UN peacekeeping operations (catch all)

[Tom Odom]

Tom Odom, I had no idea you were actively siding with Hizbullah. Shoudn't you then be posting in the "Indigenous" board?

James Dobbins writing for RAND is instructive as to the U.N. record in peacekeeping/nation building, both in terms of both faults and successes.

Hmmm maybe so...I hope some day that the thugs who kidnapped Rich Higgins stand against a wall.

In many ways my service as a UN observer in Lebanon and losing friends on the ground prepared me for Rwanda and some of the failures there. It also allowed me to understand just how hamstrung a Force Commander like MG Romeo Dallaire or MG Guy Tousignant could be. Dallaire's book catalogs all of that well when discussing UNAMIR 1; Shahyar Khan--the Senior Rep for the UN Secretary General and senior civilian for UNAMIR 2--does the same for the reborn UNAMIR in his book.

As a US DATT I worked closely with both UNAMIR 2 and the new Rwandan government--especially the military. Sometimes that was much like being a UN observer in Lebanon again; both sides saw you as suspect or sympathetic to the other side. The latter was certainly true because I did sympathize with both sides and sometimes one had to choose.

In the case of Kibeho and the massacre in April 95, my role was to report what I saw as accurately as possible and report the views reported or held by all sides. MG Tousignant and I differed on casualty counts; he was reporting as a UN officer based on what he got from below. I did the same but I did my own assessment. Later when we talked, he told me that he recognized that our agendas could not always be the same. In the case of Kibeho, the divergence was one of perspective; he was the FC charged with a mandate (one defunct before his troops deployed) to protect persons at risk. That gave him an immediate perspective on Kibeho. And he rightly violated UN orders when he put troops in the middle of the camp and kept them there. The Aussies and the Zambians did the best anyone could do. My perspective was longer, predating his as I saw what was happening in Kibeho as a direct extension of the civil war and genocide. In my view what happended was tragic and largely unavoidable because it was inside Rwanda. The greater tragedy was that Kibeho heralded what was going to happen in Zaire and none of us--Tousignant, Khan, David Rawson, Bob Gribbin, and I--could get that message across or perhaps could stimulate the proper responses from the greater international community.

Lebanon is both the same and different. Conflicting agendas just like Rwanda abound and have their effects on those on the ground. The big difference is the attention that Lebanon draws routinely versus the attention that Rwanda (and the larger Congo War) drew by exception.

The RAND report is quite interesting.

best

Tom

PS

As an inveterate table of contents and bibliography scanner, I downloaded the RAND study and looked at it. My initial assessment is that it sets high goals and fails to meet them. For example:

The UN missions selected are relevant; many that were not selected are more relevant. There is no mention of UNAMIR 1 or 2; both missions were involved in nation building.

I studied the 1960s Congo operation in depth when researching and writing LP 14; the scholarship shown in this study on the Congo is remarkably shallow. Brian Urqhart and Conor O'Brien's books are not in the bibliography. Urqhart's book on UN peackeeping is seminal; he was by the way that British intelligence officer who dared question the wisdom of OP Market Garden and was relieved for "exhaustion."

I will add more as I finish the study.