One More Time--UN "Peacekeepers" Can't Keep The Peace

The Geek has been a harsh critic of UN peace keeping operations most of the past thirty or so years.  While there have been some exceptions, the general rule is simply that the blue helmet crowd is not worth a fraction of what it costs the UN, which is to say the American taxpayer.

One more splendid example of the common rule comes from Sudan.  You might recall that after forces from South Sudan ambushed a UN aid convoy protected by units of the Khartoum army, the northerners responded by an attack on the contested border town of Abyei.  The incursion and concomitant looting and burning lasted two days during which thousands of residents hit the dust for points south.  During the festivities, the UN peace keeping force drawn from the army of Zambia hunkered down in its dug in compound, heads between their no doubt quavering knees.

This aspect of the story was widely, one is tempted to write "universally" ignored by the MSM of the world.  An honorable and lonely exception was Reuters Africa whose correspondent investigated this neglect of duty with a fine degree of assiduousness.  The article notes in several places that the UN is both "livid" and is "investigating" the incident.  The Zambian mission to the UN had no comment.  Wow!  What a shock.

This is not the first time that the Zambian contingent has determined that discretion was the better part of valor.  Nor is it likely to be the last.

The Abyei fiasco is typical of UN peace keeping operations in Africa.  In the Congo the blue helmet bunch has been recurrently unable to furnish protection to local civilians besieged, raped, and murdered by one or another of the assorted "rebel" groups.  This has been true even when the UN outpost has been within easy earshot of the rapine.  Nor was the performance of peacekeeping force notably better elsewhere from the Ivory Coast to points east.

The usual reasons given for the under performing nature of the peacekeepers is that they are drawn in the main from the poorest of the poor undeveloped countries.  Thus the personnel are underpaid, undertrained (if trained at all) under equipped (if equipped at all) and very, very poorly officered.  All of this is true.  It is also irrelevant.

There is no explicit requirement that the UN peacekeeping office use forces of this nature.  Rather, these are the only forces generally available.  More developed countries with professional armies seem to be reluctant in the extreme to deploy in the service of humanity.  There are normally valid domestic political imperatives behind this stance.

(Arguably even the presence of a Western professional army is no guarantee of success.  Recall that the small Dutch contingent present at Srebrenica as Ratko Mladic demanded the handover of all Muslim males could not offer resistance, and their request for air support was ineffective as it was submitted on the wrong form.  The result was eight thousand Muslim dead.)

The notion of peacekeeping is flawed in several essential respects.  The first is the requirement that peace already exist--at least in principle--before the blue helmet boys arrive to maintain it.  There is no writ for the UN force to impose peace and then keep it.  The second is the need for the government of the recipient country to request or approve the UN move.  In the context of Sudan the offer of Ethiopia to provide additional peacekeeping troops is contingent upon both Khartoum and Juba signing off on the proposal.  Thirdly, the peacekeeping forces are almost always too small and too lightly armed to intimidate effectively any and all locals inclined to fighting.

The final flaw is the one demonstrated by the Zambians at Abyei.  There is no real stomach for the idea of getting killed in the middle of someone else's war for the abstract of "peace."  This is a very commonsense approach.  It is bad enough to risk one's only skin in a conflict in which one's nation has a direct stake and in which one fights under one's own national command.  It is far less appealing to die for someone else's notions of peace or victory.  For societies and polities barely beyond the tribal stage of abstract loyalties (if that far along the continuum of political abstraction), the desire not to die in a truly meaningless conflict is all the more potent.

For a Zambian or anyone else from any country, there is no inbuilt loyalty to the supreme abstractions expressed in the UN.  Dying under the baby blue banner has no appeal, brings no glory, has no intrinsic reward potential.  When the bullets are flying, the best thing to do is what the Zambians did--dig a deep hole and stay there until the noise ceases.

The lofty thinkers behind the concept of the UN as a peacekeeper in the violent internal affairs of a state and nation which are, at least in theory, sovereign and independent, need to get a grip on the realities as perceived through the eyes of men sent far from home for little material reward to risk themselves in pursuit of something which is utterly meaningless to them.  If the lofty thinking, high minded people at the UN are serious about the notion of armed intervention in the bloody internal politics of a state or establishing an armed presence on the line dividing two combatant states, they need to stop outsourcing the duty to the unfortunate poverty ridden lesser states of the General Assembly--even when these states are eager for the "honor"of doing the dirty work.

Peacekeeping is a form of mercenary warfare.  Period.  This means the forces employed must be heavily armed enough and well disciplined enough to overawe the local combatants.  Overawing means the probability of actual shooting and dying is reduced.  A clear superiority in the task of killing means killing will be less likely.  Beyond that, it means that should the locals not stay properly impressed, the peacekeepers will have the ability to kill without being killed.

This approach would be more expensive to the UN (or the US which is the single largest financial supporter of these missions).  It also means the forces will have to be drawn from the most militarily competent members of the UN, the Great and Near Great Powers.  This, in turn, will open a very large box of political problems for the leaders of these Powers (with the exception of authoritarian regimes--and we all know who these are).  The political problems will in their turn make the Powers a bit more reluctant and circumspect in their handling of interventions under the blue flag.

An increase in reluctance would not be a bad idea.  While the notion and optics of internal violence or border skirmishes with clouds of emotionally appealing refugees is disconcerting, the bitter reality of the utility of both the violence and its consequences must be recognized.  The problems which produced the violence will not be settled by outside intervention, foreign interference.  They may be tamped down, made less visible, but they will still exist to be dealt with by future violence of an increased nature.  All peacekeeping efforts accomplish much of the time is kicking the can down the road.

It would be far better in the long term for the violence to produce a solution to the problem as contrary to the cliche so loved by the lofty thinking sort, violence does settle problems.  History is replete with examples.  It is also filled with examples of how prematurely truncated violence breeds a further outbreak of even bloodier violence.

The world was not produced by Walt Disney.  Nor is the human race given to peace, love, and flower power.  Political and social evolution is often propelled by suffering and dying, by instability and conflict.  The sensitive sort of person might wish it were otherwise, but the dreary history of the human race at least since we left the Eden of hunting and gathering shows the opposite to be the case.  Organized social and political life is characterized by redness of tooth and claw.

Nature is far more gentle and kind creature than is the human.  Get a grip on it.