Brazil in MINUSTAH: exporting a domestic understanding of civil-military relations to a UN peace operation

ABSTRACT Brazil led the military contingent of MINUSTAH during the 13 years of the mission and was also the largest contributor with troops for this mission. This paper argues that what has been described as the ‘Brazilian way’ of civil-military relations in that peacekeeping mission is illustrative of the Brazilian association between notions of security and development at home. The mandate for MINUSTAH is actually representative of Brazilian efforts to promote new paradigms in UN peacekeeping operations going beyond short missions in order to address the roots of the target country’s issues and ensure long-term progress. Nevertheless, if such discourse does hold merit in terms of the deeper approach to peacekeeping it encourages, this approach involves military actors beyond the security realm, into development activities, as visible during MINUSTAH. This paper describes the implications of uncoordinated military-led humanitarian initiatives and demonstrates that this security-development nexus, as it exists currently in Brazil and in the way it is exported by Brazil into peacekeeping operations like MINUSTAH, jeopardises the country’s capacity to build sustainable civilian institutions and mechanisms for longer-term recovery and development.

Developing states' troop contributions to peacekeeping operations and their impact on domestic societies has been subject to substantial scholarly interest in contemporary literature. 1 Since the Post-Cold War era, these states contributed more to peacekeeping operations and consequently led to substantial scholarly debates on their motivations and dynamics. Brazil is a clear case of developing states' new engagement in a new generation of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (PKO). 2 Despite growing scholarly interest in the domestic effects of engagement in PKO, few studies discuss the other way around; that is, the reproduction of domestic practices of civil-military relations in the international arena through peacekeeping operations. Our study aims to fill this gap. We intend to show how the Brazilian troops exported their particular view of civil-military relations to the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) from 2004 to 2017.
This view comprises an all-encompassing view of military roles, especially as providers of social policies and promoters of development. 3 Despite contributing since the very first mission in 1947 with troops and observers, 4 Brazil's longstanding engagement within MINUSTAH, from 2004 to 2017, caught particular scholarly attention due to the unusual extent of its participation in comparison to previous periods. Overall, the country deployed a total of 37,449 military personnel, a net contribution of 26 contingents distributed on a rotation basis, whilst holding the leadership of the military component during the 13 years of the operation. 5 Brazil's military leadership in MINUSTAH motivated a wide scope of scholarly contributions, ranging from the International Relations perspective 6 to the tactical aspects of troop engagement. 7 Over time, a group of scholars argued that Brazil's military leadership in MINUSTAH contributed to the development of an alleged new paradigm in PKO. Indeed, as MINUSTAH progressed, some scholars in Brazil and abroad started talking about a 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping'. 8 A portion of Brazilian scholars shared a sort of enthusiastic view about this 'new approach' to PKO, encouraged by positive media coverage of Brazil in Haiti, especially after the earthquake in 2010. 9 This enthusiasm was typical of the superlative self-perception common in Brazil at that time that affected several areas, such as foreign policy. 10 The discourse of 'never before in the history of this country', so frequently repeated in the early 2000s regarding Brazilian domestic affairs, 11 was applied to Brazil's performance in PKO: 'never before in the history of PKO have we seen an approach as successful as Brazil's in Haiti'.
This widespread positive perception towards Brazil's engagement in MINUSTAH built up a discourse of success more broadly regarding this stabilisation mission, in contrast with previous international interventions in Haiti, going as far as pointing to the development of a new ideal paradigm for peacekeeping practices. 12 In turn, this so-called new paradigm was often attributed to this alleged 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping'. This alleged approach combined robust military action with non-security-related operations closer to civilians and the local population. 13 The military, diplomatic circles, and academia altogether appeared to have incorporated the idea of a Brazilian agency in a paradigmatic change in the concept of peacekeeping operations, 14 especially as regards the practice of civil-military relations. 15 Only in the past few years, analyses started discussing unintended domestic effects of the international engagement in MINUSTAH, such as pressures for more operational leeway and legislative changes in internal security operations or using Haiti as a laboratory for developing doctrines of military intervention applicable for domestic urban security. 16 Recent studies even linked the re-rise of military role in politics from 2016 onwards as a result of positive views from Brazil's roles in Haiti as several Force Commanders would take leadership positions in government and politics. 17 Our study falls into this second strand of scholarship; that is, a more critical perspective on the Brazilian role in MINUSTAH. 18 Our main argument in this article is that the Brazilian military transposed to MINUSTAH their domestic understanding of how to relate to civilians -particularly as providers of social policies and promoters of development. The Brazilian military thus misunderstood the military component's roles as intended in the United Nations model for adequate Civil-Military Coordination (UN-CIMIC) in peacekeeping operations in ways detrimental to the mission and to the local population in the longer term. Our goal is to challenge the mainstream romanticised narrative of Brazilian engagement in Haiti. The paper builds upon Carvalho and Lima (2023)'s argument in this Special Issue that the Brazilian armed forces' perception of the inefficiency of civilian public actors in providing development and public policies legitimates military engagement in various fronts of non-security domestic roles, ultimately, discouraging the development of these capabilities by civilian actors. 19 We build upon recent studies on Brazil's misunderstanding of UN-CIMIC to present the novel argument that the MINUSTAH experience represents an export of the Brazilian security-development nexus to Haiti. Ultimately, this approach resulted in undermining the country's ability to develop solid civilian institutions as well as the necessary means for longer-term recovery and development. Our paper draws on nonstructured interviews conducted by one of the authors during two periods of fieldwork in Haiti in 2013 and 2017. Following an ethnographic approach, interviews were conducted with a wide range of actors, from uniformed and civilian peacekeepers to local populations as well as non-governmental organisation (NGO) staff. 20 The insights in this paper also rely on fieldwork conducted in Brazil in 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2018, as well as workshops with the CCOPAB and interviews with personnel of the Division of Peace Missions at the Comando de Operacões Terrestres (COTER) conducted during the period. All the interviews, both in Brazil and Haiti, were 'non-structured' and without any prompts. In Haiti, in 2013 the following formal interviews have been conducted: Force Commander; BRABAT Commander; BRABAT Staff (and particular with G9), BRAENGCOY commander and deputy-commander, Commander of the Indian Police Force, Commander and staff of the Bangladesh Female Police contingent, the UN Police Commissioner, the Heads of Political Affairs and Legal Affairs of the Office of the SRSG, the Head of the Humanitarian Affairs Coordination. Informal ethnographic conversation has been held with several troops of Brazil, and Police forces from India and Bangladesh, with civilian personnel from OCHA and other components of the mission, as well as with NGOs members. In 2017, interviews have been conducted with the Force Commander and with the Commander and Staff of BRABAT and BRAENGOY. Some of these interviews have been recorded, particularly those conducted in Brazil. In Haiti, notes have been taken.
After this introduction, the article is divided into four sections. The first section discusses the ways in which scholarly research has engaged with Brazil's distinctive peacekeeping participation in MINUSTAH and places this article's argument within this literature. Then, after describing the development of UN doctrines of civilmilitary coordination (UN-CIMIC), the second part highlights the case of UNcoordinated Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) as instances where the Brazil-led military component fulfilled its functions and implemented adequate civil-military cooperation. In contrast, the third section highlights the ways in which Brazilian troops went beyond UN standard methods of civil-military coordination, complementing their practices with distinctive approaches to civilians. Focusing on precisely the characteristics of the 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping' so often praised in the literature regarding civil-military interactions, this section describes the domestic origins of this understanding of military roles and emphasises the issues with this approach. The final section then focuses on unpacking the link between the Brazilian security-development nexus and its application during MINUSTAH, drawing attention to the obstacle this domestic military culture represents for efforts aimed at improving civilmilitary coordination in UN peacekeeping operations. Overall, it demonstrates the need to de-mythicise the Brazilian military's practices in MINUSTAH as an ideal 'new way of peacekeeping'.

Brazil in MINUSTAH: background and literature review
In many ways, MINUSTAH did represent a new way and a new moment of Brazilian engagement in peacekeeping operations. Resulting from its historical support for the principle of non-intervention and rejection of the use of force on behalf of the UN, Brazil had traditionally only been willing to approve of and engage in peacekeeping missions under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, which aims for pacific dispute settlement. 21 Therefore, Brazil's participation in MINUSTAH broke with this Brazilian tradition since MINUSTAH was Chapter VII and involved more forceful action. For this reason, in the domestic discourse, the engagement in Haiti was framed primarily as a humanitarian intervention rather than a peacekeeping operation. 22 Moreover, diverging from the previous pattern of Brazilian participation in PKO, it deployed troops to a mission in a country without obvious ties to Brazil. In the post-Cold -War context, Brazil had deployed peacekeepers in Angola, Mozambique and East Timor, 23 all three former Portuguese colonies with Portuguese as the official language. Haiti was, therefore, in some ways, outside of the traditional spectrum of interest of Brazilian diplomacy. 24 This was interpreted by most observers as part of a change in Brazil's global engagement, led by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Celso Amorim. 25 Following a strategy aimed at gaining recognition as a global player, Brazil aimed at reforms of the structure of the United Nations and into a permanent seat at the Security Council. 26 Apart from these analyses of the foreign policy dynamics which led Brazil to take on the military leadership in MINUSTAH, scholars interested in the impact of developing countries' participation in UN peacekeeping have examined on the one hand, the influence of Brazilian practices on models of UN peacekeeping, but also, on the other hand, the domestic consequences of Brazil's participation in MINUSTAH.
This renewed engagement in peacekeeping operations also led to substantial recognition by the international community. A few outcomes exemplify this trend. First, the Brazilian Navy held the leadership of the Maritime Task Force (MTF) of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) from 2011 to 2021. The Brazilian Navy was deployed to support the development of the Lebanese Navy, secure the coastline, and prevent the entry of illegal shipments (especially armament), as the first ever naval operation in the history of UN-PKO. In addition to holding the leadership of the MTF for almost 10 years, Brazil also contributed with a Frigate, with a crew of about 240 military, as part of this Maritime Task Force for the period it held leadership. 27 Second, a number of Brazilian Force Commanders (FC) in MINUSTAH, notably General Alberto dos Santos Cruz and Lieutenant General Floriano Peixoto Vieira Neto, received particular acknowledgement. The former became the first of numerous subsequent Brazilian FC for the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), celebrated for his success in implementing and affirming the Intervention Brigade concept -a particularly robust approach to PKO. 28 The latter, MINUSTAH's FC during the 2010 earthquake, was appointed a member of the Highlevel Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) in 2014. 29 In turn, this engagement provoked changes to the Brazilian approach to peacekeeping operations at the domestic level. Based on MINUSTAH contingents' direct experience and UN Civil-Military Coordination doctrine, both the Army and Navy created training centres for PKO that became internationally recognised for their excellence; 30 respectively, the Joint Centre for Peacekeeping Operations -CCOPAB (Centro Conjunto de Operações de Paz do Brasil), and the Centre of Naval Peacekeeping Operations (Centro de Operações de Paz de Caráter Naval) -COpPazNav. Following UN calls for establishing training programs for military and civil personnel in peace operations, the CCOPAB (CIOpPaz until 2010) was created in 2005 at the start of MINUSTAH so as to prepare the deployed contingents according to UN Charter Chapter VII missions. Similarly, the COpPazNav was created to train the Brazilian Navy for UN peace operations, and particularly the UN-MTF training received UN certification and high praise.
As a result, Brazil's military leadership in MINUSTAH promptly motivated a discourse describing the development of a new paradigm in PKO resulting from Brazilian influence. Much of Brazil's armed forces, diplomatic leadership and academia presented a very positive view of Brazil's military participation in MINUSTAH. 31 Significantly, a number of scholars highlighted a diplomatic tradition within Brazil's participation in UN peacekeeping towards a reluctance to use robust force and an emphasis on integrating a long-term development element to the mission, which many analysts found exemplified in the Brazilian military's actions in MINUSTAH. 32 The most optimistic thus praised the Brazilian military's close interaction with local civilian actors, its social assistance initiatives, as well as the cultural and historical affinities between Brazil and Haiti as key factors which made the mission so successful, going as far as romanticising football, carnival and capoeira as effective peacebuilding tools. 33 In this light, an emerging positive narrative describing a 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping' was developed. Ultimately, it described an alleged new form of civil-military relations that encouraged humanitarian missions by the military component in close contact with the local civilian population, especially in assistance activities aimed at local development. 34 However, gradually, a number of scholars advanced a more critical perspective on Brazil's participation in MINUSTAH, pointing out tensions between the Brazilian discourses on peacekeeping and the military's practices on the ground, with notably a growing reliance on a more robust approach to peacekeeping when tackling Haiti's urban gangs. 35 One analyst, amongst others, completely challenged the view of the Brazilian peacekeeping style as closely integrated with the local Haitian population, emphasising instead the Brazilian peacekeeping appearing rather as an aggressive police enforcer. 36 While some praised MINUSTAH's military leadership for embracing this offensive method of peacekeeping for its success in addressing the gang threat and encouraged increasing incorporation of this approach, 37 this was often more critically understood as suggesting that MINUSTAH constituted a training ground for Brazil to consolidate doctrines of military intervention applicable in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. 38 Some scholars highlighted how positive discourses on the Brazilian military's robust methods in MINUSTAH have been used to legitimise expanding military engagement domestically following similarly robust patterns. 39 In this sense, one strand of the literature highlighted the domestic consequences of Brazil's participation in MINUSTAH, most importantly the importation of the lessons learned in Haiti in relation to the pacification of urban areas as well as a strengthening of military influence on internal security matters. 40 These authors challenged the growing assumption that engaging in peacekeeping is beneficial to developing states by socialising their armed forces to democratic practices and reforming their militaries. Instead, the pattern of peacekeeping engagement of the Brazilian armed forces, particularly in MINUSTAH, suggested a reinforcement and legitimation of their traditional emphasis on inward-looking military missions and reliance on a robust militarised approach to public security. 41 Yet, while it is true that the engagement in MINUSTAH did have this reinforcing effect, this research also stressed the pre-existence of these tendencies in the Brazilian military prior to the PKO in Haiti. 42 Some studies show that, even though there was indeed a two-way transfer of knowledge between MINUSTAH and Rio, it cannot be considered a distinct Brazilian approach to peacekeeping. One interpretation finds the roots of this combination of coercive and cooperative methods as far as French colonial Counterinsurgency tactics and US policing techniques. 43 Regardless, a number of studies have called attention to Brazilian peacekeepers' self-perception as 'socialisers' deployed to display leadership and 'export' their domestic practices. These studies, however, mostly focused on their export of Brazilian policing methods, with some analysts even suggesting that the Brazilian military's prior experience with pacification tactics in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro actually motivated the international community's invitation of Brazil to lead the military component of MINUSTAH. 44 Only very recently have a few scholars examined the influence of domestic patterns of civil-military relations on Brazilian peacekeeping practices. A small number of studies have pointed out Brazilian contingents' tendency to directly deliver social assistance to the local population, identifying it as aiming to gather local support in the mission or to address pressing local needs. These authors have started suggesting that this seemed to be the result of a confusion on the distinction between Brazilian practices and UN-CIMIC doctrines, and in turn was producing a seemingly 'Brazilianized' form of CIMIC in practice in MINUSTAH. 45 This way, this paper inscribes itself into the strand of the literature which aims to break with romanticised narratives on the alleged 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping', presenting a more critical perspective on outcomes for the local populations in Haiti. In accordance with the few more recent studies which identified the domestic origins of Brazilian peacekeepers' practices of civil-military relations, we highlight this transposition to MINUSTAH of Brazilian ways of relating to civilians, which caused frequent misunderstandings of adequate UN-CIMIC methods. Going further, this article aims to bring out the link between these Brazilian practices of civil-military relations and the military's integrated security-development nexus. We build upon Carvalho and Lima (2023)'s argument in this Special Issue that this domestic security-development nexus implies a self-perception as the more effective providers of public policies and promoters of development among Brazilian armed forces. 46 Consequently, we argue that this has led to a tendency to expand beyond strictly military roles and directly deliver social assistance to the local population, not following the identification of a strategic need, but occurring naturally as a result of these well-entrenched domestic doctrines.

Brazil and UN-CIMIC in MINUSTAH
The Brazilian military did not radically reject UN understandings of civil-military relations, and, in fact, successfully implemented UN doctrines as the case of UN-coordinated Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) will highlight. The dynamics of Brazil's military engagement in MINUSTAH were the outcome of a complex interplay between domestic military doctrines and incredibly novel UN methods of civil-military coordination. Indeed, MINUSTAH was considered a transformative mission for peacekeeping models, particularly as regards how to relate with civilians. This meant military troops needed to adapt to a new approach to civil-military relations in peacekeeping.
MINUSTAH took place following a global re-evaluation of the meaning and value of PKO, particularly regarding the practice of civil-military relations. By definition, civilians are an inevitable part of all peacekeeping missions, making civil-military interaction an inherent element of all UN PKO. Consequently, it has always been indispensable for both military and civilian actors to have a mutual understanding of each other's roles and responsibilities. However, since the end of the Cold War, the UN has had to undertake increasingly complex 'multidimensional' missions aimed at assisting the establishment of sustainable peace, by supporting the construction of sustainable governance institutions, humanitarian assistance, or disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants (DDR), for instance. In addition, since the 1990s, there were substantial shifts in UN peacekeeping operations. 47 Many operations occurred in areas where there was no peace to keep or no formal military conflict. That was the case of MINUSTAH. This expansion from 'traditional' missions to these complex 'multidimensional' operations has implied closer and multiplied contact between military actors and a wide range of civilian actors, from administrators to legal experts, humanitarian workers, etc., making adequate civil-military coordination particularly crucial. 48 Faced with this major challenge, the UN pushed to examine the implications of these new developments and introduced and gradually updated reforms of peacekeeping operations in order to standardise the understanding and practice of civil-military relations in the missions. 49 The UN codified this necessary civil-military coordination under a mechanism labelled UN-CIMIC aimed at establishing adequate dialogue and interaction between civilian and military components to ensure the success of integrated humanitarian operations. It became crucial for both military and civilian actors to have a clear understanding of their separate roles, by emphasising their distinctive spheres of competence and responsibility and their own limitations. Military actors had to understand the complex network of humanitarian assistance and diversity of civilian actors (local, national and international), which, for the most part, were present long before and would remain on the ground long after temporary military personnel would. Meanwhile, civilian actors needed to understand and accept the necessity for occasional military encroachment on humanitarian space. 50 Indeed, the military sometimes has practical means and specific expertise useful to some aspects of social and humanitarian assistance, such as rapid deployment of large numbers of personnel, supplies, etc. 51 Yet, direct military involvement in relief operations can present a number of issues and ultimately undermine the overall humanitarian efforts, especially in terms of the indispensable perception of neutrality and impartiality of humanitarian relief that military presence (vehicles, weapons, uniforms) can affect. 52 Ultimately, this is why humanitarian and social assistance should be directed and implemented through civilian actors as a matter of principle. Therefore, military support for humanitarian assistance should be an option of absolute last resort when no civilian alternative is available. It should only be done upon request and coordination with humanitarian organisations and based on the comparative advantages of the military component -mostly infrastructure support or indirect assistance enabling direct humanitarian action by non-military actors. 53 This is why constant sharing of information between the military and the other components of a multidimensional mission, specially the CMCoord Officer and the Civilian Affairs Officer team is indispensable. Furthermore, assistance by military forces should be implemented in a clearly defined framework which anticipates an exit strategy allowing for the prompt transfer of the functions assumed by military actors to the adequate civilian actors to ensure that military assistance will not affect long-term relief and recovery negatively. 54 Therefore, in addition to the complexity of the internal political situation in Haiti, the novelty and characteristics of MINUSTAH demanded that military troops adapt to a new approach to peacekeeping, especially regarding the coordination with the CMCoord Officer and Civilian Affairs Officer of the mission. As emphasised by Hamann (2009) QIPs essentially revolve around building confidence towards the peace process by making partners within the local communities and sometimes providing infrastructure support, to be implemented imperatively within a short timeframe. 56 Successful QIPs indeed tend to promote increased support for the mission's goals and the peace process overall, which is crucial for facilitating the mission's progress and coordination between its various components and for promoting sustainable gains. A prominent example is the project 'Light and Security' that was developed to address street lighting issues in the neighbourhood of Cité Soleil, in Port-au-Prince. Not only did local populations feel more vulnerable to crime, but the lack of proper lighting also meant that MINUSTAH troops were more exposed during night patrols. 57 As leaders from the Community Violence Reduction (CVR) Section came to identify this issue as an immediate necessity, 58 the Brazilian Battalion in Cité Soleil (BRABAT 1) took the initiative of executing the 'Light and Security' project, which involved installing about 200 solar-powered lamp posts in that neighbourhood. 59 This way, the 'Light and Security' Project was funded, overseen and assessed by the CMCoord of MINUSTAH, manufactured and installed by local technicians trained by a Haitian company specialised in solar energy innovation (ENERSA). 60 Furthermore, projects like this one enabled the training and temporary employment of thousands of atrisk youth in the process. 61 While the 'Light and Security' project in Cité Soleil functioned mostly through these local community members and the training provided by the local manufacturing company, it also maximised budget efficiency by involving MINUSTAH's Brazilian Military Engineering Company (MEC) for the additional manpower and their heavy equipment. 62 Resulting from such successful civil-military integration, the project produced immediate impact and promised sustainable progress. 63 As a consequence of these installations, local newspapers not only praised the cooperation between the different actors and highlighted the repeated initiatives of similar projects by the Brazilian Battalion, but also reported renewed freer movements of the population in the streets at night and a decreased sense of insecurity. 64 Such positive coverage exemplifies the confidence-building purpose of such QIPs around the mission, reinforcing trust between population and troops thanks to the visibility of the Brazilian Battalion and even military engineers, as part of impactful community projects like this one. Therefore, in the tactical point of view, the project was favourable for the military operations in the neighbourhood. The work done by the Brazilian Battalion in this project was properly coordinated with other UN civil agencies involved in the mission and with the direct participation of the local population. The agency of the local population was fundamental in detecting the need for this project, as well as implementing and maintaining the structures constructed. And because it was executed in coordination with other UN agencies in the mission, the project was strategically developed in order to achieve a longterm transformation and be sustainable even after the end of the mission. 65 In this sense, the 'Light and Security' QIP is representative of several other QIPs carried out during MINUSTAH, which showcase the possibility of successful coordination between civilian and military components of the mission. Indeed, although QIPs have been used in UN peacekeeping organisations since 2001, MINUSTAH is the mission with most resources invested in QIPs, 66 and the Brazilian military component distinguished itself for its extensive use-91 QIPs between 2004 and 2017. 67 As shown by Hamann, Garbino and Folly (2017), the phases of the operation involving more robust actions from the military component were accompanied by an increase of QIPs executed by the military, as was the case at the occasion of military encounters with armed groups. 68 It is precisely because of the effectiveness of QIPs in terms of fostering trust and credibility in the mission that MINUSTAH funded so many. Brazil's engagement with and successful implementation of UN-coordinated QIPs highlights that the 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping' did not radically break with UN understandings of civilmilitary relations.

Beyond UN-CIMIC: the so-called 'Brazilian way'
Despite a successful approach to the use of QIPs, the Brazilian military leadership in MINUSTAH went beyond strictly defined UN doctrines of civil-military coordination. The praise motivated by this so-called 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping' was most often related precisely to the ways in which the Brazilian military complemented standard UN practices in MINUSTAH with distinctive approaches to civilians. Although CIMIC should aim primarily at helping the peace process, civil assistance projects executed by the military often present the added benefit of gaining public support and credibility. Consequently, such motives sometimes become the main drivers of military participation in assistance functions, blurring the lines between civilian and military goals.
We argue that Brazilian commanders exported a particular view of the interaction between security and development in their actions in MINUSTAH. According to this view, as described by Carvalho and Lima (2023), civilian agencies are perceived as ineffective in providing policies, and hence the military is seen as a legitimate actor to provide numerous services-e.g. social programs, education, health care, disaster relief etc. 69 This non-traditional and expanded military role, rather common in Brazil and Latin American states, 70 is seen as key to 'winning hearts and minds' 71 and lies within the category of 'subsidiary missions'. 72 In this sense, we understand that Brazilian troops and commanders transposed this understanding of humanitarian operations to Haiti. However, we emphasise that this 'transposition' of domestic practices was not prompted by the identification of a strategic need or purpose (intelligence gathering, public support, etc.). Quite the opposite, we argue that this resulted naturally from well-entrenched domestic doctrines. Consequently, Brazilian troops undertook beneficiary actions under this same understanding; that is, the military placed military assistance at the very centre of their interpretation of UN Civil-Military Coordination. This represents an important part of Brazil's misunderstanding of the concept of UN-CIMIC -that is, the military component central's role in undertaking a UN peacekeeping mission -which, conversely, constitutes the very core of the much celebrated 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping'.

Social-civic actions (ACISOs)
Most of the numerous activities of civil assistance conducted by Brazilian troops in Haiti derived from the Brazilian tradition of ação cívico-social (ACISOs, or social-civic actions). 73 Common practice in the country since the late 1960s and codified in doctrine since 2009, ACISOs are sporadic operations of social-civic assistance conducted by military units for the benefit of local communities in their area of responsibility. Aimed at solving urgent problems, thus producing considerable immediate impacts, ACISOs can involve infrastructure work (on roads or buildings, mainly schools or medical posts), water quality improvement and distribution, food distribution, primary medical care, educational and recreational activities, etc. Mainly part of a 'winning hearts and minds' mindset, these ACISOs comprise a significant psychological objective of enhancing a positive perception of the Brazilian Army, winning the support of the local populations and, to a certain extent, favouring their collaboration in intelligence gathering about suspicious activities in the region of military operations. 74 In the context of MINUSTAH, this Brazilian approach to humanitarian assistance on the model of ACISOs was implemented in various cases. By their own initiative and without coordination with the CMCoord, Brazilian troops frequently used their own personnel, supplies and resources to deliver food to local populations or provide diverse forms of direct aid, after the 2010 earthquake and beyond. 75 Most notably, this Brazilian approach was particularly visible in the social assistance activities provided by Brazilian troops in anticipation of and then in the aftermath of robust raids carried out in areas of Port-au-Prince disrupted by armed gangs. 76 Such practices allowed troops to gather intelligence before the raids while ensuring continued public support afterwards. 77 It should be noted, however, that, beyond the context where a strategic need for ACISOs was identified (such as surrounding the robust raids), the Brazilian military conducted ACISOs even without such specific purpose, 78 suggesting indeed that this practice occurred naturally as a result of well-entrenched domestic doctrines.
Needless to say that those ACISOs were extremely appreciated by the local population and very well exploited by the Brazilian contingent in Haiti, for its tactical and operational results, but also as impactful Public Relations (PR) for the troops. 79 Countless newspaper articles, TV broadcasts and webpages reported this humanitarian engagement displayed by the Brazilian soldiers, who carried out robust patrols one day and dressed as clowns with children from the same location the next. However, this sort of civil assistance delivered by the military does not amount to adequate implementation of civil-military cooperation as the UN understands it, which, as detailed previously, envisions distinct roles for civil and military components, with specific opportunities for cooperation, and competence transfer instead. Although the 'winning hearts and minds' strategic thinking behind Brazilian ACISOs resembles the confidence-building objective of QIPs, UN guidelines for QIPs aim precisely at the integrated and coordinated implementation, anticipating competence transfer, that ACISOs lack. UN conception of civil-military cooperation thus precisely discourages 'winning hearts and minds' strategies because of their limited long-term benefits and their tendency to reinforce dependency on unsustainable military support. 80 This is not to say that the military should have no role in supporting humanitarian assistance. As emphasised above, the UN-CIMIC framework asserts that the military must enable and facilitate humanitarian actors in fulfilling their roles, and, in extreme cases where there is no civilian alternative to meet critical needs, provide direct aid. 81 Social actions delivered by the military were most acceptable under such exceptional circumstances, as was the case of the earthquake in 2010. In this context, all personnel, independent of being military or civilian, were immediately demanded to protect civilians and alleviate suffering. Even in the very particular and urgent context as the earthquake response, it must be highlighted that civil-military coordination still had to precede the voluntarist military response to humanitarian crises. Under such considerations, the military component was in a comparative advantage over the civilian one regarding capabilities for immediate response to the earthquake, and their mobilisation undoubtedly saved uncountable lives, as many testimonies from both local populations and UN personnel confirm. 82 Yet, after this type of immediate response, the military should then return its regular role of supporting Civil Affairs Officer, UN agencies, and NGOs in providing indirect humanitarian assistance, mainly by providing a safe and secure environment, facilitating access, sharing information, and, as a measure of last resort, providing actual assistance. 83 In contrast with such emergent cases requiring direct military involvement in humanitarian activities, the excessive voluntarism of the Brazilian military in providing direct humanitarian support through ACISOs created a number of disastrous cases like that of the refugee camps in 2013, as reported by Garbino and Valdetaro 2018. Two years after the earthquake, as the national government and international community struggled to find a quick solution for housing the massive population of civilians who lost everything in the earthquake, there still remained several Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps around Port au Prince, which were turning into a quasi-permanent living. In response to the constant high demand for supplies and scarcity of drinkable water and food, a Brazilian contingent decided to deliver food to the camps, out of a feeling of solidarity, without informing or coordinating with the CIMIC cell. This spontaneous action provoked significant movements and fluctuations of camp populations who moved from one camp to another to receive the distributed supplies. This internal migration in the several camps heavily hindered the work of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), compromising the coordinated planning of a systematic assistance, and actually delaying the support that the civilian and humanitarian component could provide. 84 This represents one example of the detrimental consequences of the uncoordinated delivery of humanitarian assistance by Brazilian troops in MINUSTAH. Brazil's excessive practice of ACISOs, using and abusing of them, many times compromised the efforts of the CMCoord of the mission. Organized around exceptional and temporary military assets, ACISOs lacked the coordination necessary to deliver adequate competence transfer to the relevant local actors. 85 Moreover, as most of the time they were not coordinated with non-military components, especially with the humanitarian sector, ACISOs counterproductively overlapped with the role of other actors, sometimes even endangering the perception of neutrality and putting long-term programmes in risk. 86 This was so recurrent that even the Brazilian military recognised the issue. In a report from 2013, the G9 of the BRABAT 18 (the Civil Affairs Section of the Brazilian Battalion in MINUSTAH) had as core objectives:

Military engagement with philanthropic institutions
Beyond ACISOs, Brazilian soldiers' engagement with orphanages and other philanthropic institutions -some of them managed by religious groups -is another instance where Brazilian troops' understanding of how to relate with civilians was transposed to Haiti. Although this practice was visible among other national contingents in Haiti, the tendency was particularly strong among Brazilian troops. As one of the authors observed during his fieldwork in Haiti in 2013, military officers and non-commission officers (NCOs) from the Brazilian Engineering Company 'adopted' a certain orphanage where most children had lost their parents in the 2010 earthquake. During their six-month turn with MINUSTAH, groups of off-duty soldiers would drive to the orphanage on Saturdays, with authorisation from the Company's commander, bringing soup and food, supplying the water reservoir, playing with the children for hours, singing Brazilian songs or some other in Haitian Creole (despite not speaking the language). 89 Descriptions and images of this practice were extensively used to display the humanitarian behaviour of Brazilian soldiers and construct the myth of the 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping'. 90 On an individual level, such behaviour is admirable and naturally stems from noble intentions aimed at helping miserable local populations. However, as peacekeepers, this type of practice presents a number of problems. Indeed, troops' involvement with specific orphanages, especially when it comes to the criteria for 'electing' an institution in particular to support, which was sometimes based on the soldiers' religious beliefs, represents a biased attitude towards the mission. Such activities, although practised while off-duty, would privilege some institutions over others, thus breaking with the principle of impartiality required from military troops in UN PKO. 91 Moreover, in this case, the soldiers' (or unit's) decision to support an orphanage was not coordinated with the CMCoord Officer or in coherence with the humanitarian plan of the operation. Consequently, although impactful in the short term, this lack of civilmilitary coordination implied that nothing was organised for the institution in question once the soldiers' time in Haiti ended. Because the institutions had been counting on this uncoordinated voluntary support for years, they found themselves in trouble by the time Brazilian contingents were withdrawn in 2017. Instead of providing long-term solutions by coordinating continuity plans together with other UN agencies or building practices sustainable by the local populations themselves, such individually well-intentioned practices had created significant long-term problems for the institutions and the overall mission. Therefore, this 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping' could lead to a more negative impact in the long term instead of contributing to the successful accomplishment of the mission in its multidimensional goal of ensuring sustainable peace and security in Haiti. 92

'The Brazilian way': exporting the Brazilian security-development nexus
In truth, it is often challenging and problematic to design and practice civil-military coordination in a way that drives successful cooperation. Beyond matters of logistical coordination, obstacles to civil-military cooperation often stem from diverging philosophies and vested interests, or the mutual perception of the other component's interests. 93 In interactions between military and civilian components during MINUSTAH, a number of prejudices, mutual distrust and conflict of authority were commonly pointed as obstacles to coherent coordination in the mission. MINUSTAH's civilian component personnel, in general, tended to point out the military's arrogance and denounce its lack of cooperation in sharing intelligence and goals, as they felt the military component to be mostly playing by its own interests instead of the interests of the mission as a whole. 94 In fact, some international organisations avoided carrying out any action precisely in areas where the military was present. 95 Reciprocally, Brazilian military personnel would describe the civilians as disorganised, lacking the military team's commitment and engagement with the projects, feeling like they did not form part of the same team. 96 Clearly, such prejudices are counterproductive to the mission's ultimate objectives, especially in the case of an operation presenting a structure as integrated and multidimensional as MINUSTAH's. This attitude displayed by the Brazilian military in MINUSTAH directly reflects the Brazilian armed forces' typical distrust in domestic civilian actors for efficiently delivering public policies, as described by Carvalho and Lima 2023. 97 Ultimately, the Brazilian military's perception of civilian actors as inefficient is one explanation for its tendency to directly deliver humanitarian assistance to the population, mirroring the domestic dynamic whereby the country's military is expanding beyond strictly security-related roles into the provision of public policies and development. Brazilian troops essentially translated into MINUSTAH the Brazilian army's motto 'Braço Forte -Mão Amiga'. 98 Indeed, the 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping', as described (and often praised) in the literature, often revolved precisely around those aspects of civil-military relations which relate to the uncoordinated humanitarian help provided by Brazilian troops to local populations. As Marcos Venicio Mendonça (2017) 99 However, this apparent Brazilian success story should be examined under more critical eyes. Internationally-coordinated multidimensional peacekeeping operations are not meant to be implemented by a simple transposition of domestic military behaviour, especially regarding civil-military cooperation. Military actions with a humanitarian characteristic, either in small or big scale, have a political-strategical implication that goes beyond the immediate effect or result. Most importantly, as we described previously, the specific methods used under Brazilian military leadership lacked the cross-component coordination necessary to anticipate competence transfers to the relevant social actors. 100 For this reason, the negative consequences for the civilian population of the demobilisation of the Brazilian contingent in Haiti may have been greater than the humanitarian actions developed during the 13 years of the mission. While an exclusively military approach may focus more on the threats, due to the nature of the military frame of operation, a proper coordination among civilian and military actors in the mission regarding the humanitarian response has the potential to focus on the drivers of the conflict or instability.
The notebook on civil-military coordination in Peace Operations published by the Peace Operations Training Institute (2012) states: Civil-military coordination is an exercise in strategic management, regardless of level, whose operators must be able to 'think globally and act locally' (or think strategically while acting tactically) and leverage the comparative advantages of each component or partner in order to maximize stakeholders in and minimize spoilers to the peace process in the right manner and time. 101 In order to have a proper implementation of this coordination, the simple presence of a CIMIC cell in battalions (G9) appears not to be sufficient to produce the coordination required. When dealing with armed forces which act according to well-entrenched beliefs that distrust civilian actors for efficiently delivering public policies and development, what is necessary is a much deeper re-framing of military beliefs and practices. The Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on UN Peace Operations (HIPPO Report, 2015) reinforced the democratic principle of the primacy of national civil authority, which must lead any PKO, on all levels. 102 Therefore, the military component of peacekeeping missions must understand that civil-military coordination is to be designed and implemented under a political-strategical civil overview of the mission and not decided unilaterally in tactical or operational levels of the missions as it was done by the Brazilian military leadership in MINUSTAH.
Although, to domestic as well as international audiences, Brazilian contingents in Haiti clearly proved capable to operate as robust armed force and humanitarian resource, it is definitely unwarranted to argue that it has had an impact on peacekeeping practices of military interaction with civilians structurally speaking. Although numeric participation in peacekeeping operations from emerging powers like Brazil has indeed increased significantly, studies emphasise that this has not equated with a similar increase in influence upon paradigmatic peacekeeping methods. 103 Indeed, although this appears to have been the mainstream narrative of MINUSTAH in Brazil, it is imperative to demythicise Brazil's so-called 'way' of practising civil-military integration in peacekeeping operations, not only because this exaggerates the Brazilian military's influence on global peacekeeping practices, but also because this voluntarist attitude from Brazilian troops should not become a new paradigm for future peacekeeping operations. 104

Conclusion
In conclusion, as this paper has shown, what has been described as the 'Brazilian way' of practising civil-military relations in peacekeeping is illustrative indeed of the Brazilian association between notions of security and development domestically -the topic of this Special Issue. The mandate for MINUSTAH is actually representative of Brazilian efforts, spearheaded by Minister of Foreign Affairs Celso Amorim in 2004, to promote new paradigms in UN peacekeeping going beyond short missions in order to address the roots of the target country's issues and ensure long-term progress. 105 Consequently, when it held military leadership of MINUSTAH, the Brazilian military transposed traditional Brazilian understandings of how to relate to civilians to MINUSTAH. Resulting from their typical distrust of civilian actors for efficiently delivering public policies and development, the Brazilian contingent spontaneously took it upon itself to deliver social assistance and development projects to the Haitian population with no systematic coordination with other components of the mission.
Nevertheless, if such discourse does hold merit in terms of the different approach to peacekeeping it encourages, this approach involves military actors acting beyond the security realm, into development activities, as visible domestically and in MINUSTAH. Crucially, this practice lacked the cross-component coordination necessary to anticipate competence transfers to the relevant social actors, thus jeopardising the longer-term sustainability of the operation's endeavour. Moreover, in the context of a multidimensional, integrated peace operation like MINUSTAH, the delivery of social assistance by the military component also threatens the perception of the neutrality and impartiality of the mission's humanitarian relief activities. Therefore, it becomes clear that this security-development nexus as it exists currently in Brazil and in the way it is imported by Brazil into peacekeeping operations like MINUSTAH not only represented a misunderstanding of UN-CIMIC doctrines but also, crucially, jeopardised the country's capacity to build sustainable civilian institutions and mechanisms for longer-term recovery and development. Consequently, this paper urges scholars and the broader audience against a romanticisation of this so-called 'Brazilian way of peacekeeping' and to instead consider the underlying implications of such an expansion of military roles beyond the security realm, as well as the long-term consequences for the local population after the withdrawal of the mission. Carbonnier, 'Humanitarian and Development Aid in the Context of Stabilization'; Jagger, 'Blurring the Lines?' 53. There are three categories of humanitarian assistance, distinguished based on the degree of contact with the affected populations. Direct assistance involves face-to-face distribution of goods and services; indirect assistance is at least one step removed from the population, e.g. transporting relief goods or humanitarian personnel; infrastructure support involves providing general services (e.g. road repair) that facilitate relief but are not to or solely for the benefit of the affect population. See UN OCHA, UN-CMCoord Handbook.