Peace as immobility

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 391-407

  Lippens, Ronnie ^a  

^a KEELE UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 52549088857     PISSN: 09528059     EISSN: 15728722     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1012211607147     Document Type: Review

References (43)

1. UNOSOM I was to monitor cease-fires (there were 50 military observers before December 1992), to protect relief operations and distribution centres (there were 500 Pakistani troops until September 1992; reinforcements up to 4,219 were promised but not delivered), while the U.N. Special Representative, Mohammed Sahnoun, set up consultations with Somali warring factions. See "mission backgrounders" at http://www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/ unosomi.htm.
2. UNITAF was to comprise 28,000 U.S. troops, as well as 17,000 troops from over 20 other countries.
3. Baudrillard, J., "Catastrophe Management" in The Illusion of the End (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), 66-71, at 67.
4. UNOSOM II comprised 28,000 troops as well as 2,800 U.N. staff. See "mission backgrounders", supra.
5. Bloch, E., The Principle of Hope (Cambridge Mass: MIT Press, 1986).
6. See Deleuze, G., Foucault (London: Athlone, 1988), especially at 47-69 (quotes from 59 and 57).
7. Lacan, J., "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience" in Ecrits. A Selection (London: Tavistock, 1977), 1-7.
8. Quotes and terminology from: Maffesoli, M., The Time of the Tribes. The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society (London: Sage, 1996).
9. In this essay we will not try to reconstruct the U.N. operations in Somalia that took place between 1992 and 1995. Events and chronologies only appear in the essay at hand if they are necessary to bring forward the argument. Those interested in the U.N. operations and Operation Restore Hope (UNITAF and UNOSOM II) may find the following texts useful (as we did): Hirsch, J. and Oakley, R. Somalia and Operation Restore Hope: Reflections on Peacemaking and Peacekeeping (Washington D.C.: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1995), an account by UNITAF Special Envoy Robert Oakley;
10. Drysdale, J., Whatever Happened to Somalia? A Tale of Tragic Blunders (London: Haan Associates, 1994), a highly critical account of U.N. operations, as well as a somewhat biased "pro-Aideed" apology;
11. Clarke, W. and Herbst, J. (eds) Learning from Somalia: the Lessons of Armed Humanitarian Intervention (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997), a scholarly collection;
12. and Lyons, T. and Samatar, A.I., Somalia. State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention and Strategies for Political Reconstruction (Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995).
13. Texts and quotes of all Resolutions from: www.un.org.
14. E.g. "the restoration of law and order throughout Somalia", in order to arrive at "reconciliation and political settlement", "rehabilitation of Somalia's political institutions and economy".
15. Supra n. 9, at 82.
16. All quotes are from Rausenberger, M., A Somalia Journal (Mahomet: Mayhaven Publishing, 1995).
17. U.S. troops' nickname for "Somalis".
18. A gaze often does not see individuality, or particularity, but only undifferentiated mass.
19. The author, too, once was a Sergeant medic (in the Belgian army, though; 1987-88).
20. From T Lyons and A. Samatar, supra n. 10, at 1.
21. One would probably not be able to find a book on Somalia and UNITAF/UNOSOM that makes no reference to Somalia's "anarchy" or "chaos".
22. See Prunier, G., "The Experience of European Armies in Operation Restore Hope" in Learning from Somalia, Supra n. 10, 135-150, at 142.
23. Though not necessarily. Images - and one might claim: imageries/imaginations as well - hold a "plenitude of virtualities". See, e.g. Barthes, R., "Rhetoric of the Image" in Image, Music, Text (London, Fontana Press, 1977), 32-51, at 42.
24. We may perhaps speculate on how this process, on the one hand, may have engendered the e-mergence of other imageries/imaginations of peace and hope. On the other hand, one may also speculate on how imageries/imaginations of peace as immobility - or fragments of these - have, in other peacekeeping operations, structured (to a certain extent) the form of peace enforcement measures and initiatives. With regard to the latter, we may perhaps point at the operations in former Yugoslavia. The U.N. Security Council, acting under Chapter VII (peace enforcement) of the U.N. Charter, avoided a more or less proactive campaign of stabilization on the ground (though would ultimately agree to a bombing campaign) and, very early on, focused on the threat of a newly installed "International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the territory of the Former Yugoslavia" (Resolution 827). The statute of this International Tribunal was adopted 25 May 1993, as part of a Chapter VH-based effort to "contribute to the restoration and maintenance of peace in the former Yugoslavia". The same could be said with regards to the "International Tribunal for Rwanda", adopted by Resolution 955 on 8 November 1994.
25. See Hirsch and Oakley, as well as Drysdale, supra n. 10.
26. On this, see Natsios, A., "Humanitarian Relief Intervention in Somalia: The Economics of Chaos", in Learning from Somalia, supra n. 10, 77-98.
27. "The Mooryaan are now living out their rancor in the era of high anarchic season midwifed, as always, by kleptocratic goons". Quote from Ahmed, A. Jimale, "Preface" to The Invention of Somalia, ed. A. Jimale Ahmed (Lawrenceville: The Red Sea Press, 1994), at xi.
28. R. Oakley and J. Hirsch, supra n. 10, at xvii-xviii.
29. The book was published in 1995.
30. Book covers sometimes do reveal something. Hirsch's and Oakley's book has, on its cover, a picture of an American soldier occupying the "centre" of a small group of Somalis, who appear to be listening to this soldier's directives, or perhaps advice. John Drysdale's highly critical account bears a picture of one American soldier who, having stopped and disarmed one Somali youth (thus, no "centre"), holds a gun to the latter's head.
31. As confirmed by U.N. 'critic' John Drysdale, supra n. 10.
32. Adam, H., "Somalia: Federalism and Self-Determination" in Conflict and Peace in the Horn of Africa, eds P. Woodward and M. Forsyth (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1994), 114-123, at 114.
33. Said Samater quoted on page 3 of Hirsch's and Oakley's book. Supra, n. 10.
34. Indeed, Oakley's book, as almost any book on Somalia would, begins with a chapter on Somalia's pastoral nomadism and its clan based politics.
35. For a detailed reconstruction of this development, see: Menkhaus, K., "International Peacebuilding and the Dynamics of Local and National Reconciliation in Somalia", in Learning from Somalia, supra, n. 10, 42-66.
36. Crocker, C. "Foreword" in Somalia and Operation Hope, supra n. 10, at xv-xvi.
37. Supra n. 20.
38. Deleuze, G., Negotiations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), at 30-33.
39. Though "assistance" was also mentioned in U.N. Security Council Resolution 814 (March 26 1993), which installed UNOSOM II, before February 1994, the overall logic of operations seemed to have been imagined as an U.N. orchestrated "restoration of law and order" (quote from the preamble to Resolution 814).
40. Resolution 814 (March 1993) also mentioned "civil society", though it was deemed to be the role of the U.N. to "create conditions under which Somali civil society may have a role, at every level, in the process of political reconciliation and in the formulation and realization of rehabilitation and reconstruction programmes" (U.N. Resolution 814, s4 (g)).
41. Quote from "United Nations Operation in Somalia II", at www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/unosom2b.html (page 5 of 9).
42. Recall Said, E., Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin, 1995).
43. Deleuze, G., Essays Critical and Clinical (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), at 160-161.