A UN Type Conflict Management: Dilemmas of Military Observer Missions in the Example of UNOMIG

Abstract

Peace support operations and the role of the United Nations is getting important in changing the global power system. But generally peace support missions are creating new problems while trying to solve the original ones. In this presentation I will try to examine the relative effectiveness of the UN in the military observer missions, which is the most common type of UN peace support operations. The UN Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG) is used to show their relative effectiveness in the current world system by means of differentiating the problems they are facing. After showing the common problems, I will give special emphasis to the genuine problems of UNOMIG. First of all we have to take a brief look at the origins of military observer missions. During the long Cold War, the UN had to engage in conflict resolution/management in a world widely divided between two superpowers. The Security Council (SC) suffered lots of problems to handle conflicts without jeopardising the interests of the superpowers. So in most of the cases (except Korea and Congo) the SC did not authorise the necessary military forces to the conflict areas. Instead the SC preferred to send interpositional forces with light arms or military observers without arms after getting the consent of the conflicting parties. Currently we are calling this approach traditional peacekeeping. By experiences gained on the ground and in the SC it was understood that the best and easiest reaction is establishing a UN military observer mission (UNMOM) (Mackinlay, 1996, pp. 9–11; British Army, 1995, pp. 1–2/2–7). According to this limited and conservative logic this process must follow standard steps: First an armed conflict between two states; second a stalemate that nobody is able to defeat the other side completely; third conflicting states ask the UN to enforce a ceasefire; fourth the SC authorises neutral military observers to monitor a ceasefire and to achieve some other limited objectives, according their mandate; fifth conflicting states try to reach a peaceful solution by diplomatic negotiations with the help of the UN; sixth agreement is reached and end of UNMOM. In short, the duty of the military observers is to monitor the ceasefire and the restrictions agreed to by both parties in a geographically limited area for a limited time. But in reality, diplomatic negotiations often do not provide fast and lasting solutions. UNMOMs have remained and temporary missions turned into permanent ones. The answer to the question why is that they are economically cheap operations and politically easier to maintain than to remove. Most of the UNMOMs that were established in different continents are still going on without an end in sight (Brahimi et al., 2000, p. 3).

Citation

Uyar, M. (2005), "A UN Type Conflict Management: Dilemmas of Military Observer Missions in the Example of UNOMIG", Caforio, G. and Kümmel, G. (Ed.) Military Missions and their Implications Reconsidered: The Aftermath of September 11th (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 583-594. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1572-8323(05)02037-0