Understanding Peacekeeping. Alex J. Bellamy
The last encouraged ‘a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict [which] contributed to false political assumptions and military assessments’ (DPKO 1996: §3). According to the report, UNAMIR’s failure to prevent or halt the genocide, however, was also the fault of member states because, ‘at the height of the crisis, the unilateral decision of some Governments to withdraw their national contingents left the remnants of UNAMIR even more vulnerable and unable to provide protection to civilians at risk’ (ibid.: §2). Despite this, the report found, UNAMIR persevered and played a constructive role in Rwanda:
The United Nations and its family of agencies, although after some delay, did exert considerable efforts to assist the Rwandese people, particularly in the rehabilitation of the country’s justice system and to alleviate the very harsh conditions of many of the roughly 60,000 detainees in the prisons. UNAMIR itself was instrumental in restoring the telecommunications capabilities of the country, doing road and bridge repairs and rehabilitating basic infrastructure. (Ibid.: §3)
Although many of the report’s forty-three recommendations identified key areas in need of improvement (see table 4.3), they stopped short of assigning institutional responsibility or fault on the part of the UN’s agencies, officers and personnel. Moreover, although it identified key problems (e.g. the gap between mandate and means; late/non-deployment of troops), some of its recommendations were contradictory, and it omitted some important pieces of information.
One piece of now well-known information missing from this report is that, shortly before the genocide, one of Major-General Dallaire’s telegrams advised UN headquarters that he had received intelligence about preparations for mass killing. In it he asked for permission to seize arms caches belonging to militia groups. The telegram was passed to the deputy head of the DPKO, Iqbal Riza, who responded on behalf of Annan. Riza replied to the Secretary-General’s Special Representative (SRSG) in Rwanda (not Dallaire) that the peacekeepers should not act until given clear instructions from headquarters. The SRSG, Jacques-Roger Booh-Booh, replied that he had high-level political verification of Dallaire’s intelligence and that UNAMIR planned to act on it in the next day or two. Riza’s response was that UNAMIR did not have a mandate to seize weapons caches or protect civilians and must therefore refrain from doing so. UN headquarters would pass on the intelligence to the US, France, Belgium and the Rwandan government. Riza infamously ended his telgram by declaring that ‘the overriding consideration is the need to avoid entering into a course of action that might lead to the use of force and unanticipated repercussions’ (in Traub 2006: 52). Although the telegrams were all copied to the Secretary-General, the DPKO did not specifically bring the matter to Boutros-Ghali’s attention, nor did they ask the Secretary-General to alert the Security Council. The overarching concern in the wake of Somalia was to guard against overextension in a context where the US was actively arguing against UN peace operations. As Annan explained, ‘you can’t look at Rwanda without thinking of what happened in Somalia; in fact, they were happening almost simultaneously’ (ibid.: 53).
Table 4.3 Key DPKO recommendations from its Comprehensive Report on … UNAMIR (1996)
| Recommendation | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 Mandates should reflect realities on the ground and be matched with the means to implement them. | UNAMIR’s mandate and means were based on a misunderstanding of the conflict and a false assumption that parties supported the Arusha Accords. |
| 3 Peacekeepers require intelligence. | UNAMIR and UN Headquarters lacked capacity to collect intelligence. |
| 6 Requests for troops should focus on capabilities not numbers. | UNAMIR lacked logistical and communications capabilities. |
| 7 Troops must deploy in a timely fashion. | Authorized expansion of UNAMIR in May 1994 was not translated into enhanced capacity due to late deployment and the unwillingness of non-Africans to contribute. |
| 8 Contingents must be fully equipped. | Some African peacekeepers lacked basic equipment. |
| 9 Unilateral troop withdrawals should be discouraged. | Belgian withdrawal was announced without consultation, which undermined the whole mission. |
| 32 An effective political and humanitarian early warning system is needed. | Human Rights Commission reports of deteriorating situation were not circulated across the UN system. |
| 34 Missions should have a joint civil–military operations centre. | There was little coordination of political, military and humanitarian agencies. |
| 36 Protection of civilians is an important humanitarian contribution. | The UN should have had a human rights office in Rwanda working with UN police (CIVPOL). |
| 37 Peacekeepers should strive to maintain impartiality in appearance and perception. | Negotiations with the Rwandan government and the RPF impaired UNAMIR impartiality. |
This tendency to try to shield the UN from criticism over Rwanda persisted after the report. While member states must obviously shoulder the blame for providing inadequate support to UNAMIR and then withdrawing in the face of genocide, the DPKO’s report and Annan’s public statements failed to address equally troubling questions about the UN’s performance. For example, the Report of the Independent Inquiry in 1999 argued that, even given its limited size, UNAMIR should have been able to do more to prevent the genocide and protect civilians (Independent Inquiry 1999: 28).
Partly in response to mounting public criticism of the UN’s refusal to examine its mistakes in Rwanda properly, and partly in response to internal advice that a more critical examination was a prerequisite for regenerating UN peace operations, in 1999 Annan established an Independent Commission comprising the former Swedish prime minister Ingvar Carlsson, the former South Korean foreign minister Han Sung-Joo, and a retired Nigerian general, Rufus Kupolati, to investigate all aspects of the UN’s performance in Rwanda. When Annan received a draft copy of the report, his first inclination was to order its revision, believing that it was too critical of the UN. However, on the advice of senior advisers such as Mark Malloch Brown and the new head of the DPKO, Jean-Marie Guéhenno (2002: 72), who argued that only by reconciling fully with the past could the UN move forward and begin to rebuild credibility and support for peace operations among member states, Annan agreed to leave the text as written by the Inquiry.
The Report of the Independent Inquiry opened with a damning but general criticism, insisting that the Rwandan genocide resulted from the failure of the whole UN system. The ‘overriding failure’, it argued, was the lack of resources and lack of will to take on the commitment that would have been necessary to prevent the genocide and protect its victims. The lack of resources and will meant UNAMIR was not adequately ‘planned, dimensioned, deployed or instructed’ in a way that would have ‘provided for a proactive and assertive role’ in the face of the deteriorating situation in Rwanda (1999: 2). The mission was smaller than recommended by the DPKO, slow to deploy owing to the reluctance of states to contribute troops, and debilitated by administrative difficulties. When troops did arrive, they were generally inadequately trained and equipped.
Hence, when the genocide erupted, UNAMIR was not functioning properly and was mired in problems associated with dysfunctional command and control and a lack of military capacity. ‘A force numbering 2,500’ (UNAMIR’s strength at the time of the genocide), the Inquiry concluded, ‘should have been able to stop or at least limit massacres of the kind which began in Rwanda’ at the start of the genocide (1999: 2). That UNAMIR failed to do this was the result of ‘fundamental capacity’ problems. Among the report’s many criticisms and recommendations were ten points