The Foreign Service Journal, June 2012

WLS: Initially, yes. Though the il- legal regime of General Raoul Cedras remained in power for most of my first year at post, we eschewed all contact with it —something Pres. Carter’s mis- sion later criticizedme for, even though it was Clinton administration policy, not mine. On Sept. 19, 1994, we invadedHaiti with 21,000 troops and returned Aris- tide to office. But Aristide failed to take advantage of the historic opportunity that the invasion and strong Washing- ton support had provided, so much of what we accomplished has withered on the vine. This underscores one of the more frustrating aspects of my career: the absence of sustained engagement from so much of our diplomacy. At my Defense Department pre-depar- ture briefing, for example, our military were so consumed by concern for an “exit strategy” that I had to interrupt to ask to be briefed about our “entry strategy” — about which nothing had been said up to that point. Each time we engage diplomatically, and then leave before there is a minimum of in- digenous institutional capacity, our re- engagement is more costly and less likely to succeed. FSJ: Your final Foreign Service as- signment was as ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from 1998 to 2001. And two years later, you returned as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the Demo- cratic Republic of the Congo, where you successfully led all facets of the largest U.N. peacekeeping operation in history from 2003 to 2008. Howwould you assess the country’s prospects after such a grim history? WLS: Looking at the Congo—and I often said this while in Haiti, as well — it seems that “Everything is broken but the human spirit.” The civil war there drew in troops from many other countries in Central and Southern Africa—so many, in fact, that the Con- golese conflict is sometimes referred to as “Africa’s First World War.” More than four million people lost their lives during the conflict, most from indirect causes. Another three million people were displaced, and nearly a million became refugees. Yet the war got sparse public attention at best. The country’s size, and the trauma associated with the United Nations’ first peacekeeping mission there at in- dependence in the 1960s, made the Se- curity Council reluctant to re-enter the Congo some four decades later. That hesitancy was reflected in the inade- quate troop levels it authorized for the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in the Congo, known as MONUC. Even so, the Security Council did support the peace process by passing successive resolutions prolonging MONUC’s mandate. That commit- ment has helped the Congo make gen- uine progress, but the country still has a long, difficult road ahead. Gender- based violence remains rampant, and there are few new faces on the political landscape. On the whole, though, the atmosphere was more positive than at the time of my departure. Paradoxically, in some ways the DRC’s riches have kept it on the bot- tom rung of the development ladder. But as a nation of 53 million people bordering nine countries in the heart of Africa, a stable Congo could become one of Africa’s richest countries and a natural political center of gravity. That potential is precisely why ongoing diplomatic efforts there are so impor- tant. FSJ: Shortly after retiring from the Foreign Service in 2001 after a 38-year career, you took up the first of two United Nations positions, as Special Representative to the Secretary-Gen- eral for Western Sahara and Chief of Mission for the U.N. Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara. How did that appointment come about, and do you see any way that long-running conflict can be resolved? WLS: I had just retired, and the SRSG/Chief of Mission position in Western Sahara had just become va- cant. Based on my African experience and expressed interest, both Secretary Colin Powell and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Negroponte actively supported me for the position with Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Thus only two months after retiring, I found myself on my way back to Africa, although this time in the greater Maghreb. TheWestern Sahara remains one of the world’s most intractable issues, de- spite my efforts over two years and 22 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U N E 2 0 1 2 Left: Amb. Swing meets with then-Senator Barack Obama, Sept. 2006. Top right: Amb. Swing with his wife, Yuen Cheong. Bottom right: Amb. Swing with U.N. Sec- retary-General Ban Ki Moon.