With the end of the cold war and the increase in peace operations required to respond to intra-state conflict, the UN was increasingly asked to tackle complex civilian tasks. These went beyond the quite limited role of liaising with political actors and the “good offices” work that had characterized civilian peacekeepers until that point. Cedric Thornberry, the first Director of Civil Affairs in a UN mission (UNPROFOR in 1992), described this new broader role as follows: To fully understand the UN’s meaning of “civil affairs” it is first important to appreciate that most of the missions created between 1989 and 1992, especially, were qualitatively different from those which had preceded. It is not just that most were a lot bigger … they were to fulfil many roles additional to the archetypal ones of the 1947-1988 period. The task of the UN became, not merely to observe, but actively, itself, to bring about peace […] In a rapid sequence of major operations – principally in Namibia, Central America and Cambodia – the UN was required not only to make peace, but to conduct nationwide processes of reconstruction and national reconciliation. Their task was, in broad terms, to harmonize or unify deeply divided societies, long racked by war, and to establish democracy where previously there had been tyranny. These key themes of helping to unify divided societies and helping states to exert legitimate authority are central to the continuing role of civil affairs today. During the 1990s small civil affairs components were included in a number of missions, including those in Cyprus, Tajikistan and Georgia. At the end of that decade, major civil affairs components were deployed to Kosovo and East Timor, to implement the executive mandates that were given to peacekeeping operations at that time. In these cases civil affairs components found themselves mandated to establish effective administrations and to support capacity-building for self-government. The start of the 2000s saw a surge in the deployment of large civil affairs components to peacekeeping missions. Each one had its own unique focus and contribution to make in implementing peace mandates at the local level, but each was there to strengthen links to ordinary citizens, as well as to support the development of social conditions conducive to peace and provide an overall facilitation role locally. Civil Affairs into the Next Decade In 2008, for the first time, the UN Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and