Keeping the peace

Some 120 000 troops are currently deployed around the world as part of peace missions operated by the UN, the EU, NATO and other international organizations. The number of civilian forces employed in these missions is a tenth of this figure, while budgets for military spending similarly overshadow budgets for civilian peacekeeping services.

But these days, even military veterans with years of experience in conflict regions maintain that troops alone cannot restore peace. This can only be done with the help of a civilian peace service with contacts and access to local politicians, administrations, judiciaries and police - these are the people who will determine whether or not a peace agreement proves lasting.

So it is none other than military forces who these days tend to stress the primacy of politics - while the politicians immediately send in the troops as soon as a conflict flares up.

No job for a soldier

Some 3,500 Bundeswehr soldiers are currently stationed in Afghanistan, mandated to ensure the safety of the population, protect refugees, provide humanitarian relief, fight the heroin trade and contribute to reconstruction. These are all civilian tasks from which the Bundeswehr would be exempted back in Germany. And meanwhile, Germany has sent only 60 officers to help train 10,000 Afghan police forces.

But what is the task of the army? To defeat an enemy. To provide security and protection for a state or an alliance of states that is facing enemies. Its primary goal is the efficient elimination of armed resistance. But these are precisely the tasks soldiers deployed in international peacekeeping missions are not allowed to do. They must treat the local population - even when they are armed - as partners, not enemies. They may only use their weapons in self-defense. And first and foremost, they must protect civilian reconstruction efforts. So why exactly is this job carried out by soldiers?

A group of experts made up of army officers, scientists and politicians at the University of Hamburg recently drew up criteria for the Bundeswehr’s foreign deployments. According to these, the Bundeswehr must always observe international law and comply with the principle of proportionality. Any deployment of German troops must take place with a specific mandate within the framework of a realistic peace plan. Basically, the group’s report concluded that military missions are only legitimate when they are designed as police deployments. In the specific cases of Kosovo and Afghanistan, the experts even proposed gradually replacing international military troops with international police forces.

Why not police?

The difficulties and disadvantages of international military missions were widely known by the time the Brahimi Report (also known as the Report of the Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping Operations) was issued in 1999. After that, leading peace researchers stepped up calls to design the role of armed troops in such missions like that of an international police force under the aegis of a reformed UN. Admittedly, an international police force would need to be sufficiently trained and armed to be able to defeat dangerous warlords, for example. So the role model for such a force would be less the British bobby with his truncheon - regrettably, some might say - and more billeted cops like the Italian Carabinieri.

The advantages would be manifold. An international police force upholding international law would represent a significant step on the path to a global society in which security is based on global domestic policy’s monopoly on the use of force instead of on the potentially violent model of mutual deterrence between sovereign states. Politicians would be less tempted to boost their image by deploying troops abroad in gestures steeped in national pride - which has often proved to be the undoing of such missions.

Instead of providing an arena for military interests and power games, peace could be returned to conflict regions by means of a civilian imposition of law within a framework of political solutions via diplomatic means. Instead of demonstrating maximum efficiency in defeating an enemy, the point would be to prevent breaches of international law and human rights with as minimal intervention as possible.

Another advantage would be that while states jealously guard against the establishing of a UN standing army, they are far more willing to grant it and other international organizations a standing police force that could be immediately deployed in the event of a conflict. An armed deployment in civilian form separate to military tools of power would also be less likely to offend the conflict regions’ emerging notions of sovereignty.

Earning respect

From the outset, decision-making would be led by politics and tied to civilian goals and responsibilities. Cooperation with local civilian forces would also be easier and more lasting. How can a frightened population ever believe in the possibility of a peaceful future when their daily lives are dominated by the sight of foreign soldiers with guns and tanks? They resemble the same warlords and rebels many of them see as the original cause of conflicts in their country.

Police forces would also need to earn the respect of the population. But in terms of their background, training, mandate and presence, they would have closer ties to the population than soldiers can ever have. In Kosovo, foreign police forces worked very well with their Albanian and Serb colleagues.

Existing international law is by no means ideal. The EU has good reason to demand a reform of the UN Security Council, but it should itself also serve as a good example of a multi-lateral civilian power. The European Union Force should be based on a police force instead of the sort of out-of-date military model that Europe itself has seen fail catastrophically.

Tilman Evers is an expert on political science and Latin America and chairman of the Forum Civil Peace Service in Bonn (jp)

Editor: Rob Mudge