ABSTRACT
The UK shares a number of similarities with its former colonial rival France but also exposes significant differences. Unlike its Southern neighbour the UK only in rare cases has intervened militarily on the African continent and also does not entertain military bases. The cultural, language, economic and political ties that France is eager to maintain with Francophone Africa are much more weakly developed in the case of Britain and Anglophone Africa. This certainly also results from different foreign policy priorities. British influence in Africa cannot simply or easily be referred back to a common Anglophone language space. While the two most influential African countries, South Africa and Nigeria are largely English-speaking, this has not translated into significant British leverage in this case. In contrast to the Francophone area in which France is mostly (with the exception of Algeria) confronted with many rather small and politically less influential countries, South Africa and Nigeria in the African Anglophone world are self-declared continental leaders. Thus British influence is not self-evident or compelling. Furthermore it also does not follow foreign policy priorities comparable to France. However, together with France the UK holds a permanent seat in the UN Security Council and has played a constructive and facilitating role sponsoring many Security Council resolutions. Britain also remains one of the key donors to UN peacekeeping, accounting for 6.7 per cent of the 2013-2014 peacekeeping budget of $7.54 billion.2 In Europe the UK is one of the few countries taking a keen interest in security and defence policies. It has participated in most CSDP missions and together with France is undoubtedly forming the back bone of the EU in terms of security and defence matters. Although the UK’s closeness to the US and NATO has for a long time impacted on European efforts to build an independent security and defence policy also impacting on the EU’s peacekeeping capabilities, the classical divide between British transatlantic
orientation and French continental ambitions has narrowed substantially over recent years.3 The rather low profile (in comparison to France) that Britain was keeping with regard to Africa only changed years after the Cold War ceased. As Porteous noted ‘No one could have predicted … that Prime Minister Tony Blair would become more involved in African politics than any British leader since decolonization.’4 Indeed Blair made Africa a policy priority after a long time of rather marginal political interest. A vividly visible attempt to reinvigorate the British Africa policy was the establishment of the Department for International Development (DfID) independent of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). With DfID in place Africa not only climbed in the priority list but also awareness increased that development and security needed to be addressed in concert.5 Under the impression of the Balkan wars, NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999 and later the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 significantly influenced British foreign and security policy, which also had consequences for Africa. British military intervention under Tony Blair became an often used foreign policy tool with interventions taking place in Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sierra Leone. The most recent British military intervention in Africa took place in Libya in 2011 under David Cameron. Naturally these operations do not count as peacekeeping missions in a classical sense. They do have in common an offensive use of military power justified by a mix of reasons ranging from objective humanitarian concerns to the fight against global terrorism and rather assumed and abstract security threats. British military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq overshadowed all other operations in terms of its size and combat involvement. Due to its commitments in these two countries the British Armed Forces have been under stress. It is hardly possible that other major operations on a unilateral basis could have been deployed without seriously over-stretching the existing forces. Involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has certainly also led to a shrinking British participation in UN peacekeeping. As can be seen in Figure 10.1, the British contribution has been declining from 2002 when it deployed nearly 700 troops, to 2013 when 288 troops were sent. Although overall British participation in UN peacekeeping declined over the last decade and there are hardly any indicators for change, this has had rather minimal impact on British deployments in Africa, largely because this was minimal to non-existent anyway. Of the 275 British troops deployed under the UN in August 2013 only nine were deployed to missions on the African continent. De facto, the UK has opted out of UN peacekeeping in Africa (see Table 10.1). While France shows a similar pattern, in the case of the UK it cannot be argued that instead of the UN the country is now deploying via the EU. Although most of the EU’s peacekeeping in Africa is conducted with British participation, in terms of numbers it remains minimal. A 2010 study by Soder reveals the minimal British involvement in EU missions and African
peacekeeping.6 Accordingly, the UK is only the fifth largest troop contributing country to EU missions providing 8 per cent of EU troops while France comes first providing 15 per cent.7 These numbers are declining significantly if we only focus on Africa. Here France is by far the leading country providing slightly more than half of all peacekeepers, 52 per cent, while the UK is not even listed in the statistic although it is displaying country contributions of as little as 2 per cent.8 While the study only analysed EU missions until 2009 the general trend is unbroken. Considering these numbers it is hard to argue that there is any significant interest in operational participation in either UN or EU peacekeeping in Africa. Of all British peacekeeping operations in Africa, Sierra Leone stands out. It is one of the rare occasions in which the UK decisively and mostly unilaterally used its military and political weight in an African country to restore political order. The British operation in Sierra Leone also stands out because it did not find imitators and thus is rather a special and atypical case of British peacekeeping in Africa. British military intervention in Sierra Leone started in May 2000 with the deployment of 1,300 troops
in Operation Palliser.9 Conflict in the country was intensified by corrupt and patrimonial elites privatising the country’s diamond industry. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a group of youngsters, aimed at taking power. A year long war broke out between the RUF and incumbent president Kabbah. An ECOWAS intervention restored Kabbah as president but could not sustainably consolidate his rule. In 1999 the Lomé Accord was signed with British involvement. As it turned out, the agreement was a shady compromise not mediating conflict between the warring parties but rather preferring a peace agreement instead of continuation of war.10 The following events pushed the UK into the conflict and the country felt a responsibility to act. A certain degree of contingency cannot be denied. As the conflict resumed, ECOWAS quickly withdrew its troops before the UN peace operation could be deployed and the UK refused military support for Nigeria as long as Abacha was in power; a serious power vacuum emerged. Britain only got involved slowly but progressively. The UK first sent troops to evacuate its nationals. Clashes with local rebel groups and the hostage taking of a group of British soldiers escalated the involvement. A rescue mission was started. Soon, however, it became clear that without larger British involvement and stabilisation on the ground the deployment of the UN mission would have been in danger. In this context the UK beefed up its efforts and deployed additional forces in support of the later UN mission. In sum, it cannot be said that Britain from the beginning planned to stay in Sierra Leone; rather, it was the conflict dynamics, the sudden withdrawal of ECOWAS troops and the slow deployment of the UN that made it necessary to stay longer. Alternatively, a quick rescue operation would very likely have given room for a flaring up of the conflict and would have put the UN mission under severe strain. In many aspects British involvement was atypical and as such did not form a precedent, as unilateral British military operations in Africa remain a rare exception. As in most cases British operational involvement in peacekeeping is very limited, the UK plays a more prominent role in training and supporting African peacekeepers on the continent. In this regard Sierra Leone was important because it reinforced British commitment to training African peacekeepers. In 2002 Britain set up the International Military Advisory and Training Team (IMATT) in Sierra Leone mostly focusing on SSR which indeed became a British trade mark. A number of further training projects were set up such as: the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK), the British Peace Support Team (BPST) in Eastern Africa, the International Mine Action Training Centre (IMATC), the Peace Support Training Centre (PSTC) or the BPST in South Africa.11 To many African peacekeeping operations the UK has been providing funds and in some cases also military equipment. For the AU mission to Darfur the UK even made available 600 vehicles and support for airlifting Nigerian troops to Sudan.12 Furthermore, a number of Africa-based peacekeeping training centres have been supported too.
