Eurasian Peacekeepers and U.S. Training
The former Soviet Union has more often been the recipient of United Nations peacekeeping missions than contributors to them. But several of the countries in the region have been working, often with assistance from the United States, to get their militaries ready to participate in international peacekeeping.
Georgia recently announced that it will be taking part in two European Union-led peacekeeping missions in Africa, representing the first substantial participation from the Caucasus or Central Asia in a peacekeeping operation other than U.S.- or NATO-led missions. (Georgia has sent substantial contingents to Iraq and Afghanistan, and Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan all have sent token units there or to Kosovo.) There are small numbers of Eurasian forces, mainly police officers, currently deployed on UN missions: twenty Tajikistanis (all police officers) in Darfur, one Armenian in Lebanon, and several Kyrgyzstanis scattered around the world: one officer in Abeyi (contested between Sudan and South Sudan), five in Lebanon, nine in South Sudan, one in Haiti, and ten in Darfur. Kazakhstan has had a handful of police officers deployed in Darfur in the past, but none now. Azerbaijan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have never had any UN peacekeepers deployed.
Georgia announced this month that it will send a company to the newly formed EU mission to the Central African Republic and appears poised to send a token force (possibly two officers) to the EU mission to Mali. Georgia also has recently held discussions with UN officials about participating in UN peacekeeping operations.
Although the U.S. rarely participates in UN peacekeeping missions itself, it has trained over 170,000 peacekeepers around the world as part of its Global Peace Operations Initiative. The large majority of these have been in Africa and only a handful in Eurasia: according to data from Security Assistance Monitor data, under peacekeeping training programs the U.S. has trained 58 soldiers from Kazakhstan, 54 from Kyrgyzstan, 18 from Tajikistan and one from Georgia. Dedicated peacekeeping units from the region, however, may receive training from U.S. programs that are not solely focused on peacekeeping; for instance, seven students from Kazakhstan’s KAZBRIG brigade were trained through the International Military Education and Training and the Combatting Terrorism Fellowship Program accounts in 2012.
Both the trainer and recipient countries have a vested interest in this training. U.S. officials have estimated that a UN peacekeeping deployment costs one-eighth as much as a comparable U.S. military deployment, so if the U.S. can train foreign soldiers to carry out missions it would otherwise deem necessary to do itself, it can bring substantial savings. And for the peacekeeping countries, they get access to training, equipment, and real-world experience that would be impossible otherwise. In discussing the potential Mali deployment, Georgia's Defense Minister Irakli Alasania explained: “We are interested in international operations for two reasons. The first - we are equal contributors to international and European security and we also receive great combat experience, that will further assist to strengthening Georgia's defence capabilities.”
As recently as December 2013, Armenia was considering contributing to the UN mission in Lebanon, but no concrete decision had yet been made. And the U.S. also recently added Armenia to the GPOI program. The GPOI program “will contribute to the participation of Armenian peacekeepers in international activities, particularly, the [UN] peacekeeping action in Lebanon,” said the country's First Deputy Minister of Defense Davit Tonoyan.
Among Central Asian countries, Kazakhstan has done the most to try to get ready for UN peacekeeping missions. The Ministry of Defense has reportedly been “seriously considering” sending its troops to UN mission, possibly in Africa, and the defense ministry has “drawn up a list of possible UN deployments and arrived at seven feasible operations in which it may become involved.” But the unit that the U.S. and other Western partners has been training for years in preparation for international deployment, KAZBRIG, continues to be delayed. (KAZBRIG training does not fall under the GPOI program.) The primary problem has been that Kazakhstan doesn't have enough professional soldiers to man the brigade. In a 2010 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, the U.S. embassy in Astana complained that “[t]his non-deployable non-mission capable status will continue until there is a serious commitment on behalf of the Kazakhstan MOD and Government to professionalize.”
A handful of Tajikistan soldiers have participated in the UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur. In 2010, U.S. Central Command spent $3.5 million to help Tajikistan's government with “the goal of training and equipping a Peacekeeping Operations Battalion for the eventual deployment of an infantry company in support of a United Nations Peacekeeping Operation in 2011.” Tajikistan has yet to deploy a full unit internationally, and given the dire state of the armed forces it's not clear when it may be able to. But under GPOI, the U.S. has been aiding some Tajikistan soldiers in getting peacekeeping training.