afrol News / The New Times, 7 November - Keeping peace where there is no peace. No doubt this is the dilemma many peacekeepers have found themselves in, in many occasions. In a twinkling of an eye, they have found themselves in the middle of crossfires beyond their comprehension and capacity to handle. Their peacekeeping missions turn out to be a crisis within another.

Someone should have taken enough time to figure out the right mandate and name of the mission and equip them accordingly. At the end, most peace keepers eventually realise that the mission should actually have been dubbed a peace finding or enforcing one and not peace keeping. For there was no peace to keep in the first place.

Sometimes back, at the height of one of the most severe crisis the United Nations has faced since, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned to the US, France and the UK for help. He asked them to organise a rapid reaction force to rescue the 500 UN peacekeepers who had been taken hostage by rebels in Sierra Leone. All three countries said no, although the UK subsequently sent in its own force under national command.

One of the main challenges the UN undoubtedly faces is putting together missions capable of diffusing conflicts and finding peace in Africa. It is counter-productive to send soldiers to 'keep peace' in battle grounds unless the world organisation just wants to look busy and be seen to mind.

Nevertheless the UN cannot be blamed solely, taking into account the resources needed to send well equipped, ready for combat, peace finding missions. Numbers are never a problem, equipments and financial resources are.

Unfortunately, those who are able are not willing and those who are willing are not able. The reluctance of countries to support large, well-equipped peace finding and enforcing missions in the field and within the UN Security Council usually is perceived to leave the world organisation with no option but to 'prescribe painkillers for life threatening ailments'.

Most of the world organization's armed peacekeepers come from less developed countries, such as Kenya, Nigeria, India and Jordan. These troops are usually poorly equipped and receive training in UN peacekeeping procedures only after they have arrived in the conflict region.

On the other hand, the warring factions at times take advantage of this and outrightly embarrass them. This became evident sometimes back when Zambian troops, who were unable to call for help for lack of radio equipment, quickly surrendered to Sierra Leonean rebels.

It is the high time some developed nations - so vocal on UN missions and doing nothing of much consequence - showed up or shut up. If they are not courageous enough to send their troops, they should at least contribute in kind by supplying equipments. There is no sense in putting difficult and heavy mandates on the UN shoulders and back tracking on resources to achieve them.

It is pedestrian knowledge that the US has become allergic to UN peacekeeping in Africa, since its catastrophic involvement in the Somalia operation in the early 1990s. It has also been too stingy and tight even in helping out with the logistics of peace keeping in Africa. The UN was forced to decline the US offer to fly additional emergency peacekeepers into Sierra Leone because Washington charged three times the commercial rate for its aircraft.

The UK, although praised for its rescue mission to Sierra Leone, was also criticised for not acting under UN command. While they do not share the American allergy to UN peacekeeping, many European NATO countries are reluctant to subject their troops to UN control after their disastrous experience in Bosnia, where UN peacekeepers were unable to prevent the slaughter of 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.

Against all odds, the UN needs to make hard decisions on peace keeping missions, especially in Africa, if history is not to repeat itself. There is need to transform the peacekeeping department into a larger, more efficient military-style operation. Once guts are gathered, the bridge will be crossed somehow.

Otherwise lack of funds and the reluctance of developing countries to increase the UN's ability to intervene in conflicts that are most likely to erupt on their own turf, have also hampered the enlargement of the organisation's peacekeeping department.

As a matter of urgency, the UN has to decide early enough whether a mission's mandate is to find peace or to keep peace. It is inhuman to send ill equipped troops to 'keep peace' in battle fields where it is hardly in existence. Sending troops based on the belief of deterring violence by presence is not only vague but catastrophic.

The UN has to have a clear mission from the word "go", a unified political direction and a clear chain of command. Carefully regulated combination of force and diplomacy is the key to successful peacekeeping. Force should be used in the face of peace-breakers who use it freely and criminally.

Peacekeepers have to be tough, efficient, and high-minded, whereas peace finders ought to have all the latter, as well as the corresponding military might.

Kenneth Kimathi is the Commercial Editor and Writer of 'The New Times Newspaper', Kigali, Rwanda.

By Kenneth Kimathi (Kigali, Rwanda)

© afrol News / The New Times (Kigali)

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