they did want peace.
The Congo, beckoning again, could be the right occasion
at the right time to resurrect this well tested method of UN
intervention. The African leaders have completed peace
negociations. Everyone agrees on both what the terms are and
what the UN peacekeepers' role is. If President Clinton was
serious on his African trip last year in asking for
forgiveness for standing on one side while the Tutsis were
massacred, this is the time to test his sincerity. If he
leads the rest of the world will follow. If he gets cold
feet again the UN might as well fold its tent and await
another president.
Copyright © 1999 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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