UN Peace Keeping Mission in Congo - Essay Example

The Congo A United Nations peacekeeping force was sent to the Congo essentially to stabilize conditions that had become chaotic and violent when thecountry gained independence from Belgium. Before the independence, under the external aggression of Belgium, in 1958, Patrice Lumumba founded the National Congolese Movement (MNC). Just after the foundation, the party started demonstrations and protests for independence from the colonial government of Belgium. Those freedom-fighting activities thus became fruitful and led to the first parliament election in May 1960. Patrice Lumumba became the first prime minister. Just after becoming the prime minister, he emphasised on the need of social and economic changes in the country. The independence did not solve all the problems of Congo, and problems started arising in the province of Katanga, which was enriched with mines. The province was under the control of Moise Tshombe, who in July 1960 supported the Belgium mercenaries and the Belgium Mining company named Union Minere. After having this support, he declared Kantanga independence. Due to this treachery to the Congo government, Lumumba requested United Nations to look into the matter and resolve all the upcoming issues and probable Civil War. The Lumumba's government requested UN military assistance "to protect the national territory of the Congo against the present external aggression which is a threat to international peace." There was no request to restore internal stability. However, Secretary-General Hammarskjold recommended to the Security Council the establishment of a peace-keeping force to assist the government of the Congo in maintaining law and order until, with technical assistance from the UN, the Congolese national security forces were able to meet these tasks. The Security Council authorized the Secretary-General to take the necessary steps for this purpose and called on Belgium to withdraw its troops from the territory. Thus began what, until the operation in Cambodia, was the largest UN peacekeeping operation (reaching a peak of 20,000 troops plus a large civilian corps) and one with a profound influence on internal developments in a member state. The Secretary-General was fully aware of the sensitivity of the action that the UN was undertaking in the Congo, both in terms of the attitudes of the foreign countries having a strong interest in the course of events in the Congo, and of the resistance of the Congolese government to any seeming. UN Peace Keeping Mission in Congo -Congo Crisis (MONUC) The secretary-general thus faced a government clearly desperately searching for assistance, and the possibility that outside powers might fill the resulting vacuum if the UN did not. Acting under Article 99 of the charter for the first time in the organization's history, the secretary-general called for a Security Council meeting to discuss the issue. In doing so, Hammarskjold set in motion the UN involvement in the Congo. That involvement took the form of an operation that, until the 1990s, was the largest UN peacekeeping operation on record. It was also an involvement that prompted a crisis so deep and an experience so devastating for the United Nations that once the UN operation in the Congo was officially over the UN did its best not only to put the experience behind it but also to forget it altogether. The willingness to use force in the Congo was a first for the United Nations and it came in the early days of UN experience with peacekeeping. Some of the logistical and communication problems associated with the operation, therefore, can be attributed to a general lack of experience and procedures. Command and control problems, for example, such as those associated with the final unexpected push into Jadotville that surprised UN headquarters, fall into this category. It remains possible, though, that the Jadotville example, like the murky background to Operation Morthor, is an example of a disconnect between decision making in the field and decision making at UN headquarters, either deliberately or because of the pressure of events. And, in that sense, both examples demonstrate the difficulties inherent in running an operation where force might and is being used, while using a peacekeeping decision making structure. In both situations, commanders in the field made decisions that contravened directives from the secretary-general. The speed of the resultant events and their unexpected nature posed difficult political problems for the secretary-general and, in the case of Operation Morthor, undermined the credibility and the impartiality of the operation. IRC Expectations from the United Nations The International Rescue Committee expected from the UN that it would strictly condemn the factional fighting for the sake of Congo innocent people and Congolese economy, undermining provision of basic services, and effecting massive and otherwise preventable death.(IRC2006) IRC expected from the U.N Security Council to provide: Sufficient funds for logistical support and troops. Use internal and external resources to help internally displaced persons who wish to return to their homes. Establish a U.N. led protection group for the displaced persons and take necessary measures to address gender-based violence and other human rights abuses. Provide justice to all those who are affected in terms of human rights abuses and prosecute and bring all the criminals and accomplices to justice, whatever be the political support they have. (IRC2006) With all the expectations, the human right agencies were having from the UN, UN is considered having certain weaknesses to have every activity in peacekeeping process, fair, transparent, unbiased and credible. This hindered in the handling of various processes permitting people to live in harmony with each other under democratic governance that in itself will serve as a deterrent to war. The term "peace-building" has come into use to describe what needs to be done to bring about these conditions, or, at least, to make progress toward this goal. Peace-building can be seen as the macro approach to the prevention of war. It can too easily be dismissed as overly idealistic and vague, as beyond the human capacity and certainly beyond that of existing multilateral organizations. The danger of conflict is apparent, often intrastate in nature that results from social and economic causes and of humanitarian disasters that in their consequences can be equated with war. With the end of the Cold War more resources and greater attention should, in principle, be available to alleviate these problems than has been the case since the United Nations was founded. It can be argued that the disappearance of the rivalry between the United States and the USSR will result in less rather than more attention being paid to the needs of the poorer countries since they are no longer competing for strategic advantage in Third World countries, and, further, that any resources released from Cold War related objectives will be directed toward relief of the budgetary problems of the rich countries rather than the development needs of the poorest. All of this is doubtless true. Beyond that, the successor states to the USSR are not economically able to provide aid to developing countries, a category into which many of them now fall. But it is also evident that governments are beginning to accept a measure of responsibility for human well-being and are coming to realize--if only slowly--that investment in removing the underlying causes of conflict, whether interstate or intrastate, is an investment in their own security. Western countries, for example, have been willing to make large financial outlays in the interest of social and political stability in Russia. The United States invested a substantial amount of money in UNITAC to alleviate a social crisis in Somalia, notwithstanding its own budgetary problems (and its indebtedness to the UN). Still, it will take strong intellectual and political leadership to bring about a wide public understanding of the commonality of interest in deterring conflict through peace-building measures that should now bind the countries of the world together. The United Nations can fill an important leadership role by establishing as the goal of a new era of fundamentally changed international relations the construction of a foundation for lasting peace. This may not sound very different from long-articulated UN ideals. What is new is the opportunity to pursue this objective in a greatly changed environment and with a revised assessment of what is - or should be - possible. The United Nations system should take the lead in developing, in cooperation with member states, the concepts, programs and new instrumentalities needed for progress toward this goal and in defining the complexities, difficulties and likely setbacks that will be entailed. (Jane, 2001, p. 48) Few examples provide a good cross section of experience from which to draw some lessons for future decision-making. The studies have shown that peace enforcement is not an easy or straightforward undertaking for the United Nations. The complexity of peace enforcement operations creates difficult, sometimes intractable dilemmas at the operational and mandate levels. The situation on the ground is highly changeable. Political and military support from member states is equally changeable. The risks of failure are high. Indeed, each of these examples prompted major, highly divisive crises for the United Nations. In the case of the Congo, the operation created a major political rift with the Soviet Union, a financial crisis (from which the organization has never fully recovered), and the death of the secretary-general shook the organization deeply. The whole experience brought about a pause in the authorization of new operations. Equally, the sequence of events that led to the disbanding and withdrawal of the UN Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II), encouraged a general hesitation to consider new operations. The UNOSOM II experience strongly contributed to the nonrenewal of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as secretary-general and was a significant factor in the Security Council's resistance to be-coming significantly involved in Rwanda in the early stages of the crisis there. The possibility of the withdrawal of the operation in Bosnia, the deep political divide between troop-contributing countries and those advocating greater use of force, and the images of helpless peacekeepers being held hostage and, in Srebrenica, standing by while the Bosnian Serbs engineered the evacuation and disappearance of its male citizens, have had a serious impact on UN credibility. United Nations has always been ahead from the rest of the organisations in the prevention of global conflicts, whatever be the circumstances. Over the long term, the surest way UN has adopted to prevent conflict is to eliminate its root causes. That is the reason as to why the UN confronted to several setbacks in Congo. References & Bibliography Boulden Jane, (2001) Peace Enforcement: The United Nations Experience in Congo, Somalia, and Bosnia: Praeger. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. IRC2006, accessed from Ntalaja, Nzongola Georges, (2004) From Zaire to the Democratic Republic of Congo: Nordic African Institute Weiss F, Herbert & Carayannis Tatiana, (2004). 'Reconstructing The Congo' In Journal of International Affairs, Vol 58. Read More