1 00:00:00,330 --> 00:00:05,040 Today and delighted to introduce our speaker on the semester King's College. 2 00:00:05,670 --> 00:00:12,990 Before completing college, he was the Director of Science at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. 3 00:00:13,410 --> 00:00:24,780 He also worked for the Norwegian government on the inquiry, which was kind of like the one in Norway on inspection in Palestine. 4 00:00:25,290 --> 00:00:32,099 And today he's going to speak about his work on the Republic of Congo and in particular on the 5 00:00:32,100 --> 00:00:40,740 Force Intervention Brigade and led mission in Kabul and took part in the note for the Journal. 6 00:00:42,450 --> 00:00:48,540 Thank you very much. Anthony Grey. 7 00:00:49,830 --> 00:00:55,000 Okay. Okay. 8 00:00:55,960 --> 00:01:00,580 All right. Well, thank you very much for the invitation. It's a real pleasure to be to be back in Oxford. 9 00:01:00,580 --> 00:01:04,240 It's always nice to come here and see friends and colleagues. 10 00:01:05,380 --> 00:01:10,240 Sorry, I forgot the most important part of your life. He's awesome. 11 00:01:10,810 --> 00:01:14,470 Oh, okay. Yes, I suppose that's. Yeah, that makes sense. 12 00:01:14,510 --> 00:01:18,580 Absolutely. Yeah, no worries. Before I. 13 00:01:19,960 --> 00:01:26,470 I turn to the more precise focus of my talk, which is the period from late 2012, 14 00:01:26,890 --> 00:01:32,380 the history of the Force Intervention Brigade, and specifically the use of force by peacekeepers. 15 00:01:32,710 --> 00:01:39,900 I would like to start by setting out three more general reasons why I believe the 16 00:01:39,910 --> 00:01:49,680 UN mission in the DRC from 1999 onwards deserves closer scrutiny and attention. 17 00:01:49,690 --> 00:01:55,540 And in doing that, I'm also trying to contextualise, if you like, my more narrow focus. 18 00:01:56,120 --> 00:01:59,349 Now the first of those reasons is that, of course, 19 00:01:59,350 --> 00:02:05,950 the U.N. mission in the DRC renamed the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in 2010 20 00:02:06,370 --> 00:02:13,870 started out in 1999 as a small monitoring mission of a few hundred blue helmets, 21 00:02:13,870 --> 00:02:19,540 and is today, after 18 years, not only the longest running mission, 22 00:02:20,320 --> 00:02:28,960 but also still the largest U.N. mission with some 22,000 peacekeepers, including civilians deployed in the field. 23 00:02:29,290 --> 00:02:35,080 And yet, at the same time, in spite of all this effort, both in time and money and resources, 24 00:02:35,410 --> 00:02:46,510 it is a mission that is deeply troubled and one, of course, that continues to be the site of enormous amount of human suffering. 25 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:56,680 In fact, you will have seen for those who looked at my introduction that I wrote something about this last year and it was published in 2016, 26 00:02:57,040 --> 00:03:00,070 and it wasn't a particularly upbeat conclusion then. 27 00:03:00,490 --> 00:03:06,280 And I take no particular pleasure at all in saying that, if anything, things have got a lot worse since then. 28 00:03:06,610 --> 00:03:11,710 In fact, the last year has seen a dramatic deterioration in the DRC. 29 00:03:11,980 --> 00:03:16,480 And I think sometimes, you know, we're concerned about Brexit and things closer to home, 30 00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:22,780 but the sheer scale of the of the conflict in the DRC is worth being reminded about. 31 00:03:22,810 --> 00:03:29,410 In 2016, some 920,000 were forced to flee in eastern Congo, 32 00:03:30,430 --> 00:03:36,070 and that was the highest number of displacement and conflict and violence that year, higher than the higher in Syria. 33 00:03:37,120 --> 00:03:42,150 And since then, since the beginning of this year, another million have been forced to flee. 34 00:03:42,160 --> 00:03:45,250 So we're talking about 3.8 million internally displaced. 35 00:03:45,730 --> 00:03:51,970 And according to the UN, 8.5 million people in need of assistance, urgent humanitarian assistance. 36 00:03:51,980 --> 00:03:59,530 Now, this reflects the development over the last year, a dramatic upsurge in violent ethnic and local conflict, 37 00:04:00,070 --> 00:04:08,200 a sharp deterioration in human rights at sea and in violations with now the national security forces, 38 00:04:08,200 --> 00:04:13,479 the Congolese army, the major principal source of threat to the civilian population. 39 00:04:13,480 --> 00:04:18,160 So this is the first reason why I think we need to think about and look again at the DRC, 40 00:04:18,490 --> 00:04:26,080 the sheer scale of the crisis and the apparent inability of the UN after 18 years to arrest a downward spiral of insecurity. 41 00:04:27,400 --> 00:04:32,379 But then the second reason, and this is perhaps what I'm going to get into more in detail in my talk itself is that the 42 00:04:32,380 --> 00:04:40,360 operation of that period of 18 years reflects and epitomises three important changes or trends, 43 00:04:40,360 --> 00:04:45,130 if you like, in the history of of U.N. field operations in U.N. peacekeeping. 44 00:04:46,720 --> 00:04:55,090 The first is the which already started with the end of the Cold War, of course, is the deployment of U.N. troops in internal or civil war context. 45 00:04:55,120 --> 00:04:56,230 I'll come back to that later. 46 00:04:56,860 --> 00:05:07,510 The second trend, which is very clear and the subject of my talk, if you like, here in the DRC, is an increased emphasis on the robust use of force. 47 00:05:08,170 --> 00:05:15,010 Now, as you all know, I'm sure when peacekeeping first emerged as the distinctive activity of the UN in the 1950s, 48 00:05:15,820 --> 00:05:18,280 the chief and defining characteristics of the UN, 49 00:05:18,280 --> 00:05:29,140 in the words of Hammer, sure was a prohibition against any initiative in the use of force and along with the principle of consent and impartiality. 50 00:05:29,530 --> 00:05:36,040 This came to be seen as the the defining characteristic, if you like, of classical peacekeeping. 51 00:05:36,520 --> 00:05:45,610 Ever since the horrors of of Angola, 92, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia and of course, Rwanda in the first half of the 1990s, 52 00:05:46,240 --> 00:05:54,010 we have a combination of normative, operational and political pressures that has prompted a shift evident in. 53 00:05:54,120 --> 00:05:59,519 Policy debate and Security Council statements are in the DRC in favour of greater 54 00:05:59,520 --> 00:06:06,209 robustness and a widening of the remit for the use of force by U.N. peacekeepers. 55 00:06:06,210 --> 00:06:15,690 Now, the subject of my talk is that, if you like, this trend came to as a culminating point in the DRC in 2013, 56 00:06:16,140 --> 00:06:20,610 when the Security Council decided to strengthen the existing force in the country, 57 00:06:20,610 --> 00:06:30,839 MINUSCA With the creation of a force intervention brigade whose mandate and I wrote did I never use audiovisual? 58 00:06:30,840 --> 00:06:40,110 But I thought it might be useful here with a mandate to carry out targeted offensive operations in a robust, highly mobile and versatile manner. 59 00:06:43,390 --> 00:06:48,520 The third trend and it's closely connected to this and why this is an important case study, 60 00:06:48,520 --> 00:06:53,470 of course, is that at the heart of UNESCO's activities and mandate, 61 00:06:53,950 --> 00:07:02,140 and that's a trend over the past 15 years has been growing emphasis on the need to protect civilian populations caught up in war. 62 00:07:02,200 --> 00:07:11,650 The protection of civilian mandate. And indeed the head of the mission in 2014, then a German gentleman called Martin Kobler. 63 00:07:12,460 --> 00:07:19,390 He stated before the Security Council that in fact protection of civilians is more than a mandated task. 64 00:07:20,050 --> 00:07:24,430 It is of his own debt in the DRC and a moral imperative of the U.N. 65 00:07:24,550 --> 00:07:26,860 That in itself is a very interesting issue. 66 00:07:27,190 --> 00:07:33,910 We have this huge normative shift, if you like, in what underpins U.N. operations, which also has been tested in the DRC. 67 00:07:35,440 --> 00:07:39,980 Now, by way of conclusion, these are the two reasons I will try, 68 00:07:40,000 --> 00:07:46,270 but don't run out of time to say something about the wider lessons for the U.N. from the operation in the DRC. 69 00:07:47,020 --> 00:07:53,530 Many of you will know, of course, that the U.N. was involved in Congo in the 1960s until 64. 70 00:07:53,530 --> 00:07:56,920 That operation nearly broke the organisation. 71 00:07:57,430 --> 00:08:01,270 And like that mission, I think the current one, the challenges of the DRC, 72 00:08:01,630 --> 00:08:08,880 tells us something about the U.N. more generally and the challenges it faces, especially in the context of of civil wars. 73 00:08:08,890 --> 00:08:12,280 And that might be of interest now that we have what is not quite new, 74 00:08:12,280 --> 00:08:19,720 but is certainly a relatively new Secretary-General who's committed to revitalising the role of the U.N. in peace and security. 75 00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:25,809 So that's the background that they're very brief than, say, hang on to structure the remainder of my talk and then get straight into it. 76 00:08:25,810 --> 00:08:31,090 I'll start by saying it about the story of the U.N. operation, the evolution and pattern of the operation, 77 00:08:31,090 --> 00:08:36,100 culminating in the deployment of the Force Intervention Brigade. And then a little bit about its performance. 78 00:08:37,030 --> 00:08:42,850 Secondly, I will try to then explain why the record is so poor, so patchy. 79 00:08:43,180 --> 00:08:51,729 This is the bit that I have called a study in failure. And in doing that, I want to focus on again more than just the fourth intervention brigade. 80 00:08:51,730 --> 00:08:56,830 And I want to try to draw a distinction between reasons for failure that are 81 00:08:56,830 --> 00:09:02,830 specific to the creation of the Fourth Intervention Brigade and to the Congo. 82 00:09:03,100 --> 00:09:11,049 But also look at some of the broader reasons that I would argue are inherent in any attempt at third party 83 00:09:11,050 --> 00:09:16,600 intervention in civil war like situations governed by very distinctive political economy of conflict. 84 00:09:16,900 --> 00:09:22,390 And then finally, I'll say, if I have time a few about why the lessons regarding the use of force, 85 00:09:22,540 --> 00:09:30,670 particularly in terms of the effort to protect civilians, it's a little bit about the about the story in the background. 86 00:09:30,820 --> 00:09:37,870 The U.N., when it returned to Congo after 35 years, it was initially, of course, 87 00:09:37,870 --> 00:09:44,950 a very small scale affair following the cease fire after the second Congo war, 88 00:09:44,970 --> 00:09:49,420 the decisive cease fire, which it was hoped would bring that war to an end. 89 00:09:49,450 --> 00:09:54,070 The U.N. deployed in 1999, a small monitoring mission to the country. 90 00:09:55,810 --> 00:10:03,700 Now, the language accompanying that initial deployment reflected the normative aspirations and what I might call the 91 00:10:03,700 --> 00:10:13,300 Michael the Never Again sentiment which infused discussions about peacekeeping following the disasters of the 1990s. 92 00:10:13,570 --> 00:10:16,960 This was the time when the Srebrenica report had just been written and produced. 93 00:10:16,970 --> 00:10:22,480 It was a time when Lakhdar Brahimi wrote his report and there was a strong sense of whatever we do, 94 00:10:22,840 --> 00:10:31,810 we have to ensure that the same kind of mass atrocity crimes that were committed in the early nineties do not happen again on the U.N. watch. 95 00:10:33,940 --> 00:10:38,740 Neither the council, of course, nor the Secretariat, in spite of this language, 96 00:10:39,400 --> 00:10:49,240 envisaged a proactive role for the mission beyond just the monitoring and observation of a what was a hoped for cease fire tasks that would, 97 00:10:49,240 --> 00:10:50,559 of course, prove challenging. 98 00:10:50,560 --> 00:10:58,660 In any event, given the size of the country, the state of its infrastructure, and the very limited capabilities of the force that would be deployed. 99 00:10:59,620 --> 00:11:04,660 Now, what began as a very modest observer force, of course, very quickly grew in size, 100 00:11:05,350 --> 00:11:09,759 eventually becoming the UN's largest field operation with an overall strength. 101 00:11:09,760 --> 00:11:21,190 As I as I mentioned initially of some 22,000, and also with an increasingly complex, ambitious and partly conflicting set of objectives. 102 00:11:23,050 --> 00:11:29,110 The UN's deepening involvement after 99 was driven by the fact that, of course, 103 00:11:29,110 --> 00:11:39,010 the war and the profound insecurity in the eastern part of the country continued to be the norm after 1999 at a horrific cost to civilians. 104 00:11:40,630 --> 00:11:50,860 In July two. Led to a formal peace accord was reached in Pretoria between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, 105 00:11:51,370 --> 00:11:58,269 which envisaged the withdrawal of Rwandan troops from the DRC and also the simultaneous, 106 00:11:58,270 --> 00:12:03,440 in theory, dismantling of fallen forces belonging to the genocidaires and the Interahamwe. 107 00:12:03,460 --> 00:12:12,790 The zone. And this was meant to to placate and address the long term security concerns of Rwanda in particular. 108 00:12:13,360 --> 00:12:15,400 Later that year, in 2002, 109 00:12:16,030 --> 00:12:24,250 the main Congolese parties to the war also signed what was very ambitiously and grandly called a global and inclusive accord, 110 00:12:25,300 --> 00:12:32,830 which also set out critically the modalities of a power sharing and integration of the armed forces in Congo 111 00:12:33,610 --> 00:12:39,580 that would be in place until the elections that were going to be held for the first time in 40 years in 2006. 112 00:12:43,030 --> 00:12:49,900 That particular record and I'll come back to what's important concluded in 2002 was signed by 11 parties, 113 00:12:50,620 --> 00:12:54,220 six of which crucially had armed forces of their own. 114 00:12:55,450 --> 00:13:03,040 And that fact is important because, of course, historically, local politicians in in the DRC, 115 00:13:03,190 --> 00:13:09,489 Congo have tended to secure political leverage within their own party and vis a vis the capital, 116 00:13:09,490 --> 00:13:16,330 Kinshasa, by resorting to violence and often mobilising the constituencies on ethnic grounds. 117 00:13:16,840 --> 00:13:21,190 Now, this peace agreement in 2003 and I'm not going to dwell on the detail, 118 00:13:21,190 --> 00:13:29,950 but this is why it is important shaped the dynamics and the underlying political economy of the conflict in important ways that did not however, 119 00:13:30,580 --> 00:13:38,440 it did not amount to a broad based political settlement among social groups and in particular among the political military 120 00:13:38,440 --> 00:13:49,420 elites that control and regulate access to power and resources in what was and what remains an acutely weak state, 121 00:13:50,800 --> 00:13:55,210 and because it wasn't a broad based settlement among groups and elites. 122 00:13:55,660 --> 00:14:02,550 The violence continued, and you had a recurring cycles of atrocities against civilians in the lives. 123 00:14:02,560 --> 00:14:10,060 And if anything, in this period, insecurity deepened, fuelled by the complex interaction. 124 00:14:10,140 --> 00:14:14,260 This is what I want to say a little bit about, about civil wars, the nature of the civil war, 125 00:14:14,620 --> 00:14:18,610 the complex interaction between long term and proximate causes. 126 00:14:19,420 --> 00:14:20,979 These included, first of all, 127 00:14:20,980 --> 00:14:31,870 the malign effects of local and regional economic agendas developed around the control and exploitation of the areas natural resources, 128 00:14:32,380 --> 00:14:42,880 the strategic minerals. Secondly, the persistence of deep socioeconomic and ethnic grievances linked to land and displacement. 129 00:14:43,600 --> 00:14:48,250 Land and ethnicity have always been very closely linked, particularly in the DRC, 130 00:14:48,940 --> 00:14:55,360 and given rise to conflicts over land tenure and not least part of this political 131 00:14:55,360 --> 00:15:00,070 economy was a continuing proliferation and fragmentation of armed groups 132 00:15:00,580 --> 00:15:13,750 resulting from the failure to have any meaningful what we call security sector reform and the militarisation of politics that took place after 2003. 133 00:15:14,200 --> 00:15:17,679 And of particular significance in this context, and that brings me up to the present, 134 00:15:17,680 --> 00:15:23,050 of course, was a failure to create a truly integrated and credible Congolese army. 135 00:15:24,190 --> 00:15:30,579 What instead happened was that the Congolese army was put together after the former belligerents and continued, 136 00:15:30,580 --> 00:15:35,620 in spite of a commitment to security reform, to be deeply fractured and based on patronage. 137 00:15:35,620 --> 00:15:40,329 Next, those are mentioning this very briefly here, the political economy, 138 00:15:40,330 --> 00:15:44,290 because it is very crucial to an understanding of the dynamics in conflict in the DRC. 139 00:15:44,290 --> 00:15:50,990 But it's also a political economy that has been and is in constant flux and constant mutation over time. 140 00:15:51,010 --> 00:15:54,909 So the political economy today looks different for what it did ten, 15 years ago. 141 00:15:54,910 --> 00:16:04,420 But if you are intervening in that setting, understanding it is absolutely central now for UN peacekeepers deployed at the time. 142 00:16:04,420 --> 00:16:10,690 The acute and persistent vulnerability of civilian populations of course meant also 143 00:16:10,690 --> 00:16:17,470 that they were faced with a series of of protection crises in Kisangani in 2002. 144 00:16:18,160 --> 00:16:19,209 In Ituri, 145 00:16:19,210 --> 00:16:31,150 you remember the background to the interim crisis when the EU under the French led a deployment of of a force in Bukavu and ending Goma in in 2012. 146 00:16:31,450 --> 00:16:36,460 Now, the consequences for the mission of the UN of this continued instability were twofold, 147 00:16:37,330 --> 00:16:43,930 and I think it exposed very clearly the limitations of the protection mandate in the 148 00:16:43,930 --> 00:16:48,610 absence of the wider political settlement among political elites and regional players. 149 00:16:49,600 --> 00:16:58,570 The first consequence was that it ensured that the the monarch's protection responsibilities became ever more central to the mission, 150 00:16:59,320 --> 00:17:06,370 a process that led the Council Security Council in December 2008 to state that protection of civilians was now the 151 00:17:06,370 --> 00:17:13,630 priority or should have priorities and decisions about the use of available capacity and resources over any of the tasks. 152 00:17:15,220 --> 00:17:22,299 Next. And linked to this, of course, it meant that there was a growing expansion of the nation, 153 00:17:22,300 --> 00:17:28,620 but also a growing emphasis on the use of robust military force. 154 00:17:30,380 --> 00:17:39,500 That shift was especially noticeable in 2004, 2005, when the U.N. peacekeepers, with the support of the new Congolese army, 155 00:17:40,040 --> 00:17:47,990 engaged in the in the words of one in one document at the time, aggressive pursuit of negative forces in the east. 156 00:17:48,920 --> 00:18:01,770 Now, this military use of military force to try to eliminate armed groups in the east, and that had a very decidedly mixed record before 2012. 157 00:18:01,800 --> 00:18:10,640 And one reason for that, obviously, was that the the appalling performance and human rights record of the Congolese army itself, 158 00:18:11,030 --> 00:18:17,450 with which Manute was allied and to which it was lending direct operational support. 159 00:18:18,380 --> 00:18:27,560 And of course, the consequence of that was that it weakens the UN's and minsk's legitimacy and tarnished its image in the eyes of local. 160 00:18:27,950 --> 00:18:36,830 In addition to this, and I haven't mentioned this, but this is a country two thirds, depending on how you count two thirds the size of Western Europe, 161 00:18:37,940 --> 00:18:45,800 which is thought of perhaps as a sort of, as some put it, an inland archipelago in terms of its its infrastructure. 162 00:18:46,610 --> 00:18:55,010 This meant that there were enormous logistical challenges, given the UN's highly uneven quality of of of troops. 163 00:18:56,720 --> 00:19:00,160 The absence of this would be familiar to many of you. 164 00:19:00,170 --> 00:19:05,840 But my point here, it is particularly critical in Congo. The absence of key enabling capabilities, 165 00:19:05,840 --> 00:19:12,950 especially mobility assets and analytical capacity to understand the dynamics of conflict as sketched earlier. 166 00:19:13,610 --> 00:19:20,750 The lack of of unity, of command. All of this combined to weaken further the UN's ability to provide effective protection. 167 00:19:21,170 --> 00:19:26,240 And the inevitable result was a seemingly endless cycle of protection crises. 168 00:19:26,370 --> 00:19:35,239 The most humiliating of this, of course, was the crisis in November 2012, when the Rwandan backed rebel movement, the M23, 169 00:19:35,240 --> 00:19:43,219 and then also many of them I don't need to go into the details, but they overran the city of Goma, which was then, in theory, 170 00:19:43,220 --> 00:19:53,240 under U.N. protection with 1500 peacekeepers and the ease with which that capital, provincial capital, was overrun, 171 00:19:54,730 --> 00:20:00,440 and a capital which had swollen to nearly 1 million with an influx of refugees internally displaced, 172 00:20:00,560 --> 00:20:05,570 seemed to sort of lay bare the failure of Minnesota's efforts to bring stability to the east. 173 00:20:06,560 --> 00:20:08,810 And it also exposed, I think, crucially, 174 00:20:09,320 --> 00:20:18,650 the fact that the UN's large scale operation by this time had become almost entirely divorced from a meaningful political process. 175 00:20:19,580 --> 00:20:30,710 So at this point, the effect of the fall of Goma, because it had echoes and many indeed the the head of DPKO later wrote about this. 176 00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:34,190 It had echoes of what happened when Srebrenica had fallen. 177 00:20:34,190 --> 00:20:37,520 In the end, mercifully, there were no large scale massacres once had been captured. 178 00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:44,210 But it seemed to put the U.N. in the same kind of situation, and it galvanised the U.N. into trying to shoring up the mission. 179 00:20:44,660 --> 00:20:52,310 And two steps were taken. The first was to try to revitalise the diplomatic effort, which was clearly the right thing to do. 180 00:20:52,760 --> 00:21:05,150 But without going into much detail, that political process quickly ran into sand or wasn't aggressively pursued partly by the external actors. 181 00:21:05,630 --> 00:21:13,040 And there was agreement on a peace and security and cooperation framework, and the idea was that this would be a political track. 182 00:21:14,060 --> 00:21:19,310 But the other main consequence of Goma, of course, was to create what I mentioned earlier, 183 00:21:19,790 --> 00:21:28,610 the Force Intervention Brigade and to give the UN really for the first time in such explicit terms, 184 00:21:28,880 --> 00:21:35,300 a war fighting role and to confront in Syria all armed groups in eastern Congo. 185 00:21:35,930 --> 00:21:47,479 Now, these were at this time estimated to include nearly 50 different groups, ranging from neatly structured militias to bandit gangs. 186 00:21:47,480 --> 00:21:55,490 In the words of one resolution that the UN gave this force intervention brigade the mandate to take 187 00:21:55,490 --> 00:22:05,240 offensive come back to this action and a force consisting of 3000 troops drawn from South Africa, 188 00:22:05,390 --> 00:22:14,660 Tanzania and Malawi. Malawi was set up to under Chapter seven to to take the fighting to these groups. 189 00:22:15,770 --> 00:22:21,469 Now, the Force Intervention Brigade is is interesting in part because it follows it 190 00:22:21,470 --> 00:22:25,640 reflects this trend towards greater use of force on the part of peacekeepers. 191 00:22:25,850 --> 00:22:29,630 It was also welcomed by many at the time, as you know, finding the. 192 00:22:29,640 --> 00:22:32,130 The U.N. is putting its act together. 193 00:22:32,520 --> 00:22:41,070 And indeed, the secretary general at the time described it as a milestone in the evolution of of the use of force by the UN. 194 00:22:42,270 --> 00:22:51,959 And initially, of course, the force intervention brigade turned out to, you know, to to do what it was and to do in particular it appeared. 195 00:22:51,960 --> 00:22:55,740 And I say it appeared because the evidence on the ground is more complex than that. 196 00:22:55,740 --> 00:22:59,520 It appeared to evict and defeat the M23. 197 00:23:01,730 --> 00:23:05,850 And that was the initial and first objective of the group once it started operations. 198 00:23:07,320 --> 00:23:09,600 And that was a swift removal of it. 199 00:23:10,740 --> 00:23:18,630 But as soon as it has done that, of course, it stopped taking much further action, including against the other armed groups. 200 00:23:18,990 --> 00:23:24,240 And already by the middle of 23, the Secretary-General acknowledged some progress, 201 00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:32,670 but noted that the fundamental problem of the recurring cycles of violence in eastern Congo had not been addressed. 202 00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:39,210 And a strategic review in 2015 noted that the passivity which had marked the U.N. earlier, 203 00:23:39,930 --> 00:23:43,320 now seemed to in the Air Force Intervention Brigade as well. 204 00:23:45,210 --> 00:23:53,550 And that has been the picture pretty much since the situation today is that we have 70 and estimated 70 armed groups operating in eastern Congo. 205 00:23:54,540 --> 00:24:00,869 This so this particular slide gives you an idea you don't have to try obviously into local coffee on this. 206 00:24:00,870 --> 00:24:05,070 But this is gives you an a sense of the number of different armed groups in North and South Kivu, 207 00:24:07,200 --> 00:24:14,720 and that is up from 20 armed groups estimated in ten years ago and indeed in the last six months alone. 208 00:24:14,730 --> 00:24:19,260 The UN recently is reported to have identified six new groups. 209 00:24:19,860 --> 00:24:23,010 So in short, the step change in the use of force, 210 00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:30,780 the actions represented by the Force Intervention Brigade have done very little to halt both the proliferation and fragmentation of the group, 211 00:24:30,780 --> 00:24:34,380 let alone to address the issue of of protection. 212 00:24:34,440 --> 00:24:39,780 The pattern has been the same as before, which was essentially one of ban a protection, 213 00:24:40,200 --> 00:24:47,280 usually responding to the symptoms of violence rather than addressing some of the deeper political economy drivers of the conflict. 214 00:24:47,310 --> 00:24:55,710 So the question is then an interesting bit, I suppose if you talk what explains this very patchy record? 215 00:24:59,930 --> 00:25:11,540 As I said initially, I wanted to distinguish briefly between I want to try to distinguish what specific to the the way the FBI sort of FBI was set up, 216 00:25:12,470 --> 00:25:18,170 but also some more generic and broader reasons because they are of relevance to the U.S. role in these kinds of operations. 217 00:25:20,360 --> 00:25:26,540 Looking specifically at the reasons for the creation of the FBI be the first reason 218 00:25:26,540 --> 00:25:32,329 I think it is worth to bear in mind is has to do with the politics of participating 219 00:25:32,330 --> 00:25:35,569 in peacekeeping operations and particularly the willingness of troop contributing 220 00:25:35,570 --> 00:25:42,170 countries to take risk and their attitudes to the use such of the use of force. 221 00:25:43,610 --> 00:25:52,489 The point I want to make here is that the Force Intervention Brigade will set up in theory to deal with the 222 00:25:52,490 --> 00:25:59,000 whole range of armed groups or priority groups in eastern Congo that once they had dealt with the M23, 223 00:26:00,020 --> 00:26:08,000 and that seemed to be to be it simplifying slightly, but a very noticeable change in patterns of operations. 224 00:26:08,930 --> 00:26:14,690 Now, the reasons for that are partly to do with the way the figure was put together. 225 00:26:14,690 --> 00:26:20,959 And I think the reasons for that are important to flag because they they underline the degree, which I think is often forgotten, 226 00:26:20,960 --> 00:26:30,470 to which politics and interest based calculations by troop contributing countries both shape the decisions to take part in an operation, 227 00:26:31,100 --> 00:26:37,100 but also, crucially, has the character and nature of those contributions once they are deployed. 228 00:26:37,940 --> 00:26:44,810 With regard to the Force Intervention Brigade, there were two things that are worth stressing about the the setting up and the politics of it. 229 00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:49,670 The first is that the principal contributors to the force, South Africa and Tanzania, 230 00:26:49,970 --> 00:26:59,180 were prepared to go on the offensive against the M23 because they saw the movement as an instrument of Rwandan policy in the region. 231 00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:13,970 As such, the initial and very robust operation had a crucial regional dimension to it, with South Africa in particular anxious to rein in Paul Kagame, 232 00:27:14,420 --> 00:27:21,319 which was perceived to enjoy and have hegemonic aspirations following the apparent defeat of the M23, 233 00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:27,049 which Kaigama was happy to see if it also, as it turns out, defeated and the withdrawal of its troops into London, 234 00:27:27,050 --> 00:27:30,780 Uganda, it proved far less prepared to target other groups. 235 00:27:30,780 --> 00:27:35,450 So in short, the origins and the activities of this force are, at least in part, 236 00:27:35,450 --> 00:27:43,849 better explained in terms of regional politics and the political agendas held by key contributors than they are by 237 00:27:43,850 --> 00:27:49,880 any principle the willingness of traditional troop contributing countries to engage in more robust peacekeeping. 238 00:27:52,070 --> 00:28:00,320 The other political aspect I just very mentioned very briefly is that the initial enthusiasm within the UN Secretariat in the Council for a 239 00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:10,430 more aggressive concept was partly a function of the mounting unhappiness with it with a static and passive performance of the UN in the past. 240 00:28:11,120 --> 00:28:20,329 But by late 2013, it turned out that even the Force Intervention Brigade needed to be re-energized to take the lead in planning, 241 00:28:20,330 --> 00:28:21,340 combat and joint role. 242 00:28:21,380 --> 00:28:30,350 Again, if it is the reality that many of those countries contributing troops to operations, including these once the M23 was dealt with, 243 00:28:32,090 --> 00:28:39,970 were not prepared to take the risks and expose their troops to the kinds of danger that operations would have required. 244 00:28:39,980 --> 00:28:46,309 And that is a persistent problem in these kinds of operations. Leaving aside the politics, 245 00:28:46,310 --> 00:28:56,240 the second major sort of issue I think arising out of the experience is the difficulty of managing expectations 246 00:28:56,870 --> 00:29:04,940 to engage in civilian protection in ongoing civil wars and to rely and work alongside security partners. 247 00:29:06,290 --> 00:29:09,500 What I mean by this is that. 248 00:29:13,020 --> 00:29:18,290 The UN given the size of its force, 249 00:29:18,300 --> 00:29:28,530 although 22,000 is considerable by UN standards in the context of limited enabling capabilities and also the challenges facing on the ground, 250 00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:33,810 it had to depend on working closely with security partners. 251 00:29:33,820 --> 00:29:41,130 The security partners, of course, being the legitimate authorities in line and that being the Congolese government and the Congolese army. 252 00:29:44,430 --> 00:29:50,940 The the ability to deploy rapidly in response to emerging crises meant that the UN, 253 00:29:51,570 --> 00:29:58,310 in effect, engaged in an urban aid action to address civilian protection crises. 254 00:29:58,860 --> 00:30:08,760 And that meant that you could have local victories and local achievements, like in 2003, when Bosnia was prevented from being overrun. 255 00:30:09,390 --> 00:30:20,100 But the effect elsewhere of deploying it to one place was to shift predation, shift atrocities, and to shift the targeting of civilians elsewhere. 256 00:30:20,100 --> 00:30:24,930 And that led to a consequent surge of internally displaced populations. 257 00:30:25,620 --> 00:30:32,220 And that the point here is that MINUSCA experience, including with IFAD, 258 00:30:32,730 --> 00:30:38,160 points to a fundamental dilemma that has frequently been faced by ill equipped and overstretched 259 00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:44,310 peacekeepers mandated to act robustly in conditions where there is no peace to keep. 260 00:30:44,820 --> 00:30:53,969 On the one hand, the expectation among populations that physical protection is about to be extended by peacekeepers to a civilian 261 00:30:53,970 --> 00:31:01,410 population threatened by an armed group would prompt civilians to flock to a UN facility and concentrate. 262 00:31:02,490 --> 00:31:08,320 On the other hand, that would provide a ready target and an attractive target for armed groups. 263 00:31:08,340 --> 00:31:15,450 A calculation, of course, whose sinister logic has been played out repeatedly in Congo and indeed elsewhere. 264 00:31:17,340 --> 00:31:22,080 So given the reality that U.N. troops are thinly spread out, 265 00:31:22,380 --> 00:31:27,870 logistically hamstrung and devoid of reserves and critical force multipliers, such locations, 266 00:31:27,870 --> 00:31:35,550 whether they are in Congo and South Sudan, monitor the Central African Republic at the moment have provided attractive targets for attack. 267 00:31:36,210 --> 00:31:43,710 Now, faced with this kind of challenge, which are inescapable given the size of the force and the nature of the terrain, 268 00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:54,450 the U.N. has been forced to work with a legal constituted host government and has had to rely on, in this case, working with the Congolese army. 269 00:31:54,720 --> 00:31:58,980 The problem with this, of course, is that the Congolese army, as I said, 270 00:31:58,980 --> 00:32:03,720 initially, never went through a meaningful process of security directive reform. 271 00:32:04,380 --> 00:32:12,070 And indeed, that today the Congolese army is arguably not only the largest armed group, 272 00:32:12,070 --> 00:32:17,010 but also the one whose predatory activities are the most serious threat to the civilian population. 273 00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:22,230 And the U.N. has constantly face the challenge of when to support, if support, 274 00:32:22,470 --> 00:32:27,240 and whether by lending in support, it's tarnishing its own image and credibility as a force. 275 00:32:28,170 --> 00:32:36,930 Now, the nature of the Congolese army and I don't want to go into the detail, but this is a a dilemma, I think, which was always going to be there. 276 00:32:37,570 --> 00:32:42,420 And I think a recent report, which I think I will I will quote. 277 00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:50,400 On on the Congolese army written recently suggests that, you know, 278 00:32:50,470 --> 00:32:59,890 any understanding of the conflict dynamics in eastern Congo must take into account the differentiated roles of of the Congolese army. 279 00:33:00,550 --> 00:33:05,110 In theory, the Congolese army, together with the UN, is committed to eliminate armed groups. 280 00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:12,250 In reality, some of the elements are directly contributing to conditions that drive further recruitment, 281 00:33:12,250 --> 00:33:18,040 the fragmentation of armed groups and indeed, some are often allied. 282 00:33:18,070 --> 00:33:22,210 But is the Congolese army allied with many of these militias on the ground? 283 00:33:22,900 --> 00:33:31,060 So the Congolese army is really better seen, in the words of this report, as an interrelated patronage network, 284 00:33:32,170 --> 00:33:36,640 feeding off the largesse of the political elite back in the capital, 285 00:33:39,220 --> 00:33:46,840 and also developing links with armed groups in the in the east, which it is deeply connected. 286 00:33:47,620 --> 00:33:54,910 And in many cases, members of the of the Congolese army actively undermine the efforts to combat these groups. 287 00:33:56,050 --> 00:33:59,620 So I think I'll say a few words by way of conclusion on this. 288 00:33:59,620 --> 00:34:04,840 But this is one of the fundamental challenges of intervening in the context of a of an ongoing civil war. 289 00:34:05,500 --> 00:34:09,130 You cannot stay above the political fray however much you want. 290 00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:14,230 And the longer you stay, the more deeply enmeshed you become in the political economy of that conflict. 291 00:34:16,530 --> 00:34:22,589 The third major reason for the failure, I would suggest of the fourth intervention. 292 00:34:22,590 --> 00:34:28,620 The third is perhaps ironically not to do with the force itself, 293 00:34:29,340 --> 00:34:37,409 but it is to do with the larger failure to connect and properly align the activities of this force and indeed those of the U.N. 294 00:34:37,410 --> 00:34:46,950 as a whole with a long term strategy geared towards reaching a political settlement among elites in Congo and across the region. 295 00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:50,520 Remember, this is my sort of initial point about what was lacking. 296 00:34:53,860 --> 00:34:59,709 Now reaching that kind of settlement. I'm not going to say that straightforward, an easy step in a difficult. 297 00:34:59,710 --> 00:35:03,130 And the longer this goes, it's a famous joke about, you know, I wouldn't start from here, 298 00:35:03,610 --> 00:35:11,259 but trying to reach that kind of political settlement would certainly have required a better understanding of the interdependence of local, 299 00:35:11,260 --> 00:35:13,570 national and regional drivers of conflict. 300 00:35:14,920 --> 00:35:21,760 It would have understood the critical importance of substantive as opposed to largely symbolic security sector reform. 301 00:35:23,170 --> 00:35:32,170 And it would have emphasised the need for outside external actors to focus on the politics of the DLC. 302 00:35:32,590 --> 00:35:37,570 In other words, trying to find, if you like, political pathways out of the conflict. 303 00:35:37,660 --> 00:35:46,059 India, the union has become and did become entirely focussed for understandable reasons on the protection of 304 00:35:46,060 --> 00:35:53,330 civilian mandate and became divorced from a critical political aspect of the mission and the mission itself. 305 00:35:53,350 --> 00:35:59,230 And as soon as a challenge today has not leveraged its presence to push the political process forward, 306 00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,380 that is reflected to some extent in the way the mission is set up and run. 307 00:36:02,770 --> 00:36:07,239 You have things going on in the East Congo in trying to organise a firefight, 308 00:36:07,240 --> 00:36:12,760 armed groups and you have the presence in in Kinshasa where the headquarters is face and reality. 309 00:36:12,760 --> 00:36:16,300 Of course, politically those are closely connected in terms of the dynamics of the conflict. 310 00:36:19,790 --> 00:36:24,559 So to quote Jean-Marie Guehenno, you many of you know, 311 00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:33,560 as a former head of the DPKO and who finished that job in 2008 but has followed the conflict since 312 00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:38,480 and is now head of the International Crisis Group and wrote a very good book on his experiences. 313 00:36:39,380 --> 00:36:45,530 He certainly and is interesting. I mentioned him partly because he was very much part of this process that I've looked at at least how 314 00:36:45,680 --> 00:36:50,060 force could be made more relevant to support the political process and encourage that robustness. 315 00:36:50,900 --> 00:36:53,870 But he, if not came around, 316 00:36:53,870 --> 00:37:00,529 then certainly realised in his own words that the absolutely critical bit was strategic engagement in the politics of Congo, 317 00:37:00,530 --> 00:37:05,659 including from the Security Council. And without that taking place, 318 00:37:05,660 --> 00:37:14,630 there was always a real danger that if the Force Intervention Brigade was not formally linked to any wider political strategy, 319 00:37:15,470 --> 00:37:19,190 that including security sector reform and demobilisation, 320 00:37:20,240 --> 00:37:29,420 it would end up aggravating the conflict by being drawn in to the political economy in the east. 321 00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:31,250 Now we can ask why that hasn't happened. 322 00:37:31,880 --> 00:37:39,560 I think one reason why I made the point initially, you know, I didn't have time to talk about the scale of the crisis was also, of course, 323 00:37:39,580 --> 00:37:45,140 an indirect reference to how comparative and there's an interest there has been from the 324 00:37:45,380 --> 00:37:50,960 international community in putting diplomatic pressure and trying to get the process move forward. 325 00:37:51,110 --> 00:37:56,290 Comparatively little compared to other conflicts. There might be many reasons for that fatigue and so on and so forth. 326 00:37:56,300 --> 00:38:02,540 But it's clear, as John Holmes, former head of OHCHR, put it in his book on the politics of humanity, 327 00:38:02,540 --> 00:38:09,770 that in many ways it has been treated as an orphan conflict and with relatively little attention given to the dynamics on the ground. 328 00:38:11,420 --> 00:38:20,930 Let me make a final point, and I'm sort of cutting slightly here because of the time, and I'm leaving a bit of time for questions and discussions, 329 00:38:20,930 --> 00:38:25,130 and we can go on to the use of force generally, whether it has a place and what sort of place it has. 330 00:38:25,580 --> 00:38:37,010 But I wanted to say that one of the perhaps key lessons from this one and other operations has to do with the difficulties of third party 331 00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:46,190 dimension and peacekeeping and the use of force in the context of an ongoing civil war and the absence of any of the peace settlement. 332 00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:52,249 Now, there are obvious logistical issues and problems raised by all of that and need to go on that. 333 00:38:52,250 --> 00:38:58,670 But there are also structural impediments to effectiveness in civil war situations, particularly, 334 00:38:58,670 --> 00:39:03,829 and I think this is important to stress when these extend over time and where partly as a 335 00:39:03,830 --> 00:39:09,920 result of that the UN still presence becomes decoupled from a meaningful political process. 336 00:39:11,950 --> 00:39:26,629 Now. There is a journal once once peacekeeping took off as a growth industry in the early 1990s. 337 00:39:26,630 --> 00:39:30,560 A new journal was a new journal start to this journal of International Peacekeeping. 338 00:39:31,400 --> 00:39:34,520 And I remember that because I looked at that journal and one of the first in fact it might well 339 00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:42,240 have been the very first essay in that journal 1994 it was was written by Alan James now UN. 340 00:39:42,260 --> 00:39:46,910 And James, as you know, would have written a lot about peacekeeping during the Cold War. 341 00:39:47,030 --> 00:39:53,120 But this particular article was about the Congo operation in the early 1960s. 342 00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:59,689 And I'm interested because it is in many ways not only prophetic, but it points to what I think are sort of enduring insights. 343 00:39:59,690 --> 00:40:07,729 So who would like to think of this continuity of activities and what essentially Allan James was saying on the basis of that operation in the 1960s, 344 00:40:07,730 --> 00:40:16,190 that a U.N. force that deploys within the jurisdiction of a sovereign state, whether or not calling it a state, is a more of a scripted courtesy, 345 00:40:16,190 --> 00:40:25,399 if, nonetheless, a legal entity in which the host government is faced with internal challenges to its authority for the U.N. to deploy 346 00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:33,470 in that kind of country will find it impossible over the long run to remain above the domestic political fray, 347 00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:45,500 however much it may aspire to do so. And the reasons for that, he noted, was that on an internal scene, a government is one of many actors. 348 00:40:48,610 --> 00:40:52,120 And in one degree or another, 349 00:40:52,120 --> 00:40:57,520 the political balance is likely to be in constant movement and the way in which the unforced 350 00:40:58,270 --> 00:41:04,660 response may well have some impact on the balance or which in effect comes to the same thing, 351 00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:12,399 be seen as shifting that particular balance. Now, the robust use of force in particular cannot not have an impact on the political balance and thus 352 00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:19,030 pose a threat to the threat of the UN's chief asset as an interlocutor in internal conflict, 353 00:41:19,360 --> 00:41:27,240 which I think I still think is it's perceived, at least initially down to that impartiality in relation to disputes. 354 00:41:28,090 --> 00:41:30,909 And as I said, and again, Germany, you know, makes this point, 355 00:41:30,910 --> 00:41:37,030 the UN's presence in the field is very much a not a wasting business in waiting asset over 356 00:41:37,030 --> 00:41:43,150 time as it becomes increasingly enmeshed in the political economy of of the conflict. 357 00:41:43,750 --> 00:41:48,760 And I will I will stop there. Simply say that. 358 00:41:51,950 --> 00:41:56,749 There is or certainly was initially when he took office. 359 00:41:56,750 --> 00:42:04,340 The new secretary general, by all accounts, is quite not-I but sceptical of the value of these large U.N. peacekeeping operations, 360 00:42:04,340 --> 00:42:07,920 and he has emphasised the importance of of preventive action. 361 00:42:07,940 --> 00:42:10,519 Obviously we all do that, and it's always more difficult in practice, 362 00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:17,959 but also use of political good offices and the the need to get engaged in the politics of the conflict, 363 00:42:17,960 --> 00:42:23,210 and particularly to identify those elites who, by virtue of the position within the political economy, 364 00:42:23,210 --> 00:42:29,360 able to drive the conflict and that the size of the U.N. mission might not be critical to doing that. 365 00:42:29,570 --> 00:42:37,220 I think of the process. And so I think the news, I'm afraid, from the DRC at the moment is it's very bad. 366 00:42:37,250 --> 00:42:41,840 I haven't gone into the immediate challenge with the want of a political impulse resulting from 367 00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:48,260 the failure to hold election or indeed evidence that Joseph Kabila wants to hold on to power. 368 00:42:48,830 --> 00:42:54,530 And how this political impasse is leading to further jostling for positions in Kinshasa, 369 00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:59,090 which then has a knock on effect in the creation and emergence of armed groups in Kasai, 370 00:42:59,090 --> 00:43:04,100 most recently, which has always been sort of a cocktail of conflict and tension. 371 00:43:05,420 --> 00:43:16,610 But I think there is a need and a time for thinking very, very hard about about the record and the longer term lessons from this operation. 372 00:43:17,210 --> 00:43:20,750 I leave it to that culture of having left out a couple of things which might be of 373 00:43:20,750 --> 00:43:25,610 interest in terms of whether there is any place at all for more robust peacekeeping. 374 00:43:26,000 --> 00:43:31,340 And I'm certainly not one of those who say that there is no place for it, 375 00:43:32,510 --> 00:43:39,410 and also that we should aspire to an age which is clearly no longer there in terms of the operational challenges faced by the U.N. 376 00:43:40,010 --> 00:43:43,070 And indeed, there are examples we can think of. 377 00:43:43,100 --> 00:43:49,070 I'm sure you will come up with some of them where the limited use of force has had a a short term, 378 00:43:49,250 --> 00:43:54,400 if you like, tactical and important impact, whether that is in Congo, M23 three in Bosnia, 379 00:43:54,410 --> 00:43:58,729 whether it's the interesting role of the British armed forces in Sierra Leone, 380 00:43:58,730 --> 00:44:04,550 or whether it's the very forceful actions of the Haitian authority of the Brazilian forces in Haiti. 381 00:44:04,790 --> 00:44:07,909 In all these cases, you had what you might call tactical military victories. 382 00:44:07,910 --> 00:44:12,020 The problem was always having to translate that into a long term strategic again. 383 00:44:12,290 --> 00:44:15,380 And to put that within a strategic framework you can then be built upon. 384 00:44:15,770 --> 00:44:21,830 And that seems to be for a variety of reasons, very difficult for the U.N. to do, partly on account of its inter-governmental character. 385 00:44:22,190 --> 00:44:26,270 It's neither politically nor structurally equipped sometimes to take that process forward.