The Promise,
the Peril
In
10 years, the United Nations has racked up a checkered history
of 'nation-building.' Can it learn from its mistakes?
BY
Marcus Mabry
NEWSWEEK 2001/12/17
Dec. 17 issue - How do you build a nation? Leaders
have asked that question for literally thousands of years. From
Shaka Zulu to Bismarck, military rulers did it by uniting disparate
clans through the conquest of land and the cultivation of "national"
pride. In colonial times the European and American powers did
it through subjugation and might. But since the end of the cold
war-and the diplomatic paralysis that it produced-the job of
creating nations from failed states has fallen increasingly
to the nebulous "international community" through
the United Nations.
TO THE UNITED Nations' chagrin, nation-building is still more
of an art than a science. The international community failed
miserably in Somalia, choosing to cut and run with disastrous
results. It succeeded in Mozambique, thanks to the end of the
superpower rivalry that had fed the country's civil war-but
also to the war weariness of the local people and their leaders'
determination to win the peace. Despite the United Nations'
mixed record in a decade of nation-building-indeed, because
of it-there are lessons that can be applied as the effort to
build a new Afghanistan gets underway. If only the United Nations
will heed them. These are just five case studies that show what
the international community can do, what it must do and what
only the Afghans themselves can accomplish.
KOSOVO
LESSON NO. 1: BE THERE. "The best thing we can do for this
place is have lunch!" So said some members of the United
Nations mission in Kosovo. It sounds like a cynic's joke about
the work ethic of international civil servants. But in fact
it's true. After two years of fighting, not to mention the forced
expulsion of nearly half of its 2 million people, the best thing
the international community could do for Kosovo in June 1999
was to simply be there. And they came: a 10,000-odd army of
nation builders, NGO volunteers and globalist do-gooders. So
that they could go to lunch, Kosovars opened cafes and restaurants.
So that they could buy toilet paper and TVs, entrepreneurs opened
shops and businesses. That in turn generated incomes and helped
people rebuild their houses, two thirds of which had been destroyed
in the war. A majority of Kosovars got a fresh start on life.
Call it context. The United Nations arrived in chaos and brought
with it an all-important semblance (which is not to say the
reality) of order. A 40,000-strong contingent of NATO troops
provided security-halting most of the revenge killing among
Serbs and Albanians, and, no less important, reining in the
former warlords of the Kosovo Liberation Army who otherwise
would have hijacked the territory for their own reward. U.N.
internationals took over the administration of municipal governments,
schools and public works. The Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe mounted an ambitious program of democratization,
culminating in last month's elections that created a quasinational
Parliament, presidency and Constitution. The UNHCR, World Food
Program and International Red Cross brought in food and tents
to tide the homeless through their first winter. The European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development poured in hundreds of
millions of dollars in aid, rebuilding roads, communications
and infrastructure.
Despite the United Nations' mixed record in a decade of nation-building-indeed,
because of it-there are lessons that can be applied as the effort
to build a new Afghanistan gets underway.
When it comes to humanitarian intervention, Kosovo is probably
as close to a success as you can get. But it hasn't been easy,
and it hasn't been pretty. Nearly two and a half years later,
ethnic violence still flares. Electricity, heat and water are
sometimes on, sometimes not. The United Nations talks of building
the "structures" and "institutions" of civil
society in Kosovo, but rarely have such efforts succeeded. There
is no legal system. Corruption and crime are epidemic, not only
among locals. Municipal government scarcely exists, prompting
more than one international to mutter, "These people will
never be capable of governing themselves." And no one agrees
how to resolve the ultimate question of Kosovo's future-independence,
or what?
Yet to visit Pristina, the ever-grubby capital, is nothing less
than invigorating. The city teems with small businesses. The
place is a construction site, new houses and office buildings
going up everywhere-with precious little help from internationals.
This is homegrown, grass-roots civic enterprise, a triumph of
individualism that sooner or later will knit into community.
That is as it should be. It all comes back to "context."
Create a framework of security and a basic sense of order, and
with time and effort the people will take care of themselves.
－Michael Meyer
SOMALIA
LESSON NO. 2: ISOLATE THE WARLORDS. Every month Musa Sudi Yalahow
fires off his guns to "test" them. If the aging Somali
warlord could see the effect of his monthly display of force
on the people of Mogadishu (not much), he'd stop wasting the
ammunition. Five years ago the mere mention of his name sent
children scurrying from the streets. His clansmen, the Abgal,
fought with legendary cruelty on his behalf. Today his shabby
militia shows up for work only when paid. And he's not alone.
Last year warlord Osman (Ato) Ali, once able to plunge Mogadishu
into chaos with a short bark into his radio transmitter, had
every bit of furniture stolen from his house by his own underpaid
militia.
The United Nations didn't do it. The strongest military power
on earth didn't do it. But 10 years of anarchy and bloodshed
have nearly dissolved the bond between the Somali people and
the warlords who claim to represent them. "There was a
time when the warlords could say, 'Give me 1,000 boys,' and
they would be there the next minute," says analyst Yassin
Salad. "Today no one would show."
The international community gets none of the credit. It has
been a brutal road from war to a fragile peace, and Somalis
have walked it alone. After 18 U.S. Army Rangers were killed
by gunmen loyal to warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid in 1993, the
largest military operation ever mounted by the United Nations
for humanitarian purposes packed its bags. In the ensuing anarchy,
warlords kept Somalia at the bottom rung of development. Today
its infant-mortality rate is one of the highest in the world,
with one in every four children certain to die before the age
of 5. Crime is not only rampant but, in a country where everyone
is armed, lethal. Mogadishu is a shell of a city, its ruins
shot to bits or looted and sold for scrap.
Somalis are struggling to escape the morass. Last year a gathering
of clans finally elected a Parliament and a president, Abdiqassim
Salad Hassan. When he arrived in Mogadishu in August of 2000,
he was met by an ecstatic throng 250,000 strong. But the new
government has received no help from the international community.
Despite a formal endorsement by the Security Council, which
encouraged U.N. member states to work with the transitional
government, donors have adopted a wait-and-see attitude. "They've
got to show that they can control more than a few blocks in
Mogadishu," says a Western diplomat in Nairobi.
But without outside aid, U.N. officials say, that will be impossible.
As it is, there's no money to keep a police force on the street,
let alone equip and staff ministries or build a civil service
and a system of tax collection. "If we don't get some backing
from the international community, it will be very difficult
to survive," admits Hassan Abshir Farah, the newly appointed
prime minister. And that's not a danger just for Somalia. "The
world has changed after September 11," says a U.N. official.
"It can no longer afford a vacuum like Somalia... in a
vacuum anything can flourish."
The world may learn that hard lesson again in Afghanistan-just
as it did after the Soviet rout in 1989. American bombing may
have defeated the Taliban, but it also led to their replacement
with warlords who now control local fiefdoms. Only a unified
Afghan government, with international support, can neutralize
them.
－Lara Santoro
SIERRA LEONE
LESSON NO. 3: CREATE A PEACE ECONOMY. Sierra Leone finally seems
firmly on the road to recovery. The best evidence: some of its
most talented citizens, who fled almost a decade of civil war,
are bringing capital home. "The economy shows a brighter
spark than it has for a long while," says Graham McKinley,
a British expat who recently sold his Freetown-based cell-phone
company. "A few new restaurants have opened." In the
countryside, the United Nations' largest peacekeeping force-UNAMSIL,
with 17,500 members-has overseen the demobilization of 37,000
Liberian-backed rebels and pro-government militiamen. The peace
has reunited tens of thousands of families. The pillars of state
security are on the mend. Importantly, a force of about 150
British officers on long-term assignment advises every Sierra
Leonean military official with command responsibility. The cops
likewise are under British tutelage.
The problem is, the hardest road still lies ahead. Rebels loyal
to outlaw President Charles Taylor of neighboring Liberia still
hold Sierra Leone's rich diamond fields. They have pledged to
withdraw before elections scheduled for March, but old hands
in the region aren't betting on a happy outcome-even if the
United Nations moves in there. It is more than a regional problem.
Close aides of terror mastermind Osama bin Laden are reported
to have raised tens of millions of dollars in recent years after
getting access to cheap rebel diamonds through a longtime Taylor
crony from neighboring Burkina Faso.
Despite a lot of talk, the international community has failed
to clean up the trade in conflict diamonds. The United Nations
says illegal diamond sales from Sierra Leone reaped up to $75
million in 1999, and the pace has increased since rebels signed
a peace deal last summer. The national treasury sorely needs
tax income from these exports. But international negotiators
only last month agreed on a plan for international certification
of rough-diamond exports and imports. And it's still a wide-open
question whether the system will work. Re-establishing a peace
economy is a great start, but Sierra Leone will remain at best
a state without its most precious resource.
- Tom Masland
EAST TIMOR
LESSON NO. 4: EMPOWER THE LOCALS. East Timor's misery at first
looked to have a silver lining. After Indonesian-sponsored militias
laid waste to the territory in 1999, much of the population
fled into the hills or across the border into West Timor. Australian-led
peacekeepers restored order, but many professionals and nearly
all the civil servants-who had been appointed by Jakarta-refused
to return. The U.N. administrators who came instead seemed to
have been presented with a clean slate: a people who were eager
for help, buoyed by the world's sympathy and quite unprepared
to make decisions about their future.
Or so it seemed. The United Nations quickly learned that an
army of international experts and do-gooders could not simply
build a new East Timor- using local labor-without inspiring
a debilitating resentment. Bureaucratic bungling, ineffective
regulations and red tape, and a noticeable arrogance among U.N.
staffers toward the Timorese alienated much of the local population.
"The recruitment process of hundreds and hundreds of foreign
personnel was done in haste, and half of them were really a
waste of resources," says Nobel Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta,
the territory's de facto foreign minister. "Many of them
had very racist, arrogant, patronizing attitudes." Angry
Timorese clashed with U.N. police on several occasions earlier
this year to protest heavy-handed tactics by officers on patrol.
The first Timorese officials appointed to the United Nations'
executive cabinet claimed they were powerless, that the international
staff did not heed their views.
The "Timorization" of the nation-building process
that the United Nations proceeded to enact-giving local leaders
much more authority and decision-making power-is critical for
several reasons. The mission's early troubles show how easily
even a welcome international presence can come to seem foreign
and oppressive. At the same time, bringing the two sides into
the same process ensures that local leadership must take some
responsibility for the successes or failures of the effort.
And at the ground level, no vast civic project can succeed if
the population that is governed feels it is not party to the
decisions that are made on its behalf. "Related to this
is the importance of making sure that the people understand
what is going on," says Johanna Kao, resident program director
for the International Republican Institute in Dili. "Civic
education, or whatever you want to call it, is probably the
most underrated activity here." With any luck, the United
Nations has learned at least as much as it has taught the Timorese.
- Joe Cochrane
CAMBODIA
LESSON NO. 5: KEEP YOUR PROMISES. The verdict on the United
Nations mission in Cambodia is-not coincidentally-as halfhearted
as its actions. The country is at peace for the first time in
three decades. Prime Minister Hun Sen and Prince Norodom Ranariddh,
once battlefield enemies, have reconciled and formed a new coalition
government. There is a functioning national assembly and a fledgling
civil society of human-rights groups, aid organizations and
democracy think tanks. Foreign aid continues to flow for land-mine
clearance, education and health. Yet at the same time, Cambodia
continues to suffer from violence, lawlessness, a culture of
impunity for the wealthy and powerful, an AIDS epidemic and
poverty levels that have scarcely improved since the country
began receiving international assistance a decade ago. The place
is stable, but its quiet is that of the cowed.
The indecisiveness of the U.N. mission contributed in no small
measure to this mixed record. A key provision of the 1991 peace
accords signed in Paris required that all sides disarm and demobilize
up to 70 percent of their forces. Yet when the Khmer Rouge refused,
international peacekeepers-scattered around the country in relatively
weak units of Indonesians, Uruguayans, Malaysians, Thais and
others-had neither the will nor the means to force it to comply.
At times the foreign troops seemed inexplicably terrified of
the black-clad Maoist rebels: when the Khmer Rouge closed roads
into territory under its control, the blue helmets did not challenge
the simple blockades of bamboo sticks. "Without the cooperation
of the Khmer Rouge, no one else disarmed," says Kao Kim
Hourn, a prominent Cambodian political analyst. "If the
U.N. had been prepared to enforce disarmament, it would have
used force. There was no will to do so."
That first compromise led to others. The Khmer Rouge boycotted
the U.N.-sponsored elections in 1993-the centerpiece of the
mission-and dragged out the country's civil war until 1998.
Some 90 percent of the populace voted in polls that were generally
considered free and fair. But when Ranariddh's funcinpec party
won more seats than Hun Sen's CPP, the hard-liner prime minister
refused to step down. Ultimately Ranariddh's father, King Norodom
Sihanouk, proposed that the two share power as co-prime ministers
and divvy up ministries between them. "That should never
have been accepted," says Finn Viggo Gunderson, a U.N.
election officer at the time. "The U.N. should have faced
the confrontation with the CPP when it came."
Instead the United Nations committed perhaps its most fundamental
breach of faith: it promised Cambodia democracy, then began
pulling out as soon as the election was staged. Hun Sen's people
maintained control of all the key military and financial ministries,
and in 1997 the strongman overthrew Ranariddh in a bloody coup
that left him in firm and unquestioned control of the state.
Even today, when the two are ostensible allies, Hun Sen continues
to rule Cambodia as a virtual fiefdom. Some say the United Nations
could not have prevented such an outcome by enforcing the election
results in 1993. But by leaving the country with only the framework
of democracy and not the institutions to support it, the world
satisfied its own conscience more than Cambodia's needs.
－Joe Cochrane
