PART ONE
Introduction

The Brahimi Report

Expert Analysis of the Brahimi Report

Shortcomings of the Brahimi Report

Changing Nature of UN Peacekeeping

Current State of Affairs
in Sub-Saharan Africa

PART TWO
Current Peacekeeping Operations in Africa

U.S. Policy toward Africa

Conclusion

USIP Library Resources

Participants

About the Report

SPECIAL REPORT 66

Peacekeeping in Africa

PART ONE

Briefly...

• The Brahimi Report represents the first systematic and comprehensive effort to identify and address the technical problems with UN peacekeeping missions and within the United Nations' Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The conference participants largely agreed that the report is, as one participant said, "the most important document on peacekeeping ever written."
  
  
• The Brahimi Report does not, however, address the most serious problem facing contemporary peacekeeping missions: lack of international political will.
  
  
• Yet the 1990s witnessed both the changing nature of international conflict and the growing need for peacekeeping operations. Between 1948 and 1988 the UN undertook just 15 peacekeeping operations around the world; between 1989 and 1999, that number jumped to 31.
  
  
• In 1999 the African continent was gripped by 16 armed conflicts, 7 of which were wars with more than 1,000 battle-related deaths.
  
  
• Currently, the United Nations has four peacekeeping missions in Africa: MINURSO in the Western Sahara, UNAMSIL in Sierra Leone, UNMEE in Eritrea and Ethiopia, and MONUC in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
  
  
• Today, a distinct possibility exists that more civil wars, like those that gripped Sierra Leone and Liberia during the '90s, will occur on the continent.
  
  
• Despite the growing discussion of African affairs in American foreign policy circles, the United States is largely disengaged from security issues on the continent.
  
  
• The United States (and the rest of the Western nations) is loath to contribute peacekeepers to African peacekeeping missions.
  
  
• Conference participants agreed on the continued importance of the democratization process in Africa.
  
  
• Conference participants also agreed that the agenda put forth by the Brahimi Report offers numerous points of entry for members of the international community to promote conflict prevention on the continent.

Introduction

Approximately 50 participants gathered at the United States Institute of Peace on October 24 to discuss the United Nations, the United States, and peacekeeping in Africa in light of the recent "Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations" (known as the Brahimi Report). The group included leading policymakers and academics in the fields of peacekeeping, African studies, and American foreign policy (see the "List of Participants").

Out of these discussions emerged a number of key points of consensus, important areas of disagreement, and several fundamental questions that merit further inquiry. This Special Report will synthesize the proceedings from the discussion and briefly present suggestions for mitigating conflict in Africa. This report will also situate the proceedings in a wider framework of policy issues, for example, UN peacekeeping operations, conflict in Africa, and U.S.-Africa relations, in order to shed light on the current efforts to reform policy and resolve conflict on the African continent.

The October forum was part of the Institute's continuing effort to inform and stimulate dialogue on resolving conflict in Africa. Indeed, the experts assembled for the conference highlighted not only the importance of the Brahimi Report but also the need for organizations like the Institute of Peace to continue to foster meaningful review of and policy development on peacekeeping activities in Africa.

While participant comments were not for attribution, many of their views are expressed in the following report. Nevertheless, no single idea or comment should be ascribed to any one individual or to the U.S. Institute of Peace.

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The Brahimi Report

In March 2000, the secretary general of the United Nations convened a high-level panel to conduct a thorough review of United Nations peace and security activities. The 10-person panel was chaired by the former minister of foreign affairs of Algeria, Lakhdar Brahimi, and comprised of an international cast of experts in the fields of peacekeeping, peacebuilding, development, and humanitarian assistance: Brian Atwood, Colin Granderson, Ann Hercus, Richard Monk, Klaus Naumann, Hisako Shimura, Vladimir Shustov, Philip Sibanda, and Cornelio Sommaruga. The panel undertook three months of extensive research that involved fieldwork in Kosovo and drew upon more than 200 interviews, including discussions with every department within the United Nations. The panel was given a straightforward yet comprehensive mandate: to present a clear set of concrete and practical recommendations to assist the United Nations to improve future peacekeeping activities.

In August, the panel published its report, a critical assessment of UN peacekeeping operations. The Brahimi Report thus represents the first comprehensive attempt to assess the evolution and effectiveness of UN peacekeeping missions over the years and to specify important ways to improve the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO).

At the core of the report is a call for change. Indeed, the report can be seen as a damning critique of the UN's "repeated failure" in its military interventions over the past decade. At one point, the report states bluntly, "No amount of good intentions can substitute for the fundamental ability to project credible force." Following earlier stinging assessments of UN failures in Rwanda and Srebrenica, the Brahimi Report is the most recent attempt by the UN to shine the light of self-criticism on itself in search of objective and constructive analysis.

The report's call for change is thus supported by a detailed blueprint for the creation of an enhanced peacekeeping structure. In brief, the Brahimi Report examines every aspect of UN peacekeeping activities, from its current capacities to far-reaching recommendations for technical change within the 189-member General Assembly. At the start of the report the panel makes its conclusions clear: "The key conditions for the success of future complex operations are political support, rapid deployment with robust posture and a sound peacebuilding strategy" (p. 1). Every recommendation that follows is designed to ensure that these three conditions are met in the future.

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Expert Analysis of the Brahimi Report

Conference participants praised the Brahimi Report for its utility, honesty, and farsightedness. The group largely agreed that the report is, as one participant said, "The most important document on peacekeeping ever written." Indeed, while many of the technical weaknesses of past peacekeeping missions are well known, Brahimi represents the first systematic and comprehensive effort to identify and address problems in the DPKO. The general feeling of the group was perhaps best summed up by the following comment, "An enemy of peacekeeping has always been ambiguity; this document brings clarity."

Clearly these feelings are shared by the UN general secretary, Kofi Annan, who quickly responded to the report's recommendations with his October 20 "Report of the Secretary General on the Implementation of the Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations." In it, the secretary general characterizes the panel's findings as "frank yet fair, . . . far-reaching yet sensible and practical," and urges member states to approve and support the report's recommendations. Annan goes on to elucidate a plan of action in order to coordinate actions within the UN system and carry out the report's recommendations quickly.

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Shortcomings of Brahimi

Although the Brahimi Report has been widely praised for its technical merits, conference participants were quick to point out its failure to address the central problem of all peacekeeping missions, that is, the lack of political will by key Western governments to support UN peacekeeping operations. Indeed, this theme became central to the discussion and thus will be returned to later in this report.

Another area that was touched on in the Brahimi Report (and perhaps one that was beyond the mandate of the panel) but was not sufficiently addressed, according to some analysts, was the correlation between underdevelopment and conflict. While empirical evidence on this controversial point is mixed, enough data now exists to establish causal links between poverty and conflict and support Kofi Annan's observation that "the majority of wars today are wars among the poor." "There is a need," one conference participant asserted, "to link conflict prevention with effective development schemes."

Finally, conference participants turned their attention to specific conflict zones in Africa, in light of the report: Would the technical and administrative improvements recommended in Brahimi have made a difference in the way the United Nations and the West responded to recent conflicts in Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, or the Democratic Republic of the Congo? The consensus among experts was: no. For in each of these crises the West lacked the will to act. However, had the recommendations contained in the report been implemented prior to UN action in Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique (all crises that elicited some Western response), these conflicts could have been at least mitigated, many participants thought.

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The Changing Nature of UN Peacekeeping Operations:
The Rationale for Brahimi

An analysis of past UN peacekeeping missions reveals a sharp increase in both the complexity and frequency of missions since the end of the Cold War. Between 1948 and 1988 the United Nations undertook just 15 peace operations around the world. Of the 15, only three missions received mandates that transcended ceasefire verification and force separation. Between 1989 and 1999, the number of peacekeeping missions jumped to 31, of which 24 involved mandates exceeding ceasefire observation and often involved the much more complex and dangerous tasks of weapons control, refugee relief work, post-conflict reconstruction, election certification, and many more difficult policing and encampment/demobilization activities (for more information, see the tables at: www.stimson.org/unpk/panelreport/unpkstimsondiscussion.pdf, pp. 8-9, prepared by William Durch of the Stimson Center).

The explosion of demands for peacekeepers during the 1990s tested both the capabilities and resources of the United Nations throughout the decade. The unprecedented need for peacekeepers was complicated by the changing role they would play. More and more frequently peacekeeping forces were called upon to intervene in hostile (that is, non-consensual) and dangerous situations to protect besieged populations. Unfortunately, in many cases the organization failed to meet these daunting challenges and UN military failures seemed to become commonplace.

To its credit, the Brahimi Report underscores this fact and describes the United Nations' inability to bring more men, money, and thought to the mission of peacekeeping. The report thus reveals the extent to which today the UN Secretariat is under-staffed and under-funded. At the time the report was completed (July 2000) the DPKO had only 32 military officers to plan, recruit, equip, deploy, support, and direct some 27,000 soldiers that comprised the 15 missions underway. UN police forces faced a similar situation: a staff of only nine police officers working out of UN headquarters were called upon to support 8,000 UN police in the field. The report thus concluded that the DPKO administrative budget (which was equal to 1/50th of the field teams' budget) was utterly insufficient to support the teams in the field.

These numbers illustrate a central point of the report: that the United Nations currently lacks the resources to effectively fulfill its peacekeeping mission. This point also makes clear the UN's lack of independence and inability to assume a leadership role in international crisis situations. Indeed, conference participants pointed out that the United Nations is a body that is in constant search of material and financial support and coherent political backing from member states.

Another factor crucial to the success of UN missions is the ongoing political support of influential member states. While the Brahimi Report fails to address this final point, participants drove home the fundamental importance of gaining international support (especially from the United States) for UN missions. Participants illustrated the cross-cutting character of this issue: (1) "All the recommendations contained in Brahimi for improving UN peacekeeping activities depend on the will of the U.S. Congress to fund the program,'' (2) "There is a consistent undercurrent within the UN of dissatisfaction and disappointment with U.S. failure to support the institution," and (3) this dynamic is "eroding America's international standing."

In summary, the rationale behind the Brahimi Report is three-fold: (1) to underscore the growing need for peacekeepers around the world, (2) to bring to light the UN's failure to ramp up administrative and logistical support of peacekeepers in the field, and (3) to propose a series of changes to improve the effectiveness of the DPKO.

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The Current State of Affairs in Sub-Saharan Africa

Nowhere was the scope and intensity of violence during the 1990s as great as in Africa. While the general trend of armed conflict in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East fell during the 1989-99 period, the 1990s witnessed an increase in the number of conflicts on the African continent. During this period, 16 UN peacekeeping missions were sent to Africa. (Three countries-Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Angola-were visited by multiple missions during this time.) Furthermore, this period saw internal and interstate violence in a total of 30 sub-Saharan states (see table 1).

Table 1: Africa: War and Significant Lethal Violence, Bush-Clinton Administrations

In 1999 alone, the continent was plagued by 16 armed conflicts, seven of which were wars with more than 1,000 battle-related deaths (Journal of Peace Research, 37:5, 2000, p. 638). In 2000, the situation continued to deteriorate: renewed heavy fighting between Eritrea and Ethiopia claimed tens of thousands of lives in the lead-up to a June ceasefire and ultimately the signing of a peace accord in December; continued violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone, Burundi, Angola, Sudan, Uganda, and Nigeria as well as the outbreak of new violence between Guinea and Liberia, in Zimbabwe, and in the Ivory Coast have brought new hardship and bloodshed to the continent.

Indeed, there was a consensus among conference participants that the level of violence present in Africa today suggests that the continent has reached a nadir. Furthermore, the group agreed that the potential exists that more civil wars, like those that gripped Sierra Leone and Liberia during the '90s, will occur on the continent.

In addition to the massive human suffering caused by war in Africa, conference participants pointed out that the long-term effects these conflagrations will have on development are profound. Conflict has already compounded a host of health, environmental, and economic ills. A recent report, "AIDS Epidemic Update 2000" from the joint UN Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO), reported that 3.8 million people became infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa during the last year, bringing the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the region to 25.3 million or 8.8 percent of the adult population. This year alone the pandemic will claim the lives of two million Africans; one million more will die from malaria and tuberculosis.

Experts at the conference agreed that among the plethora of conflicts on the continent today, perhaps the worst and most intractable war is in the DRC. Since 1998 this conflict has involved the armed forces of nine different states and at least nine rebel groups (SIPRI Yearbook 2000). The complexity of this conflagration, along with the vast territory in play, was seen by the group as a key reason why not to get involved in the conflict. Indeed no one expressed enthusiasm or even suggested a strategy for political engagement in the Congo (although several participants wondered aloud, "Who will help pick up the pieces in the DRC or another Rwanda?"). Finally, it was agreed that the DRC conflict will most likely continue to limit the social, political, and economic development of central and southern Africa for years to come.

In reviewing past UN missions to the continent, the participants agreed that UN successes in Namibia, Mozambique, and South Africa during the 1990s probably did not receive due credit in the international community. Meanwhile, UN failures (especially in Somalia '93 and Rwanda '94) became infamous, and in the United States these calamities became emblematic of a "failed organization" and provided grist for UN bashers in Washington.

As the devastating confluence of economic, health, and political problems continue to submerge the continent in poverty and conflict, the international community will continue to be called upon to act in Africa. With conflicts still raging across the continent and the threat of new outbreaks of violence in places like Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Guinea, and Ivory Coast, it is difficult to imagine the need for peacekeeping operations diminishing in the near future. The challenges for the United Nations and the West vis-ý-vis Africa are therefore multifold.

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PART TWO