Noble Commitments and Harsh Realities

Abstract

When UN Secretary- General Boutros-Ghali introduced his Agenda for in 1992, Canadians welcomed the prospect of international commitment to more effective conflict prevention and sustained peacebuilding. Two decades of subsequent experience have left us somewhat chastened. The harsh realities of our experience in Afghanistan have severely challenged our once-noble aspirations as peacemakers and nation-builders. So, too, have our interventions in African conflicts. Twenty years have made us much the wiser about what is really required for successful and lasting peacebuilding.The paragraphs that follow are a personal reflection on how three of Canada's interventions in Africa have, through the harsh realities of experience, shifted the Canadian public and government from rather widespread and noble commitments to more limited aspirations: Somalia in 1992-93, when we joined the United States in providing security for humanitarian aid delivery; our more successful traditional peacekeeping role with the United Nations mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2000; and our whole-of-government contribution over several years to building peace and human rights in Sudan and Darfur. The lessons we have learned in these multilateral initiatives are important in considering Canada's responses to current and future demands, not least in South Sudan, and for moving forward with a renewed agenda for peace.SOMALIA, 1992-93In the year immediately following the publication of An agenda for peace, Canada joined the United States in a major intervention in Somalia. The UN's unified task force, of which Canadian troops were a substantial part, was to act under a security council mandate to provide the immediate security necessary to get food past feuding warlords to starving Somalis. Canadian diplomatic, aid, and defence officials had initially been dubious about a Canadian military role in Somalia: Somalia was not a traditional Commonwealth or francophone partner and it had little strategic or commercial connection with Canada. Indeed, it was largely unknown to most Canadians.Canadians, however, were clearly distressed at the highly visible scale of man's inhumanity to man and the media and parliamentarians reflected a popular concern that Somalis could not just be left to starve: Canada must take decisive action to help. Perhaps even more persuasively, top levels of the US administration urged our prime minister to send Canadian troops to join their forces in an American-led intervention. Canada went to Somalia for humanitarian goals, but also for foreign policy reasons well beyond Canada's immediate interests in the Horn of Africa. We were part of a broader multilateral scheme led from Washington, rather than New York, that recognized an anarchic Somalia as a threat to international security.Our forces made it work, up to a point. Our technical competence was not questioned. Our troops fulfilled their humanitarian mission by providing secure food aid delivery and working successfully to combine emergency assistance with longer-term development. By early 1993, they were well embarked on many of the goals outlined in the Agenda for peace.When the Canadian effort fell apart, it was over an entirely unexpected incident involving members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment's brutal beating death of a Somali teenager, rather than a serious challenge from Somalia. And when the American forces fell into their own peacebuilding trap, it was because, as sophisticated and overwhelming as they were, they had met their match in little-understood local networks, commitments, and clan loyalties, as well as mission creep.The truth is, none of us succeeded in Somalia, neither the unified task force nor the subsequent United Nations operation in Somalia. Somalia is today an even greater international threat than it was when Canada first went there. Somalis still suffer the ravages of bad or no government, lack of development, and deprivation. …