Saturday September 1, 2018
By Ismail Abdi Abdillahi (Bashe Abdi Gaboobe)
In the post-cold
war era and the rise of a unipolar global hierarchical system led by the United
States, the world had seen the fall of many authoritarian regimes (Kaldor, 2006).
This caused many civil wars to break out in those countries ( Example: Somalia,
Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cambodia, Yugoslavia, etc.) between those who were marginalized for a long
period of time and armed militias of the regime (Kaldor, 2006). However, those
civil wars caused havoc through large human causalities and the displacement of
millions of people both internally and externally as refugees as well as destabilizing
global security by becoming a refuge for human trafficking, drug smugglers and
terrorist (Ramsbotham, Woodhouse and Miall, 2011).
Thus, these
above-mentioned factors plus some economic interests and foreign policy
strategies drove the western powers to intervene in these countries under the
umbrella of the United Nations to make peace between the warring factions,
under the goals of state building and peace building (Paris, 2004). However
since these peace building operations are complicated and various programs are
needed to be implemented by various international agencies, the coordination
between them was poor and confusing (
).
For example the UN
asked the international agencies working in El Salvador, Mozambique, and
Cambodia to allocate more budgets for peace building projects, while the IMF
conversely urged them for fiscal restraint (Paris, 2004). This problem therefore
does not lie with the UN or the World Bank, but instead is a result of the
funding gap between DONOR PLEDGES and
the ACTUAL AMOUNT RECEIVED to implement such operations. In the case of
Somalia, the London Somalia Conference 1and 2 ( 2012 and 2017 ).
However, some
attempts had been made to improve the coordination between the peace building
agencies. For example in Kosovo, specific projects had been assigned to each agency
under the supervision of the Special Representative of the General Secretary
(Paris, 2004).Though in practice the operations had overlaps and competition arose
among the various agencies. The United Nation operation in Bosnia was also
criticized due to the lack of coordination between its different agencies. To
avoid these mistakes, the author suggests establishing an institutional center
for peace building to accumulate the expertise and the experience gained from
each mission so that they are used in every mission, instead of using personnel
and agencies outside of the peace building field. This example could be seen in
East Timor in 1999 when the UN’s Department of Political Affairs who were
familiar and experienced in the territory were assigned to lead the peace
building operations but when the
violence started between the anti and the pro independence groups, the hawks of
the UN leadership decided that a military minded agency is needed and they
assigned the leadership role to the Department of Peace Keeping operations (DPKO)
whose expertise were in running military operations but not governmental
administration (Paris, 2004). . In conclusion, one of the main mistakes of
foreign interventions are their overwhelming belief in military power and
disregard of the contributing role of the local communities, cultures and
traditions which could at any time backfire and resort to armed resistance and
jeopardize the whole concept of the peace building operation ( example, that is
what happened to the Americans when they invaded Somalia in 1992 and it is happening to
AMISOM now. )
REFERENCES
Kaldor, M.
2006. New and Old Wars. Stanford University Press: California
Paris,
Roland, “Chapter 11: Lessons Learned and Not Learned: Kosovo, East Timor,
Sierra Leone, and Beyond,” in At War’s End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 212-234.
Ramsbotham,
O., Woodhouse, T. and Miall, H. 2011. Contemporary Conflict Resolution. 3rd
ed.Polity: Cambridge
Ismail Abdi
Abdillahi ( Bashe Abdi Gaboobe), holds Marine
Engineer Certificate from Arab Maritime Transport Academy in Alexandria-Egypt,
Marine Engineer Certificate from Sharjah- UAE, Post Graduate Diploma in Peace
Building from Hargeysa University and Master degree in Peace Building from
Coventry University, UK.