The Post-9/11 Security Agenda and Peacekeeping in Africa

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Mark Malan
Programme Head of the Peace Missions Programme at the ISS

Published in African Security Review Vol 11 No 3, 2002

There are two mainstream schools of thought about the impact of the war against terror on international efforts to resolve African conflicts. One sees in the war against terrorism a renewed focus on eradicating the root causes of civil war in Africa and elsewhere, simply because it is believed that it is these conditions that foster the kind of political alienation that propels people into committing acts of terror. The other sees the continued marginalisation of Africa by powerful nations that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, have clearly become so preoccupied with their own security agenda that the bulk of resources will be directed towards combating the symptoms, rather than the root causes, of terrorism. This article asserts that the US, UN and African responses to 11 September open the door for a manipulation and redefinition of terrorism to justify crackdowns on legitimate dissent, and that peacekeeping and peace-building in Africa must inevitably take a back seat to the war on terror. It calls for a more sober and balanced perspective on what is needed to cope with the ever-increasing challenges to human security in Africa.

Introduction

The events of 11 September 2001 seem destined to reduce yet further the marginal position occupied by Africa on the international security agenda. With the spotlight on efforts to build and maintain a global anti-terrorism coalition, there is likely to be more tolerance towards countries that have previously been castigated as human rights abusers. Talk about human rights, good governance and accountability has been markedly reduced, and abuses more easily tolerated, as the US in particular becomes more preoccupied with short-term considerations, such as access to intelligence, airfields and military bases.

On 19 September 2001, Pentagon officials announced that America was gearing up to fight a “sustained land war”. Options under consideration ranged from small-scale raids using special forces to air strikes and cruise missile barrages and the threat of a larger invasion of Afghanistan, intended to dismantle and replace the Taliban, a regime that the US did not recognise, with an international administration.1 In his 20 September 2001 address to Congress and the American people, responding to the horrific atrocities of 11 September, President George W Bush declared a war on terrorism.2

The war on terrorism in which the US and its coalition partners are engaged is intended to prevent future attacks on Western institutions and political freedoms. It also intensifies the importance of the related challenge of peace-building. In the current situation, however, the US and its allies remain engaged in military crisis response. There are definite limitations to military solutions, and there have been strong pleas from many quarters for more integrated and holistic responses that combine humanitarian, political and long-term peace building approaches that include the construction of lasting coalitions for sustainable peace. Such peace rests on the pillars of security and justice, and is not dependent on coercion or the threat of violence, but rather the transformation of dysfunctional social relationships. The United Nations (UN) is the logical and most suitable instrument for the pursuit of such an agenda.

However, it is not the UN that is spearheading the ‘global war against terror’, but a US-led coalition. The UN’s role has been, as it was in Kosovo, simply to pick up the pieces in the wake of military intervention and to oversee a post-intervention administrative transition to some kind of ‘normalcy’ in the theatre of operations. This trend is bad news for Africa, which desperately needs the continued and meaningful engagement of a deeply concerned and committed UN if it is to resolve the vexing web of armed conflicts that continue to confound continental development.

UN response to the threat of terrorism

The UN General Assembly responded the day after the attacks on the US homeland with a resolution that “strongly condemns the heinous acts of terrorism which have caused enormous loss of human life, destruction and damage in the cities of New York, host city of the United Nations, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania”.3 The same day, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1368, in which Council:

Unequivocally condemns in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks which took place on 11 September 2001 … and regards such acts, like any act of international terrorism, as a threat to international peace and security; … [and] expresses its readiness to take all necessary steps to respond to the terrorist attacks … and to combat all forms of terrorism, in accordance with its responsibilities under the Charter … .4

Some two weeks later, the Security Council adopted a more concrete and action-oriented resolution against acts of terror. Reaffirming its unequivocal condemnation of the terrorist acts of 11 September, the Security Council, on 28 September, unanimously adopted a wide-ranging, comprehensive resolution (1373 of 2001) outlining immediate steps and strategies to combat international terrorism. The meeting, which began at 10.50 pm, adjourned at 10.53 pm. That such a resolution garnered unanimous approval so quickly by the members of the Security Council is almost unprecedented. There has been a great deal of concern about the lack of transparency of the process, especially as the resolution is framed under Chapter VII of the Charter, and contains specific and sweeping requirements that are binding on all UN member states.

Resolution 1373 instructs member states to take a number of specific, proactive—and for many African countries, almost impossible—actions, such as:

suppressing the recruitment of members of terrorist groups and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists;



preventing those who finance, plan, facilitate or commit terrorist acts from using their respective territories for those purposes against other states or their citizens; and



preventing the movement of terrorists or terrorist groups by effective border controls and controls on issuance of identity papers and travel documents, and through measures for preventing counterfeiting, forgery or fraudulent use of identity papers and travel documents.

Significantly, in section 4 of resolution 1373, Council:

Notes with concern the close connection between international terrorism and transnational organised crime, illicit drugs, money-laundering, [and] illegal arms-trafficking, … and in this regard emphasises the need to enhance co-ordination of efforts on national, subregional, regional and international levels in order to strengthen a global response to this serious challenge and threat to international security.

The ‘lessons learned’ literature from UN peacekeeping experiences during the 1990s reflects remarkably similar concerns about arms trafficking and organised crime in war to peace transitions. Such lessons have, however, not made much impact on the level of support provided for peacekeeping and peace-building. Nor have they resulted in the institution of effective controls over borders and official ports of entry, or the elimination of the flow of illicit weapons between African countries.

Although resolution 1373 is devoid of a definition of terrorism, it authorises, and in many cases requires, states to take serious and strict actions against suspects, collaborators or perpetrators of terrorist acts. On the issue of the lack of a consensus about what terrorism is, Britain’s UN ambassador Jeremy Greenstock simply said that: “for most of the time, if something looks like a terrorist and makes a noise like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist—and we now know what to do about it in terms of what we set out in this resolution.”

Council adopted a further resolution on terrorism on 14 November 2001, but this was merely an expression of support for the US-led efforts to dismantle the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. For the first time, specific concerns were expressed about the potential abuse of human rights in the war against terror, with Council calling on all Afghan forces:

… to refrain from acts of reprisal, adhere strictly to their obligations under human rights and international humanitarian law, and to ensure the safety and security and freedom of movement of UN and associated personnel.5

Importantly, resolution 1378 affirms that the UN should play a central role in establishing a new and transitional administration in Afghanistan, and calls on member states to provide humanitarian and peace-building support for the people of Afghanistan.

The allied military response to 9/11

Operation Enduring Freedom began on 7 October 2001, with the aim of “liberating the Afghan people from the repressive and violent Taliban regime”. According to the White House, the military war against terrorism is a broad-based effort that will take a long time, and will require a series of coalitions ready to take on the challenges and assume the risks associated with such an operation.

More than 17,000 troops from 17 nations are currently deployed to the Middle East and Central Asia to help combat terrorism. According to the US Defence Department, a total of 68 nations are supporting the war on terrorism in different ways—militarily, diplomatically, economically and financially. Some have helped openly, while others prefer not to disclose their contributions. Particular contributions include, but are not limited to, providing vital intelligence, personnel, equipment and assets for use on the ground, in the air and at sea. Coalition members also have provided liaison teams, participated in planning, provided bases and granted over-flight permission.

In Afghanistan alone, about 6,000 coalition troops are taking part in Operation Enduring Freedom. They make up more than half of the 11,000 non-Afghan forces in Afghanistan. US allies in the coalition provide personnel, intelligence, equipment and other air, ground and sea assets. The US Defence Department recently released fairly detailed information highlighting the contribution of 27 nations to the war on terrorism. Egypt was alone among the African countries on this list, with its contribution stated as having “sent three representatives to CENTCOM”.6

At a news conference in the National Press Club in Washington on 15 May 2002, US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the US and the coalition military campaign against terrorists in Afghanistan had achieved many of its objectives, noting that the Taliban has been removed from power and that Afghanistan has been essentially eliminated as an operating base for terrorists.7 The US administration has also been at pains to emphasise that the “global war on terrorism” is being fought by many means—through diplomatic, military, financial, intelligence, investigative and law enforcement actions—within the US and abroad. The Department of State has the lead role on the diplomatic front abroad to advance the cause of the coalition, among others through renewed support for the UN and multilateralism in international affairs.

As in Kosovo during 1999, however, the military intervention in Afghanistan was decided and executed outside the UN framework, with the Security Council quickly agreeing that the world body should accept responsibility for post-intervention peace-building. No African multilateral military intervention has ever enjoyed such unequivocal and substantial support. Nor is it likely to, for the prevalent concern that emerged among Americans and their coalition allies is that Africa, as a whole, should be regarded as one of the most fertile seedbeds of terrorism in the world and that certain African countries are likely targets for intervention. For example, the Chicago Times suggested that “[a]s the US makes steady progress in destroying the Taliban and flushing Osama bin Laden from hiding, perhaps it is time to turn attention to Africa, where disorder and poverty harbour extremism”.8 A senior Pentagon official recently confirmed this in official terms, emphasising that:

… in Africa … instability can create a vacuum that can draw terrorists to it. … I don’t think you need a failed state like Somalia or an environment like Afghanistan to create an environment for terrorists to transit through, to station themselves, to raise funds, to plan operations. When I look at the map of sub-Saharan Africa, I see any number of countries that are not failed states, but they may not have the government structure in which to deal with or keep track of who is coming in or out of their countries and what they are doing. … out of the 48 sub-Saharan African countries, you could pick 40 that present that kind of an environment.9

African responses to the war on terror

During September 2001, with the exception of Iraq, every state, including North Korea, expressed its condolences to the US. It is perhaps partially from fear of a knee-jerk response that leaders throughout Africa were also very quick to declare their support for the US’s ‘war against terrorism’. However, many expressed reservations about supporting US military action in Afghanistan out of concern that they would fall victim to the popular opposition this would arouse at home. But despite bitter experience of previous US operations in Africa,10 none of them articulated any fundamental opposition to US foreign policy or questioned the direction in which the Bush administration was heading.

The Horn/East Africa region, where a number of Al-Qaeda cells were suspected, was seen as a likely focus of US military interest. Sudan enthusiastically announced its co-operation in the fight against terror, leveraging its intelligence resources regarding Al-Qaeda to reshape its bilateral relations with the US. Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea appeared ready to use the opportunity to marginalise reformist elements. The Interim National Government in Somalia—a country also accused of being a possible safe-haven for bin Laden and Al Queada—was also at pains to state that “we are ready to share information and co-operate with the US in their war against terrorism”.

President Charles Taylor of Liberia showed unreserved support for US military action, even though Liberia has been dubbed a ‘rogue state’ and been placed under UN sanctions for backing rebels in Sierra Leone. Even the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, rapidly dropped his anti-American rhetoric and declared at a public rally that “the US has the right to seek revenge”. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, called for African countries to “engage in direct actions in the global fight [against terrorism]”.

African governments in a position to contribute to the global fight against terrorism by providing access to intelligence, airfields and military bases, were suddenly placed in a position where more powerful nations like the US might overlook abuses which would previously have come under greater scrutiny. For example, an October 2001 massacre by the Nigerian army of at least 200 people in Benue State went all but unremarked during President Obasanjo’s visit to the US just a few weeks later to discuss the anti-terrorism campaign. The Algerian government is reported to have given US officials a list of 350 supposed Islamic militants living outside Algeria and wanted by the regime, requesting in return sophisticated military hardware to use against ‘Islamic terrorists’. Even the governments of less strategically significant states, such as Zimbabwe, were literally able to get away with murder, simply because the international security agenda was overburdened by more pressing concerns.

On the other hand, it would be fair to say that many African leaders’ concerns about the scourge of national and international terrorism pre-date 11 September 2001, and in many countries security agencies have indeed been active in devising strategies to counter the threat. At the continental level, these concerns culminated in the adoption by the 1999 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Summit in Algiers of the OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism.

States parties which accede to the convention make a number of general and specific undertakings that will give effect to its effective implementation. For example, in the legal sphere, signatories undertake to revise national laws and establish criminal offences for terrorist acts as defined in the convention, and commit themselves to the urgent ratification of or accession to relevant international instruments related to the prevention and combating of terrorism.11

Examples of undertakings in the functional sphere include the better monitoring of borders and detection of illegal cross-border trafficking of materials and means to commit terrorist acts; and the development of joint training courses to impart the latest knowledge and best scientific, technical and operational expertise available for the prevention and combating of terrorist acts. Significantly, no mention is made of military co-operation or military operations in the convention.

However, there was obviously a renewed urgency to the collective African response to terrorism in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks. President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal proposed the adoption of an African pact against terrorism. He said the move would help the continent “to team up with the world coalition against this evil”, an initiative that was in accord with the American ‘with us or against us’ mantra. On 17 October 2001, the Heads of State and Government of 27 African countries, meeting in the capital of Senegal, adopted the Dakar Declaration Against Terrorism. The declaration condemns any act of terrorism, in Africa or any other part of the world, and appeals to all African countries:

… to ratify as a matter of urgency the OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism and similar UN instruments, and to take legal, diplomatic, financial, and other measures to fight terrorism at national, sub-regional and global levels.

To this end, the Heads of State and Government recommended that the:

… OAU convene an extraordinary summit to discuss the progress so far made in Africa in the fight against terrorism and to ensure that the post- September 11, 2001 events and their consequences have the least possible adverse impact on the development of Africa, in particular on the implementation of the New African Initiative.12

The New African Initiative has been succeeded by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). One of the four primary objectives of NEPAD is “to halt the marginalisation of Africa in the globalisation process”. The initiative promotes a new partnership in which African leaders accept responsibility and accountability for doing what is right to restore peace and political stability on the continent, as well as to create conducive conditions for investment, entrepreneurship, economic growth and development. NEPAD thus has all the ingredients of a most ambitious but vital peace-building agenda—an agenda that, if successfully implemented, would go a long way towards addressing the root causes of armed conflict and of terrorism. Significantly, the first of seven priorities listed for the detailed integrated development programme under NEPAD is that of “conflict prevention, management and resolution”.

Less than a month after the Dakar summit, at the request of Sudan, the Central Organ of the OAU Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution held its 5th Extraordinary Session at Ministerial level in New York on 11 November 2001. The session was devoted to further deliberate on the problem of terrorism, and ministers urged OAU member states which have not yet done so, to sign and ratify the Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism so as to ensure its early entry into force.13 The meeting also stated that it:

Welcomes the adoption of Resolution 1373 (2001) by the UN Security Council on 28 September 2001, as well as its previous resolutions related to terrorism and requests Member States to ensure their effective follow-up and implementation.14

There is, of course, a real danger that the elaborate and ambitious legal and functional undertakings prescribed by resolution 1373, as well as those detailed in the OAU Convention, if even partially honoured and implemented by member states, may pave the way for the further abuse of state power and the derogation of human rights. Many African governments, while quick to accede to international human rights instruments, have been notoriously lax in their implementation. On the other hand, knowledge and application of these types of instruments have been central to the evolving peacekeeping training curricula promoted by the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations and implemented by responsible UN troop and police contributing countries. Peacekeeping duties and peacekeeping training is therefore a potentially effective way of inculcating human rights values in Africa.

There is indeed a popular school of thought that sees a post-September 11 revival in international support for peacekeeping and peacekeeping training, if only to help counter the threat of terrorism. As Colin Powell puts it:

The US welcomes the help of any country or party that is genuinely prepared to work with us to eradicate terrorism. At the same time, we will not relax our commitment to advancing the cause of human rights and democracy. For a world in which men and women of every continent, culture and creed, of every race, religion and region, can exercise their fundamental freedoms is a world in which terrorism cannot thrive.15

However, there is also a realist perspective that cuts through much of the rhetoric and confronts the basic fact that, in the harsh struggle for scarce resources, peacekeeping will inevitably lose out to the war against terror.

Implications for peacekeeping in Africa

Mainstream analysts, while viewing the threat of terrorism as urgent and requiring immediate action, also realise that Africa’s economic and political problems will not be solved easily or quickly, because the structural weaknesses of most countries run very deep. They are therefore urging the ‘international community’ to adopt an approach that responds to the immediate crisis and also addresses the structural causes of that crisis. This, it is felt, requires a short-term strategy to build African anti-terrorist capabilities and a longer-term programme to reduce the conditions that foster terrorism.

The parallels with the mid-1990s discourse on the need to build African peacekeeping capacities and to engage in post-conflict peace-building are striking. For example, it has been suggested that an immediate step would be for the US to provide expanded training, equipment and support for African intelligence, drug enforcement and police organisations—and that the ‘international community’ should offer concrete rewards, perhaps limited debt forgiveness, to those African governments that take effective steps to combat terrorism.

The problem with such strategies for countering terrorism on the African continent is that the same basic ingredients have been prescribed under the rubric of conflict resolution, humanitarian and development assistance, and peace-building. Though applied seriously since 1989, in various doses and in various parts of the continent, this medicine has not had the desired effect of delivering peace, democracy and sustainable growth to Africans. Moreover, the notion of providing expanded training, equipment and support for African security agencies is not a novel one—in fact there is already a considerable body of theory and praxis on ‘security sector reform’, as applied within the ambit of peace operations.

The question is whether or not there will be any conceptual linkage between the need to engage in peace operations and the need to counter terrorism in Africa—and whether or not the war on terrorism in other regions of the world will diminish international enthusiasm and capacity for engaging in peace operations on the African continent.

On the positive side, after a five-year post-UNOSOM peacekeeping hiatus, the UN has re-engaged with Africa over the past two years, launching significant and substantial peace operations in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia-Eritrea. At the end of March 2002, 87 nations were contributing 46,445 personnel to UN operations. Table 1 captures the numbers of personnel volunteered by UN member states to serve as troops, civilian police and military observers in UN operations; employees of the UN are not included in these figures.16

Table 1: Deployment of UN peacekeepers 17

Mission	Troops	Police	Observers	Global total	African total
UNMIK (Kosovo) UNTAET (East Timor) UNMIBH (Bosnia-Herzegovina) UNIKOM (Iraq-Kuwait) MINURSO (Western Sahara) UNMEE (Ethiopia-Eritrea |UNTSO (Middle East) UNOMIG (Georgia) MONUC (DRC) UNAMSIL (Sierra Leone) UNDOF (Golan Heights) UNFICYP (Cyprus) UNIFIL (Lebanon) UNMOGIP (India-Pakistan) UNMOP (Prevlaka Peninsula, former Yugoslavia)	- 6,281 - 905 27 3,738 - - 3,173 17,109 1,040 1,204 3,642 - -	4,472 1,288 1,599 - 24 - - - 14 87 - 35 - - -	38 118 3 198 193 218 155 109 446 259 - - - 43 27	4,510 7,687 1,602 1,103 244 3,956 155 109 3,633 17,455 1,040 1,239 3,642 43 27	244 3,956 3,633 17,455
TOTAL	37,119	7,519	1,807	46,445	25,248

While well over half the global numbers of UN peacekeepers were deployed on missions in Africa, the situation has been a two-way street, with the high-level mission leadership coming from Africa, and being supported very heavily by African troop contributions. Twenty-three African countries are presently contributing the services of some 12,582 military and police personal to UN operations. As is evident from Table 2, this is half the total of peacekeepers deployed in ongoing missions in Africa.18

Table 2: Summary of African contributions to UN peace operations 19

Country	Observer	Police	Troops	Total	Ranking
Algeria Benin Burkina Faso Cameroon Cote d'Ivoire Egypt Gambia Ghana Guinea Kenya Malawi Mali Morocco Mozambique Namibia Niger Nigeria Senegal South Africa Tanzania Tunisia Zambia Zimbabwe	21 23 11 59 19 49 14 53 17 30 2 3 11 54 14 6 19 22 31	1 21 1 127 39 300 71 19 2 7 7 12 103 59 2 6 46 60	5 1 75 2 2,141 781 1,707 1 618 2 1 3,332 478 98 3 262 834	21 29 11 22 1 261 60 2,490 795 1,831 36 33 618 9 12 24 3,489 551 104 24 290 911 60	69 64 76 68 86 35 54 5 16 7 60 62 20 78 75 66 3 23 46 67 33 14 55
TOTAL	458	872	10,342	12,582 (27%

The other countries contributing formed units of troops for peace operations in Africa are mainly Asian, with a limited number indeed providing nearly half the global total of UN peacekeepers (Table 3).

Table 3: Summary select Asian contributors20

Country	Observer	Police	Troops	Total	Ranking
Bangladesh India Indonesia Malaysia Nepal Pakistan Phillippines Singapore Sri Lanka Thailand	66 35 29 60 36 77 8 8 0 17	169 625 27 126 124 326 166 25 73 35	5,771 2,217 3 36 969 5,052 58 63 0 397	6,006 2,877 59 222 1,129 5,455 232 96 73 449	1 4 56 38 11 2 37 49 52 29
TOTAL	336	1,696	14,566	22,604 (49%)

Notably absent from the list of major contributors to UN peace operations are those with the greatest military and financial assets—the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU). This is not a new trend—it started when the UN Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina (UNPROFOR) was replaced in December 1995 with a NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR), which is still deployed in the guise of a Stabilisation Force (SFOR). After the allied air war against Belgrade and the deployment of the Kosovo Force (KFOR) in 1999, it appeared that there would be no serious troop commitment to UN operations from the developed world, but that alliance countries would remain committed to keeping the peace in the Balkans within the NATO framework.

The post-9/11 security environment, including the establishment in December 2001 of a 4,800-strong International Security Assistance Force21 in the wake of US military operations in Afghanistan, seems set to reinforce the de facto international division of labour for peace operations (Table 4).

Table 4: Summary of NATO/EU countries' contributions to UN and coalition peace operations

	UNITED NATIONS PEACEKEEPING22				COALITION PEACE OPERATIONS
Contry23	Obs	Police	Troops	Total	Rank	SFOR24	KFOR25	ISAP26	Total
Belgium Canada Czech Republic Denmark France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Italy Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal Spain Turkey United Kingdom Unidted States	12 21 18 39 45 11 11 19 30 11 23 24 6 13 36 34	2 66 24 57 200 454 31 18 6 90 53 51 173 213 195 178 253 965	5 197 1 4 241 14 121 200 3 6 836 920 3 424 1	19 284 43 100 486 479 42 158 6 320 67 80 1,033 1,133 204 191 713 730	70 34 58 48 24 25 59 42 79 32 53 50 13 10 40 41 18 17	5 1,561 16 311 2,211 1,724 109 8 0 1,477 1,247 35 278 333 1,174 729 2,058 2,544	800 800 175 500 7,300 5,045 1,514 324 0 4,500 1,456 980 600(27) 295 1,200 940 3,900 5,300	50 0 0 48 550 800 100 0 0 300 200 30 20 0 300 100 1,800 0	855 2,361 191 859 10,061 7,569 1,723 332 0 6,277 2,903 1,045 898 628 2,674 1,769 7,758 7,844
TOTAL				6,088 (13%)		15,840	35,629	4298	51,469

EU members are present in all 15 current UN peace operations as well as the two NATO-run Balkan missions. However, EU member states28 together contribute only 10% of the total personnel for UN-run operations. Additionally, as of March 2002, ISAF was almost exclusively made up of EU member states, with no US troops contributing to the operation.29

It is thus extremely unlikely that any of these countries will re-commit themselves to UN peace operations for the foreseeable future, and it is virtually impossible for the US armed forces to do so. The Pentagon has pledged to pursue terrorists in a dozen more countries around the globe if necessary, and the Bush administration is facing increasing complaints of military over-extension as it dispatches thousands of troops to fight terrorism in Afghanistan, Yemen, the Philippines, Georgia and Pakistan.

While the US participates in peace operations worldwide, it provides few troops to the 15 current UN peacekeeping operations. US personnel serve primarily as civilian police and military observers in eight UN peacekeeping operations, with nearly four-fifths of them posted in Kosovo. In fact, police make up a full 95% of the total US personnel contribution to UN peacekeeping. The US military contribution of 35, on its own, represents less than 0.01% of the total number of UN peacekeepers. However, the US police contribution is not an accurate reflection of the country’s commitment to even this aspect of UN peace operations.

The US has no national police from which to recruit UN CIVPOL. It has, instead, some 18,000 state and local police departments, plus more than a dozen highly specialised federal law enforcement agencies. The US is therefore the only UN police contributing country that recruits its CIVPOL contingents through a commercial contractor. Thus the US CIVPOL programme lacks statutory authorisation, has little congressional support, and has received limited White House attention.

It is on the cards that the NATO-led peace operations in the Balkans will also suffer from a reduced US commitment. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is resisting expensive new recruitments to relieve the strain on existing personnel, preferring instead to shift existing US troops out of ‘non-military’ peacekeeping operations and civilian duties. Partly at his urging, the US has started a process of drawing down its 7,500 troops currently serving as peacekeepers in Bosnia and Kosovo.30

It is apparent from the situation outlined above that the future of UN peacekeeping will depend on the continued and improved support of African and Asian countries in providing the requisite troops and equipment for extant and new operations. Such continued and enhanced support depends, in turn, on enhancing both the quantity and quality of military and police personnel available for UN service—factors which have been thoroughly addressed in the recommendations of the Brahimi Report. However, the implementation of these recommendations requires not only high levels of commitment from poorer troop contributing countries, but also the will to fund such reforms on the part of the major financial contributors to UN peace operations.

Funding for peacekeeping and US budgetary priorities

Expenditures for UN peace operations are met by all 189 member states, which are assessed on a scale adjusted to their wealth. Members are supposed to pay roughly the same percentage of the peacekeeping budget as they do the operating budget. The poorest nations receive discounts of up to 90% of that figure, while the richer nations, including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, are supposed to pay a premium that makes up the difference. During 2000, according to then US ambassador to the UN, Richard Holbrooke, about 30 nations were paying 98% of the peacekeeping tab, with the remaining 159 member states contributing ‘token amounts’.31

The US, which is assessed at roughly 31% of the peacekeeping budget, has been paying ‘only’ 25% since a 1994 law capped the payments. This led to a situation, by the end of 2000, where the US owed a total of $1.7 billion in arrear peacekeeping assessments to the UN, which in turn led to delays in the reimbursement of troop contributing countries. The reality is that no UN peace operation is possible without US consent and US financial contributions, hence the notion that the US Congress is the ‘16th member of the UN Security Council’.

On 24 September 2001, the US Congress unanimously approved legislation that would provide a $582 million tranche towards payment of arrears to the UN. For months, conservatives had blocked the payment of UN arrears, but they abandoned their opposition in light of the strikes in New York and Washington. During a brief floor debate, both Republicans and Democrats said the US cannot afford to ignore the UN’s needs at a time when administration officials are seeking a broad international coalition to combat terrorism.32 However, this wisdom, although still embraced by some in the State Department, seems to have been short-lived in Congress.33

One of the best ways to distinguish between rhetoric and reality in a government’s domestic and foreign policy is to ‘follow the money’—that is, to examine that government’s spending priorities. A recent report by the Stimson Center, entitled ‘Following the Money’34 analyses key areas of the Bush administration’s fiscal year 2003 (FY03) and the FY02 (March) supplemental budget request to Congress, and finds that funding for peacekeeping is indeed not very high on the priority list.

The $27 billion emergency supplemental request for FY02 is primarily to meet the costs of the war on terrorism, continued operations in Afghanistan, additional homeland security efforts and economic recovery. Key elements of the administration’s FY03 budget include a near doubling of proposed spending on homeland security, from $19.5 billion in early FY02 to $37.7 billion for FY03, with major increases slated for initiatives in response to September 11 and terrorism threats. If approved, the FY03 defence budget request would also be the largest single one-year increase in military spending since 1967. The requested $396 billion represents an increase of $48.1 billion over the FY02 baseline of $350.8 billion for the Defence Department.

On the other hand, the administration’s foreign affairs funding priorities, as reflected in the FY03 budget, belie its rhetoric supporting increased funding for the State Department and International Affairs. The FY03 budget requests $725 million for the Contributions to International Peacekeeping Activities (CIPA) account, for assessments for UN peacekeeping operations over the period October 2002 to September 2003. (The FY02 CIPA account budget is $844 million.) The budget presumes that nearly all of the 15 current UN peacekeeping operations will be reduced in funding from their FY02 levels—and that no new UN operations will be launched during 2002–2003. The significant exception is MONUC in the DRC, for which $273 million is requested for FY03—a $190 million or 229% increase on the FY02 estimate.35

Significantly, the FY03 budget does not provide any room for funding that would enable the implementation of key UN peacekeeping reforms which are funded by assessments for peace operations.36 This reinforces the notion that the US does not believe in the efficacy of UN peacekeeping, and supports such activities only in relation to more parochial national interests.37 For example, even in trying to persuade the Senate to lift the seven-year-old, 25% cap on US contributions to the UN peacekeeping budget,38 Secretary of State Powell made his case as follows:

UN peacekeeping activities allow us to leverage our political, military and financial assets through the authority of the United Nations Security Council and the participation of other countries in providing funds and peacekeepers for conflicts worldwide. As we have seen in Afghanistan, it is often best to use American GIs for the heavy lifting of combat and leave the peacekeeping to others.39

This is not new thinking, especially as far as Africa is concerned. In 1997, the US launched the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), which was defined as:

a training programme which envisions a partnership with African and other interested nations to enhance African peacekeeping capacities, particularly the capacity to mount an effective, collective response to humanitarian and other crises.40

ACRI is sustained by US funding for voluntary contributions to peacekeeping, as allocated in the Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) account, which covers multinational peacekeeping activities other than UN peace operations.

The administration’s FY03 request is $108 million for the PKO account (a 20% decrease from the FY02 budget of $135 million). The funds are intended to promote the involvement of regional organisations in peacekeeping and to help leverage support for multinational efforts where no formal cost-sharing mechanisms exist.

The funding is not provided to meet obligatory assessments, and is therefore voluntary.

Nearly half of the FY03 request for the PKO account ($47 million) is earmarked for support to peacekeeping activities in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe under the auspices of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, while $40 million has been earmarked for Africa—$30 million of which is requested in support of African regional peacekeeping operations41 (the FY02 budget for this is $41 million). Only $10 million has been requested for ACRI in FY03. Funding approved for FY02 is $15 million, versus the budget request for $20 million for this year.

In its FY03 budget request, the administration confirms that the ACRI successor programme will increase the number of countries that receive common training and equipment for peacekeeping operations, but adds that it will also “provide the basis for lethal peace enforcement training”.42 The latter is a significant departure from the programme’s previous human rights–motivated emphasis on only providing non-lethal equipment and training. US support for building African peacekeeping capacities is thus set to become not only much leaner, but also a whole lot meaner.

Conclusion

Acts of terror are aimed at disrupting normal activities. Their main intention is to instil fear, create instability, cause consternation and bring about general anarchy. The same can be said of long-standing armed insurgencies and rebellions in countries such as Angola, Burundi, the DRC, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia. There is really no such thing as the ‘post-9/11 security environment’. What we do have is a new sense of urgency, and a new perception of how to deal with threats to human security—a perception that is clearly discernable from the rhetoric, actions and spending priorities of the leaders in the war against terrorism.

Some felt that the new sense of urgency would serve to promote more ‘traditional’ concerns for human rights, conflict resolution and development among the marginal populations and regions of the world. However, it is apparent that the salience of such issues has faded in favour of popular consensus on the need to engage in a ‘just war’ to find and destroy, root and branch, terrorists and those who support and harbour them. But there cannot be a successful ‘war’ against terrorism in any conventional sense of the word. As MacKinlay puts it, “the currently assembling coalition of likeminded states ‘to wage war on terrorism’ is an old fashioned emergency structure that would address a Clausewitzian threat to security, but not the virus of its own condition.”43

It is obvious that the vast sums being spent on bombs and missiles aimed against a shadowy network will not lead to total victory. Such actions may help cut and contain the branches of terrorism, but military action and law enforcement will not eliminate its roots: grinding poverty and human misery. Nor will new Security Council resolutions and African conventions aimed specifically at countering the threat of terrorism, whilst much older conventions on human rights remain un-implemented and all but forgotten.

The more the new coalition uncritically aligns itself with autocratic regimes in exchange for their support, facilities and co-operation in the war against terror, the more it risks unwittingly creating long-term instability. There is also a risk that vital emergency and development assistance will be harnessed as a counter-insurgency weapon, thus denying the pressing needs of countries and peoples who are not perceived to be harbouring or breeding an immediate terrorist threat.

Thus, while the US-led coalition spearheaded the first tactical battles in the war against terrorism, African leaders engage with renewed vigour in their longer-term fight against the poverty, corruption, exclusion and other aspects of bad governance that continue to fuel conflicts on the continent and undermine the aspirations of NEPAD. And they need to do this as part of a truly global coalition that is designed to promote security, human rights and development. This coalition does not need to be constructed, for it has existed since 1945 in the guise of the UN.

Although admittedly imperfect in terms of results, the peacekeeping and peace-building agenda pursued by the UN since the beginning of the last decade is one which indeed succeeded in embracing not only security concerns, but also human rights and development as an integral part thereof. Regional peacekeeping may sound like a good idea to some, but few regions, aside from Europe, have the capacity to mount such operations. With the exception of some very limited OAU observer missions in the Comores, Ethiopia-Eritrea and the DRC, African peacekeeping has again become UN peacekeeping. This is a trend that should be welcomed and embraced by Africans. It is time to simplify the ‘Chapter VIII’ issue by accepting that African peace operations (or peace operations in Africa) are, either of necessity or in principle, UN peace operations.

Notes

P Beaumont, War on terrorism, The Observer, 23 September 2001 <http://www.observer. co.uk/>



President Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American people, 20 September 2001, Washington-DC.



United Nations, First Resolution of the 56th UN General Assembly (2001), 12 September 2001.



UN Security Council Resolution 1368 (2001), 12 September 2001.



UN Security Council Resolution 1378 (2001), 14 November 2001.



American Forces Press Service, United against terrorism, Washington, 4 March 2002, <www.defendamenrica.mil/articles/mar2002/a030402a.html>



G J Gilmore, Anti-Terror War in Afghanistan, American Forces Press Service, 15 May 2002 <www.defendamerica.mil/>



M A Cenzer, Specters of war: African chaos invites terrorist exploitation, Chicago Tribune, 16 December 2001.



Michael Westphal (deputy assistant defence secretary for African affairs), speaking at a media roundtable at the Pentagon, as quoted in J Garamone, Backgrounder: US policy on Africa seeks stability, American Forces Press Service, Washington, 3 April 2002 <www.defend amenrica.mil/articles/apr2002/a040302a.html>



For example, in August 1998, the US bombed the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, said to be manufacturing chemical weapons and linked to bin Laden. No proof that such chemical weapons existed has ever been forthcoming.



Twelve such instruments are listed in the Annexure to the Convention—ranging from the (1963) Tokyo Convention on Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed On-Board Aircraft, to the (1997) Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction. (The latter is understandably absent from a similar 13 November 1991 US Department of State list of twelve International Conventions and Treaties Relating to Terrorism, which otherwise includes most of the instruments referred to in the Annexure to the OAU Convention.)



Dakar Declaration Against Terrorism, 17 October 2001. Own emphasis.



According to Article 20, the “… Convention shall enter into force thirty days after the deposit of the fifteenth instrument of ratification with the Secretary General …”.



OAU Central Organ Communique on Terrorism, New York, 11 November 2001, Central Organ/MEC/MIN/Ex-Ord. (V) Comm.



C L Powell, special briefing to announce the release of the 2001 Human Rights Reports, Washington DC, 4 March 2002.



Data provided by the UN DPKO.



Participating in operations that are authorised, run, and paid for by the UN. These operations are separate from non-UN peace operations authorised by a Security Council resolution but run by an international organisation or lead nation, such as the current NATO force in Kosovo or the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. This table does not include UN peacebuilding missions, such as MINUGUA in Guatemala and UNAMA in Afghanistan.



Though not all African peacekeepers are deployed in UN missions in Africa. A significant number of African police officers, for example, are deployed in the Balkans and in East Timor.



As of 31 March 2002.



Ibid.



ISAF was authorised by the UN Security Council on 20 December through Resolution 1386 and began to deploy fully on 28 December 2001, to assist the Afghan interim administration by providing security and stability in Kabul. The participation of nations in the ISAF was formalised through the signing, in London, of a Memorandum of Understanding on 10 January 2002.



Military observers, civilian police, troops as of 31 March 2002.



All countries listed in this column are members of NATO. Those that are also EU member states are in italic.



As of 5 May 2002. Figures are for total troops in theatre (i.e. SFOR contingents plus National Support Elements).



Data from the official website of the Kosovo Force <www.nato.int/kfor/nations/> 4 May 2002.



As of 31 March 2002. Source: European Defence, Afghan Stabilisation Force Update, <www.european-defence.co.uk/special13. html>12 May 2002.



Estimate. The KFOR website does not give figures for Poland, but lists its contribution to the Polish-Ukranian Battalion as HQ staff, HQ and logistics companies, and two motorised infantry companies.



EU members Austria, Finland, Ireland and Sweden are not members of NATO. Member states of EU: Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Finland and Sweden. Member states of NATO that are also EU members: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom.



Henry L Stimson Centre, factsheet from the Future of peace operations project, <www.stimson.org> 14 May 2002.



A Scott Tyson, Wider mission stretches military, Christian Science Monitor, 2 May 2002, p 1.



B Pisik, US calls for new way to allocate peace cost, The Washington Times, 4 October 2000.



J Eilperin, House approves UN payment—legislation would provide $582 million for back dues, Washington Post, 25 September 2001.



Congress has subsequently threatened to impose new conditions on payment of the third and final tranche of $244 million towards the total of $926 million that Congress voted in 1999 to cover the bulk of the US arrears to the UN and its affiliates.



E Turpen and V K Holt with C Clary and M K Shanahan, Following the money: The Bush administration FY03 budget request and current funding for selected defense, state, and energy department programmes, <http://www.stimson.org/fopo/> 12 May 2002.



The Stimson Centre notes, however, that FY02 appropriation (without FY02 supplemental funding approved or requested) is said to under fund requirements for MONUC by more than half. Thus the administration’s March 2002 request for FY02 supplemental funding included $43 million for the CIPA account to meet anticipated costs for MONUC. Hence the increase in the FY03 budget is not as large as a direct comparison suggests.



For example, original cost estimates for implementation of the ‘Brahimi’ recommendations on improving the strategic reserve at the UN Logistics Base at Brindisi suggest that a US contribution of $40–60 million would be needed in 2002–2003.



To be fair, much the same can be said of many ‘lesser’ member states that are perceived as stalwart troop contributors to UN peace operations. The implications and impact, however, are far more severe when the US holds such attitudes.



The administration is urging a speedy repeal of the congressionally mandated 25% ‘cap’ on UN peacekeeping dues and final payment of UN arrears with no new conditions.



As quoted by Turpen and Holt, op cit, from Colin Powell’s testimony of 5 February 2002 to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.



Texts of a briefing by Ambassador Marshall McCallie on the African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI), US Department of State, Office of the Spokesman, Washington, DC, 29 July 1997. For a more detailed background to the aims and activities under ACRI see, for example, M Malan, US reaction to African crises: An overview and preliminary analysis of the African Crisis Response Initiative, ISS Papers, 24, August 1997; E Berman and K Sams, Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and culpabilities, UNIDIR/ISS, Geneva, 2000.



Specifically, the State Department will focus on capacity-building assistance to ECOWAS, supporting the work of the JMC in the DRC, and funding of OLMEE (the OAU Liaison Mission in Ethiopia-Eritrea).



Turpen and Holt, op cit.



J MacKinlay, Osama bin Laden: Global insurgent, African Security Review, 10(4), 2001, p 145.