In a well-researched book that often reads like a thriller, William Stanley tells the story of MINUGUA, the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (1994–2004). MINUGUA was mandated to help Guatemala build conditions that would sustain ‘a lasting peace’ after a long and bitter internal war. The UN Department of Political Affairs (DPA) commissioned Enabling Peace in Guatemala and Stanley was provided with enviable access to MINUGUA's extensive documentation. As a result the book is slightly biased in its perspective, which is broadly favourable to the UN, but it is nonetheless a detailed and critical chronological account of the mission's work.
Guatemala's daily homicide rate is today higher than at any point in the war, and almost all spheres of life in the country are affected by swiftly mutating crime networks. What Stanley describes as ‘the descent into mass criminality and near state failure’ was evident by the late 1990s. In hindsight, the most pressing question is: what if anything could MINUGUA have done to prevent what has ensued – ‘a kind of purgatory that is neither war nor peace’ (p. 312)?
On the positive side, the 1996 Peace Accords, which MINUGUA helped to mediate, brought about the cessation of armed conflict. Stanley argues that this was by no means a ‘done deal’ and that it might not have happened, or would have happened only much later, without MINUGUA. Certainly, the rural poor that formed the bulk of the war's victims had reasons to want peace. Economic elites also wanted it: by the late 1980s Guatemala's pariah status was harming investment and tourism. But the guerrilla might have continued, as did the FARC in Colombia, by striking deals with emerging cartels. However, the greatest danger lay in sections of the military which saw no need to negotiate with a defeated guerrilla; the retention of repressive institutions and practices associated with counter-insurgency could be justified. The UN had to work with sections of the army and of the elite that were willing at least to cease armed confrontation. Stanley argues that the MINUGUA's focus on human rights verification in the first two years may have helped to provide the ‘transparency needed for the URNG to take a leap of faith and disarm’. The relatively smooth demobilisation of combatants was perhaps MINUGUA's most significant achievement.
Stanley identifies other successes: the mission produced good and impartial human rights reports, its presence probably led to the investigation of the murder of Bishop Gerardi, and some institutional reform projects were successful. The unsung Programa de Asistencia Institucional a la Reforma Legal (Institutional Support Programme for Legislative Reform, PROLEY) helped Congress learn to draft new forms of legislation. MINUGUA helped some marginalised sectors to advocate more effectively. The UN mandated what initially appeared to be a defanged truth and justice commission, the Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (Commission on Historical Clarification, CEH), to investigate human rights abuses committed during the war. The CEH could not attribute individual responsibility or initiate prosecutions of perpetrators, but its report was much stronger than anticipated: it laid the groundwork for potential prosecutions and limited the mobility of former military officers, who became liable for arrest and prosecution by other countries under universal jurisdictions of international law.
As Cousens and Kumar have argued in Peacebuilding as Politics: Cultivating Peace in Fragile Societies (Lynne Rienner, 2001), peace-building involves both the ‘negative’ task of preventing a relapse into renewed armed confrontation and the ‘positive’ task of overcoming the underlying causes of war. The prevention of relapse into war depends on political processes and institutions that can resolve conflict without resorting to violence and the existence of effective public institutions, particularly a strong judiciary and legal framework. These depend on each other. Unlike neighbouring El Salvador, in which the much stronger Left focused its greater bargaining power on eliminating most of the political and domestic security power of the army, Guatemala's Peace Accords included detailed plans for the reduction of the armed forces and the strengthening of civilian power; respect for human rights, judicial review and research into violations committed during the armed conflict; and promotion of indigenous rights and economic and agrarian reform. This aspect of the accords, an ambitious wish list developed by the much weaker Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, URNG), soon began to unravel. One gets the impression, from the book, of the head of mission's increasing frustration with the smoke and mirrors of the elites and the army, which may have wanted a ceasefire but had no interest in socio-economic reform. Sadly, both Stanley and the Guatemalan press that he often cites are right: peace, democracy, governance, equity and justice mattered more to outsiders and friendly states than to many Guatemalans. Latent crime networks segued out of the military and intelligence apparatus: these required a compliant police and a fragile judiciary. The final chapters of the book document the dark farce of the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (Guatemalan Republican Front, FRG) years, when the Peace Accords began to collapse.
Stanley correctly concludes that MINUGUA lacked a clear strategy after 1996. In hindsight, the mission should have focused on security and the rule of law, as did ONUSAL, the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador. This grave mistake is striking because it represents an ‘unlearning’ of the Salvadorean process, where intense effort was made to introduce a new civilian police force purged of the unaccountable militarised police of the past. Instead, MINUGUA gave the highest priority to pressuring successive governments to raise taxes. These increases were of course necessary to enable other reforms, but politically they were unwinnable. MINUGUA might have done more with backing from the Security Council, an adequate budget and better guidance, better leadership (at times) and, above all, clearer direction. Successive MINUGUA heads of mission must have become increasingly aware of this. But such problems are obviously more apparent in hindsight – from the vantage point of 2014, it is easier to see the then hidden, but entrenched, opposition that the mission faced at all times. Its partial and sometimes modest achievements are remarkable under the circumstances, but tragically, Guatemala really is now in a condition that corresponds to Stanley's assessment: a kind of purgatory which is neither war nor peace.
