THE UN’s COUNTERTERRORISM DILEMMA
An Analysis of how the Protection of Civilians Mandate of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has been undermined
Master Thesis Political Science
Specialisation: International Relations
Rahel Kessler – 12237183
June 2019
Supervisor: Dr. Jana Krause
Second Reader: Dr. Abbey A. Steele
Abstract
At its core, this research is an attempt to unveil the drivers that have led to an undermining of the Protection of Civilians mandate of the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mis-sion in Mali (MINUSMA). The basis of argumentation constitute the controversies that arise from the UN’s recent turn to stabilisation missions and the implications that this has on the civilian protection imperative in peacekeeping. In Mali, the already complex situation is further complicated as peacekeepers are sent to an environment that is marked by the expansion of transnational terrorist networks. Following a qualitative approach based on empirical analysis, this case study critically investigates MINUSMA’s approach to civilian protection and evalu-ates the UN’s cooperation with counterterrorism forces. The principal conclusion arrived at is that in a situation where there is little peace to keep, the UN’s presence may paradoxically act as an additional risk rather than as a deterrent for the local population. Upon discussion, it appears that the stabilising nature of the measures undertaken by MINUSMA, a prioritisation of the protection of its own personnel and a lack of action against extremists have resulted in a tremendously poor civilian protection record in Mali. The UN’s counterterrorism dilemma builds on the idea that when blue helmets are sent to an asymmetric threat environment, the UN is trapped in a vicious circle of losing its legitimacy as a global security actor.
Table of Contents
Abstract i
Table of Contents i
List of Abbreviations iv
List of Figures vi
List of Tables vii
1. Introduction 1
1.1. Objective and Focus of the Study 2
1.2. Case Selection and Relevance 3
1.3. Research Paradigm 3
1.4. Structure 4
2. Literature Review 4
2.1. An Over-Emphasis on the Use of Force 4
2.2. The Two-Sided Hypocrisy of Peacekeeping 6
2.3. A Perpetrator-Based Approach to POC 7
2.4. Between Peacekeeping and Counterterrorism 8
2.5. The Undermining of the POC Mandate of MINUSMA 8
3. Methodology 9
3.1. Case Study 9
3.2. Data Sets 10
3.3. Document Analysis 10
3.4. Content Analysis 11
3.5. Validity and Reliability 12
3.6. Generalisability and Limitations 13
4. Theoretical Framework 13
4.1. The Operationalisation of the Protection of Civilians in Peacekeeping 14
4.2. Stability and Stabilisation 15
4.2.1. UN Stabilisation Missions 16
4.2.2. Stabilisation in Mali 16
4.2.3. Stabilisation and POC 18
4.3. Counterterrorism 19
4.3.1. Counterterrorism and Peacekeeping 19
4.4. Preliminary Theoretical Summary 20
5. Analysis 20
5.1. Background 21
5.1.1. The Malian Crisis 21
5.1.2. An Appeal for UN Support 22
5.1.3. Civilian Fatalities in Mali 23
5.1.4. Preliminary Conclusion 27
5.2. The Evolution of MINUSMA’s Mandate 27
5.2.1. A Conflation of Stabilisation and the Protection of Civilians 27
5.2.2. Towards a more Robust Posture of MINUSMA 28
5.2.3. A UN Counterterrorism Operation? 29
5.2.4. Preliminary Conclusion 30
5.3. MINUSMA’s POC Activities 30
5.3.1. Numerical Results from the Content Analysis 30
5.3.2. The Military Component of MINUSMA 31
5.3.3. The Police Component of MINUSMA 36
5.3.4. The Civilian Component of MINUSMA 38
5.3.5. Preliminary Conclusion 40
5.4. MINUSMA’s Cooperation with Counterterrorism Operations 42
5.4.1. The Malian Authorities Engage in Counterterrorism 42
5.4.2. French Counterterrorism in Mali 43
5.4.3. The Joint Force of the Group of Five for the Sahel (FC-G5S) 44
5.4.4. The Establishment of a Red Line 45
5.4.5. The UN Becomes a Warring Party 46
5.4.6. Civilian Casualties as Collateral Damage 47
5.4.7. Preliminary Conclusion 48
5.5. Discussion 49
5.5.1. The UN’s Counterterrorism Dilemma 51
6. Conclusion 51
6.1. Limitations 53
6.2. Future Research 53
Bibliography I
Appendix B: Content Analysis based on the 22 SG Reports on the situation in Mali XIV
Appendix C: Intercoder Reliability Test LXXVIII
List of Abbreviations
ACLED Armed Conflict Location and Event Data
AFISMA African-led International Support Mission to Mali
ASIFU All Sources Information Fusion Unit
AQIM Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
AU African Union
AU PS AU Peace and Security
CAR Central African Republic
cf. confer; compare to
CLA Community-Liaison Assistant
DDR Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration
DFS Department of Field Support
DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operations
DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo
EU European Union
EUTM European Union Training Mission in Mali
FC-G5S Joint Force of the Group of Five for the Sahel
FPU Formed Police Unit
G5S Group of Five for the Sahel
HCUA High Council for the Unity of Azawad
HIPPO High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations
ibid. ibidem; in the same place
ICISS International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
ICTJ International Centre for Transitional Justice
i.e. id est; that is to say
IED Improvised Explosive Device
IPI International Peace Institute
IPO Individual Police Officer
ISIG Islamic State in the Greater Sahara
ISIL Islamic State in the Levant
ISS Institute for Security Studies
JNIM Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin
MDSF Malian Defence and Security Forces
MINUSMA UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali MINUSTAH UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti
MNLA National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad
MoU Memorandum of Understanding
MUJAO Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OROLSI UN Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions
para. paragraph
POC Protection of Civilians
PVE Prevention of Violent Extremism
P5 Permanent 5 Members of the UN Security Council
QIP Quick Impact Project
QRF Quick Reaction Force
R2P Responsibility to Protect
SC Security Council
SG Secretary-General
SSR Security Sector Reform
TNH The New Humanitarian
UAV Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
UN United Nations
UNDP UN Development Programme
UNMAS UN Mine Action Service
UNOCI UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire
UNOCT UN Office of Counter-Terrorism
UNOM UN Office in Mali
List of Figures
Figure 1 : Number of Fatalities of Malian Civilians from 2013 to 2019 24 Figure 2 : Number of Fatalities of Malian Civilians due to Intercommunal 26
Violence
Figure 3 : Number of MINUSMA’s POC Activities from 2013 to 2019 31 Figure 4 : Number of Fatalities in Mali from 2013 to 2019 47 Figure 5: Tier I – Number of MINUSMA’s POC Activities
from 2013 to 2019 LXXVIII Figure 6: Tier II – Number of MINUSMA’s POC Activities
from 2013 to 2019 LXXVIII
Figure 7: Tier III – Number of MINUSMA’s POC Activities
from 2013 to 2019 LXXIX
Figure 8: Total Number of MINUSMA’s POC Activities
List of Tables
Table 1: Coding Scheme for the Content Analysis XIII
Table 2: Content Analysis XIV
Table 3: Intercoder Reliability Test LXXVII
1. Introduction
After the repeated failures of the international community to respond accurately to horrific mass atrocities in the 1990s, the inclusion of the robust use of force for the protection of civilians (POC) was a welcomed development in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations (Berdal and Ucko 2015: 6-8). Over the last two decades, the POC concept has slowly replaced the liberal peacebuilding paradigm in peacekeeping missions that have continuously been man-dated to use all necessary means to protect civilians that are under imminent threat of physical violence (Howard and Dayal 2018: 71-74). In the last few years, however, substantial changes could be observed in how the UN approaches its civilian protection imperative. This has yielded a hypocritical approach to the POC principle where the employment of all measures to protect civilians seems to have been prioritised over the end-state of an effectively protected population. This can be attributed to a recent trend in the UN’s peacekeeping endeavours from conflict resolution towards conflict management, resulting in the deployment of peace operations to ever more violent settings (A770/95-S/2015/446 (2015): 28-29). Such a development resulted in the occurrence of UN stabilisation missions, a controversial phenomenon that runs the risk of standing in direct contrast to the traditional peacekeeping principles and that may result in a crisis of the UN’s legitimacy as an impartial global security actor (Di Razza 2017: 1-5).
The task to stabilise a country has recurrently been mandated in parallel to the protection of civilians in UN peacekeeping. Considering the complex security environments that UN stabili-sation missions are sent to, however, there are various obstacles that blue helmets naturally face in their attempt to effectively implement a POC mandate in the context of these operations (Di Razza 2018: 1-5). Stabilisation missions are unusually aggressive and explicitly identify spe-cific groups which peacekeepers are mandated to offensively degrade in order to enable the transfer of territorial control from spoilers back to legitimate authorities (A770/95-S/2015/446 (2015): 31; Gorur 2016: 21). This problematically implies that the UN is authorised to follow a perpetrator-based approach to implement its mandate, substantially contrasting the victims-based logic on which the POC principle is victims-based (Di Razza 2018: 24-25). Furthermore, as sta-bilisation missions are sent to areas where there is little peace to keep, these operations are inclined to overemphasise the use of force (Bellamy and Hunt 2015: 1282-1288).
The most prominent example to illustrate these issues represents the UN Multidimensional In-tegrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) (hereafter also ‘the Mission’) that was es-tablished in 2013 to assist the fragile country on its path to peace and stability. When a renewed
rebellion broke out in Mali’s nomadic regions, MINUSMA was in the first place deployed to assist in the re-establishment of state authority and to stabilise the key population centres in the country’s north. Alongside the constitutional and political crisis that the UN was confronted with in Mali, MINUSMA’s operational capabilities have been constrained by the circumstance that the Mission is operating in an environment marked by the existence of asymmetric threats. These threats emanate from terrorist and violent extremist entities, meaning that the spoiler groups which the UN is mandated to counteract take the form of jihadist organisations (Di Razza 2018: 1-3). This has implied that MINUSMA is operating in complementarity to two military counterterrorist forces in the Sahel region, namely the French Operation Barkhane and the Joint Force of the Group of Five for the Sahel (FC-G5S). At the same time, and more con-troversially, the Mission itself has started to resemble a counterterrorism operation (ibid.).
The tragedy of the Malian case lays in the reality that despite an explicit POC mandate of MI-NUSMA, the death toll in the country has neither declined nor come to a halt since the Mis-sion’s deployment in 2013. On the contrary, the year 2018 has marked an unprecedented count of 851 civilian fatalities in Mali and recent developments leave little doubts that such a number will be dramatically elevated in the upcoming months (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) 2019a). Amid extensive efforts of the international community to stabilise the situation, extremist movements and counterterrorist operations have started to play into inter-communal tensions, leading to an escalating circle of violence along ethnic lines (ibid.). Re-cently, the tremendous number of civilian atrocities due to intercommunal clashes in Mali’s central regions has caused multiple sources to designate the situation as an ethnic cleansing campaign, making an examination of the case of MINUSMA a matter of utmost urgency (ACLED 2019a; The New Humanitarian (TNH) 2019).
1.1. Objective and Focus of the Study
This study is an attempt to investigate the causes that have led to the undermining of MI-NUSMA’s civilian protection mandate and consequently to the tremendously poor civilian pro-tection record in Mali since the Mission’s establishment. Accordingly, the research is guided by the following overarching research question: How has the POC mandate of MINUSMA
been undermined since the deployment of the Mission in 2013?
To arrive at a meaningful conclusion to such an inquiry, the study is divided into two partial questions which build the foundation of the analysis. (a): How has MINUSMA approached its
to implement its POC mandate? To find an answer to this first question, I investigate the
fol-lowing argument in the analysis: MINUSMA has followed a perpetrator-based approach to im-plement its mandate which has caused the Mission to over-emphasise the use of military measures. This has implied that MINUSMA’s POC activities have hypocritically focused on using all necessary means to protect civilians instead of on a positive civilian protection record. The second partial research question is the following: (b): How closely has MINUSMA
coop-erated with counterterrorism forces? To arrive at conclusions to the second sub-section of this
thesis, I argue that MINUSMA’s close cooperation with counterterrorism operations has con-tributed to an undermining of the Mission’s POC mandate.
1.2. Case Selection and Relevance
There are a number of reasons which make the UN’s mission in Mali a particularly interesting and relevant case for conducting this research. Following the peak of intercommunal violence in 2018, the ACLED project has identified the Sahel region to «most likely be the geopolitical dilemma of 2019» (ACLED 2019b: 3). Furthermore, the recent increase in fatalities due to inter-ethnic violence makes it imperative to evaluate the reasons why the UN is incapable of protecting civilians in Mali. The extremely volatile environment that the Mission is deployed to is reflected in the fact that MINUSMA has become the deadliest peace operation that the UN has ever deployed (Karlsrud 2019: 12-15). Moreover, MINUSMA depicts the first peacekeep-ing mission that is directly operatpeacekeep-ing in parallel to counterterrorism operations and that has incorporated an own intelligence division (ibid.). Considering all these factors, MINUSMA represents the most relevant case to investigate the causes that have impeded an effective im-plementation of a POC mandate in the context of a UN stabilisation mission that is operating in an asymmetric threat environment.
1.3. Research Paradigm
The analysis is guided by the perception that there are two primary drivers that have led to an undermining of the POC mandate of MINUSMA. This has resulted in the formulation of the two aforementioned partial research questions. Since this implies that a number of different causes can lead to the same outcome on the dependent variable (the undermining of the POC mandate of MINUSMA), such an assumption follows the logic of multiple causality (Keohane, King and Verba 1994: 87-89). To test the appropriateness of the arguments, this research fol-lows a qualitative approach based on empirical analysis and thus aims at finding evidence from
observable data rather than from a formulated theory (Bryman 2012: 384-389). At the same time, a demonstration of counterfactual evidence ensures the credibility of the findings (ibid.).
1.4. Structure
The study is structured around five different parts. Firstly, a review of the existing literature on the UN’s turn to stabilisation allows to position the research in the broader academic debate. In a second step, the methodological approach is outlined. Thirdly, the subsequent chapter consti-tutes a theoretical framework that clarifies the core concepts that build the foundation of the empirical analysis and that justifies how the latter is approached. Fourthly, the main body of this research constitutes a close analysis of MINUSMA’s approach to POC and its cooperation with counterterrorism forces. In a last step, the findings are summarised and discussed with the aim of answering the research question. It is essentially concluded that in the attempt to imple-ment MINUSMA’s POC mandate, the UN is trapped in an unbreakable loop that threatens its legitimacy as a global security actor.
2. Literature Review
The evolution of UN peacekeeping and the recent trend towards robust POC mandates in the context of stabilisation missions has been subject to an extensive body of research. The follow-ing paragraphs demonstrate that the academic discourse converges in the view that the increased use of coercive measures for civilian protection purposes has been accompanied by a number of controversies and that it is far from clear where the new generation of stabilisation missions has to be positioned in the broader peacekeeping framework. At its core, the subsequent review of the existing literature highlights the challenges and dilemmas that arise from the robust use of force aiming at civilian protection in UN peace operations. It is shown that it becomes es-sential to investigate the causes that have led to an undermining of the POC mandate of MI-NUSMA.
2.1. An Over-Emphasis on the Use of Force
One of the major controversies that have arisen from the occurrence of UN stabilisation mis-sions is that up to this day, peacekeeping theoretically continues to be based on its three tradi-tional principles of host state consent, impartiality and the prohibition of the use of force except in self-defence or defence of the mandate (UN 2008: 31-35). In this respect, a wide array of scholars have identified the transformation of the UN’s impartiality to be one of the most prob-lematic implications of the UN’s turn towards stabilisation missions (Bellamy and Hunt 2015:
1282-1288; Berdal 2019: 123-124; Boutellis 2015: 4; Karlsrud 2015: 45; Rhoads 2016: 1; Ru-dolf 2017: 162-165). In the introductory chapter to her book which evaluates the UN’s impar-tiality in peacekeeping, Emily Paddon Rhoads (2016: 1-4) outlines that together with the more aggressive mandates of UN peace operations, impartiality in peacekeeping has substantially taken on a new meaning, becoming more active and imperial in nature. She attributes such an evolution to an overall shift to a «more assertive liberal internationalism» (ibid.). In line with this reasoning, both Peter Rudolf (2017: 163) and John Karlsrud (2017: 1217) refer to a move towards an assertive impartiality under which the UN is taking on characteristics of a warring party.
In a study on UN peacekeeping in the 21st century, Alex J. Bellamy and Charles T. Hunt (2015) take account of the academic debates around recent developments in UN peace operations. They underline their arguments by referring to specific examples drawn from current peace-keeping missions. Next to the aforementioned transformed meaning of impartiality, Bellamy and Hunt recognise that another core principle of traditional peacekeeping, namely the mini-mum use of force in self-defence or defence of the mandate, is being threatened by the phe-nomenon of stabilisation missions (Bellamy and Hunt 2015: 1286). As these missions are in-herently deployed to environments where there is little peace to keep, peacekeepers are ex-pected to use coercive measures not primarily in a defensive manner, but rather offensively and proactively. This implies that the military component of these operations is often overstretched (ibid.). In line with this reasoning, Karlsrud is highly critical about the specificity and robust-ness of MINUSMA’s mandate. He claims that such an aggressive stance is likely to be coun-terproductive to POC as the reactive and military posture of the Mission may result in an «es-calating circle of violence with a high likelihood of civilians being targeted and killed» (Karls-rud 2015: 46).
Similarly, representatives of the school of critical theory believe that the concept of stabilisation – instead of providing international stability and security – regularises a military approach in peace operations and thereby reduces the possibility of long-term peace (Mac Ginty 2012: 26-28; Nay 2013: 336-338). Critical theorists have significantly contributed to the academic de-bates around robust international interventions and are fundamentally sceptical about the idea of stabilisation. In a nutshell, the critical theory perspective suggests that the latter is an inher-ently conservative concept that ignores individual contexts and undermines local participation in peace processes (ibid.). In the context of Mali, whereas I agree with the proposition that there
has been a regularisation of a military approach in MINUSMA, I reject the main argument of critical theory that stabilisation endeavours undermine local participation. For the purposes of this thesis, I aim to find alternative explanations to the (in-)effectiveness of the implementation of a POC mandate in the context of a stabilisation mission. Some of these explanations have been discussed by various scholars and are outlined in the following paragraphs.
2.2. The Two-Sided Hypocrisy of Peacekeeping
In a recent study, Lise M. Howard and A.K. Dayal wish to uncover the reasons of the repeated issuance of robust peacekeeping mandates. The authors argue that the inclusion of military force in peace operations does not specifically aim at effective civilian protection, but can rather be attributed to group preserving dynamics in the UN Security Council (SC) (Howard and Dayal 2017: 79-83). Basing their argument on the rationales of small group psychology, the authors claim that peace enforcement is not in the interest of the permanent five (P5) members of the SC, but rather happens by default in an attempt of the latter to uphold a certain degree of legitimacy by underlining their cooperation (Howard and Dayal 2017: 99-100). Similarly, in an article that is labelled as a normative defence of UN peacekeeping, Rudolf (2017: 168) refers to the gap between the outcome of peacekeeping missions and their initial aspiration to protect civilians as what has often been called «organised hypocrisy». In short, the organised hypocrisy argument entails the conception that SC members act hypocritically and «detach […] the con-tent of decisions from the aim of solving particular problems […]» (Dorsch and Dörfler 2014: 4).
Namie Di Razza (2017) identifies another aspect in which peacekeeping in general, and stabi-lisation missions in particular, have become hypocritical. In an issue brief published under the auspices of the International Peace Institute (IPI), the author discusses the debates around the POC concept to explore options of how to reframe the aim of civilian protection in peacekeep-ing operations. Di Razza essentially recognises that POC has become so imperative in UN peace missions that such has resulted in an incremental prioritisation of the deed to use all measures to protect civilians over an actual successful civilian protection record (Di Razza 2017: 5). The issue brief illustrates this by highlighting a substantial gap between «the act of protecting, car-ried out by the UN, and the state of being protected, for local populations» (ibid.). Di Razza concludes by stating that in order to be more effective, the international community should work towards an accountability system to ensure civilian protection. This could be achieved
with context-specific POC approaches that better clarify protection roles and responsibilities (Di Razza 2017: 9-10).
2.3. A Perpetrator-Based Approach to POC
In another innovative study published by the IPI, Di Razza (2018) introduces a number of fac-tors that contribute to the (in-)effectiveness of the implementation of a POC mandate in the context of a stabilisation mission. She finds that the complex security environments that these missions are sent to significantly diminish the space for UN peacekeepers to pursue their civil-ian protection strategies (Di Razza 2018: 2-3). At the same time, Di Razza identifies one major cause for the over-emphasis of the use of military force in peace operations. She essentially recognises that the deployment of UN peacekeeping missions to such volatile environments has been accompanied by a shift in focus to not merely protect the local population, but to counter-act the main perpetrators of violence against civilians (Di Razza 2018: 24-25). Di Razza ob-serves that the UN has increasingly emphasised the identification of the major threats to local communities and has thus applied a threat-based logic in its peace operations. Summarising the debate, the author states comprehensibly that whereas the inherent logic of the POC principle calls for a «victims-based approach», UN peacekeeping has in recent years shown a develop-ment towards missions that follow a «perpetrator-based» logic (ibid.).
In the same report, Di Razza addresses the context-specific dilemmas that arise in MINUSMA. The author has conducted more than sixty interviews with a variety of stakeholders involved in UN peacekeeping in Mali and complements her research with a thorough analysis of relevant internal UN documents. Consequently, such an IPI report presents the most comprehensive view on the complexities that emerge when trying to implement a POC mandate in an environ-ment marked by violent extremism and terrorism. The author substantially finds that despite a robust civilian protection mandate, POC has not been identified as a strategic priority of MI-NUSMA (Di Razza 2018: 16-31). She identifies such an issue as one of the critical reasons why civilian casualties continue to be on the rise in Mali (ibid.). In a concluding step, to ensure an effective implementation of the POC objective in the Malian context, Di Razza proposes three policy recommendations. First, she suggests that the UN shall make use of the whole spectrum of measures available in their peacekeeping toolbox. In this respect, she proposes to harness the competences of civilian units, to act proactively and militarily and to exploit the potential of the UN police (UNPOL) (Di Razza 2018: 40-44). Secondly, Di Razza recommends to draw a clear separation between MINUSMA’s civilian protection activities and such that fall under the
area of counterterrorism. And thirdly, she suggests that the UN revise their peacekeeping strat-egy to make civilian protection the highest priority of MINUSMA (ibid.).
2.4. Between Peacekeeping and Counterterrorism
The second point that Di Razza addresses in her recommendations, namely the challenge of drawing a clear line between a peacekeeping mission and counterterrorism forces, has also been highlighted by other scholars. Karlsrud has extensively conducted research on the shift of UN peace operations towards the recent trend of stabilisation missions. A topic that repeatedly comes up in his publications is the important role of regional ad hoc coalitions that are intro-duced to actively fight terrorists or armed rebel groups (Karlsrud 2015: 48-50; Karlsrud 2018; Karlsrud 2019: 8-9). By conducting extensive field work and policy analyses on current stabi-lisation missions and their standing within the UN, he finds that a «division of labour» has strategically emerged on the international sphere (Karlsrud 2015: 48-51). In this respect, the UN has primarily been given peacekeeping tasks whereas regional organisations have been entitled with peace enforcement duties (ibid.). Having developed this argument over the years, in his newest study on the UN’s move towards counterterrorism operations, Karlsrud credibly affirms that UN peacekeeping missions are now increasingly working in parallel to these re-gional coalitions and closely cooperate with them (Karlsrud 2019: 8-9). In this context, Karls-rud is highly critical about the proximity of MINUSMA to international security actors in the Sahel region (Karlsrud 2018: 1219-1226). He does not recognise a clear division of tasks in Mali and believes that the UN should be clearer on the limits of MINUSMA by solely focusing its operations on the political sphere and the POC mandate. This would allow for a strict dis-tinction to the non-UN forces that undertake military counterterrorism operations (ibid.).
2.5. The Undermining of the POC Mandate of MINUSMA
This brief review of the literature helps to recognise the controversies that arise from the robust use of force for the protection of civilians. Taking into account the above outlined debates in the academic discourse, I discern that MINUSMA represents the most distinct case in point where a peacekeeping mission that is operating in an asymmetric threat environment has turned remarkably military. At the same time, the Mission is the paramount example where despite an explicit POC mandate, the number of civilian casualties is still increasing. Building upon the extensive study published by the IPI (2018), I wish to take these arguments one step further and unveil the drivers that have led to the undermining of the civilian protection mandate of MI-NUSMA. The tragic developments in Mali over the last few months that have caused the deaths
of hundreds of innocent civilians make it essential to reassess the UN’s presence in the country. Accordingly, the conundrum that builds the core of this research remains not whether the POC mandate of MINUSMA has been undermined, but rather which causes have led to such an impairment of the Mission’s civilian protection obligation.
To find a meaningful answer to the first sub-question that was outlined in the introduction, I follow Di Razza’s (2018: 24-25) line of reasoning and argue that in Mali, the UN has followed a perpetrator-based approach to POC. Such an argument relates back to the claim that was introduced in the previous report published by the IPI, namely that the employment of all nec-essary measures to protect civilians has prevailed over the end state of effectively protected civilians (Di Razza (2017: 5). In accordance with the arguments of Bellamy and Hunt (2015: 1286) and Karlsrud (2015: 46), I reason that this has been accompanied by a prioritisation of coercive measures and thus by an overstretch of the military component of MINUSMA. In relation to sub-question (b), I adopt Karlsrud’s (2018: 1219-1226) critical stance on the prox-imity of MINUSMA to counterterrorism forces. Realising that the UN has directly worked in parallel to counterterrorism actors in Mali, the approach to the second section of this study is based on the argument that the close cooperation of MINUSMA with counterterrorism opera-tions has undermined an effective implementation of the POC mandate of the Mission.
3. Methodology
This next chapter outlines the methodological approaches to undertake a significant analysis for this thesis and to conclusively answer the research question of how MINUSMA’s civilian protection mandate has been undermined. In order to infer meaningful conclusions to both sub-questions, the methods for data gathering and analysis are systematically selected for each one of them individually. A separate approach to answer sub-questions (a) and (b) helps to uncover the multiple causes that have impeded an effective implementation of the POC mandate of MINUSMA. The subsequent paragraphs show that both parts of the research follow a qualita-tive empirical procedure and that data is collected mainly from primary sources.
3.1. Case Study
The core of this research constitutes a case study of MINUSMA and as such involves a «de-tailed analysis of the setting» (Creswell 2009: 184). The relevance to investigate the Malian case has been emphasised in the introduction. MINUSMA represents an extreme case as it can be regarded as being «prototypical or paradigmatic of some phenomena of interest» (Gerring
2007: 101). That is, the Mission is the most extreme case where the POC mandate of a UN stabilisation mission has been undermined (Di Razza 2018: 16-31). From a methodological point of view, a study focusing on an extreme case follows a (dis-)confirmatory approach which attempts at testing the hypotheses or arguments brought forward (Gerring 2007: 71). Inductive as well as deductive methods are used, since after inductive reasoning to arrive at the main arguments, a deductive view facilitates to relate the retrieved data to the research questions (Creswell 2014: 234). On a more general note, it is not reasonable to undertake a field trip to Mali to gather further primary data. This would prove to be too dangerous for the researcher and would be of limited additional value to infer conclusions to this thesis.
3.2. Data Sets
In a first step, a number of datasets retrieved from the ACLED project data base (such as i.e. the regional data file of Africa) help to assess the pattern of violence in the Malian crisis (ACLED 2019a). ACLED provides «the dates, actors, types of violence, locations, and fatalities of all reported political violence and protest events» and therefore presents the most valid tool to analyse the number of civilian fatalities in Mali (ACLED 2019c). The time frame of interest includes the period between July 1, 2013 (the deployment of MINUSMA) and the moment of writing (June 1, 2019). This timely limitation allows for an evaluation of the fluctuations in the number of civilian fatalities and most significantly reveals that casualties in Mali have not come to a halt since MINUSMA’s establishment. Moreover, the UN Peacekeeping Open Data Portal provides the researcher with access to the number of casualties of UN peacekeepers in MI-NUSMA (UN 2019a).
3.3. Document Analysis
Primary data is gathered based on a close reading of official UN documents as well as of a number of additional publications and reports. According to Creswell (2009: 180), such a doc-ument analysis of primary sources allows for an unobtrusive investigation of existing infor-mation. Most significantly, in relation to sub-question (a), a thorough analysis of the SC Reso-lutions on Mali that have been issued since MINUSMA’s deployment in July 2013 allows for an investigation of how the mandate of the Mission has evolved over time. At the same time, such an analysis facilitates to assess the extent to which there has been a conflation of a POC, a stabilisation or even a counterterrorism mandate. As only six of the issued resolutions on Mali have renewed MINUSMA’s mandate (annually in June), the focus of the analysis is laid on these six documents. Subsequently, the examination of the resolutions facilitates a comparison
between the transformation of the mandate and the POC activities that MINUSMA has engaged in.
The comprehensive study published by the IPI on the dilemmas of implementing a POC man-date in the context of violent extremism serves as one of the primary resources guiding this research (Di Razza 2018). Basing the argumentation on numerous internal UN sources and documents, the report constitutes a credible and useful document to evaluate the UN’s POC activities in Mali. Following ethical reasons, drawing on the interviews conducted in this IPI study ensures that no information is repeated and that no interviewees have to justify themselves on the same issue twice (Bryman 2012: 475-479; Keohane, King and Verba 1994: 23-27). Ad-ditionally, official reports and case studies of Mali published by institutions such as the UN Human Rights Council and the UN Civil Affairs Unit help to better evaluate the civilian and humanitarian situation in the country. Lastly, the official website of MINUSMA provides an overview of the newest activities of the Mission and recent developments in Mali (UN 2019b).
To answer sub-question (b), in a first step, text material of reports of the UN Secretary-General (SG) on the situation in Mali are investigated. A document analysis of these sources helps to examine the level of cooperation between MINUSMA and counterterrorism operations. Start-ing with the first report after the deployment of MINUSMA in October 2013 up until the most recent one in March this year, there exist 22 reports in total that are subject to analysis. The investigation to the second sub-question is further based on official documents from the French and the Swedish Defence Forces and on information gained from the website of the French army (Gasinska and Bohman 2017; Ministère des Armées 2019). Lastly, relevant scholarly ar-ticles and studies complement the document analysis to account for a triangulated conclusion to the second part of the research.
3.4. Content Analysis
The reports of the UN SG on the situation in Mali moreover provide the most comprehensive and detailed overview of the POC activities that MINUSMA has engaged in. Therefore, the reports build the foundation to arrive at a conclusion to sub-question (a). In a parallel step to the aforementioned examination of the documents, the SG reports are closely analysed follow-ing the logic of content analysis. In its essence, a content analysis is «a summarizfollow-ing, quantita-tive analysis of messages […]» (Neuendorf and Skalski 2002: 203).The basis of the coding scheme for the content analysis constitute three policy reports that were jointly published by
the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and the Department of Field Support (DFS) on the operationalisation of the POC concept in peacekeeping operations (UN DPKO/DFS 2015a; UN DPKO/DFS 2015b; UN DPKO 2017). As this thesis focuses specifi-cally on the POC mandate of MINUSMA, these reports provide the most valuable documents to understand the particularities and the dimensions of the Mission’s POC mandate.
With the help of the DPKO/DFS policy reports on civilian protection and scholarly articles, a complex coding scheme was developed based on the three different tiers under which civilian protection activities in UN peacekeeping can fall. 1 According to Neuendorf and Skalski (2002: 206-207), such an approach qualifies for human coding, where the researcher bases his coding scheme not only on theoretical concepts, but also on previously conducted research. At the same time, the design of the scheme contributes to the accuracy and internal validity of this research as the activities are divided into categories that «meaningfully capture the ideas con-tained in the corresponding concept» (Adcock and Collier 2001: 530). The 22 reports are thor-oughly scanned for the measures that MINUSMA and its partner organisations have undertaken in Mali over the last six years. Such an analysis facilitates a segmentation of the Mission’s endeavours into the three different tiers of the POC concept in the form of a table. This does not only allow for a numerical summary of the activities undertaken in each of the tiers, but also helps to allocate the different POC activities to the military, the civilian, and the police component of the Mission. Based on such an allocation, the qualitative aspect of the empirical findings from the content analysis is evaluated and interpreted. 2
3.5. Validity and Reliability
While the classification of Mali as an extreme case underlines the relevance of this research, the triangulation of a multiplicity of primary data in relation to both sub-questions (a) and (b) accounts for its internal validity (Creswell 2009: 199-200). Moreover, an accurate coding scheme for the content analysis in the first sub-question adds to the validity and reliability of this study. As the analysis focuses on a human and not on a computed coding scheme, it be-comes crucial to test for intercoder reliability. Such a test «requires that a representative subset of the messages under study be coded independently by two or more […] coders» (Neuendorf and Skalski 2009: 207). The intercoder reliability test is based on a random and proportionate
1 What the three tiers of the POC concept in peacekeeping encompass is explained in paragraph 4.1.
2 The coding scheme that includes a detailed categorisation of the civilian protection activities in peacekeeping as
sample of the data retrieved from the content analysis and has resulted in 91 percent accuracy of the findings. The approach to the test and the observations that it is based on can be found in detail in the appendix.
3.6. Generalisability and Limitations
There are a number of limitations that should be kept in mind when assessing the external va-lidity and generalisability of this case study of MINUSMA. Overall, the principle of external validity requires a cautious approach in qualitative procedures and it needs to be individually assessed for each case to what extent the findings can be extrapolated to a different case (Gerring 2007: 76-80). As Gerring (2007: 145) has noted, a research that bases its analysis on a unique case usually demonstrates low levels of external validity or none at all. Bearing in mind that MINUSMA constitutes an extreme case, general implications for the future of UN peacekeeping should thus be drawn with caution. Considering the limited scope and time of this study, a comparison to the (in-)effective implementation of a robust POC mandate of an alternative peacekeeping mission operating in an asymmetric threat environment remains a topic for further scholarly discussion. What this study intends to show in the first line is that a POC mandate that is conflated with stabilisation tasks in a volatile context like Mali can be accompanied by a number of dilemmas. These dilemmas primarily arise from the attempt to protect civilians while simultaneously pursuing the strategic interest to fight the main perpetra-tors of violence.
4. Theoretical Framework
Before turning to the analysis of the Malian case, the following chapter conceptualises the main terminologies of this study to provide the reader with an overview of the theoretical assump-tions that guide the empirical analysis. Firstly, the operationalisation of the POC principle in UN peacekeeping is outlined to emphasise the different dimensions of power that MINUSMA’s civilian protection mandate entails. Secondly, the contested terms of stability and stabilisation are introduced. This illustrates the problematic nature of the phenomenon of UN stabilisation missions and justifies the notion of stabilisation that is adopted in the context of this research. As MINUSMA is increasingly taking on characteristics of counterterrorism operations, it is further clarified what the term counterterrorism entails and how the international community has approached such an issue. In summary, I conclude that a conflation of a POC, a stabilisation and a counterterrorism mandate in theory runs the risk of over-emphasising the coercive di-mension of power in peacekeeping.
4.1. The Operationalisation of the Protection of Civilians in Peacekeeping
The DPKO/DFS Policy Report on the POC concept in peacekeeping identifies the protection of civilians as comprising «all necessary means, up to and including the use of deadly force, aimed at preventing or responding to threats of physical violence against civilians […]» (UN DPKO/DFS 2015a: 5).3 These threats include «hostile acts or situations that are likely to lead to death or serious bodily injury, including sexual violence, regardless of the source of the threat» (ibid.). MINUSMA has included a POC mandate that coincides with this definition since the Mission’s establishment in 2013. Overall, such a provision has not changed over the years and up to this day reads the following: «To protect […] civilians under [imminent] threat of physical violence […].» (S/RES/2100 (2013): 8). The term ‘imminent’ has been omitted start-ing with MINUSMA’s mandate in 2016 (S/RES/2295 (2016): 8). The Policy Report defines a threat as ‘imminent’ when peacekeepers have a «reasonable belief that a potential perpetrator displays a hostile intent, capacity, historical record and opportunity to inflict physical violence» (UN DPKO/DFS 2015a: 17). As’ imminent’ thus connotes that there is no guarantee that vio-lence will be perpetrated, an exclusion of such a term reflects the extremely complex security situation that has emerged in Mali.
Each UN peace operation develops a mission-wide POC strategy that guides the activities un-dertaken for civilian protection purposes (UN DPKO/DFS 2015a: 7-8). From a practical point of view, the POC is divided into three operational tiers under which activities related to civilian protection in UN peacekeeping missions fall and which comprise: (I) Protection through dia-logue and engagement; (II) Provision of physical protection; and (III) Establishment of a pro-tective environment (ibid.). As the task of protecting civilians is a multidimensional one, the civilian, the police as well as the military component of a peacekeeping mission should be involved in the implementation of a POC mandate. In this respect, POC strategies must follow an integrated approach between the different components, whereby military actions are coordi-nated with and guided by civilian units (UN DPKO/DFS 2015a: 7). Such an integrated approach does not only apply to the coordination within the Mission, but to an entire protection cluster that is composed of a peacekeeping operation, humanitarian actors and other UN funds and agencies operating in the same area (ibid.).
3 A civilian is «any person who is not or is no longer directly participating in hostilities or other acts of violence
4.1.1. The Dimensions of Power in Peacekeeping
From a theoretical perspective, the division of the POC principle into the three tiers implies that civilian protection should combine all three different dimensions of power in peacekeeping. These dimensions build the foundation of the newest book of Lise M. Howard and their con-sideration in UN peace operations essentially aims at regulating the power relations between peacekeepers and the local population. To put it into Howard’s words: «[…] the stated long-term goal of peacekeepers is not to gain more power over B [the peacekept] but rather to in-crease B’s power» (Howard 2019: 19). Firstly, the idea of persuasion includes public outreach campaigns that fall under the first tier of POC, where power is primarily used to interact with local communities and to thus influence their actions in the longer term (Howard 2019: 1-3). Secondly, power through inducement provides communities with incentives to adhere to certain regulations, belonging to activities under tier III that aim at establishing a protective environ-ment. And thirdly, coercion includes the offensive use of force to protect civilians, a military endeavour that belongs to the second tier of the POC concept in peacekeeping (ibid.). Taken together, the comprehensiveness of the POC concept does not only imply that every component of a peacekeeping mission should be involved in the implementation of a POC mandate, but also that peacekeepers must take account of all three dimensions of power to such an end.
4.2. Stability and Stabilisation
UN stabilisation missions constitute a phenomenon that threatens to undermine the multidi-mensionality of power in peacekeeping. On the international plane, the terminology around stabilisation was for a first time employed in the late nineties to describe the process of strength-ening economies to resist shocks in the market (Gorur 2016: 13). Such an economic notion of stability has over the years been enhanced to include the areas of development and security, following the perception that underdevelopment and state fragility can potentially constitute a danger to the international security landscape (ibid.; Nay 2013: 326-328).4 Simultaneously, the discourse around state fragility as a threat to international stability has been accompanied by shifts in the nature of international interventions and is utilised as a prerogative to justify exter-nal interference in the interexter-nal affairs of weak and conflict-prone states (Nay 2013: 329-331). As a consequence, in 1996, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deployed a
4 The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issues an annual report on state fragility
and defines it as «[…] the combination of exposure to risk and insufficient coping capacity of the state […] to manage, absorb or mitigate those risks. Fragility can lead to negative outcomes including violence, the break-down of institutions, displacement, humanitarian crises or other emergencies» (OECD 2016: 22).
Stabilisation Force to Bosnia and Herzegovina, marking the first multilateral intervention to carry such a title (Gorur 2016: 12).
4.2.1. UN Stabilisation Missions
In the context of UN peacekeeping, the term was introduced remarkably later with the deploy-ment of the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) in 2004. Subsequently, three other UN stabilisation missions have been established in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and in Mali in 2013 and in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2014 (Gorur 2016: 7-11). As all these countries rank among the world’s most fragile states, intervention was jus-tified under the prior claim that their fragility poses a substantial threat to stability on the inter-national sphere (The Fund for Peace 2018). However, when one analyses the content of all four UN stabilisation missions, it becomes evident that the idea of stabilisation can be interpreted substantially differently in different contexts and that there does not exist a consensual defini-tion of the term (Gorur 2016: 9-11). The High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operadefini-tions (HIPPO) Report noted the lack of conceptual lucidity around stabilisation missions and stated that the UN needed to clarify the application of the concept (A770/95-S/2015/446 (2015): 30).
Devoid an international consensus around the meaning of stabilisation, Aditi Gorur proposes a definition based on a thorough analysis of the commonalities of the four deployed UN stabili-sation missions. He suggests that stabilistabili-sation should be conceptualised as «supporting the transfer of territorial control from spoilers to legitimate authorities» (Gorur 2016: 21). By iden-tifying specific spoilers in the process of stabilisation, Gorur’s definition illustrates the perpe-trator-based logic that stabilisation follows, an approach that has been identified to be problem-atic in the implementation of a POC mandate (cf. para. 2.3.).
4.2.2. Stabilisation in Mali
Since this research focuses on stabilisation in the context of UN peacekeeping, the terminology introduced by Gorur proves to be auxiliary and can be further specified to the Malian case. What is generally striking when analysing MINUSMA’s mandate is that stabilisation seems to have assumed a variety of different meanings in Mali.5 Nonetheless, there is one aspect that
5 How the meaning of stabilisation has specifically changed during the different stages of MINUSMA’s mandate
is outlined in more detail in paragraph 5.2. The analysis will show that as the Mission’s mandate evolved over the years, the stabilisation mandate has not only taken on different meanings, but has also been merged with other tasks such as the protection of civilians.
appears as a common denominator throughout the six years of the Mission’s deployment. The mandate of MINUSMA consistently mentions that measures to stabilise the key population centres «in support of the [transitional] authorities in Mali» should include «to deter threats and taking active steps to prevent the return of armed elements» (S/RES/2100 (2013): 7). It can thus in the first line be assumed that the legitimate authorities that Gorur refers to take the form of the host government. However, over the years some authority over northern towns was assigned to armed groups, implying that in certain situations or regions these groups have a higher degree of legitimacy at their command (Gorur 2016: 23).
Furthermore, Gorur arrives at his definition by identifying the spoilers to be «non-state armed actors that have been deemed politically illegitimate by UN member states, the host-state gov-ernment and/or parties to a peace agreement» (Gorur 2016: 21). At the establishment of MI-NUSMA, the Mission’s mandate condemned the advancement of «terrorist, extremist and armed groups» to the central and southern regions of Mali, implying that these groups are con-sidered to be illegitimate by the UN (S/RES/2100 (2013): 1). In this regard, MINUSMA’s latest mandate has identified the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Al Mouribatoune, Ansar Eddine and related individuals and groups as terrorist organisations (S/RES/2423 (2018): 2). Hence, to undertake a meaningful analysis for this research, it suffices to label these organisations as terrorist groups.6 As these entities are all listed on the UN’s Islamic State in the Levant (ISIL) and Al-Qaeda sanctions list, it is evident that the UN regards them as being illegitimate (S/RES/1267/1989/2253 List (2019)).
Combining these particularities of the Malian case and referring back to the definition intro-duced by Gorur, I define stabilisation in Mali as follows: To support the transfer of territorial
control from armed and extremist groups back to the legitimate authorities by deterring threats and taking active steps to prevent the return of armed elements.This provides the most general definition that can be arrived at but should not be looked at in isolation from the mandate-specific stabilisation measures that MINUSMA was authorised to undertake. Following my definition of stabilisation in Mali, the Mission can undertake both defensive and proactive sta-bilisation tasks to re-establish the extension of state authority. The Mission can act defensively by deterring threats and proactively by taking active steps to prevent the return of armed
6 It is important to note that a close analysis of relevant MINUSMA documents reveals that the UN seems to have
used the terms terrorist, extremist and jihadist interchangeably. Hence, this research makes no distinction between the three different designations and treats them as synonyms.
elements. Considering the political nature of the objective of transferring territorial control to legitimate authorities, it becomes evident that stabilisation in Mali should constitute not merely a means to an end, but should be connected to the broader political strategy of MINUSMA (Berdal 2019: 126; Gorur 2016: 21-24). As such, and just like POC, stabilisation follows a comprehensive approach and entail all components of a peacekeeping mission (ibid.). Recalling Howard’s (2019) conceptualisation of power in peacekeeping, stabilisation should theoretically encompass all different dimensions of power. However, as stabilisation missions are sent to complex security environments and as they are unusually aggressive by identifying specific spoiler groups, I argue that the coercive dimension of power risks to be over-emphasised in the context of stabilisation (cf. para. 2.1.).
4.2.3. Stabilisation and POC
The coercive nature of the theoretical concept of stabilisation in UN peacekeeping is accompa-nied by a number of practical challenges. Most substantially, the above-introduced definition has shown that it is pivotal that stabilisation tasks are aligned with the overall political strategy of a peacekeeping mission. Otherwise, a stabilisation mandate ultimately runs the risk of being confused with or even being self-defeating to the POC imperative of UN peace operations (Gorur 2016: 21-24). To effectively implement a POC mandate, it is essential that – alongside measures that fall under the three tiers of the POC concept – peacekeepers engage in additional protection activities to counteract the risks that stabilisation measures are accompanied by (Gorur 2016: 24). In this respect, to not undermine the POC imperative of peace operations, it is crucial that civilian protection is prioritised in a stabilisation mission (Gorur 2016: 24).
Whereas a conflation of a POC and a stabilisation mandate is possible in theory, the case of MINUSMA demonstrates that such a two-sided command is problematic in practice. The over-emphasis on the coercive dimension of power and the perpetrator-based logic of stabilisation can impede an effective civilian protection record. In other words, although the transfer of ter-ritorial control from spoilers to legitimate authorities ultimately aims at establishing more se-cure conditions for civilians, the efforts that have to be undertaken to that end can pose sub-stantial threats to the local population (Gorur 2016: 24). Accordingly, this research works around the core assumption that in certain areas and contexts, the UN’s presence may at times paradoxically function not as a deterrence, but rather as an additional risk for civilians (Di Razza 2018: 2-3; Howard 2019: 19).
4.3. Counterterrorism
Another aspect that has been particularly problematic in Mali is that MINUSMA is sent to a context marked by the existence of asymmetric threats and that consequently the spoilers that the Mission has been authorised to counteract constitute terrorist movements (cf. para. 4.2.2.). The UN clarified its perception of asymmetric threats in a debate titled ‘peace operations facing asymmetrical threats’, where it stressed that peacekeepers are increasingly deployed to areas that are designated by terrorism and violent extremism (SC 12577 (2017)). Due to the complex security environment in Mali and the consequent perpetrator-based logic that MINUSMA’s mandate has followed, the Mission has started to resemble a counterterrorism operation (Karls-rud 2019: 12-15). The broad spectrum of measures that can fall under counterterrorism endeav-ours is conceptualised in the four pillars of the UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy which was adopted in 2006. These pillars are: (I) Addressing the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism; (II) Preventing and combatting terrorism; (III) Building state capacity and strengthening the role of the UN; (IV) Ensuring human rights and the rule of law (UN Office of Counterterrorism (UNOCT) 2019). However, while the concept of counterterrorism seems to have been one of the only consensually approached issues by all UN member states, it is a more disputed matter where UN peacekeeping operations should be situated in this respect.
4.3.1. Counterterrorism and Peacekeeping
The HIPPO Report in 2015 explicitly stated that UN peacekeeping missions are ill-suited to undertake military counterterrorism activities (A770/95-S/2015/446 (2015): 31-32). At the same time, the Panel continued to identify peace enforcement and offensive tasks to be neces-sary at times where UN stabilisation missions are deployed to asymmetric threat environments, but that such should not be the norm and an exceptional measure limited in time (ibid.).7 This vague and seemingly inconsistent attitude towards peace enforcement has led to heightened confusion about the UN’s standing. The case of MINUSMA demonstrates that it has become inherently difficult to distinguish between what is fundamentally a UN peacekeeping mission undertaking peace enforcement tasks and what needs to be characterised as a counterterrorism operation. A definition of counterterrorism applied by Boutellis and Fink (2016: 5) underlines how similar a stabilisation mission can appear to a counterterrorism operation: «[…] traditional
7The UN emphasises that peace enforcement is not the same as robust peacekeeping. Whereas the latter is entitled
to use force at the vaguely defined tactical level, the former allows the UN to use force at the strategic level (UN 2008: 19).
law enforcement of military responses that focus on reactive measures intended to contain, suppress, or neutralize the threat». Following this definition, counterterrorism measures would fall under the second pillar of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. Accordingly, I define counterterrorism operations as military entities that are trying to prevent or combat terrorism. On Malian territories, there are two intervening forces that fall under the counterterrorism def-inition, namely the French Operation Barkhane (formerly Operation Serval) and the FC-G5S (Di Razza 2018: 2). Additionally, the Malian armed forces have repeatedly engaged in coun-terterrorism activities (ibid.).
Equally to UN stabilisation missions that identify specific spoiler groups against which action should be taken, counterterrorism naturally follows a perpetrator-based logic to eliminate the threat of terrorism. At the same time, it becomes evident that in contrast to the implementation of a POC and a stabilisation mandate that should even-handedly draw on activities of civilian nature, counterterrorism operations put their emphasis on the use of robust measures. Therefore, they solely take account of the coercive dimension of power. This links the recommendations from the HIPPO Report back to the theory; peacekeeping missions are not supposed to engage in military counterterrorism endeavours as such would essentially ignore the persuasive and the inducive dimensions of power.
4.4. Preliminary Theoretical Summary
This theoretical framework has applied the different dimensions of power in peacekeeping to the core concepts of this research. The three tiers of POC should essentially include activities that take account of the persuasive, the coercive, as well as the inducive dimensions of power. At the same time, the perpetrator-based approach that the theory of stabilisation follows in Mali implies that MINUSMA runs the risk of putting an emphasis on coercion. The definition of counterterrorism operations, on the other hand, explicitly reduces its power dimensions to the latter, implying that peacekeeping missions in general and MINUSMA in particular are not suitable to engage in counterterrorism.
5. Analysis
After having introduced the methodological approach that this study follows and the core con-cepts that it is based on, the next chapter constitutes a thorough analysis of the Malian case. This helps to arrive at relevant conclusions to the question of how MINUSMA’s POC mandate has been undermined. The following pages are divided into four overarching parts. Firstly, a
background section on the Malian conflict and MINUSMA provides a meaningful starting point for the analysis. Secondly, to answer sub-question (a), the evolution of the Mission’s mandate is briefly evaluated. This highlights that a problematic conflation of a POC, a stabilisation and a counterterrorism provision has implied that MINUSMA has approached its POC obligation from a perpetrator-based perspective. Thirdly, and also in relation to the first sub-question, a close investigation of the Mission’s civilian protection activities follows. Thereby, the activities are divided between the measures taken in the military, the police and the civilian component, respectively. This demonstrates that MINUSMA has undertaken extensive efforts that can be attributed to each of the three tiers of the POC concept but that its focus has laid on military solutions. In a succeeding step, to answer the second sub-question guiding this research, it is evaluated how closely MINUSMA has cooperated with counterterrorism forces that are oper-ating in Mali. This illustrates the Mission’s proximity to these forces and helps to draw impli-cations from such a cooperation. A last chapter succeeds the tripartite main body to discuss the findings and to draw final conclusions.
5.1. Background
The ensuing few paragraphs outline the background to the most recent crisis in Mali and clarify the circumstances that have led to the establishment of MINUSMA in 2013. Furthermore, a close analysis of the number of civilian fatalities in the country underlines the magnitude of the ongoing conflict and reveals that local communities in Mali continue to face substantial risks.
5.1.1. The Malian Crisis
Situated in Africa’s wide region of the Sahel, Mali appears to be a country that is predestined for conflict. Discrepancies inherent in Mali’s structure, the vastness of the land and long-lasting tensions between the country’s numerous ethnic groups each contribute their part in causing Mali to be one of the world’s least developed countries (UN Development Programme (UNDP) 2018). Therefore, ever since Mali gained independence from French colonial rule in 1960, the country has been marked by recurring periods of instability and repeated rebellions. These orig-inated from significant inequalities between the deserted north that is home to nomadic Tuareg tribes and the affluent and densely populated south (Chandler and Zogg 2017: 1-2). The most recent violent insurgency in the country’s northern regions broke out in 2012, when the Tuaregs – on behalf of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) – de novo called for the independence of their unrecognised state Azawad (Di Razza 2018: 4). Two factors set this rebellion apart from past incidents in Mali, however. On the one hand, the fall of the
Gaddafi regime in Libya in 2011 had caused numerous Tuareg and Arab militants to head back to their bases in northern Mali, equipped with heavy arms that they acquired throughout the Libyan revolution (Chandler and Zogg 2017: 1-2). On the other hand, an influx of experienced Islamist fighters arriving from Algeria constituted a second coefficient that contributed to the vast arsenal of weapons available across the deserted lands (ibid.). Consequently, unlike in pre-vious uprisings, the Malian government faced severe difficulties in containing the violent revolt, which resulted in a coup d’état and the overthrow of the government at the time (Di Razza 2018: 4). This led a severe crisis of the Malian political and constitutional system (ibid.).
Absent any effective governmental control, jihadist movements spread across Mali’s northern regions and slowly aligned with the Tuaregs (Chandler and Zogg 2017: 1-2). The rebels and the Islamists increasingly diverged in their ideological views, however, and the MNLA started to detach itself from these entities. This implicated the splintering of the rebel movement and caused a number of northern cities to fall into the hands of violent extremist groups (ibid.).8 When the latter advanced to Mali’s central provinces and threatened to seize the capital Bamako, the fragile situation in the country was standing the risk of being further exacerbated. This triggered the Malian interim authorities to appeal for the support of their former colonial power France, leading to the deployment of the French military Operation Serval in January 2013 which was authorised to intervene in support of the Malian Defence and Security Forces (MDSF) (Chandler and Zogg 2017: 1-2).
5.1.2. An Appeal for UN Support
Next to the French military intervention, the Malian government called for UN structural sup-port, resulting in the opening of the UN office in Mali (UNOM) in the beginning of 2013 to assist the country in the areas of politics and security (UN 2019b). In the context of the same SC resolution, the African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA) was estab-lished as a concerted international effort to bring peace and stability to the country. In cooper-ation with Opercooper-ation Serval, AFISMA substantially contributed to the improved situcooper-ation in Mali’s north (ibid.). Additionally, a transitional road map was adopted to provide guidelines
8 The rebel movement has become extremely fragmented in the Malian crisis, with numerous different alliances
each following their own agenda, either individually or in collaboration with extremist groups. As a clear outline of all these groups would exceed the scope and purpose of this study, only the most relevant actors will be mentioned further. For a more detailed overview of the various actors involved in the Malian conflict, see D. Cristiano and R. Fabiani (2013) «The Malian Crisis and Its Actors».
