Ending Civil Wars: Determinants of Implementation Success

April 2, 2001

Hoover Institution

Overview

1) The Project

2) The Findings

3) Recommendations

List of Cases

Failed Partial Success Success

Angola, 92-93 Bosnia and Herze- El Salvador, govina, 95-00 93-95

Angola, 94-98 Cambodia, 91-93 Guatemala, 92-98

Rwanda, 93-94 Lebanon, 91-00 Mozambique, 92-94

Somalia, 92-93 Liberia, 90-99 Namibia, 89

Sri Lanka, 87-88 Nicaragua, 89-91

Sierra Leone, 98 Zimbabwe, 1980

Guatemala

El Salvador

Nicaragua

Zimbabwe

Mozambique

Namibia

Cambodia

Liberia

Bosnia

Lebanon

Angola I

Rwanda

Angola II Sierra Leone

Somalia

Sri Lanka

Success

Partial Success

Failure

< 2,500 2,500-7,500 7,500 – 60,000

Puzzle 1: What constitutes an adequate security “guarantee”?

N U M B E R S O F T R O O P S

O

U

T

C

O

M

E

UNAVEM II

Angola I

1991-93 $175

UNAMIR

Rwanda

Oct 93 – April 94

$35

ONUSAL

El Salvador

Jul 91 – April 95 $124

UNTAC & UNAMIC

Cambodia

Nov 91 – Sept 93 $1,621

IFOR, SFORBosnia & Herzegovina

Dec. 95 – now $16,000 + +

Mission Years Total Expenditure

Puzzle 2: Which cases get the most international attention?

Given a world of limited resources and

attention, which of the following tasks would

you prioritize when implementing a peace

agreement?

Human Rights? Local Capacity Building?

Disarmament? Demobilization? Elections?

Refugee Repatriation? Police and Judicial Reform?

Puzzle 3

It’s simple to predict when implementation will succeed: when it is easy and when there are lots of resources.

Conflict Score

• More than 2 parties• Disposable Resources• No Agreement/Coerced Agreement• Collapsed State• Likely Spoilers• Hostile Neighbors• >50,000 soldiers• Secession

Cases By Difficulty (From Most to Least Difficult)

Sierra LeoneBosniaLiberia

Sri Lanka

CambodiaLebanonSomalia

Angola IAngola IIZimbabwe

Rwanda

MozambiqueEl SalvadorNicaragua

GuatemalaNamibia

Willingness Score

• Great Power/Regional Power Interest

• Resource Commitment

• Risk Lives

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

0 2 4 6 8

Difficulty Score

Inte

rest

Sco

re

SuccessPartial SuccessFailure

Guatemala

Namibia

El Salvador

Mozambique Zimbabwe

Lebanon Bosnia

Liberia

Sri Lanka

Sierra Leone I

Angola I

Somalia

Interest & Difficulty: Case Outcomes

Rwanda

Nicaragua Cambodia

Angola II

…It means bigger forces, better equipped and more costly, but able to pose a credible deterrent threat, in contrast to the symbolic and non-threatening presence that characterizes traditional peacekeeping. United Nations forces for complex operations should be sized and configured so as to leave no doubt in the minds of would-be spoilers as to which of the two approaches the Organization has adopted.

- Brahimi Report

Mission PopulationTotal Expenditure

(millions)

IFOR, SFOR (95-now)

Bosnia & Herzegovina 3,835,777$16,000 ++ $4,171.25

KFOR/UNMIK (99-now)

Kosovo

1,902,000 $3,500 $1,840.16

UNTAC & UNAMIC (91-93)

Cambodia

12,212,306 $1,621 $132.73

UNAVEM II (91-93)

Angola I

10,145,267 $175 $17.25

UNAMIR (93-94)

Rwanda7,229,129 $35 $4.84

Peacekeeping ExpendituresExpenditure

Per capita

Kosovo and the DRC

“If we had gone to the Security Council three months after Somalia, I can assure you no government would have said, “Yes, here are our boys for an offensive action in Rwanda.”

- Iqbal Riza

“There is no way I or anyone in this situation can presume you are dealing with a party out to dupe you. We came in believing that each side was talking in good faith.”

- Oluyemi Odeniji

SRSG, Sierra Leone

May 14, 2000

“A key to understanding the failure of the Lusaka Accords is to unravel how the U.N. officials could certify UNITA compliance with cantoning its troops and demobilizing its army, while unofficially acknowledging that UNITA withheld 15-25,000 soldiers.”

- Angola case study

“You can’t go to the Security Council and say, ‘We think Indonesia is going to implement a scorched-earth policy and we need a foreign intervention now.’ The politics of the council are such that you can’t paint a worse-case scenario.”

- Unnamed Diplomat

“I deeply regret that we were unable to prevent the senseless bloodshed of August and September. But if we compare the prospect now with that of two years ago, we see that East Timor is one more case where time and patient diplomacy have brought hope to what had been a hopeless situation.”

- Kofi Annan

December 14, 1999

Policy Recommendations

1) Need to treat great/regional power interest as hard constraint

2) Without great/regional power interest, don’t do the hard cases

3) Need for better strategic assessment concerning case difficulty

4) If there are spoils, spoilers, and hostile neighbors, don’t implement unless you have the capability to manage them

5) Need for intelligence gathering and analysis capability

6) Need for contingency planning

Given a world of limited resources and

attention, which of the following tasks would you prioritize when implementing a peace

agreement?

Human Rights? Local Capacity Building?

Disarmament? Demobilization? Elections?

Refugee Repatriation? Police and Judicial Reform?

Policy Recommendations: Subgoals

1) Ambitions must be commensurate with resources and permitted strategies

2) Priority in implementation should go to demobilization of soldiers and demilitarization of politics

3) Reconceptualize relationship between democracy and human rights and peace implementation

4) Pursue civilian security and local capacity building