Who really keeps the peace?

Linda Polman, writing in The Guardian today, argues that Western nations’ experiences of peacekeeping are distorting peacekeeping missions in a disproportionate manner, and that Third World states are shouldering a burden that the West is unwilling to bear.

[A] single death, of an American peacekeeper in Somalia in 1992, not only made headlines, but was also decisive for the way we practice peacekeeping today.

In contrast, she says, 1,200 Nigerian peacekeepers have died in Africa alone since 1990.

She also goes on to address the number of troops that states contribute to UN missions…

Of the 191 UN member states, 94 contribute 39,329 troops to 13 different missions. The overwhelming majority are from the UN’s poorest members. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, India and Ghana are the five main contributors, providing 18,745 troops. The five permanent members of the security council (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China), who effectively ordered all those blue helmets dispatched, provide 1,030 troops in total; far fewer than each of the large contributors individually.

(The full breakdown of UN troop contributors, by the way, can be found at the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations website).

As far as it goes, this is all accurate information. But what is more interesting to me today is what Linda Polman has chosen to leave out of her article.

Lets look first at the numbers of troops contributed by permanent members of the Security Council. Polman argues that they contribute only 1,030 blue helmets. But she neglects to mention that Britain and France, the US (and other European states) contribute heavily to NATO missions, such as the IFOR mission in Afghanistan, which currently stands at approximately 5,500 troops. Russia also contributes large numbers of peacekeeping troops throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States, although up to date figures are hard to come by (if anyone knows where I can find them on the web, please let me know).

And what about the disproportionate level of fatalities? The impression given by Polman’s article is that there have been two Western fatalities (one Canadian and one US) compared with 1,200 Nigerian fatalities. She does not explicitly say this but it is, nonetheless, the impression that it leaves. In fact, Canada has lost 106 troops during UN missions, and the US 54. Other Western states have also suffered relatively high casualty rates. To list a few: France 95, Ireland 85, United Kingdom 92, Sweden 64). (Source: UN DPKO. These figures are purely for UN peacekeeping missions, and doesn’t include non-UN missions, such as the ECOMOG missions to Sierra Leone/Liberia, and NATO’s current mission in Afghanistan.)

Polman accurately reports that Nigerian casualties have been high (largely they came during the ECOMOG missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which is why the UN DPKO reports only 63 Nigerian fatalities). They are certainly higher overall than those suffered by Western peacekeepers. But, relative to Western losses, they are not as high as she would have us believe.

I entirely agree with her basic argument that the deaths of Western soldiers have a disproportionate impact on the way that peacekeeping operations are structured. But the way she chooses to make her argument alarms me. She mixes and matches her facts and figures to give the impression that the West’s contribution of peacekeeping troops is negligible, and that Third World states are being left to take on dangerous missions almost entirely alone. This simply is not true. The West does provide far fewer troops overall than the Third World, and this is inexcusable when you consider the high quality of Western troops. But they are far from the uninvolved paymasters that Polman paints them to be.

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