Documenti
PEACEKEEPING REHEARSALS
by Piero Maestri
With Operation Alba the intention was to stress the pivot role of the army as an instrument of our foreign policy and our "peace force." This idea is making dangerous headway even among pacifists, with the risk of ensnaring them in militaristic policies, in defence of presumed national interests.
After the Albanian elections, the military and political top brass who had carried out Mission Alba were quick to hail its success, claiming that it had allowed free elections without giving Berisha the support some "spoil sports" had said it would.
Actually the election results have not altered the significance of the Italian military presence in Albania, which we have dealt with amply (G&P, no. 39/40), the intent of which, with or without Berisha (after some awkward attempts to bolster his position were snubbed even by the USA), was to safeguard our political and economic interests and put our business men back in business. This is borne out by the recent meetings in Rome with the new Albanian premier and the decision to keep a 600 man contingent in Albania, which will work together with Greece on "reconstruction."
ARMED FORCES AS "PEACE FORCES"
The "new" humanitarian and pacifist role of the Armed Forces has been repeatedly stressed in the papers and on television over the last months by various military strategists, especially the ever-present General [Carlo] Jean, ex-advisor to Cossiga. What is new is the widespread consensus this idea and, hence, peacekeeping (the magic word!) operations have gained even in non militaristic and anti-interventionist circles that had mobilized against the Gulf War and, after some initial waffling, against Restore Hope. Suffice it to mention two episodes, significant and disquieting.
In Rome last May an NGO as serious as Movimondo, along with the Army War School of Civitavecchia, touted an ititiative that was presented as "the first case of collaboration between an NGO and the Armed Forces in preparation for an international mission, intended not only as on occasion for a meeting of minds and exchange of experiences, but also as a moment of coordination 'ex ante' between the various components of a peace mission" [our emphasis]. In Rome on July 3 even more happened. At the invitation of the USIS and the US Embassy, the spokespersons of Assopace (Peace Association), ARCI-Civil Service and the Consorzio Italiano di Solidarietà (Italian Solidarity Consortium) met with Colonel Mark Walsh of the War School of the American Army to discuss "the experience of the forces involved in peace missions" (the invitation does not specify which US "peace missions" were to be talked about, whether the Vietnam War, the invasion of Panama, the embargo against Iraq, the bombing raids against Mogadish or the uranium projectiles in Bosnia).
CUI PRODEST?
It is easy to guess why attempts are made to involve "civilian society," especially the pacifist and non-government organizations in foreign interventions. First of all, it serves to make the idea of the armed forces as "peace forces" more believable. Secondly, it makes it possible to reach places a simple military intervention could not get to - for instance, using the co-presence of military and pacifist forces as a beachhead for a later political or economic presence. What is less easy to understand is why pacifists and NGOs would wish to "collaborate" with the Armed Forces. Not that one wants to cast doubt on the good intentions of those who fool themselves they can thereby participate in the "management" of the intervention, but logic and experience tell us that on the inside of a mission directed by the military and under their discipline the role of "civilians" will inevitably be subordinate and can in no wise contribute in defining the goals of intervention (not even Parlament has a say in the matter). Nor will it be possible for the NGOs to "keep check" on the behavior of the troops, given that the latter's actions, which one would like us to believe are uncontrollable even by their superiors (as in the case of Italian torture and violence in Somalia), utterly "escaped" the attention of the many NGOs present in Mogadish during Restore Hope.
"Collaboration" implies accepting the idea that the the military and civilian contingents have the same ends, to bring peace and provide "aid" to the population. But this flies in the face of reality, as Ambassador Luigi Vittorio Ferraris was honest enough to acknowledge when he claimed that those intervening to furnish "assistance" had the "right and duty to controll how it was to be used and to employ it for purposes determined by the donor himself" (Politica Internazionale, no. 1/2, 1997).
All the military interventions during the '90s (from the Gulf down to Albania) were aimed at favoring a Western or Italian presence and controll. Just this neo-colonial spirit, which the upper military echelons cultivated and affirmed openly in planning a defence model finalized toward safeguarding national interests, clarifies the attitude of the Italian Army in Somalia, including the violence some sources seek to explain away as the actions of a few "rotten apples."
It is a neo-colonial, racist spirit that was already present in the old Operation Pellican in Albania (v. G&P, no. 39/40), as well as before and after Operation Alba, in the naval blockade that brought on the tragedy in the waters of Otranto, in the hush-up of this carnage, and in the shameful haste with which [Foreign Minister] Napolitano had the refugees packed up returned to the sender.
ALTERNATIVE, NOT SUBALTERN
The whole reason of existence for pacifism, voluntary groups and NGOs is to be alternative, not complementary and subaltern to "military missions." If these groups and the government sit down at the discussion table, it must not be to collaborate in operations that have already been decided upon but an occasion where the associations critique policies they are not responsible for and for which they must not "assume responsibility." To our mind it is likewise in this prospective that the still open discussion must be entered on the bill of Parlament for the creation of Italian "White Helmets," i.e. a civil interposition corps for crisis areas, according to an idea already experimented positively in Yugoslavia by the Pope John XXIII Association and the European Civil Peace Corps, previously proposed by Alex Langer and accepted by the European Parlament.
Neither of these initiatives can turn out positive if they imply a corps marching side by side with Italian or European troops (as the European Civil Corps ambiguously proposes), but only if such corps are autonomous. Otherwise their critical, anti-militaristic role would be compromised - but the word "anti-militaristism" seems to have disappeared from the vocabulary of certain varieties of pacifism.