The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (40 page)
Authors: Adam Roberts,Vaughan Lowe,Jennifer Welsh,Dominik Zaum
Other European institutions also contributed to the enforcement of sanctions. In April 1993, the Western European Union (WEU) established a Danube Patrol Mission of eight patrol boats staffed with customs and police officers to inspect riparian traffic. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) also joined the effort, teaming with WEU in June 1993 to establish a combined naval task force in the Adriatic Sea. Fourteen nations provided ships, crews, and resources to the task force’s ‘Sharp Guard’ operation, which was responsible for checking all vessels entering or leaving the Adriatic and diverting ships to Italian harbours when necessary to inspect cargoes and documents.
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According to a US State Department report, the task force ‘prevented large merchant vessels from calling at Bar–Serbia’s only significant port’ and had a significant impact on trade.
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According to the official UN report on the SAMs system, ‘this unique and unprecedented formula of coordinated inter-institutional co-operation at the regional level… was identified as the main reason for the effectiveness of the sanctions in the case of the
former Yugoslavia.’
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The US State Department report concluded, ‘the presence of monitors bolsters frontline state enforcement by exerting pressure on the host government and its police, customs, and military to minimalize the violations.’
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The main lesson of the Yugoslavia experience, according to the UN report, was that ‘adequate arrangements for international co-operation and assistance can enhance sanctions effectiveness.’
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It also illustrated that porous borders can be controlled even after a history of undermining sanctions by actors in frontline states.
OUNTERING
T
ERRORISM
The UN Security Council entered the fight against international terrorism nearly a decade before September 2001 when it imposed sanctions against Libya in March 1992. This was the first use of Security Council sanctions to combat international terrorism.
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The Council demanded that suspects wanted for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and Union des Transports Aériens (UTA) flight 772 over Niger be handed over for trial. The Council also demanded that the Libyan regime end its support for and harbouring of international terrorist organizations. To back up its demand, the Council banned all flights to and from Libya. In November 1993, in the face of Libyan defiance of UN demands, the Council broadened UN sanctions to include a ban on imports of oil equipment and all aviation-related services.
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The sanctions against Libya did not lock down its entire economy. Selective measures were imposed to isolate Libya from the rest of the world community, reduce its ability to support terrorism, and impose modest but targeted economic hardships on the country. The aviation sanctions were effective in halting nearly all international flights to the country. The sanctions caused some economic losses, but their primary impact was diplomatic and symbolic, isolating Libya from the global community and branding it an international pariah.
The sting of the sanctions proved more painful to Libya than some would have estimated. When sanctions were initially imposed, the Qaddafi regime offered to
turn over the terrorist suspects to an international tribunal, but this offer was unacceptable to the Security Council and was rejected. A diplomatic stalemate ensued, which was not broken until August 1998, when the US and the UK responded to demands from Arab and African states to negotiate a compromise settlement. Washington and London agreed to hold the trial of the two Libyan suspects under Scottish law in a court in the Netherlands. Libya accepted the deal, although it took months of additional diplomatic wrangling before the suspects were finally delivered to The Hague for trial in April 1999. The Security Council subsequently suspended the sanctions against Libya.
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When asked if the Libya sanctions had been effective, Secretary-General Kofi Annan replied:
I prefer to think it played a role…. No country likes to be treated as an outcast and outside the society of nations…. I think Libya wanted to get back to the international community. Libya wanted to get on with its economic and social development. And Libya wanted to be able to deal freely with its neighbours and with the rest of the world.
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Although the sanctions had only limited economic impact, they provided bargaining leverage that eventually led to a settlement.
The UN sanctions also had a positive effect in restraining Libyan government support for international terrorism. In the years preceding the imposition of sanctions in 1992, the government of Libya was implicated in attacks against Pan Am flight 103 and UTA flight 772. After sanctions were imposed, Libya ceased its terrorist attacks against international aviation. The US State Department’s 1996 report on global terrorism stated flatly, ‘Terrorism by Libya has been sharply reduced by UN sanctions.’
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This assessment was reaffirmed in 1999 in interviews at the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department.
The Security Council also imposed counter-terrorism sanctions against the Taliban regime, and later against al-Qaida – although with less apparent success than in the case of Libya. On the basis of its support for terrorism, the UN Security Council imposed aviation and financial sanctions against the Taliban regime in 1999, demanding that the Taliban cease using its territory to harbour international terrorists, and that it turn over Osama bin Laden to ‘proper authorities’ for his role in the bombing of US embassies in Africa in August 1998.
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An arms embargo
and other measures were added in 2000.
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The sanctions were designed to end Taliban support for international terrorism.
After the overthrow of the Taliban regime, the Security Council restructured the sanctions. It lifted the aviation sanctions in January 2002, but continued the financial sanctions and travel ban on targeted Taliban and al-Qaida leaders.
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The Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee developed a list of hundreds of designated individuals and entities subject to targeted sanctions. Among the measures imposed against those on the consolidated designation list were a freeze on financial assets, a ban on travel or transit, and a prohibition on the supply of arms and related military goods and services. The measures imposed in Resolution 1390 were similar to and adopted some of the language of the sweeping counter-terrorism provisions contained in Resolution 1373, passed shortly after the attacks of 9/11.
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The Council also created an Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team (the Monitoring Team) to report on member state compliance and make recommendations for improved implementation.
Member state enforcement of the sanctions imposed on al-Qaida and the Taliban has been uneven. In December 2004, the Monitoring Team reported, ‘[w] hile many States reported action taken against Al Qaida, few offered specific details or referred directly to the names on the consolidated list.’ The Monitoring Team noted that the sanctions regime had only limited impact, mostly due to the constantly evolving structure of the al-Qaida network and the slowness of the list designation process to keep up with those changes.
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As of January 2006, 145 member states had reported to the Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee on their implementation efforts, although most of those reports dated from 2003 and 2004.
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Forty-six member states had not completed reports as of July 2005.
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Compliance with the financial measures against al-Qaida and the Taliban was the most significant. The Committee reported in 2004:
Information from States suggests that financial sanctions are having an effect. The designation of non-profit organizations that had previously provided funds to Al-Qaida, and more rigorous scrutiny of transactions in the formal banking system, may have forced Al-Qaida cells to rely more heavily on local criminal activity to finance their operations, rather than on money from elsewhere within the organization. Large sums, while not critical to the success of an attack, are now less likely to be available.
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Compliance with the travel ban against al-Qaida and the Taliban was less satisfactory, mostly because states lacked detail about the individuals on the designation list.
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The effectiveness of the arms embargo against al-Qaida and the Taliban was also uncertain.
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The Committee reported, ‘[a]lthough the majority of States reported that they have legal measures regulating the traffic, acquisition, storage, and trade in arms, in general States have not provided sufficient detail to establish whether they have actually taken all necessary measures to implement the arms embargo.’
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MPROVING
S
ANCTIONS
M
ONITORING AND
I
MPLEMENTATION
Beginning in the late 1990s, the Security Council developed a number of additional mechanisms for making sanctions more effective against law-violating regimes. As the situations in which sanctions were imposed – such as long-standing civil wars, or in failed economies characterized by extensive criminalization – increased in complexity, the Council recognized the need both for an expert view of the prospects for sanctions compliance in any particular case, and for more precision in fashioning the sanctions process. The creation of special investigative and expert panels dealt with the former challenge, while specially convened and nationally sponsored ‘processes’ contributed to the latter.
To overcome the lack of monitoring capacity within the UN system, the Security Council began to appoint independent expert panels and monitoring mechanisms to provide support for sanctions implementation. The first panel was established in conjunction with the arms embargo against Rwandan Hutu rebels.
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The panel, known as the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry (UNICOI), issued six reports from 1996 through to 1998 documenting the illegal supply of arms to the rebel groups in eastern Zaire. UNICOI reports provided voluminous evidence of wholesale violations of the arms embargo and contained numerous recommendations for cracking down on arms smuggling in the region. A breakthrough toward more effective monitoring came in the case of Angola. In 1999, the Angola Sanctions Committee became more active in monitoring sanctions violations and encouraging greater implementation efforts. The Security Council also appointed a Panel of Experts and a subsequent monitoring mechanism to improve compliance with the Angola sanctions.
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The Panel of Experts and monitoring
mechanism issued a series of reports that focused continuing attention on sanctions implementation efforts.
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The Angola Panel of Experts and the monitoring mechanism were followed by similar investigative panels for Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Liberia. The Security Council created a monitoring group for the Afghanistan sanctions in July 2001,
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and later transformed this into the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team to provide support for the restructured financial, travel, and arms sanctions on former Taliban leaders and members of al-Qaida. An investigative panel was also created to examine the exploitation of mineral wealth and natural resources in the DRC, and to monitor compliance with sanctions after 2003.
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Panel reports were also commissioned in 2004 in the cases of Sudan and Côte d’Ivoire. In each of these settings, the investigative panels produced detailed reports on sanctions violations and smuggling activities. The Sierra Leone Panel of Experts focused on the link between arms trafficking and diamond smuggling and found a pattern of widespread violations of UN sanctions. The Panel issued numerous policy recommendations, the most important of which was that sanctions be imposed on the government of Liberia for its role in undermining sanctions implementation and providing support for the rebels in Sierra Leone.
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Sanctions on the Charles Taylor regime soon followed.
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The Liberia Panel of Experts report confirmed allegations of the Monrovia government’s extensive involvement with and support for the armed rebellion of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone. The Panel recommended a series of measures for strengthening the enforcement of the arms embargo, diamond embargo, and travel sanctions against Liberia.
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In parallel with the emergence of the monitoring mechanisms and their many recommendations for improved implementation were a series of reform initiatives by individual member states to improve Security Council sanctions policy-making. The governments of Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden sponsored working group meetings and a series of research studies to increase the effectiveness of Security Council sanctions and strengthen the prospects for member state implementation and target state compliance. The first of these policy initiatives was the so-called
Interlaken Process in 1998–9 sponsored by the government of Switzerland. The focus of the Swiss initiative was to enhance the effectiveness of targeted financial sanctions. The Interlaken Process attempted to apply the methods utilized in combating money laundering to the challenge of implementing targeted financial sanctions. As a part of the Swiss initiative, the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University developed model legislation for governments to strengthen their capacity to implement targeted financial sanctions. The Watson Institute also produced a handbook on the implementation of targeted financial sanctions that was subsequently distributed to member states through the UN Secretariat.
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