From Counterinsurgency to Peace Enforcement : New Names for Old Games

(Thomas R. Mockaitis)

1. Unconventional wars - a confusing notion for military specialists

2. Confusing denotation of peace operations

Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s, Agenda for Peace, identifies five types of peace operation, none of which exists as a pure form in the real word: “preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping, peace making, peace enforcement, and post conflict peace-building.”

The constantly changing and imprecise array of terms created to name such conflicts reflects the profound discomfort of conventional armed forces with unconventional war. “Small wars”, “imperial policing”, counterinsurgency”, “counter-revolutionary warfare”, “Low Intensity conflict” and “Military Operations Other than War”.

3. Similarities between peace operations and counterinsurgency

•Insurgency - Is an organized effort to overthrow a nation from within using a combination of subversion, guerilla warfare and terrorism. Insurgents persuade people that the revolutionary movement will provide them better life while demonstrating the inability of the government to either protect people or meet their needs. They use terrorist fight tactics, when conventional forces arrive insurgents disappear in the larger population.

•Counterinsurgency – denying the insurgents their objectives, it requires active state implication (purely reactive governments lose the war). Military operations against the guerillas require the highly selective and very discriminatory use of force (Vietnam is a good example of a massive firepower application inefficiency)

• Counterinsurgency violates the fundamental principles of classical United Nations peacekeeping.

• According to Cold War period definition, peacekeeping means deployment of neutral interposition force between warring parties who had agreed both cease fire and to the deployment of UN forces. Peacekeepers would be lightly armored and highly visible in their blue helmets, they can use only the minimum force necessary to achieve their objectives, they can use weapons only in self-defense.

4. Cold war definition of peacekeeping mission

• However during Cold War period there were no clear provisions for this kind of operations.

• First peacekeeping mission was deployed in Sinai peninsula in the 50’s, its role was to manage the conflict between Israel and Arabian States, the idea belonged to Dag Hammarskjöld (Secretary-General of that time) and Canadian Foreign Minister Lester Pearson.

• Legal basis for such mission could be found by combining Chapter VI, article 40 of the Chapter, which empowers the Security Council to take “provisional measures” to restore the peace and Chapter V, article 29, which allows the council to create “subsidiary organs” necessary to perform its work.

5. Post-Cold war peacekeeping missions

• Post-Cold war conflicts are mainly intrastate wars, their characteristic is that nation breaks into its provinces or even clan territories, also they are characterized by intense ethnic strife in which people rather than armies have been pitted one against other, often resulting in genocide, this kind of war produces humanitarian crises, including famine and refugees.

• Somalia(1992-1995) and former Yugoslavia(1992-present) conflicts have confounded the assumption of classical peacekeeping. The belligerents in a civil war recognize no neutrals and interpret every action of an outside agency as either helping or hindering their cause.

• Intrastate conflicts have more in common with insurgency than they do with other type of warfare. Both involve belligerents who do not accept the legitimacy of the established state. In each the combatants seek to win the loyalty of people with legitimate grievance against the established order.

• If an ethnic war resembles an insurgency, then intervention to end it must be based on sound counterinsurgency principles.

6. UN’s most important interventions in active civil war

There were three such interventions: 1. Congo(1960-1964) 2.Somalia(1992-1995) 3. Yugoslavia (1992-present), analyses of these three missions can provide valuable information for possible future missions.

1. Congo - less than in two weeks after its independence, the former Belgian colony degenerated into civil war as copper rich Katanga Province ceded from the country led by a puppet government representing European mining interests. Other provinces followed Katanga’s example.

*To protect their nationals, and presumably their economic interests as well, the Belgians sent in troops.

*Prime minister Patrice Lumumba appealed to the UN, first for “technical assistance in the field of security administration” and then for troops to “protect the national territory of the Congo against the present external aggression which is a threat to international peace”

*USA and USSR agreed to deploy a peace keeping mission to the Congo, although they had different visions of what it would accomplish.

*Mission changed it status from classical peacekeeping to enforcement (although the Security Council never gave it a Chapter VII mandate) as the situation in the region was labeled “A threat to international peace”.

*At the its height the Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo (ONUC) , numbered 19.828, thirty countries contributed to mission.

*During the four years of its existence ONUC protected European residents while ushering them out of the Congo, supervised withdrawal of Belgian forces, separated warring factions, safeguarded humanitarian aid, helped to restore semblance of law and order. All these exceeded what peacekeepers in Sinai were originally asked to do and what the Congolese government had originally requested.

*Mission accomplished its most challenging task – ending the secession of Katanga province (for doing that they attempted to deport European mercenaries working for the secessionist government and the Union Miniere mining firm)

*Finally ONUC found itself employing an infantry brigade supported by aircraft in operations, obviously it is not a defensive military characteristic.

*Operation accomplished all that it could in the restrictive environment of the Cold War, It ended the secession of Katanga. The West, however supported Joseph Mobutu, who systematically exploited the country for the next 30 years and plunged it back into a civil war at the end of his life. Although colonial rule formally ended, foreigners maintained control of the country’s lucrative mining interests.

*If the UN would give to ONUC mission the enforcement operation status from the very beginning that could be an even more successful intervention.

*Author suggests that the distinction between Chapter VI and Chapter VII is rather an academic one and had to be reconsidered.

*Negative effects of the mission: costs of the mission were to high, that

almost bankrupted the UN, it brought Soviet Union to the brink of being expelled from the organization, and cost Secretary Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld his life (on September 17, during nighttime, he was going by plane to meet Moise Tshombe, leader of insurgents, his plane never reached the destination, it crashed under mysterious circumstances near Ndola, Zambia)

2.Somalia – Just as the end of colonialism had created a power vacuum

that destabilized the Congo, so the end of the Cold War produced a similar void that unsettled Somalia. Both the US and USSR had pumped arms and money into the country enabling the corrupt dictator Siad Barre to stay in power.

*In 1991 the East African nation disintegrated into rival clan territories whose leaders competed for control of the country. Fratricide destroyed the Somali infrastructure, particularly the food delivery system, 4 million people lived in famine afflicted areas and 330.000 faced imminent starvation.

*NGO’s tried to supply food in the area, but it was almost impossible because gunmen from various factions stole 50% of food and resold it, organized looting became the basis of the Somali economy.

* UN nations moved to intervene. The organization first attempted to mount a classical peacekeeping operation.

*The Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, got qualified agreement from clan leaders for deployment of a small number of troops, and the Security Council approved the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) on April 24, 1992.

*UN forces are not enough to secure needed resources. *By the fall of 1992, the “CNN factor” brought the subject to the attention of

George Bush, he authorized deployment of 20.000 US troops as the core of an American led Unified Task Force (UNITAF) for Somalia.

*The Security Council accepted the offer and on December 3, 1992 approved the mission under a Chapter VII mandate, authorizing it “use all necessary means to establish as soon as possible a secure environment for humanitarian relief operation in Somalia.

*the UNITAF mission goals:

1.to secure the major air and sea ports, key installations, and food distribution points.

2.to provide open and free passage of relief supplies.

3.provide security for convoys and relief organization operations and

4.assist UN/NGO’s in providing humanitarian relief under UN auspices. Upon

5.establishing a secure environment for uninterrupted relief operations,

6.USCINCCENT [US Commander-in-Chief Central] terminates and transfers relief operations to UN peacekeeping forces.

*Four no’s of US force commander Marine Lieutenant General Robert Johnston:

1.on the streets of Mogadishu there must be “no technicals [trucks or other vehicles with crew-serviced weapons such as heavy machine guns]…; no banditry, no roadblocks; no visible weapons.”

*After a few intense fire-fights that demonstrated Marine resolve, the Somalis complied with General Johnston‘s terms

*UNITAF succeeded in securing delivery of humanitarian aid. In accomplishing this mission they came very close to forging the kind of coherent civil-military strategy characteristic of counterinsurgency. At the center of this approach was the Civil/Military Operations Center (CMOC). CMOC aimed to provide a workable interface between the NGO’s who coordinated their efforts through the Humanitarian Operations Center (HOC) and UNITAF.

*Despite contradictions that appeared between Marine and NGO’s, UNITAF should be considered a success in that it accomplished its primary mission of stopping the famine. The intervention saved thousands of lives. Had it remained longer in the field, it might have restored a modicum of normalcy to Somalia.

*In May 1993, UNITAF handed operations back to the UN, which in march created a new mission, UNOSOM II, to deal with Somalia.

*From its inception UNOSOM II combined the worst elements of UN and a US led mission. The new mandate empowered the force to act throughout the whole of Somalia even though it would have fewer troops than UNOSOM.

*Although the American commitment to UNOSOM II consisted primarily of 3.000 support troops and logistics personnel, the US also kept a 1.150 strong rapid deployment force in the theater. Because of the American refusal to have its troops serve under foreign command, these troops were led by Major General Thomas Montgomery, who also served as UNOSOM II deputy force commander under Turkish General Cevic Bir. These arrangements produced a top-heavy and incredibly complicated command and control system, allowing the American forces just enough independence to get in trouble.

*The final part of the “play” just was to come as a series of chain of incidents produced a chain reaction leading to the failure and withdrawal of the UNOSOM II. ON June 5, 1993, forces of General Aidid’s United Somali Congress ambushed a contingent of Pakistanis sent to inspect an arms depot located at Mogadishu radio, killing 24 of them. This action forced both UNOSOM II and many of the NGO’s into a cantonment mentality, disconnecting them from the day to day reality of Somali life.

*Finally because Aidid’s forces has committed the massacre, the Secretary-General was determined to capture Aidid himself.

*Persuaded that capturing the “war lord” was necessary, the US send Delta Force Commandos and US Army Rangers to an October 3 raid on Adid’s headquarters that tagged 27 of his associates but not the general himself. During the withdrawal the troops were cornered trying to rescue a helicopter pilot (the movie “Black Hawk Down”). The soldiers lacked air and armor support, 18 of them were killed. That incident lead to the withdrawal of US and others troops contingents and ultimately to the end of the mission itself

*Somalia revealed the same lessons as the Congo had thirty years before. The object of military operations should have been to separate the people from the gun-men, not drive the two together through an over-reliance on fire-power that killed indiscriminately.

*UNOSOM II placed military activity ahead of diplomatic and humanitarian, over-relied on firepower, and concentrated too much on arresting individuals rather than on stabilizing the situation.

Nacu Roman, UBB, RISE-Eng, Year III, 2nd group.