The political will of member states to mandate and contribute to UN peace operations is related to the operational effectiveness of the organization itself (Berdal 1993: 5). It is not surprising, therefore, that the repeated failure of peace operations between 1992 and 1995 encouraged member states to curb their earlier enthusiasm and limit their commitment. The disasters in Angola, Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia partly caused (in the case of Somalia) and were partly caused by (in the case of Rwanda) a retreat from peace operations as dramatic as the triple transformation that began between 1988 and 1993. The change in sentiment at the UN can be seen in the words of the Secretary-General in 1994 and 1995 (box 4.1).
One obvious consequence of this retreat was the reduction in the number of UN peacekeepers – from over 70,000 in 1993 to fewer than 20,000 in 1996. UN member states, particularly those in the West, were reluctant either to support renewed engagement with the world’s trouble spots (Somalia, Afghanistan, Zaire/Congo, Burundi) or to place their troops under UN command and provide the global institution with the resources it needed. Thus, the 20,000 UN peacekeepers were augmented by a further 40,000 working under the command of regional arrangements (McCoubrey and Morris 2000). Within this context, the Security Council displayed a growing reluctance to authorize new missions, with the largest UN mission deployed in the second half of the 1990s being UNAVEM III in Angola. Between 1995 and early 1999, the Security Council created only three new (and small) missions in regions where the UN was not already active (UNSMIH/UNTMIH, UNOMSIL and MINUGUA). The largest of these was the UNSMIH mission in Haiti, which comprised 1,500 civilian and military personnel, though this was soon reduced to 250 when it handed over to UNTMIH in August 1997. UNOMSIL in Sierra Leone and MINUGUA in Guatemala were both limited to approximately 200 personnel.
In February 1995, before the Srebrenica disaster, Boutros-Ghali published a supplement to his An Agenda for Peace in which he outlined a far less ambitious future for peace operations. In it he argued that the experience of the previous three years had damaged the credibility of the Security Council and the UN as a whole, because the Council had adopted decisions that could not be carried out since the necessary troops were not forthcoming. In addition, a lack of funds imposed ‘severe constraints’ on the UN’s ability to deploy the troops that had been offered (Boutros-Ghali 1995a: §§98–9).
By conservative estimates, around 1.5 million civilians were killed while peacekeepers were present in Angola, Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. The failures, the deliberate killing of peacekeepers and the comparatively high financial costs of these missions prompted many states to temper their earlier enthusiasm both for the UN as the primary agent for maintaining international peace and security and for peace operations. On the one hand, states reluctant to place their troops under UN command began to make greater use of regional arrangements or to act unilaterally. On the other hand, for most of the latter half of the 1990s, states were reluctant to authorize, fund or participate in peace operations, despite the continuation of violence in many parts of the world. The final part of this chapter asks what lessons were learned from these experiences.
Box 4.1 Boutros-Ghali on the failure of UN peace operations
The international community appears paralysed in reacting … even to the revised mandate established by the Security Council. We must all recognise that in this respect, we have failed in our response to the agony of Rwanda and have thus acquiesced in the continuing loss of human lives. Our readiness and capacity for action has been demonstrated to be inadequate at best, and deplorable at worst, owing to the lack of collective political will. (31 May 1994, in Wheeler 2000: 230)
Peace-keeping in such contexts is far more complex and more expensive than when its tasks were mainly to monitor cease-fires and control buffer zones with the consent of the States involved in the conflict. Peace-keeping today can involve constant danger … It must also be recognized that the vast increase in field deployment has to be supported by an overburdened Headquarters staff that resource constraints have held at levels appropriate to an earlier, far less demanding, time. Meanwhile, there is continuing damage to the credibility of the Security Council and of the Organization as a whole when the Council adopts decisions that cannot be carried out because the necessary troops are not forthcoming. (Boutros-Ghali 1995a: §§15, 17, 98)
The limits of peace-keeping in on-going hostilities starkly highlighted by the distressing course of events in the former Yugoslavia have become clearer, as the Organization has come to realize that a mix of peace-keeping and enforcement is not the answer to a lack of consent and cooperation by the parties to the conflict. The United Nations can only be as effective as its Member States may allow it to be. The option of withdrawal raises the question of whether the international community can simply leave the afflicted population to its fate. (Boutros-Ghali 1995c: §600)
Should there be a mismatch between the international force’s mandate and its resources, there would be a risk of failure, of international casualties, and of undermined credibility for those who had put the force into the field. (Boutros-Ghali 1995c)
4.4 Lessons learned?
In November and December 1999, the UN issued landmark reports accepting responsibility and detailing the many failings that had led its peacekeepers to stand aside amid genocide in Srebrenica and Rwanda respectively. They were not, however, the first attempt to learn lessons from UN peacekeeping failures.
The first UN ‘lessons learned’ report was produced in February 1994 but not publicly released. The Commission of Inquiry created by the Security Council to investigate the armed attacks on UNOSOM II personnel in Somalia made two important observations and issued a damning recommendation that could be read as an endorsement of the retreat of peace operations. It argued that the mission failed principally because its different military components had no means of communicating with each other directly. A complex and slow process of decision-making was required for one contingent to request assistance from another (Commission of Inquiry 1994: 40). Second, the Commission noted that there was very little coordination at UN headquarters. The US component of UNOSOM II distanced itself from UN elements, creating a situation where information was not shared and common operating procedures and rules of engagement were not established. Importantly, the Commission concluded by insisting that ‘The United Nations should refrain from undertaking further peace enforcement actions within the internal conflicts of states. If the United Nations decides nevertheless to undertake enforcement operations, the mandate should be limited to specific objectives and the use of force would be applied as the ultimate means after all peaceful remedies have been exhausted’ (ibid.: 42). From the mid-1990s to around 2005, the UN tended to refrain from using enforcement measures in civil conflicts, leaving that to NATO, ECOWAS and other regional bodies. As chapter 5 demonstrates, however, from around 2005, UN peace operations gradually increased in size and used force in order to protect themselves and civilians under their care as well as to coerce ‘spoilers’.
With regard to Rwanda, the UN was slow to acknowledge its role in facilitating the 1994 genocide. In 1996, the newly created Lessons Learned Unit of the DPKO issued an internal report which attempted to exonerate the UN while blaming member states. ‘UNAMIR’, it found, ‘seemed always to be one step behind the realities of the situation in Rwanda.’ This was a product of operational problems such as the mission’s critical lack of transportation (of twenty-two armoured personnel carriers requested, UNAMIR received only eight – all seconded from other missions, and only five of which were roadworthy) and a breakdown of communication between peacekeepers