Alex de Waal
In June 1993, a Belgian soldier serving with the United Nations in Somalia put a gun to the head of one of my Somali colleagues and threatened to shoot him. At the time I was investigating the war in Somalia: that the residents were living in fear of the peacekeepers came as a shock.
The Belgian military attorney dismissed my complaint. When I investigated more thoroughly I discovered that arbitrary killings and torture of Somali civilians were common. The UN then took my case more seriously: they instructed that I should be arrested and detained. I left town.
The truth is now coming out: many of the contingents serving in Somalia were brutal and racist. Italians, Canadians, Malaysians, Nigerians, Pakistanis and Americans are among the culprits, alongside the Belgians.
The hostility their behaviour generated was no small factor in the willingness of ordinary Somalis to take up arms and fight against what was increasingly seen as an occupying force.
Although some charges of torture and homicide have belatedly come to court, the full implications of this dark episode in the UN’s history have yet to be recognised.
When the UN went to war against General Mohamed Farah Aidid, between June and October 1993, United States helicopters fired on hospitals, houses and civilian crowds.
If a handful of Belgian troops are to be brought to court for torture then it follows that some US military officers should be prosecuted for grave breaches of the Geneva Convention – otherwise known as war crimes.
When I challenged a US military attorney on these points, his answer was that the Geneva Convention did not apply to UN forces, on the technicality that the UN itself was not a signatory to the convention.
The official line was that the UN security council had authorised “all necessary measures” against Aidid – implicitly including gunning down women and children. Acting on behalf of the world’s highest legal authority seemed to empower UN peacekeepers to flout international law.
Somalia is a striking manifestation of a new doctrine in international affairs, which we might call “humanitarian impunity”. A succession of security council resolutions on Bosnia and elsewhere have focused on getting the aid convoys through, even if this means compromising on the protection of civilians.
Aid givers and peacekeepers are becoming the beneficiaries of international law. This is an insidious inversion: the unlearned lesson of Somalia is that it generates resentment and political problems.
In Africa, the results have become catastrophic. In the Rwanda and Congo crises, UN agencies – notably the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) – displayed a higher level of hubris and sense of impunity.
Just as the bureaucrats in their Mogadishu bunkers were oblivious to the anger they were generating, UN officials seem unaware of the deepening antagonism between many Africans and UN agencies.
In recent months, the UNHCR has been expelled from Eritrea and Congo. With the UN seemingly incapable of reform, many African governments appear ready to do without it.
Sadly, it may already be too late for the UN humanitarian agencies to haul themselves back from the brink. But the UN should make a start by formally renouncing the doctrine of humanitarian impunity and opening a public inquiry into why things have gone so badly wrong.