National Interests as Friction: Peacekeeping in Somalia and Mali

The concept of friction is applied to challenge the assumption that the main goal of peace support operations is to permanently stabilise a country. By exploring missions in Somalia and Mali,
where neighbouring states are the main troop contributors, it is suggested that we should focus on the interaction and friction among troop contributing countries within missions. They express in practice how national interests play out in the framework of international organisations. Even when it is agreed within an organisation like the African Union (Somalia) or the United Nations (Mali) to deploy a mission, enforceable sets of rules and norms that should define how cooperation is to occur during deployment are lacking and negotiable. This is especially the case when those rules and norms contradict national interests of individual troop contributors. In both missions under scrutiny in the article, the result is mission incoherence and fragmentation.