U.N. Votes to Establish Peacekeeping Force for Mali
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Version 0 of 1. UNITED NATIONS — Despite qualms about embroiling peacekeeping troops in the global fight against Islamist extremists, the United Nations Security Council voted Thursday to establish a force for Mali, where militants controlled much of the north until France intervened in January. The United Nations force, to be composed of 11,200 soldiers and 1,440 police officers, is due to deploy July 1 to stabilize the nation, on the condition that the fight between the French-led troops, who are supporting the Malian government, and the retreating militants remains low-key. “We know it is going to be a fairly volatile environment,” said Hervé Ladsous, the head of peacekeeping for the United Nations, after the unanimous 15-to-0 vote in the Council. The resolution specifies that French troops, which deployed in January to push the Islamist militants out of the north, will intervene again should the peacekeeping forces face an “imminent and serious threat.” Russia expressed concerns that the United Nations blue helmets, as the peacekeeping soldiers are known because of their distinctive headgear, are moving away from their traditional role of monitoring cease-fires to more aggressive tasks. “We are especially alarmed by the growing shift towards the force aspects of U.N. peacekeeping,” Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian envoy, told the Council, referring to a rapid-reaction force already approved to go on the offensive in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “What was the exception before now risks becoming the standard practice.” Involving peacekeeping troops in a civil war would have “unpredictable and unclear consequences” for the safety of all United Nations personnel, he said. The mandate for the force, called the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, or Minusma, says it will be deployed to help establish stability and, along with a European training mission, to resurrect the Malian armed forces. That would allow a political dialogue between various factions to proceed and the government in Bamako, the capital, to re-establish its authority throughout the country. The north has long been home to a Tuareg separatist movement. But Islamist militants, fueled by men and matériel flowing into Mali from Libya after the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi collapsed, captured much of the north early last year. A military coup in Bamako compounded Mali’s problems, toppling a democracy and creating a chaos the militants could exploit. The separatists made a bold push in January toward Bamako, but the French military intervention drove them out of the main cities and into retreat in the desert. “Small cells of armed terrorists and rebels continue to represent a threat to stability,” Tieman Coulibaly, the foreign minister of Mali, told the Council on Thursday. Mali’s requests for foreign intervention in recent months have won over governments skeptical about sending peacekeeping forces. Security Council Resolution 2100, which authorizes the United Nations force, makes it clear that the main goals of the force are to aid the return to civilian rule — presidential and legislative elections are scheduled for July — and to bolster the efforts of a dialogue and reconciliation commission. The commission is meant to address Tuareg grievances, among other issues. It conditions participation in such talks on the rebels’ disarmament. “They are not going to chase the terrorists in their strongholds,” said Gerard Araud, the envoy from France, which orchestrated the new force. “They are there to stabilize the country.” Of course, if the peacekeepers uncover a terrorist cell in places where they are deployed, like the famed Saharan city of Timbuktu, they will dismantle it, he said. The regional political alliance Ecowas has already deployed about 6,000 troops in Mali and they, along with 1,000 French soldiers expected to remain, will form the core of the new force. No budget has been defined, but the force is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Some of the African contingents are expected to undergo military and human rights training before they can become United Nations peacekeepers, said Mr. Ladsous, the peacekeeping chief. Also on Thursday, Morocco managed to squash the appointment of a United Nations human rights monitor in Western Sahara, the contested territory controlled by Morocco. The United States put the creation of human rights monitors into the draft resolution approved Thursday that extended the mandate of United Nations operations in Western Sahara — one of the few modern United Nations missions without such a monitor — but it garnered no significant support from other Council members. Ahmed Buhari, the representative of the Polisario Front, which seeks independence for Western Sahara, said Moroccan resistance to the change “indicates that serious violations of human rights take place, which the Moroccan government wishes to hide from the international community.” There was no immediate response from the Moroccan government. |