Human Security Lab Director Calls for UN Peacekeeping Mission in Afghanistan
In her latest column in World Politics Review, Professor Charli Carpenter argues that the time is ripe for a UN peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. Citing numerous studies by political scientists, Carpenter argues that “unlike U.S. nation-building or counterinsurgency efforts, U.N. peacekeeping missions work.”
The proposal follows on the heels of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and fears of a resurgent power vacuum as peace talks stall between the Taliban and the nominal Afghan government. According to Carpenter, UN peacekeepers could fill the security gap and make the conditions for sustainable peace possible, while avoiding the pitfalls of the former counterinsurgency approach by remaining neutral among the parties avoiding violence except to protect civilians.
”In comparison to U.S. counterinsurgency or nation-building missions, U.N. peacekeepers may also seem more legitimate to combatants because they represent the international community rather than just hated Western powers. The forces making up peacekeeper missions come from all over the world, but many major troop-contributing countries are from the Global South, and the troop composition for a specific mission can be tailored to local cultural dynamics. A mission to Afghanistan, for example, might include a preponderance of forces from Muslim-majority countries like Bangladesh, making it less reminiscent of Western imperialism,” Carpenter writes.
Carpenter joins an emerging chorus of voices suggesting that the international community give UN peacekeeping a chance in Afghanistan, including Major Ryan van Wie of West Point, who published an important policy paper on the topic in the Journal of Indo-Pacific Affairs last winter, and Professors David Cortright and Madhav Joshi of University of Notre Dame, who called for an interim security force in a recent article at Global Observatory. Until now, however, little attention has been paid to this idea among the US national security establishment. According to Carpenter, it’s time for this to change.