Maitaining Iternational Peace and Security

Maintaining International Peace andSecurity: A Summit Meeting of theUN Security Council

JUNE 2011

I N T E RNAT I ONA L P E AC E I N S T I T U T E

Cover Photo: A wide view of the

United Nations Security Council at

its meeting on the situation in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo

(DRC). Members discussed the

challenges facing the country and

the UN's mission there (MONUSCO).

May 18, 2011. © UN Photo/

JC McIlwaine.

The views expressed in this paper

represent those of the contributors

and not necessarily those of IPI. IPI

welcomes consideration of a wide

range of perspectives in the pursuit

of a well-informed debate on critical

policies and issues in international

affairs.

IPI Publications

Adam Lupel, EditorEllie B. Hearne, Publications Officer

Suggested Citation:

“Maintaining International Peace and

Security: A Summit Meeting of the

UN Security Council,” New York:

International Peace Institute, June

2011.

© by International Peace Institute,

2011

All Rights Reserved

www.ipinst.org

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

IPI owes a debt of thanks to its many generous donors who

contribute to the Coping with Crisis program. In particular,

IPI would like to thank the government of Turkey and the

Permanent Mission of Turkey to the United Nations for

making this project possible.

CONTENTS

Introduction, Francesco Mancini . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Meeting Note. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

SECURITY COUNCIL ISTANBUL RETREAT:AT THE CROSSROADS OF PEACEMAKING,PEACEKEEPING, AND PEACEBUILDING

Adam C. Smith and Vanessa Wyeth,rapporteurs

Discussion Papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

PEACEMAKING IN AFGHANISTAN:A ROLE FOR THE UNITED NATIONS? 8

Gerard Russell

THE SECURITY COUNCIL AND PEACEKEEPINGIN THE BALKANS, 1992-2010 16

Richard Gowan and Daniel Korski

THE GREAT LAKES OF AFRICA (BURUNDI,THE DRC, AND THE LRA-AFFECTED AREAS) 25

François Grignon

COMPOSITE PAPER ON CROSS-CUTTING THEMES 34

International Peace Institute

Annex. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT OF THESECURITY COUNCIL

iii

Introduction

On September 23, 2010, the United Nations Security Council held a summit meeting on the maintenance ofinternational peace and security, which is the primary responsibility of the Council.1 The summit was initiatedby Turkey, a nonpermanent member of the Council in 2009-2010 and holder of the rotating presidency forSeptember 2010. It was attended by nine heads of state and government and six ministers, and chaired byAbdullah Gül, President of the Republic of Turkey. The resulting presidential statement (S/PRST/2010/18,reproduced in the Annex to this report) reaffirmed that international peace and security require a morecomprehensive and coherent approach. The Council also pledged to continue to strengthen the crisis-manage-ment toolbox at its disposal, including preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding,and to adapt it to changing circumstances. In addition, the statement reiterated the Council’s support for theprotection of civilians and its commitment to strengthening strategic partnerships with regional andsubregional organizations and other relevant players. Further, it reaffirmed the importance of women in allaspects of prevention and resolution of conflicts and underlined the importance of addressing the root causesof conflict.

Turkey carefully managed the process that led to the summit. Beside numerous bilateral consultations, Turkeywith the support of the International Peace Institute (IPI) organized an expert meeting in New York in May2010, and an informal retreat in Istanbul for members of the Council in June of that year. Turkey and IPI alsocommissioned a set of regional papers to draw lessons from the UN’s experiences in three areas of the world(Afghanistan, the Balkans, and the Great Lakes region of Africa), in addition to a paper on cross-cutting themes.The discussions aimed to build on and enrich the ongoing debate on the interplay among peacekeeping,peacemaking, and peacebuilding, and to facilitate the formulation and implementation of coherent, flexible, andintegrated strategies for addressing threats to international peace and security. The four papers, the outcomesummary of the Istanbul retreat, and the final presidential statement are presented here.

The importance of the topic taken up by the Council in September 2010 cannot be overstated. Since the firstCouncil summit in January 1992, the global peace and security environment has witnessed dramatic changes.While traditional threats still persist—from conflict to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction andsmall arms and light weapons—new challenges have emerged. Climate change, environmental degradation,growing demand for resources, and dramatic demographic trends all affect the security of states and theirpeople, most especially the poor. Other challenges have evolved to become more dangerous, such as transna-tional organized crime, piracy, and terrorism. Illicit and violent organizations have gained control over territory,markets, and populations, complicating peacemaking efforts. States with ineffective and corrupt institutionsincreasingly constitute weak links in global arrangements to deal with international threats.

Not only have the threats evolved, but the world also looks like a very different place since the end of the ColdWar. Rapid socioeconomic changes have affected the geopolitical landscape. New powers have assertedthemselves on the international scene. Regional and subregional organizations play a growing role in peace andsecurity. Nonstate groups have become relevant actors in many conflicts, both positively and negatively. Thisfluid, and at times confusing, context is severely testing the Council’s capacity in providing coherent solutionsto conflict and insecurity.

It was a timely choice for Turkey to focus on the big-picture issues at the crossroads of peacemaking,peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. In fact, the Council had not had such a discussion since 2001.

The 1992 summit was followed up by the Secretary-General’s report An Agenda for Peace, a landmarkdocument that attempted to provide a coherent framework for the analysis and implementation of preventive

1 Charter of the United Nations, 1945, Article 24, para. 1.2 Boutros Boutros Ghali, An Agenda for Peace (United Nations: New York, 1992).

iv INTRODUCTION

diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and “peacebuilding,” a term that it introduced.2 The only othersummit-level meeting which covered a broad overview of international peace and security was held in 2000.3The Millennium Summit Declaration of September 7, 2000, (S/RES/1318), pledged “to enhance the effective-ness of the UN in addressing conflict at all stages from prevention to settlement to post-conflict peacebuilding.”The presidential statement of February 2001 (S/PRST/2001/5) still provides the point of reference for theCouncil’s comprehensive approach to peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding.

While in the last two years the Council engaged in a series of thematic debates on issues that recognize thegrowing linkages and overlaps among prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding, there hasbeen no attempt so far to bring coherence to these fragmented discussions. The Turkish initiative sought torefocus the debate and bring political attention to the need for a stronger UN architecture and greater capacityin the maintenance of international peace and security.

In fact, judging from the multiple attempts to improve the UN capacity in that area, there is a broad consensusthat something should be done. The opportunity presented by an exceptionally strong membership of theCouncil in the next two years should not be missed; the Council’s work can be more strategic, dynamic, andintegrated. Building on the September 2010 presidential statement, the Council could encourage a process oftaking stock of what has been achieved since An Agenda for Peace, but also acknowledge the limitations of theconcepts of conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding as outlined in that report, andthe departmental silos and institutional arrangements that have flowed from these concepts. In other words, theUN system has “overlearned” the lessons of An Agenda for Peace, separating the functions of peacemaking,peacekeeping, and peacebuilding into different offices and structures, which are poorly coordinated, obeyingconflicting interests and goals. The process could take a critical look at the efficacy of the Secretariat’s overallinstitutional arrangements for peace and security and recommend reforms to break down silos with respect toleadership and management, analytical support, budgets and resourcing, and the design of political andpeacekeeping missions.

A solid base for discussion already exists in the form of recent efforts at doctrinal and institutional levelscarried out by different parts of the UN system—e.g., “New Horizon,”4 the Secretary-General’s nonpaper onpeacebuilding, the Department of Field Support strategy, and the Secretary-General’s forthcoming report onpreventive diplomacy. While each of these efforts may represent significant progress, some of them may alsoserve to reinforce existing silos. None of them offers an overarching strategy for the maintenance of interna-tional peace and security, which should come from the Council. A focus on consolidating these efforts wouldallow the Council to stress the importance of coherent and sustained engagement with a country, which couldalso include the international financial institutions and other important actors on the agenda from the outset tocreate a common sense of purpose from the international community.

The Turkish initiative was grounded in the recognition of the complexity of the task and the need for high-level engagement to create momentum for the pursuit of a more coherent, responsive, adaptable Council. Givenhow much has been achieved so far, it would be a pity not to push forward on the road to a more effective wayto carry out the primary responsibility of the Council: the maintenance of international peace and security.

Francesco ManciniSenior Fellow and Director of ResearchInternational Peace Institute

3 Security Council Report, “Monthly Forecast, September 2010,” available at www.securitycouncilreport.org, 2010.4 UN Departments of Peacekeeping and Department of Field Support, “A New Partnership Agenda: Charting a New Horizon for UN Peacekeeping,” New York,

United Nations, July 2009.

www.securitycouncilreport.org

On June 25-26, 2010, the government of Turkey andthe International Peace Institute co-organized aninformal retreat for members of the United NationsSecurity Council. The discussions aimed to build onand enrich the ongoing debate on the interplay ofpeacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding, inpart by drawing on the lessons learned from the UN’sexperiences in three regions: Afghanistan, theBalkans, and the Great Lakes region of Africa. Asecond goal was to facilitate the formulation andimplementation of coherent, flexible, and integratedstrategies for addressing situations in flux.

KEY ISSUES

In advance of the retreat, three regional case studiesand a cross-cutting thematic paper were producedto frame the discussion around the following topics:

• forging sound connections and transitionsamong peacemaking, peacekeeping, andpeacebuilding;

• producing clear and achievable mandates andadjusting them as needed to reflect changingcircumstances on the ground;

• ensuring that peace operations and othermissions receive adequate financial, human,and material resources to fulfill theirmandates;

• ensuring coherence with the work of other UNbodies, including through enhancedcommunication, consultation, and exchange ofinformation among the Council, the GeneralAssembly, the Economic and Social Council(ECOSOC), and the PeacebuildingCommission;

• ensuring coordination and coherence withnon-UN actors, including regional bodies,international financial institutions (IFIs), andhost countries; and

• building effective state capacity and legitimacyso that host countries are better placed to leadtheir own recovery.

LESSONS FROM THE FIELD

The authors of the case studies were asked to focuson those topics above that were most relevant totheir region’s experience. The following is asummary of important takeaways from the UN’srecent and ongoing engagement in these regions,based on the case studies and the authors’ presenta-tions at the retreat.

In the Great Lakes region, recognition of theinterconnections among peacemaking, peace -keeping, and peacebuilding are evident in thecontent of the peace agreements signed forBurundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC), and Northern Uganda, as well as in themandates developed for the integrated missions inBurundi and the DRC. However, it should berecognized that processes set in motion by theCouncil’s engagement are intrusive and are oftenaimed at establishing new power relations in acountry. Hence, lessons for the Council include thefollowing:

• The Council needs to be proactive and remainengaged during the entire life of the mandate,since the implementation of a peaceagreement is a delicate and transformativeprocess for the host country.

• Political strategies developed by the Councilthat undergird its resolutions are necessary butnot sufficient to the success of peace processes.Council members need to remain consistentwith respect to the spirit and letter of theseresolutions in their bilateral interactions withtransitional governments.

• The Council should always consider accounta-

1

MEETING NOTE

Security Council Istanbul Retreat:At the Crossroads of Peacemaking, Peacekeeping, and

PeacebuildingAdam C. Smith and Vanessa Wyeth, rapporteurs

bility and transitional justice mechanisms as acore element of peacebuilding mandates andimpose them when necessary through bothbilateral and multilateral pressure.

• There is a need to be pragmatic about anyproposed division of labor and partnershipwith regional actors. The Great Lakes experi-ence showed that African regional engagementcould deliver impressive results, especially inpeacemaking. Such regional engagement wasimportant in both Burundi and in theDemocratic Republic of the Congo.

An overarching lesson from the UN’s experiencein the Balkans is the importance of recognizing thelimitations that political context puts on theCouncil. In this regard, understanding theCouncil’s proper role in relation to other actors isimportant. While it is now common to claim thatthe Council should play a lead role in devisingpolitical strategies for peace operations, the Balkancases show that the Council is often a receiver,legitimizer, or adapter of strategies developedelsewhere.

• On mandates in the Balkans, the SecurityCouncil often wavered between two extremes:excessive and detailed mandates with constantreassessments and readjustments (1992-1995),and broad or vague mandates giving signifi-cant freedom to the mission head (post-1995).Neither extreme option was an ideal scenario.But the Council should guard against thetendency to micro-manage through theproduction of overly detailed mandates.

• In spite of the Council’s difficulties in definingeffective mandates, it did make a usefulinnovation in its Preventive Deployment Force(UNPREDEP) to the former YugoslavRepublic of Macedonia.

• There is still no standard for transitioningfrom one mission to another (e.g., a UNmission to an EU mission). Where possible,phased transitions are more useful than an on-off switch of authority.

Since 2004, Afghanistan has been in a peace-to-war transition driven by the parties excluded fromthe Bonn process. The resulting instability hascircumscribed the UN’s ability to operate effectivelyin Afghanistan.

• The United Nations Assistance Mission in

Afghanistan (UNAMA) has no objective thatit can achieve alone; it must work with andthrough other institutions in order to fulfill itsmandate. With limited financial resources andno military capacity, the mission’s successdepends on its political authority and the skillsof its staff.

• The mandate for UNAMA needs to reflect thelimitations in staffing, staff movement, andstaff security. It should focus on preservingboth the UN relationship with the Afghangovernment and its credibility with theAfghan opposition.

• Given its limited resources, the UN shouldconcentrate on work that others cannot do:development and governance in secureprovinces; reporting on human rights; andregional dialogue, specifically with Iran.

• Dialogue with the armed opposition should beundertaken by a separate special envoy, ratherthan the UNAMA Special Representative ofthe Secretary-General (SRSG).

• Thorough and regular consultations betweenthe UN Security Council and the NATOSecretary-General would be a useful supple-ment and “backstop” for coordination inKabul between UNAMA and the InternationalSecurity Assistance Force (ISAF).

The analyses of these distinct cases togethersuggested a number of lessons and conclusions:

• The Security Council is not a single actor, butrather a collection of member states withdiverse interests. Politics is messy and rationaldecision making is not always possible.Ambitions should generally be scaled downwhen there is no sense of common purposeamong Council members.

• Periods of transition may offer the Councilopportunities to consolidate gains and addressgaps. Transitions from peacekeeping topeacebuilding missions, as well as mandaterenewals, often offer a window of opportunityto redesign the roadmap for internationalengagement in a country. Yet, the process ofreconfiguring the UN presence from onelargely featuring peacekeeping into one inwhich peacebuilding dimensions move to thefore still poses significant political andadministrative challenges.

2 MEETING NOTE

• The cases suggest the need for the Council toadapt to changing circumstances withoutabandoning its legal and political authority.The temptation to constantly revise mandatescan risk diminishing the Council’s authorityand diluting its vision.

• The Council requires candid analysis and thepresentation of a range of policy options toinform its deliberations. However, historysuggests that the UN Secretariat is notstructured to deliver this kind of analysisconsistently.

• The cases suggest that the issuing of amandate is just the beginning of a process.Mandates and the UN’s authority are oftenchallenged, and many actors need to beinfluenced repeatedly and throughout the lifeof the UN’s engagement. Council memberscan do a better job of persuasion.

• Regional and subregional arrangements needimprovement. Desk-to-desk cooperation is anencouraging development, but there is acontinued problem at the strategic andpolitical levels.

• Finally, the Council must do better atmatching means and ends. Proper resourcingof missions and mandates was a recurrenttheme throughout the case studies.

KEY THEMES AND CONCLUSIONS

The remaining discussion in Istanbul wasorganized around three distinct but related themes:mandates, capacities, and adaptation. Below is asummary of the salient points raised by retreatparticipants on these topics, as well as comments onthree related themes that emerged during thecourse of discussion: conflict prevention, partner-ships with regional organizations, and engagementwith the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC).Mandates

The retreat’s thematic discussions began with apanel focused on mandates and mandate-making.The discussions explored the process of craftingachievable and strategic mandates that have soundconnections among peacemaking, peacekeeping,and peacebuilding. Discussion also covered consul-tations among partners (troop- and police-contributing countries, regional and subregionalorganizations, other organizations, host govern-

ments, the UN Secretariat, and other UN organs)and how the Security Council, and the UN moregenerally, devise strategies.

There was broad agreement that mandates shouldbe clear and achievable, based on a realistic assess-ment of the political context on the ground, thebroader strategic context, and the UN’s capacity todeliver. The challenge, of course, is to makemandates sufficiently detailed but not too burden-some—too often, overly detailed mandates and tasklists have substituted for strategy. As politicaldocuments, mandates should be backed by apolitical strategy. But they also define priorities andtasks that the Secretariat is called upon toimplement. The Council should involve theSecretariat (including DPA, DPKO, and the Officeof Legal Affairs) in the process of draftingmandates. Other relevant actors should be includedin the process as well, including the host country,regional actors, and other UN organs.

At the same time, mandate design is just thebeginning of the process. Mandates need to becontinually reassessed against developments on theground. This requires continual engagement by theCouncil, matched by strong analytical capacitywithin the Secretariat. Mandate reviews should beseen as moments to assess and address shortcom-ings in strategy and capacity. Prioritization andsequencing are essential in implementingmandates.

Participants were reminded that there is atendency to speak exclusively of peacekeepingwhen discussing mandates, whereas nonpeace-keeping mandates are also clearly important. TheCouncil, especially during times of severeeconomic stress, could pay more attention to itsother, less-often-discussed tools of peacemaking,preventive diplomacy, and peacebuilding. Ofcourse, these types of mandates have less flexibilityin terms of resourcing than do typical peacekeepingoperations.Capacities

The second panel focused on the issue of thecapacities of the UN, host states, and partnerorganizations for peacemaking, peacekeeping, andpeacebuilding. Discussions focused on how toproperly resource missions, assess capacity needs atthe outset of engagement, develop host statecapacity, and leverage each partner organization’s

SECURITY COUNCIL ISTANBUL RETREAT 3

relative strengths to accomplish mandated goals.Discussion of resourcing UN missions focused

on two main issues: financial resources, particularlyregarding budgeting for UN missions, and humanresources, particularly the issue of civilian capacity.Participants noted the apparent disconnectbetween policy decisions taken in the Council andfinancial decisions taken in the General Assembly.Different arrangements govern budgeting forpeacekeeping missions and for special politicalmissions, which can limit the flexibility ofnonpeacekeeping missions and pose additionaldifficulties in planning transitions. Such discon-nects make it difficult to generate a sharedunderstanding of what capacities are needed andinhibit the ability to conduct careful, conservative,and sober assessments of these needs.

Participants agreed that the Council should do abetter job of matching ends and means. In an idealworld, the Council would focus on designing thebest kind of mission for the task at hand, and thesystem would work to support the mandate. Manyparticipants noted the need for the Council to makemore frequent use of preventive diplomacymandates and peacebuilding missions, particularlyin the context of funding constraints resulting fromthe global financial crisis. Recent innovationswithin the Secretariat—such as the creation of theDepartment of Field Support (DFS)—have allowedthe UN to support both DPA- and DPKO-ledmissions more efficiently. Unfortunately, budgetingremains a significant obstacle. Participants agreedthat the Council should work more closely with theFifth Committee of the General Assembly to ensuremore appropriate resourcing for Council-mandatedmissions.

Much attention was devoted to the subject ofhuman resources, as missions should receive bothadequate numbers of personnel and the rightbalance of military and civilian capacity. Thecredibility of the Council depends on theimplementation of its mandates, but missions oftenstruggle to find staff with the right combination ofskills. While military capacity remains important,the expansion of mandates to include morepeacebuilding tasks has increased demand foressential civilian staff. Missions need expertise inareas such as rule of law, security-sector reform,and elections. In addition, they need staff that are

capable of planning and assessment, who alsopossess the ability to develop local capacity andtransfer skills. Technical experts who can alsonavigate complex political contexts in postconflictcountries and work effectively to build fragileinstitutions are a rare breed, and the UN strugglesto find them.

Participants spoke frankly about the shortcom-ings of the current personnel system, both inrecruitment and personnel management. Oneparticipant noted that in some missions, “weprobably have the right numbers but the wrongpeople.” The current climate of distrust between theSecretariat and member states leads to reluctanceon the part of the Secretariat to “cut the fat,” for fearof losing overall posts and resources. Several partic-ipants spoke of the need for a new deal between theSecretariat and member states that would allow theSecretariat to shift resources more freely. On theother hand, if the Secretariat were seen to be savingmoney through personnel reforms, member statesmight prove less resistant on resourcing issues.Participants looked forward to the forthcomingcivilian-capacity review undertaken by thePeacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) to addresssome of these issues.

The discussion also emphasized the importanceof linking the process of developing mandates withthe need to assess—and, where necessary, bolster—implementation capacity. This should includeregular appraisal of capacity gaps. It was suggestedthat each mission should maintain a gap list thatcould be addressed during mandate reviews andrenewals. Since the Secretariat and the field bothbear responsibility for helping the Council identifycapacity gaps, they should both be forward-lookingin terms of estimating capacity needs. At the sametime, the Council could do a better job of helpingthe Secretary-General mobilize capacity in supportof the mandates it has declared. Finally, whencapacities simply are not and will not be there, theCouncil could be more judicious in the use ofChapter VII.Adaptation

The final panel, on adaptation, drew from theprevious two panels. It focused on how the Counciladjusts mandates and strategy to meet changingconditions, how missions and the Council canbetter use benchmarks to mark progress and refine

4 MEETING NOTE

strategy, and how the UN can be more proactive onthe ground and the Council more agile andinclusive in its consultations and deliberations inNew York. Among the questions posed were, Howfrequent should the mandate or strategy reassess-ment process be? How could more policy planningexpertise be harnessed? And, how could theCouncil’s interface with the host country beenhanced to achieve fuller consent?

Given the diversity and complexity of the issuesthe Council is now called upon—or has chosen—toaddress, many felt that the Council has, in fact,displayed an ability to adapt to the changing natureof security threats. In addition, the evolution ofCouncil working methods and strategy can be seenin each of the regional case studies. They show thatthe Council has learned and adapted during the lifeof each mission, as well as from one mission toanother. The learning, however, has been slow anduneven at times. This would argue for a continuingreview of Council working methods to ensure thatthe learning process continues. One note ofcaution, however, was expressed. Too often“working method reform” is used as code forincreasing the transparency and openness of theCouncil. It is argued that such reforms shouldrather be concerned primarily with how theCouncil could forge better mandates.

It was asserted that more could be done with thetools the Council already has, rather than workingto develop new ones. The Council needs to makemore efficient and more effective use of its tools, inaddition to generating greater political will andbetter follow-up to assess implementation. In thisregard, benchmarking is an important tool of whichthe Council could make better use. There could bemore frequent meetings between the SecurityCouncil and the Secretariat, with the Secretariat notnecessarily always represented at the Under-Secretary-General level. More use could be made ofthe Council working group on peacekeepingoperations. However, establishing a working groupfor each mission, such as the joint working groupon Chad, would overburden already busy memberstates.

Finally, the discussion turned to the possibility ofundertaking a strategic reassessment of the efficacyof the UN’s peace and security architecture andinstruments in light of changing conditions and

opportunities. The Council had not initiated such abroad-based review since January 1992, when itsfirst summit-level meeting launched the processthat produced the Secretary-General’s report, AnAgenda for Peace. Almost twenty years later, it maybe time for the Council to step back and considerhow to organize a new strategic review. Such aprocess could take stock of what has been achievedsince An Agenda for Peace, but also acknowledgethe limitations of the concepts of preventivediplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, andpostconflict peacebuilding as outlined in thatreport, as well as of the departmental silos andinstitutional arrangements that flowed from thoseconcepts. Such a review could consider ways tobreak down silos in terms of leadership andmanagement of the UN’s peace and security efforts,analytical support, budgets and resourcing, and thedesign of political and peacekeeping missions.Related Themes

Conflict Prevention

Under Article 34 of the UN Charter, the SecurityCouncil may investigate any dispute or situationthat “might lead to international friction or give riseto a dispute.” Although recently discussed in aformal meeting of the Council on July 16, 2010,retreat participants continued the discussion ofhow to strengthen the role of the Council inpreventing crises, whether through preventivediplomacy, preventive deployment of peacekeepers(e.g., to Macedonia), or through special political orpeacebuilding missions.

There is little argument that the Council shouldbe more active in the field of conflict prevention.Yet, despite this consensus and the desire for morecost-effective conflict-management tools likeprevention, there is no easy consensus in theCouncil on which countries should be placed on itsprevention agenda or on how exactly to go aboutdoing prevention work. Such a decision is fraughtpolitically, and it would be problematic to attempt apreventive deployment without the full consent ofthe host state. The Secretary-General, on the otherhand, can use his good offices for the cause ofprevention with comparative ease. In this, theSecretary-General could be supported by theDepartment for Political Affairs and would notneed a consensus in the Council. The newlyestablished DPA regional offices could be useful in


this regard.Participants also called for a fresh look at how

missions are designed. Some urged the use of moreChapter VI mandates that address underlyingcauses of conflict, rather than relying on ChapterVII mandates, which are intended to “put out fires.”Recent successful examples of this include thespecial political mission in Nepal and the Timor-Leste mission. Both focused on the more pressingpolitical issues likely to spark a return to conflict.Another proposal was for the Council to develop anew kind of mandate that would specify a leadingrole by a particular member state in each selectedprevention opportunity. The leading member statewould serve as the chair of a working group withresponsibility for political outreach and reportingback to the Council. This arrangement would besimilar to the country configurations in thePeacebuilding Commission. Should the Secretary-General appoint a special envoy or other represen-tative to address that situation, the chair of theprevention working group would be charged withcoordinating closely with that person.Partnerships with RegionalOrganizations

All three case studies highlight the important andevolving role of regional and subregional organiza-tions in conflict management. This topic alsosurfaced repeatedly in the ensuing thematic discus-sions. Participants noted both the potentialcomparative advantages of such regional partnersand the gaps regional organizations could help tofill, such as in rapid response, mediation, forceenablers, and, at times, local legitimacy.

Despite the benefits of partnership, significantchallenges at the operational, strategic, and politicallevels remain. On the operational side, the lack of arealistic assessment of the capacities of partnerorganizations complicates any effort to define rolesand responsibilities or to attempt a de facto divisionof labor. In addition, the UN and the Council stillstruggle with how best to offer support (includingfinancial resources and capacity building) toregional and subregional organizations. Adding tothe oft-cited operational difficulties with partner-ships on the ground, it is still unclear how theCouncil can best coordinate with external partners.Even in a UN-led mission, the Council is never thesole actor. It must work in collaboration with a

number of other stakeholders. These factorsunderscore the value of a strategic vision on thepart of the Council regarding why, when, and howto use partnerships to greatest effect

At the political level, while the formal relation-ship between the Council and regional bodies iscodified in the UN Charter, in practice, therelationship is less clear. Article 53 of Chapter VIIIprohibits any enforcement action under regionalarrangements without Security Council authoriza-tion, but contrary to the Charter, Council authori-zation is often sought ex post facto. Article 54 callsfor the Council to be kept fully informed at all timesof activities undertaken or contemplated byregional arrangements for the purpose ofmaintaining international peace and security.Although it may be unreasonable to expect theCouncil to be kept fully informed of such activitiesat all times, more regular reporting to the Councilby regional and subregional organizations would bewelcome. Engagement with the PeacebuildingCommission

The discussion also addressed how the Councilmight better collaborate with other parts of the UNsystem, particularly the PeacebuildingCommission. Some described the PBC as an“orphan” and exhorted the Council to take bettercare of its child. It was suggested that those withpermanent seats on both bodies could do more tofully engage the PBC.

Several ways for the Council to collaborate moreclosely with the PBC were proposed. For example,the chairs of the PBC’s country-specific configura-tions could be invited to Council discussions. ThePBC could be given a role in advising on andhelping to monitor peacebuilding benchmarks inCouncil mandates. If appropriate, the next countryplaced on the Council’s agenda could be concur-rently placed on the PBC agenda to foster integra-tion between peacekeeping and peacebuilding. TheExecutive or Special Representatives of theSecretary-General in PBC countries could reportfirst to the PBC and then allow the PBC to report tothe Council. The Council could learn from thePBC’s flexible working methods and emphasis onnational ownership. There was some disagreementover whether the PBC should be prepared to takeon a “bigger” case to demonstrate its value, with

6 MEETING NOTE


some participants arguing that countries had yet tosee the value in being placed on the PBC’s agenda.Above all, there were a number of calls for a moreorganic institutional relationship between the PBC

and the Council, reflective of the value of a moreintegrated approach to peacekeeping andpeacebuilding.

This article asks what it would mean for the UnitedNations to play a role in peacemaking inAfghanistan, given the organization’s recent historyin that country and its current capabilities. First, itsets out the context and possible future of thereconciliation process in Afghanistan; second, itexamines the possible role for, and limitations of, theUnited Nations there; and, finally, it makes someconcrete proposals for future action.

RECONCILIATION: CONTEXT

The term “reconciliation” is regularly used to referto attempts to bring the Taliban and otherinsurgents into the mainstream political process.That is how the term will be used in this article. Inaddition, “reconciliation” is often used—includinghere—to signify substantive talks with insurgents’senior leadership, that aim to bring the entiremovement into the political process (as opposed toongoing efforts to persuade individual Talibanmembers to defect to the government side inexchange for money and other incentives). Thelatter process is now called “reintegration.”

Reconciliation—usually rendered as sulh in Dariand Pashto, meaning peace—was written into thepost-2001 political settlement in Afghanistan fromits earliest point: signatories of the Bonn Agreementof December 2001 declared themselves“determined to end the tragic conflict inAfghanistan and promote national reconciliation,lasting peace, stability and respect for human rightsin the country.”1

The Bonn Agreement itself, signed by representa-

tives of various Afghan factions, reflected theefforts already being made to create an inclusivegovernment in Afghanistan. It did not, however,include the Taliban. Subsequently, Sempleestimated that only twenty-two senior Talibanbecame “reconciled” to the post-Bonn Afghangovernment and that only three of those hadpreviously been active insurgents.2 No politicalparty representing the Taliban stood inAfghanistan’s 2004, 2005, 2009, or 2010 elections,mostly rejecting democracy as a matter of religiousprinciple. Many Taliban viewed the post-Bonnsettlement as favoring their former enemies in theAfghan Northern Alliance.3

The Taliban are not the only faction that tookpart in the subsequent insurgency. Although, forexample, a large part of the Hezb-e-Islami, a largelyPashtun Islamist faction, have reconciled with theAfghan government, another part have becomeinsurgents.4 Jalaluddin Haqqani has become amajor player in terrorism and insurgency insoutheastern Afghanistan, which, although alliedwith the Taliban, is generally regarded as semi-autonomous.5 So although reconciliation wouldprimarily be with people who self-identify asTaliban, and have some degree of group identityand cohesion, there are several other groups thatwould ideally need to be involved. Nonetheless forsimplicity’s sake this article concentrates on thedialogue with the Taliban, on the understandingthat other groups must be engaged in the sameprocess.

* Gerard Russell is a Research Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. 1 Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan (“Bonn Agreement”), 2001.2 Michael Semple, Reconciliation in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2009).3 See, for example, Taliban spokesman Mullah Zaeef ’s comments to Reuters on December 5, 2001, available at ww.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2001/december/

dec5jj2001.html . “All the control will be with the Northern Alliance ... he (Karzai) will only be a doll in Kabul.”4 See, for example, Institute for the Study of War, “Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin,” 2011, available at www.understandingwar.org/themenode/hezb-e-islami-gulbuddin-hig .5 See, for example, Jeffrey Dressler, “The Haqqani Network: From Pakistan to Afghanistan,” Afghan Report no. 6, Institute for the Study of War: Washington, DC:

October 2010.

8

DISCUSSION PAPERS

Peacemaking in Afghanistan: A Role for the United Nations?

Gerard Russell*

www.understandingwar.org/themenode/hezb-e-islami-gulbuddin-hig

www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2001/december/dec5jj2001.html

www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2001/december/dec5jj2001.html

IS THE MOMENT RIGHT?

I. William Zartman analyzes conflicts in Africawhere parties saw the moment as “ripe for resolu-tion.”6 In the complex, multiparty conflict inAfghanistan, none of the three major partiesappears to see the moment as ripe. Both the UnitedStates and the Taliban appear to believe that theyare winning the battle; both sides have somethingto lose from showing a desire for peace, whichmight sap their followers’ and their allies’ morale;even the Afghan government’s initiative of creatinga Supreme Peace Council is viewed by someanalysts as an insincere gesture.7

Although the US government has professed itselfsupportive of an initiative from Afghan PresidentHamid Karzai to launch a renewed push forreconciliation, under the supervision of a newlyappointed Supreme Peace Council8—and hasallegedly facilitated the travel to Kabul of seniorTaliban for talks with President Karzai, in what onenews report called a “significant U-turn”9—a betterguide to US policy is probably the position set outby Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On October14, 2010, she declared herself “cautious” aboutreconciliation, and added: “I think it's highlyunlikely that the leadership of the Taliban thatrefused to turn over [Osama] Bin Laden in 2001will ever reconcile,” she said. “But, you know,stranger things have happened in the history ofwar.”10

Consonant with that position, the USA’s ownemphasis appears to be on reintegration efforts,aimed at persuading individual insurgents or smallgroups to switch sides, and, governed by toughconditions, “anyone who wishes to rejoin societyand the political system must lay down theirweapons and end violence, renounce al Qaeda, andbe committed to the Constitution and laws of

Afghanistan, which guarantee the rights of women,”said Secretary Clinton when she visited Kabul inJuly 2010. The US, along with other donors, hascontributed to a Peace and Reintegration TrustFund which “offers antigovernment combatants fullrecognition of their rights as Afghan citizens, adignified way to renounce violence, and avenues topeacefully reintegrate into their communities.”11

Many experts believe,12 however, that reintegra-tion efforts will not turn the tide of the Afghaninsurgency, even if they do win over some mid-levelor senior commanders. Individuals who switchsides are at risk of being targeted, and suchindividual deals still fail to address the underlyingissues that drove people to join the insurgency inthe first place. So this brings us back to the idea ofa comprehensive reconciliation process—one thatmay not begin right now, but which might well doso in two or three years’ time, when the politicaland military environment may be riper for it.

A formula for peace is not unimaginable:Dorronsoro suggests one with Taliban ministersjoining the Kabul government, and the appoint-ment of Taliban “judges and administrators indistricts the Taliban already control,”13 alongperhaps with President Karzai’s resignation and thechoosing of his successor by the traditional Afghanassembly of notables, the loya jirga. Former UNenvoy Ambassador Francesc Vendrell has proposedanother, with an emphasis on a geographic divisionof local authority with the Taliban rather than adivision of government posts in Kabul.14

An essentially geographic solution would beeasier to verify and enforce; and it would preservemost of the country from the influence of theTaliban (for example, on women’s rights). In eithercase, though, there would be room for things to gowrong: disputes over the exact meaning of the

6 I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).7 See for example Pajhwok News, “MPs Doubt Peace Council’s Success,” October 11, 2010. An Afghanistan Analysts Network report of September 2010, concludes

that “the council’s composition no surprise, but a disappointment all the same.” Martine van Bijlert and Thomas Ruttig, “Warlord’s Peace Council,” AAN,September 28, 2010, available at http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp?id=1175 .

8 Reuters, “US Backs Afghan Reconciliation, No Comment on Talks,” October 6, 2010.9 Radio Free Europe, “US Changes Course To Back Afghan-Taliban Reconciliation Talks,” October 15, 2010.10 ABC News, interview with Hillary Clinton on Good Morning America, October 14, 2010.11 This is wording taken from the International Security Assistance Force’s (ISAF’s) Reintegration Guide, published 2010.12 For example, Michael Semple, “Offer the Taliban More than Mere Money,” Financial Times, February 4, 2010: “Reintegration is not going to end the conflict.” Gilles

Dorronsoro, "Karzai Comes to Washington," Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 11, 2010, available atwww.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=40779 .

13 Gilles Dorronsoro, “Afghanistan: Searching for Political Agreement,” Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 2010.14 “A coalition, personally, I do not see it. I do not think it is realistic, or if it were, it would last a few days. Power-sharing, under which the Taliban commanders

would exert power in some provinces and districts in the south and possibly the east, I think that is different. I think that is more conceivable.” Interview withFrancesc Vendrell, Voice of America, October 19, 2010.

Gerard Russell 9

www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=40779

http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp?id=1175

agreement, and small infringements that could leadto escalating tensions. This shows the need for astrong mediator and, perhaps, an adjudicator ofdisputes.

If serious talks do take place in the future, theAfghan government and international communitywill need to have analyzed these and other possibleformulae for peace; they will want to know whatproblems and obstacles stand in the way, and toremove them if they can; and they will want toknow who credible interlocutors might be on theTaliban side.

They will also want there to be a relationship oftrust between those interlocutors and certainpotential intermediaries. That relationship, inparticular, will take years to develop, just as secretcontacts between the British government and theIRA lasted for years before any public dialoguebegan,15 and contacts between US forces and Iraqiinsurgents in Anbar province allegedly began in2004, bearing fruit only many years later.16 InAfghanistan, contacts between the Soviets and thejihadi commander Ahmed Shah Masoud likewisecontinued, secretly, for years.17

This all points to a great deal of preparatory work,which must start now. THE PROCESS

If there is to be a reconciliation process, then itcannot be solely an Afghan-to-Afghan negotiation.The international community will need to beinvolved—for six reasons:

• First, the lack of US and UN involvementmight reduce Afghan confidence in the deal’sendurance, especially given the long history ofbroken and failed peace agreements inAfghanistan.

• Second, US practical support for the talks willbe necessary, at least while American troopsare actively fighting in Afghanistan. Evenbefore a deal is reached, the United States willprobably be called upon to release someprisoners, and the Coalition will certainlyneed to exempt the Taliban negotiators, andlater perhaps the leadership, from arrest or

targeted killing. A final deal might well requireUS funding, or funding leveraged from thirdparties by the US, because the Taliban will losesignificant revenue from peace (donationsfrom fundamentalist groups in other parts ofthe Muslim world, for example).

• Third, an Afghan-to-Afghan process mightlead to secret deals that international partiesmight not countenance. Deals of this kind—over narcotics or women’s rights—might makean agreement easier to reach, but would beregressive for Afghanistan; they would alsomake the international community less likelyto step in to enforce the agreement and wouldtherefore, from the beginning, make it morevulnerable.

• Fourth, the simple exclusion of the Pakistanigovernment, and other regional parties, mightmake those parties “spoilers.”

• Fifth, despite the expertise that Afghan politi-cians have in forging relationships, few ofthem have any experience of large-scale,successful political negotiations.

• Finally, international involvement may—should—press the Afghan government to beinclusive in its approach to the negotiations. Aprocess that lacks full participation by themajor ethnic and political groups on thegovernment side may provoke a backlashamong (for example) Tajiks, Uzbeks, orHazaras.

It seems far preferable therefore that the reconcil-iation process be complex and inclusive, drawing inat least some of the Afghan pro-government andinsurgent factions, and, perhaps in a separateprocess, engaging regional players as well,especially Pakistan. The former British specialrepresentative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, SirSherard Cowper-Coles, compared the process to adouble-decker bus, with an Afghan track on onelevel, a regional track on the other, US petrol in thetank, and a UN conductor.18 Francesc Vendrell hassuggested four different layers or tables—onewholly Afghan, one involving the US, NATO, and

10 DISCUSSION PAPERS

15 Jonathan Powell, Great Hatred and Little Room (London: Bodley Head, 2008).16 Mark Perry, Talking to Terrorists: Why America Must Engage with its Enemies (New York: Basic, 2010).17 Steve Coll, Ghost Wars (New York: Penguin, 2005), p. 118.18 Personal communication with author, October 2010.

the EU, a third involving key regional players, and afourth of well-wishers such as Turkey and theUnited Arab Emirates.19

If a Pakistan-Afghanistan agreement were toemerge from such a series of negotiations, it wouldhave the advantage of status in international law; itcould even resolve the contentious issue of theborder between the two countries.

To ensure consistency across the different sets oftalks, and bring some experience in internationalnegotiations, an impartial mediator would need tobe present at all of them. And this is an obvious rolefor the United Nations to play.A ROLE FOR THE UNITED NATIONS?

As explained, formal talks might take years to start.There might be no need, as yet, for a mediator to beappointed. But it is not too soon to start putting inplace the infrastructure and political credibility thatsuch a role might require.

The United Nations in Afghanistan already hassome qualities which the process will need: consid-erable expertise, a huge, though neglected,infrastructure, and some residual element of moralauthority. The UN has had a continuous presencein Afghanistan for nearly sixty years. Its coordi-nating body there, the UN Assistance Mission inAfghanistan (UNAMA) has had since 2001 anexpanding network of regional offices giving accessto parts of the country often unreached andunvisited by national embassies. Until 2009UNAMA retained more liberal security rules thanembassies or the military, giving its staff wide-ranging opportunities to develop personal relation-ships with Afghans. It still imposes no limit on thetime that a staff member can spend in country,meaning that some stay for many years—incontrast to embassies, whose staff tend to serve fora year or two, and the military, whose longest timein country is just over a year. Its talented Afghanstaff sit alongside international colleagues, unlikethe system used in the larger embassies, whichexclude non-national staff on security groundsfrom at least some parts of their premises.

As a result of these circumstances UNAMA, and

other UN bodies that preceded it, have housed anumber of Kabul’s finest international experts.Francesc Vendrell, Antonio Giustozzi, and MichaelSemple are among its alumni. For this author, whojoined it in 2009, it sometimes felt like enteringgraduate school after taking an undergraduatedegree: colleagues’ conversations in its cafeteriaoften sounded like an encyclopedia of Afghanpolitics, peppered with the names of obscure politi-cians in distant provinces of which I had neverheard.20

This expertise did not save UNAMA fromattracting unprecedented criticism from analystsand independent commentators (and even its ownstaff) for failing to confront aggressively thewidespread fraud that characterized the Afghanpresidential election in 2009. The InternationalCrisis Group subsequently reported that itsapproach to the elections “badly damaged the UN’sstanding in the country.”21

The episode well illustrated the limitations of theorganization, but also its capacities. MinnaJarvenpaa, also a former UNAMA employee, wrotein an article published by the Afghanistan AnalystsNetwork on February 2, 2010, “During the 2009elections, UNAMA staff were consistently ahead oftheir counterparts in the assembled Embassies andinternational organisations in the speed andaccuracy with which they collated and analyseddata on ghost polling stations and other forms offraud. That the advice was not heard or taken isanother matter.”22

UNAMA’s current head, Special Representative ofthe Secretary-General (SRSG) Staffan de Mistura,took a more balanced approach to the Afghanparliamentary elections held in 2010, saying to theInternational Peace Institute in September, “the[2010] elections were meant for us, at the UN, torecover some of the lost credibility, frankly. We hadbeen identified as being biased, or at least confused,about how to handle the previous elections... it wasextremely important to be able to re-conquer thetype of moral ground... in helping the Afghans tohave a better election.” Grant Kippen, who headedthe Electoral Complaints Commission during the

Gerard Russell 11

19 Personal communication with author, October 2010.20 The author worked at UNAMA between April and November 2009.21 International Crisis Group, “Afghanistan: Elections and the Crisis of Governance,” Asia Briefing no. 96, Washington, DC: November 25, 2009.22 Minna Jarvenpaa, "A Challenge for the Next Head of UNAMA," Afghanistan Analysts Network, February 2, 2010, available at

http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp?id=599 .

http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp?id=599

2009 election, agreed. His impression was thatUNAMA had “understood the implications” of the2009 crisis and were taking a “more judicious”approach to the 2010 elections.

Even so, the Taliban may not be convinced. Thelimitations of UNAMA are systemic: it cannot bothbe an impartial and just mediator on the one hand,and the Afghan government’s main internationalinterlocutor on the other. Former SRSG Kai Eide, ina paper called “Strategy for Transition,” publishedin March 2010, took pride in the fact that “UNAMAhas become the main interlocutor for the interna-tional community with the Afghan Government.”This indeed has been a goal for UNAMA since thebeginning: each year, the Security Council inrenewing its mandate expresses its appreciation for“the United Nations’ long-term commitment towork with the Government and the people ofAfghanistan.”

Such a role however makes it difficult forUNAMA to risk alienating the Afghan governmentby disagreeing with it, especially as UNAMA is aweak partner in the relationship, not having theleverage of the US ambassador or ISAFcommander, for example.

UNAMA’s mandate also associates it closely withISAF,23 the NATO force in Afghanistan.24 UNAMAhas been able to balance this with outspokencriticism of the accidental killing of civilians byISAF and US forces, and vocal endorsement of talkswith the Taliban. But the nature of the mandate—linking UNAMA and ISAF but not requiring anyspecific form of coordination between them, letalone giving UNAMA any authority over ISAF—remains problematic.

The Taliban was critical of the UN’s role from2001 onwards, and its behavior toward the UN hastaken a definite turn for the worse in recent years.Insurgents have attacked it numerous times,including an assault on a UNAMA guesthouse inKabul in October 2009, frequent bomb attacks onthe UNAMA compound in Herat (as recent asOctober 22, 2010), attacks on UN staff in Kandahar

and the closure of the UNAMA office in Kandaharin April 2010, allegedly because of a threat madeagainst it by the Taliban.25

Not everyone believes that a mediator has to beseen as neutral by the parties to a negotiation(Touval argues otherwise, for example26); but it iscertainly an asset. Despite de Mistura’s skilledefforts at achieving neutrality within the frameworkof the UNAMA mandate, a UN mediator outsidethe authority of UNAMA might have morecredibility with the Taliban.

Since the appointment of a mediator may well beyears away, that still leaves plenty of work forUNAMA to do in the meantime: building up theteam, the expertise, and the database of informa-tion that an envoy will inherit as and when he orshe is appointed. It also allows UNAMA, both nowand in the event that a mediation process begins, tofocus on other peacebuilding activities (which mayprove at least as important as the mediation effort).POSSIBLE ROLES FOR THE UNITEDNATIONS

An organization can help peace come about byother means than mediating; here are someexamples, with illustrative references to theNorthern Ireland and Middle East peace processes(though there are of course differences betweeneach situation):

1. Hosts, who do not need to be mediators:Terje Rød-Larsen and Mona Juul played sucha part in the “Oslo process,” as describedbelow.

2. Experts: providing ideas and information toone or both parties to the talks (or makingthem public);

3. Parties to the process;4. Secondary players: not direct parties to the

conflict, but whose cooperation is necessaryfor the peace agreement to succeed. TheNorthern Ireland peace process eventuallybrought most relevant parties directly to thetable, but a parallel might be the role of the


23 The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) was created in 2002 by UN Security Council Resolution 1401 and headed by the SpecialRepresentative of the Secretary-General. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was created in 2001 by UN Security Council Resolution 1386, and leadby NATO from August 2003 to present.

24 See Talatbek Masadykov, Antonio Giustozzi, James Michael Page, “Negotiating with the Taliban: Toward a Solution for the Afghan Conflict,” LSE Crisis StatesWorking Paper no. 66, January 2010, p. 5.

25 See Al Jazeera, "UN Closes Office in Kandahar," April 27, 2010, available at http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/04/2010427113253231104.html .26 Saadia Touval, The Peace Brokers: Mediators in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-1979 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/04/2010427113253231104.html

Saudi Arabian government in the MiddleEast peace process today, playing a partwithout participating in talks;

5. Pioneers: those who helped set up prelimi-nary, indirect, or informal contacts thathelped the parties decide there was a basis fordirect talks. The talks between John Humeand Gerry Adams are perhaps a parallel;

6. Guarantors: those who provided guaranteesor incentives that helped clinch the deal, orwere regarded as potential arbitrators whoseinvolvement reassured one side or the other.The US government played this role inNorthern Ireland to some extent;

7. Advocates: those who helped create afavorable atmosphere for talks by courtingpublic opinion—a role played in NorthernIreland by civil society, as well as the AllianceParty (a centrist political party) and somechurches;

8. Conflict resolvers: those who helped resolvethe many subsidiary conflicts and disputesthat had exacerbated the original conflict.Civil society played this part in NorthernIreland, to some extent.

UNAMA could, in theory at least, act in any ofthese roles. Some, however, will be easier and morelikely to succeed than others, and also play to theorganization’s unique strengths.

By hosting but not mediating, UNAMA couldconceivably adopt the approach taken by TerjeRød-Larsen and Mona Juul in hosting back-channel talks between Palestinians and Israelis,which ultimately evolved into formal negotiationsand the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1993. In theirinitial phase, the Norwegian hosts “provided ‘goodoffices’ rather than more advanced forms ofmediation... [they] did not actually participate indiscussions, nor come up with bridging proposals,nor put pressure on either party to accept theother’s proposals.”27 A quiet role of this kind wouldplay to UNAMA’s strengths, but eventually wouldneed to be bolstered by concrete steps, just as theOslo talks eventually became more serious as bothsides realized the other was genuinely interested.

Norway was not viewed by either Israelis orPalestinians as intrinsically biased towards one sideor the other, which is an advantage that UNAMAwould lack.

On October 31, 2010, UNAMA announced that itwas forming a Salaam Support Group of expertsthat would provide assistance to the High PeaceCouncil, if asked. This certainly plays to UNAMA’sstrengths in expertise; it only remains to be seen ifthe High Peace Council chooses to accept thisadvice. Such advice however can be offeredimpartially (for example, information that Talib Xor Y wishes to have talks) or partially (advising theCouncil whether or not to accept offers or engage inpeace talks). The latter would preclude UNAMAfrom any form of impartial mediation and wouldpotentially compromise its relationship with theAfghan government, should its advice conflict withgovernment policy or should it prove mistaken.

UNAMA could, in theory, be a party to the talks.This would preclude the United Nations fromacting in any quasi-neutral capacity, either as hostor as guarantor. The United Nations could speak upin the negotiations for its red lines, for example onthe status of women or principles of internationallaw. It would however have relatively little that itcould offer as part of a peace deal: no funds, notroops, and not even the power to remove sanctionsimposed on specific members of the Taliban by UNSecurity Council Resolution 1267—a Talibandemand which would allow those individuals totravel internationally, but which only the SecurityCouncil could address.

It could act as a secondary player that is consultedby the Afghan government or the US in betweennegotiating sessions, and contributes its views onthe process via that government. In doing sohowever it would compromise its neutralitywithout even gaining a seat at the table.

UNAMA has tried to be a pioneer in initiatingcontact with Taliban and other insurgentsinformally. Kai Eide, the former SRSG, apparentlymet Taliban members in Saudi Arabia in January2010.28 His successor, de Mistura, met Hezb-e-Islami representatives in March 2010.29 Giustozzi,

Gerard Russell 13

27 Thomas G. Mitchell, When Peace Fails: Lessons from Belfast for the Middle East (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), pp. 31-32.28 Alan Cullison, Jay Solomon, and Matthew Rosenberg, “UN Envoy to Afghanistan Met With Taliban,” Wall Street Journal, January 29, 2010.29 UNAMA press release, “Top UN Human Rights Official in Afghanistan Calls for Repeal of Amnesty Law,” March 25, 2010.


Masadykov, and Page report that “According toanti-government elements and their representa-tives, ... UNAMA is the only relatively credibleorganisation that can be approached by them inAfghanistan.”30

By meeting them and relaying their views,UNAMA could play a dual role of showing that anegotiation process is possible, and building somedegree of trust on the Taliban side in UNAMA’sgood faith. It has the difficulty however thatUNAMA cannot deliver on the steps that wouldbuild true confidence in such a process. Pioneeringcontacts between the British government and theIRA, and between the Israeli government and thePLO, needed at some point to be bolstered byconfidence-building measures (the release ofprisoners, for example, or a temporary cessation ofhostilities).

The ICRC brokered an agreement with theTaliban for polio vaccinations to be carried outacross the south and east of Afghanistan; this mightperhaps serve as a model for UNAMA-coordinatedconfidence-building measures, although the ICRCis viewed significantly more favorably than theUnited Nations by the Taliban.31 In any event it willultimately be more sensible for initial contacts togive way to more formal negotiations, at whichpoint a new mechanism for engagement would beneeded, such as a UN envoy with a clear mandatefor the purpose.

The UN would doubtless have a guarantor orarbitrator role, especially in the event of anyagreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Thismight be addressed better through the creation of aseparate body rather than giving the task toUNAMA—or it would place the organization in thesame difficult place it found itself in 2009, if it mustadjudicate between the Afghan government and theTaliban while needing primarily to preserve arelationship with the former.

It can be an advocate for talks. It is already doingthis: the most senior official in Afghanistan, SRSGde Mistura, said at IPI in September that “there isonly one format for the next months. . . . It is

political dialogue, reconciliation, deal.” Afghans in the north of Afghanistan, and

especially those who supported the NorthernAlliance of anti-Taliban fighters in that region,clearly need reassurance: former intelligence chiefAmrullah Saleh told NPR on September 14, 2010,that “We think if we do not rise today, our rights—our very basic rights—in a deal with the Talibanwill be violated fundamentally.”31

Luckily, UNAMA has considerable expertise inthe north of Afghanistan, where the security threatis smaller. The Coalition and the rest of the interna-tional community have, relatively speaking,neglected these areas to focus on the war-tornsouth. UNAMA is the only international organiza-tion that has put full-time staff into Daykundiprovince, for example, with any kind of politicalrole; in several other provinces of northern andwestern Afghanistan, its understanding of localpolitics far exceeds that of other internationalactors. UNAMA can play a part using its knowledgeof these areas to provide a channel of communica-tion for their residents, by which they can be at leastpartly reassured that their interests will berespected in a reconciliation process.

For example, UNAMA could use its regionaloffices to host public discussions and debates onreconciliation. Its spokespersons or even the SRSGcould engage in discussion fora on Afghan televi-sion and radio—the Tolo TV channel broadcastsfree over the airwaves to fourteen cities inAfghanistan and many more throughout CentralAsia via satellite. UNAMA could also invite thosewho have participated in peace processes elsewherein the world, including Northern Ireland, or Mali(whose failed Tamanrasset peace agreement inJanuary 1991 might be an instructive example forAfghanistan32) to explain how those peaceagreements were reached, and (crucially) how theopposition and fear that those peace processesevoked were ultimately put to rest.

An option that UNAMA itself appears to haveneglected, though, is the last one: that it might playa wider role in resolving localized conflicts that

30 Masadykov, Giustozzi, and Page, “Negotiating with the Taliban.”31 Abdul Salam Zaeef praises the ICRC in his book My Life with the Taliban (London: Hurst, 2010). The Taliban have avoided attacking ICRC convoys and staff--in

contrast to recent attacks on UNAMA.32 A description of the Mali peace process can be found on the website of Conciliation Resources, available at www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/public-

participation/malis-peace-process.php .

www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/public-participation/malis-peace-process.php

www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/public-participation/malis-peace-process.php

could destabilize any broader agreement. Forexample, Kuchi/Hazara disputes over land rightshave led almost yearly to armed clashes betweenPashtuns (allegedly, with Taliban connections);disputes between tribes or individuals in southernAfghanistan over land and water rights havemotivated some to join the insurgency; a disputebetween Ismail Khan and Amanullah Khan inHerat province in 2002 exacerbated ethnic tensionsbetween Tajiks and Pashtuns in the province, andled Amanullah Khan by some reports to join forceswith the Taliban. Again, the geographic focus ofUNAMA equips it to play this part, while its limita-tions in the south and east of Afghanistan make afocus on direct contact with the Taliban andmediation more difficult.PROPOSALS FOR A WAY FORWARD

The United Nations should prepare itself, when themoment is ripe, to appoint a figure who can lead amediation effort between the Afghan governmentand the Taliban. By appointing a separate envoywith a dedicated mandate, it would preserveUNAMA’s existing relationship with the Afghangovernment and not put it at risk.

Before that moment comes, the UN can preparefor it by expanding the circle of expertise among itsown staff on the Taliban, especially in UNAMA(although they can draw to some extent on theexpertise of the Al Qaeda/Taliban Sanctions

Committee, based in New York). In order to do so,it will probably need to expand its staffing inPakistan (where it currently has one internationalstaff member) and in southern Afghanistan (whereits office in Kandahar has been greatly reduced).This will require funding, particularly for enhancedsecurity measures.

In the meantime, UNAMA can draw on itsunderrated strengths as an organization with apresence in the areas of Afghanistan that have beenneglected by ISAF and most other internationalplayers. If it wishes to build on those strengths, itcould do so by continuing its work to rebalanceitself politically, and reach out to those politicalleaders and elements of the public who are mostdoubtful about reconciliation—some of whom werealso on the losing side in the 2009 elections. Thisdoes not need to mean ceasing to advocate forreconciliation, but instead engaging in a moreactive form of public diplomacy to Afghanaudiences that are doubtful about the idea. A newstrategy of engagement would elicit morecredibility for UNAMA, so that it could persuadeskeptics to accept an agreement in the event thatone is reached. UNAMA would also then be in abetter position to engage impartially in localizedconflicts where those groups and individuals areinvolved. These small-scale resolutions will be a lesspublic but essential contribution to lasting peace.

Gerard Russell 15

BACKGROUND

Why we can still learn from the Balkans

The Security Council has overseen peacekeeping inthe Balkans for eighteen years, issuing more than200 resolutions and roughly 300 presidentialstatements on the region since 1991.1 The UN hasdeployed eight missions in the region, ranging fromthe UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR), whichpeaked at 38,600 troops in 1995, to its monitoringmission on the Prevlaka Peninsula (UNMOP),which involved just twenty-eight militaryobservers.

The Council has also approved the deployment ofNATO and European Union (EU) soldiers andpolice officers to Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH)and Kosovo, while the Organization for Securityand Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has beenactive across the region. Today, the Council’s role islimited to direct responsibility for the UN InterimAdministration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) andindirect oversight of the NATO, EU, and OSCEoperations still in the area.

Nonetheless, the Council’s engagement in theBalkans—and the many set-backs the UN experi-enced there—has clearly been decisive in shapingpeacekeeping more broadly. The UN’s approach to“protection,” still a source of considerable doctrinaland political debate, is rooted in UNPROFOR’sfailure to protect civilians in Bosnia in the early1990s. The organization’s attitude to longer-termpeacebuilding was heavily influenced by itsexecutive missions in Eastern Slavonia (1996-1998)and Kosovo (1999 onward). Its current emphasis onthe utility of “police-keeping”—involving both thedeployment of international police officers andFormed Police Units (FPUs) and building upcredible local police capacities—can be traced backto its Balkan operations. The Council’s decision tomandate the International Criminal Tribunal for

the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) created importantprecedents for future efforts to pursue justice inregions where UN peacekeepers are deployed, asource of contention in cases like Sudan.

Similarly, the UN’s increasing openness to hybridoperations in the last decade was conditioned byNATO-UN-EU cooperation in Bosnia, UN-OSCEcollaboration in Croatia and—above all—thecomplex multiorganizational mission mandated forKosovo by Security Council Resolution 1244 in1999. The UN now regularly enters into multidi-mensional operations in tandem with otherinternational organizations (as with the EU in Chadand NATO in Afghanistan). But it is arguable thatonly the UN-AU hybrid peacekeeping arrangementin Darfur (UNAMID) has approached the Kosovomodel in terms of its institutional complexity—andthe Darfur operation lacks the economic, justice,and political capacity-building dimensions thatdefined the Kosovo operation.

Any discussion of the Security Council’s role inoverseeing peacekeeping must thus include duereference to its previous engagement in the Balkans.Many ostensibly “new” ideas on the future of UNoperations turn out, on closer inspection, to bepermutations of options that were tested (and oftenfound wanting) in southeast Europe in the 1990s.What can’t we learn from the Balkans?

Three basic challenges complicate any effort todraw lessons for the Security Council from theBalkans. The first is that the sheer number andvariety of the institutional arrangements, acronymsand interorganizational mechanisms involved canmake it difficult to draw any hard and fastproposals for future deployments. The followingdiscussion is selective, citing examples that offeruseful lessons to the Council rather than trying tobe comprehensive. It inevitably sidesteps someimportant issues: in focusing on the Council’s

16

The Security Council and Peacekeeping in the Balkans,1992-2010

Richard Gowan and Daniel Korski*

* Richard Gowan is Associate Director at the NYU’s Center on International Cooperation. Daniel Korski is Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on ForeignRelations.

1 Susan Woodward, “The Security Council and the Wars in the Former Yugoslavia,” in The United Nations Security Council and War, edited by Vaughn Lowe, AdamRoberts, Jennifer Welsh, and Dominik Zaum (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 407.

management of peace operations, it also does notaddress the Council’s role in sanctions and thecreation on the International Criminal Tribunal forthe former Yugoslavia, both extremely importantaspects of regional conflict management.

The second, more substantial, challenge is thatthe Balkan missions were arguably “special” or“privileged” operations: the number of troops,police, and civilians devoted to them was unusuallyhigh, reflecting the region’s great strategic relevanceto at least four of the permanent five (P5) membersof the Security Council and, outside the UN, toNATO. It is, of course, striking that this level ofcommitment was still not sufficient to stop thehorrors of Sarajevo, Srebrenica, and Račak. Butwhen the NATO powers did bring sufficientresources to bear—as in their deployments toBosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999—they fieldedforces of a strength and size that the UN can rarelycall on elsewhere. Policy advice based on thesedeployments may simply be inapplicable in othertheaters as a result.

But the third challenge—and the hardest toresolve—concerns the limitations placed on theSecurity Council by the complex political andinstitutional context in which it made decisionsconcerning the Balkans from the early 1990sonward. From the beginning of the break-up ofYugoslavia, the UN has been only one institutionalactor among many trying to manage the fall-out—and the Security Council only one of a number ofdecision-making centers responsible for shapingmandating, and guiding international missions. Attimes, it has been peripheral to major decisions onthe region’s future.

The Yugoslav crisis was only placed on theSecurity Council agenda in 1991 after the EuropeanCommunity (EC, predecessor to the EU) and theConference on Security and Co-operation inEurope (CSCE, predecessor to the OSCE) had beenengaged in efforts to mediate the secession ofCroatia and Slovenia for some months.2 At mostcrucial political junctures in the wars and peace

processes that followed—be it the negotiation of theDayton Agreement3 on BiH in 1995, the fruitlessRambouillet talks on Kosovo in 1999, or the negoti-ations among members of the Contact Group onthe Balkans on Kosovo’s status in 2007-2008—theprimary locus for talks was not the SecurityCouncil.

This is significant in so far as recent studies ofpeacekeeping have persistently argued thatsuccessful operations require a strong politicalstrategy to guide them. Policy documents authoredin or around the UN tend to imply that the Councilshould generate such a strategy.4 The Balkan experi-ence is a reminder that, in spite of its unique legaland political status under the UN Charter, theCouncil is often a receiver rather than a maker ofpolitical strategies: it acts as a forum in whichmember states search for agreements that reflectpositions already negotiated in other fora.Sometimes, it has acted as a legitimizer foragreements made elsewhere. At others, it has been amore proactive adapter of political decisions intopeacekeeping mandates and concepts.

At times, decision makers in other fora canunderestimate the continuing relevance of theCouncil. In 2006-2007, for example, the EUundertook significant planning to prepare for atakeover of police and justice responsibilities fromUNMIK in Kosovo in the event of the province’sindependence. As Giovanni Grevi has shown, thisplanning assumed that the Council would backKosovo’s independence.5 This proved flawed whena more complex “status neutral” framework had tobe negotiated for the EU’s deployment in late 2008.Balkan lessons: protection, peacebuilding,and operational complexity

This paper does not set out to explore theunderlying political dynamics that have meant that,at times, the Security Council has been unable toagree on detailed political strategies forpeacekeeping in the Balkans. Instead it focuses onthe Council’s engagement with the operational

Richard Gowan and Daniel Korski 17

2 See Woodward, “The Security Council and the Wars in the Former Yugoslavia”; and Richard Caplan, Europe and the Recognition of the New States in Yugoslavia(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

3 The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina is variously known as the Dayton Agreement, Dayton Accords, Paris Protocol or Dayton-ParisAgreement. In this paper, it will be referred to as the Dayton Agreement.

4 See, for example, United Nations Departments of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO) and Field Support (UNDFS), “A New Partnership Agenda: Charting a NewHorizon for UN Peacekeeping,” New York, United Nations, July 2009, p. 9ff.

5 Giovanni Grevi, “EULEX Kosovo,” in European Security and Defence Policy: The First 10 Years (1999-2009), edited by Giovanni Grevi, Damien Helly, and DanielKeohane, 2009, p. 356-359

dimensions of UN and non-UN missions in threethematic areas: (i) protection of civilians in conflictsituations; (ii) the Council’s engagement with theevolving roles of missions in the years followingconflict; and (iii) frameworks for complex transfersof operational responsibility between the UN andother organizations.

The next section of this paper reflects on themandates and resource dimensions of civilianprotection and postconflict peacebuilding. It arguesthat, whereas the Council’s mandates forUNPROFOR in the early 1990s often involveddetailed and unachievable directions concerningcivilian protection, the Council’s decision to giveNATO and UNMIK broad postconflict mandates inBiH Kosovo also created complications. These casesraise the question of whether the Council can act asa “command post,” directing operations in detailthrough its mandates, or whether it should confineitself to setting broad political parameters for theSecretary-General and his representatives in thefield—a problem that was brought into focus onceagain in late 2008 during Council debates overwhen and how the UN should use force in theCongo. This section also notes the deterrent roleUN forces played in the former Yugoslav Republicof Macedonia (FYROM).

The third section of the paper addresses issues ofadaptation, reviewing how the Council oversawand facilitated transitions of responsibility inEastern Slavonia, BiH and Kosovo. We argue thatthese raise not only political questions about thedistribution of decision-making between theCouncil and other political fora, but alsooperational questions about how to sequence

transitions. Is it preferable to attempt an “on/off ”transition, by which one organization (usually theUN) hands over all its duties to another actor on asingle date, or are “phased transitions”—by whichduties transfer over time—preferable?

The paper concludes with brief recommenda-tions for other missions. It argues that the challengefor the Security Council in all phases of operationsis to adopt and adapt a strategic framework thatgives senior officials in the field the flexibility totake tactical decisions as necessary—and in turngives the Council flexibility in terms of how closelyit engages with reshaping peacekeeping operationsas they evolve over time.MANDATES AND RESOURCES: FROMPROTECTION TO PEACEBUILDING

1992-1995: an excess of mandates?

From the first years of peacekeeping in the Balkans,the Security Council directed UN forces to helpkeep civilians alive. Sadly, it struggled to answer thequestions of which civilians to protect and how todo so. From the initial deployment of UNPROFORto Croatia in 1992 (when peacekeepers weredirected to ensure that civilians in the Serb-majority UN Protected Areas should be “protectedfrom the fear of armed attack”) to the DaytonAgreement in 1995, the Council found itself repeat-edly drawing up new mandates and giving newinstructions to the peacekeepers on their protectionduties.6 A vicious circle resulted by which the UNalways reacted to threats to civilians as or after theyhad emerged, while the Council’s thinking onprotection came to center on various types of“deterrence” that were either inadequate or


UNPREDEP

In spite of the Council’s many difficulties with mandates, it did achieve an important innovation in its decisionto deploy an element of UNPROFOR to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). In 1995, withthe closure of UNPROFOR, this was replaced by an ongoing preventive deployment (UNPREDEP), whichoperated until 1999. The mission fulfilled its mandate successfully throughout its deployment, but violencebetween the Albanian and Macedonian communities emerged after its departure—the Kosovo war was animportant factor in this destabilization. This underlines the fact that, while a military preventive deploymentcan ensure short-term stability, it should be accompanied by political efforts to reduce or resolve longer-termsources of tension.

6 The phrase “protected from the fear of armed attack” was first used in paragraph 7 of the Vance Plan for a UN peacekeeping force, developed in the last quarter of1991.


7 This account draws on the history of UNPROFOR, available at www.un.org . 8 5,711 such flights were recorded between November 1992 and July 1995. See Michael O. Beale, Bombs over Bosnia: The Role of Airpower in Bosnia-Herzegovina

(Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1997), p. 21.9 United Nations, Report of the Security Council Mission Established Pursuant to Resolution 819 (1993), UN Doc. S/25700, April 30, 1993, pp. 6, 9, 11-12.10 Ibid., p. 8.11 See source at n.7 above.12 Shashi Tharoor, as quoted by Rupert Smith, “The Security Council and the Bosnian Conflict: A Practioner’s View,” in The United Nations Security Council and War,

edited by Lowe, Roberts, Welsh, and Zaum, p. 448.

unachievable with the resources the UN had.The reactive nature of the Security Council’s

engagement was displayed in its series of decisionsto expand UNPROFOR’s area of operations fromCroatia to BiH in 1992.7 That June, with theBosnian crisis gathering pace, the Council directedUNPROFOR to send personnel to Sarajevo airport.In August, it expanded this task to supportinghumanitarian convoys. Three months later, itmandated a “no-fly zone” over BiH and directedUNPROFOR to monitor it. In December, it author-ized the creation of a “Macedonia Command,”requested by FYROM’s government to monitor itsborders.

While this flurry of new mandates gaveUNPROFOR an increasing range of responsibili-ties—and the force was incrementally expandedduring the year—the Council still directed thepeacekeepers to use force only in self-defense. TheUN’s strategy continued to rest on helping humani-tarian agencies and keeping a watch on militarydevelopments, in addition to the imposition ofsanctions on the warring parties. It was only in1993 that the Council shifted toward approvingenforcement and deterrence.

From April, NATO aircraft began implementingthe Council’s mandate by patrolling BiH’s airspaceto enforce the no-fly zone—but this did not stopnearly 6,000 unauthorized helicopter flights takingplace.8 In March, the Council passed the first of aseries mandates declaring “safe areas” in BiH,beginning with Srebrenica, then believed to be indanger of imminent collapse following a BosnianSerb offensive. However, this initial mandate onlytasked UNPROFOR with helping demilitarize thetown, rather than giving directions or makingarrangements to protect it.

In this period, the Council took an astonishinglydirect role in devising UNPROFOR’s strategy. InApril 1993, a Security Council mission visitedSrebrenica (which the ambassadors called an “openjail”) and returned with highly specific advice on

the need to designate further safe areas, thepotential to monitor them with UNPROFOR’scurrent resources and the potential need to expandthe force. Although the mission concluded that safeareas, once declared, should be “enforced anddefended” it argued that UNPROFOR should notyet be mandated to pursue “military strike enforce-ment.”9 The ambassadors recognized that theycould be accused of “micro-managing”UNPROFOR.10

In Resolution 836 of June 4, 1993, the Councilfurther mandated UNPROFOR to “deter attacks”on the safe areas. While the Force Commander dulyreported that he would require an extra 34,000troops to fulfill this mandate reliably, the Secretary-General also suggested an additional 7,600 couldprovide “light-weight” deterrence.11 The Councilaccepted the latter option. UNPROFOR lacked thenumber of soldiers required to project strengtharound all the safe areas, and while the Councilasked it to “deter” the forces surrounding them, itexplicitly avoided using the words “defend” andeven “protect.”12 The disastrous consequences ofthese equivocations for Srebrenica in 1995 are wellknown.

In retrospect, it is striking that the Council notonly calibrated its language so disastrously, but alsofollowed a mandating process that demonstrated itslack of strategic vision. To declare the “safe areas”before mandating UNPROFOR to “deter attacks”and only then to decide on the force numbersnecessary to provide deterrence was arguablyprecisely the wrong order in which to act: theCouncil should have identified the necessary forcesand determined their responsibilities before callinganywhere “safe.”

This is, of course, an easy argument in retrospect:the Council was driven by a real and understand-able fear of Srebrenica’s fall in 1993. Its resolutionsbought time. But, because of their sequencing, theyappeared hollow from the get-go, and undoubtedlyplayed a role in encouraging the antagonists.

www.un.org

Moreover, the Council at no point reviewedUNPROFOR’s existing responsibilities in BiH,meaning that the force was increasinglyoverstretched. The Council was thus guilty of (i)giving dangerously detailed mandates; (ii) callingfor deterrence by the UN without grasping how itmight (not) work and without choosing toauthorize more than a minimum of forces toimplement it; and (iii) not pausing for a strategicreview of the situation. After the capture ofSrebrenica in 1995, as General Sir Rupert Smith hasnoted, “the Security Council was effectivelyprevented from taking any further strategicdecisions,” as Britain and France insisted that theircommanders on the ground should have de factoautonomy on when to use force (we note theimplications of this for the transition to a NATOforce in Section 3 below).13

This was a decisive moment not only forUNPROFOR—which proceeded to assert itself farmore aggressively than before—but also for theCouncil as a decision maker. Council ambassadorswould not repeat the experiment of the 1993mission to Bosnia, by which they insertedthemselves directly into operational decisionmaking. Indeed, from 1995 onward, the Councilbecame extremely detached from the militarydetails of operations.1995-1999: a shortage of politicaloversight?

From Srebrenica onward, the Council’s approach tomandate making was transformed, with UN resolu-tions only giving the broadest outlines of howtroops should act. In the case of the DaytonAgreement which ended the war in BiH, theCouncil’s role was confined to signing off on theagreement already negotiated by the warringparties—although this agreement had been reachedwith the assistance of four of the P5. In Resolution1301 of December 15, 1995, the Council welcomedDayton’s proposals for a NATO-ledImplementation Force (IFOR) and authorizedmember states to either contribute to the force or“to take all necessary measures, at the request of

IFOR, either in defense of IFOR or to assist theforce in carrying out its mission.” It was, however,explicit that IFOR would act on the direction of theNorth Atlantic Council and NATO Secretary-General, not the UN.

While IFOR was authorized under Dayton toenforce compliance with the agreement, it has beencriticized for its minimalist interpretation of thistask. NATO commanders on the ground, forexample, focused on a (successful) separation offorces within BiH and creating an “absence of war,”rather than laying the groundwork for enduringpeace.14 As Elizabeth Cousens and Charles Caternoted, IFOR and its successor SFOR initiallyfollowed a “force separation strategy” and did notfulfill secondary aspects of their Dayton powers,significantly reducing their leverage over politicalparties and paramilitaries.15 It is arguable that thisapproach was exacerbated by insufficient politicalpressure on the NATO commanders from above tofulfill all aspects of their mandate. The Council didnot, and politically speaking probably could not,take steps to change this.

While IFOR’s performance was largely NATO’sbusiness, the Security Council had direct authorityover the UN Transitional Authority in EasternSlavonia, launched in 1996 to manage the region fortwo years prior to its return to Croatia. The Councilmandated a military force of 5,000 personnel tofacilitate demilitarization “to contribute, by itspresence, to the maintenance of peace and securityin the region.” This phrase gave considerable leewayto the first Transitional Administrator, JacquesKlein, who used force against paramilitaries early inthe operation.16 Although the Council was briefedon developments regularly, military decision-making was once again devolved to the field.

The Council would give a similarly broadsecurity mandate to NATO’s Kosovo Force andUNMIK in Resolution 1244 in 1999. This included“deterring renewed hostilities” and ensuring thedeparture of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo, as wellas “establishing a secure environment” and“ensuring public safety and order” until the UN


13 Ibid., p. 449.14 The phrase was used by Admiral Leighton Smith, IFOR’s commander, in an interview with PBS, broadcast on December 20, 2006.15 Elizabeth M. Cousens and Charles K. Cater, Towards Peace in Bosnia: Implementing the Dayton Accords (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), p. 37ff. 16 See Lise Morjé Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil Wars (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 225ff. Klein’s freedom of maneuver was also rooted

in the vague language of the Erdut Agreement on Eastern Slavonia’s future.

could do so.Problems arose from this mandate during

KFOR’s deployment, as a number of NATO contin-gents initially focused on ensuring the departure ofYugoslav forces, to the exclusion of broader aspectsof public order. As a result, KFOR failed to actdecisively against a wave of attacks on Serbs andother minorities in the immediate aftermath of itsdeployment; and this effectively ruled out whatlittle chance existed of rapid progress toward apeaceful, multiethnic Kosovo. The UN could notdeploy Formed Police Units to handle the violencequickly. KFOR eventually resolved this dilemma bydeploying military police of its own. But theremaining Serb minority was now firmlyentrenched in its view that KFOR was the enemy. Ittook some time for many Serbs to recognize thatNATO troops also potentially guaranteed theirsecurity.

Nonetheless, the main difficulties inherent inResolution 1244 related to political rather thansecurity issues. The resolution foresaw a “finalsettlement” on the province’s status, but neitheroutlined a mechanism for negotiating this nor setany deadline for it. In the short term, this was amatter of political necessity. But as the resolutionwas, unusually, open-ended this permitted theSecretariat and Council to let the search for apolitical outcome to remain unresolved. In theyears following 1244’s approval, internationalattention was inevitably drawn to Afghanistan andIraq, while UNMIK settled on a formula of“standards before status”—which the SecurityCouncil approved—meaning Kosovo was expectedto achieve a high level of good governance.17 Thisprocess proved unsustainable after large-scaleAlbanian rioting in March 2004 took UNMIK andKFOR by surprise, damaging interethnic tensionsfurther.

After the riots, it was recognized that UNMIKhad frequently fallen into the trap of “happyreporting”: telling the Secretary-General andSecurity Council what the mission thought theywanted to hear.18 While Security Council ambassa-dors undertook one mission to Kosovo and Serbiain December 2002, there was a significant discon-

nect with the field. As in BiH, therefore, theimmediate postconflict settlement was followed bya damaging period of drift. The Council grantedbroad mandates to international forces but, perhapsas a result, did not pursue the political dimensionsof the postagreement peace settlement—in sharpcontrast to UNPROFOR’s numerous over-specificmandates.Mandating processes: what works when?

Our analysis suggests that the Security Council’sapproach to mandating and reviewing its missionsin the Balkans was counterproductive at differenttimes for different reasons. During the Bosnianwar, the Council was trapped in a self-defeatingcycle of giving UNPROFOR new, detailedmandates very frequently in reaction to events. Itshowed (i) lack of strategic vision; (ii) poorsequencing of its decisions; and (iii) weaknesses inUNPROFOR’s deliberations. During periods ofviolence where protecting civilians should be apriority, the Council can weaken the UN’s leadersin the field if it tries to act as a “command post”directing operations. The “safe areas” story alsohighlights the need to match mandates andresources effectively even where, as in BiH, amission is relatively well-equipped and well-resourced overall. In such circumstances, weconclude, the Council should lay out a vision forthe peacekeepers to follow—but not second-guesstheir decisions about tactical priorities.

By contrast, the BiH and Kosovo cases suggestthat the Council should beware giving too littleattention to peacekeeping operations once violencehas passed (or paused). The Council might nothave helped either case by generating a stream ofnew mandates. Given the political circumstances inboth cases, this was not an option. But greaterCouncil attention to (i) political developments onthe ground, (ii) the quality of the reporting fromthe field, and (iii) the opportunities for creatingdialogue would have been useful. This leads us backto the obstacles to creating any single UN “politicalstrategy” in the Balkans that we have alreadynoted—but BiH and Kosovo show the difficultiesthat arise when there is a loss of political attentionto a mission. As our next section shows, they also


17 See UNMIK, “Standards for Kosovo,” 2005, available at www.unmikonline.org/standards/ .18 See Richard Gowan, “Kosovo: In Search of a Public Order Strategy,” in Annual Review of Global Peace Operations 2006, edited by Ian Johnstone (Boulder, CO:

Lynne Rienner, 2006).

www.unmikonline.org/standards/

point to the complexities of interinstitutionalcooperation. INTERINSTITUTIONAL COOPERATIONAND ADAPTATION

As we have noted, multiple organizations—including the EC and CSCE—were involved inefforts to manage the collapse of Yugoslavia evenbefore the UN became engaged. They even hadsmall monitoring presences in the region beforeUNPROFOR deployed. Nonetheless, during theUNPROFOR era the UN and NATO emerged asthe primary institutional players in the Balkans—the former on the ground, the latter with air power.The Dayton Agreement altered the balance in theregion in favor of NATO, while also opening theway for a series of large-scale governance supportmissions from the OSCE and eventually the EU.

Resolution 1244 established a UN-EU-NATO-OSCE condominium in Kosovo, while the lastdecade has seen the EU take on responsibilitiesfrom the UN and NATO in BiH and—in part—from UNMIK in Kosovo. A detailed history ofinstitutional cooperation in the region would alsohave to take into account a number of non-institu-tionally specific multilateral groups that haveemerged to manage parts of the internationalpresence, such as the Peace ImplementationCouncil that oversees the High Representative inBIH, and the International Steering Group that hastaken a similar role for Kosovo.Phased transitions vs. on/off transitions

In this section, we focus on just one importantaspect of interinstitutional cooperation in theBalkans: how the Security Council and otherinternational fora have engaged in adapting theiroperations and orchestrating transitions betweenorganizations. In this context, there have been fournotable phases of “institutional transition” in theBalkans:

• 1995: the transition from UNPROFOR to thepost-Dayton international presence, centeringon IFOR and a UN police and civilianpresence in BiH.

• 1998: the transition from UNTAES to OSCEpolice and civilian monitoring in EasternSlavonia.

• 2002-2004: the replacement of the UN policepresence and IFOR’s successor, SFOR, in

Bosnia by an EU Police Mission and an EUForce (Althea).

• 2008: the reconfiguration of UNMIK anddeployment of an EU Rule of Law Mission(EULEX) and EU Special Representative inKosovo.

Although all peacekeeping transitions betweeninternational organizations involve differentmodalities, they can roughly be divided into twogroups: (i) “phased transitions,” in which theinternational presence is adapted over time and (ii)“on-off transitions,” in which the institutionstransfer their responsibilities in full on a given date.This distinction is, of course, mildly misleading: an“on-off ” transition requires preparation andplanning, while a phased transition requires harddeadlines. Nonetheless, we can identify a clear splitbetween these two models in the Balkan cases listedabove.

The transition from UNPROFOR to IFOR andthe UN police/civilian presence in BiH in 1995 is agood example of a phased transition. In the secondhalf of 1995, UNPROFOR took an assertiveposture, using force more readily than previously.From October to December 1995, it monitored aceasefire across BiH in anticipation of a transitionto IFOR. UNPROFOR thus managed the securitysituation while the Dayton Agreement washammered out; but, as we have noted, the SecurityCouncil’s role was reduced to a formal one in thisperiod, with UNPROFOR’s commanders enjoyingbroad freedom of action. The UN did, however,play a helpful secondary role by deploying anInternational Police Task Force (IPTF) as part ofthe residual UN Mission in Bosnia andHerzegovina (UNMIBH) that partially addressedthe “policing gap” created by IFOR’s militaryposture.

By contrast, the Council and Secretary-Generaltook a more active role in shaping the internationalpresence in Eastern Slavonia after the closure ofUNTAES in January 1998. A month before the endof the UNTAES mandate, the Council approved afollow-on UN Civilian Police Support Group(UNPSG) to monitor the region for nine monthsafter the main peacekeeping force departed. InFebruary 1998, the Council issued a presidentialstatement encouraging the police monitors to workclosely with the OSCE, which began to plan to take


over policing responsibilities that October.19 Thedetails of this transition were worked out through ajoint steering group in the field, and the transferwent smoothly, with the OSCE Mission initiallycarrying on all tasks that the UNPSG hadundertaken. Sixty UN personnel switched to theOSCE—a successful phased transition.

This case compares positively with the transfer ofpolice responsibilities from the UN to the EU at theend of 2002. This was intended to be an on/offtransition, with the EU replacing the UN’s IPTF onJanuary 1, 2003. This switch was stipulated in aSecurity Council mandate of April 2002, and theUN appointed a Police Commissioner for IPTFwho was also designated as the first EUCommissioner—he also oversaw a pre-deploymentEU planning cell in Sarajevo from July 2002, asignificant additional burden.

The transition was complicated by the fact thatthe EU wanted a much more limited role than theUN, with no residual executive mandate. Although120 UN personnel were re-hatted as EU staff, therewas no system for transmitting documents onongoing issues between the two missions. Many ofIPTF’s programs were wound up in short order—often being declared “successful” for the sake ofconvenience—while the EU’s own plans were stillincomplete on the transition date. Although theon/off transition went ahead, the EU Police Mission(EUPM) stumbled, receiving widespreadcriticism.20

Much of the blame for this mishandled transitionattaches to those who managed it in the field, butthe Security Council and EU Council were arguablyat fault for approving it in advance and failing tomonitor operational progress in the second half of2002. Whereas the creation of the UNPSG created asuccessful bridge between UNTAES and the OSCEin Eastern Slavonia, allowing operational experi-ence and knowledge to pass between the twoorganizations, the on/off switch in Bosnia provedan operational error.

When planning for a transition from UNMIK tothe EU in Kosovo in 2006-2007, UN and EUplanners projected a four-month period duringwhich EU police would deploy while UNMIK

remained in place—followed by an on/off switch toEuropean responsibility. This was deliberatelydesigned to avoid the mistakes made in BiH, butwas worked out in the field without strategicguidance from the Security Council. After Kosovo’sunilateral declaration of independence in February2008, there was a period of uncertainty duringwhich an initial batch of EU personnel worked withUNMIK while waiting to see what terms the mainEuropean police presence could deploy under. Inlate 2008 and early 2009, the EU deployed alongsidea much-reduced UNMIK. Although the transitiontook much longer than expected, it is arguable thatthis had significant operational benefits. The EUhad time to iron significant gaps in its pre-deploy-ment planning and cooperated with the UN ingaining access to Serb-ethnicity areas. Rather thana relatively rapid on/off transition, the uncertaintyover Kosovo permitted a more gradual phasedapproach.Managing transitions

The Balkans thus provides examples of a variety ofinterinstitutional transitions, typically associatedwith different regions’ progress toward sustainablepeace. These examples suggest that, where possible,phased transitions are considerably more effectivethan on/off switches of authority. As the EasternSlavonia case shows, the Council can create thepolitical and operational framework for a phasedapproach through mandating short-term“bridging” missions to manage the transitionalphase. This does not mean that the Council shouldtake on “command post” responsibilities for thedetails of a transition—it can, however, ensure thatthere are enough opportunities for joint transitionplanning.RECOMMENDATIONS

As we noted at the outset, the political andoperational conditions that prevailed in the Balkansover the last eighteen years are unlikely to apply inmany future cases facing the Council. The UN’sexperiences in the region do not provide simplemodels for future deployments. But generic lessonscan be derived from the missions we havedescribed:


19 This account draws on the accounts of UNPSG, available at www.un.org , and the OSCE Mission to Croatia, available at www.osce.org . 20 See Michael Merlinger, “EUPM (Bosnia and Herzegovina),” in European Security and Defence Policy: The First 10 Years (1999-2009), edited by Grevi, Helly, and

Keohane, pp. 161-171.

www.osce.org

www.un.org

• The Council must avoid reactive mandating incases where missions face significant violence.Rather than trying to micro-manageoperations by giving them new mandates inresponse to events—as in BiH—the Councilshould ensure that initial mandates containclear political direction for UN officials in thefield on the use of military and police. Wherenecessary, the Council should back up thebroad language in its mandates with exchangesof letters with the Secretary-General orpresidential statements giving guidance onthese issues. These communications naturallyneed to be developed with troop contributors.

• Specifically, the Council must ensure that ithas reliable military advice prior to directingmissions to “deter” or “protect”—rather thansetting these goals and then asking what isrequired, as it did in BiH. While the UN’smilitary planning staff has been expandedsignificantly, the Council should ensure thatthe Secretariat can provide emergency contin-gency planning at short notice in crises.

• While the Council should recall that preven-tive deployments—such as that to FYROM—are a tool in its arsenal, it must note that amilitary deployment in these cases is notsufficient to ensure peace. Political engage-ment with potential sources of conflict is alsorequired. The Council should investigate therange of preventive-mission models—including political, military, and police

options.• The Council should recognize the need for

close political engagement in the developmentof missions in immediate postconflict environ-ments—a problem in both BiH and Kosovo. Itis important that the Council ensure that thepolitical reporting it is receiving is notmisleadingly optimistic, and that it isinformed of political openings as they arise.Council missions should visit countriesemerging from conflict early during apeacekeeping operation—within six to twelvemonths of its deployment, security conditionspermitting. The Council should commissionindependent analyses of political trends inmission areas to compare with reporting fromoperations, to ensure it is accurately and fullyinformed.

• The Council—which has made considerableprogress in recent years in mandatingpeacebuilding offices to manage thedrawdown of large peace operations—shouldinvestigate potential transitional supportmissions to manage transfers of responsibilityto other international and regional organiza-tions. The model of UNPSG in EasternSlavonia—a mission charged with bridgingfrom a large UN peacekeeping force toanother organization’s presence—is a usefulone for planning future phased transitions ofresponsibility elsewhere.


INTRODUCTION

The interconnections among peacemaking,peacekeeping, and peacebuilding have beenrecognized as one of the key aspects of thesuccessful return to stability in the Great Lakes ofAfrica by both the parties to conflicts and thoseinternational partners supporting peace processes.This was clearly illustrated by the agreementsnegotiated and signed respectively in Arusha(Burundi, 2001), Lusaka and Pretoria (theDemocratic Republic of the Congo, 1998, 2003), andJuba (the Lord’s Resistance Army, not signed, 2008),which covered a whole range of peacekeeping andpeacebuilding issues. These included ceasefireagreements, foreign-troop withdrawal, armyintegration, militia disarmament, and power-sharing, as well as radical changes in economic andpolitical governance, security-sector reform, repara-tions for victims, justice and reconciliation, interalia. The agreements showed a willingness toaddress both the short-term requirements of puttingan end to violence, as well as medium- and long-term structural institutional reforms to effectivelydeal with root causes of conflict.

Similarly, the establishment of integratedmissions in Burundi and the Congo—which havebrought together the leadership of peacekeepingoperations and UN agencies, and are mandated bythe Security Council to fulfill what would tradition-ally be considered as both peacekeeping andpeacebuilding mandates—is another acknowledge-ment of this strong interconnection. The recogni-tion of this interconnection is thus less a problemthan drawing the related consequences inoperational terms, producing the required politicalstrategies (which should be setting the prioritiesand the sequencing of activities on multiplepeacebuilding fronts) and establishing adequateplanning processes. Thereafter, implementing such

strategies and laying sustainable foundations forprotection of civilians, governance reforms, andearly economic recovery become the mostimportant challenges.

Implementing a peace agreement is an arduouspolitical process that requires leadership,coherence, and efficiency from the internationalpartners involved, and above all, the appropriatemobilization of political leverage when needed. Bysupporting governance reforms, identifying thosewho are responsible for ceasefire violations, orcontributing to the building of new institutions, theUN and other actors influence power dynamics andpower relations and thus necessarily meet resist-ance. Their intentions are questioned, and they areaccused of partisanship, regardless of the nationalactors’ early commitments to peace, which theyoften made under short-term pressure.

The fundamentally political nature of peace -keeping and peacebuilding thus makes theseprocesses vulnerable to shifts in power dynamics,the changing strategies of national actors, and a lackof commitment to move forward. Peacekeeping andpeacebuilding therefore also demand political andsometimes operational military risk-taking, arequirement for which the UN system is probablythe least prepared and to which it is the mostinstinctively averse. Peacebuilding is hence often amessy and confused process, necessitating flexibilityand a degree of ad hoc political management. Theimperative of protecting civilians and avoiding theperpetrating or repetition of atrocity crimes, willoften require robust political or military engage-ment at times of crises, and will command that themilitary means immediately available, and effectivepolitical initiatives, be given priority over anestablished division of labor between UN institu-tions and/or regional organizations dedicated topeacekeeping and peace building.1

25

The Great Lakes of Africa(Burundi, the DRC, and the LRA-affected Areas)

François Grignon*

* François Grignon was until June 15, 2010, the International Crisis Group’s Africa Program Director.1 Hence, when the UN Mission in the Congo (MONUC) lost credibility or leverage, or simply did not have the means and ability to successfully manage a crisis

situation, other actors with the required leverage had to be called in. This occurred with the European Artemis operation deployment in northeastern Congo, abridging facility deployed in Bunia from June to September 2003, to give the UN time to generate and deploy additional troops and to manage a situation which hadbecome catastrophic. The appointment in November 2008 of President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Benjamin Mkapa as joint UN/regional envoys for EasternDRC also followed the same logic, and contributed to bringing the North Kivu crisis under control.

In the end, these processes are therefore neitherlinear nor easily subjected to a discrete division oflabor among UN institutions, or between the UNand regional organizations. What might work inone country will probably not be easily replicated inanother, each having its own specific conflictconfiguration, history, and political dynamics. Theobjective of this paper is nevertheless to offer somereflections on the challenges of implementing peaceagreements in the Great Lakes of Africa, andlessons learned for the UN Security Council tobetter plan, prepare, and coordinate its activitieswith the other peacekeeping and peacebuildingactors, notwithstanding that ad hoc high-levelpolitical engagement often remains necessary forsuccessful implementations of peace agreements,both in routine situations and at times of crisis.2

The Great Lakes peacebuilding experience showsthat the peace-process political calendar largelydetermines the ability of international and regionalactors to play a peacebuilding role. Within thatcalendar, the signature of peace agreements and theholding of national general elections representturning points. Before elections and during the“transition” periods after the signing of peaceagreements, the UN and other international andregional actors will often have the authority andlegitimacy to set the peacebuilding agenda in anunprecedented way. After national elections, whena national government has been elected and is ofteneager to regain the full extent of its sovereignty, thisability shrinks dramatically, requiring a renegotia-tion of the international intervention’s actual terms,around the drawdown of a peace operation. Thispaper will present insights on the interconnectionsamong peacemaking, peacekeeping, andpeacebuilding during these three phases of peaceprocesses. PEACE NEGOTIATIONS: PLANNINGAND PREPARING TRANSITIONS

Peace negotiations are the stage when all parties toa conflict usually agree to extensively review theirinterpretations of the root causes and history of theconflict, and what is required to provide for short-,mid-, and long-term solutions. This is also theopportunity not just to involve the actual parties to

a conflict, but also civil-society representatives andother political and socioeconomic actors, whoseinvolvement might not have an immediate effect onending the violence, but are critical for sustainablepeacebuilding and early recovery. Evaluating Peace-Agreement Strengthsand Weaknesses

Inclusivity

In this respect, the three Great Lakes peaceprocesses did provide various degrees of consulta-tion with civil-society representatives andeconomic actors, whose role in the postconflictearly recovery and peacebuilding strategies isacknowledged. Peace negotiations are hence acritical moment to reflect on the interconnectionsamong peacemaking, peacekeeping, andpeacebuilding and should ideally provide baselinedocuments evaluating the characteristics ofsuccessful peace processes.

The Arusha, Lusaka, and Juba processes providedsuch opportunities. The Arusha peace negotiationson Burundi provided a thorough review of thecountry’s crisis of governance and the trauma thatstarted to develop in the immediate postindepen-dence period. The negotiations dealt with politicaland security issues, socioeconomic grievances, therequirements of reconciliation, and the resettle-ment of refugees mostly from Tanzania.

The Lusaka negotiations, for their part, producedboth a ceasefire agreement and a framework for theresolution of two of the three intertwineddimensions of the Congo conflict—i.e., (1) thepresence of foreign armed groups in eastern DRCand occupation of the eastern part of the country byRwandan and Ugandan troops; and (2) the crisis ofgovernance that led to state collapse in the Congo.Destined to produce a new political dispensationfor the country, the 2002 Sun City negotiations gavea unique opportunity to Congolese civil society andothers to air their views on key aspects of theCongo’s governance crisis, and revive in particularsome of the recommendations of the NationalConference of the early 1990s, which wereultimately included in the 2005 constitution.

The Juba talks, which lasted almost two years,


2 Political engagement is often necessary by Council members and regional power-brokers, but also by the UN leadership on the ground. SRSGs without strategicpolitical understanding of their mandates, and who see their role as servicing host governments rather than the fulfilling peacemaking, peacekeeping, orpeacebuilding requirements of the situations they have to work in, are unlikely to succeed in implementing their mandates.

François Grignon 27

also produced a fairly comprehensive review of theenvironment that had led to the Lord’s ResistanceArmy (LRA) insurgency, and gave multipleopportunities to Acholi delegations to raise issuesof concern, even though the LRA cannot becredited at any moment of its history with being achampion of Acholi rights in Northern Uganda. Core Deficiencies

Yet peace agreements may also have somestructural weaknesses that reduce their ability toprovide the required solutions and processes forsuccessful peacemaking and peacebuilding. TheLusaka peace process, for instance, and the negoti-ations that took place successively in Addis Ababa,Gaborone, Sun City, and Pretoria between 2001 and2003 never successfully addressed the political andoperational requirements of proper security-sectorreform in the Congo, which was central to thesustainable stabilization of the country, having beena source of conflict since the early 1960s. The thirddimension of the Congo war—intercommunalconflict dynamics in the Kivus—did not benefitfrom sufficient attention from negotiators orinternational partners, and was largely ignored.

Unsurprisingly, the shortcomings of the Sun Cityagreements on both SSR and the resolution of localconflicts started to haunt the Congolese transitionas early as October 2003. At that time, LaurentNkunda and Jules Mutebutsi from the thenRassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie-Goma (RCD Goma) rejected the transitionalauthority in Kinshasa as well as the newlyappointed representatives of the transitionalinstitutions in the Kivus and the army. The effect ofall of this was to realize the fears of the North andSouth Kivu Tutsi minorities and legitimize a newinsurrection. These core shortcomings of thePretoria negotiations still undermine the Congopeace process today and have contributed tomultiple crises: February 2004, June 2004,September-October 2004, February 2007, June2007, and September-October 2009, inter alia.

Lastly, although the Juba talks did represent oneof the most significant attempts to settle the LRAconflict through detailed negotiations, a review ofthe agreements reveals that insufficient attentionwas paid to the operationalization of the LRAdisarmament strategy and guarantees for Kony andhis men. Legitimate doubts have always existed

about Kony’s commitment to the talks, but aprocess which did not address, for instance, therequirements of Sudanese-combatant disarma-ment, or guarantee the presence of a third-partyindependent force to supervise the disarmamentoperations had little chance to succeed. Theseshortcomings contributed to the collapse of theprocess when Kony refused to sign the Jubaagreements.

Such shortcomings are often linked to thebalance or imbalance of political and military forcesbetween opposing parties, specific vested interestsby the facilitators, or the perception that one partyor another has succeeded in imposing its owninterests on the direction of the talks. In Sun City,the DRC government and Joseph Kabilavehemently rejected any genuine negotiations onSSR, hoping to just absorb rebel groups within theirown military structures. The attempt to resolvelocal conflicts in the Kivus was also perceived as aTutsi ploy to get special treatment and thus wasrejected. In Juba, Government of Southern SudanVice President Dr. Riek Machar, was uncomfortablebringing to light the Sudanese chapter of the LRAhistory, in which he had been personally involved.Yet, when such core issues remain unaddressed,these gaps end up undermining the entirepeacemaking effort.The Need for Early ComprehensivePolitical Strategies

In part, the solution to these problems lies in theearly formulation of political strategies for peace-agreement implementation by DPA and DPKO andthe definition of the overarching political objectivesin this context. Such strategies would need toreview the strengths and weaknesses of peaceagreements, clarify their end-states, and suggestappropriate complementary mechanisms toreinforce peace processes, where these are criticallylacking.

If a political strategy can be produced withinthree months of the signature of peace agreementsand presented to the UN Security Council so thatan adequate mandate is developed for the deploy-ment or expansion of a peace operation, themission itself will be able to use such a strategy as aroadmap to determine its priorities and actionplans, and compensate for the weaknesses of thenegotiated frameworks. With a political strategy


defined early on, the mission will also be at reducedrisk of being permanently reactive, in crisis-management mode, and behind the curve of events.

The signing of peace agreements represents a keystrategic moment for the production of suchoverarching peacebuilding political strategies,defining the commonly agreed end-state of a peaceprocess and its key stages. The mandates given bythe Council to peace operations are tools critical tosupporting the implementation of such compre-hensive approaches to peacebuilding, taking intoconsideration the possible limitations of peaceagreements. Whereas it had been left aside by theSun City and Pretoria agreements, coordination ofSSR should have been at the center of MONUC’smandate, and political pressure should have beenapplied on the parties by the Security Council toaccept a fundamental compromise for thereconstruction of the Congolese army from theearly days of the transition.

Such political strategies can similarly helpdetermine which tool should be used to reach eachpeacebuilding objective, define the priorities, andarticulate the adequate sequencing in view of thenegotiated calendar of peace-agreement implemen-tation and related institutional reforms during thetransition. Adequate funding and resourcing canthen be found for the different institutions involvedin peacebuilding tasks, thus avoiding glaringshortcomings.

Such strategies should be discussed with theparties to obtain their buy-in, but the finalization ofthe strategy should not hinge on the parties’endorsement. Synergies would also need to befound among donors, IFIs, and other UN agencies,since early recovery activities often have to startimmediately after a peace agreement has beensigned. Peacebuilding efforts in Ituri have shownthat success is often driven by the hope provided toa traumatized population by the rehabilitation ofbasic infrastructures—including educational facili-ties and health centers—and the investment inlabor-intensive projects leading to large-scale jobcreation.

Sustainable rebel demobilization both in Burundiand northeastern Congo have also shown that thechallenges of implementing disarmament, demobi-lization, and reintegration (DDR) strategies aremuch greater with the rehabilitation/reintegration

phase of the process, than with the demobilizationand disarmament stages, once political agreementhas been obtained. Delays in the mobilization anddisbursement of financial resources for reintegra-tion of former combatants or the rehabilitation ofbasic infrastructure and facilities in the areas theyoperate in can become a cause for rapid remobiliza-tion and rearmament and should therefore beavoided by early planning and consultations onearly-recovery priorities with bilateral and multilat-eral donors.

Finally, such plans/strategies would have to beconsidered as a live document benefitting fromannual review ahead of mandate renewal, so as totake into account progress on implementation orlack thereof. They could also address the comple-mentary dynamics at national, local, and regionallevels of the conflicts, and include a division oflabor between UN and regional actors based oneach other’s respective comparative advantages.DURING TRANSITIONS: POWER-SHARING AGREEMENTS AND THEIRCONSEQUENCES

Both the DRC and Burundi saw similar patternsduring their respective transitions: power-sharingagreements led to increased corruption and freneticfinancial accumulation from the parties, sincestealing government resources could be done withimpunity and was perceived as both a peacedividend and a requirement for winning elections.Similarly, beneficiaries of the power-sharingagreements started to renege on key reforms agreedto during the talks, both to sustain their impunityafter the transition and to prevent institutionalchanges that might shift the newly found balance ofpolitical and security forces.Entrenched Impunity

Both the DRC and Burundi transitions sufferedfrom the entrenched impunity of the beneficiariesof the power-sharing agreements. Because neitherthe Lusaka nor Arusha negotiations succeeded inproperly addressing issues related to justice andreconciliation, illegal exploitation of naturalresources, and more general economic-governanceissues (signatories of the peace agreementssucceeded in paying only lip service to these issues,and often only agreed to provisions under interna-tional and national civil-society pressure), theyboth largely undermined any genuine effort to see


these issues addressed during their respectivetransitions.

The truth, justice, and reconciliation commissionwas made irrelevant from the beginning of the DRCtransition by the appointment of likely targets ofprosecutions within its ranks. The anticorruptioncommission was never given the legal authority orresources needed to fulfill its mandate. In Burundi,the issue of justice and reparations for the crimescommitted since independence was consistentlyand systematically ignored by the politicalestablishment, which had everything to lose inengaging on these issues. Some members of theinternational community (EU Commissioner LouisMichel, for instance) even openly campaignedagainst the establishment of any accountabilitymechanism during and even after the transition, inthe name of stability, and so as to preserve theparties political goodwill in support of the organi-zation of national elections.

Regardless of successes with the establishment oftransitional-justice mechanisms in other parts ofthe world, there was no international support forthose in the Great Lakes region, and impunityremained largely entrenched for all the crimescommitted during both the conflicts and the transi-tions. In the Congo, the intervention of theInternational Criminal Court was welcome toaddress the crimes committed in Ituri. But thishappened only because the Ituri armed-groupleaders were not party to the national power-sharing agreement and represented politicalconstituencies at the periphery of the Congo peaceprocess.3

Lastly, the UN panel reports on the illegalexploitation of national resources in the DRC alsorepresented missed opportunities to strengthennational and regional accountability mechanisms.Whereas the establishment of the panels of expertscontributed positively to balance the regionalpolitical environment, documenting andillustrating convincingly the economic stakesZimbabwe, Rwanda, or Uganda had in the Congoconflict, and the negative impact these interests hadon the progress of the peace process, panelrecommendations—including sanctions regimes—

were hardly ever endorsed or supported by Counciland other UN member states, and did not lead tothe establishment of the adequate accountabilitymechanisms against the national, regional, orinternational culprits of the illegal exploitation ofnational resources, except for a sanctions regimeagainst Rwanda’s Hutu rebels, or the LRA leader-ship.DDRRR4, Elections, and Protection ofCivilians: Unclear End-States

Peacebuilding during and after transitions hassimilarly faced difficulties because of unclear end-states contained in peace agreements, and aninternational lack of political will to address theend-states afterward. The disarmament of foreignarmed groups—Rwandan Hutu rebels and combat-ants of the Lord’s Resistance Army, for example—had been used by Rwanda and Uganda to legitimizemilitary interventions in the Congo since 1996.While this aim was legitimate both in political andsecurity terms in the early stages of the conflict, itwas less legitimate when used later on to provide auseful cover for occupying and sometimes illegallyexploiting mineral resources in the Congo, orpropping-up rebel groups actively involved in theillegal exploitation of natural resources in partner-ship with members of the political and militaryestablishments in these neighboring countries. Thispattern did not stop during the Congolese transi-tion.

Despite the repeated negotiations and talksbetween the Congolese government and itsneighbors over the past ten years, there is still noclear agreed definition of an end-state for thedisarmament of foreign armed groups present inthe Congo or any joint agreement stating clearlywhen and how this task will be considered, eventhough neither the Rwandan Hutu rebels nor theLRA have actually presented a security threat tothese countries in the past several years (since 2003for the Rwandan Hutu rebels, and 2005 for theLRA). The lack of a clear definition of the end-states and objectives pursued by the actors of theGreat Lakes peace processes, though, was not aproblem limited to regional actors.

Members of the International Committee for the

3 Having welcomed the ICC to investigate the crimes committed by the LRA in northern Uganda, the government of Uganda did not have to fear the possible judicialconsequences of its implications in the Ituri conflict.

4 Demobilization, disarmament, repatriation, resettlement, and reintegration.


Support of the DRC Transition (ICST, better knownby its French acronym, CIAT) often seemed topursue their own bilateral political agendas duringthe transition, regardless of the consequences forthe peace process. The election of Joseph Kabila,and the protection of his interests against those ofthe former rebel groups or unarmed politicalparties, became one of their key priorities at theexpense of a more balanced political approach thatwould have helped lay an early ground for SSR,transitional justice, or an improvement ineconomic governance. International support to theCongo transition was in the end marked by twopolitical goals: (1) political appeasement in theKivus and between the Congo and Rwanda (June2003-December 2004); and (2) the election ofJoseph Kabila under a new constitution (January2005-December 2007). Rarely were these two goalsclearly articulated with the requirements ofsuccessful and long-term peacebuilding in theregion, with unfortunate, dramatic consequencesfor Congolese civilians.

The peacebuilding environment in the Congoalso suffered from contradictions and conflictingpriorities in the modus operandi for protection ofcivilians. Throughout the Congolese transition andafterward, there was an overreliance on militaryand humanitarian strategies, and a deficiency ofpolitical engagement to support accountability forthe crimes committed. Whereas the Congolesearmy in its different manifestations has been identi-fied as the worst human-rights abuser in easternCongo since the withdrawal of foreign troops in2002 and 2003, the same largely unreformed andunaccountable Congolese army has remained thekey partner of protection-of-civilian strategies andthe recipient of training and financial aid, regard-less of its performance, or of the implementation ofany reforms.

MONUC was even encouraged by SecurityCouncil members in 2009 to engage in jointoperations against Rwandan Hutu rebels with theCongolese army, regardless of both the chances ofsuccess of these joint operations or their modusoperandi. This, de facto, made the UN mission anaccomplice to the crimes committed by the ForcesArmées de la République Démocratique du Congo(FARDC). The military component of the missionwas put between a rock and a hard place. Whereasit was primarily given the responsibility for protec-

tion of civilians, it was similarly asked to be themain actor of SSR, supporting and training theCongolese armed forces, who committed atrocitycrimes during successive military campaigns.

The exact protection-of-civilian operational aimand modus operandi were never clarified, and theirpolitical and judicial aspects never emphasized—allwhile dangerously shifting the responsibility ofprotection tasks from national governments to thepeacekeeping operation without necessarily theconsent/support of troop contributing countries, orproper revisions of their rules of engagement.Supporting Accountability ThroughInternational Consistency

Transitions represent the only real moment whenactors in a conflict and international partners arebound together to support the reforms and strate-gies for recovery from war. Since the nationalparties to a peace agreement are usually inclined todefault on their commitments and to try to gaineverything they can from the balance of politicaland security forces established by the transition,international partners—who often invest consider-able resources in peace processes—need to be theguarantors of peacebuilding strategies. This impliesfirst that member states of the Council who passresolutions remain committed to the spirit andletter of these resolutions as bilateral interlocutorsof the transitional governments concerned. Goalsof improved accountability and institutionalreforms contained in Security Council resolutionsmust be strongly supported politically by memberstates in the countries themselves.

This is all the more important when it conditionsthe efficiency of a protection-of-civilian strategy.Unless the Council and its members put pressureon national governments to guarantee the protec-tion of civilians, no military or humanitarianstrategy can succeed. Perpetrators of mass atrocitieshave to be prosecuted or at least suspended fromtheir positions regardless of their political rankingduring transitions, as it will be even more difficultto obtain basic measures of transitional justice oncea government has been elected. The Council shouldconsider accountability and transitional-justicemechanisms as core elements of peacebuilding andimpose them if necessary through both bilateraland multilateral pressure.

Similarly, when national and regional actors in a


conflict are unwilling or unable to define clear end-states for a transition, the Council should take theinitiative to do so. A discussion should have beenopened by the Council with the DRC, Uganda, andRwanda to determine clear end-states to thedisarmament of foreign armed groups in theCongo, and clear benchmarks allowing a joint anduncontroversial assessment of the progress made indoing so. Since democratization via nationalelections represents an end-state for most transi-tions, such elections should also become a keybenchmark for peacebuilding objectives such asSSR, vetting processes, and local reconciliationmechanisms. The establishment of sound reformprocesses should be negotiated as a requirement forthe establishment of credible electoral environ-ments, at a time when peace agreements andinternational engagement still provide sufficientleverage on the parties.POSTELECTORAL ENVIRONMENTS

Postelectoral environments in the Congo andBurundi have not been conducive to maintaininglarge foreign-military contingents. While electionsprovided both countries with legitimate govern-ments, both viewed the departure of peacekeepingoperations as a necessary step toward the fullrestoration of national sovereignty. Hence, theBurundian government demanded the downsizingof the UN mission in Burundi soon after its 2005elections, and the DRC government took the firstopportunity to do the same once the NationalCongress for the Defense of the People (CNDP)insurgency in the east appeared to have been putunder control, and most importantly, ahead of newpolls scheduled for 2011. A mission drawdownshould in any case be seen as an opportunity toreview international engagement to make it morestrategic and more effective, and to serve as amoment of political reengagement in pursuingdifficult reforms.Societal Challenges to the Building ofState Authority and Capacity

The rebuilding of state capacity and authority is along-term process that always includes both thephysical process of state reconstruction or even firstconstruction—as in some areas in the Congo forinstance, where it was probably never built—andthe social process of state formation. This wouldinclude the creation of specific categories of state

employees who would embrace bureaucraticnorms, rules, management procedures, andknowledge as their guiding work principles andethics, and the cultivation of a recognition by thebeneficiaries of state services that the creation anddelivery of public goods should follow normativerules and procedures and should not be privatized.

This dual process is usually difficult in agrarianeconomies dominated by barter and the personal-ization of all social relations, and made even morechallenging in conflict or postconflict environ-ments where the acute needs for basic services andcommodities transform state positions as a meansof resource extraction, encouraged by families andother social networks.

The rebuilding of state authority and legitimacy isalso challenged by the specific history of state-citizen relations in a specific country, and/or thelegacy of conflict. For instance, after independencein the Congo, state administration and the securityapparatus slowly became tools of predation forthose holding office who started to use violencewith systemic and systematic impunity.

This trend was reinforced during the war as newadministrators drawn from rebel groups exactedretribution against communities or individuals theyassumed to be supporting Kinshasa, and vice versa,as civil servants in government-dominated areasused the war effort as justification for additionalviolence and resource extraction from the popula-tion. As a result, for the past sixty years, Congolesecitizens have invested all their energies andingenuity in avoiding, escaping from, diluting, oropposing any kind of state authority, in all aspectsof their daily lives. In the Congo, state agents aregenerally considered to be at best a necessarynuisance and at worst a life-threatening curse.

This history, socioeconomic environment, andenduring set of practices make it particularlydifficult for UN and other actors to help restorestate authority. Not only are state agents—civilianor military—as well as elected officials psychologi-cally unprepared for the transformation required toestablish bureaucracies oriented toward publicservice, but neither is the population itself. Andwhen social networks can benefit from the officialpositions of some of their members, they willpressure them to use those positions to extract themaximum benefits.

There are, nevertheless, successful cases ofreform both in the security sector and in thecivilian administration which illustrate thatrebuilding institutions and changing state agents’practices is possible. The first Belgian-trainedintegrated brigade of the FARDC is an example ofsuch success. Not only did the brigade succeed inreestablishing state authority against Ituri militiasin 2004-2005, but the process that led to its creationcould have been repeated later as a model for otherintegration efforts, to create at least a nucleus of aCongolese army. Yet the initial success of thebrigade in Ituri was short-lived, as its operationswere not supported, salaries were not paid, andsenior commanders resorted to the same practicesthat led to the Congolese state’s collapse—lootingthe resources allocated to its operations, forexample.

Similar examples can be provided from thecustoms administration in Kinshasa, or the air-traffic administration. As long as impunity ismaintained at the senior levels of the state, politicalleaders of the country will not be held accountablefor squandering and stealing its resources, and nogenuine progress can be made on the restoration ofstate authority in the Congo. Further, all efforts attraining, increasing transparency, and improvingmanagement systems will deliver only very short-lived results.

The TPA—“training, pay, and account ability”—doctrine proposed by former USAID CongoDirector Tony Gambino is providing useful guidingprinciples for rebuilding state capacity andauthority in the provinces. Yet, unless it issupported with very significant political pressureand international commitment to fight impunity atthe top level of government, even these practicaland sensible steps to recreate the nucleus of acivilian and military administration in environ-ments devastated by civil war will not deliver signif-icant results. Technical support cannot producesustainable change without increased accounta-bility.Creating New Leverage, Sharing theBurden of Peace Consolidation

The transition from a peace operation to the use ofless-intrusive and less-visible peacebuilding instru-

ments is an opportunity to redesign the roadmapguiding international engagement with a govern-ment in a postconflict situation, with the aim ofconsolidating the gains and addressing the gapscreated by the peace process during its politicaltransition. This roadmap should be clear inoutlining short- to medium- and long-termobjectives, defining the respective roles and respon-sibilities of the government, the peace operation,the UN Security Council, and bilateral donors, IFIs,and other UN agencies, and realistic in its approachin light of current and expected resources andcapacities.

Distinctions should be made among thenecessary conditions for drawdown; the overallobjectives of the government and internationalpartners in building sustainable peace; and thecritical tasks required to achieve those objectives.Some of these tasks should remain the responsi-bility of the peacekeeping operation until thesecurity environment has sufficiently improved toallow the operation’s full withdrawal, while manyothers should be taken on by bilateral donors, IFIs,or other UN agencies. A peace operation cannotusually achieve the key objectives and necessaryconditions for its drawdown alone. In addition tothe government of DRC, the rest of the interna-tional community has an important role to play inmeeting key objectives for drawdown—improvedand sustainable security—and in sustainingengagement over the long-term peacebuildingprocess through the Security Council, UN agencies,and bilateral partnerships.

When a country reaches that phase, bilateral andmultilateral donors need to agree to use theirleverage on the host government, and to step uptheir role through a new and coordinated divisionof labor. For example, donors must rally their ownpolitical will to collectively and individually engagethe government of Congo on key reforms,including considering how to leverage both debtrelief and investment. The Security Council shouldhence take the lead in formulating a commonpeacebuilding agenda around the continuation ofefforts toward sustainable protection of civilians,key institutional and governance reforms (SSR,judiciary, exploitation of national resources), andthe continuation of the democratization agenda.5

5 One might argue that the Great Lakes contact group is a more appropriate forum to take the lead on this issue, but it has not succeeded in the past as anything otherthan an information-exchange mechanism, with no real policy coordination or policymaking ability.


CONCLUSION: REGIONALPEACEMAKING, INTERNATIONALPEACEKEEPING

The “African solutions for African problems”mantra supported by the African Union and itsmember states recommends a primarily conti -nental/regional engagement in peacemaking andpeacebuilding, before considering the interventionor involvement of any other actor.

The Great Lakes peace processes have to a largeextent shown the merits of this approach. TheBurundi peace process in particular was largelydriven by a regional initiative, and no actors otherthan the countries of the region (Uganda, Rwanda,Tanzania, and South Africa in particular) wouldhave been able to deliver similar results. It is theconstant pressure and support of the region for theBurundi peace process during and after the Arushanegotiations that, until today, have allowed itssuccess. Rwanda and Uganda’s engagement with theTutsi establishment in particular helped themaccept political compromise. South Africa andTanzania’s tireless efforts to bring the Hutu-dominated rebel groups on board with the Arushaframework were also key to its success. Had SouthAfrica not decided to take the risk and bear the costof deploying one battalion to Bujumbura immedi-ately after the signature of the Arusha agreement,the momentum for peace might have then beenderailed with catastrophic consequences for thecountry.

Yet, regional engagement is not always thesolution, either because of a lack of capacity, orbecause of the region’s own involvement in theconflict. Chaos unfolded in Ituri in March 2003after the withdrawal of Ugandan troops from theregion. Additional UN forces were required to

control the situation but could not be generated anddeployed in time to prevent mass atrocities. The EUthen stepped in to control Bunia’s airport and putthe militias on the defensive. The Ugandan army,which had been associated with the same militiasthat ransacked Bunia in April 2003, would havebeen ill-suited to intervene. Still in Congo,following Zambia’s initial facilitation of the peaceprocess, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africatook the lead in finalizing the inter-Congolesedialogue negotiations started by former Presidentof Botswana, Ketumile Masire.

The region took the lead in the mediation, buthad to work hand in hand with the UN for theexecution of peacekeeping and peacebuilding tasks.The division of labor between regional and interna-tional actors should be guided by prospects forsuccess, based on existing political leverage, capaci-ties, technical expertise, and the ability to deliverquick results. This is generally guided by thespecific characteristics of each peacekeeping/peacebuilding situation and cannot be predeter-mined. The Great Lakes experience has shown thatregional engagement was often best suited topeacemaking, but often lacked the capacity andresources for peacekeeping and peacebuilding.Even in Burundi, South Africa had considerableproblems sustaining its battalion in Bujumbura,and had to hand over to the UN when the missionneeded to support the organization of elections. Inthe case of ending the LRA insurgency, there is littledoubt that part of the solution will come from amobilization of efforts from the DRC, the CentralAfrican Republic, Southern Sudan, and Ugandaaround a joint strategy, with the technical andfinancial support of international partners on keyaspects of a tailor-made regional disarmamentstrategy.


1 This paper was circulated prior to the Security Council Istanbul retreat, June 25-26, 2010, in preparation for the discussion that followed.2 For a recent description of the complex peacebuilding environment, see Mats Berdal, Building Peace After War (London: IISS, 2009), pp. 29-94; and, for an outdated

linear representation of the life of a conflict, see Michael Lund, Preventing Violent Conflict (Washington, DC: USIP, 1996), p. 38.3 See Jake Sherman and Benjamin Tortolani, “Implications of Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in United Nations Mandates,” in Robust Peacekeeping: The Politics of

Force, edited by J. Nealin Parker (New York: CIC, 2009), p. 15.

The main objectives of the Istanbul Retreat are (1)to advance the Security Council’s continuingconsideration of the linkages among peacemaking,peacekeeping, and peacebuilding and, thus, (2) tofacilitate the formulation and implementation ofcoherent and integrated strategies for addressingsituations in flux. To kick off the discussion,lessons-learned papers will be presented on theexperiences of UN operations in Afghanistan, theBalkans, and the Great Lakes region of Africa. Thispaper highlights the following themes drawn fromthese distinct regional experiences:

1. Mandates: the process of mandate-making,consultations among partners, and thedevising of strategies;

2. Capacities: developing host-state capacitiesand properly resourcing missions (force-generation, police, and civilian capacity) as aresult of calculated, conservative, andintegrated needs assessments; and

3. Adaptation: how the Council adjustsmandates and strategy to meet changingconditions, how missions and the Councilcan better use benchmarks to mark progressand refine strategy, and how the UN can bemore proactive on the ground and theCouncil more agile and inclusive in itsconsultations and deliberations in New York.

Following the presentation of the regional papers,these themes will be addressed in succession at theretreat. To help focus the discussion, this compositepaper poses possible questions for each theme.INTRODUCTION

The representation of conflict as a linear phenom-enon that moves from crisis to violence to peacerarely conforms to reality.2 Similarly, peacemaking,peacekeeping, and peacebuilding do not necessarilyunfold as a linear progression from one “phase” ofactivities to another. Responses to armed conflict

often involve, as in Sudan today, the simultaneousengagement of diplomatic efforts to implementpeace agreements, robust peacekeeping to protectcivilians, and early-recovery activities to addressthe needs of devastated postconflict communities.Peace operations frequently have significantpeacebuilding components, while peacemakingoften proceeds concurrently with peacekeeping andpeacebuilding. Such complexity calls for an over -arching strategy behind which the internationalcommunity’s political, security, and developmentefforts can align.

At the same time, UN peacekeeping operationsmay have to perform as many as 300 individualfunctions that fall under more than twenty broadcategories, such as disarmament, demobilization,and reintegration (DDR), electoral assistance,peace-process management, human rightsmonitoring, security-sector reform, justice reform,and rule of law, among others.3 In the face of somany competing demands for time, attention, andresources, success depends on the articulation of anintegrated political strategy supported by thediverse tools of peacemaking, peacekeeping, andpeacebuilding, as well as on high degrees ofcoherence, coordination, capacity, and adaptabilityduring the implementation of the strategy. The goalshould be the development of a comprehensivestrategy that can be pursued with agility not only byUN member states, departments, and agencies, butalso by regional and subregional organizations, civilsociety, and the private sector. A sound commonstrategy should recognize both that securityprovides the foundation for development and thatdevelopment sustains security.MANDATES

The Security Council bears a dual responsibility:(1) to define clear and achievable mandates; and (2)to oversee their implementation. As the threeregional cases demonstrate, neither the negotiation

34

Composite Paper on Cross-Cutting Themes1

International Peace Institute

of sensible mandates with mutually supportiveconnections among peacemaking, peacekeeping,and peacebuilding components nor the sustainedoversight of their implementation in the face ofuncertainty and changing conditions is an easytask, especially for a collective political body.

Mandates, it is suggested, should reflect a well-articulated and broadly accepted understandingboth of the desired end state of a planned interven-tion and of the means and steps by which thosegoals can be achieved. They embody, therefore,aspirational and strategic elements, as well asoperational and tactical ones. When the mismatchbetween those two sets of elements is too large,problems in implementation are likely to ensue.Mandates that set overly ambitious goals or thatgenerate strategies and plans that are unrealistic canundermine the credibility of the mission and theUN, including the Council itself. Realistic end-stategoals, particularly if they are locally owned, offerthe prospect of a steady diminution of localdependency on the UN’s blue helmets and on thelarger international presence. There is a premium,therefore, on finding ways of incorporating widerconsultations with the Secretariat, with keypartners, and with the host government in theprocess of crafting and adjusting mandates. Amongthose that could usefully be consulted, dependingon the circumstances of each case, are troop- andpolice-contributing countries (TCCs and PCCs),the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC), regionaland subregional players, donors, and internationalfinancial institutions (IFIs).

As the three regional papers illustrate, the UNrelies on a distinct set of partners for the implemen-tation of each mandate; identifying them is an earlystep toward shaping a successful consultation andimplementation strategy. Buy-in may be requiredfrom security partners, such as the North AtlanticTreaty Organization (NATO) in Afghanistan andthe Balkans, and/or multilateral and bilateraldevelopment actors, such the European Union inthe Balkans or the World Bank in the African GreatLakes. Peacebuilding efforts in Ituri, DemocraticRepublic of the Congo (DRC), demonstrated theimportance of more traditional development activi-ties—such as rehabilitation of essential infrastruc-ture, service provision, and the creation of jobopportunities—to the overall success of themission. And as the case of the Great Lakes region

also illustrates, mandates should be drafted withdue consideration of the strengths and weaknessesof preexisting peace agreements in the region.

Tasks once associated with longer-termpeacebuilding efforts, such as security-sectorreform and strengthening the rule of law, haveemerged as core peacekeeping activities, closely tiedto the eventual withdrawal of a mission. This hasbeen the case in the DRC and Kosovo, whileNATO-led stabilization activities in Afghanistanappear to have embarked on a similar path. As suchefforts have become both more central and morecommonplace, mandates have become morecomplex and more nuanced. This, in turn, hasunderscored the value of setting clear priorities anddevising effective and realistic plans for implemen-tation. A number of observers have suggested thatthe growing length of mandates—in number ofwords and tasks—serves to limit, rather thanexpand, the initiative of mission personnel, asmission leaders increasingly view these mandates as“ceilings,” rather than “floors.”

Mandates, of course, usually address both whatneeds to be done and which entities are responsiblefor carrying out each task. Without this step,accountability is bound to suffer. This necessitates acommon understanding of institutional compara-tive advantages and of the appropriate division oflabor, at each step of the conflict, between the UNand other influential actors in the region. Makingsuch a differentiated strategy work requires thesustained political support of the Security Council,the host country, and other important players.Again, the importance of these dynamics ishighlighted in all three regional cases.

The discussion of mandates in Istanbul mightconsider the following questions, among others:

1. How can mandates facilitate the integrationof peacemaking, peacekeeping, andpeacebuilding tools?

2. What do the case studies tell us about howthe provisions of Chapter VIII of the Charterhave been implemented in each situation? Inparticular, how have the provisions ofArticles 52(2), 52(3), 53(1), and 54 fared inthese situations?

3. How can the Security Council ensure that theend-state goals are realistic, locally owned,and sustainable politically? What kinds of

International Peace Institute 35

provisions could help to discourage localdependency on the UN’s blue helmets andthe wider international presence?

4. How can the Security Council, thePeacebuilding Commission, regional arrange-ments, and the host government enhancetheir cooperation in this regard?

5. How can peacebuilding strategies for acountry or region best be developed andcoordinated among the UN, regional actors,IFIs, and the host country?

CAPACITIES

How to properly resource missions is a subject ofperennial debate at the UN. The General Assemblyhas broad budgetary authority under Article 17(1)of the Charter, and the Advisory Committee onAdministrative and Budgetary Questions(ACABQ) and the Fifth Committee play criticalroles in such matters. Sometimes, however, there isa disconnect between policy decisions in theSecurity Council and financial decisions in theGeneral Assembly. Different arrangements governbudgeting for peacekeeping missions versus specialpolitical missions, which can pose additionaldifficulties in planning transitions. Such discon-nects make it difficult to generate a sharedunderstanding of what capacities are needed or toconduct a careful, conservative, and sober assess-ment of these needs. Yet, as these cases show onceagain, the absence of adequate resources—be theytroops, police, civilian capacity, or assets andequipment—can frustrate the attainment ofimportant Council mandates. Lack of capable andreadily deployable civilian staff, reflected in danger-ously high vacancy rates in many places, is a partic-ularly glaring problem in today’s missions. As notedin the Secretary-General’s 2009 report onpeacebuilding in the immediate aftermath ofconflict, there is a pressing need for a morecoherent response by the UN system to providingknowledge, expertise, and experienced personnelwhere and when they are most needed.4

When resources are not available, missionmanagers have no choice but to adapt to limitationsin capacity on the ground. Inevitably, they have tomake decisions about how to utilize scarceresources. These decisions may involve trade-offs

among the multiple tasks they have been assignedby the Security Council, in essence amending themandate in practice if not in fact. As the case ofAfghanistan shows, mandates may need to beadjusted to reflect the lack of personnel and thechanging security context in which staff operate.Should capacity gaps persist, the Council—likemanagers in the field—may want to consider howbest to deploy or redeploy existing capacities. Thismight or might not entail a modification of theoriginal mandate. How such collective assessmentsare made, and on the basis of what information, isless clear.

In many situations, a prime determinant of thelevel, character, and duration of the internationalresources needed to achieve end-state goals is thecapacity—including, importantly, its legal andpolitical authority—of the host state. Governanceand institutional capacity are recognized drivers ofsustainable peace. In each of the three casesaddressed in the papers, the host state has been farfrom being able to exercise effective control over itsentire territory. In some cases, the mission becomesthe extension of state authority and capacity, suchas in Kosovo. In other cases, the UN’s legitimacy ischallenged, as in the DRC and Afghanistan, wherethe UN has been linked to government policies andactions over which it has little control.

To achieve maximal results in terms of advancingmission goals, the comparative advantages of theUN and its partners need to be both understoodand effectively leveraged. The mix is likely to varyfrom case to case, as the three lessons-learnedpapers suggest. Indeed, the case of the Great Lakesregion of Africa highlights the importance of adivision of labor among regional, subregional, andinternational actors, guided by the political context,by each organization’s available technical expertise,and by developments on the ground. The Burundipeace process, in particular, was largely driven byregional initiative, as few other actors could havedelivered similar results. At the same time, regionalengagement is not always the solution, due to lackof capacity or political will. The example of Ituri in2003 showed the limits of regional intervention, asthe UN, and later, the EU, had to step in after thewithdrawal of Ugandan troops. In every case,however, neighbors do matter, for good or ill.


4 United Nations General Assembly, Peacebuilding in the Immediate Aftermath of Conflict, UN Doc. A/63/881–S/2009/304 (June 11, 2009), para. 51-59.

Although partnerships are essential, a frankassessment of the capacity of regional andsubregional organizations is required. The GreatLakes experience has shown that regional engage-ment was often best suited to peacemaking, ratherthan peacekeeping or peacebuilding. In theBalkans, sustained regional engagement, for bothresource and political reasons, has been animportant factor, especially in peacebuildingefforts. But an extra political-security push byglobal actors was required to end the conflict. Ineach case, the actual division of labor should bedetermined by circumstances, which will evolveover time, not by predetermined templates.

Possible discussion questions include thefollowing:

1. How can the Council assess needs andexisting capacity in a careful, conservative,and sober way when first crafting mandates?How might it go about considering adjust-ments over time as needed?

2. What can be done to ensure that missionsreceive adequate resources—includingpersonnel and equipment—from the outset ofa mission and as the situation on the groundevolves?

3. What financial mechanisms are at thedisposal of policymakers in transition phases(such as when transitioning from apeacekeeping mission to a special politicalmission) or when adjustments to a mandateare required?

4. Which tasks are considered under theumbrella of assessed contributions and whichas voluntary contributions?

5. How can the Council (and its members) usethe tools at its (their) disposal to develophost-state capacity? How can an overdepen-dency on the international community beavoided?

6. How can the Council identify and leverageeach partner organization’s comparativeadvantage to accomplish mission goals?

ADAPTATION

The discussions above on mandates and capacities,as well as the analyses presented in the three casestudies, underscore two points. One, the links andoverlap among peacemaking, peacekeeping, and

peacebuilding add difficult layers of complexity todecision making and policymaking in the Council.Two, changing conditions on the ground and in thegeopolitical environment often demand that theCouncil be as agile as it is authoritative. All threeregional cases paint a picture of a Council thatstruggles to adapt to dynamic, evolving conditionson the ground, shifting host-country attitudes andcapacities, and an evolving mix of strategic andpolitical considerations. They also suggestrecurring weaknesses in the process of reassessingand adjusting strategy—and therefore mandates—when needed. While the Council usually seeks toinfluence both conditions on the ground and theattitudes of key players, its choices are shaped bythose factors as well. The result is an interactiveprocess of adaptation.

Transitions from peacekeeping to peacebuildingmissions, as well as mandate renewals, often offer ashort window of opportunity to redesign theroadmap for international engagement in acountry. Yet, the process of reconfiguring the UNpresence from one largely featuring peacekeepinginto one in which peacebuilding dimensions moveto the forefront still poses significant challenges.Lessons from the Balkans and Afghanistan suggestthat periods of transition may offer the Councilopportunities to consolidate gains and addressgaps. The timing of mandate renewals and ofperiods of transition, however, do not alwayscoincide. Nor is it evident that mandate renewalsare always treated as opportunities for sober andfrank assessments of the progress toward the end-state goals or for adjusting strategies and mandatesaccordingly.

Because peace operations often undertake arange of peacebuilding tasks, adaptation implies anongoing dialogue between the Security Council andthe PBC, the Secretariat, and engaged memberstates that are not on the Council. Moreover,because the UN is never the sole player and oftennot the primary one, improved means of communi-cation, consultation, and exchange of informationon specific cases need to be found with a range ofexternal actors, including civil society, as well. Inthe case of Afghanistan, for example, thorough andregular consultations between the Security Counciland NATO leadership could be considered inaddition to the in-the-field coordination betweenthe UN mission there (UNAMA) and the NATO-

International Peace Institute 37

led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).Adaptation also means improving the flexibility

of the mechanisms used to finance UN responses toarmed conflict. Designating an operation, apeacekeeping mission, a special political mission,or a peacebuilding mission has distinct financingimplications, even though the tasks and functionsof the different types of missions are often similar.Decisions on the form or title a mission takesshould be based on a comprehensive needs assess-ment, not on quirks in the UN’s financial rules andprocedures.

Possible discussion questions include thefollowing:

1. How can the Council monitor and assessdevelopments on the ground and maketimely adjustments as conditions change? Towhat extent can the UN Secretariat be helpfulin making such assessments and in consid-ering mid-course corrections?

2. How can mandate renewals and transitionsbe used as windows of opportunity toreassess and adjust strategy—and thereforemandates—based on evolving conditions onthe ground, shifting host-country attitudes,and other changes in the broaderstrategic/political environment?

2. Is the Security Council kept sufficientlyinformed of the capacities, plans, anddecisions of other actors in a given situation?Do Council members share information andassessments among themselves in asufficiently timely and candid manner?

4. How can communication, consultation, andexchange of information on specificsituations be enhanced among the Counciland other UN bodies, such as key Secretariat

departments and offices (e.g., DPKO, DFS,the Department of Political Affairs [DPA],the Office for the Coordination ofHumanitarian Affairs [OCHA], thePeacebuilding Support Office [PBSO], etc.)and the offices of the two HighCommissioners?

5. How can the Security Council work withnon-UN entities to develop regional andsubregional conflict management strategies?

6. Have reforms in the Council’s workingmethods already provided sufficient opportu-nities for such inputs? Are additional stepsneeded to enhance the Council’s agility andadaptability in addressing highly dynamicsituations over time?

* * *

Neither this composite paper nor any of the threecase studies offers an assessment of how theCouncil is doing or of its efforts to improve itsworking methods over the past decade and a half.As independent observers tend to, they offercommentary, with the benefit of hindsight, onwhere the Council could have done better in thepast, as well as suggestions about how it couldbetter prepare to face future crises. In voicing theirconstructive criticism, the papers also serve tosharpen our understanding of how complex anddemanding the work of the Council has become.Expectations have risen, even as the Council and itsmandated missions have taken on increasinglydifferentiated and varied tasks. Of the manydynamic elements noted in these papers, this is onethat surely should not be overlooked.


39

ANNEX

Statement by the President of the Security CouncilUN Doc. S/PRST/2010/18, September 23, 2010

At the 6389th meeting of the Security Council, held on 23 September 2010, in connection with the Council’sconsideration of the item entitled “Maintenance of international peace and security”, the President of theSecurity Council made the following statement on behalf of the Council:

“e Security Council reaffirms its primary responsibility under the Charter of the UnitedNations for the maintenance of international peace and security. e Council in this regardrecalls its resolutions and statements of its President in relation to preventive diplomacy,peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

“e Security Council recognizes the progress made in many regions of the world towardsbuilding a more peaceful and stable environment. e Council, however, acknowledges theevolving challenges and threats to international peace and security including armed conflicts,terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and small arms and light weapons,transnational organized crime, piracy, drug and human trafficking.

“e Security Council thus reaffirms that international peace and security now requires amore comprehensive and concerted approach. e Council also underlines the necessity toaddress the root causes of conflicts, taking into account that development, peace and securityand human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. To this end, the Council expressesits firm commitment to contribute to the enhancement of the effectiveness of the UnitedNations throughout the conflict cycle.

“e Security Council welcomes the considerable progress made in refining and strength-ening the United Nations preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping andpeacebuilding capabilities in recent years, and pledges to continue to contribute to the adapta-tion of these tools to changing circumstances. e Council also underlines that the relationshipbetween these tools is not always sequential and that it is necessary to use them in a compre-hensive, integrated and flexible manner.

“e Security Council stresses that the comprehensive and coherent use of preventivediplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding tools is important in creating theconditions for sustainable peace. e Council undertakes to provide the necessary politicalsupport to ensure this overarching objective.

“e Council also reiterates its strong support for the protection of civilians and reaffirmsits conviction that the protection of civilians in armed conflicts, particularly women andchildren, should be an important aspect of any comprehensive strategy to resolve conflicts. eCouncil further reiterates its opposition to impunity for serious violations of internationalhumanitarian law and human rights law.

“e Security Council calls upon Member States to resolve differences peacefully anddraws particular attention to the importance of preventive diplomacy as a cost-effective andefficient way of crisis management and conflict resolution. e Council encourages andreaffirms its support for endeavours aimed at enhancing the preventive capacities of theMember States, United Nations, regional and subregional organizations. e Council stresses,in particular, the importance of developing early warning, assessment, mediation and responsecapabilities of these actors, as well as ensuring a sound coordination among them.

“e Security Council pays tribute to the efforts undertaken by the Secretary-General inusing his good offices, his Representatives, Special Envoys, mediators, as well as by regionaland subregional organizations to help facilitate durable and comprehensive settlements, andundertakes to continue to support their work.

“e Security Council further commits to following closely existing and potential conflictsituations that may affect international peace and security, engaging with parties undertakingpreventive efforts, encouraging the steps taken to de-escalate tension and build confidence,supporting efforts aimed at mobilizing the necessary expertise and capabilities available in andto the United Nations. e Council also recognizes the importance of enhancing efforts,including coordination among bilateral and multilateral donors, to ensure predictable,coherent and timely financial support to optimize the use of preventive diplomacy tools.

“e Security Council underscores its commitment to continue to enhance the overalleffectiveness of United Nations peacekeeping. In this regard, the Council reiterates its supportto ongoing efforts such as those of the General Assembly and the UN Secretariat to bolster theeffectiveness and efficiency of UN peacekeeping and to upgrade the United Nations capacityfor successful planning, establishment, deployment, conduct, monitoring and evaluation, aswell as transition and completion of peacekeeping operations, including those steps taken tospeed the deployment of experts in policing and rule of law. e Council in this regardwelcomes efforts by the UN Secretariat to advocate the development of partnerships among allstakeholders.

“e Security Council recognizes that peacekeeping operations have become an increas-ingly complex undertaking, requiring an overarching political strategy for each mission, adeterrent posture consistent with their mandate, strong civilian and military leadership,adequate resourcing, as well as experienced, trained and equipped military, police and civilianpersonnel, with the ability to communicate effectively with local populations. e Council alsoacknowledges the need for improved military expertise and expresses in that context itsintention to continue to look into the role of the Military Staff Committee.

“e Security Council pays tribute to the invaluable role played by the troop and policecontributing countries in keeping and building a sustainable peace in many volatile parts of theworld and reiterates its commitment to strengthen consultations with them, while encouragingMember States with the necessary capabilities to contribute more police, military and civilianpersonnel, including female personnel to UN peacekeeping and political missions.

“e Security Council emphasizes that effective peacebuilding requires an integrated andcomprehensive approach based on coherence among political, security, development, humanrights, humanitarian and rule of law objectives and that peacebuilding perspectives need to beconsidered starting from the first stages of planning and implementation of peacekeepingoperations.

40 ANNEX

ANNEX 41

“e Security Council underlines that sustainable peacebuilding also requires nationalownership, the development of national capacities and empowerment of people affected byconflict. e Council stresses the need for continued progress by the Secretary-General infulfilling his agenda for action to improve UN peacebuilding efforts in order to better respondto the core needs and priorities identified by the countries concerned. e Council looksforward, in particular, to the outcome of the civilian capacity review.

“e Security Council also stresses the importance of progress in refining roles and respon-sibilities for the key peacebuilding actors, and welcomes in particular the important role of thePeacebuilding Commission in promoting and supporting an integrated and coherentapproach to peacebuilding. e Council reiterates its support for the work of the Commissionand expresses its willingness to make greater use of its advisory role. e Council looks forwardto considering the facilitators’ report of the 2010 Review of the PBC.

“e Security Council recognizes that a comprehensive and integrated strategy topeacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding should involve all relevant actors taking intoaccount the unique circumstances of each conflict situation. e Council further acknowledgesthat sustainable peace and security can best be achieved through effective collaboration amongall concerned parties on the basis of their expertise.

“e Security Council reiterates its commitment to strengthening its strategic partnershipswith and support to regional and subregional organizations consistent with Chapter VIII of theCharter, in conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding. e Councilalso underlines that it should continue to strengthen its partnerships with all other relevantplayers at both the strategic level and on the ground, in particular the General Assembly,ECOSOC, PBC, international financial institutions, such as World Bank, and civil society.

“e Security Council also reaffirms the important role of women in all aspects of theprevention and resolution of conflicts, as well as in peacekeeping and peacebuilding andrecognizes that a concerted and determined approach that addresses the root causes of conflictsalso requires a systematic and comprehensive approach to women and peace and securityissues. e Council in this regard looks forward to marking the 10th Anniversary of Resolution1325 by taking action on a comprehensive set of indicators on the basis of recommendationsof the Secretary-General.

“e Security Council is fully aware of the responsibilities bestowed upon it by the Charterof the United Nations, and of the collective aspirations of the peoples of the world, which impelit to take effective action to maintain international peace and security and eradicate the scourgeof war. e Council expresses its commitment to continue to fulfil its responsibilities in themost effective manner and in full cooperation with its partners. It further recognizes thatsuccessful accomplishment of this task requires a continuous process of reflection and adapta-tion of its practices in preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding.”

The INTERNATIONAL PEACE INSTITUTE (IPI) is an independent,international not-for-profit think tank with a staff representing more

than twenty nationalities, with offices in New York, facing United

Nations headquarters, and in Vienna. IPI is dedicated to promoting the

prevention and settlement of conflicts between and within states by

strengthening international peace and security institutions. To achieve

its purpose, IPI employs a mix of policy research, convening, publishing,

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