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Contributions from
the Column
Tribune
The importance of Europe
Attention deficit
Neglected war victims
“Pull together”
01/2006
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[ Klaus Reinhardt, retired general ]
“Pull together”
“Mission accomplished,” US President George W. Bush declared as early as 2003 in respect to Iraq, neglecting to mention that the real work – that of securing peace – was only just beginning. In other regions as well, peace missions only progress slowly, if at all, as is exemplified in the Balkans or Afghanistan. Normally, there is a lack of an overarching strategy, says former German General Klaus Reinhardt. He has commanded several missions abroad.
[ Interview with Klaus Reinhardt ]
Which international peace missions were successful in the past few years, and which were not?
The missions in East Timor and Macedonia were successful. In East Timor, a transitional government was set up and is now firmly established. In Macedonia, peacekeepers reacted quickly to prevent a conflict from re-escalating. All of the other missions still underway deserve big question marks. The political and economic situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina is anything but stable. In Kosovo, people are becoming more anxious and may soon take to the streets if the status question is not clarified. And in Afghanistan, warlords and drug mafias are preventing things from stabilising.
When do you consider a peace mission a success?
Two things are important. First, a government representing the people has to be established as quickly as possible – rather than an administration imposed from outside as was initially the case in Iraq. In Kosovo, the situation is similar, because the UN mission UNMIK still too strongly overshadows the democratically elected government. There may be good reasons for this state of affairs, but responsibility has to be given as quickly as possible to a government that represents the people. Second, living conditions on the ground also have to improve as quickly as possible. Above all, I’m talking about basic things like a reliable supply of water and electricity or security. For instance, people in Kosovo simply do not understand why – after six years of UNMIK – they still only enjoy electricity, heating and water for a few hours at a time.
Why is so little progress being made?
The international community generally focuses too much on military aspects. We are ready to send soldiers at the drop of a hat. But what we also need is a clear overall strategy, internationally coordinated. I don’t know of any such plan for Kosovo, and I don’t know of a plan for the Balkans. Our politicians like to travel to the countries in question to find out firsthand how things are developing, but they mostly focus on military issues.
Let’s talk about Afghanistan. German government officials have repeatedly pointed out our country’s commitment to civilian matters.
In Afghanistan, there is no doubt that the German government is more committed. And there is a clear plan called the Petersberg Concept. Implementation is another story. Reconstruction and the demilitarisation of former combatants is taking far too long, and no progress is being made in the fight against opium cultivation, criminality and warlords. The international community has to disarm the militias and get people away from warlord leadership by providing civilian jobs. Otherwise, a decisive precondition for domestic security and a healthy economic development cannot be met.
Has the international community bitten off more than it can chew on missions like Afghanistan ?
Sometimes, the decision to act is almost a knee-jerk reaction. In such cases, everybody involved should sit down together and discuss the strategic goal, the means to achieve it and the contributions of every partner involved. It is important that the goal be clearly defined and realistic. We can’t send our young men and women in uniform to Bosnia-Herzegovina for more than 14 years or to Kosovo for more than six years, tying up a considerable number of German troops. Rather, we should be offering temporary support for transitional periods and telling the people we are helping that they will be taking over once we are finished. But for that to happen, we need a clear idea of our goal.
Do soldiers and humanitarian organisations cooperate well?
In a lot of areas they do. When I was in Kosovo, we were working closely with NGOs and international organisations. Otherwise, we would not have managed to take care of all the returning refugees in the very cold winter of 1999/2000. That was a major success. It would also not have been possible to take back thousands of refugees to Afghanistan if military and civilian organisations had not cooperated. But those are isolated aspects – and won’t do to stabilise the overall situation. What we need is an overriding organisational unit that coordinates everyone involved and makes sure that the main goals are attained.
That sounds like a leader nation...
. . . or an international body like the European Union or the United Nations. We need someone to coordinate everything. Often, a large number of international agencies are on the ground and want all the best for the country, but they are not all pulling in the same direction. As a result, they do not, by far, make the progress they could if they were coordinated.
In theatres of crisis, a lot of NGOs often become involved quickly, and they do not like being told what to do. Is that a problem?
Yes, coordination is sometimes very difficult. A lot of NGOs have very specific ideas about how they want to do their job. Their mission philosophy is completely different from what soldiers think and feel when they go into such a theatre for six months to reach certain goals in that time. We therefore need to prepare both civilian organisations and the military for joint missions. We should make both parties familiar with each others’ management and mission cultures, making it easier to come up with a joint strategy instead of constantly getting in each others’ way.
Many civilian aid agencies are afraid of working with the military. They don’t want to be misused for security purposes. Do you understand them?
Yes, I do. For small civilian organisations, the military is a very large, closed organisation that must seem like a steamroller. If we soldiers are not sensitive to their requests and only try to push them to work with us instead of offering to cooperate, I understand their worries. On the other hand, maintaining old prejudices does not help either. We should not just look back and ask ourselves what we did wrong. We have to make everyone involved familiar with the other party and help them understand one another’s potential as soon as possible in order to overcome deep-rooted prejudice. After all, there are cases where cooperation was successful and both sides did learn from each other, to the benefit of the people we were helping.
Aid agencies have repeatedly insisted that the military should only handle security, not reconstruction. Does such a strict division of labour make sense?
You can’t enforce that completely. It always matters who can do what job at any given time. If you need to build bridges and repair train lines early on during a peace mission, civilian organisations are often not a good option because they simply will not have enough people on the ground. Usually, troops are the first to arrive in sufficient numbers. But of course, the aid organisations are completely right: soldiers are not Samaritans in uniform, even though politicians often depict them that way. Soldiers are mainly there to ensure domestic security and protect borders so that civilian organisations can reconstruct the country. It goes without saying that troops can help them in certain cases – with the positive side-effect of the population gaining trust in the military. But these jobs are not the main task of our troops.
To what extent does cooperation between the military and civilian agencies depend on close coordination of the ministries involved?
I really can’t say because I never saw any such coordination on any of my missions. Maybe there was some, but I didn’t notice. But of course, political and ministerial coordination would be very important. After all, the kind of over-arching strategy for peace missions that I’m calling for is only possible if all of the departments involved agree on it. If you don’t agree on a goal at home, then everyone will do what they think is best on the mission. They all have the best intentions, but their efforts sometimes cancel each other out. I am, however, optimistic that, in the case of Afghanistan, we are finally seeing the first signs of a good cooperation.
Questions by Tillmann Elliesen.
Dr. Klaus Reinhardt
is a retired general of the German armed forces. From October 1999 to April 2000, he was commander-in-chief of the KFOR peacekeeping troops in Kosovo. Prior to that mission, he directed German missions in Somalia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Most recently, he was a commander at NATO’s Joint Command Centre in Heidelberg.
klreinhardt@aol.com
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