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Description
The emergence of post-September 11 military operations in the context of the global fight against terrorism in general and the Iraq war in particular has overshadowed humanitarian interventions conducted by multilateral institutions. However, the threat posed by genocidal governments deserves the continuing attention of global governance because their draconian policies and mobilization capacities constitute the actual weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations. The tardy response of the international community to atrocities in Darfur has been widely regarded as a backlash of the emerging norm in international society which attributes a responsibility to protect civilians targeted by genocidaires. This article, however, will argue that the United Nations, the African Union, the European Union, and NATO have in fact devised and implemented two innovative peacekeeping strategies in Darfur that have set more optimistic precedents for humanitarian intervention, namely, a new division of labor between regional and international organizations and a pragmatic turn in peacekeeping. By dint of these new strategies, intervening organizations have an opportunity to counterbalance the deep-seated problems that routinely affect peacekeeping operations, namely, the body-bag syndrome and the rigidity of bureaucratic norms that regulate PKOs. KEYWORDS: conflict management, Darfur, humanitarian intervention, peacekeeping, United Nations.
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This article will invoke the lessons learned from the Rwandan tragedy as a reflective point against which to consider the implications of Darfur for peacekeeping operations (PKOs). Darfur and Rwanda will be regarded as two significant cases indicative of a wider tendency, or direction, in peacekeeping in the course of the past ten years and beyond. By investigating what has remained the same in peacekeeping since Rwanda, what advances have been made, and what could still be improved, it is possible not only to assess the most recent progress made with regard to PKOs but also to anticipate the future. This examination will argue that, although political will on the part of member states remains the most crucial factor in explaining the success and failure of PKOs, structural transformations in peacekeeping strategies can considerably alter that will and enable a more rapid and desirable response to humanitarian crises of the future.
Just as the machete-wielding, drunk, and drugged Interahamwe militia quickly became the symbol of the Rwandan genocide, so too the eyes and imaginations of those watching CNN news coverage in the West fixed on the Janjaweed fighters, exotic killers riding on horseback and camelback wielding AK-47s and G3 rifles. In cooperation with Sudanese government forces, the Janjaweed unleashed a campaign of terror, burning the villages of non-Arab communities; raping and abducting their inhabitants; looting their property; forcing them to abandon their homes; and destroying their livestock, water points, mills, and other village assets. (1) Such a scorched earth campaign, taking aim not only at the lives of innocent civilians but also at their basic living conditions, intimates the "ultimate crime," namely, genocide. Such a suspicion was confirmed by the close connection between the Janjaweed and the Sudanese government; the latter supplied uniforms, arms, and financial assets to the Janjaweed. The government not only recruited the Janjaweed to fight non-Arab movements, but also launched indiscriminate aerial bombardments against civilian targets in northern Darfur. (2)
In Darfur, both non-Arabs and Arabs are black, indigenous, African, and Muslim. (3) Nevertheless, while Arabs traditionally have been nomads, non-Arabs have made their living from farming, which partly explains the division of conflict in Darfur along ethnic lines. Following the drought and famine in Darfur from 1984 to 1985, local conflicts erupted between these groups over the scarce natural resources. (4) Such a low-intensity conflict, however, soon broke into a larger war, as two non-Arab rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), began to accuse the government of backing the Janjaweed and neglecting the socioeconomic conditions in the region. In February 2003, SLA/M and JEM launched an armed rebellion against the government. Like the so-called Inyenzi attacks on Rwanda by Tutsi refugees from Uganda, the rebellion by SLA/M and JEM triggered disproportionately harsh counterinsurgency strikes by the government on civilians of non-Arab communities.
The analogy between Rwanda and Darfur seems apposite in terms of the nature of the conflicts as well as the international responses they commanded, or indeed the lack thereof. Despite former US Secretary of State Colin Powell's courageous invocation of the term genocide in relation to Darfur on 9 September 2004, neither the UN Security Council nor the Secretariat has applied that word in connection to Darfur. This silence recalls the unwillingness of the UN to recognize the Rwandan genocide in April 1994. All major powers demonstrated a lack of political will when it came to triggering the provisions of the genocide convention to legitimate a humanitarian intervention in Rwanda. The "shadow of Somalia" (i.e., the heavy casualties suffered by US and UN troops in UNOSOM II in autumn 1993) generated the paucity of political will to rescue Rwandans six months later. Today, the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan has drained the military and political capacities of those same states that had previously advocated the responsibility to protect vulnerable civilians, thereby producing a reluctance to engage in further military operations in Darfur or anywhere else. What makes Sudan a particularly unattractive target for intervention is the fact that Western governments have become wary of conducting military ventures in Islamic countries. They are aware that such actions may enhance anti-Western sentiment in the Islamic world and thus play into the hands of terrorists. (5)
For the aforementioned reasons, the response of the international community to atrocities in Darfur has been almost identical to that in Rwanda. While the intervention force of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR II) landed in Rwanda after the genocide had been completed, military intervention in Darfur was not even seriously considered until late July 2004, a full year after the outbreak of large-scale violence. And then, intervention was considered only by the African Union (AU), an organization facing a severe shortage of materiel equipment and logistical capacity with which to conduct any effective military operation. An extensive protection force, the African Union Mission in the Sudan (AMIS II; henceforth, AMIS), was authorized by the AU on 20 October 2004 and strengthened on 28 April 2005, but its capacity to halt atrocities remained weak. In the beginning of June 2005, its total strength stood at only 2,674 personnel (6) out of a total number of 7,731 authorized troops. (7) AMIS appeared a grossly inadequate response to the enormous humanitarian disaster. By July 2005, at least 50,000 civilians had been killed in Darfur. Malnutrition and disease had increased the number of casualties to 180,000. (8) Moreover, nearly 2 million internally displaced persons remained in Darfur while more than 200,000 refugees had fled to neighboring Chad. (9)
The half-hearted reaction of the international community to the plight of Darfurians has been widely perceived to be indicative of the sorry state of current intervention mechanisms. "Too late, too little" was the blunt statement of Human Rights Watch concerning international action in Sudan. (10) In a wider historical and political context, however, the lack of political will on the part of Western powers to deploy troops to Africa has not been absolute, which is aptly illustrated by the examples of Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In May 2000, Operation Palliser was launched by the UK government under orders to evacuate foreign nationals from Sierra Leone. Following the completion of its mission, the mandate of British forces was extended to assist in the peacekeeping operation of the UN Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), which had descended into crisis. Hundreds of UN peacekeepers had been captured by the Sierra Leonean rebel organization, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), known as the "West Side Boys." The Royal Marines raided RUF camps and released their hostages. As a result of British efforts, the West Side Boys eventually disintegrated. (11) Secondly, UN conflict management in the Ituri region of the DRC is an instructive example of the way in which the gradual achievements in civilian protection have enabled the UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) to use robust force against criminal elements, resulting in a decrease of militia activity and the withdrawal of armed gangs from MONUC's zone of influence.
Nevertheless, such piecemeal progress has unfortunately been overshadowed by the UN's overall failure to prevent tragedy in the DRC and in other African trouble spots, most crucially in Darfur. John Borton and John Eriksson's Lessons from Rwanda--Lessons for Today, published in December 2004, provides a pessimistic picture of the changes that have taken place. Most crucially, the report concludes that the Security Council did not discuss the genocidal killing in Darfur until March 2004, thirteen months after the outbreak of the conflict, and neither the Council nor the secretary-general have recognized it as a "genocide." (12) These observations call to mind the lack of political resolve on the part of member states and the Secretariat to recognize genocide in Rwanda.
Lieutenant-General Romeo A. Dallaire, commander of UN troops in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, formulated his verdict as follows: "Looking at Darfur, seeing Rwanda." Although Dallaire's notion captures a sentiment common among those observing the situation in Darfur, one paragraph in his New York Times article alludes to an interesting new dimension to the case thus far neglected in the debate on Darfur and on peacekeeping in general: "Still, I believe that a mixture of mobile African Union troops supported by NATO soldiers equipped with helicopters, remotely piloted vehicles, night-vision devices and long-range special forces could protect Darfur's displaced people in their camps and remaining villages, and eliminate or incarcerate the Janjaweed." (13) Dallaire's statement is groundbreaking in its stark opposition to mainstream and more elaborate stances, both of which are deeply skeptical of the AU's capacity to protect civilians in Darfur. The latter include, for example, the Bridging Force Option provided by the International Crisis Group (ICG), which maintains that the AU's AMIS troops should come under NATO's command and control until it has built up its strength in Darfur. (14) Most crucially, Dallaire shifts the focus of discussion on Darfur from an unrealistic vision of a greater mission by Western forces to a more pragmatic conception of military intervention, one which stands a better chance of being implemented and is less dismissive of African initiatives than the ICG's option. In short, Dallaire's comment anticipates a new model of peacekeeping based on humanitarian realism.
On Arthur J. Klinghoffer's definition, humanitarian realism denotes "a blending of the 'globalist' and 'realist' perspectives." (15) Jonathan Moore conceptualizes it as "the accommodation of both realism and idealism." (16) Essentially, humanitarian realism intimates that moral imperatives are not absolute, but always embedded in the "surrounding" material, temporal, and social... |
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