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The Evolution of Peacekeeping Intelligence: The UN’s Laboratory in Mali

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Perspectives on Military Intelligence from the First World War to Mali

Abstract

This chapter looks at how peacekeeping intelligence expanded in MINUSMA and how it worked in practice. Apart from reviewing the main innovations and structures, and the means for information gathering, processing, dissemination and direction, the chapter identifies many challenges and summarizes these by means of three dichotomies. First, the European countries brought in the innovative intelligence capabilities, heavily based on advanced NATO procedures, but the main force was mostly populated with African soldiers who had the greater cultural familiarity and knew more of the locally spoken languages. Marrying the Western and African capabilities turned out to be challenging due to incoherent procedures, systems, levels of experience as well as reporting mechanisms. In addition, information-sharing from classified NATO databases proved difficult. Second, whereas several innovative intelligence units produced comprehensive intelligence reports focusing on the longer term, MINUSMA’s military leadership valued current and security-related intelligence more, but that was insufficiently available within the organization. Third, the contributions of military and civilian actors were largely stovepiped and lacked sufficient sharing, coordination and integration. The reasons underlying this were organizational, political as well as technical in nature. Coordination boards were installed but these were not fully effective due to a lack of directive powers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Flynn et al. 2012, p. 14.

  2. 2.

    See e.g., Flynn et al. 2010; Kitzen et al. 2013, pp. 159–191.

  3. 3.

    Kitzen 2012.

  4. 4.

    Spencer and Balasevicius 2009.

  5. 5.

    Perugini 2008, pp. 213–227.

  6. 6.

    Norheim-Martinsen and Ravndal 2011.

  7. 7.

    Dorn 2010, p. 277.

  8. 8.

    In the twenty-first century, the United Nations added new “intelligence” components to its missions, though avoiding the term explicitly. For instance, in 2005–06, it instituted “Joint Mission Analysis Centres” and the “Joint Operations Centres” in its peacekeeping operations and formulated a general policy for them (United Nations, Department of Peacekeeping Operations 2006).

  9. 9.

    The African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA) was authorized by the UN Security Council in resolution 2085 of 20 December 2012. It was a military mission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), led by Nigeria. The first forces arrived on the ground in January 2013.

  10. 10.

    Fortunately, the Ebola epidemic did not spread to Mali, though about eight fatalities occurred in the country, including in Mali’s capital, Bamako. World Health Organization 2015.

  11. 11.

    United Nations 2015a, b. The site gives currently authorized figures (August 2016) of 13,300 military personnel and 1,920 police.

  12. 12.

    For an elaboration on JMACs, see Ramjoué 2011. See also Chap. 8 by Theunens.

  13. 13.

    PowerPoint presentation by representative of UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Carlisle Barracks, United States, 28 January 2015.

  14. 14.

    First Commander ASIFU, Col. Keijsers, cited in Karlsrud and Smith 2015, p. 11.

  15. 15.

    1 NLD ISR COY Information Brief. PowerPoint presentation, 13 September 2014.

  16. 16.

    Several other countries contributed soldiers to the ISR Company, including Belgium, Denmark, Estonia and Switzerland.

  17. 17.

    To ensure internal validity, four officers and one civilian analyst from The Netherlands and two civilians from Canada who were all closely involved in the mission reviewed draft versions of the paper. The draft versions were met with responses of recognition, as well as reactions indicating that important issues had been revealed.

  18. 18.

    MINUSMA fatality statistics: 6 (2013), 39 (2014); 29 (2015), with most fatalities from malicious acts. Statistics available at http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/resources/statistics/fatalities.shtml Accessed 8 February 2017; cf. BBC 2015.

  19. 19.

    See e.g. Cammaert 2003.

  20. 20.

    One of MINUSMA’s former field officers commented: “Most of the challenges faced by MINUSMA in the regions were, indeed, mostly linked to local community issues (e.g., economic and political rivalries within and between communities and individuals) and not directly to the peace process. Hence formal institutional frameworks, by themselves, only gave a partial understanding, which impacted MINUSMA activities.” Email of 28 August 2016.

  21. 21.

    ASIFU found that it possessed high-resolution (<1.5 m) satellite imagery for only 8 small locations and that for its imagery covering all of Mali the best resolution was 150 m, hardly enough to do intelligence-led peacekeeping, especially within a city or to guide a helicopter or a UAV to a particular target. Especially for automated change detection and to identify emerging threats, higher resolution imagery integrated into a Geographical Information System (GIS) was deemed to be essential. MINUSMA ASIFU 2014.

  22. 22.

    Van Dalen 2015.

  23. 23.

    MINUSMA ASIFU PowerPoint presentation, September 24, 2015. Bamako.

  24. 24.

    Silobreaker is a browser-based tool that structures open source information available on the internet.

  25. 25.

    United Nations 2015; Lewis and Farge 2015.

  26. 26.

    New York Times, 17 March 2015.

  27. 27.

    For a detailed analysis see Rietjens and Zomer (forthcoming).

  28. 28.

    “With all the new information coming in, one of the main problems was to interpret the data. For instance, ‘how do you know if a vehicule heading towards MINUSMA is a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) or a contractor’s car?’” Email from former MINUSMA civilian staff member, 28 August 2016.

  29. 29.

    A photograph of the damage is available at http://www.unmultimedia.org/photo/detail.jsp?id=664/664068. A video taken the day after shows the aerostat still in the air. MINUSMA 2016.

  30. 30.

    United Nations 2016.

  31. 31.

    Interview with a captain of the ISR Company by one of the authors.

  32. 32.

    When the original system was created in the US, TITAAN stood for “Theatre Independent Tactical Army and Air Force Network” but in The Netherlands version it was renamed “Theatre Independent Tactical Adaptive Armed Forces Network,” with the same acronym.

  33. 33.

    For example, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping, Hervé Ladsous, obtained agreement in 2014 from Mauritania's President to provide two intelligence officers for the Mali mission but only realized later that they could not be put into ASIFU because the unit held information and equipment that only NATO countries were allowed to access (Ladsous 2016).

  34. 34.

    Within the Dutch ISR Company this cell was coined the All Sources Intelligence Cell (ASIC), while at ASIFU HQ such a cell was named the Analysis Fusion Cell (AFC).

  35. 35.

    ASIFU information brief, PowerPoint presentation, November 2015, Bamako.

  36. 36.

    For a more general overview of the tension between military and humanitarian actors during peacekeeping operations, see Lucius and Rietjens 2016.

  37. 37.

    UN official in New York in correspondence with one of the authors in 2016.

  38. 38.

    These included amongst others representatives of JMAC, Stabilization and Reconstruction and Protection of Civilians.

  39. 39.

    This information was retrieved from several interviews with Dutch respondents as well as with Swedish representatives at ASIFU HQ.

  40. 40.

    Van Dalen 2015.

  41. 41.

    At the morning briefs of the Force Commander’s staff at MINUSMA headquarters, the U2 was tasked with describing the “Opposing Forces Situation” while the U3 would deal with the “Friendly Forces.”

  42. 42.

    Walzer 2016, pp. 289–293.

  43. 43.

    Abilova and Novosseloff 2016.

  44. 44.

    The interviews revealed that there was very little communication between Barkhane and the Dutch ISR Company. Most of the communication with Barkhane went through the SOLTG that was co-located with the ISR Company in Gao. Both Barkhane and SOLTG were special operations units and as a result their people trusted each other much more. Still, personal connections depended to a large extent what and how much information was being shared between Barkhane and SOLTG. In general Barkhane was very reserved in sharing information. And if they did, it was mostly for “SOLTG eyes” only. In some cases the SOLTG shared information they had received from Barkhane with their ISR colleagues, but this was incidentally.

  45. 45.

    MINUSMA was one of several UN mission selected to trial i2 software. It was being rolled out in early 2016. Other software can be adopted from NATO but the lesson from TITAAN is that such software needs to be adequately customized and re-purposed for the United Nations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Netherlands Defence Academy, Breda, The Netherlands

    Sebastiaan Rietjens

  2. Defence Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada and the Canadian Forces College, Toronto, Canada

    A. Walter Dorn

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  1. Sebastiaan Rietjens
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Correspondence to Sebastiaan Rietjens .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Military Sciences, Netherlands Defence Academy Faculty of Military Sciences, Breda, The Netherlands

    Floribert Baudet

  2. Department of History and Art History, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Eleni Braat

  3. Veteraneninstituut , Doorn, The Netherlands

    Jeoffrey van Woensel

  4. Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Independent scholar, retired Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Aad Wever

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Rietjens, S., Dorn, A.W. (2017). The Evolution of Peacekeeping Intelligence: The UN’s Laboratory in Mali. In: Baudet, F., Braat, E., van Woensel, J., Wever, A. (eds) Perspectives on Military Intelligence from the First World War to Mali. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-183-8_9

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