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Peacekeeping and legitimacy: lessons from Cambodia and Somalia

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13533310500066487

1743-906X

Michael Mersiades,

Global Peace and Security Dynamics

Abstract This article argues that the legitimacy of peacekeeping forces in the eyes of the local actors impacts significantly on the success of the peacekeeping operations. Legitimacy not only provides the basis for consent, it has the additional benefit of generating support from local actors. This article uses the 1993 Australian peacekeeping operation in Baidoa, Somalia, and the UNTAC operation in Cambodia as case studies to explore peacekeeper legitimacy and its effect on operational success. Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Dr Alex Bellamy for his kind patience and support. Notes 1. See, for example, Ministry of Defence, Joint Warfare Publication 3–50: Peace Support Operations, London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 2000. 2. James Gow and Christopher Dandeker, ‘Peace-Support Operations: The Problem of Legitimation’, The World Today, Vol.51, No.8–9, 1995, p.171. 3. ‘Legitimacy’, in Ted Honderich (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, p.447. 4. David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power, Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities, 1991, pp.16, 28. 5. David Beetham, The Legitimation of Power, Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities, 1991, pp.28–33. 6. See Gow and Dandeker, ‘Peace-Support Operations: The Problem of Legitimation’, The World Today, Vol.51, No.8–9, 1995, p.171 and Dandeker and Gow, ‘The Future of Peace Support Operations: Strategic Peacekeeping and Success’, Armed Forces and Society, Vol.23, No.3, 1997, pp. 337–40. 7. See Gow and Dandeker, ‘Peace-Support Operations: The Problem of Legitimation’, The World Today, Vol.51, No.8–9, 1995, p.171 and Dandeker and Gow, ‘The Future of Peace Support Operations: Strategic Peacekeeping and Success’, Armed Forces and Society, Vol.23, No.3, 1997, pp. 337–40. 8. The term ‘spoilers’ was coined by Stephen Stedman to denote leaders and parties who believe peace will be disadvantageous to them and use violence to undermine attempts to achieve peace. See Stephen John Stedman, ‘Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes’, International Security, Vol.22, No.2, 1997, pp.5–53. 9. The four factions were: the incumbent government, led by Hun Sen, and installed by the Vietnamese after they invaded Cambodia in 1978; the Khmer Rouge; the royalist forces led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk; and the Khmer People's National Liberation Front led by Son Sann. 10. Jonathan Tombes, ‘Cambodia: Lessons for Peacekeepers’, The American Enterprise, Vol.5, No.3, 1994, p.48. 11. Lyndall McLean, ‘Civil Administration in Transition: Public Information and the Neutral Political/Electoral Environment’, in Hugh Smith (ed.), International Peacekeeping: Building on the Cambodian Experience, Canberra: Australian Defence Force Studies Centre, 1994, p.48. 12. Janet Heininger, Peacekeeping in Transition: The United Nations in Cambodia, New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1994, p.65. 13. Yasushi Akashi, ‘The Politics of UN Peacekeeping from Cambodia to Yugoslavia’, in Ramesh Thakur and Albrecht Schnabel (eds), UN Peacekeeping Operations: Ad Hoc Missions, Permanent Engagement, Tokyo: UN University Press, 2001, p.151. 14. James A. Shear, ‘Riding the Tiger: The UN and Cambodia’, in William J. Durch (ed.), UN Peacekeeping, American Policy, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s, London: Macmillan, 1997, pp.139–40. 15. James A. Shear, ‘Riding the Tiger: The UN and Cambodia’, in William J. Durch (ed.), UN Peacekeeping, American Policy, and the Uncivil Wars of the 1990s, London: Macmillan, 1997, p.40. 16. John Sanderson, ‘Peacekeeping in Cambodia’, Sydney Papers, Vol.6, No.2, 1994, p.58. 17. Raoul M. Jennar, ‘UNTAC: “International Triumph” in Cambodia?’, Security Dialogue, Vol.25, No.2, 1994, pp.152–3. 18. Tombes, ‘Cambodia: Lessons for Peacekeepers’, The American Enterprise, Vol.5, No.3, 1994, p.51. 19. Ken Berry, Cambodia – From Red to Blue: Australia's Initiative for Peace, Canberra: Allen & Unwin, 1997, p.241. 20. Khatharya Um, ‘Cambodia in 1993: Year Zero Plus One’, Asian Survey, Vol.34, No.1, 1993, p.73. 21. Michael W. Doyle, ‘UNTAC – Sources of Success and Failure’, in Hugh Smith (ed.), International Peacekeeping: Building on the Cambodian Experience, Canberra: Australian Defence Force Studies Centre, 1994, pp.93–4, 97. 22. Sanderson, ‘Peacekeeping in Cambodia’, Sydney Papers, Vol.6, No.2, 1994, p.58, and Heininger, Peacekeeping in Transition: The United Nations in Cambodia, New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1994, p.32. 23. Berry, Cambodia – From Red to Blue: Australia's Initiative for Peace, Canberra: Allen & Unwin, 1997, p.240. 24. The Paris Agreements stipulated that all foreign forces (ostensibly Vietnamese forces) had to withdraw from Cambodia before demobilization and cantonment could begin. UNTAC declared Cambodia free of foreign forces, but the Khmer Rouge had a different definition of ‘foreign forces’. The Khmer Rouge included Vietnamese ‘settlers’ in their definition, and claimed that almost a million Vietnamese had been given Cambodian identity cards by the government. David Roberts, ‘A Dangerous Game: Managing Consent in the Cambodian UN Peacekeeping Operation’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol.21, No.1, 1998, pp.35–8. 25. Mats Berdal and Michael Leifer, ‘Cambodia’, in James Mayall (ed.), The New Interventionism 1991–1994: United Nations Experience in Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.43. Lyndall McLean, the Deputy Director of civil administration in the UNTAC Phnom Penh provincial headquarters, provides a detailed account of the difficulties that the civil administration component faced in trying to control the government bureaucracy in McLean, ‘Civil Administration in Transition: Public Information and the Neutral Political/Electoral Environment’, in Hugh Smith (ed.), International Peacekeeping: Building on the Cambodian Experience, Canberra: Australian Defence Force Studies Centre, 1994, p.48. 26. See Steve Heder, ‘The Resumption of Armed Struggle by the Party of Democratic Kampuchea: Evidence from National Army of Democratic Kampuchea “Self-Demobilizers”’, in Steve Heder and Judy Ledgerwood (eds), Propaganda, Politics and Violence in Cambodia: Democratic Transition under United Nations Peacekeeping, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. 27. Doyle, ‘UNTAC – Sources of Success and Failure’, in Hugh Smith (ed.), International Peacekeeping: Building on the Cambodian Experience, Canberra: Australian Defence Force Studies Centre, 1994, p.89. 28. Tombes, ‘Cambodia: Lessons for Peacekeepers’, The American Enterprise, Vol.5, No.3, 1994, p.51. 29. Doyle, ‘War and Peace in Cambodia’, in Ramesh Thakur and Albrecht Schnabel (eds), New York: UN University Press, 2001, p.91. 30. Jamie Frederic Metzl, ‘The Many Faces of UNTAC: A Review Article’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.17, No.1, 1995, p.88. 31. Ramses Amer, ‘The United Nations’ Peacekeeping Operation in Cambodia: Overview and Assessment', Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.15, No.2, 1993, p.218. 32. Berdal and Leifer, ‘Cambodia’, in James Mayall (ed.), The New Interventionism 1991–1994: United Nations Experience in Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.41; UN Department of Public Information, ‘Completed Peacekeeping Operations: Cambodia’, at: www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/untac.htm. 33. Um, ‘Cambodia in 1993: Year Zero Plus One’, Asian Survey, Vol.34, No.1, 1993, p.73. 34. Nayan Chanda, ‘Isolate Khmer Rouge’, Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol.155, No.30, 30 July 1992, p.18. 35. Berry, Cambodia – From Red to Blue: Australia's Initiative for Peace, Canberra: Allen & Unwin, 1997, p.275. For a detailed account of the government campaign of violence, see Judy Ledgerwood, ‘Patterns of CPP Political Repression and Violence During the UNTAC Period’, in Steve Heder and Judy Ledgerwood (eds), Propaganda, Politics and Violence in Cambodia: Democratic Transition under United Nations Peacekeeping, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996. 36. Berdal and Leifer, ‘Cambodia’, in James Mayall (ed.), The New Interventionism 1991–1994: United Nations Experience in Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p.54; Ledgerwood, ‘Patterns of CPP Political Repression and Violence During the UNTAC Period’, in Steve Heder and Judy Ledgerwood (eds), Propaganda, Politics and Violence in Cambodia: Democratic Transition under United Nations Peacekeeping, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996, pp.125–6; and John Sanderson, ‘UNTAC: Successes and Failures’, in Hugh Smith (ed.), International Peacekeeping: Building on the Cambodian Experience, Canberra: Australian Defence Force Studies Centre, 1994, p.20. 37. At one point Norodom Sihanouk temporarily withdrew his support for UNTAC, citing UNTAC's inability to protect FUNCIPEC. Amer, ‘The United Nations’ Peacekeeping Operation in Cambodia: Overview and Assessment', Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.15, No.2, 1993, p.218. 38. Tombes, ‘Cambodia: Lessons for Peacekeepers’, The American Enterprise, Vol.5, No.3, 1994, p.53. 39. Tombes, ‘Cambodia: Lessons for Peacekeepers’, The American Enterprise, Vol.5, No.3, 1994, p.53. 40. The other reason for factional compliance with the election was the lure of the international legitimacy that an election victory would grant. Conversely, the delegitimizing effect non-compliance would also have prompted factional cooperation. 41. Sanderson, ‘UNTAC: Successes and Failures’, in Hugh Smith (ed.), International Peacekeeping: Building on the Cambodian Experience, Canberra: Australian Defence Force Studies Centre, 1994, pp.20–21. 42. Heininger, Peacekeeping in Transition: The United Nations in Cambodia, New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1994, p.38; and Sanderson, ‘Peacekeeping in Cambodia’, Sydney Papers, Vol.6, No.2, 1994, p.59. 43. Doyle, ‘War and Peace in Cambodia’, in Ramesh Thakur and Albrecht Schnabel (eds), New York: UN University Press, 2001, p.88. Some of the efforts UNTAC went to included creating an UNTAC radio station and a troop of travelling actors performing skits in the countryside. 44. Um, ‘Cambodia in 1993: Year Zero Plus One’, Asian Survey, Vol.34, No.1, 1993, p.75. 45. Tombes, ‘Cambodia: Lessons for Peacekeepers’, The American Enterprise, Vol.5, No.3, 1994, p.55. 46. Tombes, ‘Cambodia: Lessons for Peacekeepers’, The American Enterprise, Vol.5, No.3, 1994, pp. 50–51. 47. Ledgerwood, ‘Patterns of CPP Political Repression and Violence During the UNTAC Period’, in Steve Heder and Judy Ledgerwood (eds), Propaganda, Politics and Violence in Cambodia: Democratic Transition under United Nations Peacekeeping, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1996, p.121. 48. FUNCINPEC is a French acronym; its English translation is ‘The United National Front for an Independent, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia’. 49. Mick Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, para.802; and Bob Breen, Through Aussie Eyes: Photographs of the Australian Defence Force in Somalia 1993, Canberra: Defence Public Relations, 1994, p.13. 50. Breen, Through Aussie Eyes: Photographs of the Australian Defence Force in Somalia 1993, Canberra: Defence Public Relations, 1994, p.15; and Robert G. Patman, ‘Beyond “the Mogadishu Line”: Some Australian Lessons for Managing Intra-State Conflicts', Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.12, No.1, 2001, p.64. 51. Security Council Res. 794, S/RES 794, 3 December 1992, at http://ods-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N92/772/11/PDF/N9277211.pdf?OpenElement. 52. Breen, Through Aussie Eyes: Photographs of the Australian Defence Force in Somalia 1993, Canberra: Defence Public Relations, 1994, p.15. 53. Sam Kiley, ‘Americans at odds over disarming Somali clans’, The Times [London], 15 Dec. 1992. 54. Jane Perlez, ‘Mission to Somalia; Expectations in Somalia?’, The New York Times, 4 Dec. 1992; and Jill Smolowe, ‘Great Expectations’, Time, 21 Dec. 1992, p.35. 55. Martin R. Ganzglass, ‘The Restoration of the Somali Justice System’, in Walter Clarke and Jeffrey Herbst (eds), Learning from Somalia: Lessons from Armed Humanitarian Intervention, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997, p.34. 56. Bob Breen, A Little Bit of Hope: Australian Force – Somalia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998, p.86. 57. Patman, ‘Beyond “the Mogadishu Line”: Some Australian Lessons for Managing Intra-State Conflicts', Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.12, No.1, 2001, pp.70–71; and Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, para.802; and Bob Breen, Through Aussie Eyes: Photographs of the Australian Defence Force in Somalia 1993, Canberra: Defence Public Relations, 1994, para.808. 58. William J. Mellor, ‘The Australian Experience in Somalia’, in Hugh Smith (ed.), Peacekeeping: Challenges for the Future, Canberra: Australian Defence Studies Centre, 1993, p.66. 59. Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, para.802; and Bob Breen, Through Aussie Eyes: Photographs of the Australian Defence Force in Somalia 1993, Canberra: Defence Public Relations, 1994, para.818. 60. Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, para.802; and Bob Breen, Through Aussie Eyes: Photographs of the Australian Defence Force in Somalia 1993, Canberra: Defence Public Relations, 1994, para.803. 61. Patman, ‘Beyond “the Mogadishu Line”: Some Australian Lessons for Managing Intra-State Conflicts', Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.12, No.1, 2001, p.65. 62. Patman, ‘Beyond “the Mogadishu Line”: Some Australian Lessons for Managing Intra-State Conflicts', Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.12, No.1, 2001, p.65. 63. See Breen, A Little Bit of Hope: Australian Force – Somalia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998, chs 3, 4. 64. Patman, ‘Beyond “the Mogadishu Line”: Some Australian Lessons for Managing Intra-State Conflicts', Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.12, No.1, 2001, p.65. 65. Breen, A Little Bit of Hope: Australian Force – Somalia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998, pp.340–41. 66. Breen, A Little Bit of Hope: Australian Force – Somalia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998, p.341. 67. Robert G. Patman, ‘Disarming Somalia: The Contrasting Fortunes of United States and Australian Peacekeepers during United Nations Intervention, 1992–1993’, African Affairs, Vol.96, No.385, 1997, p.525. 68. Ganzglass, ‘The Restoration of the Somali Justice System’, in Walter Clarke and Jeffrey Herbst (eds), Learning from Somalia: Lessons from Armed Humanitarian Intervention, Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997, p.27; and Patman, ‘Disarming Somalia: The Contrasting Fortunes of United States and Australian Peacekeepers during United Nations Intervention, 1992–1993’, African Affairs, Vol.96, No.385, 1997, p.525. 69. Breen, A Little Bit of Hope: Australian Force – Somalia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998, p.218. 70. Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, para.820. 71. Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, para.824. 72. Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, paras 847, 849, 851. 73. Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, paras 853, 859, 865. 74. Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, para.810. 75. Breen, A Little Bit of Hope: Australian Force – Somalia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998, p.336. 76. Cited in Patman, ‘Disarming Somalia: The Contrasting Fortunes of United States and Australian Peacekeepers during United Nations Intervention, 1992–1993’, African Affairs, Vol.96, No.385, 1997, p.526. 77. Breen, A Little Bit of Hope: Australian Force – Somalia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998, p.344. 78. Patman, ‘Disarming Somalia: The Contrasting Fortunes of United States and Australian Peacekeepers during United Nations Intervention, 1992–1993’, African Affairs, Vol.96, No.385, 1997, p.529. 79. It should be noted, however, that there is some conflicting evidence about the durability and effectiveness of the judicial system without the Australian presence. See: Breen, A Little Bit of Hope: Australian Force – Somalia, St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998, p. 223; and the testimony of Maj.-Gen. Clunies-Ross in Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Defence Sub-Committee, Inquiry into Australia's Participation in Peacekeeping 1993–94, Volume 2: Transcript of Evidence, Canberra: Australian Federal Parliament, 1995, p.201. 80. Kelly, Peace Operations: Tackling the Military, Legal and Policy Challenges, Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1997, para.872.