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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 532
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WCL 532 September 2006
Peacekeeping units
What are British troops doing in Afghanistan? Or in Iraq, come to that. It is notorious that they were sent to Iraq in an illegal attack, after misleading and erroneous information about weapons of mass destruction. They are being kept there because prestige, armour-propre and inertia makes it very difficult to correct such mistakes. They are also hostage to a foreign policy designed to tie Britain in without choice to the decisions made by an imperialist American administration. The so-called 'war on terror' is being used by the American 'neo-cons' to involve European and other countries in those imperialist designs.
But in Afghanistan we have the American direction of a NATO force including a British contingent in such an imperialist venture, now masquerading as a peacekeeping operation. Leaving aside the questionable nature of any foreign incursion into Afghanistan, a country unforgiving for everyone, native or intruder, we have no business there. The beginnings of the involvement came with the Cold War, when the Russians blundered into the country only to discover, as the British did during the previous century, that it was far easier to enter than to leave.
The Americans were slow to learn the lesson but have done so neatly, replacing themselves by using NATO successors. But all that they have done has led the world into trouble and a mistaken direction. The alternative is still to be sought - what should be done to create a capable and adequate peacekeeping forces for the world. Policing the trouble-spots, like Darfur and even Lebanon, requires adequate and efficient forces, not partial and unsatisfactory units scrambled together for a brief and possibly exceptional spell.
Proper peacekeeping requires above all three essentials. First a clear mandate for the action, with international law reformed to cover such eventualities, or a least a legal code relating to the duration of the action. Second a command structure, independent but responsible and impartial. Third, an integrated force, with units properly recruited, trained and united by a common sense of purpose. In addition, financing should be assured for the duration of the tasks allotted to the force.
Until now, it has been assumed that only member-states of the United Nations (with trained military forces) could deliver these requirements and so all U.N. peacekeeping has been undertaken by ad hoc forces drawn from diverse members. This, however, has not been satisfactory, for several reasons. The states volunteering have not always done so for reasons consonant with the needs of the tasks in hand. Nor have their governments always been willing to supply the troops for the time or the tasks envisaged. And finally, political considerations have at times prohibited and at times required that particular states should supply the forces for some particular tasks.
A great deal of nonsense has been talked and written about 'the international community' and so-called 'international forces' sent to deal with problems of violence. When American marines and French troops went into Lebanon a generation ago, they found hostility and danger. The suspicion attached to their governments' intentions and practices vitiated their chances of providing a stable and impartial presence in a country needing that above all; and American marines were blown up spectacularly.
What is clearly needed is a volunteer force, under the command and control of a specialist Peacekeeping Agency set up by and responsible to the Security Council but with its independence guaranteed for the tasks specified in its code of establishment. It should be a volunteer force, with regulation based upon international and world law and be directly recruited as a professional force, with loyalty to the world community as determined by the Security Council on behalf of the world community.
John Roberts
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