International Crisis Group

Mali: An Imposed Peace?

After eight months of negotiations between Malian parties, the government and some armed groups signed an agreement on 15 May 2015 in Bamako. Fighting has resumed, however, in the north and centre of Mali. Crucially, the Azawad Movements Coalition (CMA) has still not signed the agreement. It initialled the text on the eve of the ceremony but demands further discussion before fully accepting it. An agreement without the signature of the main coalition opposing the government is of little value and will likely make disarmament impossible. The mediation team should establish a framework that would allow for further talks and Malian parties should return to the negotiating table at the earliest opportunity. The UN Security Council and its UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), backed by France, must take a stronger stance against violations of the ceasefire.  

FULL REPORT (via Crisis Group)

Photo: Reuters/ Joe Penney

Source: Crisis Group

The U.N. at 70: The Past and Future of U.N. Peacekeeping | Jean-Marie Guéhenno

When the Cold War ended in 1991, there was hope the U.N. Security Council would be able to take decisive action to create a more peaceful world. Early blue helmet successes in Cambodia, Namibia, Mozambique, and El Salvador seemed to vindicate that assessment. 

This optimism was tripped up by the tragedies that followed in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda. U.N. peacekeepers were bystanders to horrible atrocities. Peacekeeping shrank rapidly.

FULL COMMENTARY (via Inter Press Service)

Photo: United Nations Photo/Flickr

Source: Inter Press Service

Peacekeeping and geopolitics in the 21st century | Jean-Marie Guéhenno 

Jean-Marie Guéhenno is the president of the International Crisis Group and long serving head of UN Peacekeeping. He comes from an interesting background–his father was a well known French intellectual whose experience in World War I made him a pacifist. In this episode, Guéhenno discusses his experiences as the top French foreign policy planning official during the fall of the Berlin Wall; what it was like have Kofi Annan interview you for a job; and the future challenges facing international peacekeeping.

Guéhenno is out with a new book that details these experiences and more. The Fog of Peace: A Memoir of International Peacekeeping in the 21st Century was published this month by Brookings Press. Guéhenno is a true scholar practitioner.  This is a great episode.

FULL INTERVIEW (via Global Dispatches)

Photo: Crisis Group

Source: Global Dispatches

Why Peace Negotiations in Mali Will Not Succeed | Sofia Sebastian 

The peace process in Mali is at a standstill. The fifth round of negotiations between the Mali government and rebel groups from the northern region resulted in the preliminary signing of a peace agreement by the government in early March. The rebels, however, demanded additional time for deliberation and ultimately rejected the deal because it did not meet their demands for autonomy in the north. Addressing the conflict over the institutional status of northern Mali has been a priority for the international community. While the focus on the political dialogue must continue, no solution will be viable until the nexus between criminality and violent extremism in the north is eliminated, and the links between rebel groups and transnational criminal networks are curtailed.

FULL ARTICLE (via The International Relations and Security Network -ISN)

Photo: United Nations Peacekeeping/Flickr

Source: The International Relations and Security Network

The Central African Republic Wakes Up From a Long Nightmare But the conflict isn’t over | Peter Dörrie

An upcoming national forum offers tenuous hope for peace in the Central Africa Republic, but an on-going conflict and confusing diplomatic moves from neighboring African nations complicate a slow and painful journey toward recovery and reconciliation.

“There is no war in the Central African Republic,” Thierry Vircoulon, the Crisis Group’s Central Africa Project Coordinator, told War Is Boring. His assessment is optimistic compared to just a year ago, when widespread sectarian and political violence led to thousands of deaths.

But the absence of war is not the same as peace — a distinction that Vircoulon was quick to make. “We see the disintegration of the state, a low intensity conflict,” he said.

FULL ARTICLE (via War is Boring)

Photo: hdptcar/flickr

Source: War is Boring

Libyans don’t need more weapons | Claudia Gazzini & Issandr El Amrani

The United Nations is walking a tightrope in Libya. Last week, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the latest non-state actor to emerge in the current chaos. Because of this threat, pressure is mounting on the UN to relax a four-year-old international arms embargo to allow weapons to be delivered to the Libyan military to fight the group.

This would be a terrible move: It almost certainly would scuttle ongoing talks brokered by Bernardino Leon, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative in Libya; dash any hope of a peaceful solution; and create fertile ground for jihadi groups to flourish.

FULL ARTICLE (via Aljazeera English)

Photo: Global Panorama/Flickr

Source: Aljazeera English

Diplomatie, retenue militaire et patience sont les seuls remèdes pour la Libye | Jean-Marie Guéhenno & Issandr El Amrani

« L’Etat islamique » (EI) médiatise avec beaucoup d’habileté les atrocités qu’il commet, poussant les Etats à réagir dans l’émotion. Après l’Irak et la Syrie, c’est maintenant la Libye qui est concernée. La décapitation de 21 chrétiens égyptiens a conduit l’Egypte à bombarder des camps d’entraînements sur la côte libyenne et à lancer une offensive diplomatique auprès du Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies (ONU) pour qu’il autorise des opérations militaires. Les exemples assez peu concluants de l’Irak et de la Syrie –sans même évoquer la campagne de l’OTAN en Libye de 2011 – devraient pourtant faire réfléchir : bombarder ne peut pas tenir lieu de stratégie politique, d’autant qu’en Libye, pays majoritairement sunnite, l’EI ne peut se nourrir des mêmes revendications sectaires qui l’aident en Irak et en Syrie.

FULL COMMENTARY (via Le Monde)

Photo: George Henton/Flickr

Source: Le Monde

Yemen at War

Yemen is at war. The country is now divided between the Huthi movement, which controls the north and is rapidly advancing south, and the anti-Huthi coalition backed by Western and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) allies that President Abdo Robo Mansour Hadi is cobbling together. On 25 March, the Huthis captured a strategic military base north of the port city of Aden and took the defence minister hostage. That evening Saudi Arabia launched a military campaign, in coordination with nine other, mostly Arab states, to stop the Huthi advance and restore his government. Hadi left for Riyadh and will attend an Arab League summit on 28 March. No major party seems truly to want to halt what threatens to become a regional war. The slim chance to salvage a political process requires that regional actors immediately cease military action and help the domestic parties agree on a broadly acceptable president or presidential council. Only then can Yemenis return to the political negotiating table to address other outstanding issues.

The political transition, in trouble for some time, began to unravel in September 2014, when Huthi fighters captured Sanaa, toppling the widely unpopular transitional government. Neither President Hadi nor the Huthis (a predominantly Zaydi/Shiite group, also known as Ansar Allah) honoured the soon concluded peace deal. In January, conflict over a draft constitution led the Huthis to consolidate control in the capital, precipitating the 22 January resignation of the prime minister and president; the latter subsequently fled to Aden.

FULL BRIEFING

Photo: Reuters/Stringer

Source: Crisis Group