Should Canada battle for peace in Africa?
On June 6, 2014, a few hours after sunset, armed men opened fire on an outdoor church ceremony in Mutarule, a small village in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The assailants attacked the village with rifles and grenade launchers, shooting civilians at close range and then burning them alive.
A survivor described the experience to Human Rights Watch: “We heard bullets coming from all sides. We all got down on the ground. They came in by the door and were in camouflage military uniforms. There were many of them. The first one said: ‘Exterminate them.’ Then they started shooting.”
All told, the attackers killed 38 villagers in a few hours, including nine children. Many more were injured, stabbed with bayonets or burned past recognition.
That’s the picture Canadian peacekeepers are likely to come face-to-face with when Canada returns to peacekeeping in an era where the rules of engagement are non-existent.
The tragedy in Mutarule could have been avoided. A United Nations peacekeeping base, located just an eight-minute drive away, received frantic phone calls from villagers asking for help as the massacre began. Although the peacekeeping mission in the DRC has the authority to use force to protect civilians, UN soldiers stayed in their barracks.
This week the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sacked the commander of a peacekeeping force in South Sudan following a damning report that accused the blue helmets of failing to protect civilians during an outbreak of violence in July that killed dozens of people. Investigators concluded peacekeepers abandoned their posts and failed to respond to pleas for help from aid workers under attack.
These reports illustrate how peacekeepers’ choices — in particular the choice to use force — matter a great deal to the protection of civilians. For the past 15 years, UN peacekeepers have had robust mandates that require them to protect civilians and authorize them to use force beyond self-defence to achieve that goal. Despite these changes, long-standing debates on the offensive use of force in peacekeeping continue.
A Nanos Research survey conducted for CTV News last month found that nearly 70 per cent of Canadians support deploying Canadian Forces on UN peacekeeping missions in active fighting areas. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has committed to deploying 600 Canadian troops on UN peacekeeping missions. If Canadian peacekeepers were to use force beyond self-defence, then I believe four key factors should be taken into consideration.
First, the deployment of a large number of peacekeepers will likely amplify the deterrent effect of the use of force. When they intervened, blue helmets in Congo simultaneously launched offensives and deployed in greater numbers to war-affected regions. This combination probably did more to change the calculus of rebels than the offensive use of force alone, which failed to quell rebel violence against civilians in other cases.
Second, Canadian Forces should also weigh the capacity of rebel groups, compared to peacekeepers and their allies, when contemplating the use of force. UN peacekeepers and the Congolese army failed to change the behaviour of sophisticated rebel groups. These large and well-trained forces, with external financial or military support, continued to target civilians during and after the offensive use of force.
Third, Canadian peacekeepers might not be able to protect civilians through the use of force when the national government allies with a rebel group that commits atrocities. In these situations, Canada might have to turn to other tools to persuade the government to reconsider the alliance or to otherwise protect civilians. These tools might include diplomatic pressure, use of media or threatening to suspend certain forms of cooperation with the government.
Lastly, rebel groups that operate out of a vast and remote forest, employ hit-andrun tactics and disappear into the local population might not often respond to the offensive use of force. These guerrilla tactics mean offensive use of force might not bring about a decrease in rebel violence against civilians.
Research shows that deploying large numbers of peacekeepers does reduce violence against civilians. I believe the offensive use of force amplifies that effect. When Canada takes the initiative, it should do so with a sufficient number of troops — both civilian and military — not just 600 pairs of boots on the ground.