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India And The Changing Paradigm Of UN Peacekeeping

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In 2007, India became the first country to deploy an all-women contingent to the UN peacekeeping mission, in Liberia. (UN Photo: Christopher Herwig)

NEW DELHI: Late last month, at memorial ceremonies in the United Nations for slain peacekeepers, it was a moment for India to remind the world of the 164 lives it had sacrificed in the service of UN missions worldwide. For Indian diplomats and military personnel, it was also time to reflect on an uncomfortable fact: India today contributes less troops to UN missions than ever before.

UN figures for 2018 show Ethiopia, not even half India’s size with a total military of 162,000 personnel (vis a vis India’s 1-million-man army), had over 7000 troops on UN missions. Comparatively, India fielded a little over 6,600 troops, just a shade more than Rwanda and less than Bangladesh!

The 2021 rankings showed India in the same fourth position (with a little over 5000 troops deployed) with South Asian neighbours Sri Lanka and Nepal close behind. But is UN peacekeeping all about numbers of troops and personnel?

“This is not a numbers game,” argues Lt Gen. Jasbir Singh Lidder, former UN force commander in Sudan and deputy special representative to the UN secretary-general on Sudan. “Nor is it about competing with Pakistan, Bangladesh or Nepal. Nor is this about only serving in those missions where our national interests are at stake.”

In his view, peacekeeping and India have been synonymous since its very inception. So there is expertise born of decades of peacekeeping experience. “Consider this our national heritage and a national asset. It means we don’t need to compete in numbers, but we must exhibit our quality footprint in task force-based contingents like the UK does. Also through use of force multipliers and modern logistics units, which means deployment of helicopters, drones, highly mobile and heavily armoured units, which is what some of the European countries do.”

The fact that UN experience is a national asset for India also means we need to shed our reluctance about getting involved in places like Mali, where the French are fighting Islamist rebels, or the Central African Republic where UN forces have gone in with a muscular mandate to protect civilians from armed militias and government forces. It means protecting civilians is now central to peace operations, which is a marked departure from the traditional norm.

This comes with another requirement: involvement of women not only in junior functions but also at the decision making level. Ireland’s Maj. Gen. Maureen O’Brien was appointed deputy military adviser to the UN secretary general last month. The Indian Army needs to take a close look at this and broaden the training and education of its women officers for larger roles and for UN missions.

There is another trend visible in UN peacekeeping operations: that of regionalization. Many voices in the African Union and sub-regional organisations like ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), are seeking a strong African presence in all peacekeeping missions on the continent. The Force Intervention Brigade in Goma, Congo is a case in point. But regionalization has its own set of problems. For instance, Ethiopian troops are deployed in oil-rich Abyei on the border of Sudan and South Sudan. Given tensions between Sudan and Ethiopia, there are demands for the withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops.

While the trend of “Africanisation” is expected to continue, there is an Indian view that international interventions warrant multidimensional skills and experience, where India can play a critical part.

China is the rare case of a permanent member of the UN Security Council sending troops on peacekeeping deployment. As of June last year, it had a little over 2500 troops on UN duty, of which over 1000 are in South Sudan. Critics say China has sent troops there to secure the strategic investment it has made in oil, but India’s ONGC too has invested in those oil fields. Whether there has been any gain in all these years, given the civil war which has wracked the country since independence from Sudan in 2011, is doubtful.

Nevertheless, China is there, also in DRC Congo where there are other interests to secure: around $10 billion with 80 Chinese companies mostly engaged in mining and smelting (DRC Congo is a major source of rare earths). India has been in Congo since the 1960s but to no great discernible advantage, commercial or otherwise. So the question being asked is whether India should continue to send troops there. That could be answered in November when the UN may set a deadline for pulling out its peacekeepers with the aim of ending the mission.

China has 400 troops in Mali, another 400-plus in Lebanon and in some other locations. There have been questions and official inquiries into their conduct, including their refusal to intervene when fellow peacekeepers were attacked in South Sudan some years ago.

“As a tactical unit they are not ready to take risks,” says an Indian Army officer, “they are highly centralized, their junior leadership tends to wait for orders, something which we have noticed in our interaction with them along the Line of Actual Control.”

Richard Gowan of the non-profit International Crisis Group seeking to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts, writes that Western diplomats are concerned about Beijing’s growing interest in peacekeeping. They suspect it is to reshape peacekeeping, “reducing the UN’s focus on supporting human rights and democratic processes … and use blue helmet missions to prop up pro-China leaders in Africa.”

China is the second highest financial contributor to peacekeeping (15%) after the U.S. (28%). The total UN budget for peacekeeping is over $6 billion. It has been seeking a heightened role in peacekeeping operations but is constrained by having to work with the other permanent members of the Security Council. There is no doubt that China sees such operations as signaling its commitment to the international multilateral system.

The question is whether China has made a late entry into peacekeeping at a time when budgets are shrinking. India is still awaiting payment for some missions. But the larger question is whether Delhi has a vision about UN operations with a set of goals to be realised. There is a view UN missions have not given India a bigger voice in the world body nor increased its strategic heft. But that pinpoints weaknesses and deficiencies in the Indian approach. Will our current presence in the Security Council as a non-permanent member throw up some new ideas and approaches? The answer, as they say, is out there.

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