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Pouligny - Peace Operations Seen From Below

Tags: un, ddr, books

Describes the case studies of el salvador, mozambique, cambodia, bosnia, and somalia in the context of un peacekeeping operations

  • Battleground for how the conflict is presented on an international level
  • Somalia was the first time the UN was authorized to use force in a peacekeeping mission
  • Budgetary issues tends to lead missions towards short term management
  • Deployments outside of Europe tend to have firm end dates
  • Electoral politics is used as a landmark for UN security council
  • Sometimes the UN has engaged in direct authority, such as Cambodia, East Timor, and Kosovo
  • 794 Resolution: Military force under humanitarian purposes
  • SC members are often more okay with intervening in places where the state no longer exists than trample on soverighty for fear of precedence
  • Superimposing of east/west and urban/rural on local conflcits

International Communities

  • How the international community defines a crisis is important0
    • Permanent SC members play a role in this
  • SC matintains discretion over what is and is not an emergency
  • lack of consensus leads to common denominator type mandates
  • Deployments are most often partial and reinforced by patrolling teams, which limits their scope
  • Different staff members (civpols, civs, military) are treated differently
    • civs least likely to have contact with local memebers
    • military is most visible, but often limited
    • police are often not numerous enough
  • Urban/rural divide exasterbated by the UN staff, UN staff take over a capital but are raely seen in towns

Various Faces of Local Populations

  • Blue helments often consider two parties: a “military” and a “political” one
    • This division is often nonexistent
  • Peace agreements do not create peace, but give a map for who the UN will negotiate with
  • Absense such agreements, parties vie to become recongized as the negotiating parter of the UN, such as in Somalia
  • Local actors are not monoliths, they also evolve when the UN injects itself
  • Political actors who do not play the military game or hardball the UN often get marginalized
  • Bosnia’s “civil” parties were shut out by 3 extreme viewpoints
  • Returnees from exile also pose unique sets of questions
  • Peace process sharpens the differences between the leaders and their constituants

Indigenous Civil Societies

  • UN usually takes a very passive view of civilians
    • “refugee” idea, or “oppresive state”
  • UN actors look for structure of “civil society” that mirror the ones in the west
    • ngo, trade unions, etc
  • UN predominately interacts with Human rights orgs
    • Typically benefits diaspora
  • Both UN staff and local NGOs feel the other is difficult to work with
    • UN has massive NIH syndrome as a result
    • IGNO’s are perceived to be favored by the UN
    • UN often assumes distinct “political” and “civil” realms
      • El Savador had Human rights NGO’s, but as a result of the civil conditions, these NGO’s inherently favored some politicans
  • False impression of “intellectuals” as unbiased mediators
  • Community interaction in rural vs urban areas
  • Strict top/down interpreations are wrong, communities constantly renegotiate their position
  • Religious actors play a special role
    • UN often drawn into local political disputes
    • Religious actors are mobilizing capacity in wars
  • Local employees as brokers
    • Missions w/ admin that have pressure exterted on them as UN employees
    • Foreign language knowledge biases the background
    • Information trading from local employees for future posts

Peacekeepers & local socities

  • “Peace is not self evident”
    • Ambiguity between UN and local cultures provides space for political entrepenurs
  • “Blood & BOne: Kinship in Somali society”
  • Local actors perceive social change for power, UN sees it as waging for reference ideas
  • “Rule of law” is particularly thorny
    • Locals often see the gov as “not for them”, and the UN missions in the same way
  • “Law” as a concept is not widely respected
    • Do locals describe the state as they describe the UN mission?

Sizing Up the Aims of a UN Mission

  • Political actors greatly affected if the mission was deployed as part of a peace agreement
  • UN officials assume a static “peace” and worry about exaggerated hopes, but reality is locals see the UN as part of a new power struggle
  • UN in bosnia
    • European community percieved as hostile by Serbs
    • UN seen by Serbs to preserve the status quo
      • Bosnians interpreted the UN boundaries and limits on mandate as the limits of will of the West
        • pg 106
      • Persistent doubts about military intervention by the Serbs
    • Humanitarian mission of Blue Helmets actually forestalled direct military intervetion
    • Ambiguity opens for entreprenurs
    • ON overshadows INGOs rather than supporting them
  • UN often seen as spectators rather than actors by locals
    • Locals expect the UN to do nothing
    • UN seen as destabilizing the social order without benefits
  • Often inflated expectaions due to pre-arrival announcements
  • “Quick impact” projects - smaller, cheaper, more immediate projects often taken as a sign that the UN could do more
  • UN missions reinterpret on the ground, members constantly improvise
  • SC mandates are often messy and contradictory
    • Pressure to avoid loss of human life/resources
  • International institutions interwine and overlap, causing confusion for the locals
  • UN missions are not monolithic either, individual components clash with each other
  • UN HQ vs mission HQ
  • “Localism” via zones of responsibility
  • Missions often have impressive archives, but the decision making process is often removed from the diagnosis
  • Causes of UN mission incompetence
    • Bad to no training
    • KNowledge of actors are often not impartial
    • Information flows up but never down
    • MIssions often retreat within, hindering their progress
  • Missions target international opinion by natives
    • Mission reports are first made to the Secretariat and the SC
  • Narratives refract and reflect via foreign journos, local journos and (I)NGO’s

Soverignty and Intervention

  • Why are peacekeepers not greeted as liberators?
    • Similar: why are peacekeepers not thought of as occupying forces?
  • Locals may refer to the UN forces in colonial language
  • “Aid culture” - some countries have been flooded with aid, and percieve the UN as a continuiation of that aid
  • Political groups within countries typically engage with the UN on a local level and have conflicts with the UN, very rarely band together against the UN on a larger level
  • Rejection of the UN is rare because the UN is perceived as doing so little
  • Soldiers and violations of the local customs, especially prostitution often harms reputation
  • UN ignores rumors about its missions at its own peril
    • “We do not take them seriously because they do not take us seriously” syndrome
  • When countries emerge from conflict, main interests of the political entrepenurs differ wildly than most people
    • Which is why most demonstrations against the UN are very local
  • The UN imposes on the political arena, and cannot remove itself from that

Strategies of Local Actors

  • Speaking with the UN conferrs legitmacy
    • More visible the UN is, the more it is sought after
  • In Bosnia, media warw as waged
  • Some NGO’s derive their funding and existance completely from the UN
    • El Salvador and Haiti had local NGO’s, this relationship is more unclear there
  • UN is perceived to facilitate international aid
    • When the UN is a transitional authority, the peace mission takes on an economic action
    • UN can act as a spoiler for those with previously agreed transition plans
    • Actors in Mozambique and Somalia sold their participation in the UN process, with political actors, warlords, imams, etc
  • UN staff can be percieved to be controlling aid access
    • Maifoso networks in bosnia
  • Business shifts to accomodate UN workers
    • Especially in capital
  • Overlaying the intl political map on the local
  • Looting of UN property upon withdraw
  • Local actors will “try their luck” and “keep trying”
  • Local actors will also try to force the UN into taking a side
    • Bosnian muslims routinely made things worse in hopes of attracting a military intervention
    • Local villages in Cambodia owuld cause issues to get the UN to go in
  • Implication of the UN very often land disputes
  • UN as an alibi and scapegoat
    • Easy to scapegoat UN actors
    • Local actors complain about funds, drawing together the very real issues of peace and money
  • “elections at any cost”
    • Elections seen as key milestone for success
    • Local actors recongize this, and will repeatedly threaten to bow out of elections
  • Some local political actors apply force because they may not survive the peace process
  • Delays in peace process implementation are common, difficult for the UN to admit failure
  • Looming international deadlines

Forgotten Promises

  • UN always comes in with a set of preconcieved notions
  • Most frameworks use elections as a barometer for success
    • UN uses elections for places where it is an occupying force
  • Goals & aims of a “procedural democracy” are formed
    • Premature elections after a war actually risks stoking old fears, elections are not a quick fix
  • Eletion rigging, emphasis on security criteria dog UN elections
  • “Legitimacy”, “Democracy”, and UN’s desired results often clash
  • International election monitoring is often conducted in a very technically oriented way
  • Elections @ any price opens ot election fraud, leading to perverse goal setting for future elections
  • Economic reconstruction only approaches it from the symptomes, does not attempt to solve the core issues
    • Peace processes often accompianed by worsening of living conditions, which sharpens conflict
  • UN missions have largely shifted from maintence of ceasefires to “policing action”
    • Policing action means intervening within the social fabric
    • Policing as a coercive tool
    • UN is often not responsible for the intial training
    • New police blunders are often overlooked as “youthful” mistakes
    • UN missions lack local trust, local knowledge, and cannot effectively intervene on the social contract
    • Usage of force opens the possbility of a peace mission turning into an occupation
  • Judicial systems
    • Weak judicial systems contribute to the issues, UN does not attempt large-scale reforms of judicial systems
    • Reconcilation of status (“who are we as a people”/“who is the state”) is often neglected in the peace process
    • Demand for justice is sacrifed for the demand for peace
      • Lacuna of history is imparted onto new generations
    • Technical expertise of the UN reduces the peace process to be without political substance

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