Darfur and the peacekeeping myth

Better than I could have written it:

African mission And we may have to kill to save lives in Darfur

The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Re: We may have to lose lives to save them in Darfur, Jan. 4.

When Robert Muggah states: "the fact that there is no obvious peace to keep does not mean that protection of civilians cannot be achieved," that is true. But protection is not peacekeeping. The rules of the peacekeeping game are that peacekeepers must be neutral, and may not use their weapons, but for self-defence. And these rules contributed much to the impotence of the UN in the Balkans, until the mission was taken over by NATO, with more robust rules of engagement.

I am very concerned by calls to protect civilians in the same context as peacekeeping, as it reveals a lack of understanding of peacekeeping. There were three essential conditions to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Pearson peacekeeping concept: peace, or at least a ceasefire, a will to keep the peace by the former belligerents and an invitation, by the former belligerents, to come help them keep the peace. None of these conditions exist in Darfur.

How would a UN-African Union force, known as UNAMID, guarantee protection for humanitarian workers and safe corridors to access displaced people? By fighting those who want to harm the protected.

So the harsh reality is not simply that the international community may lose lives to save them. That is nations, including possibly Canada, would send their soldiers to die. The harsher reality is that the international community may have to kill to save lives.

Calling a mission to Darfur "peacekeeping" when in fact the role is to take sides, protect selected groups against others and kill when needed, is totally misleading. It may be why some Canadians clamour to trade our combat role in Afghanistan for our traditional peacekeeping role in Darfur. The question really is not do we have the stomach to send our soldiers to die for our noble cause, but do we have the stomach to send them to kill for our noble cause.

This is not to argue Darfur is not a noble cause. But let us not be so unwilling to face the truth that we call such an adventure peacekeeping. Peacemaking perhaps, protecting the weak maybe, but not peacekeeping.

Normand Levert,
Orléans
Lieutenant colonel (ret'd)

Prof. Michael Byers, that notable opponent of our Afghan mission, might well want Canada to go into Darfur with guns blazing--though his grasp of military operations seems rather shaky.

Update: Anyone still think there's a role for Canadian units?

Sweden and Norway have dropped plans to send about 400 troops to the UN peacekeeping force in Darfur because of opposition from Sudan's government, a Swedish Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday.

The two Scandinavian countries had planned to send a joint engineering unit to the peacekeeping force in the troubled region, but the Swedish and Norwegian foreign ministers said in a joint statement that "Sudan's opposition makes it impossible to maintain the offer of a Norwegian-Swedish contribution."..