#19 Hindering Escape during an Emergency:
National Caveats within the UNAVEM II Operation in Angola
& the Need for Appropriate Mandates & ‘Iron Resolve’
– Dr Regeena Kingsley
In the last blog I demonstrated how national caveats have led to several extremely negative and serious calamities within multinational security operations, by conducting three case-studies of United Nations (UN) operations executed in the early 1990s (see blog “#18 Caveats Endanger & Caveats Kill: National Caveats in UN Operations in Angola, Rwanda & Bosnia-Herzegovina”).
In this analysis it was shown, firstly, that national caveats complicated evacuation and endangered the lives of UNAVEM II military and civilian personnel during a critical emergency security crisis in Angola, as the country descended back into civil war in 1992-1993.
Secondly, national caveats bound the actions and capability of Belgian military forces operating within the UNAMIR operation in Rwanda in 1994, in a manner that left 2,000 Tutsi civilians under UN protection at a school compound completely defenceless during the Rwandan genocide there. The Belgian forces eventually abandoned the UN mission, their tasking and the people under their protection at the school – allowing hundreds of Hutu militia fighters to enter the compound and slaughter all of the civilians sheltering there by means of guns, machetes and spiked clubs.
Lastly, during the UNPROFOR operation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, national caveats rendered Dutch military forces completely impotent in their security tasking of repelling assaults and assertively protecting 50,000 war refugees sheltering at a UN safe zone in Srebrenica in 1995. Because of these caveat constraints, Dutch combat forces did not mount any military defence of the safe-zone, thereby allowing Bosnian Serb militia and army forces to invade the UN Protection Area. Furthermore, because of their caveat fetters, these same Dutch forces were compelled to stand helplessly by and watch over a period of nine days as these Bosnian Serb forces carried out genocide within the UN safe area, methodically selecting and killing 8,000 Bosniak male civilians of all ages. All of these victims were human beings who had sought protection under the UN flag and trusted the Dutch combat forces to save them.
These two genocidal bloodbaths in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina – each one a caveat-generated military and humanitarian disaster – are now considered the UN’s greatest failures on record so far, and comprise two of the organisation’s greatest shames.
This blog will take a closer look at the first case-study presented in blog #18, the UNAVEM II operation in Angola. It will examine in greater detail the caveat-related incident which occurred there, in which restrictive and inappropriate national caveats imposed on UN national force contingents in Angola were responsible for both worsening a dire emergency security situation and hindering the safe evacuation of scores of UN military and civilian personnel during that country’s return to civil war in the years 1992-1993.
Background to the Angolan Operation
During the long civil war from 1975-2002 that followed Angola’s independence from Portugal, the Communist ‘Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola’ (Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola, or MPLA) and the pro-Capitalist ‘National Union for the Total Independence of Angola’ (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, or UNITA) fought over many decades to take control of the country. The longest civil war in Africa, the war was also a proxy war of the Cold War era, with the MPLA receiving support from the Soviet Union and Cuba and UNITA likewise supported by the United States and South Africa. At the close of the first phase of the conflict from 1975-1991, the UN intervened in the conflict to facilitate peace and security in the country. In 1989 it established the United Nations Angola Verification Mission I (UNAVEM I) to oversee the complete withdrawal from Angola of some 25,000 Cuban troops, forces that had been deployed by Cuban President Fidel Castro to the country in 1975 in an effort to assist the triumph of the Communist MPLA in the African nation.[1]
The President of Communist Cuba, Fidel Castro, bids farewell to the visiting Angolan leader of the Communist MPLA faction at the Cuban International Airport in Havana, December 1988.[2]
The UNAVEM II Mission
Once Cuba’s withdrawal was at last complete in May 1991, the UN further sanctioned the creation of a second UN mission, the United Nations Angola Verification Mission II (UNAVEM II) with the mandate of:
- (1) monitoring the ceasefire agreement;
- (2) monitoring the demobilization of the victorious MPLA troops, now the government of the country, as well as their rivals, the UNITA guerrillas;
- (3) monitoring the neutrality of the Angolan police; and
- (4) observing and verifying democratic elections, as outlined in the Bicesse Peace Accords. [3]
A limited Multinational Force (MNF) of 350 military observers were deployed to Angola under the UN banner, under the command of Chief Military Observers Brigadier (BRIG) Péricles Ferreira Gomes (Brazil) and then successively Major General (MAJGEN) Edward Ushie Unimna (Nigeria), along with 126 additional civilian police observers, 87 international civilian staff (to work alongside 155 local staff), a civilian air unit, and a medical unit.[4] In addition, 400 electoral observers were fielded to the mission to observe and monitor that the scheduled election would be carried out lawfully and deliver a legitimate result, bringing the UNAVEM II force up to a total commitment of some 1,118 personnel.[5]
This MNF was drawn from the following 25 countries: Algeria; Argentina; Brazil; Canada; Colombia; Congo; Czechoslovakia (the Slovak Republic from January 1993); Egypt; Guinea-Bissau; Hungary; India; Ireland; Jordan; Malaysia; Morocco; the Netherlands; New Zealand; Nigeria; Norway; Senegal; Singapore; Spain; Sweden; Yugoslavia; and finally, Zimbabwe.[6]
Map of Angola in Western Africa[7]
The 350 UN military observers, comprising the bulk of the UN force, were stationed in 65 separate UN locations around Angola, while the UN headquarters was established in the capital city of Luanda.[8] By their intervention, the UN intended to turn one of Africa’s worst disasters – the longest-running Angolan civil war – into ‘an international success story’. [9]
However, because the UN had rendered the mission a strictly ‘neutral’ mission, several national contingents of military observers contributed to the UNAVEM II force had been deployed to Angola both unarmed and bound by restrictive national caveats.[10] The lack of weapons among most of the UN force, combined with a lack of government authorisation to employ force in self-defence or the defence of others for the few who did carry weapons, meant that the UN observers were completely unable either to act or to react – offensively or defensively – should any negative security situation develop within the civil war conflict theatre.
Consequently, it could well be argued that through a lack of common sense, vigilance and foresight, together with a consequent failure to make any provision for UN forces to take either offensive or defensive lethal action, the UN Security Council had, from the outset, set the stage for any developing crisis within the Angolan UN mission to deteriorate beyond its control.
Some of the leading commanders and soldiers of the pro-Capitalist UNITA faction of Angola.[11]
Downward Spiral: The Failure of the Demobilization Process & A Contested Election
Despite initial success in the mission during the years 1991-1992, UNAVEM II forces in fact failed to achieve their second key security task – the demobilization of the two primary warring factions of the civil war, the MPLA and UNITA. While government MPLA military forces had demobilized significantly, though not completely, UNITA had not demobilized at all and also maintained access to hidden weapons caches that had never been surrendered to UN forces.[12] In addition, it soon became clear that both factions were in fact maintaining alternative, proxy, back-up forces – the Anti-Riot Police for the governing MPLA, on the one hand, and the Special Security Corps for UNITA, on the other.[13] This meant that UNAVEM II’s third security objective, that of monitoring the neutrality of the Angolan police, had also been compromised (while UNITA’s Special Security Corps force lay outside the UN’s mandate and supervision entirely).[14] According to New Zealand Army Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Mortlock, Regional Commander of both the Huambo and Mavinga UNAVEM II Regional Command sectors, the situation in Angola by late 1992 was ‘a guaranteed recipe for conflict’.[15]
In this tense environment, and in accordance with the Bicesse Peace Accords, national presidential elections were held in Angola on 29-30 September 1992. The election resulted in a 92% turnout of the population (equating to approximately 4.8 million of a total population of 5.3 million) and a victory for the governing MPLA Party over its 18 other political rivals, including its main rival UNITA.[16] The interim MPLA government, led by President José Eduardo dos Santos, won 54% of the popular vote, defeating UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi.[17] UNITA, together with several other political parties, could not accept such an unfavourable result and claimed that there had been ‘widespread, massive and systematic irregularities and fraud’ committed by the MPLA during the elections.[18]
The leaders of the two main warring factions in 1992-1993 – President José Eduardo dos Santos of the governing MPLA and Jonas Savimbi of rival guerrilla group UNITA.[19]
Angola Returns to Civil War
In October 1992, the month after the presidential elections, the security situation in Angola suddenly and dramatically deteriorated. The persistent UNITA claim of massive MPLA electoral fraud was contradicted on 1 October by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Angola, Margaret Anstee, who determined that the allegation was unfounded and the elections were generally peaceful, orderly, free and fair, with only a few organizational and logistical difficulties.[20] However UNITA refused to accept the UN Special Representative’s finding and, in a gesture of protest, withdrew 11 of its former commanders from the new, unified Angolan Armed Forces that had been established in accordance with the Bicesse Peace Accords only two days before the elections.[21]
Further investigations were subsequently conducted throughout early October by UNAVEM II officials and the Angolan National Electoral Council (NEC), in all of the 18 provinces of Angola.[22] On 17 October, both Anstee and the NEC announced publicly their separate determinations that the Angolan presidential elections were generally free and fair, that there was no conclusive evidence of widespread fraud, and that the election result of a MPLA victory at the polls was valid and legitimate.[23] Once again, however, UNITA rejected this unfavourable conclusion, wholly rejecting not only the election result, but also the investigations and findings of the UN and the NEC.
Hostilities resumed in many parts of the country as UNITA rapidly mobilized and occupied large swathes of the country, including key towns and ports, facing little effective resistance by partially-demobilized government forces and hastily armed civilian groups.[24] UNITA sought to overthrow elected MPLA officials in the Angolan provinces by force and to remove the government’s administrative structures throughout the country.[25] Frantic attempts by the UN’s highest officials and diplomats, together with UNAVEM II personnel stationed around the country, to heal the emerging breach and restore dialogue between the MPLA government and UNITA forces ultimately failed. Despite their best efforts, UNITA had returned to warfare.[26]
UNITA soldiers prepare to attack during its conquest of Angolan Provinces in 1992-1993.[27]
On 31 October, only one month after the national presidential election, government MPLA forces clashed violently with UNITA forces on the streets of the Capital, Luanda, and the whole country quickly descended back into civil war.[28] UNITA continued to successfully attack and capture municipalities throughout Angola, destroying key Angolan infrastructure as they went – dams, bridges, electrical pylons, schools, orphanages, hospitals and medical facilities.[29] UNITA also seized control of several Angolan diamond mines in Lunda Norte Province, and used the precious gems to finance and fuel their war effort.[30] In November, MPLA government military forces and civilian vigilante groups struck back fiercely at UNITA guerrilla units in Luanda, Malange, Lubango, Benguela and Lobito.[31] The heavy fighting that occurred throughout Angola during this second phase of the long-running Angolan civil war was reportedly worse than the fighting of the previous 16 years, and ‘engulfed towns and population centres’ around the country.[32]
During the course of the fighting, all of the military fighting forces – government MPLA military forces, the Anti-Riot Police, UNITA guerrilla forces, and Special Security Corps fighters, along with other internal security forces – each ‘flagrantly disregarded fundamental humanitarian values’ in their detention and treatment of prisoners of war, their extrajudicial killings of unarmed civilians – including women, children and the elderly, and their ‘impediments to the delivery of humanitarian assistance to civilians in dire need’. [33] In addition, UNITA seized and held foreign hostages in Jamba and Huambo and conducted ‘ethnic cleansing’ campaigns in Uige Province on the border with Zaire, while government forces took revenge on Zairians living in the Capital Luanda.[34] The fighting resulted in the displacement of large numbers of people, while the absence of government administration led to widespread hunger and starvation of the civilian population around Angola.[35]
Popular Anger as the UNAVEM II Mission Fails & Disintegrates
As war consumed the country throughout November, the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt) announced that it was ‘too soon to despair of the Angolan peace process’ and extended the UNAVEM II mission by a further two months until 31 January 1993. UNAVEM II officials and commanders suddenly found themselves tasked with the impossible job of being ‘mediators’ between the two main warring factions, the MPLA and UNITA, in the midst of intense and bloody fighting. [36]
At the highest level, Anstee, the UN Special Representative to Angola, met with MPLA and UNITA delegations in Namibe, where all parties agreed, in theory, to the validity of the Bicesse Peace Accords, to an immediate cease-fire, the cessation of offensive movements, and the need for greater UN involvement in Angola. However, in practice, offensive action continued unabated throughout Angola following the Namibe agreement, with UNITA seizing the provincial capital of Uige and an important airbase in Negage, and heavy fighting reported in at least 10 provincial capitals around the country.[37] An attempt by UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali himself, to restore dialogue by inviting the leaders of the MPLA and UNITA, President dos Santos and Savimbi, to a meeting with him personally at a neutral location, also failed.[38]
By January 1993 the calamitous situation in Angola prompted the UN Secretary-General to state that: ‘To all intents and purposes, Angola has returned to civil war, and is probably in an even worse situation than that which prevailed before the Peace Accords were signed in May 1991’.[39] ‘An already serious humanitarian situation has become catastrophic in many areas,’ he concluded.[40] In a report to the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali also admitted that UNAVEM II’s failure to fulfil key provisions of the Bicesse Peace Accords, including a failure to demobilize the two warring sides, seize and store weapons caches, re-establish effective administration in many parts of the country, and establish a neutral police force, lay at the heart of the country’s return to war.[41] As civil war consumed the Angolan nation, the mandate of the UNAVEM II mission became increasingly ridiculous and obsolete, and the mission disintegrated and began to peter out.
Disappointed and hostile crowds blamed UN forces for the return to civil war in their country, and began to vent their despair, bitterness and anger on UN personnel. At least two UNAVEM II military observers, an Argentinian and a Slovakian, were beaten up by former friends and neighbours near their UN compounds during this time.[42] Anstee, the UN Special Representative to Angola, was also repeatedly targeted and attacked by UNITA militia.[43] Due to the intensity of the violence around the country, including increasing dangers posed to the lives of UN personnel as UN compounds were regularly targeted and attacked, the UN was compelled to evacuate 45 of its 67 UNAVEM II locations around Angola.[44]
A Security Emergency in Huambo
It was in this perilous and complex environment that national caveats appeared within the UN multinational operation, at the UN compound in the city of Huambo, to further exacerbate the security crisis in Angola and endanger the lives of UNAVEM II personnel.
During this time Huambo was the second largest city of Angola and its broader environs of Huambo Province, located in the heart of the Angolan central highlands, had historically always been considered one of the most important economic and strategic assets in the country.[45] Huambo had once been a symbolic UNITA stronghold, however in 1975 MPLA forces had won the city and had continuously controlled and administered government there ever since.[46] Following the public announcement of the election result in late October 1992, in which UNITA had won the majority of votes within Huambo Province despite its overall defeat, the entire leadership of UNITA, including Jonas Savimbi, had retreated to UNITA’s central headquarters in Huambo – a complex known as the ‘White House’ near Huambo airport.[47] Following Savimbi’s rejection of the election result, the UNITA leadership took measures to bring this prized and symbolic population centre under its own control once more, by driving MPLA government officials and civil servants out of their administrative positions there.[48]
MPLA government forces in Huambo city, prior to the ‘Battle for Huambo’.[49]
In November, as civil war broke out around the country, the UN Regional Commander in Huambo, New Zealander LTCOL Mortlock, had worked hard to mediate between the two local factions before war also engulfed the city of Huambo.[50] On 21 November, the UN commander successfully forged an agreement between the local MPLA military commander of Huambo (Colonel Walter Jorge) and his local UNITA counterpart (General Augusto Domingos Wiyo) to keep the peace in Huambo, and all three commanders stood on the steps of the pink UN command headquarters to announce this joint agreement.[51] However, the agreement was not to last. By early December all foreign aid agencies had fled the provincial capital and, a week before Christmas on 17-18 December, UNITA began its military campaign to take back control of the city.[52] In order to do so, UNITA abandoned its usual tactics of asymmetric ‘hit-and-run’ guerrilla warfare, which had so far won them the control of approximately 75% of Angola, to wage conventional symmetric war against opposition forces in the city.[53]
What ensued was a 55-day siege of Huambo, known as ‘The 55 Day War’ or ‘The Battle for Huambo’, in which UNITA first shelled the city with artillery and then fought for it street-by-street, and suburb-by-suburb, by means of ferocious street battles against MPLA government military forces. Approximately 20,000 UNITA soldiers and 8-10,000 armed civilian vigilante fighters waged war for UNITA control of the city, in what was essentially the ultimate showdown between UNITA and MPLA forces in Angola.[54] Bloody and ‘vicious’ warfare raged throughout the city with UNITA inflicting ‘heavy human and material forces’ on MPLA government forces and seizing large amounts of arms, ammunition and tanks as MPLA forces fled the city.[55] The street warfare lasted until mid-January 1993, when the last MPLA forces were forced out of Huambo and UNITA claimed victory.[56]
During the fighting the Huambo civilian population of some 40,000 lived in ‘horrific’ conditions – residential buildings and houses were regularly sprayed with bullets, suburbs were flattened by UNITA and MPLA artillery and even aerial bombardment, running water was stopped, and electricity was cut off.[57] Approximately 15,000 were killed during the Battle for Huambo, many of whom were civilians.[58] Following the siege, Huambo effectively became UNITA’s capital city within Angola, as it made plans to continue its destructive campaign of conquest westwards and northwards towards the Atlantic Ocean and Luanda, with the ultimate aim of seizing total control of the Capital, and thereby, the entire country of Angola.[59]
A residential building in Huambo riddled with bullets as a result of heavy fighting between UNITA and MPLA military forces during the 55-day ‘Siege of Huambo’, December 1992-January 1993.[60]
Endangering Escape – Scandinavian Caveats Place UN Personnel in Peril
It was in the midst of this very heavy fighting during the siege of Huambo that national caveats appeared within the UN multinational mission to render a dire security situation even worse.
In early January 1993, during some of the worst weeks of warring between UNITA and MPLA forces in Huambo, and indeed Angola, LTCOL Mortlock at the UN Regional Command headquarters in Huambo suddenly found himself and his staff in an emergency security situation and faced with an imminent and critical threat: two separate groups of armed militia fighters were heading directly towards the UN compound, from different directions, but both with hostile intent – and one of the groups was UNITA.[61] In addition to this threat, the grim reality was that there were few escape routes for the UN personnel.[62] Furthermore, because the UN Security Council had in 1991 desired a ‘neutral mission’ in Angola, and had thereby given the UNAVEM II forces the primary role of ‘observing’ rather than ‘enforcing’ compliance to the Bicesse Peace Accords, few UN personnel carried weapons. Consequently, as was the case across the UN mission as a whole in Angola, most of the international military and civilian personnel under Mortlock’s command, who had been assigned to the regional UN headquarters in Huambo, were completely unarmed and unable to defend themselves.[63]
As time grew short and the mortal danger drew ever nearer, LTCOL Mortlock mobilized the few weapons and resources he could muster among all of the international personnel stationed in Huambo and sat down to devise a plan of escape to evacuate the compound, and thereby, save the lives of the scores of people placed under his command and into his care there.[64] It was at this critical point in time that LTCOL Mortlock was suddenly presented with caveat cards by two Scandinavian National Commanders (from Norway and Sweden based on UNAVEM II Force Contributing Nations records), whose respective national contingents operated in Angola under strict caveat constraints.[65]
These Scandinavian caveat rules – potentially relating to the carrying of weapons and/or the employment of lethal force – added additional difficulty to an already complex and dangerous situation, further frustrating and thwarting the Regional Commander’s efforts to safely plan and execute the evacuation of the UN personnel in Huambo.[66] It is a somewhat tragic irony that lethal force caveats imposed on Scandinavian forces out of fear of casualties may in fact have been responsible for actually impeding their own and others’ safe evacuation during a time of crisis and, moreover, carried the potential to actually cause casualties through excessive restraint, by the simple fact of rendering the two national force contingents powerless to protect themselves or others during a time of war.
To his credit, and despite great risk to the life and limb of himself and his team, LTCOL Mortlock was able to successfully lead the UNAVEM II personnel through the deadly Huambo warzone to safety, and from there to the Capital Luanda.[67] However, it is clear that national caveats played a role in making a difficult and very dangerous situation even more strenuous that it needed to be. The strain of navigating a path through the caveat red tape, while attempting to save the lives of many under his command, in the midst of a situation fraught with immediate mortal danger, and without adequate resources, all took its toll on the UN Regional Commander. Indeed, Margaret Anstee recalls that when the dirty and bedraggled group at last arrived in Luanda, after having passing through multiple UNITA frontlines and checkpoints west and north of Huambo, they were being led by a commander who looked ‘thin and totally exhausted’ from the traumatic ordeal.[68]
As for the UN regional headquarters compound in Huambo, the former military camp was sacked by the invading militia groups. The ‘smart prefab houses’ in ‘neat rows’ which had once housed the UN personnel were completely destroyed and removed, leaving nothing behind but dirt trenches, and a UN Mi-8 helicopter, abandoned by the fleeing UN personnel, was thereafter used by the militia and locals as a public toilet.[69]
A devastated, war-ravaged street in the city of Huambo at the end of the Angolan civil war in 2002, which came following the death of UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. UNITA subsequently agreed to a cease-fire with the MPLA government and, proclaiming itself a political party, thereafter rejected military warfare as a means to achieve its political goals in Angola. [70]
Intervention, Mandates & Caveats: Lessons from the Failed UN Mission in Angola
Already a veteran of the Vietnam War, the failure of another international military intervention had a profound effect on the commander and the man. Indeed, despite having commanded the New Zealand contingent ‘superbly’ during his service in Angola, when Colonel Mortlock left that conflict theatre later in the year, he returned to New Zealand ‘an emotionally drained man’.[71]
Nevertheless, despite the impact of these two unsuccessful and extremely negative multinational campaigns in Vietnam and Angola, Mortlock would once again deploy to a conflict theatre in 1997 as a Brigadier and commander of the New Zealand-led Truce Monitoring Group (TMP) intervention on the Pacific island of Bougainville, a multinational security operation supported by Australia, Fiji and Vanuatu. The inhabitants of Bougainville Island had taken up arms in 1988 in a long-held quest to secede from the rule of Papua New Guinea (PNG). In addition, the Bougainvilleans wished to take control of a vast and lucrative copper mine on the island, which had been worked by Australia and PNG since 1972 and whose profits enriched both countries, but gave little benefit to the local Bougainvilleans. By 1997 the civil war in Bougainville between the Papua New Guinea Defence Force (PNGDF) and the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) had lasted nearly ten years and was ‘the largest conflict in Oceania since World War II’ with an estimated 15-20,000 casualties.[72]
In striking contrast to the international security campaigns in Vietnam and Angola, however, the multinational operation in Bougainville was a success. The New Zealand-led intervention resulted in a favourable resolution to that conflict: first, peace talks and a truce; second, the signing of an agreement to demobilize the main warring factions in Bougainville in conjunction with PNG forces withdrawing from the island; third, an enduring cease-fire agreement and the successful withdrawal or demobilization of the main warring parties; and finally, a further agreement in 2001 which gave Bougainville autonomy from Papua New Guinea, allowed a public referendum in Bougainville on full independence from Papua New Guinea, and instituted a weapons disposal plan.
In an article entitled, ‘A Good Thing to Do’, Mortlock makes the argument that multinational security interventions should only be mandated and military forces deployed to conflict theatres if peace is actually achievable.[73] As he states:
‘For me, Bougainville began in the Angola UN Mission, and Angola began in Vietnam…Vietnam had taught me that in order to win, you have to have a winning strategy. It had also taught me that if you enter conflict in support of others, you have no right raising their hopes, only to dash them by failure. And we of the involved West did this to the South Vietnamese people…In Angola the United Nations Mission simply became a new card for the antagonists to play. They had been stalemated and needed new opportunities for manoeuvre in order to win the war. Both sides looked to the UN to provide these opportunities. Where there is no universal desire for peace, peace is unattainable, and the leaders there desired only to win.’[74]
Where peace is achievable and an intervention force is deployed, moreover, Mortlock argues that this force must bring more than simply a message of hope – it must bring an ‘iron resolve’ to make and maintain peace, including the determination to ensure security and decisively quash any return to violence in the conflict theatre.[75] As Mortlock himself asserts:
‘Hope is the message that a peace intervention force brings. But hope, by itself, is not enough. Behind the hope there has to be the resolve for peace… Starting a war is easy. All you need is an explosive environment and two idiots each with a gun. Making a peace is infinitely more difficult. Making peace requires an extra iron resolve and a steely determination to maintain the aim in the face of all setbacks… Once started, there can be no pulling back when making peace. I would also make the point that courage is an essential ingredient of endurance…An intervention force has to have some reasonable guarantee of security in order to do its job…Once committed, it is the job of a peace intervention force to sabotage any inclination of the antagonists to return to conflict.’[76]
In this respect, national caveats serve to erode and undermine this necessary resolve to achieve the aims and desired end-state of the mission within a multinational force. Caveat constraints on national contingents, imposed by governments out of fear of casualties, handicap a multinational force’s ability to act with such resolve and determination. Indeed, Mortlock claims that ‘nothing saps human effort like fear’.[77] Like Australia and New Zealand in command of the successive Bougainville interventions, many governments view ‘no casualties’ as a political precondition for contributing forces to a multinational mission.[78] According to Mortlock, however, such an expectation is not only counterproductive, but also totally unrealistic: zero casualties is a downright ‘impossible ask’ for a commander to achieve in a conflict theatre – even with the best will in the world.[79]
The truth is that to maintain the aim of the security mission in the face of all security setbacks is to necessarily expose multinational military forces to danger and to place them in harm’s way in the interest of protecting thousands of civilian lives and maintaining or enforcing peace and security. If the verbal commitments made by national governments to such solid peace and security aims, within political forums like the UN or NATO, are not backed up in practice and in-theatre by caveat-free, flexible, armed, equipped, trained and capable troops on the ground, sailors on the seas, or pilots in the air – then the multinational security mission is ham-strung and skewed towards inefficacy and failure before it has even begun. Without this political and tangible, material determination to create, maintain and enforce peace and security in a conflict zone, a multinational mission risks becoming – in the words of Anstee with regard to many UN Security Council resolutions – nothing more than ‘sound and fury, signifying nothing’ in any given conflict theatre.[80]
Indeed, in Angola, this is exactly what happened. The UNAVEM II operation became known as a ‘text book example’ of a failed multinational peace-keeping operation: under-manned in terms of personnel, under-resourced in terms of budget and supplies, and – worst of all – under-muscled in terms of mandate, being completely powerless both to enforce compliance with the military and political process or to intervene ‘when it became evident early on that both sides failed to comply with the demobilization plan’.[81] As Anstee once remarked, the insufficient mandate and resources of UNAVEM II was comparable to trying to ‘fly a 747 with only the fuel for a DC 3’.[82] After floundering in Angola over successive years, as hostilities continued to rage throughout the war-torn country from 1992 well into 1994, the UNAVEM II mission ultimately failed completely. It was replaced in February 1995 by another, successive, UN multinational mission – UNAVEM III.
The experience of UN military and civilian personnel in Angola suggests that comprehensive investigation needs to be undertaken within the UN and other international security bodies, like NATO, on the issue of inappropriate mandates at both the international and national levels (for more information on the framework of international and national military mandates governing multinational operations, see blog #9 “What are “Rules of Engagement”? Military Mandates & Instructions for the Use of Force“). In her memoire, Orphan of the Cold War: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Angolan Peace Process 1992-93, Anstee argues that the negotiation of a mandate for a multinational security operation may well be a masterpiece of diplomacy, but it serves no purpose if it is not workable in reality on the ground.[83]
It is clear that further examination of the mandate designs that govern multinational security missions – including Rules of Engagement and the controversial but important issue of caveat limitations and bans – must be properly and rigorously undertaken in the academic domain. Such research would benefit not only future policy-makers and operational planners in the political and military spheres, but also greatly aid the work and well-being of military and civilian personnel who will be deployed on international security missions in the future and tasked with achieving difficult security objectives in complex conflict theatres within the strict confines of these mandates.
* For more information and analysis on the issue of “national caveats” and their impact on the effectiveness of multinational military operations conducted in the interest of establishing and maintaining international peace and security, see Dr Regeena Kingsley’s original doctoral research in Defence & Strategic Studies (2014) entitled: “Fighting against Allies: An Examination of “National Caveats” within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign in Afghanistan & their Impact on ISAF Operational Effectiveness, 2002-2012”.
Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices can be viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10179/6984
Endnotes
[1] ‘Angola Unravels – the Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process, X. The United Nations’, Human Rights Watch, 1999, https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/angola/Angl998-10.htm, (accessed 22 August 2017); Clive Foss, ‘Cuba’s African Adventure’, History Today, Vol. 60, No. 3, March 2010, http://www.historytoday.com/clive-foss/cubas-african-adventure, (accessed 29 August 2017).
[2] Modified image taken from A. Vines, ‘Why Fidel Castro’s Greatest Legacy in Africa is Angola’ [online photograph], Newsweek, 30 November 2016, http://www.newsweek.com/fidel-castro-greatest-legacy-africa-angola-526321, (accessed 28 October 2017).
[3] ‘Angola Unravels – the Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process, X. The United Nations’, op. cit.; United Nations (UN), Completed Peacekeeping Operations, ‘Angola: United Nations Angola Verification Mission II’, United Nations, 2000, https://www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/Unavem2/Unavem2.htm (accessed 29 August 2017).
[4] United Nations (UN), Completed Peacekeeping Operations, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Facts and Figures’, United Nations, 2000, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/Unavem2/UnavemIIF.html, (accessed 29 August 2017); K. Maier, ‘Angola: Peace at Last?’, Refworld, 1 May 1997, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6a6be10.html (accessed 29 August 2017).
[5] UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Facts and Figures’, ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] ‘Angola Map – Political Map of Angola’ [online map], Ezilon Maps, 2015, http://www.ezilon.com/maps/africa/angola-maps.html (accessed 29 August 2017).
[8] ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Background’, United Nations, 2000, https://www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/Unavem2/UnavemIIB.htm#UNITA (accessed 29 August 2017).
[9] K. Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, Independent, 19 February 1994, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/un-toils-for-peace-as-angolan-rebels-create-a-capital-1395037.html, (accessed 29 August 2017).
[10] New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) BRIG Roger Mortlock (Ret’d), Personal communication with Regeena Kingsley, 3 November 2009, Centre for Defence & Security Studies (CDSS), Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
[11] Modified image taken from ‘Angola : L’UNITA, un parti de rebelles’ [online photograph], APR News – Agence de Presse Régionale, 14 July 2017, http://apr-news.fr/fr/actualites/angola-lunita-un-parti-de-rebelles, (accessed 28 October 2017).
[12] United States (U.S.) Government, Department of State (DoS), ‘Angola Human Rights Practices, 1993’, U.S. Department of State, 31 January 1994, http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/democracy/1993_hrp_report/93hrp_report_africa/Angola.html, (accessed 27 October 2017).
[13] Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, op. cit.
[14] Ibid.
[15] M. Anstee, Orphan of the Cold War: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Angolan Peace Process, 1992-93, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1996, pp. xvi, 78; Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, ibid.
[16] UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Background’, op. cit.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Modified images taken from YouTube video ‘MPLA – Posse PR Jose Eduardo dos Santos – Parte 2’ [image screengrab], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac4tsenG6Zg, (accessed 28 October 2017) and ‘Asesinos, delincuentes y genocida – Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002) –> 400.000 victimas’, Pinterest [online photograph], https://www.pinterest.nz/pin/447404544204738954/, (accessed 28 October 2017).
[20] U.S. DoS, ‘Angola Human Rights Practices, 1993’, op. cit.; UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Background’, op. cit.
[21] UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Background’, ibid.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid.
[24] U.S. DoS, ‘Angola Human Rights Practices, 1993’, op. cit.; J. O’Neill & N. Rees, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War Era [e-book], Taylor & Francis, 2005.
[25] ‘UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Background’, op. cit.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Modified image taken from ‘UNITA diz que caso de antigos militares em atentado contra Presidente República é uma “cabala”’ [online photograph], SAPO24, 24 November 2016, http://24.sapo.pt/atualidade/artigos/unita-diz-que-caso-de-antigos-militares-em-atentado-contra-presidente-republica-e-uma-cabala, (accessed 7 November 2017).
[28] UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Background’, op. cit.
[29] U.S. DoS, ‘Angola Human Rights Practices, 1993’, op. cit.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, op. cit.
[32] UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Background’, op. cit.
[33] U.S. DoS, ‘Angola Human Rights Practices, 1993’, op. cit.
[34] Ibid.
[35] UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Background’, op. cit.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Ibid.
[41] Ibid.
[42] Anstee, Orphan of the Cold War, op. cit., p. 370.
[43] Ibid., p. 308.
[44] Ibid.
[45] U.S. DoS, ‘Angola Human Rights Practices, 1993’, op. cit.; J.G. Porto, C. Alden & I. Parsons, From Soldiers to Citizens: Demilitarisation of Conflict and Society, UK, Ashgate Publishing, 2007, p. 51.
[46] Porto, Alden & Parsons, From Soldiers to Citizens: Demilitarisation of Conflict and Society, ibid., p. 51.
[47] Ibid., p. 52; ‘Troops and Insurgents in Angola Are Still Battling for a Key City’, The New York Times,11 January 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/11/world/troops-and-insurgents-in-angola-are-still-battling-for-a-key-city.html, (accessed 9 November 2017).
[48] Porto, Alden & Parsons, From Soldiers to Citizens: Demilitarisation of Conflict and Society, ibid., p. 52.
[49] Modified image taken from ‘1993: Angolans die in battle for Huambo’ [online photograph], BBC, 6 March 1993, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/6/newsid_4270000/4270617.stm, (accessed 9 November 2017).
[50] Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, op. cit.
[51] NZDF BRIG Roger Mortlock (Ret’d), Personal communication with Regeena Kingsley, op. cit.; Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, ibid.
[52] ‘1993: Angolans die in battle for Huambo’, BBC, op. cit.; O’Neill & Rees, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War Era [e-book], op. cit.
[53] Porto, Alden & Parsons, From Soldiers to Citizens: Demilitarisation of Conflict and Society, op. cit., p. 51; O’Neill & Rees, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War Era [e-book], ibid.
[54] ‘Troops and Insurgents in Angola Are Still Battling for a Key City’, The New York Times, op. cit.
[55] Ibid.
[56] O’Neill & Rees, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War Era [e-book], op. cit.; Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, op. cit.; ‘1993: Angolans die in battle for Huambo’, BBC, op. cit.
[57] Canadian Government, ‘Angola: General information on the city of Huambo, including information on the political control of this city from 1987 to 2000’, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, 14 August 2002, http://www.refworld.org/docid/3f7d4d4e7.html, (accessed 9 November 2017); ‘1993: Angolans die in battle for Huambo’, BBC, op. cit.
[58] U.S. DoS, ‘Angola Human Rights Practices, 1993’, op. cit.; O’Neill & Rees, United Nations Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War Era [e-book], op. cit.
[59] Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, op. cit.
[60] Image taken from ‘Angolan Civil War’, Wikiwand, http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Angolan_Civil_War, (accessed 14 September 2017).
[61] NZDF BRIG Roger Mortlock (Ret’d), Personal communication with Regeena Kingsley, op. cit.; Anstee, Orphan of the Cold War, op. cit., p. xvi.
[62] NZDF BRIG Roger Mortlock (Ret’d), Personal communication with Regeena Kingsley, ibid.
[63] Ibid.
[64] Ibid.
[65] Ibid.; UN, ‘Angola – UNAVEM II: Facts and Figures’, op. cit.
[66] NZDF BRIG Roger Mortlock (Ret’d), Personal communication with Regeena Kingsley, ibid.
[67] Ibid.; Anstee, Orphan of the Cold War, op cit., p. 370.
[68] Anstee, Orphan of the Cold War, ibid.
A recollection of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative to Angola from 1992-1993, Dame Margaret Joan Anstee (a British diplomat and the first woman to head a UN peacekeeping mission), recorded in her book ‘Orphan of the Cold War: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Angolan Peace Process, 1992-93’.
[69] Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, op. cit.
[70] Modified image taken from ‘Memories of Angola – Photo Gallery’, International Committee of the Red Cross, 28 April 2009, https://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/photo-gallery/angola-photos-200409.htm, (accessed 9 November 2017).
[71] Maier, ‘UN toils for peace as Angolan rebels create a capital’, op. cit.
[72] ‘Bougainville: 1990-2003’, NZ Army, 18 March 2015, http://www.army.mil.nz/about-us/what-we-do/deployments/previous-deployments/bougainville/default.htm, (accessed 7 November 2017); L. Thornber, ‘Kiwi documentary to screen at Cannes Film Festival after picking up peace award’, Stuff.co.nz, http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/92804534/Kiwi-documentary-to-screen-at-Cannes-Film-Festival-after-picking-up-peace-award, (accessed 7 November 2017).
[73] R. Mortlock, ‘A Good Thing To Do’, Peace on Bougainville: Truce Monitoring Group (ed. R. Adams), Centre for Strategic Studies, Wellington, Victoria University Press, 2001, p. 71.
[74] Ibid., p. 69.
[75] Ibid., p. 82.
[76] Ibid., p. 82, 70, 71.
[77] Ibid., p. 70.
[78] Ibid., p. 70.
[79] Ibid., p. 70.
[80] Anstee, Orphan of the Cold War, op. cit., p. 373.
[81] ‘Angola Unravels – the Rise and Fall of the Lusaka Peace Process, X. The United Nations’, op. cit.
[82] Ibid.
[83] For more information see M. Anstee, Orphan of the Cold War: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Angolan Peace Process, 1992-93, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1996, pp. 1-566.