The Scoop on Peacekeeping

About a quarter of the way into Pale Blue Hope: Death and Life in Asian Peacekeeping, Ronald Poulton’s memoir about working with the United Nations, Poulton states his thesis. There may be moments in UN operations, he tells us, when both the bureaucrats in New York and the staff in the field have “a cold, careful eye trained on the realities of a country.” They encourage compromise: military force is brought into readiness while behind the scenes private dialogue is held. With skill, tact and planning, a crisis is averted. “Unfortunately,”hewrites, “I have never seen a UN operation handled in such a manner.”

Poulton is a lawyer—what his publisher calls a human rights lawyer. In the early 1990s and then later, in 1998, seeking both adventure and the chance to do what he considered some good, he signed on to work for the United Nations, first in Cambodia and then in Tajikistan. Although there would be lots to say about the Pol Pot aftermath in Cambodia, this story in the main hinges on Poulton’s months in post-Soviet Tajikistan. The old communist regime, secured in the capital city, Dushanbe, is engaged in a struggle with Islamic tribesmen based in the mountains. The UN, supported by (and it might be argued, directed by) the Russians, has sent a contingent to monitor an uneasy truce. One foggy morning, four UN monitors—a group called Team Garm—disappear, their vehicle eventually discovered run over a mountain cliff. Poulton’s job as the lawyer is to push the regime to find the killers and then try to make sure a trial is organized that will be fair.

Pale Blue Hope is, in the broadest sense, a story about how Canada comes up against the rest of the world—at least its faraway, exotic corners. At the same time, it is a story we hardly ever hear and probably do not really want to hear, for which reason it deserves a wide readership. A natural impulse is to compare it to Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Poulton, though, looks through an even darker lens, yet all the while avoiding the trap of being self-serving. It is not that the locals are evil and the UN cowardly; it is more that the whole idea is somehow a delicate charade balancing between innocence and cynicism. “Mr Poudon,” a woman tells him (the accidental—or intentional—name mispronunciation only heightening the absurdity and sense of petty humiliation), “you are in Tajikistan … not Canada. Here everyone is born guilty.”

I happened to read the book just when Canadian news was filled with the argument among diplomats, politicians and generals over whether prisoners had been handed over to torturers in Afghanistan. Poulton’s story fits perfectly, reminding us that, high-minded ideals notwithstanding, the reality of life out there in our far-flung foreign adventures is a mix of Kafka novel and Peter Sellers movie.

Canadians might have difficulty coming to terms with this, for we have a great deal invested in organizations such as the UN and NATO, both practically but also morally and psychologically. We by and large believe in the UN, needing to partly because we are a small country, but also because by nature we are (or at least used to be) an outward- looking international people. The reality, however, for a lawyer with a UN mission, is a disturbing awareness of his own helplessness and the absurdity of his project. This book is not a send-up by an ideologue. Neither is it policy analysis. Poulton, in fact, is an anti-policy wonk, which makes him—the practitioner who opts to become a memoirist— arguably more potent.

The minutiae of life are a batch of standard absurdities. “Infused with a morning’s cup of Nescafé coffee that tasted like poison and a hearty dollop of fear,” writes Poulton, “we in the United Nations begin our day.” The number-one cause of fatalities in UN missions, he tells us, is traffic accidents. “United Nations staff, particularly military, especially Third World military, are very bad drivers.” His job is to be section head for the legal department. There is one person in his section, an Austrian woman who possesses the advantage of speaking Russian but who, alas, is about to leave. “I am to become the section head of a section with only a head.” He rents an apartment only to be called on the carpet by the UN security chief who tells him he must give it up and pick another. He suspects the security chief to be too much under the influence of local government types who probably own the apartments inside the security triangle for which they can charge excessive rents, payable in American dollars. Poulton caves when told that should something happen to him in his unauthorized apartment, the UN will not cover him. He envies and longs to be a part of a small group of more robust employees, mainly Poles and Russian speakers, prepared to live outside the rules. They “came without illusions, to earn a handsome United Nations pay in Tajikistan, to save some money, and to stay alive.” What he likes most is how they “liberally explored the countryside, befriended locals, had girlfriends, went out to restaurants after curfew, and killed time by living outside the fortress United Nations.”

Then there are the big picture frustrations. “The United Nations,” he writes, “will rarely act outside its mandate for a country, despite the horrors that are confronted. And so a curtain of grey descends.” In this way, Rwanda, Somalia, the Balkans (certainly the tragedy of Srebrenica) and so many other frustrations undertaken in the name of the greater good but ending up in a moral and practical morass, suddenly become clear. The factions in a civil war, no matter what agreements have been signed, will not easily give up their arms, disband armies, move soldiers into containment areas. On the other hand, the international community will not easily hand over millions in aid, despite what promises it made.

Peace agreements, it turns out, are much more than just agreements to stop fighting, disband armies, exchange prisoners and conduct elections. At their foundations lie compromises between parties who do not want to compromise. “If they had a choice they would wipe out their enemy and rule like kings. Instead, they bargain and seek international aid, and the United Nations responds by brokering an agreement, having it signed, and then, while the ink is still wet, the parties search for ways to wipe out the other side and rule like kings.”

“The United Nations,” Poulton writes finally, “cannot stop wars. No amount of negotiation or outside intervention will initially resolve anything, once blood is shed.” He declines to expand this analysis, but an obvious problem is that the United Nations was set up to be what its title implies, an organization with the tools to broker between nation-states to forestall war. Yet most conflicts of the last two generations have been civil wars, or inter-ethnic fights within states. In these, the UN is a referee, but one perpetually compromised, depending on inadequate information from sources always with their own agendas. In the end three men were handed over for killing Poulton’s Team Garm. He never believed they were truly the guilty ones. The trial he oversaw was a show trial and the accused were convicted and executed. The world moved on.