The Rising East
Turning swords into
plowshares takes strict
training, disciplineIt takes special training to transform soldiers into peacekeepers.
Ever since the legendary Dag Hammarskjold was secretary general of the United Nations in the 1950s, soldiers of many armies have struggled with peacekeeping operations. As he once said: "Peacekeeping is not a job for soldiers, but only soldiers can do it."
The reason for the dilemma is that soldiers are trained to apply maximum force, killing people and breaking things, to accomplish a mission. A basic rule of combat holds that commanders who strike with mass, speed and lethality lose fewer of their own soldiers and achieve their objectives in less time.
In contrast, peacekeepers apply a minimum of measured force to separate enemies and impose a truce, like cops wading into a barroom to break up a fight, then stick around to make sure the brawlers don't get into it again while peace is being negotiated. As a report at the U.N. says: "Force cannot create peace; it can only create the space in which peace may be built."
Especially after the Cold War, soldiers have been trying to cope with peacekeeping tasks assigned by their political leaders. To sort out recent lessons learned, military officers and civilian officials from 22 nations in North America, Asia, the Pacific and Europe gathered here several weeks ago to sort out lessons learned in Somalia, Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor and Ethiopia and Eritrea and to pass on their experience to novices in peacekeeping.
In this conference, the Center of Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance, which has been charged by the Pacific Command to train peacekeepers, asked that speakers not be identified so that they could be candid.
Those who have commanded in peacekeeping operations emphasized the need for an unambiguous mandate from the U.N. or the leading nation in what they called "a coalition of the willing." Said one officer: "Mandates of peacekeeping operations need to be clear and precise, yet flexible and based on the realities of the conflict."
Several criticized marching orders from political authorities that had been hastily drawn, were based on inadequate or inaccurate intelligence, and had been confusing because of a lack of consensus among the nations furnishing troops.
"The essence of this idea is that military operations are conducted to achieve a political objective," said another former commander. "The main secret for success is that political and military considerations have to be matched."
This is easier said than done, he continued. "On the national level, this process is already difficult enough, but it gets even more tedious on the international level with nations that hold widely different views on how a crisis should be resolved."
Another experienced former officer agreed. "Modern peace operations are not military campaigns, and they are not led by generals. They are led by civilians." He added that most of those civilians have been chosen for their political skills rather than their ability as leaders.
Just as a clear mandate is necessary, so are what peacekeepers call exit strategies and end states, meaning that political leaders should figure out how they are going to get peacekeepers out of a mission when it is over and define what they expect to remain in place after the peacekeepers have gone home.
Throughout the conference ran a consistent theme: that soldiers must be trained in peacekeeping before being deployed on a mission because their prior training had been for combat. In addition, the peacekeepers should have what several called "robust rules of engagement" that set conditions under which force would be employed, and how much.
A retired general who had worked with a combined staff of different nationalities noted the difficulties of operating without a common language or a common military doctrine or common staff techniques. Even if allied on a mission, some staff officers refuse to share intelligence they have gained from their own services.
The solution, the general said, was to get qualified liaison officers, to get national influence from the top, and to build a consensus.
"You may not have unity of command," he said, "but you can strive for unity of effort."
Although much of the conference was aimed at Asians, a European officer was skeptical about Asians doing peacekeeping operations because Asian organizations do not "take stands on issues that exceed the comfort levels of all of its members."
Richard Halloran is a former correspondent
for The New York Times in Asia and a former editorial
director of the Star-Bulletin. His column appears Sundays.
He can be reached by e-mail at rhalloran@starbulletin.com