Assessing Peace Operations' Mitigated Outcomes

Abstract

This article seeks to explain why different dimensions of peace operations' success are not always compatible. It puts forward a new typology for better assessing peace operations based on the accomplishment of the mandate and the establishment of order. It provides an explanation of outcomes based on the strategy and the type of interveners. The theoretical framework is applied to 11 peace operations. The analysis shows that mitigated cases are not isolated and result either from the absence of a major military power or from the adoption of a compellence rather than a deterrence strategy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Stephen M.Saideman, Marie-Joëlle Zahar and Rex Brynen, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

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Michael Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006, p.331.

Ibid., table 3.1, pp.79–80.

Ten Somali refugees were interviewed in a camp in the contested Ogaden region of Ethiopia, chosen because of their diverse of origins and the various lengths in stay. They came from different regions (Kismayo, Mogadishu and Berbera) and they had left Somalia at various times: some at the beginning of the war in 1992, others after the Americans and the UN left in 1995, and still others in the 2000s, after the second round of war between the Islamists. Two of the refugees interviewed (from Mogadishu) said they ‘worked’ with the US and the Italian contingents during UNOSOM II. It became clear that they were aware of the subtleties of the various interventions, from the tensions between the different contingents to the dynamics within their relationships.

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According to UN Resolution 751, the mandate was ‘to monitor the ceasefire in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia; and to provide protection and security for United Nations personnel, equipment and supplies at the seaports and airports in Mogadishu and escort deliveries of humanitarian supplies from there to distribution centres in the city and its immediate environs’; UN Security Council, S/RES/751, 24 Apr. 1992.

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The mission's mandate was established ‘to support the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and the peace process; protect United Nations staff, facilities and civilians; support humanitarian and human rights activities; as well as assist in national security reform, including national police training and formation of a new, restructured military’. UN Security Council, S/RES/1508, 19 Sept. 2003.

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Dominic D.P. Johnson and Dominic Tierney, Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics, Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Johnson and Tierney (see n.59 above), p.213.

Ibid.

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Thomas Mockaitis, ‘Peacekeeping in Intra-state Conflict’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol.6, No.1, 1995, pp.112–25; UNDPKO (see n.53 above); Omar Halim, ‘A Peacekeeper's Perspective of Peacebuilding in Somalia’, International Peacekeeping,Vol.3, No.2, 1996, p.80.

Doyle and Sambanis (see n.11 above), p.154.

UNDPKO (see n.53 above).

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John Hirsch,‘War in Sierra Leone‘, Survival, Vol.43, No.2, 2001, pp.145–62; Adekeye Adebajo, ‘Pax West Africana? Regional Security Mechanisms’, in Adebajo and Ismail O.D. Rashid (eds), West Africa's Security Challenges: Building Peace in a Troubled Region. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004, pp.291–318.

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