The Development of Sustainable Peace and Peacekeeping Operations - Essay Example

Introduction Although conflict may be unavoidable, the intensity of hostilities reached in conflict-ridden countries, such as Kosovo, Bosnia, and Somalia, were not. While main answerability for the violence perpetrated falls on those countries’ domestic actors, the international community was highly sensitive to these countries’ predisposition to conflict and took little collaborative attempt to prevent it (Murphy 2007). Only after major peace-building calamities were in full swing did international actors initiate rigid action to ease the hardship and attempt to put a stop to bloodshed. Yet, once international actors did make a decision to take steps, they realized that ending the violence was merely a component of what was required to build a sustainable peace. International actors afterward embark on an operation that has been diversely referred to as ‘state building,’ ‘nation building,’ or ‘peacekeeping’ (Hawk 2002: 110) in an effort to put a stop to hostilities. Even though Western democracies, such as the United States, have helped other nations as they have attempted to shift from communist or authoritarian regimes to a democracy, the extent of peacekeeping efforts in some hostile countries, particularly in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Somalia were of much greater scale (Browne, Serafino & Grimmett 2003). There is considerable doubt in the move from a totalitarian system to ‘something else’ and that this move is never a balanced or linear process, as demonstrated by the experiences of several Latin American governments in the 1980s and 1990s and some southern European nations in the 1970s (Langholtz, Kondoch & Wells 2005). Kosovo, Bosnia, and Somalia have strengthened these lessons and, if the ethno-political domain apparent in each of these conflicts is added, it is readily evident that there is no easy way out, or no simple solution to mitigate these deeply rooted and thorny clashes. It is in this perspective that this essay will seek to explore what steps external actors took in their attempts to cultivate peace to these countries and to assess how successfully they have established the groundwork for (re) building an effective, legitimate, and sustainable state in each. Ultimately, by using examples from these prominent peacekeeping experiences, this essay would attempt to formulate possible ways to improve provision of peacekeeping. Generally, it is safe to assume that external action in each of these countries has put it in an improved situation than it was previously and, hence, should be perceived as attaining a certain extent of success. The building of a more permanent foundation, though, has been intangible. Improving Provision of Peacekeeping Domestic actors usually are incapable of putting an end to hostilities and bringing about a resolution of the conflict, particularly when the forces provoking the conflict have an outside supporter (Lederer & Jenner 2002). The domestic organizations that sought to create a conflict resolution were incapable of counteracting the powerful or influential forces with weapons that held a stake in provoking the conflict. The head of these forces normally aimed to secure financial or political privileges that would be inaccessible to them in a democratic and peaceful nation (Rubinstein 2008). While this is not essentially a contemporary occurrence, the forced starvation and magnitude of violence committed against civilians, usually due to their ethnicity, is (Debrix 1999). International actors have understood that, without their intervention, immense suffering would never cease. In Somalia, the customary arbitrating institution of the tribal elders was made mostly useless by armed organizations who were gaining enormous profits and better political position in the framework of bloodshed (Razack 2004). There was little or no motivation for those with new power and affluence to surrender their privileges and go back to their previous dejected lives. In Kosovo, indigenous Albanians basically were incapable of opposing the well-resourced Serb armed militias dispatched from Belgrade (Buckley 2000). In Bosnia, patriotic Serb leaders realized that their political influence would be substantially restricted in a new Bosnian regime where in they would be marginalized. Thus, they aim to protect as much land as they could by governing it aggressive or militarily and, in its course, purifying it of all non-Serbs (Browne et al. 2003). In this attempt, they had an available source of weapons accessible from their tribal brethren in bordering Serbia (Hawk 2002). First Lesson Early response or action may protect or save lives, need less international assistance or support, and build a more encouraging climate for peace. Several recent investigations have publicized the advantages of pre-emptive steps (Snow 2000). Although it is easy to argue that avoiding the transition into mass destructions and lawlessness is apparently favorable, it is difficult to acquire the international backing and muster the resources to do so, particularly when other more important issues are obscuring the horizon (Snow 2000). Nevertheless, once obsessions are provoked and hostilities perpetrated, it is much more complicated to generate compromise and build peace. Sahnoun (1994), Special Representative of the UN Secretary General (SRSG), maintained, “if the international community had intervened earlier and more effectively in Somalia, much of the catastrophe that has unfolded could have been avoided” (p. 39). It can be asserted that deterrence should have been initiated prior to the eruption of the civil war in 1988, and that military assistance from the United States, Britain, and Italy, certainly retained Siad Barre in authority (Murphy 2007). While this may have been validated with regard to cold war objectives (Fleitz 2002), this outside assistance perhaps contributed to the inception and ruthlessness of the civil war. The clashes in Kosovo and Bosnia were each a consequence of the collapse of Yugoslavia and each showed several indications of approaching major conflict (Hawk 2002). In the aftermath of the secession of Croatia from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it was evident that Bosnia would eventually jump on the bandwagon and that Serb military would oppose it (Langholtz et al. 2005). On the other hand, earlier response in the Balkans would have compelled external actors or the international community to build an agreement on the complicated issues of secession rights and aggressive peacekeeping when the West was basically aiming to avert the collapse of the Soviet Union and prevent further armed response in the advent of the Persian Gulf War and the U.S. Army Rangers casualties in Somalia (Sriram & Wermester 2003). Second Lesson A wholly humanitarian mission is essentially impossible in the middle of internal strife. Outside actors prevented the creation of a political program for advance actions Somalia, attempting merely to give humanitarian aid to starving civilians (Razack 2004). It was not until the establishment of United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM II) that a directive was carried out to contend with the disintegrated state (Murphy 2007). On second thoughts, it was immature and impractical to believe that the international community’s role as an arbitrator and humanitarian agency would be able to resolve Somalia’s tremendous predicaments or that the humanitarian, military, and political attributes of intervention could be isolated. Starvation in Somalia was exploited as a means to dispossess people and as a vehicle of influence to acquire resources or backing from the international community (Berman & Sams 2000). Thus, providing disposed people and refugee with food had humanitarian as well as political repercussions. In several aspects, the absence of a concerted humanitarian, military, and political mission reinforced the power and influence of the warlords who were not in favor of a return to stability and who aimed to weaken the unarmed and neutral components in society (Berman & Sams 2000). Outside actors tried to act in response to the early stages of the Bosnian emergency mainly by dispatching UN peacekeepers responsible for the provision of humanitarian assistance (Hawk 2002). Conversely, the major crisis in Bosnia was not a humanitarian one that may be lessened by the provision of medicine and food, but was an endeavor of a minority group to control a territory mostly inhabited by people from a different minority group (Thakur & Schnabel 2001).Because the objective of the Serbs was to purify the territory of non-Serb inhabitants, they tried to spoil attempts to provide food to those they intended to eliminate (Thakur & Schnabel 2001). In Kosovo, it would have been impractical to suppose that the international community will take care of the needs of multitudes of indigenous Albanians dispossessed by the actions of Milošević (Sriram & Wermester 2003) without trying to address the root of their dispossession. Third Lesson In order for a peacekeeping operation to be triumphant, external actors should be in common consensus on the objectives, and mostly on the instruments and methods used to realize those objectives. They also should agree to take steps collaboratively and be devoted for the long term. Domestic actors usually are capable of preventing and circulating any force to alter behavior, unless outside actors formulate a joint strategy (Keating & Knight 2004). While creating a cooperative tactic is challenging to do, particularly in the early stages of a conflict, disorganized, restricted actions may be detrimental, provoking domestic actors to revolt. By revealing that the detriment of action would be immense and likely would fail, the domestic actors may try to weaken domestic backing for the action in the home countries of external actors (Keating & Knight 2004). In Somalia, there was common consensus on mitigating the humanitarian predicament and staving off the starvation of multitudes of people (Razack 2004). Nonetheless, once that goal was mostly fulfilled, there was far less agreement on the UN operation. Though UNOSOM II was furnished a major directive, it was not provided with resources and assistance to perform it, provoking local struggle by those who viewed the objectives of the operation as endangering their power (Murphy 2007). Moreover, there was little agreement that the search for Aideed, a Somali warlord, was the best means to contend with the problems of Somalia, as swiftly became evident when several European powers and the United States proclaimed the pulling out of their troops after the casualties sustained by the U.S. Army Rangers (Murphy 2007). In Bosnia, Serb militias were capable of acting with virtual freedom and to ignore UN interventions from 1993 to 1995, until the Europeans and the United States were able to build a consensus on a strategy (Coate, Weiss & Forsythe 2000). Yet, when a suitable agenda for peace was agreed upon, NATO was capable of taking definite steps that, in agreement with the eviction of Serbs from the Krajina Region by the armed forces of Croatia and the eagerness of Milošević to withdraw from support for the Serbs of Bosnia, was capable of persuading players to negotiate (Hawk 2002). In Kosovo, a number of rifts within international organizations were active. Primarily, while Western Europe and the United States condemned the actions of Milošević against the Kosovar Albanians, they differed on the basics for successful actions (Buckley 2000).The United States encouraged air attacks and declined to think about sending U.S. troops on the battlefield (Fleitz 2002). Conversely, the Europeans dreaded a repeat of the unsuccessful air attacks in Bosnia in 1995, and disputed that air attacks should be supported by the danger of ground attacks if they were to be successful (Fleitz 2002). In addition, Russia, regaining its capability of acting globally, declared that it did not support international military operation against the Serbs. Milošević relied on this backing to weaken actions against him (Thakur & Schnabel 2001). Furthermore, while lamenting Milošević’s actions, several countries dreaded that the idea of sovereign power of a nation would be corroded by the standard of the international community acting in response against a regime in support of a minority (Langholtz et al. 2005). With ethnic groups aspiring to break away from China, Russia, India, and several other countries, numerous feared the standard would activate a series of separatist hostility that would weaken numerous countries (Langholtz et al. 2005). And ultimately, several developing countries view operation in Kosovo as laying down a double standard. They argued it was deceitful for the international community to intervene against a European authoritarian who was violently dispossessing multitudes of people but exterminating fairly few, by establishing international standards, but not take action to cleanse several African countries of merciless despots who were dispossessing and killing larger masses of people (Murphy 2007). Taking into consideration these rifts, there was little possibility that any action may be carried out by the United Nations. Eventually, Europe and the United States attempted to compel diplomatic operation through threat of air attacks, approving in effect to postpone a verdict on ground forces (Browne et al. 2003). After the Serbs declined the Rambouillet treaty, NATO embarked on what it hoped to be a practically brief air attack. Russia responded by breaking away from NATO, and NATO moved quickly to impose more pressure on Milošević to compromise (Hawk 2002). Yet, as weeks progressed and the destructive attacks began to devastate the infrastructure of Yugoslavia distressing Serbian citizens, Russia, Europe, and the United States were finally able to reach a consensus on a set of tenets upon which a treaty could be founded, successfully pressuring Milošević to compromise (Hawk 2002). Fourth Lesson NATO and U.S.-governed forces have been successful at putting an end to hostilities and enforcing peace. However, peacekeeping necessitates initiating reforms that the military is not capable of effecting (Keating & Knight 2004). NATO forces in Kosovo and Bosnia, and the U.S.-governed Unified Task Force (UNITAF) operation in Somalia have been successful at subduing hostilities and imposing an interlude of peace (Lederer & Jenner 2002). Still, though this is indispensable condition for establishing the groundwork of a legitimate, capable, and sustainable state, it has showed that it is never an adequate one. Armed forces can be successful at realizing military objectives (Rubistein 2008). Yet, they have a partial influence in forming political objectives, and practically have no ability to produce ethnic compromise, economic progress (Keating & Knight 2004), and many of the other fundamental missions in (re)building a nation. Even though the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) proclaimed that it was not concerned in the reconstruction of Somalia, NATO forces in Kosovo and Bosnia were components of larger operations that aimed to build sustainable peace to the countries (Hawk 2002). Nevertheless, while several have criticized the Stabilization Force (SFOR) and the Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia for not acting aggressively to apprehend war criminals and impose minority rights and freedom of movement (Fleitz 2002), the armed forces have sustained peace for several years, emphasizing the argument that stopping the hostilities alone has not produced the needed reforms in society to guarantee that such a peace would continue without them (Murphy 2007). Fifth Lesson Unless a new assurance and dedication is found to build up the needed strategies, UN forces must not be dispatched to a territory where conflict is prone. If military intervention is necessary, it must be assigned to a competent national organization or force such as NATO (Bellamy, Williams & Griffin 2010). In the premature phases of international assistance in Bosnia and Somalia, UN peacekeepers were assigned (Sriram & Wermester 2003). In these disorganized settings, the sparsely armed peacekeepers discovered themselves outgunned, outnumbered, not capable of performing their tasks, and, on many instances, taken as captives (Findlay 1996). In Somalia, the incompetence of the UN operation yielded to the U.S.-governed UNITAF forces that quickly crushed local dissenters, enabling relief goods to reach their intended beneficiaries (Razack 2004). Once they had completed their restrictedly assigned task, UNITAF forces pulled out, transferring safekeeping back to the UN, which awarded authority to UNOSOM II (Razack 2004). Still, it was immediately obvious to the forces of Aideed that the wider authority did not conquer the limitations of the UN peacekeepers, and the society gradually slid back into anarchy (Hawk 2002). UN peacekeepers in Bosnia were originally dispatched to open the Sarajevo airport and guarantee the safe provision of assistance all over the city. The directive afterward was modified to a Chapter VII operation and assigned with guaranteeing provision of assistance all over the country (Sriram & Wermester 2003). Yet, neither operation was able to prevent Serbs inclined on conquering and ethnically purifying Bosnian region (Sriram & Wermester 2003). Following many incidents of peacekeepers being captured, the external actors withdrew them into territories under complete UN control, leaving assigned ‘protected areas’ to the Serb, and embarked on unrelenting NATO air attacks to castigate Serb forces (Murphy 2007). With the UN peacekeepers’ credibility weakened, the Croats and Bosniacs demanded upon a NATO force to implement the prerequisites of the Dayton Accords (Browne et al. 2003). Armed forces did not critically examine the well-armed and well-organized forces of NATO. In Kosovo, NATO blazed the trail from the start, with the Western countries realizing that intervention under UN control would certainly be prevented by Security Council proscriptions from China and Russia (Langholtz et al. 2005). Even though defenseless Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers had been dispatched into the region following the 1998 accord, they were pulled out prior to the air strikes in order to make sure that the hostage incidents of Bosnia were not recapitulated (Thakur & Schnabel 2001). In the conciliations to halt the terror campaign, NATO claimed that it control and direct the security force that would deal with the cessation of hostilities, even though it did not permit the involvement of a Russian defense force (Hawk 2002). Sixth Lesson Exit strategies for defense forces should be asserted on the fulfillment of specific goals, not externally directed dates. Even though valuable for budgetary aspects and acquiring local political support in the countries of the external players, exit strategies founded on a subjective period of time rather than on the fulfillment of specific goals have a detrimental impact on the operation’s capability of making and/or reinforcing benefits (Lederer & Jenner 2002). If local players are aware that a military intervention will only be primed for a short period of time, they will oppose enforcing detested procedures, such as demobilizing and neutralizing, and waiting until the time expires (Coate et al. 2000). Similarly, the U.S. forces in Bosnia has been charged of being planned “to leave as soon as possible, with as few casualties as possible, rather than to do whatever was necessary, for as long as necessary, to keep (or make) the peace” (Hastedt 1997: 22). Seventh Lesson The United Nations should embark on needed reforms if it is to serve important function in future peacekeeping missions. While numerous of the predicaments in UN missions, such as complementing a directive with the way to perform it, can be attributed to the absence of strong, definite, and continuous support from the member states, several difficulties can also be attributed to the bureaucratic system, organizational management, and United Nations’ institutional culture itself (Fleitz 2002). In each of the mission, the United Nations has encountered critical insufficiencies in dispatching, recruiting, and organizing missions in the field (Langholtz et al. 2005). A large number of these deficiencies have been identified and revealed by the Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations given to the president of the UN Security Council and the UN secretary-general in August 2000 (Hawk 2002): The United Nations took on thirteen new peacekeeping missions between 1989 and 1992, the same number as had been undertaken between 1945 and 1988. In 1989, there were eight thousand peacekeepers; in 1994, there were eighty thousand. The Somali operation with its broad mandate was the victim of an overstretched, understaffed, underfunded, inexperienced, and poorly organized UN peacekeeping staff (p. 114). The UN, in Bosnia, does not serve the dominant function it had in Somalia, or keeps on serving in Kosovo, but the duties that it does supervise, such as the International Police Task Force (IPTF), have endured from scarcity of equipment and resources (Hawk 2002). The UN Interim Administration Mission (UNMIK), in Kosovo, (Buckley 2000) has been repeatedly slowed down by a sluggish response to necessities in the field. Conclusions While majority of the peacekeeping operations performed over the recent decade have attained a certain extent of success, majority endure from substantial difficulties as well. The most evident weakness is the incapability of asserting that any operation has created a permanent transformation in the country so that the major hostilities that encouraged international aid in the first place will not happen again when the outside actors depart. Unless this circumstance can be altered, prosperous and powerful countries may perhaps discontinue conducting or sponsoring such operations, except in particular situations. They already have halted providing forces to prop up UN peacekeeping operations, whose staffs are currently recruited from less-developed countries whose regimes normally exploit such missions as a means to equip, train, and sponsor their combatants. It is practically safe to assume that if the prosperous nations, such as the United States, withdraw from sponsoring peacekeeping operations the internal strife in numerous territories will not be mitigated in a way tolerable to Western criteria of human rights or in a manner that will establish a foundation favorable to the growth of democracy, if they are mitigated in any way. The core question that this essay had attempted to answer is: How can peacekeeping missions more successfully produce long-term change in countries overwhelmed by internal conflicts that can facilitate the development of sustainable peace? The absence of interest on (re)constructing the state as a pillar upon which to relate, strengthen, and support other components has been a major failure. Peacekeeping operations should concentrate on (re)constructing a society along three domains: first, it should be capable of wielding authority or influence over its territory and giving protection to its population; second, it should be efficient at mitigating conflicts through its organizations and advancing the general wellbeing of its people; and lastly, it should bestow a political identity founded on acknowledged legitimacy. While reviewing a number of case studies, such as those conducted in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Somalia, cannot present completely adequate assumptions or lessons, they can be consulted to recognize developments or trends that have taken place. Thereby, the wide-ranging duties that have to be acknowledged and addressed have been specified. Developing particular solutions to those undertakings, alongside their realization, is the actual challenge. If the groundwork for the state is established, a great deal of the work that has been accomplished by practitioners and scholars in numerous specific domains, such as the growth of civil society, institutional agreements for conflict-ridden societies, international arbitration of agreements, can be related to each other to develop a better strengthening system that will be capable of surviving the unavoidable threats to peace that will occur. References Bellamy, A.J., Williams, P. & Griffin, S. (2010) Understanding Peacekeeping, UK: Polity. Berman, E.G. & Sams, K.E. (2000) Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and Culpabilities, Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research/Institute for Security Studies. Browne, M.A, Serafino, N.M. & Grimmett, R.F. (2003) United Nations Peacekeeping, Huntington, NY: Novinka Books. Buckley, W. (Ed.) (2000) Kosovo: Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions, Cambridge, UK: Wm.B.Eerdmans Publishing Company. 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(eds) (2001) United Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Ad Hoc Missions, Permanent Engagement, New York: United Nations University Press. Read More