What is Missing in Peacekeeping? The Role of Strategy

Introduction

Sometime during the end of April 1994, a Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) commander, Lt. Colonel, now Lt. General (Rtd) Caesar Kayizari, walked by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) headquarters in the eastern Kigali neighbourhood of Kisimenti.[i] At the time, Lt. Colonel Caesar Kayizari, commander of the RPA’s Alpha Combined Mobile Force (CMF), viewed the peacekeepers in a somewhat discouraging light. Since the beginning of the Genocide against the Tutsi, commonly referred to as the Rwandan Genocide, the RPA provided much of UNAMIR’s security. Its headquarters, adjacent to the Amahoro stadium, held thousands of internally displaced Rwandans who were seeking safety from the genocide forces known as the Interahamwe, loosely translated as ‘those who fight together’.

Initially, the RPA’s Eagle Company, part of the 3rd Battalion stationed at Rwanda’s Parliament in the heart of the capital city of Kigali, protected the UNAMIR peacekeepers and the refugees. Its battalion commander, Lt. Colonel, now Lt. General (Rtd), Charles Kayonga, was informed by a scout how genocide perpetrators and the opposing Rwandan military police and Presidential Guard were closing in on the site.[ii] Despite only being a day into the Genocide, which had begun the previous evening of April 6th, Lt. Colonel Charles Kayonga knew what would be the grim fate of those seeking refuge at the UNAMIR’s headquarters. Beginning on April 7th, he sent a small company of less than 150 soldiers to secure the compound until the arrival of the RPA’s Alpha CMF roughly a week later on April 12th.[iii]

Since April 12th, Lt. Colonel Caesar Kayizari’s Alpha CMF had protected the site. However, he grew to despise the UNAMIR forces for their inefficiencies in stopping the genocidal massacres. On this day, during the final days of April, he began heckling the UNAMIR soldiers and yelled out to its commander, Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, to leave Rwanda. Its mission had failed, and now the RPA was using its scarce military resources to protect the foreign actors.[iv] Despite UNAMIR’s minimal soldiers, only a few hundred after UN Security Council Resolution 912 reduced its numbers to 270, it nevertheless tried to save Rwandans and broker a ceasefire.[v] While the political debate of UNAMIR’s failures is well examined[vi], Lt. General Caesar Kayizari’s recollection of that day stemmed not from moral or policy debates but from what was found in Strategic Theory.

This article examines the importance of Strategic Theory in how the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) engages in peacekeeping missions. It defines Strategic Theory as the theoretical and analytical mechanisms that understand how ways and means lead to expected ends. While not exclusively, it often is used to understand military engagements and events such as war. M.L.R. Smith and John Stone define it as “Strategy is concerned with the ways in which available means are employed in order to achieve desired ends.”[vii] This article first provides some historical context of UNAMIR’s failures in 1994. Rather than repeating existing arguments of the political and moral failures of the international community to end the Genocide, it instead suggests that one of its primary failures was the lack of a clear strategy which impacts the current RDF peacekeeping policy. It then examines how these historical experiences influenced Rwanda’s participation in the United Nations–African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and, most recently, in the Cabo Delgado province in Mozambique.

The peacekeeping failures in Rwanda, Bosnia and other missions in the 1990s resulted in attempts to reform how international forces operate in peacekeeping missions. James Sloan[viii] illustrates that, unlike the first decades of UN peacekeeping, which focused more on state conflicts, its attention shifted towards more in-state conflicts. The failures of peacekeepers to properly engage in these new conflicts have led to policies such as the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) doctrine and ‘robust’ peacekeeping operations and tactics. Since 2005, the R2P doctrine gained significant traction among international leaders as a way for peacekeepers to be more effective in promoting peace and protecting civilians.[ix] Kersti Larsdotter[x] provides a detailed examination of the relationship between strategy and peacekeeping. She argues how the rise of ‘robust’ peacekeeping ideally became the answer for how peacekeepers could be more effective in providing security to civilians and damper ‘spoilers’ of peace agreements. However, Charles Hunt[xi] questions the expected benefits of this new, more active engagement from its costs, specifically peacekeepers often becoming more oriented towards state-centred institutions and leaders, which harms its depiction of neutral actors. While Kersti Larsdotter does discuss four different strategies on peacekeeping – defence, deterrence, ‘compellence’ and offense- through the case study of the Democratic Republic of Congo[xii], she, along with others[xiii], do not distinguish the importance of the relationship between Clausewitz’s policy, strategy, and tactics. The importance of a clear strategy, as described by Donald Stoker[xiv] for warfare, is often stated but not applied enough to the various case studies. While these researchers discuss different UN peacekeeping operations and tactics for more effective missions, they often do not connect with the necessity of strategy. UNAMIR could not change its strategy after April 6th, which led to its failure to keep the peace and save Rwandans from the genocidal massacres.

UNAMIR’s Failures:

The arrival of UNAMIR soldiers on October 5th, 1993[xv], resulted from the previous August 1993 Arusha Accords peace agreement.[xvi] Along with political and military concessions, the UNAMIR was introduced to assist in implementing the accords. A rather simplified but accurate description of UNAMIR’s military strategic goal was the implementation of the public policies described by the Arusha agreement. The relationship between its strategy and policy follows John Stone’s description, “strategy, in other words, is concerned with the process by which armed force is translated into intended political effects.”[xvii] UNAMIR was riddled with inefficiencies within its operational art and a lack of support from the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, Kofi Anan. UNAMIR commander General Roméo Dallaire[xviii] and Ghanese General Henry Kwami Anyidoho[xix] detail the restrictions on UNAMIR to follow its mission of upholding the Arusha Accords before the Genocide. Lt. General (Rtd) Emmanuel Karenzi Karake, former RPA liaison officer to UNAMIR, commented how, before the Genocide, it was relatively transparent that the peacekeepers would be bogged down by ineffectiveness based on the deficits of its operational art. The lack of understanding of the complex dynamic of Rwanda’s previous war and the lack of military personnel would make it impossible to carry out effective tactics and operations and change its central strategy if needed.[xx]

Once the massacres began, the political will of international leaders such as France, the United States and the United Kingdom turned to minimise and ideally withdraw the forces. Despite its limited capabilities and lack of political support, it is nevertheless seen as contributing to the saving of thousands of Rwandans. An example is how it was the primary force responsible for saving over 1,200 lives at the Hotel Des Mille Collines, as it had a squad of roughly seven to ten soldiers at its entrance.[xxi] However, Lt. General Caesar Kayizari saw UNAMIR’s failure as a result of rigid strategy more than anything else.

Alan Kuperman[xxii] and Linda Melvern[xxiii] argue on the political failings of UNAMIR, specifically how international powers such as the United States, France and the United Kingdom used their soft power to reduce UNAMIR’s capabilities and mandate. Often overlooked in their analysis is how once the Genocide ignited with the assassination of President Habyarimana, it was followed by a coup d’état, which terminated the Arusha Accords. Genocide leaders such as Colonel Théoneste Bagasora, Major, later General, Augustin Bizimungu and Jean Kambanda terminated the previous public policies that focused on fostering political and economic liberalisation to instead concentrate the military forces on the Genocide.[xxiv] UNAMIR’s strategy was no longer connected to any policy. Lt. General (Rtd) Emmanuel Karenzi Karake alluded to this problem when he stated, “They (UNAMIR) were peacekeepers rather than peacemakers. But most peacekeeping missions suffer from this issue.”[xxv] Once the policy of the Arusha Accords was terminated, UNAMIR’s peacekeeping mission, i.e. its strategy, ended without a change in its strategy to become peacemakers. The deficits in Kersti Larsdotter’s description of the different operational and tactical methods which peacekeepers can utilise occur when the original strategic goal is no longer possible. Militaries, whether peacekeepers or more conventional forces require a strategy to effectively impose their goals and desires.

Clausewitz’s[xxvi] description of the connection between policy and strategy plays out here as without policy, there is no strategy and, thus, no clear method of operations or tactics. With the removal of the Arusha Accords policy, the strategy to uphold it became moot; therefore, UNAMIR soldiers had little to follow. There was no shift in policy, and thus, there was a question of strategy to either save lives or combat genocide forces. This is not to argue that General Roméo Dallaire and the remaining UNAMIR soldiers did not help save lives, even if it required protection from the RPA, as they still deserve praise for their limited actions. However, it illustrates the necessity of strategy in understanding failures or successes in peacekeeping. Many in the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) perceive General Roméo Dallaire and UNAMIR’s failure as the inability of policymakers to create a new strategy to end the Genocide. Their interpretation of UNAMIR’s failures influences how the post-Genocide Rwandan military engages in its current peacekeeping to include a clear strategy for each mission.

Rwandan Peacekeeping:

Since the end of the bloody Second Congo War in 2003, Rwanda’s military capabilities have both reduced[xxvii] and shifted towards new state security and peacekeeping goals. The reason stems largely from the RDF’s necessity to adapt to the shifting financial restraints[xxviii], political pressures by donors[xxix], the reduction in the threat posed by remaining genocide forces[xxx] and greater concern for regional stability[xxxi]. By 2012, the Rwanda Demobilization and Reintegration Project (RDRP) demobilised over 26,000 former soldiers.[xxxii] Edmonds, Mills and McNamee[xxxiii] increase the number to 60,000 to include the demobilisation of Rwanda’s pre-genocide military, current RDF and civilian militia groups such as the Interahamwe. The demobilisation process included financial assistance, training programs to gain non-military skills and Ingando civil education courses on Rwanda’s post-genocide society. Rwanda’s military now largely focuses on participation in multiple peacekeeping operations, mainly in Africa. Their current 4585 military and police forces operate in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).[xxxiv] Since the end of the Congo Wars, Rwanda has contributed over 6500 peacekeepers to multiple now-ended missions in Darfur, Sudan, Haiti, and Mali.[xxxv] Its force’s effectiveness in peacekeeping received praise from UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.[xxxvi] The political and security reasons for its peacekeeping participation are hotly debated.

Danielle Beswick[xxxvii] categorises Rwanda’s contribution to peacekeeping due to its poor international perception during the Congo Wars (1996-1997 and 1998-2003) to promote state foreign policy and agency. Filip Reyntjens[xxxviii] takes a more critical approach by describing it as a foreign policy mechanism to deflect international criticism. This critical approach is shared by Jason Stearns and Federico Borello[xxxix], who argue it is a political mechanism to deflect international criticism of Rwanda’s interference in neighbouring DRC or its domestic political sphere by threatening to remove its much-needed peacekeepers. While conducting past research on Rwandan peacekeeping, I explain how it takes a different approach by examining its impact on domestic societal norms. Rwanda’s promotion of post-genocide norms within the government’s attempt for ‘home-grown solutions’ to combat challenges is depicted to Rwandans as beneficial as it applies them to other societies, such as the Central African Republic. The depiction of the successful application of norms helps reinforce their incorporation within Rwandan society.[xl] Marco Jowell[xli] disagrees and suggests peacekeeping is a mechanism to advance the RDF’s effectiveness in combat scenarios. Within Rwanda, there are different explanations for Rwanda’s peacekeeping.

During the 2014 US–African Leader Summit, Rwandan President Paul Kagame described Rwanda’s contribution to peacekeeping, “We are very happy to work with our colleagues across the continent and deal with different challenges, including trying to keep and maintain peace in our continent.”[xlii] It illustrates a sense of regional cooperation. However, others in the RDF, such as the Director of the Rwandan Peace Academy, Colonel Jill Rutaremara, and High Commissioner of Rwanda to Tanzania and former RDF Chief of Staff General Patrick Nyamvumba, describe Rwanda’s participation in peacekeeping as a mechanism to promote state security. Rwandan security officials described how Rwanda participates primarily in regional peacekeeping missions in Darfur, South Sudan, Central African Republic, and, more recently, in Mozambique to help promote a safe neighbourhood for Rwanda’s security benefit.[xliii] Despite the relatively large distance between these zones of instability, the fear is that African institutions are not strong enough to prevent instability from spreading across Central and East Africa. Colonel Jill Rutaremara illustrates this point, “The [Rwandan] peacekeepers are used to put out regional ‘fires’ in order to protect your ‘house’ rather than a projection of force.”[xliv]

The failures of UNAMIR influence can be seen within Rwandan peacekeeping. Major General Joseph Nzabamwita, Senior Security Advisor and former Secretary General of National Intelligence and Security Services of Rwanda, described in a 2014 interview the operational art behind Rwandan peacekeeping. While Rwanda receives military equipment assistance from donors for peacekeeping missions, he commented how its soldiers are sent with the necessary equipment even if not contributed by its UN partners to conduct whatever tactics are needed for the operation.[xlv] Unlike Uganda, which focuses its peacekeepers on conflicts that fall within the US-led War on Terrorism[xlvi], Rwandan soldiers are sent to peacekeeping missions in societies that are either close or on the brink of societal collapse and genocide.[xlvii] Its strategy is to prevent genocide and protect civilians. The reasoning has and remains to be how the ineptitude of UNAMIR to stop Rwanda’s Genocide influenced RDF beliefs that its contribution to peacekeeping must be more effective. That includes well-trained and equipped soldiers, but more importantly, this study holds a strategy that can be achieved. Rwanda’s first peacekeeping operation in Sudan tested its abilities in terms of military operations and tactics and in not allowing international pressures to influence the fulfilment of its strategic goals.

Darfur, Sudan:

Before establishing UNAMID in January 2008, the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) was established in July 2004 and focused on monitoring a ceasefire in Sudan.[xlviii] Rwanda was one of the first nations to send peacekeepers, 150 soldiers, for the mission. This number would steadily increase and reach over 3647 by May 2010.[xlix] However, Rwandan peacekeepers began encountering difficulties in upholding the mandate.[l] Akin to UNAMIR’s narrow policy and strategy, AMIS’s focus was upholding the policy of monitoring any violations of the previously established ceasefire. The policy and thus strategy held little ability to combat the Janjaweed, a Sudanese Arab militia group which attacked Black African civilians residing in Darfur.[li] AMIS’s ineffectiveness in stopping civilian attacks frustrated the Rwandan government, with Beswick describing, “Rwandan officials frequently signalled their frustration with this mandate, regarding it as inadequate for protecting refugees and civilians from what the US Congress had described as genocide in 2004.”[lii] While UNAMID did broaden the mandate, it still restricted how the peacekeepers could respond to civilian attacks. Rwandan peacekeepers quickly faced witnessing a repetition of their history in Darfur and questioned how they would react.

From 2009 until 2013, General Patrick Nyamvumba had been assigned as the commander of the newly established UNAMID forces.[liii] During an observation mission in a Darfuri village, he recalled an approaching small number of Janjaweed militias. His UN orders were not to intervene or stop the Janjaweed until they had harmed or killed a civilian. For General Patrick Nyamvumba, this was unacceptable as it reminded him of witnessing UNAMIR’s failure in Rwanda during the Genocide. He ordered his Rwandan troops to fire at the Janjaweed to either force them to retreat or kill them before they arrived at the village. This went well beyond the boundaries of the mandate, with some UN officials contacting the Rwandan government and RDF requesting his removal. However, the Rwandan government responded in support of his response as it was within the RDF’s peacekeeping strategy of its soldiers using whatever means to reach the end of protecting civilians from genocidal actors such as the Janjaweed.[liv] The Rwandan government also threatened to withdraw its troops if General Patrick Nyamvumba was reprimanded, or its peacekeepers were limited in responding to Janjaweed attacks.[lv]

While Marco Jowell provides greater details of the RDF’s logistics in UNAMID[lvi], the story of General Patrick Nyamvumba illustrates the importance of strategy within Rwandan peacekeeping. The historical experience of UNAMIR’s failures, witnessed by many within the current RDF while fighting either for the RPA or former Forces Armées Rwandaises (FAR), fostered a perception of the necessity for the RDF to conduct their strategy even if it departs from the peacekeeping mandates. The political questions that formulate the policies of the UN and African Union mandates for the peacekeepers are not ignored but instead superseded based on Rwanda’s policy and strategy for its peacekeepers.[lvii] Its policy contains the necessity for Rwandan soldiers to help stabilise societies on the brink of genocide or mass atrocities.[lviii] This formulates a strategy for the use of operations and tactics that fulfil the goal of preventing or ending massacres and protecting civilians. While Western researchers list the reasons for Rwanda’s commitment, it falls not within strategy or military operations but rather political questions. It often ignores what M.L.R. Smith describes as the “moral neutrality” of the researcher and fails to “avoid conflating the attempt to describe and understand social action with normative judgements that inevitably undermine any attempt to provide objective analysis.”[lix] The strategy of protecting civilians from genocidal or antagonist actors should not be conflated with whether the stated reason for Rwanda’s policy is accurate or not. The protection of civilian strategy continues in Rwanda’s most recent peacekeeping mission in Cabo Delgado, Mozambique.

Cabo Delgado, Mozambique:

On July 9th, 2021, Rwanda sent 700 soldiers and 300 police officers to assist in the Mozambique Defence Armed Forces (FADM) campaign against Islamic fighters, working with the support of the Islamic State’s Central African Province (IS-CAP).[lx] While not sanctioned by either the UN or the African Union, the military force under the command of Major General Innocent Kabandana[lxi] focused on utilising counterinsurgency tactics to combat the Islamic jihadists who had been targeting civilians. Within a year of its initiation, the RDF soldiers captured most of the Cabo Delgado province. Under the leadership of Major General Innocent Kabandana, the RDF contingent was successful in decreasing rebel activity after Islamic jihadists attempted a failed November 2021 counter-offensive.[lxii] After nearly a year of command, in September 2022, he was replaced by Major General Eugene Nkubito.[lxiii] The current commander is Major General Alex Kagame, who has continued his predecessors’ counterinsurgency tactics.[lxiv]

Ralph Shield examined Rwandan counterinsurgency tactics in its ability to protect civilians.[lxv] He argues that its soldiers’ and polices’ engagement with the local community have helped generate societal trust and vital intelligence. Additionally, the RDF was more restrained in its use of firepower, which had the benefit of combatting an enemy that did not utilise suicide tactics.[lxvi] The reasons why Rwanda participated in the military operations are debated with Phil Clark, who suggested that French President Emmanuel Macron lobbied for the Rwandan forces.[lxvii] However, Rwandan officials dismissed this notion, with one high-level official commenting on how it fits within the RDF’s strategy.[lxviii] Ralph Shield’s description of RDF-civilian relations is a tactic within the RDF’s strategy to end the instability and massacres within the region. While these massacres were not to the level of genocide, they nevertheless fell within the framework of aiding civilians from antagonistic forces. Rather than just combatting the Islamic jihadists, Major General Innocent Kabandana’s soldiers focused on the protection of civilians, as it fell within the core strategic goal.[lxix] This reinforces how the RDF incorporated UNAMIR’s failure in protecting civilians by incorporating civilian-oriented operations along with its counterinsurgency tactics, which both were the means to the end of protecting civilians and bringing about societal stability.

Conclusion:

Rwanda’s contribution and effectiveness of its soldiers and police in African and global peacekeeping missions is well established. The political and historical aspects of why the Rwandan government participates in peacekeeping are hotly debated. However, these explanations of peacekeeping contribution ignore the historical aspect of the failures of UNAMIR in terms of strategy. Despite the absence of Strategic Theory in the study of African conflicts and wars, it is seen within the RDF as an important field that provides clarity during war.[lxx] This research illustrated through the case studies of Darfur, Sudan and Cabo Delgado province in Mozambique show how the RDF contains a strategy of ending civilian massacres and threats by genocidal or antagonistic forces. This underlying strategy guides its operations and tactics as troop effectiveness can best be achieved with military actors understanding a clear strategic goal. The RDF witnessed peacekeepers’ failures that were beyond just failed political will but instead its strategy. The UNAMIR forces deployed in Rwanda prior to the Genocide against the Tutsi held the strategic goal of upholding and carrying out the public policy of the 1993 Arusha Accords. It could not adapt to Rwanda’s changing environment, which witnessed the removal of past policies for genocide. The forces which ultimately ended the Genocide are now in command of Rwanda’s policy creation and military capabilities. The inability of UNAMIR to adjust its strategy after the start of the Genocide against the Tutsi and the return of the war contrasts with how the RDF operates in its peacekeeping and peacebuilding operations. The RDF learned from UNAMIR’s failures by having a strategy to prevent genocide and protect civilians when it contributes to peacekeeping missions. The RDF’s ways and means of peacekeeping all focus on the end of stopping or preventing other societies from collapsing into genocide or mass atrocities. Understanding the missing element of strategy in failed peacekeeping missions helps us better understand Rwanda’s contributions to peacekeeping and more effective ways for peacekeepers to save civilians and promote peace.