November 8, 2025: UN peacekeeping missions have become a thing of that past. There are fewer of them and in a growing number of cases peacekeepers have been replaced by the International Crisis Group. Since 1945 there have been 70 UN peacekeeping missions and currently eleven of them are still active. These include Haiti, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Abyei South Sudan, Rwanda, Kosovo, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel/Syria, Middle East, India/Pakistan. Over the next decade this list may get smaller, when two or three peacekeeping missions are terminated. It’s difficult to predict which ones because there are so many variables.
There are some other problems. NGO/Non-Government Organizations will sometimes ask, or demand, that the UN or other foreign governments send in peacekeeping troops to protect the NGOs from hostile locals. This had disastrous effects in Somalia during the early 1990s. Some NGOs remained, or came back, to Somalia after the peacekeepers left. These NGOs learned how to cope on their own. They hired local gunmen for protection, as well as cutting deals with the local warlords. But eventually the local Islamic radicals became upset at the alien ideas these Western do-gooders brought with them, and chased all NGOs out.
In eastern Congo, aid workers found themselves the primary target of the local bandits and militias that had created the problems that attracted the foreign aid in the first place. NGOs have learned to raise militias when they want to. But in areas where there are peacekeepers, and the NGOs believe they are not being well served, the NGOs will often simply depart, amid a flurry of press releases, to show their displeasure at the security arrangements, or the political goals of the peacekeepers.
But then came Afghanistan and Iraq, two places where many local leaders thought it served their interests best if there were no NGOs at all. Throughout the world, NGOs are finding that the world has changed. NGOs will never be the same after what’s happened during the last decade.
NGOs have formal legal recognition in many countries, and internationally they, as a group, have some standing. NGOs have become a player in international affairs, even though individual NGOs each have their own, independent, outlook on world affairs. But as a group, they are a power to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, there is no leader of all the NGOs you can negotiate with. Each one has to be dealt with separately. Since NGOs also come from many different countries and have members that speak English, peacekeepers can also run into language and cultural customs problems. NGOs have turned out to be another good idea that, well, got complicated in unexpected ways.
The problems NGOs are encountering are not as bad as those crippling peacekeeping missions. International peacemakers are often inclined to address conflicts with little or no reference to established international rules and procedures. The local leadership, whether it be tribal, clan-based or what they experienced back home are often uncooperative with the foreigners. The difference is the peacekeepers come from places that don’t need peacekeepers because local police are sufficient. The peacekeepers are often baffled by how violent and unpredictable the locals are. The UN also sends in diplomats and technical experts to work with the locals to establish peace. That rarely works. Afghanistan is the best example of a failed state that regularly resists any efforts to embrace nationwide peace.
And then there was AFRICOM. In 2008 Africa Command/AFRICOM was established to handle American military operations in Africa. AFRICOM coordinates all American military operations in Africa. The establishment of AFRICOM meant more money for counter-terror operations in Africa, and more long-range projects. One thing most African nations wanted from AFRICOM was military and counter-terrorism trainers. The problem with this was that the people so trained are often then employed as enforcers for the local dictator. Even providing training for peacekeepers can backfire, for those peacekeeping skills can also be used to pacify your own people. This was seen as a problem in Nigeria as well, as long as there is so much corruption in the government and military. But at the same time the U.S. could not ignore the growing cooperation between Boko Haram and al Qaeda type terrorist organizations, especially those in northern Mali, which had become a new sanctuary for al Qaeda. . Boko Haram was becoming part of the terrorist threat to the U.S. and the West. This was a threat that neither peacekeepers nor local security forces could handle. Haiti is another example. For the past century there have been numerous peacekeeping efforts. The most impressive one was when US Marines occupied and pacified Haiti for 19 years, from 1915 to 1934. That was an expensive failure and ever since then Haiti has proved itself ungovernable. Haiti is currently controlled by various criminal gangs who fight among themselves when they aren’t looting, abusing and generally living off the local civilians.
