Keeping the Peace Abroad? Try and Make Peace At Home First!!

This contribution from a blogger who goes by the name of YB, thank you very much YB for spotting this article in the Economist and the subsequent reply by the United Nations Under Secrtary General for Peace Keeping Operations. In the article the author goes on to describe the problems that befall our country due to the presence of an unecessarily bloated National Army. Read on and see the UNSGPKO response at the bottom and judge for yourself whether it is necessary for us to have an Army.

Fiji
The utility of peacekeeping
Sep 27th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Without it, the army would be less prone to coup-making
FRANK BAINIMARAMA, Fiji’s army commander and coup leader, was in New York this week to boast to the United Nations General Assembly about his eight-month-old government’s achievements. Now serving as interim prime minister, he has good reason to be grateful to the UN. In the days before he seized power on December 5th, Kofi Annan, then the secretary-general, raised questions about the future involvement of Fiji’s soldiers in UN peacekeeping operations. But under Mr Annan’s successor, Ban Ki-moon, blue-helmeted Fijian soldiers are still being flown to the world’s trouble-spots.
Without peacekeeping missions overseas, it is unlikely that Fiji’s army would ever have become strong enough to seize power. When the British left in 1970, there were only around 200 serving military personnel. UN peacekeeping operations in Lebanon and Sinai generated a tenfold increase by 1986. The next year, Fiji witnessed its first military coup. Some 20,000-25,000 Fijians have been deployed on UN missions since independence—a lot for a country of fewer than 1m.
Peacekeeping has also provided an escape-route for disgruntled senior officers. In May 2000 Fiji saw its second coup, led by a civilian, George Speight, but backed by a faction from an elite army squadron. Other senior officers, including Viliame Seruvakula and Filipo Tarakinikini, rallied troops against Mr Speight and defeated that coup. But both men then fell out with Commodore Bainamarama. They enlisted with the UN. Much of the senior, often Sandhurst-educated, officer corps left or were dismissed from Fiji’s armed forces after 2000, enabling Commodore Bainimarama, a naval officer who has served with the UN in Sinai, to promote his own placemen. (Even these loyal officers have been redeployed since the latest coup, to senior positions in the civil service.)
The UN does not prohibit successful coup-leaders from attending its meetings, and the commander’s New York trip is a chance to improve his regime’s standing. Suspended by the Commonwealth and under scrutiny by the European Union, his government responded by agreeing to establish a clear timetable for fresh elections.
That was cast in doubt, however, by the reimposition of emergency regulations on September 6th, by the continued suppression of dissent, and by a statement from the shadowy Military Council that the deposed governing party will not be allowed to contest future polls. The commander recently said that politicians were “not ready” to run the country. As a result, Fiji risks losing around $254m in promised EU aid, badly needed at a time when tourist numbers are declining, the gold industry has collapsed and the country’s main export industry, sugar, has stagnated.
All of which gives even greater importance to peacekeeping. Remittances from peacekeepers now make up a big chunk of Fiji’s foreign-exchange earnings. And with the demand for their services growing, there is understandable reluctance to limit recruitment. Yet in Fiji, as in Nepal and Bangladesh, two other big contributors to UN peacekeeping, keeping the peace abroad has big repercussions at home.

And Mr. Jean-Marie Guéhenno’s ,the Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, response.

14:08 GMT +00:00
The Utility of Peacekeeping, September 27th
SIR—

Your article inaccurately implies that service with UN peacekeeping forces encourages an attitude of impunity and exceptionalism within national military structures. In fact, the opposite is true. Troops from all over the world serve within UN operations with honour, courage and distinction, far from their home soil, helping to nurture a fragile peace and provide breathing room for a viable political process to take hold. Service with UN peacekeeping also provides other benefits, exposing militaries to key international norms and standards including human rights training, gender parity, support for elections and a doctrine of civilian control. This is not to argue that the role of national armies in politics is unimportant, however your article misses a wider point: UN peacekeepers provide an unique and intrinsically positive contribution to the maintenance of international peace and stability.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations
United Nations
New York

Fuggedaboutit has this to say to Mr Jean-Marie Guéhenno. While I do believe that the majority of UN Soldiers have most probably served with disticntion, honour and valour in war torn areas and have nurtured peacekeeping intiatives, I think that it is hypocritical of the UN to employ an armed force that has acted in defiance of the democratic principles that the UN is meant to embody.

It’s simply a matter of practice what you preach, the former UN secretary General Kofi Annan had the right idea. This was when he informed the Coup Monger, Frank Bainimarama, that the UN would have to look at the Fiji Military Forces role in future peacekeeping operations if he persisted with carrying out his threat to remove the SDL Government.

Unfortunately we have seen what happened when the UN did nothing and Annan’s successor Ban Ki Moon still allowed the FMF to participate in UN Peacekeeping missions. By not cutting off one of the lifelines to this Interim Regime’s jugular veins they have allowed them to stay in power a little longer…. but the the Army Command and Interim Regimes’ actions will lead to their own demise, people are seeing through their lies each day.