Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War. Elizabeth SchmidtЧитать онлайн книгу.
populations from gross human rights violations, ethnic cleansing, or genocide, but is also complicit in perpetrating those crimes. According to the new paradigm, a state that is unable or unwilling to fulfill its foundational responsibilities forfeits the right to sovereignty over its territory and people—and its exemption from outside interference.
It was in this new context that the UN moved toward a broader definition of international responsibility for the protection of human rights. In June 1993, governmental and nongovernmental representatives from 171 nations met in Vienna at the UN-sponsored World Conference on Human Rights, where they endorsed the claim that “All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. . . . While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”5 In theory, a state’s failure to protect its citizens could warrant UN intervention.
After the Cold War, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the splintering of states in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and challenges to other states elsewhere produced millions of refugees and spawned untold numbers of armed insurgents who crossed borders and fomented instability. Because the UN’s purpose is to “maintain international peace and security,” and because massive human rights violations have ripple effects that affect entire regions, rectifying such wrongs increasingly was understood to be within the UN’s purview.6 However, UN actions did not keep pace with the expanded understanding of the organization’s jurisdiction. Prioritizing their own domestic and foreign policy agendas, permanent members of the Security Council opposed measures that might have thwarted the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s Darfur region in 2003–4. Continued pressure from nongovernmental organizations and human rights activists pushed the UN General Assembly to pass the 2005 R2P resolution, which allowed the international community to intervene if governments did not protect their citizens from gross human rights violations.7 Supported by 150 countries, the R2P resolution upended an understanding of state sovereignty that had been one of the fundamental tenets of international law since the seventeenth century. In theory, deference to “state sovereignty” no longer could be used as an expedient to allow ethnic cleansing, genocide, or other crimes against humanity to proceed unhindered.
Once again, the reality was far more complicated. New principles of international intervention had been endorsed, but enforcement remained problematic. Governments were reluctant to set precedents that might be used against them in the future, and powerful members of the Security Council rarely committed the resources or personnel necessary to implement the R2P resolution. If a culpable state opposed external involvement, outside powers ordinarily persisted only if their own interests were at stake. Action was likely solely in the case of weak states or those without powerful allies on the Security Council—that is, in states that could not effectively challenge foreign intervention.
As calls for multilateral diplomacy evolved into appeals for military intervention under the mantle of responsibility to protect, there was sharp disagreement over the motives of those intervening, the means they employed, and the nature of the outcomes, that is, whether intervention provided protection for civilians or only increased their insecurity. Some governments reacted to international scrutiny by invoking the old principle of national sovereignty. Others charged that international human rights laws were based on Western capitalist norms that give primacy to the rights of individuals over those of society and thus were not applicable to their cultures or conditions. They argued that Western claims regarding the universality of their human rights definitions were yet another example of cultural imperialism and neocolonialism. Still others claimed that humanitarian intervention was simply a guise for Western powers’ pursuit of their own economic or strategic objectives, and they warned that Western countries were attempting to recolonize the Global South. In countries and regions affected by conflict, governments and citizens were divided on the merits of outside intervention, whether by international organizations, neighboring states, or extracontinental powers. Many remained skeptical of outsiders’ motives and their capacity to bring peace, even when their actions were part of an approved multilateral initiative.
Similar problems have plagued the International Criminal Court (ICC), which was established in 2002 to investigate and prosecute individuals believed to have engaged in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. Just as the UN Security Council may not intervene without a host country’s consent unless the government has failed to protect its citizens from gross human rights violations, the ICC is authorized to act against alleged human rights abusers only if their national governments and courts are unable or unwilling to do so. However, the ICC’s jurisdiction is far from universal. The international court may investigate alleged crimes in countries that have ratified the ICC treaty, in cases referred to it by the UN Security Council, or when the ICC prosecutor opens a case of his or her own volition. Although 123 UN member states had ratified the ICC treaty by 2017, 70 others had not. Among the holdouts were three permanent members of the UN Security Council that have veto-wielding powers: the United States, China, and Russia. These countries refused to recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over their own citizens, and they also shielded their allies from the court’s authority. ICC member states have also undermined ICC operations. Although they are technically obliged to comply with the court’s decisions, the ICC has no police or military to enforce summonses or arrest warrants. As a result, alleged perpetrators with powerful allies avoid prosecution, while those without connections are more likely to be held accountable.
Like advocates of R2P, the ICC has been accused of bias against African countries and norms. The court is authorized to investigate human rights abuses worldwide, but nine of the ten investigations it conducted between 2002 and 2017 and all of its indictments, prosecutions, and convictions involved African political and military figures. As a result, some critics have charged that the ICC is simply another neocolonial institution. Criticism from the African Union has been especially sharp, with some African leaders urging AU member states to withdraw from the international court—a step that Burundi took in 2017. However, other African leaders and many civil society organizations have voiced strong support for the court and urged it to expand its protection of African civilians rather than to reduce it. The degree to which the ICC can promote equal justice in an unequal international order remains an open question.
Paradigm 2: The War on Terror
If the roots of the first paradigm can be traced to post–World War II understandings of the need for peace, justice, and human rights to ensure a stable international order, the seeds of the second paradigm can be found in the Cold War struggle between capitalism and communism. From the outset, the United States recognized the power of religion as a weapon against its atheistic opponents, and it mobilized conservative religious groups to fight the communist menace. In Europe, it supported Christian parties and organizations that opposed the Italian, Greek, and French communist parties that had gained strength during World War II and its aftermath. In the Middle East, it backed conservative Muslim organizations and regimes that sought to suppress both communism and radical nationalism. When the pro-Western Shah of Iran was overthrown in January 1979 and replaced by militants who embraced the Shi’a branch of Islam, Washington rallied extremists in the rival Sunni branch to counter Iran’s growing prominence.8 Saudi Arabia, a staunch US ally, promoter of fundamentalist Sunni teachings, and competitor with Iran for regional dominance, joined the United States in its patronage of Sunni militants.
Most relevant for this study is the CIA-led multinational coalition that recruited, trained, armed, and financed Sunni militants from all corners of the globe to challenge the decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979–89). After ousting the Soviets from Afghanistan, the fighters dispersed to their home countries, where they founded new organizations and spearheaded insurgencies, primarily against Muslim states they deemed impious. These Soviet-Afghan War veterans played prominent roles in most of the extremist groups that emerged in Africa and the Middle East in the decades that followed. A brief summary of that history provides the context for the war on terror.
In 1978, a military coup in Afghanistan installed a communist government that was sympathetic to Moscow. It was also brutal, internally divided,