UN peacekeeping's changing face

• Published Jun 17, 2013 6:05 PM KST
• Updated Jun 17, 2013 6:05 PM KST

By John J. Metzler

UNITED NATIONS ― Peacekeeping is fraught with risk, but it is also filled with promise, stated U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “Our Blue Helmets bring hope to millions of people in some of the most troubled parts of the world,” advised the secretary general in a somber ceremony honoring fallen peacekeeping troops, 3,000 of which have been killed since the peacekeeping operation began 65 years ago.

U.N. peacekeepers serve in a myriad of military missions which have dropped off the standard news cycle but can be as brutal and violent as Afghanistan or Syria. Last year; 111 personnel were killed in operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan and South Sudan. Equally, there are dangerous missions in Cote d’ Ivoire and Liberia.

Herve Ladsous, under-secretary general of peacekeeping operations, stated “peacekeeping must be flexible because the environments in which different mission operated varied considerably from the very stable, long-established missions such as the one in Cyprus, to new situations like Syria.” Ladsous stressed that the U.N. Disengagement Force (UNDOF) in the occupied Syrian Golan “was very sedate situation in which practically nothing ever happened” has now dramatically changed when events in Syria began to unfold.

Given the escalating dangers of the Golan mission, Austria is withdrawing 400 of its troops from the operation.

In the meantime, following the successful French military operations against Islamic militants in the West African country of Mali, the U.N. will soon deploy a peacekeeping mission there, pending Security Council approval.

Currently, there are 111,000 U.N. personnel serving in 15 global missions, the biggest of which is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 23,000, UNIFIL in Lebanon with 13,000 and the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti with 8,000. In fact there are three separate operations in Sudan; in Darfur 27,000 in Abyei, 3,700 and 7,500 in South Sudan

In Cyprus, the UNFICYP force was inserted into the Mediterranean island in 1964 to stop ethnic violence between the Greek and Turkish communities. The force, numbering 875 troops is still there along the dividing “green line” with contributions from Austria, Canada, Hungary, Slovakia and the United Kingdom. The mission is commanded by a Chinese general. In other words peacekeeping is a self-fulfilling prophesy; it does not solve the root political causes of the crisis but usually stops the violent symptoms.

One of the oldest missions going back to 1949 is the U.N. Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) which monitors the disputed line of control in Kashmir.

Stereotypically U.N. blue beret missions have been identified with soldiers from Canada, Austria and India along with the neutral Scandinavian states. In recent decades the face of the peacekeepers has changed where major troop contributors now hail from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nigeria. European countries that once played pivotal roles such as the United Kingdom have been replaced by Brazil, China and Egypt.

Currently Canada fields only about 130 soldiers, Sweden 68 and the Netherlands 41.

Traditionally the permanent members of the Security Council ― Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States ― did not participate in the military deployments but this has changed marginally. Though the U.S. has only 109 soldiers assigned to peacekeeping and 106 from Russia, 278 from the United Kingdom, the People’s Republic of China has nudged into the operations with 2,000 soldiers. France, the usual exception to the rule, has 950 troops in the field.

But when it comes to financing the worldwide operations, the United States is the major donor paying 27 percent of the budget along with Japan as 12.5 percent and the United Kingdom and Germany each contributing 8 percent.

Japan through a major financial supporter, because of constitutional constraints, has had to slow-pedal its troop deployments on the ground. Nonetheless Japanese units served in East Timor and currently play an important role in South Sudan.

Diplomats concede that while peacekeeping has grown exponentially, the constraint of “mission overload” faces any new deployments where troop contributors are stretched too thin. The danger of “mission overload” the U.N. is nevertheless confronted with a possible deployment in Syria should there be a diplomatic breakthrough to the conflict, and a plethora of other crises awaiting the Blue Helmets.

John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of "Transatlantic Divide USA/Euroland Rift?’’