International conflict intervention misses community point of view

Military officers, diplomats and aid workers are still struggling to plan international peacekeeping operations from the point of view of ordinary people in countries affected by war. According to Dr Emmanuel Kwesi Aning of Copenhagen University’s Centre for Development Research, international assistance missions are poorly orientated towards the long-term needs of populations in danger, while often the military mission’s “end-state” does little to successfully address the root causes of conflict in failing countries. “It is painful to see international mission staff prioritise their own state or institutional interests over the needs of ordinary people,” he explained. “The crux of the problem is empowerment - you cannot address deep-rooted problems such as poverty from this top-down ‘we-are-in-charge’ approach.” However, some analysts defend the international community’s conflict resolution mechanisms. “It may seem bureaucratic, but we have to agree rules to set the limits of intervention,” one Western academic told IRIN. But the former commander of the West African peacekeeping force in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Major-General Victor Marlu, said he believed inefficiency and “mandate fussing” were the main reasons why UN forces in Angola and other countries had failed. “I was amazed when the UN came to me days before Liberia’s disarmament process and started to ask for a three-month delay because they were not organised,” he said. “It could have thrown the country back into war.” Dr Brian Holt from the Institute for International Relations agreed that the international community’s perspective sometimes risked being “legalistic” and prioritising the interests of international organisations, regional powers and states over their people. “I do not think you can put up the international flag in a country at war and not imagine your are also raising ordinary people’s expectations things will improve for them,” he said. “International law is just a framework and a tool for the world community to help societies in conflict. It should not be an end in itself - after all it is the powerful who write it,” another aid worker commented. Aning also warns that international missions frequently mirror the same inaccessible state power structures that have performed poorly for ordinary people in Africa since independence. “We need to fundamentally re-think how peacekeeping operations can support the political rights of people at the community level and stop rubber-stamping the handover of the state apparatus to the region’s faction of choice,” Aning said.