From conflict to peacekeeping: Haiti, Kosovo and Liberia

What does it feel like to enter the space of a peacekeeping mission? On our fieldwork trip to Cyprus in 2004, for example, it was much like arriving in any other sunny tourist destination in southern Europe. The passengers milling around the airport tended to be white European tourists busy shopping, eating and drinking. While security forces paced through different parts of the airport, nothing seemed out of the ordinary for a tourist destination. However, flying into Toussaint Louverture Airport, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince; Robertsfield Airport some 35 miles outside of Monrovia; and Pristina International Airport, a short distance away from the capital city in the province of Kosovo, were experienced as quite different from stepping off the plane in Cyprus. Yet all four places: Cyprus, Haiti, Liberia and Kosovo are post-conflict countries that play host to UN peacekeeping missions.

The airports of Haiti, Kosovo and Liberia tended to be filled with large numbers of humanitarian workers, Blue Beret peacekeepers and other internationals from around the world. In Kosovo, aged Mercedes taxis queued outside the airport. In Monrovia and Port-au-Prince, few people took taxis (or tap-taps), with most greeted by friends, colleagues or family. The ride from the airport to the city centre in Port-au-Prince is seen by many as risky, where the shortest route skims the notorious 'gang' neighbourhood of Cité Soleil. In Monrovia, the combination of storms in the rainy season and lack of street lighting can make the 45-minute journey from the airport to the city centre a treacherous one, not least since roads are in a poor state of repair.

Once inside the capital cities of all these missions one experiences the overwhelming institutional presence of the UN; unlike Nicosia in Cyprus, the UN dominates the urban spaces of Haiti, Kosovo and Liberia. White Toyota Land Cruisers branded with black lettering fill the landscape. Military surveillance equipment and vehicles, especially khaki-coloured jeeps and tanks, are regularly seen patrolling the busy streets. In Liberia and Haiti, where national public transportation is virtually non-existent, the supreme power of the UN vehicles stands in marked contrast to broken-down tap-taps and other ageing vehicles used to transport locals to and from various destinations. Uniformed soldiers and international civilian police, alongside corporate-dressed civilian workers, throng the restaurants, cafés and bars. On Sundays, international workers are seen in abundance at a number of leisure spots, including white sandy beaches in Haiti and Liberia, once a magnet for tourists in more peaceful times.

Peacekeeping mission sites are both exceptional and everyday physical, social and political spaces. On the one hand, each mission has a particular flavour or feel to it, which is dependent upon the historical and political context of the country, the number and composition of peacekeeping troops and civilian contractors, and the UN mandate in force. Missions vary in their degree of safety, a point which can be illustrated by contrasting previous UN deployments to Somalia or the current UN–AU mission in Sudan, where, at the time of writing, several peacekeepers had just been killed. UNFICYP in Cyprus differs sharply from these two examples, as it is safe and peaceful. On the other hand, given that peacekeeping missions have a great deal in common, they can also can be viewed as 'peace franchises', a point explored further in Chapter 2. For example, the UN often set up their headquarters in old hotels, and when visiting the main offices of the UN one is struck by the sheer familiarity of these buildings whether in Africa, Europe or the Americas. In some cases restaurants which cater for UN staff are mobile, moving from one mission to another, as is the case with particular Thai restaurant owners in Liberia. The ubiquitous and much-maligned presence of 'expensive' Lebanese stores in numerous African missions underscores this sense of familiarity between geographically disparate missions.

In this chapter we provide historical information on the peacekeeping missions of Haiti (MINUSTAH), Kosovo (UNMIK, NATOKFOR) and Liberia (UNMIL) with the aim of revealing the kinds of spaces to which they have given rise. These research sites were selected for a number of reasons. First, we wanted to have a sample of missions from the Americas, Europe and Africa. We knew that the evolution of conflicts in these regions differed from one another in ways that produced diverse perceptions of security. In Haiti, there was no official civil war, while in Liberia the conflict spanned the years 1989–2003. Kosovo had been part of a larger regional war, and then a more specific localized war in the late 1990s. In this way, each mission's experiences of security and insecurity was framed by a different trajectory of conflict. Second, we tried to select missions that were similar in both geographical size and the numbers of personnel employed within them. Here, we made the assumption that the impact of the mission on different actors was likely to be similar. If we had included a mission such as that in Kashmir, for example, we would have been faced with a very small group of UN personnel with whom to work and study. Third, we wanted to research missions that were at different stages of development, but none that was either drawing down or that had been very recently established. First-hand reflections of the spatial feel of each of the sites within which fieldwork was conducted are examined below, together with an overview of the historical and political context of these countries. We also include a sense of the everyday nature of the missions in terms of security perception of both international staff who work and live in the mission and members of the host population.

All three mission sites share histories of conflict and political turbulence; yet each is unique. Commonalities, however, should not be taken as evidence that each of these countries can be labelled as inherently insecure or violent. Simplistic assumptions made about any one country's pathological trajectory or genealogy adds little to an in-depth understanding of the complex nature of conflict in each of these research sites. However, similarities across these UN and NATO–KFOR mission sites included: allegations of state incompetency; the ongoing existence of corruption and repression together with the violent activities of security forces; the active role of paramilitaries and/or criminal gangs; the dynamism of charismatic and popular leaders; widespread poverty and or/unemployment; and, finally,...