Category: 01

After four years of peace negotiations, the 52-year-long civil war between the Colombian government and the left wing guerrilla FARC-EP recently came to an end. What will happen now to the thousands of combatants who are laying down their arms and what are the challenges to their reintegration? Could a gender aware reintegration programme hold the key to long-term peace?

On November 30, 2016 the Colombian government formally ratified a revised Peace Agreement after a national plebiscite rejected the original peace accord. The agreement ended the longest armed conflict in the western hemisphere and in Latina America.

The FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo) started the demobilisation process in January 2017. The combatants are currently gathered in 23 transitory areas (zonas veredales transitorias de normalización) and 7 camps that will be in force for 180 days. The government is expecting around 6.300 combatants to reach the areas. In relation to children associated with the armed group, the High Commissioner said that the delivery´s protocols will be activated upon FARC´s arrival in the zones: as FARC combatants enter the zones they will be delivering the minors and UNICEF will receive them.

The FARC´s demobilisation and disarmament is supported by the United Nations Special Mission in Colombia. The mission has the mandate to monitor and verify the disarmament, and be part of the tripartite mechanism that will control and verify the definitive bilateral ceasefire and cessation of hostilities.

Once the FARC´s members are settled in the transitory areas, the first step will be for arms and weapons to be laid down and registered. Unstable armaments will be destroyed on site and the UN Mission will remove all the weapons from the camp after 180 days.

After the demobilisation and disarmament, the former combatants will also go through a reintegration process that, at present, is based on the current legal framework implemented by the Colombian Agency for Reintegration (Agencia Colombian para la Reintegración: ACR). The Colombian government agency ACR is the institution in charge of the reintegration process. The ACR was created on 3 November 2011 as a new state agency ascribed to the Administrative Department of the Presidency of the Republic.

Overview of the Colombian reintegration process

The reintegration of former combatants is a formidable challenge for Colombia. In addition to the FARC´s members that will soon reintegrate, data from the ACR shows that there are currently 15.043 persons taking part in the governmental reintegration process and a further 15.478 former combatants have completed the reintegration programme since the ACR´s creation. Among the persons currently going through the reintegration programme, 47% are former paramilitaries, 42% are former FARC´s combatants who demobilized before the peace agreement and most of the remaining former combatants were enrolled with the guerrilla ELN (Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional).

Additionally, if the on-going negotiation between the ELN and the Colombian government succeeds there will be another collective demobilization of about 2.500 combatants. This figure includes both men and women but not children. Although it is impossible to know with certainty how many children and adolescents are currently linked to the armed groups or have been demobilised in the last few decades, between 1999 and 2013 the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) assisted 5,417 children and adolescents who were separated from illegal armed groups (28 percent of them are girls and 72 percent boys).

The ACR takes into account national and international guidelines on DDR, such as the United Nations Integrated Standards for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (IDDRS). The main components of the reintegration process are social and economic assistance (such as payments for basic living expenses), psychosocial care, vocational training, and access to the national health system. The reintegration model includes eight dimensions: personal, productive, family, habitability, health, educational, civic and security.

Challenges to the reintegration process

Image credit: Silvia Andrea Moreno/Flickr.

The reintegration of former combatants is a key factor in the stabilisation of countries that are transitioning from conflict to peace. Unsuccessful reintegration could lead to the creation of new armed groups, the expansion of criminal activities and the recurrence of violence. In transitional and violent settings “unemployed, demobilized young men, socialized to violence and brutality during war, are more likely than others to form gangs, particularly in urban areas, and pose a constant threat to the security of women and children” (De Watteville, 2002: ix). As it has been acknowledged by the international agencies working in reintegration, creating alternative livelihoods and jobs opportunities is exceptionally difficult in post-conflict or conflict settings. The high number of former combatants to reintegrate into the civilian life poses an arduous challenge for the second most economically unequal country in Latin America, with an estimated unemployment rate of 8.3 and one of the highest and most inequitable concentrations of land ownership in the world.

Colombia has already experienced the consequences of an incomplete reintegration process. After the demobilization of the paramilitary group United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Spanish: Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia: AUC) in 2005 and 2006, new armed groups emerged. Those groups are referred to as Las Bandas emergentes en Colombia o bandas criminales emergentes (BACRIM), meaning emerging criminal gangs, by the Colombian government but it has shown similar continuity with the previous AUC structure and often some mid-level paramilitary commanders have joined this new groups.

There is a risk that many demobilized combatants will receive recruitment offers or will be threatened into joining the new organizations and narcotraffic groups, as has happened in the past. A recent Wall Steet Journal article reported that the Brazilian gang Primer Comando is recruiting FARC´s members in order to extend its drug network and routes. Since one of the main factors that can jeopardize the reintegration of former combatants is the enormous Colombian drugs trafficking market, the government launched a comprehensive strategy against illegal crops with the goal to substitute and clean about 50,000 hectares of illicit crops in 2017.

One of the main challenges for former combatants is to find a sustainable and decent employment. Most of the ex-combatants have an extremely limited education level and it will be very challenging for them to succeed in the increasingly competitive job market. Many of them joined the armed groups as teenagers and did not complete a formal school education. The governmental reintegration programme developed learning programs for adults and it offers education opportunities. However, adults’ education has many challenges and not all former combatants succeed in completing the studies. Among those who took part in the reintegration programme, 21.875 passed the primary level of elementary school, 8.064 passed the second grade of elementary education, 14.967 graduated from the high school and 2.763 attended further education. Most of the jobs that are accessible with a low education level are paid the national minimum wage, which in 2017 is about 240 euro (737,717 Colombian pesos). Without doubt, the drugs cartels and the armed groups offer payments that are much higher than those of the regular job market for unschooled persons.

Additionally, the former combatants have to overcome the trauma generated by the war. It has been estimated that in Colombia 90% of the people who enter the reintegration process have some kind of psychosocial affectation.There are also gender specific risks and challenges effecting the reintegration phase. Demobilised women may face stigma and discrimination. In Colombia, where gender roles and patriarchal models are very strong, female combatants that have transgressed traditional gender norms – by joining the armed groups – face difficulties in their personal lives and for many of them returning to their families is not an option. It has been reported that 87% of individually demobilised women choose to leave in anonymous urban environments like Bogotá and Medellín, instead of their native towns.

The gender dimension of reintegration programmes

The importance of a gender mainstreaming approach during the reintegration processes is widely recognized today and many manuals and guidelines have been designed to reflect this (United Nations 2014, UN Women 2012). Also, the literature emerging in the conflict resolution field examining masculinities and transitional justice shows the importance of addressing militarized and hegemonic identities as a key step toward peace (see Specht 2013; Enloe 2008; Cockburn 2010). However, the demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants frequently overlooks the relationship between masculinities and the construction of peace (see Flisi 2016). Still there is limited knowledge on how to deconstruct wartime masculinities and too few attempts to promote non-violent ideals of manhood.

In Colombia different initiatives are emerging that focus on the gender dimensions of the transition to the civilian life, with a special focus on family relationship, positive masculinities and gender roles. In this sense, the Colombian ACR´s reintegration programme has elaborated a gender strategy. The strategy promotes non-violent gender relations, both in the reintegration process and in the families. This is done through the implementation of psychosocial activities that include a gender and new masculinities perspective. To this extent, competencies such as non-violent conflict resolution and assertive relationships are encouraged by cultivating the ability to identify and generate constructive relationships. The focus is on effective communication, tolerance, empathy, emotional assertiveness and the demilitarization of masculinities and femininities.

Many of the challenges of a reintegration programme are related to the community, family and domestic spheres. The anthropologist Kimberly Theidon, who researched the reintegration of former combatants in Colombia, highlights the risk of an increase and “domestication” of violence. Similarly, researchers showed an increase in sexual violence against women and girls as well as other forms of violence after the reintegration of paramilitaries (see Caicedo Delgado 2007; Londoño & Ramírez 2007). Tackling gender based violence is an important component of a holistic and integral reintegration programme. A successful gender strategy is not limited to a focus on womens’ needs and should also consider the gender dynamics and the relationship within the family and the community. A transformative gender reintegration programme should include activities that are able to tackle gender stereotypes such as initiatives to promote the role of men as care givers, equal redistribution of the childcare responsibilities and womens’ economic and political empowerment, among many others examples. Since the end of 2011 the ACR designed and implemented a special focus on tackling interfamily violence that is composed of 24 activities aimed to address both men and women. But the effectiveness of those activities is not known and further research is needed to identify the impact in the long term.

Conclusions

In Colombia fighting narcotraffic and criminal armed groups should be at the forefront of the government strategies to ensure a successful reintegration. However, there other many other aspects of the reintegration that are equally important and should not be overlooked such as technical and professional education, employment generation, psychosocial caring, family and community support, domestic violence and gender specific needs. There is important evidence of the Colombian Government´s efforts to incorporate a gender approach into the reintegration programme. Colombia could provide valuable examples in elaborating strategies to tackle violence against women and deconstructing militarized masculinities as part of the reintegration process but further evidence on this needs to be collected.

Isabella Flisi is an international development worker and researcher with almost 10 years of experience working on human rights in Colombia and in Latin America. She has worked with different international organizations: Peace Brigades International, Christian Aid, War Child Holland, FAO and KIT-Royal Tropical Institute. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Ulster University Transitional Justice Institute, where she is researching child soldiers´ reintegration and reparations programs from a gender perspective. Flisi has both a master’s degree in international cooperation and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Bologna, Italy. Her expertise covers conflict transformation, peace-building, DDR, gender-based violence and human rights with a strong focus on women and child rights. She has published the article The reintegration of former combatants in Colombia: addressing violent masculinities in a fragile context in Gender & Development. She wrote about the reparations for victims of sexual violence in Colombia in PassBlue.

Chemical weapons elicit a very specific emotive and political response from populations, namely, anxiety. What are the drivers behind the fears surrounding chemical weapons? 

“War, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation. A victorious war…destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will…Terror…kills individuals, and intimidates thousands”.

Writing in 1920, Leon Trotsky thus attributed the power of war and terrorism to its psychological effect. The ability to intimidate and coerce is the key strategy in a world in flux; fear and uncertainty are the weapons of choice for terrorist groups. The observation that terrorists endeavour to kill few and create fear among many has been woven tightly into the fabric of terrorism discourse for decades.  

But the current century has witnessed an evolved threat paradigm in which the aim of a new type of terrorist group is to achieve “a lot of people watching and a lot of people dead”. Chemical weapons are often presented as the apex of such a goal. Yet increasingly it is argued that chemical weapons are merely a tool to elicit fear that far exceeds their actual destructive clout. This fear is a very human response. The psychological power of chemical weapons is intrinsically linked to their contaminant nature, indiscriminate harm and ability to undermine an individual’s sense of security.

Are chemical weapons really weapons of mass destruction, with a devastating impact on infrastructure, life, and property? Or, are they weapons of terror? Distinguishing between the two, this article queries how uncertainty feeds the fears surrounding chemical weapons. To what extent does the weapon of terror moniker depend on the concept of mass destruction?

The enduring power of contamination

Image credit: New York National Guard/Flickr.

Chemical weapons have an ancient history. Early hunter-gatherers learned to poison their arrows to ensure an effective kill. Poison gas as a weapon of war was recorded by Thucydides in 428 BCE. The scorched earth tactic of poisoning wells using the rotten corpses of people who had died from infectious disease was used across the Ottoman era and Middle Ages. Chemical weapons have been utilised – or attempted – in many conflicts since then. The British government, for example, approved the use of sulphur fumes at the siege of Sebastopol during the Crimean War. Even in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US Army used white phosphorous grenades, as did the British.

As scientific advances began to allow a greater multiplicity of chemical agents in industrial quantities, concerns mounted over potential consequences. In recognition of the sentiment that injury or death by poison is inhumane, the Hague Conventions (1899 & 1907) outlawed the battlefield use of poisoned weapons and toxic gas via projectiles. The declaration prohibiting the dissemination of asphyxiating and deleterious gases was ratified by all major powers except the US which refused to sign, arguing that projectiles as detailed in the convention had not yet been fully developed.

The use of poison has long been regarded as morally reprehensible. This harks back to disdain inherent to poisoning and its associations with chemical weapons: in contrast to the hero’s death by sword in battle, poisoning is regarded as cowardly and secretive. Yet this became more acute in the aftermath of the Hague Conventions: moral indignation follows the breaking of accepted conventions, shattering indoctrinated agreement as to non-use. In the early 20^th century, both Allies and Axis powers were reluctant to be the first to breach the law.

Even General John Pershing, having established the U.S. military’s first gas warfare unit in 1917, denounced chemical weapons as “abhorrent to civilization…a cruel, unfair and improper use of science…fraught with the gravest danger to non-combatants”. By the end of WWI, over 124,000 tonnes of chlorine, phosgene and mustard gases had been dispersed, causing approximately 90,000 deaths and 1,230,853 injuries and earning WWI the moniker, “the chemist’s war”. Though the development of gas masks reduced the number of casualties in the later years, the scale of chemical warfare had set the precedent for a lingering psychological and moral response. That even Hitler refused to use chemical weapons on the battlefield (if not in the gas chambers) cemented their standing as a wholly unacceptable weapon of war.

For decades, the threat from chemical weapons remained largely in the hands of states. Almost two decades since the Chemical Weapons Convention came into force outlawing the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons, the threat of non-state actors obtaining or producing chemical weapons has become of increasing concern. Large quantities of improperly disposed unconventional weapons have been unearthed in recent decades. After WWII, for instance, tons of mustard gas, sarin, soman, tabun, hydrogen cyanide and many other agents were left in storage facilities near towns and cities, buried in landfills across the world or dumped at sea. During the Cold War, chemical weapons facilities proliferated across the world, shrouded in secrecy. Throughout this time, in the Soviet Union thousands of tonnes of chemical materials were simply dumped in undisclosed, unchartered locations. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, some chemical research units were abandoned, leaving available a mass of untraced and unacknowledged weaponry.

Chemical weapons and non-state actors

Various terrorist organisations have spent years working on developing chemical weapons, of which the so-called Islamic State (IS) is but one. The eleventh volume of al-Qaida’s Encyclopaedia of Jihad provides instructions on how to construct chemical and biological weapons, although al-Qaida seems to have balked at actually using such weapons. Where groups have succeeded in their use, they have created vast shockwaves, with minimal outlay. In 1978, a Palestinian group injected non-lethal quantities of mercury into Jaffa oranges leading many countries to cease imports, jeopardising a market worth $172 million to Israel at the time. In 1989, terrorists reportedly laced Chilean grapes with cyanide, costing the Chilean fruit industry $333 million, despite the chemical only having been identified in two grapes.

In 1995, Aum Shinrikyo unleashed the largest gas attack in peacetime history on several lines of the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring thousands. Though the proportion of people killed was relatively low compared to numbers injured, the attack demonstrated the ability of non-state actors to obtain and use significant quantities of non-conventional weapons. It has subsequently been cast as a “crossing of the Rubicon” (to pass a point of no return), foreshadowing further similar attacks.

Chemical anxieties

Chemical weapons elicit a very specific emotive and political response. When the threat and impact of terrorist attacks using conventional weapons against Western targets is so real, why does the as-yet unrealised potential for chemical terror attacks in the West retain a particular power over our thinking?

Attempts to explain the anxieties surrounding chemical weapons remain incomplete when considered alongside conventional weapons with similarly cruel capabilities. Why, as in Aleppo or Homs, do we regard using explosives to tear people apart as more humane than burning or asphyxiating them to death? Weapons such as “soft nosed” bullets (which disintegrate upon entry to the body) were banned alongside asphyxiating gases by the 1899 Hague Conventions, yet they do not receive such global censure.

Part of the concern specifically attributed to chemical weapons lies in the human fear of unpredictable, adverse events such as the potential to develop illness after exposure. The most terrifying threats are those perceived not just as lethal but as dehumanising. The fear of chemical weapons is therefore, at least partially, a result of their potential to cause insidious harm.

So the potency of chemical weapons lies in the unknown and in how they fester in the imagination of those who have felt threatened by them. Chemical weapons attacks are distinguished by the propagation of functional somatic – medically unexplained – physical symptoms, bestowing unconventional weapons a “psychogenic” hallmark. A result of the potential for chemical weapons to yield psychiatric illness, the notion that the long-term psychological consequences of unconventional weapons may be worse than acute physical, is popular in psychological circles. The many chemical incidents in which low-risk patients far outnumbered those whose exposure could be confirmed, contribute to this “weapon of terror” epithet: the perception of exposure to a toxin is a greater determinant of health status and anxiety than actual exposure. After the Aum Shinrikyo attack, over 4,000 people with no sign of exposure sought medical care.

Many chemicals are perceived by the public as having a high to extreme degree of uncertainty; many, too, elicit strong anxiety, which can drive somatic symptoms. In order to form judgement under uncertainty, people form intuitive assessments upon relevant information. Attempting to decrease their uncertainty, people may apply preconceived beliefs (for instance, that chemicals are dangerous) to symptoms, even if benign, constructing a causal link between symptom and event.

Consider, for instance, cases in Israel, a nation so subject to the corollaries of war that it has been termed a natural station for the study of stress. During the 1991 Gulf War, Israel endured 18 Scud ballistic missile attacks from Iraq. The stress of conventional bombardment was compounded by the fear that the missiles contained nerve agents; residents had been instructed to carry gas masks and prepare for Iraqi use of biological or chemical weapons. Fearing contamination, over 1,000 patients attended medical facilities with symptoms such as tremors and breathing difficulties. Only 22% of patients had been genuinely injured: none by biochemical agents. 27% of casualties had mistakenly injected themselves with atropine, an antidote to nerve agents.

Conclusion

There are two schools of thought explaining the power of chemical weapons. On one hand is the argument that chemical weapons can be harnessed as weapons of mass destruction. This bears significant political pull. On the other, there is scepticism as to their capabilities, where instead they are branded weapons of psychological terror. The schism between “weapon of terror” and “weapon of mass destruction” is rarely acknowledged. Conflation of the two allowed Tony Blair to drawn upon their psychological power to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which shattered the Middle East.

The truth lies somewhere in between. The psychological and physical fallout of chemical weapons are, essentially, two sides of the same coin. Feared or sustained physical harm gives rise to short-term anxiety and long-term psychological distress. Chemical weapons victims may never be definitively free from the physical effect, thus the psychological effects may endure. Uncertainty directly impacts upon fear, and is thus one of the most influential features of human history. As human experience is a complex nexus of affect, behaviour, cognition and physiology, chemical weapons are disturbing for their ability to bear upon each, fracturing this integration. Uncertainty can become visceral. While war does not accommodate certainty, the potential use of chemical weapons will feed doubt and continue to draw substantial political influence.

Clare Henley divides her time between acting as Assistant to the Director of the Oxford Process, and as Project Officer at Refugee Trauma Initiative. She previously worked on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons Initiative at Chatham House, and at the Maudsley Hospital’s Centre for Anxiety Disorders and Trauma. Prior to this, she interned on a decontamination project with the Behavioural Science team at Porton Down, Public Health England. Clare has an MSc in War and Psychiatry from King’s College London, where her thesis focused on the psychological impact of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Her other work focused on topics such as the impact of war on child soldiers and of being held hostage. She also has a BSc in Psychology from the University of Exeter.

With right-wing populism growing across Europe, Germany was thought to be an exemption to this trend. However, the rise of Alternative for Germany could potentially change this.

While far right parties have been on the rise throughout Europe for decades, it seemed like Germany was immune to the seduction of the far-right. Whereas, among others, the National Front in France, the Dansk Folkeparti, Flemish Interest in Belgium and the Freedom Party in Austria recorded growing electoral results, parties such as the Republicans (REP), the National Democratic Party (NPD) or the German People’s Union (DVU) were unable to overcome the electoral threshold. Although successful at the national level and represented in several regional parliaments (Landtage), no party to the right of the Christian Democrats has managed to gain seats in the Bundestag since 1949. Why has this been the case in Germany?

Germany’s “special status”

Political scientists and other observers both in and outside the country were puzzled by the ‘special status’ of the German party system, all the more so because the key conditions for the electoral success of right-wing populist and radical right parties were not that different from the European neighbors. Several studies have shown a small but relatively stable presence of nativist, even xenophobic attitudes within the German society. However, although right-wing populist parties profited from these preconditions in several state elections – e.g. in Baden-Württemberg in the early 1990s and some East German states from the beginning the new millennium onwards – they were not able to establish at the federal level. One can hardly identify one single reason for this mismatch, but according to most scholars, the answer lies in three German characteristics.

Firstly, the German political right was divided and fractioned. While in France, Austria, Switzerland and other European countries, major far right parties were able to unify the right beyond the Conservatives, the right spectrum in Germany was distinguished by a high degree of competition. For instance, with NPD and DVU, two main players of the extreme right competed against each other in several Land elections until their consolidation in 2011. At the same time, the populist radical right spectrum was marked by the coexistence of various small parties, such as The Freedom or the so-called ‘Pro’ Movement, a minuscule group that basically operates in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Secondly, the yearlong strategy of the Christian Democrats, which consisted in the integration of conservative streams within the German society, might have had a negative impact on newcomers on the right. Especially the Bavarian CSU, an autonomous party that is embedded in the Christian Democratic Union at the federal level—the CDU, in turn, holds no regional branch in Bavaria—was able to address conservative voters beyond the Bavarian borders and helped to maintain the strategy of the Union.

The third reason relates to German history. Since the end of World War II, radical or extreme right parties have been dealing with stigmatization and exclusion from the political discourse.  While far right parties are treated as outsiders in almost all countries, in Germany, they are suspected of standing in the tradition of historical Nazism and thus barred. For instance, when the NPD found its way into the state parliament of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in 2006, the other parties decided to not to support any of the NPD’s parliamentary initiatives (so-called ‘Schweriner Weg’ – ‘Way of Schwerin’).

These unfavorable conditions contributed a great deal to keeping far right parties out of the German party system for more than six decades. At the beginning of 2017, however, it seems like the ‘anti-fascist consensus’ of the German post-war era has begun to totter. Violent acts against refugees have risen. In 2015, the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (Bundeskriminalamt) had registered a right-wing populist political movement (‘Pegida’), although solely a regional phenomenon in the city of Dresden, has dominated media coverage on East Germany. The most impressive evidence for the establishment of a far right stream is the ongoing success of a new right-wing populist party: the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Accounting for the AfD’s rise

Image credit: Metropollco.org/Flickr.

Since its foundation in the first quarter of 2013, the AfD has been denoting growing electoral support. Whereas it had failed to jump over the electoral threshold in the 2013 general election, the party won seats in every state election since that time. With partly extremely high results—such as 24.3 percent in Saxony-Anhalt and 20.8 percent in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania—the AfD is already the most successful new party in the history of the Federal Republic.

To some scholars—including the author of this piece—one crucial reason for the popularity of the AfD are the arbitrary features of its ideology in the first two years of its existence. While clearly Eurosceptic and populist in terms of its anti-elitist appeal, the official program of the AfD in 2013/2014 did not include any nativist or xenophobic components.

However, studies diagnose a clearly right-wing populist profile for both the sympathizers and the members of the AfD from the start. Other inquiries illustrate that in 2013, the public opinion as well as the first studies on the party located the AfD firmly at the right of CDU and CSU but did not imply a far right profile. The party therefore profited from its moderate but populist program while at the same time, as it was slightly more conservative than the Christian Democrats, the AfD was attractive for far right voters and activists from the very beginning. At the same time, the success of the AfD mirrors the evolution of the Christian Democrats, which have turned to a more liberal party under the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel. While this strategy has clearly marginalized the SPD, which scores just under 21 percent in the national polls, it has annoyed a great deal of more conservative voters, who now lean towards the AfD.

It is not surprising that that the agenda of the AfD changed after the 2014 European election. Whereas anti-Euro and anti-EU positions had dominated its program until May or so, the party highlighted its conservative social values in the face of the state elections in autumn 2014. During this phase of the party’s history, growing tensions about the leadership of its founder Bernd Lucke, an economist from the University of Hamburg and the ideological direction of the AfD, including its relationship to Pegida, occurred. In summer 2015, Mr Lucke lost the election to the party executive against the leader of the Saxonian regional branch and parliamentary party, Frauke Petry, who chairs the party until today together with co-speaker Jörg Meuthen. Even though scandals and internal conflicts have been shattering the party, some observers’ expectation that the party will break down did not prove true. At the beginning of the election year 2017, the polls indicate high electoral support (around 12 percent) for the AfD at the general election in September.

While it is right that a successful far right party in Germany mirrors a normalcy in Europe, it is also a benchmark for the crisis of representative democracy and the elites and the parties that underpin it. Populist far right parties—including Donald Trump in the United States by the way—benefit from growing contempt towards the political elites and the perception of individual powerlessness in the political process. In that sense, parties like the FPÖ in Austria, the French Front National or the AfD in Germany are phenomena of modernization, although they do not directly profit from its negative economic consequences (e.g. unemployment), as scholars have argued for years.

Not surprisingly, recent studies show that electoral support for the AfD is not entirely based on protest—in fact, there is a great deal of convergence between the political positions of the voters and the ideology of the party. Empirical results also illustrate that the share of losers of the modernization process within the AfD electorate is high, but they do not represent the majority of their voters. In other words, the AfD is at least as much the exponent of a latent new right movement as it is the vehicle of discontent. At the same time, it represents to a certain extent an invisible coalition of middle-class and lower-class voters.

In contrast to its predecessors in the far right spectrum, the AfD faces hardly any competitors in its niche. Founded by both neo-liberal, Eurosceptical economists (e.g. former party leader Bernd Luck and Joachim Starbatty) and socially conservative activists (e.g. Beatrix von Storch), the AfD became the center of attraction for right-wing networks without being right-wing extremist on its own terms. Due to its electoral successes, the AfD became a much more attractive player in the spectrum than other, much less successful parties did.

The political public, especially the established parties, still seem somehow paralyzed and helpless. Strategies oscillate between stigmatization—the approach that embossed the exposure to the far right for sixty years—and dispute. While some argue that the—in part—extreme ideology of the party prohibits its inclusion in the democratic discourse, approaches that are more pragmatic allude to three crucial facts.

First, they highlight the ‘normative power of the factual’: by being represented in more than half of the state parliaments and likely to master the electoral threshold in the upcoming federal election, the AfD is already an established actor, at least in the medium term. Ignoring is thus no strategic option. Secondly, while it was easy to demonize other right-wing parties, such as the NPD, due to their extremist ideology and appeal, the AfD, although clearly part of the far right, is not a fascist party. Even if the party has evolved from a moderate conservative-Eurosceptic to a far right party, it still lacks a clear racist and anti-system agenda. Neither its anti-elitist appeal to the people nor its Islamophobia resemble the neo-Nazi agenda of the NPD or other parties of this spectrum. It is thus not surprising that the anti-fascist reflexes of the political public failed.

Finally, the common strategy of demonization (or stigmatization) could even prove to be counterproductive: populist far right parties feed on their perception as political outsiders. Therefore, any attempt to exclude the AfD from the political discourse can be interpreted as another move by the ‘aloof’ political class and strengthen the bond between the party and its supporters.

Outlook

In the face of the increasing establishment of the AfD and constantly high results in the polls, the prospects for the newcomer party are auspicious. The AfD will almost certainly be represented in the next German Bundestag. This will pose a challenge to the established parties. As to parliamentary strategies, a strong far right fraction could prevent the realization of preferred coalitions. While the SPD is unlikely to gain enough seats to claim the chancellorship, the CDU/CSU might become the strongest party but without the perspective of a two-party alliance other than a grand coalition. However, the only possible outcome might as well be the worst.

Not only is the grand coalition highly unpopular among Social Democrats. As the case of Austria shows, grand coalitions in persistence lead to the increasing perception of the ‘cartelization’ of the political class, which fosters support for the far right. Considering the options of government formation after the 2017 general election, the AfD might well become the beneficiary of the situation it contributed to: political sclerosis. In that case, Germany might face a long period of bounded competition between the major mainstream parties and growing polarization in terms of increasing successes of the far right.

Dr. Marcel Lewandowsky (* 1982) is a political scientist and research fellow and the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg, Germany. His current research focuses on right-wing populism in Europe with special consideration to the AfD in Germany.

by Joe Thwaites

Last Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council held its second ever debate on climate change, at the request of Germany, who holds the monthly presidency. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Director of the UN Environment Program Achim Steiner, President of Nauru Marcus Stephen, and Australia’s Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs Richard Marles all addressed the Council, along with representatives of 62 member states.

Stephen wrote powerfully in the New York Times last week about the threat rising sea levels pose to his Pacific island country’s existence, and did not hold back in the Council, usually a place of diplomatic stoicism. Speaking on behalf of the Pacific Small Island Developing States, he said they were facing “the single greatest security challenge of all – that is, our survival” and put the question: “Where would we be if the roles were reversed? What if the pollution coming from our island nations was threatening the very existence of the major emitters? What would be the nature of today’s debate under those circumstances?”

As it happened, the nature of the debate was twofold. On the ostensible subject, “Maintenance of international peace and security: impact of climate change”, most states agreed that it would have – and in some cases already is having – profound implications for international peace and security, and that the UN had a key role to play coordinating efforts on mitigation and adaptation to climate change. But discussion on this remained secondary to complex political wrangling over the role of the Security Council in addressing the topic. Whilst this is the case for any issue before the body – in discussions on whether to mandate armed intervention into a specific country, for example, the debate focuses not just on the rights and wrongs in that instance, but also the wider precedent it may set – there were added complexities with climate change.

China and Russia displayed their usual reticence about extending the Security Council’s competencies into new areas. They were joined by Brazil, India, and many developing countries in the G77 bloc, who opposed attempts to move the issue away from the General Assembly-mandated UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in which all member states have equal footing and decisions are made by consensus, and into the 15 member body where China, Russia, France, the UK and U.S. hold veto power, and are some of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, on either cumulative or per capita bases. The underlying fear of developing countries was that such a move would circumvent the core principles which make the existing climate change regime palatable – namely, the recognition of states’ “common but differentiated responsibilities” to act on climate change, and the right to sustainable development.

Indeed, if the Security Council were to take overall control of climate action, this would be a regressive step, potentially allowing developed countries off the hook for their failure to meet existing targets under the Kyoto Protocol, and removing the impetus to agree a further UNFCCC commitment period. States proposing that the Security Council address the issue (primarily the EU, U.S. and small island states) were therefore at pains to stress that it would be complementary to existing UN bodies and processes, and should not encroach upon their remits. They argued that as a major security threat, it was right that the Council afford these dimensions of climate change due consideration. But as the UN body with the most diplomatic bite – only the Security Council has the power to authorise military force – it is easy to see why there are concerns that it could dominate the issue.

During the debate there was related apprehension about the excessive securitisation of climate change. Many states pointed out that climate change was a cross-cutting issue, as much related to sustainable development and humanitarian relief as security, and that looking at it as a security issue would not address the underlying causes of the problem. Bolivia noted that developed countries gave $10 billion in climate change finance annually, which amounted to just 1% of defence spending, and suggested the Council adopt a resolution to cut defence and security spending by 20%, using the money saved to address the impacts of climate change. Papua New Guinea echoed Nauru’s Marcus Stephen, pointing out that if the Security Council could address issues such as development and HIV/AIDs as security problems (without them becoming militarised), then why not climate change?

The non-binding Presidential Statement which was finally agreed did not include mention of a Special Representative on Climate Change and Security, which had been one of Germany’s original proposals. Many countries remained open to the idea of a representative, but opposed them being answerable to the Security Council, instead suggesting they be appointed by the General Assembly.

On one level, the outcome was disappointing. Russia initially vetoed adoption of the statement, later agreeing to a watered down version merely noting the “possible security implications” of climate change. Ambassador Susan Rice of the U.S. lambasted the lack of stronger action as “pathetic”, “short sighted” and “a dereliction of duty”. However, given that the first Council debate on climate change in 2007 was unable to agree any formal outcome, getting a Presidential Statement was something of a success.

There remains wide disagreement between states over whether climate change merely exacerbates conflict, or is a distinct threat itself. Academic opinion is still divided, and the Security Council’s position often lags a good ten years behind the latest research on peacebuilding and conflict prevention, so this is not hugely surprising. It is also difficult to untangle the opposition to climate-security links on conceptual grounds from opposition for political reasons related to Security Council ‘mission creep’, as discussed above.

In 2009, the General Assembly requested that the Secretary General produce a report on the possible security implications of climate change. A few states strongly disputed its findings on Wednesday. Nevertheless, the Presidential Statement recommended that in his regular reports to the Council, the Secretary General begin to include information on the possible influence of climate change upon conflict situations around the world. These are important first steps towards mainstreaming climate change in conflict assessments, even if we are a long way from any legally binding resolution.

Another reason for optimism is the level of participation in the debate. I followed many Security Council meetings whilst working in the UN community last year, and never saw so many member states request to speak. Most countries took the discussion seriously, and even where they disagreed on whether the Council had a mandate to act, they spoke strongly on the devastating impacts of climate change.

The question now is: how long will it take for states to take this rhetoric seriously; to realise the gravity of the situation, break the cycle of mistrust in international negotiations and commit to unified multilateral action to address this issue – in whatever forum they choose? The answer is unclear.
There is one thing we can be confident about – this won’t be the last time the Security Council discusses climate change.

Joe Thwaites is a graduate in politics from the University of York, UK. He has worked on conflict prevention at the Quaker United Nations Office and represented Friends of the Earth at the UNFCCC.

Image Source: United Nations Photo

Author’s note: In this article, I use the terms “war” and “civil war” interchangeably. They refer to a contested armed incompatibility involving a government and a non-state actor that generates at least 25 battle-related fatalities annually. Whereas ethnic civil wars refer to those armed conflicts that include ethnic challengers that are at odds with the identity of a state, seek to redefine or divide the state itself, or strive for major changes in their relationship with the state ( see Sambanis 2001).

Under what conditions can religion play a constructive role in peacebuilding and what are the obstacles to this process?

Religion, war, and peace are among the “thickest” and multifaceted concepts. Thus, tackling the relationship between them is a daunting task and calls for a greater scrutiny.

A great deal of existing scholarship on civil war, particularly those statistically examining the effects of various social, economic, and political factors on war dynamics, almost exclusively refer to the term “peace” in the negative sense, i.e., the absence of violence. This “narrow” approach to peace is in part driven by its simplicity that allows for large-n cross-national comparison. While useful in reaching generalizable findings, such an approach could potentially mask the underlying causes of war, preventing us from addressing the root causes of conflict eruption.

Here I refer to peace in the positive sense, or the absence of “structural violence” that calls for going beyond the mere absence of physical violence and points toward “social justice” (see Galtung 1969). This positive or “quality peace,” in the words of Peter Wallensteen, requires the creation of postwar conditions that not only prevent countries from relapsing back into another episode of violence but also allows for security and dignity for the members of the war-torn society.

How does religion help or hinder the creation of such circumstances? Under what conditions can religion as a powerful, potent force help reinforce and strengthen peace? What are the obstacles to religion playing such a constructive role in peacebuilding?

A complicated relationship

Photo credit (edited): murdelta/Flickr. 

A number of scholars have identified religion to be the cause of deadlier, longer, and more intractable civil wars (see Svensson 2007; Fox, James, and Li 2009; Basedau et al. 2011). Yet others have drawn attention to “the seeds of tolerance, justice, compassion, and peace” in religious traditions and argued that religion can help bring about peace and democracy (Johansen 1997, 53; see also Appleby 2000; Driessen 2010).  Religion, as Philpott states, “devastates not only New York skyscrapers but also authoritarian regimes; it constructs not only bellicose communal identities but also democratic civil society.” Thus, this group of scholars concludes that religion can also be used in conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes (see Abu-Nimer 2001; Alger 2002).

These contradictory findings stem from a number of sources. First and foremost, the literature on the relationship between war, peace, and religion often conceptualizes and measures these concepts from different points of view. In addition to the narrow conceptualization of peace noted above, the question of what entails a civil war and how it should be operationalized has caused much controversy. While scholars often agree on what a civil war is, the casualty threshold used to mark the onset of a civil war, ranging from 25 to 1,000 annual battle-related deaths, has resulted in a number of civil war datasets on which most of empirical findings are based, and that are not always comparable.

Second, the peacebuilding capacity of religion is applied to cases that are not necessarily analogous. For example, as Nichols argues, religious actors played a positive role in bringing about peace in the conflict between the Sandinistas and East Coast Indians of Nicaragua in the late 1980s through helping to develop a common language of conciliation and infusing Christian values into the negotiating process. Appleby, drawing on the case of Northern Ireland, maintains that religious leaders can gradually “saturate” the society by transforming the conflict environment and issues, condemn violence, and thus foster cross-communal cooperation. However, Appleby warns that such an outcome requires special situations characterized by a strong civil society and democratic tradition as well as assistance from the international community. Partly because of the lack of agreement on the casualty threshold noted above, current literature on civil war often treats the case of the Sandinistas vs. East Coast Indians within the broader conflict between Nicaragua under the Sandinistas and Contras, making it a somewhat “marginal” case. Whereas, the Northern Ireland conflict, as Appleby aptly warns, is characterized by some unique characteristics that are that are rarely present in many war-torn countries.

Third, existing literature is still in the process of identifying the complex and complicated causal mechanisms between religion and peacebuilding. This is in part due to the ambivalent, contextual nature of religion. Religion and politics are connected in complicated ways that make it nearly impossible to disentangle one from another. A religious tradition as Armstrong summarizes is “never a single, unchanging essence that impels people to act in a uniform way.” Instead, religions and religious interpretations “are susceptible to different readings in different contexts and become entangled in or influenced by newer sociopolitical context”. In the context of civil war, religion often becomes a part of the political arsenal to sustain the fight. As religion turns into another instrument of legitimation and mobilization in the hands of political actors it loses its power as a peacemaker.

Finally, and relatedly, the politicization of religion is most prevalent in ethnic civil wars in which fighters are lined up along identity lines and rebels are by and large secessionist in goals or desires. Therefore, the effect of religion on conflict processes in a case like Chechnya where Muslim Chechens fought destructive civil wars against Russia dominated by Orthodox Christians needs to be distinguished from the role religion plays in ethnic conflicts that involve groups hailing from the same faith, as in the case of Kurds vs. Turkey. While civil war between groups hailing from different faiths can contribute to identity formation in such a way that fuels the violence, war between co-religionists does not necessarily help foster peace. Instead, religion as the common denominator is often subsumed to ethnic, national identities and interests. The war realities often constrain, if not shape, religion, rendering religion an ineffective peacemaker (Gurses 2015).

Religion and ethnic civil war

Nicolas Rost and I have shown that due mainly to this “politicization of religion,” the hypothesized peacemaker role of religion does not hold against a global sample of ethnic civil wars. War and country characteristics, rather than shared religion, are better predictors of peace duration after ethnic civil wars. While the peace duration in our study refers to the absence of violence, in further support of studies that have pointed to discriminatory state policies as the culprit behind ethnic civil war onset and recurrence (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010; Gurses and Rost 2013), we found that the level of discrimination faced by members of ethnic groups that rebelled against their government after the end of the war is the most robust predictor of peace duration. Thus, state policies that address the demands of aggrieved minorities and re-adjust their relationship with the state that could make them a part of the system are more likely to help build sustainable peace. Resorting to a shared religion to help reconcile warring groups without addressing the root causes of conflict is more rhetoric than reality.

Observations 

• There is a need to clarify the terms in order to delineate the religion-peacebuilding nexus. The terms war, religion, and peace are multidimensional and hence defy reaching a consensus on the exact nature of religion’s relationship with peacebuilding. Avoiding law-like, general explanations is more likely to be fruitful. Just as religion’s role in identity formation varies, so does the role it plays in conflict onset, duration, outcome, as well as building peace in postwar environments.
• The role religion plays in peacebuilding should be qualified. Religion in conflicts fought over government, also known as ideological civil wars, could take on a dramatically different role than in conflicts involving competing identities which are often secessionist in nature. While it is much easier for religious actors to mediate between warring groups that share the same ethnicity, speak the same language, and believe in the same “God,” their role is likely to be diminished, tarnished by political considerations in situations where protagonists use religion to either distinguish themselves as a group from one another (e.g., Palestinians vs. Israel) or religion as a common denominator ceases to be a marker that separates members of warring groups (e.g., Acehnese vs. Indonesia, 1976-2005; Kurds vs. Turkey, 1984-Ongoing). Thus sharing the same faith in the context of such ethnic civil wars often results in relegating religion to a secondary role as the war dynamics help bring ethnic identities front and center.
• Sustainable peace requires addressing structural causes of violence. Merely stressing shared faith as a solution to conflict without undertaking reforms that can re-adjust the warring groups’ relationship with the state is not likely to be effective.

Conclusion

Religion is a potent force and can serve as a peacemaker. Its role, however, is contingent upon characteristics of the civil war and the nation in question. It is worthwhile to note that “ethnic conflict remains one of the prevailing challenges to international security in our time” and “conflicts that in some way involve an ethnic dimension can be found across each of the world’s continents”. Furthermore, as Fox notes, of 268 politically active ethnic minorities worldwide for the 1990-1995 period, 163 (61%) are not religiously distinct from the dominant group. Gurses and Rost, building on datasets drawn from two different sources, find that in about half of the ethnic civil wars that started and ended between 1950 and 2006 ethnic rebels shared the same religion as the governing ethnic group. Thus, it is essential to differentiate such cases in which religion is likely to be politicized and used as an instrument of legitimation and mobilization than those cases involving groups hailing from the same ethnicity, culture, and faith.

Still, religion can serve as a peacemaker by injecting “meaning” and repair social ties that were destroyed during the war. Ideally a change of mind should coincide with a change of heart in order to reach positive or “quality” peace. However, given the discriminatory state policies toward ethno-national minorities that account for armed conflict, concrete measures, a change of mind, should precede a change of heart to build and sustain the peace in the aftermath of seemingly intractable ethnic civil wars. Sustainable peace is a dignified peace. Religion can help bring about sustainable peace only after ethnic minorities’ relations with the state are re-adjusted to a degree that minority groups feel secure and certain of their future.

Mehmet Gurses is an associate professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. He received his B.A. degree in political science and international relations from Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey, and his doctorate from University of North Texas. His research interests include democracy and democratization, ethnic and religious conflict, post-civil war peace building, post-civil war democratization, Kurdish politics, and the emergence and evolution of the Islamist parties in the Middle East. His publications have appeared in International Interactions, Social Science Quarterly, Civil Wars, Defense and Peace Economics, Democratization, Party Politics, International Journal of Human Rights, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Conflict Management and Peace Science, and Political Research Quarterly.

Author’s note: In this article, I use the terms “war” and “civil war” interchangeably. They refer to a contested armed incompatibility involving a government and a non-state actor that generates at least 25 battle-related fatalities annually. Whereas ethnic civil wars refer to those armed conflicts that include ethnic challengers that are at odds with the identity of a state, seek to redefine or divide the state itself, or strive for major changes in their relationship with the state ( see Sambanis 2001).

Under what conditions can religion play a constructive role in peacebuilding and what are the obstacles to this process?

Religion, war, and peace are among the “thickest” and multifaceted concepts. Thus, tackling the relationship between them is a daunting task and calls for a greater scrutiny.

A great deal of existing scholarship on civil war, particularly those statistically examining the effects of various social, economic, and political factors on war dynamics, almost exclusively refer to the term “peace” in the negative sense, i.e., the absence of violence. This “narrow” approach to peace is in part driven by its simplicity that allows for large-n cross-national comparison. While useful in reaching generalizable findings, such an approach could potentially mask the underlying causes of war, preventing us from addressing the root causes of conflict eruption.

Here I refer to peace in the positive sense, or the absence of “structural violence” that calls for going beyond the mere absence of physical violence and points toward “social justice” (see Galtung 1969). This positive or “quality peace,” in the words of Peter Wallensteen, requires the creation of postwar conditions that not only prevent countries from relapsing back into another episode of violence but also allows for security and dignity for the members of the war-torn society.

How does religion help or hinder the creation of such circumstances? Under what conditions can religion as a powerful, potent force help reinforce and strengthen peace? What are the obstacles to religion playing such a constructive role in peacebuilding?

A complicated relationship

Photo credit (edited): murdelta/Flickr. 

A number of scholars have identified religion to be the cause of deadlier, longer, and more intractable civil wars (see Svensson 2007; Fox, James, and Li 2009; Basedau et al. 2011). Yet others have drawn attention to “the seeds of tolerance, justice, compassion, and peace” in religious traditions and argued that religion can help bring about peace and democracy (Johansen 1997, 53; see also Appleby 2000; Driessen 2010).  Religion, as Philpott states, “devastates not only New York skyscrapers but also authoritarian regimes; it constructs not only bellicose communal identities but also democratic civil society.” Thus, this group of scholars concludes that religion can also be used in conflict resolution and peacebuilding processes (see Abu-Nimer 2001; Alger 2002).

These contradictory findings stem from a number of sources. First and foremost, the literature on the relationship between war, peace, and religion often conceptualizes and measures these concepts from different points of view. In addition to the narrow conceptualization of peace noted above, the question of what entails a civil war and how it should be operationalized has caused much controversy. While scholars often agree on what a civil war is, the casualty threshold used to mark the onset of a civil war, ranging from 25 to 1,000 annual battle-related deaths, has resulted in a number of civil war datasets on which most of empirical findings are based, and that are not always comparable.

Second, the peacebuilding capacity of religion is applied to cases that are not necessarily analogous. For example, as Nichols argues, religious actors played a positive role in bringing about peace in the conflict between the Sandinistas and East Coast Indians of Nicaragua in the late 1980s through helping to develop a common language of conciliation and infusing Christian values into the negotiating process. Appleby, drawing on the case of Northern Ireland, maintains that religious leaders can gradually “saturate” the society by transforming the conflict environment and issues, condemn violence, and thus foster cross-communal cooperation. However, Appleby warns that such an outcome requires special situations characterized by a strong civil society and democratic tradition as well as assistance from the international community. Partly because of the lack of agreement on the casualty threshold noted above, current literature on civil war often treats the case of the Sandinistas vs. East Coast Indians within the broader conflict between Nicaragua under the Sandinistas and Contras, making it a somewhat “marginal” case. Whereas, the Northern Ireland conflict, as Appleby aptly warns, is characterized by some unique characteristics that are that are rarely present in many war-torn countries.

Third, existing literature is still in the process of identifying the complex and complicated causal mechanisms between religion and peacebuilding. This is in part due to the ambivalent, contextual nature of religion. Religion and politics are connected in complicated ways that make it nearly impossible to disentangle one from another. A religious tradition as Armstrong summarizes is “never a single, unchanging essence that impels people to act in a uniform way.” Instead, religions and religious interpretations “are susceptible to different readings in different contexts and become entangled in or influenced by newer sociopolitical context”. In the context of civil war, religion often becomes a part of the political arsenal to sustain the fight. As religion turns into another instrument of legitimation and mobilization in the hands of political actors it loses its power as a peacemaker.

Finally, and relatedly, the politicization of religion is most prevalent in ethnic civil wars in which fighters are lined up along identity lines and rebels are by and large secessionist in goals or desires. Therefore, the effect of religion on conflict processes in a case like Chechnya where Muslim Chechens fought destructive civil wars against Russia dominated by Orthodox Christians needs to be distinguished from the role religion plays in ethnic conflicts that involve groups hailing from the same faith, as in the case of Kurds vs. Turkey. While civil war between groups hailing from different faiths can contribute to identity formation in such a way that fuels the violence, war between co-religionists does not necessarily help foster peace. Instead, religion as the common denominator is often subsumed to ethnic, national identities and interests. The war realities often constrain, if not shape, religion, rendering religion an ineffective peacemaker (Gurses 2015).

Religion and ethnic civil war

Nicolas Rost and I have shown that due mainly to this “politicization of religion,” the hypothesized peacemaker role of religion does not hold against a global sample of ethnic civil wars. War and country characteristics, rather than shared religion, are better predictors of peace duration after ethnic civil wars. While the peace duration in our study refers to the absence of violence, in further support of studies that have pointed to discriminatory state policies as the culprit behind ethnic civil war onset and recurrence (Cederman, Wimmer, and Min 2010; Gurses and Rost 2013), we found that the level of discrimination faced by members of ethnic groups that rebelled against their government after the end of the war is the most robust predictor of peace duration. Thus, state policies that address the demands of aggrieved minorities and re-adjust their relationship with the state that could make them a part of the system are more likely to help build sustainable peace. Resorting to a shared religion to help reconcile warring groups without addressing the root causes of conflict is more rhetoric than reality.

Observations 

• There is a need to clarify the terms in order to delineate the religion-peacebuilding nexus. The terms war, religion, and peace are multidimensional and hence defy reaching a consensus on the exact nature of religion’s relationship with peacebuilding. Avoiding law-like, general explanations is more likely to be fruitful. Just as religion’s role in identity formation varies, so does the role it plays in conflict onset, duration, outcome, as well as building peace in postwar environments.
• The role religion plays in peacebuilding should be qualified. Religion in conflicts fought over government, also known as ideological civil wars, could take on a dramatically different role than in conflicts involving competing identities which are often secessionist in nature. While it is much easier for religious actors to mediate between warring groups that share the same ethnicity, speak the same language, and believe in the same “God,” their role is likely to be diminished, tarnished by political considerations in situations where protagonists use religion to either distinguish themselves as a group from one another (e.g., Palestinians vs. Israel) or religion as a common denominator ceases to be a marker that separates members of warring groups (e.g., Acehnese vs. Indonesia, 1976-2005; Kurds vs. Turkey, 1984-Ongoing). Thus sharing the same faith in the context of such ethnic civil wars often results in relegating religion to a secondary role as the war dynamics help bring ethnic identities front and center.
• Sustainable peace requires addressing structural causes of violence. Merely stressing shared faith as a solution to conflict without undertaking reforms that can re-adjust the warring groups’ relationship with the state is not likely to be effective.

Conclusion

Religion is a potent force and can serve as a peacemaker. Its role, however, is contingent upon characteristics of the civil war and the nation in question. It is worthwhile to note that “ethnic conflict remains one of the prevailing challenges to international security in our time” and “conflicts that in some way involve an ethnic dimension can be found across each of the world’s continents”. Furthermore, as Fox notes, of 268 politically active ethnic minorities worldwide for the 1990-1995 period, 163 (61%) are not religiously distinct from the dominant group. Gurses and Rost, building on datasets drawn from two different sources, find that in about half of the ethnic civil wars that started and ended between 1950 and 2006 ethnic rebels shared the same religion as the governing ethnic group. Thus, it is essential to differentiate such cases in which religion is likely to be politicized and used as an instrument of legitimation and mobilization than those cases involving groups hailing from the same ethnicity, culture, and faith.

Still, religion can serve as a peacemaker by injecting “meaning” and repair social ties that were destroyed during the war. Ideally a change of mind should coincide with a change of heart in order to reach positive or “quality” peace. However, given the discriminatory state policies toward ethno-national minorities that account for armed conflict, concrete measures, a change of mind, should precede a change of heart to build and sustain the peace in the aftermath of seemingly intractable ethnic civil wars. Sustainable peace is a dignified peace. Religion can help bring about sustainable peace only after ethnic minorities’ relations with the state are re-adjusted to a degree that minority groups feel secure and certain of their future.

Mehmet Gurses is an associate professor of Political Science at Florida Atlantic University. He received his B.A. degree in political science and international relations from Marmara University in Istanbul, Turkey, and his doctorate from University of North Texas. His research interests include democracy and democratization, ethnic and religious conflict, post-civil war peace building, post-civil war democratization, Kurdish politics, and the emergence and evolution of the Islamist parties in the Middle East. His publications have appeared in International Interactions, Social Science Quarterly, Civil Wars, Defense and Peace Economics, Democratization, Party Politics, International Journal of Human Rights, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Conflict Management and Peace Science, and Political Research Quarterly.

 (This piece was originally published by Channel 4 News on  January 22, 2013 and is the first of two parts by Anna Alissa Hitzemann and Ben Zala)

Britain is on standby and the US is already transporting French troops into Mali. But a new paper says the west is “betting on the wrong horse” by intervening in the region.

Environmental changes in the Arctic are making the region more accessible which many believe will lead to competition and conflict over its resources. But is this really the case?

The Great Game moves North

A battle to ‘carve up’ the Arctic

‘Ice Wars’ heating up the Arctic

Melting ice caps open up Arctic for ‘white gold rush’

Warming Arctic opens way to competition for resources

Conflict ahead in Arctic waters

The above are just some of the many headlines and titles that have described the state of the Arctic over the last decade. Ever since a Russian flag was planted on the seabed at the North Pole in 2007, media outlets, academics and policy-makers have been pondering the conflict potential of a warming Arctic.

Their concerns surely have a dramatic background. The Arctic, the region commonly defined as all land and water areas above the Arctic Circle at 66 degrees north, has over the past 50 years warmed twice as fast as the global average. Consequently, the Arctic ice sheet has retreated significantly. In September 2012, the ice extend dropped to around half of what it was in the late 1970s, and is lingering on low extent numbers ever since. The diminishing sea ice has made the resources of the Arctic, such as oil and gas, increasingly accessible for exploration and exploitation.

This increasing accessibility of the region combined with, thus far, inaccessible and high-in-demand resources and still existing boundary disputes between the Arctic coastal states, made (and still makes) many believe that we are heading towards a region of conflict.

But is this really so? Should we expect the region in the north to erupt into hot conflicts about access to oil and gas, shipping lanes and fishing grounds that the retreating ice lays open? Does a warming Arctic inevitably mean increasing conflict potential with little hope for cooperation to emerge?

Cooperation and conflict: a misleading dichotomy

Image credit: Fulbright Arctic Initiative/Flickr.

Most of the debates aiming to answer these questions circle around the issue of whether the Arctic is a region of “conflict” or “cooperation”. The cardinal error of this debate is that “cooperation” and “conflict” are taken as two sides of the same coin. Taking cooperation and conflict as the two ends of a continuum inadequately twists the empirical perceptions and expectations as to future developments in the Arctic.

As a matter of fact, cooperation and conflict are part of two different coins. Conflict is first of all a situation in which the interests of two or more actors overlap in the sense that they pursue different goals or that they prefer different means to achieve a specific goal. The opposite of conflict is then harmony, a situation in which actors’ interests do not touch each other. This is one coin.

If there is a case of conflict, actors can react to this situation in different ways. Roughly speaking, they can either react with “cooperation” or “confrontation”. They can decide to solve the conflict through negotiation and looking for compromises, or they can revert to using force of some kind, such as sanctions or military actions. These possible options for actions in a situation of conflict are the second coin.

Once one has understood the difference between these two coins, it is possible to analyze how actors have reacted to Arctic conflict cases in the past (like open boundary disputes, of which many have been solved since the 1970s), and which options for resolution exist in response to possible future Arctic conflict cases (like still open boundary disputes, competing interests for access to resources or shipping lanes etc.).

Unfortunately, in the past and current Arctic conflict debate the existence of a conflict is usually treated the same as a confrontation– a situation in which breakdown of relations and even violent actions are imminent. But if we equalize conflict and confrontation, we face a very alarming situation in the Arctic since there are cases where the interests of Arctic actors (including those from south of the Arctic Circle) overlap. The open maritime delimitations around the area of the North Pole and the question how much of the Arctic is to be legally treated as a common heritage of mankind are just two examples of Arctic conflicts.

But if we were to conduct a sound analysis with the two-coin understanding as outlined above, we would understand that conflict is the very prerequisite to make cooperation and confrontation happen in the first place. In other words, there is no cooperation or confrontation if there is no conflict (since actors do not interact in a situation of harmony). Then we can look at the Arctic world out there and check which options for action Arctic actors choose to react to conflict situations.

The Arctic Council – A prime example of Arctic cooperation

We find a multitude of examples for actors choosing cooperative options for actions, especially among the members of the Arctic Council, which are the eight Arctic states Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Since the flag-planting in 2007, and also since Russia’s more recent assertive actions elsewhere in the world, cooperation in the preeminent political forum of the region, the Arctic Council, has been strengthened. The Council has evolved from a forum for debate to a policy-shaping body through the adoption of several intergovernmental agreements under its auspices. These range from provisions for preparedness and response for oil spills in Arctic waters, a search and rescue cooperation agreement, and will soon be added by an agreement on Arctic scientific cooperation.

On the international level, an “International Code of Safety for Ships Operating in Polar Waters” or short “Polar Code” has been negotiated under the International Maritime Organization to regulate the increasing shipping activity in the Arctic. Arctic countries are working on their submissions to the UN to verify their extensions of their continental shelves, and have in unison pledged to settle any overlapping claims peacefully and in close consultation with each other.

All these cooperative actions have included the Arctic states as well as many state and non-state actors beyond the region, for example in the form of observers to the Arctic Council. The short result of this analysis is: Yes, the Arctic is full of conflict but also full of cooperation since across the board actors are reacting cooperatively to cases of conflict.

The crux is that these instances of cooperation can be observed. In contrast, most foreboding of a confrontation in the Arctic only refers to what could happen now that the Arctic is accessible and its resources up for grasp. In other words, these contributions can only be speculative.

A lingering problem of the Arctic conflict debate is that a conflict over Arctic issues is usually very easily and quickly proclaimed and seldom reflected upon or questioned again. So once a conflict is said to exist, it is hard to get rid of again, even if observations show that there is no real ground for the conflict or if actors react cooperatively to it. A prominent example is the rising Chinese interest in Arctic issues, which peaked 2013 when China was admitted as an observer to the Arctic Council. Since then, many have depicted Chinese Arctic interests as a “conflict” since China as a powerful player would undermine other Arctic voices and generally would bring turmoil to Arctic affairs. In contrast, when talking to the members and Permanent Participants (the representatives of Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations) of the Council, one hears that after some initial concerns everyone is pretty happy about the presence of important players like China. Not least, China has to be part of the solution to the global climate change problem, which heavily affects the Arctic. And having China present at Arctic Council meetings is a rare opportunity for small, Indigenous organizations to get into a direct conversation with countries like China.

Conclusion

In sum, if we consider how often the “next Cold War” in the Arctic has been proclaimed now that we have entered the tenth (!) year after the Russian flag-planting, one keeps wondering why this war has failed to materialize. This may be sign that the assessment of the Arctic as a region of confrontational conflict is not for nothing predominantly based on speculation. In fact, the predication of a next Cold War in the Arctic may be exactly that: a wild guess.

Dr. Kathrin Keil is Scientific Project Leader at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, where she is leading the Arctic research work on Sustainable Arctic Futures: A Regional and Global Challenge. She is also Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute – Center for Circumpolar Security Studies where she regularly writes about and comments on current Arctic developments. Further, Kathrin is part of the official German observer delegation to the Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) of the Arctic Council.

Over 10 years ago, the Cathedral Peak Hotel, which nestles among the peaks of South Africa’s majestic Drakensburg Mountains, played host to what was, at the time, a unique gathering. Scholars from around the globe (the United States, Britain, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, South Africa, and Israel) met with representatives of international NGOs (the International committee of the Red Cross and the Geneva Center for the Democratic Study of Armed Forces, among others) and members of the private military and security industry to discuss and debate the growing role of private contractors in contemporary conflict zones. I was the convener of that conference and co-editor of the subsequent volume of the same title, Private Military and Security Companies: Ethics, Policies and Civil-Military Relations (Routledge 2008).

Though the modern private military company can be traced back to companies such as David Stirling’s WatchGuard International in the 1960’s, and though there was some related early scholarly research, it was the massive use of contractors by the United States in Iraq in the civil war that emerged after the 2003 invasion which ultimately sparked serious public and scholarly interest in the sector. Just a year before the conference, the killing and gruesome mutilation of four Blackwater contractors by insurgents had been a major cause of the bloody and ultimately fruitless first battle of Fallujah. Given the context, it’s particularly interesting that Doug Brooks – then the President of the largest industry body for PMSCs, the International Peace Operations Association (now the International Stability Operations Association) – chose to focus his contribution to the conference, and his co-authored contribution to the book, on peacekeeping operations.

Brooks argued then that, with the growth of what he called ‘Westernless peacekeeping’ (i.e. UN and African Union peacekeeping operations carried out without major support from NATO and ‘NATO-class’ military forces) PMSCs should have an increasing role in peacekeeping operations, contributing capabilities not possessed by the military forces of developing world countries like Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Nepal, Indonesia and Rwanda, who contribute the bulk of peacekeepers for UN operations.  Contractors, Brooks contended, offer ‘faster, better and cheaper’ solutions to capability challenges in peacekeeping operations, operate with a smaller and less culturally sensitive footprint than equivalent military forces, and act as a force-multiplier through the provision of specialist and niche capabilities.

Private military contractors in Baghdad, Iraq. Image by Babeltravel via Flickr.

A decade on and Iraq is still in the news, but Western boots on the ground are largely absent, and the previously booming market for contractors there and in Afghanistan has shrunk dramatically. As Molly Dunigan and Ulrich Petersohn and their collaborators show in a recent edited collection, the once-championed ‘global market for force’ has proven itself to be, in fact, a conglomeration of quite different markets for force, and it is a mistake to conflate the legitimate with the illegitimate. The United States, Britain and other nations continue to employ the services of private military contractors for lower priority tasks where doing so is (or at least appears to be) cost and manpower effective.

The US State Department’s five-year $10.2 billion Worldwide Protective Services contract, the next phase of which was announced in mid February, is distributed largely among companies like SOC, Triple Canopy and Aegis Services which made their names during the Iraq post-invasion boom. And the old stomping ground is showing signs of a revival – according to a report by Bloomberg Business week, “Operation Inherent Resolve, the Pentagon’s anti-Islamic State initiative, employed 7,773 contractors in the second quarter of 2016, up from 5,000 in the first quarter of 2015.” Many of those contracts are for logistical, training and advisory roles in conflict and post-conflict environments in Africa and the developed world. And, quietly, the United Nations has also become a significant employer of PMSCs, as a careful reading of the UN Department of Procurement’s list of registered vendors reveals. As long ago as 2011 the Geneva Center for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) released a report showing that, despite the sensitivities involved, “the UN has increasingly paid private military and security companies (PMSCs) for a range of services in the areas of humanitarian affairs, peacebuilding and development.” The companies themselves have become increasingly corporatized and professional in their structures and practices, an evolutionary necessity for those companies which survived the ‘gold rush’ days of post-invasion Iraq.

The more dramatic pronouncements by both proponents and opponents of the PMSC industry have failed to come to pass. Contractors have neither rendered state-based peacekeeping and stability operations obsolete, nor have they radically undermined the monopoly on force of the states that employ them or created greater instability in the international sphere.

Looking to the future, what might we expect regarding the involvement of PMSCs in peacekeeping and stabilization operations? Despite their popularity as ‘bad guys’ in television dramas and Hollywood films, and an uncomfortable legacy of past serious human rights abuses committed by contractors, the evidence suggests that in the real world the use of PMSCs is increasingly becoming normalized, and that in policy circles there is a growing understanding of the potential value contractors can provide if properly employed. While there are still contractors operating in the global periphery who better fit the old ‘mercenary’ moniker, we can expect this process of normalization to lead to an increase in the employment, and more open employment, of PMSC’s in peacekeeping operations (though the term ‘PMSC’ will likely decline in usage).

The improved clarity about the status and responsibilities of contractors in zones of armed conflict that resulted from the publication of the ICRC sponsored Montreaux Document of 2008 has played an important role in this process of normalization. Though this was unquestionably not the intended purpose of the creation of the document (which carries no legal weight but summarizes the status of contractors under international law and gives recommendations to both PMSCs and the states that contract them), the Montreaux process cleared up numerous misconceptions and provided a firm framework to which companies could attach their claims to legitimacy.

Over the past decade there has been much debate and discussion over what functions ought to be considered by states to be ‘inherently governmental’ and which therefore ought not to be contracted out. A similar discussion will likely occur as the outsourcing of peacekeeping functions becomes more publicly acknowledge. However, it will likely be pragmatic factors which establish the limits of outsourcing.  Whatever those limits turn out to be in practice, it is certain that there will be limits. Even in today’s complex and spoiler afflicted environment, effective peacekeeping relies heavily on the perception of legitimacy, and that means blue UN helmets or the green berets of the African Union, not beards and Oakley sunglasses.

Dr Deane-Peter Baker is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra, located at the Australian Defence Force Academy. He is also a Researcher in the Australian Center for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society. His research interests include military ethics, private military and security companies, special operations, military strategy and the ethics of public policy. He is the author of Just Warriors Inc.: The Ethics of Privatized Force and Citizen Killings: Liberalism, State Policy and Moral Risk.

El Salvador’s gang history dates back to the 1960s. At the time, numerous neighbourhood-based groups provided marginalised urban youths with the means to hang out, party, take drugs, and fight their rivals. These gangs constituted a nuisance for the affected residents but did not represent a public security threat. The situation drastically changed when the Central American civil wars ended and the United States stepped up its deportations of offending non-citizens, including members of Mara Salvatrucha (or MS-13) and Calle Dieciocho (18^th Street). Both gangs had been formed in Los Angeles’ immigrant barrios, a haven for Central American refugees some of whose children responded to difficult circumstances by joining existing gangs (such as the Dieciocho) or forming their own group (Mara Salvatrucha). Tired of the stresses of gang life, many deportees arrived in their country of origin hoping to make a fresh start. Faced with poor reinsertion opportunities, however, they continued with what they knew best. Their comparatively nice dress, money, and tales of gang exploits held a fascination that local adolescents found hard to resist. Soon the imported gangs absorbed their smaller counterparts and continued to grow, since widespread social exclusion made El Salvador fertile ground for gang proliferation. Over time gang members resorted to greater levels of violence and drug activity, but the country long lacked a full-fledged gang policy.

In 2003 – eight months before the 2004 presidential elections – President Francisco Flores of the conservative ARENA party launched Plan Mano Dura (“Strong Hand”), ostensibly to dismantle the gangs and curb the number of homicides, most of which had been attributed to these groups. Backed by considerable media publicity, the measure entailed not only area sweeps and joint police-military patrols, but was also accompanied by a temporary anti-gang law that permitted the arrest of suspected gang members on the basis of their physical appearance alone. Both the nature and the timing of the initiative suggested that it had been designed to improve the ruling party’s electoral position rather than to ensure effective gang control. Plan Mano Dura enjoyed huge support among a population that had become weary of permanent insecurity, but human rights defenders, judges, and opposition politicians criticised it for its abuses and neglect of prevention and rehabilitation. The measure helped ARENA win the elections, but the incoming administration of Antonio Saca responded to the earlier criticism by incorporating prevention and rehabilitation into his Plan Super Mano Dura. These alternative approaches, however, were a largely rhetorical concession since suppression remained the dominant strategy. Contrary to the official discourse of success, Mano Dura was spectacularly ineffective: the homicide rate escalated, and the gangs adapted to the climate of repression by toughening their entry requirements, adopting a more conventional look, and using heavier weaponry. More importantly, confinement in special prisons allowed gang members to strengthen group cohesion and structure. Moreover, the large-scale incarceration of gang members fuelled the need for more resources for both the inmates and their families and resulted in an upsurge in extortions, particularly in the transport sector.

By June 2009, when the government of ex-journalist Mauricio Funes and the FMLN (the former guerrilla army) came into power, the gang problem had become intractable. MS-13 and Dieciocho clicas (subgroups) sprawled hundreds of marginal urban communities, their members committed a variety of crimes – ranging from threats, robbery, injuries, auto theft, and the illegal carrying of firearms to drug sales, extortions, rapes, kidnappings, and homicides – and their violence had become increasingly diffuse and brutal. The Funes government announced a comprehensive crime policy comprising social prevention, law enforcement, rehabilitation, victim support, and institutional and legal reforms. The strategy, however, is underfunded (state coffers had been plundered by previous administrations), and gangs are being tackled through the overall crime policy rather than a specific gang programme. The police – now under a new command – has stopped conducting mass raids in gang-affected zones and begun to strengthen its investigative capacity. These are promising steps, but events on the ground soon pushed policy in another direction. Public demands for a quick reduction of homicides and media coverage alleging government incompetence led President Funes in November 2009 to deploy the army. Military participation in public security tasks is no recent development. At present, however, the army has been given broader powers, permitting it to conduct patrols, perform searches, and arrest criminals caught red-handed as well as to maintain perimeter security at the prisons. In what appears to be a face-saving gesture, the Funes administration adopted a gang strategy that exhibits ominous parallels with the earlier Mano Dura policies. Meanwhile, prevention and rehabilitation have once again taken the backseat.

Sonja Wolf is a Researcher at the Instituto para la Seguridad y la Democracia in Mexico City, where she conducts research on security and migration issues in Mexico and Central America.

Image source: VCK xD

This month marks the 25^th anniversary of the start of Operation Desert Storm, the combat phase of the Gulf War. Precipitated by Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait in August 1990, the conflict was the first to see the widespread use of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition. US and UK forces subsequently acknowledged firing a combined 286,000kg of DU – the vast majority of which was fired by US Abrams and M60 tanks, and A10 and Harrier aircraft.

The decision to deploy the radioactive and chemically toxic weapons, which had been under development since the 1950s as a response to Cold War concerns over defeating Soviet armoured divisions, would prove highly contentious in the following years. Once the media and military’s enthusiasm for what was promoted as a new paradigm in high-tech low-casualty warfare began to subside, veterans, journalists and civil society organisations in the US and UK increasingly began to challenge the general conduct of the war, and the use of DU in particular.

Soldiers in Gulf War wearing gas masks. Image by Wikimedia.

This was largely to be expected, and had been anticipated just six months before the conflict in a US military study on the environmental and health risks of DU: “Public relations efforts are indicated, and may not be effective due to the public’s perception of radioactivity. Fielding and combat activities present the potential for adverse international reaction.” Those wishing to continue to use DU weapons recognised that they would need to plan vigorous public relations efforts in order to justify their continued use, a pattern that continues today. Following 1991, this saw DU branded as the “Silver Bullet” – a weapon capable of such astonishing feats, and so militarily important, that any concerns over its potential health or environmental impacts should be disregarded.

“The most toxic war in history”

As increasing numbers of veterans began to report post-deployment health problems in the years that followed, attention began to focus on the overall toxicity of the conflict. From oil fires and pesticides, to the use and disposal of chemical weapons, the Gulf War was increasingly viewed as “the most toxic in history”. Whether it was – conflict pollution had been developing in concert with the mechanisation of warfare and industrialisation throughout the 20^th Century, or whether this just represented a growing awareness of the linkages between chemicals and health is a matter of debate. Nevertheless, questions were asked about whether possible exposures to a suite of chemicals could be responsible for the ailments reported by veterans. These ranged from birth defects to chronic fatigue, and led to the emergence of the catch all term Gulf War Syndrome (GWS).

US troops wearing Nuclear Biological and Chemical outfits with a ‘wounded’ soldier on a stretcher during an exercise before the start of operations in Kuwait, 1991. Image by Wikimedia.

In the decade that followed a number of internal reviews, which were triggered by public concern over veterans, flagged problems caused by the haste to deploy DU weapons. For example, a 2000 review by the US Government Accounting Office found that there had been significant failures in the training policies intended to minimise the exposure of military personnel to DU. It also found flaws in the systems of data collection necessary to determine exposure levels and subsequent health impacts, not only for DU but also for other toxic exposures.

In the case of DU, it also became clear that scientifically unjustified assumptions had been made about the health risks it posed. These ranged from basic information about the quantity of DU released when targets are struck, to the complex biological responses within the human body when cells are exposed, with the in vitro and animal studies necessary to identify DU’s role in causing cancer only initiated in 2000. For those troops caught in friendly fire incidents, or who returned to, or repaired, DU damaged vehicles, it was clear that the scientific knowledge available on these and other issues was insufficient to answer their concerns about the health risks they faced.

The clear lesson from DU’s use in 1991 is that far more data is required on the health risks and environmental behaviour of the substances used in munitions before they are deployed. Indeed, such data should be a pre-requisite for determining both the legality and acceptability of munitions prior to their use. In the rush to deploy the weapons, DU advocates found it all too easy to rely on assumptions that were not based on robust scientific evidence. Similarly, the lack of accurate monitoring of other toxic battlefield exposures hampered efforts to determine the cause or causes of GWS among military personnel. The situation was similar to that experienced by veterans from the conflict in south-east Asia, when efforts were made to quantify their exposure to dioxin contaminated herbicides.

Increasing concerns over the health of Iraqi civilians

Concerns over the health risks that DU weapons posed to Iraqi civilians took rather longer to emerge but by 1996, reports had begun to circulate from western journalists visiting Iraqi hospitals. Harshly affected by the sanctions regime, which blocked access to basic equipment and medication, medical professionals were identifying changes in the rates and age distribution of certain cancers, and in the prevalence of birth abnormalities.

Politicisation of the findings by the Iraqi regime, and a disinterest in the humanitarian consequences of the legacy of the 1991 conflict, contributed to a failure to meaningfully address these reports. Yet the problems that the US military had faced in trying to determine the health effects being reported by their own troops during the 1990s also applied for those who sought, and continue to seek, to examine the impact of the weapons on Iraqi civilians.

Sole of shoe at ‘Highway of Death’ in Iraq, where DU munitions were used to destroy tanks and other vehicles. Image by Christiaan Briggs.

As was the case with military personnel, systems to track and record potential environmental exposures for communities in conflict were, and remain, largely absent. Mechanisms for warning civilians about possible environmental exposures are largely non-existent, in spite of the numerous pollution risks found in contemporary conflicts. Systems to follow up possible exposures in order to determine health effects in the medium to long-term are almost unheard of. What civilian epidemiological or exposure research there is, is often undertaken independently with minimal resources, as a result studies may be temporally or geographically limited, which can leave methodologies open to criticism.

The new norm?

The pollution generated in 1991 affected military personnel and public and environmental health across the Persian Gulf area, with smoke plumes travelling 1,600km and oil slicks affecting 440km of coastline, but it was not unique by contemporary standards. The conflict in Ukraine is also thought to have produced significant pollution, due to the fighting taking place in one of the most heavily industrialised regions on Earth. Elsewhere, current Russian and Coalition bombing operations against Islamic State controlled oil facilities in Syria have also caused widespread air, water and soil pollution. This is also likely to be the case for the conflict as a whole, which has seen half of Syria’s housing stock pulverised to rubble and fighting in and around industrial areas. From Iraq, to Libya and South Sudan, isolated and strategically valuable oil and gas facilities are often the targets of choice for militaries and armed groups alike.

Instability and armed conflicts also degrade the institutional frameworks that safeguard environmental and public health. These forms of degradation can create pollution problems in their own right, for example by limiting governmental systems of oversight or management for industrial or domestic wastes. Institutional damage also reduces the capacity of the State to properly address pollution threats to public health and the environment. Instability can also slow or halt progress towards the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements, be they on waste, water or biodiversity, ensuring that the environmental legacy of armed conflict lasts well beyond the cessation of hostilities. Together with the direct environmental damage caused by conflict, the diminution of environmental governance and institutional capacity has serious implications for the attainment of the environmental dimensions of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Lessons learned?

A quarter of a century on from the Gulf War, what have we learned? As anticipated in 1990, DU weapons have not become any more acceptable, with an overwhelming majority of States demonstrating their concerns at the UN General Assembly every two years. This has helped encourage a shift in US policy on their use. Gulf War veterans are still seeking recognition for their illnesses but the experiences from 1991, and Vietnam before it, have helped catalyse progress on the collection of “environmental intelligence” for troops on deployment.

Gunners of 26 Squadron (Sqn) Royal Air Force (RAF) Regiment based at RAF Honington wearing the GSR10 gas mask during an exercise. Image by Defence Images.

Rather less progress has been made for the civilians living in environments polluted by conflict, and much more could and should be done to gather data on environmental risks and integrate it into humanitarian assistance and public health systems. As for environmental protection in times of war, little has changed since 1991. For that reason Ukraine deserves praise for sponsoring a resolution on the necessity of greater environmental protection and more effective response ahead of this May’s UN Environment Assembly.

Last year, the Toxic Remnants of War Project completed a study that examined whether a more formalised mechanism of post-conflict environmental assistance could not only help address wartime environmental damage when it does occur, but also help to strengthen norms against the most damaging military behaviours. For inspiration, we looked to the treaties on land mines and cluster bombs but also to the norms and principles established by international environmental and human rights law. Although primarily a think piece, it clearly demonstrated that elements of these systems are readily transferrable to the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflicts – if the political will could be mobilised to address the topic in a meaningful way.

Building the political will for the systemic change that could overhaul the existing ad-hoc responses to wartime environmental damage, and challenge the weakness of current protection under international humanitarian law is a significant challenge, but if we fail to do so we will be ignoring the lessons from 1991 and from many conflicts since.

Doug Weir is the Coordinator of the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons and manages the Toxic Remnants of War Project, which studies the environmental and public health legacy of conflict pollution @detoxconflict. The Project is a founding member of the Toxic Remnants of War Network, which advocates for a greater standard of environmental protection in conflict @TRWNetwork.

by Elizabeth Minor, Researcher at Article 36

This article is part of the Remote Control Warfare series, a collaboration with Remote Control, a project of the Network for Social Change hosted by Oxford Research Group.

Later this month, governments will meet in Geneva to discuss lethal autonomous weapons systems. Previous talks – and growing pressure from civil society –  have not yet galvanised governments into action. Meanwhile the development of these so-called “killer robots” is already being considered in military roadmaps. Their prohibition is therefore an increasingly urgent task.

From 13-17 April, governments will meet at the United Nations in Geneva to discuss autonomous weapons – also referred to as killer robots. The week-long meeting will be the second round of multilateral expert discussions on “lethal autonomous weapons systems” to take place within the framework of the United Nations’ Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).

Urgent and coordinated international action is needed to prevent the development and use of fully autonomous weapons systems. Such systems would fundamentally challenge the relationship between human beings and the application of violent force, whether in armed conflict or in domestic law enforcement. Once activated and their mission defined, these systems would be able to select targets and carry out attacks on people or objects, without meaningful human control. As states with high-tech militaries such as China, Israel, Russia, South Korea, the UK, and the US continue to invest in aspects of increased autonomy in weapons systems technologies, consideration of this issue is increasingly urgent. Campaigners are calling on states to tackle this issue by developing a treaty that pre-emptively bans these weapons systems before they are put into operation, by which time it may be too late.

The issue

The UK’s Taranis stealth UAV. The Taranis exemplifies the move toward increased autonomy as it aims to strike distant targets “even on other continents”, although humans are currently expected to remain in the loop. Source: Flickr | QinetiQ

Weapons systems that do not permit the exercise of meaningful human control over individual attacks should be prohibited, due to the insurmountable ethical, humanitarian and legal concerns they raise. The governance of the use of force and the protection of individuals in conflict require control over the use of weapons and accountability and responsibility for their consequences. This principle, rather than any particular piece of technology or format of weapons delivery, is at the heart of the issue of autonomous weapons systems. Some have argued that fully autonomous weapons systems might reduce the risk of conflict or be able to better protect civilians. However, the focus must remain on these systems’ overall implications for the conduct of violence, rather than on a small range of hypothetical possibilities.

Tasks can be given to hardware and software systems. Responsibility for violence cannot. The process of rendering the world ‘machine-sensible’ reduces people to objects. This is an affront to human dignity. Computerised target-object matching such as shape detection, thermal imaging and radiation detection may enable the identification of objects such as military vehicles, though in complex and civilian-populated environments, not necessarily with accuracy. However, assessment of information about these objects and the surrounding environment, including the presence of protected persons such as civilians or wounded combatants, is also essential to uphold the principles that govern the launching of individual attacks under International Humanitarian Law. These are not quantitative rules, but considerations that require deliberative moral reasoning and contextual decision-making. As such, they could not be translated into software code. Based on the principle of humanity, they implicitly require human judgement and control over the process of decision-making in individual attacks.

Other concerns about the development of fully autonomous weapons systems include the dangers of proliferation among state and non-state actors, hacking, and the use of these systems in law enforcement or other situations outside of warfare.

Campaign to Stop Killer Robots first NGO conference in April 2013

A preemptive ban as a solution

Whilst the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is calling on states to move with urgency towards negotiations on a treaty to outlaw fully autonomous weapons systems, previous talks in Geneva have not yet galvanised governments into action.

Some states have suggested that existing law is sufficient to tackle this issue. Existing international law, which was developed prior to any consideration of autonomous weapons systems, implicitly assumes that the application of force is governed by humans. This body of international law is now inadequate as a reliable barrier to the development and use of fully autonomous weapons systems. A pre-emptive ban through an international instrument would not only halt any progress on these systems amongst states parties, but would help to stigmatise development by others.

Some states have argued that this issue can be dealt with by conducting individual reviews of their weapons technologies to ensure they continue to uphold current international law. States are already obligated to do this however, and whilst it is important, it will not be sufficient in preventing the development of these systems internationally. A clear legal standard and norm needs to be set, and this is best done through new international treaty law.

A ban based around prohibiting systems that operate without meaningful human control over individual attacks should be the starting point in international discussions among states, and so the elaboration and agreement of the elements of this principle are required as a next step.

International response so far

To date, autonomous weapons have been raised at the Human Rights Council in 2013 and considered by governments in dedicated discussions held at expert meetings of the CCW in 2014. The UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, called in 2013 for national moratoria to be imposed by all states on the “testing, production, assembly, transfer, acquisition, deployment and use” of these systems, until an internationally agreed framework on their future has been established. The CCW could be a possible venue for developing this, having previously produced a pre-emptive ban on blinding laser weapons. One should note, though, that previous attempts within the CCW to deliver the responses needed to certain weapons systems have occasionally failed, often hampered by operating under the consensus rule and a tendency to defer to military considerations rather than focus on humanitarian or ethical imperatives.

Promisingly, the need to ensure meaningful human control has already been a prominent feature of the debate at the CCW, with several states recognising the importance of this approach. In upcoming discussions, governments should elaborate their policies for maintaining meaningful human control over existing weapons systems in individual attacks. Such an exchange would advance consideration of how human control can be ensured over future systems. This would in turn help clarify what practices and potential systems must be prohibited and the standards that states must demonstrate that they are meeting in their conduct. Elements to consider could include the need for adequate information to be available to commanders using any weapons system, positive action from a human being in launching individual attacks, and ensuring accountability.

Few states have elaborated any policy on human control over weapons systems. Current US policy on autonomous weapons systems stresses that there should be “appropriate levels of human judgement over the use of force”, but does not define what these should be. The policy leaves the door open for the development of fully autonomous weapons systems, whilst recognising the harm they could cause to civilians. The UK government has stated that it has no intention to develop fully autonomous weapons and that “human control” over any weapons system must be ensured. However, it has not given sufficient elaboration of what exactly this means and how it will be ensured.

States may see different types of operating, supervising or overseeing systems to constitute acceptable control. Agreement between states on the concept of meaningful human control is therefore an important element of international progress on the issue of fully autonomous weapons systems.

Work by states on an international framework should be supported by input from civil society and draw on the views of a range of experts. Ultimately, negotiation processes will determine the definitions of key concepts. If discussions do not advance towards a binding framework within the CCW, a freestanding treaty process may be required, as was the case previously in the processes to outlaw both anti-personnel landmines and cluster munitions.

The upcoming meeting of experts at the CCW in April is unlikely to result in particular concrete actions due to the nature and format of the meeting. It could pave the way for a decision in November that states continue to discuss this issue in 2016 and put it on the agenda for the CCW’s 2016 Review Conference. At that point it could be flagged as a subject on which States Parties should develop a new binding protocol. No clear group to lead this process has yet emerged. So far Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, the Holy See, and Pakistan have endorsed a pre-emptive ban on autonomous weapons systems. France secured consensus for the CCW mandate in 2013 that established its work on lethal autonomous weapons systems, and Germany will be chairing the upcoming meeting, with the aim of seeking consensus on further consideration of the subject. However, the development of fully autonomous weapons systems is already being considered in military roadmaps. This makes their prohibition an urgent task.

Elizabeth Minor (@elizabethminor3) is a Researcher at Article 36, and was previously Senior Research Officer at Every Casualty, and a Researcher for Iraq Body Count (IBC). 

Featured image: The UK’s Taranis stealth UAV. The Taranis exemplifies the move toward increased autonomy as it aims to strike distant targets “even on other continents”, although humans are currently expected to remain in the loop. Source: Flickr | QinetiQ

One year on from the French intervention in Mali, Saharan jihadist groups continue to threaten not only Mali but Algeria, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Tunisia. Will French and US plans to expand their military presence in the Sahel combat, contain or exacerbate the threat from militants displaced from Mali?

Fragmentation, Displacement and Reconsolidation:  The AQIM Threat in 2014

French General Pillet, Chief of Staff of MINUSMA, Kidal, during the visit of the Joint Security Committee in charge of the observance of the cease-fire between the Malian army and armed groups from the north. Source: MINUSMA (Flickr)

Last January, the French military, supported by African troops and 10 non-African air forces, intervened militarily in Mali at the request of its transitional government. Over the following four weeks they recaptured all of the towns in the northern half of Mali. This vast desert region had been seized by Islamist and separatist militia in March-April 2012 and declared independent as the ‘State of Azawad’, the Tuareg name for their homeland in northeast Mali. Since then, French troops have continued to conduct security operations across northern Mali to locate and ‘neutralise’ militants associated with Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a jihadist group of Algerian origin, and its West African splinter groups. Reduced numbers of French forces now support Malian and African forces within the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             However, the final quarter of 2013 saw an increase in violence in northern Mali, including terrorist attacks, violent protests and inter-communal violence. Moreover, the French advance into northern Mali displaced rather than destroyed AQIM and its two local allies, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and Ansar Dine, a Tuareg Islamist group. Their impact has been particularly felt in Niger and Libya and may also have bolstered jihadist groups operating in northern Nigeria, Tunisia and Egypt’s Sinai. The lawless desert of southwest Libya is believed to be the new stronghold of AQIM.

A new group, al-Murabitun, combining MUJAO and the most active elements of AQIM’s Saharan front, now appears to pose more of a threat to western and West African interests than AQIM. This is because its strategic direction is towards the weak states of West Africa, including Niger, Mali and Mauritania, where critical infrastructure and individuals are more difficult to protect. It is also better connected to the kidnapping and trafficking enterprises that fund Saharan militancy, and more deadly. During 2013, its militants were behind frequent raids on Gao (northern Mali’s main town), on a prison, garrison and French-owned mine in Niger, and on the Algerian gas plant at In-Amenas. These audacious operations attest to its range, training, discipline and cosmopolitan membership. If it finds common purpose with the larger jihadist groups in northern Niger, as some analysts suggest, it could represent a severe threat to stability in the already shaky regional power.

French Repositioning in the Sahel

In recognition of the expansion of jihadist groups, France announced a major repositioning of its forces in Africa in January. The new French military posture will refocus from large coastal bases, designed to train, transport and supply African Union and regional rapid reaction forces, to smaller forward deployments in the Sahel and Sahara. 3,000 French troops will now be based indefinitely in Mali, Niger and Chad.

U.S. soldiers and French commandos marine conduct a reconnaissance patrol during a joint-combined exercise in Djibouti. Source: Wikipedia

The new posture is heavily influenced by US ‘War on Terror’ strategy in Africa, Yemen and south-west Asia, relying heavily on Special Forces, air strike capacities and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). French and US forces (including contractors) already share facilities in Djibouti, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, and there is a small US liaison detachment with the French Combined Air Operations Centre in Chad. The French repositioning is explicit about confronting Islamist terrorist groups and the threat to regional security posed by the security vacuum in southern Libya. While the repositioning focuses on Mali, Niger and Chad, supplied via a coastal base in Côte d’Ivoire, it will actually include deployments to over a dozen small bases and elite detachments in the Sahel and Sahara, covering at least seven countries. In some cases it will mean French Special Forces reoccupying desert forts long abandoned by the Foreign Legion.

There will also be greater use of aerial reconnaissance and targeting. French Navy patrol aircraft already criss-cross the Sahara and two MQ-9 Reaper UAVs arrived with French forces at Niamey airport in December after the US fast-tracked French acquisition of and training on these ‘hunter-killer’ drones. These double the effective range of the Harfang target-acquisition UAVs formerly used by the French in the Sahel, bringing all of Mali, Niger, almost all of the rest of West Africa and much of Algeria, Chad and southwest Libya into range.

France also makes greater use of combat aircraft in the Sahel-Sahara, deploying fighter aircraft from its long-term base in N’Djamena, Chad to Bamako and Niamey airports. This brings northern Mali into range. Since October, French fighter-reconnaissance aircraft have deployed to Faya-Largeau in northern Chad, which brings southern Libya well within range. French Special Forces and armed helicopters have also operated from Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania in pursuit of AQIM.

US and China Extend Their Presence

French and US Reapers now operate from the same facility at Niamey airport, set up by the US in February 2013. While US UAVs in Niger are unarmed, it is unclear if French Reapers will be used for strike missions. US armed UAV bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Seychelles currently bring all of the Horn of Africa, East Africa and most of Arabia within range. US private military contractors have also flown unarmed, unmarked light aircraft on surveillance flights all across the Sahel belt since at least 2007. Using covert hubs in Burkina Faso and Uganda and smaller airfields in Mauritania, Niger and South Sudan, they have sought AQIM and the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Since 2011, US Special Forces have established small bases in the Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to assist Ugandan forces seeking the LRA there. They also provide training to several African militaries countering the LRA. As with programmes in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad, these programmes have focused on creating elite counter-terrorism units. Unfortunately, all of these countries plus the CAR and South Sudan have experienced coups d’état or major army mutinies since this assistance began.

In order to combat Boko Haram, a Nigerian Special Operations Command was announced on 14 January with the US military providing advice, training and equipment. Massive attacks by Boko Haram since December suggest that the Nigerian army’s use of indiscriminate force in the northeast has not weakened the insurgency. Rather, the state of emergency is likely to have strengthened the recruitment base of Boko Haram since May.

China and Japan are also increasingly active in the Sahel. Chinese parastatals are the dominant actors in the oil industries of Sudan/South Sudan, Chad/Cameroon and Niger. They also mine uranium in Niger, and China is the primary buyer of iron ore from Mauritania’s vast desert complexes. So far, China is the only non-African state to deploy more than a few dozen troops with MINUSMA.  Japan, which saw ten of its nationals killed in the January 2013 militant attack on Algeria’s In-Amenas gas plant, has pledged $1 billion to stabilise the Sahel, including training of counter-terrorism units.

Compromised Alliances

This expansion of deployments and offensive operations relies on the status of forces agreements between western powers and’ friendly’ states such as Algeria. France, for example, depends on an air corridor across the Algerian Sahara. Securing such access puts host governments in a position of greater power. The highly authoritarian regime in Algiers – the world’s fifth or sixth largest arms importer – no longer faces western pressure to improve its dismal human rights record. Indeed, it has received friendly visits from the leaders of France and the UK and the US Secretary of State since late 2012. Mauritania’s military-based government faced little criticism over its unfair elections in November.

Chad, Uganda and Ethiopia may be the biggest regional beneficiaries of the militarisation of the Sahel. Each has been governed for a quarter-century by a former armed movement. They face little censure of their authoritarian and undemocratic internal policies and have become more assertive as regional military powers. Ethiopia has forces in Somalia while Uganda now has combat troops in operation (by agreement) in Somalia (under AU command), South Sudan, the DRC and the CAR.

Boosted by expanding oil revenues, French alliance and the demise of Libya’s Gaddafi regime, Chad has greatly expanded its military reach into Mali, Niger and the CAR, where its troops and citizens now face a violent backlash. It is also a Security Council member for the next two years and will be expected to help guide decisions on UN peacekeeping operations in Mali, South Sudan and potentially the CAR and Libya.

Burkina Faso, long relied on by Paris to negotiate with armed groups in francophone West Africa, is also facing unaccustomed turbulence in 2014 as its president seeks to permit himself an additional term of office. Algeria, which is wary of France’s military deployments on its southern border, is set to take over from Burkina the mediation of talks between Mali’s government and secular Tuareg and Arab rebels.

Foundations in Sand

In some respects, the eviction of AQIM and its allies from northern Mali has made the wider Sahara a less safe place, without obviously impeding the capacity of jihadist groups to threaten Europe. In 2014, southwest Libya and parts of Niger are not necessarily less safe havens than northern Mali was in 2012. The insurgency has moved closer to the Mediterranean and closer to critical European energy infrastructure in Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Niger (uranium). Unlike heterodox Mali, controlling Libya’s chaotic state is likely to be of interest to Arab Salafist groups, including AQIM.

As elsewhere, the western military approach to countering Islamist insurgency in the Sahel rests on very unsteady foundations. This applies to the political legitimacy of allied regimes, the stability and security of locations hosting French and US bases, the traumatic historical legacy of France as the former colonial power, and the potential for counter-insurgency tactics to provoke wider alienation and radicalisation. However asymmetric its military technology, reinforcing a new line of castles in the Saharan sand may be as futile a gesture in France’s long retreat from empire as the UK’s last stand in Afghanistan.

Richard Reeve is the Director of the Sustainable Security Programme at Oxford Research Group. He has researched African peace and security issues since 2000, including work with ECOWAS and the AU. Richard’s most recent security briefing ‘Security in the Sahel (Part II): Militarisation of the Sahel is available here.

Author’s Note: This contribution is a shorter version of the article “Assessment of Transboundary River Basins for Potential Hydro-political Tensions” by De Stefano et al. 2017.

The impacts of new dams and diversions are felt across borders, and the development of new water infrastructure can increase political tensions in transboundary river basins. International water treaties and river basin organizations serve as a framework to potentially deescalate hydro-political tensions across borders.

The availability of freshwater in the right quantity and quality at the right times for dependent systems is required for human security, environmental security, and economic growth. As populations and economies have grown, water has become scarcer and more variable in certain locations, leading to concerns over how water may lead to conflict. Though violent conflicts over water occur more often at the local level, disputes over water are also possible at the international level, particularly as impacts of water use spill across international borders.

Dams and other water infrastructure help manage water variability—providing water in times of drought and dampening the effects of floods. With these benefits come ecological impacts as large-scale water infrastructure effects the hydrologic function of the basin in which they are built. This includes altering the timing and/or magnitude of flows, altering aquatic migratory patterns, and preventing sediments from moving downstream. Thus, the construction of large-scale water infrastructure such as dams and water diversions can become significant sources of tension between countries sharing a river basin.

The significance of new dams and water diversions is increasing across the world as many countries have begun construction on large infrastructure projects in internationally shared river basins. This is evident in places such as the Nile Basin, where the Ethiopian government’s construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam has been occurring without an agreement with downstream Egypt, and the news of its construction has been met with violent protests and strong rhetoric from Egyptian politicians. Water diversions are not the only factor potentially creating tension between countries over shared waters. Other factors including high population growth, urbanization, increasing water pollution, over-abstraction of groundwater, climate change and water-related disasters can contribute to tensions.

Building institutional capacity (treaties and river basin organizations) is a crucial factor in decreasing the likelihood of conflict over shared waters – particularly if the agreements contain mechanisms that reduce uncertainty and increase flexibility in water management. Past research suggests that a basin will be more resilient to conflict if a basin has international mechanisms able to manage effects of rapid or extreme physical or institutional change. However, the mere presence of institutions does not necessarily indicate that a basin is resilient, nor does it indicate that water-related conflict will be absent.

Countries can exploit treaties since they are not easily enforceable. Treaties can also be structured in a way that exploits (or worsens) already-existing inequities between countries. Treaties can not only solidify power imbalances, but can also lock out public participation or even become a source of conflict themselves. This can lead to a lack of participating by some countries.

Previous studies in analyzing potential future conflict in river basins at a global scale have identified basins at future risk through predictive and forecasting methods, treaty analysis, and climate change. Our recent study aims to contribute to those types of analyses through examining multiple issues – stressors on political relationships due to the development of dams and water diversions, how treaties/river basin organizations can mitigate these stresses, and external socio-environmental factors that could exacerbate these tensions in the near future. We integrate these multi-faceted data to map the risk of potential tensions regarding water and politics in transboundary basins across the globe.

Findings

We found several basins to be vulnerable to tensions over water, particularly in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central America, the northern part of the South American continent, the southern Balkans as well as different parts of Africa (Table 1). New dams and diversions is ongoing or planned in at least 57 basins worldwide. The new dams are highly concentrated in very few geographic areas, including regions in Nepal, Brazil, and India. Most international river basins were found to have a moderate risk of tensions over water (see Figure 1). Twenty-two basins were classified as having a very high risk, and 14 basins were classified as having a high risk of tensions. Many basins of higher risk are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Central and Southeast Asia. These basins at higher risk are experiencing a combination of factors lending them vulnerable to conflict, including high rates of dam development, limited, weak, or nonexistent treaty coverage, high water variability, and low gross national income per capita.

Concluding remarks

The indicator-based analysis (Figure 1) uses a combination of environmental, political, and economic metrics, including high or increased climate-driven water variability, presence of armed conflicts, and low gross national income per capita, to identify vulnerability and resilience to tensions brought forth by water resources development in international watersheds at a global scale. The development of new dams and water diversions is very unevenly distributed.

Certain basins will be much more impacted than others. Most of the new water infrastructure is in upstream portions of river basins, with many dams being built in emerging or developing economies that require increased hydropower and water regulation to sustain their economic development. Many of these areas still lack well-developed instruments and institutions that would contribute towards transboundary cooperation.

The ability to understand when (and where) these variables combine to potentially create conflict is critical to managing and transforming future conflict in transboundary basins. Understanding where conflict might occur can contribute towards guiding policy interventions, focusing capacity-building efforts where needed, and actualizing worldwide initiatives of integrated water resources management. This includes achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal Target 6.5 (“By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through transboundary cooperation as appropriate.”).

Jacob D. Petersen-Perlman is a Research Analyst at the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center. His research areas of interest include transboundary water conflict and cooperation, water security, and water governance.

Lucia De Stefano is Deputy Director of the Water Observatory of the Botín Foundation and Associate Professor at Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). Her main fields of interest are multilevel water planning, drought management, groundwater governance, transboundary waters, and the assessment of good governance attributes from different disciplinary perspectives.

Eric Sproles is a hydrologist at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas Áridas in La Serena, Chile and a Courtesy faculty member at Oregon State University. His research areas of interest include climate change impacts on hydrology, particularly on mountain snowpack and streamflow, and remote sensing of terrestrial water storage.

Aaron T. Wolf is a professor of geography in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and directs the Program in Water Conflict Management and Transformation, through which he has offered workshops, facilitations, and mediation in basins throughout the world. His research focuses on issues relating transboundary water resources to political conflict and cooperation.

The French Front National is now one of the most successful political protest forces in Western Europe. The party is preparing to participate in the April 2017 Presidential election where the migrant crisis and the capacity of the government to provide security from terrorist attacks will be pressing issues.

According to some scholars, such as Cas Mudde, the French Front National (FN) now appears to be one of the most successful populist radical right parties in Western Europe. Since the mid-1980s, the FN has established itself as a permanent force in French politics. Nowadays, the party appears to offer strength in a climate where European security appears weak and vulnerable. Flourishing in a France characterized by strong concerns about the migrant/refuges crisis and recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists, the party is currently placed in a European ideological space of extreme right protest, often dominated by racism and xenophobia. The FN supports a concept of “Europe of Nations” and protectionism. These ideas have been encouraged by the recent winning of the “leave” campaign in the UK referendum and the Donald Trump’s rise in the USA. What are the origins of the FN, its current strategies and its role in the contemporary political landscape (at national and supranational level)?

From Jean-Marie to Marine: a family party

Image credit: Blandine Le Cain/Wikimedia Commons.

Since Marine Le Pen took over party leadership from her father in 2011, the FN has entered a new stage of its political development, which demonstrates its adaptability and an ability to survive its founding leader: Jean-Marie Le Pen. However, the party has an even longer history in French politics. It was founded in 1972 from a small neo-fascist organization, Ordre Nouveau, as an electoral umbrella for nationalist groups to run in the 1973 legislative elections. The FN remained electorally irrelevant during the first decade of its starting phase. Its turning point was the 1984 European elections where it obtained about 11% of the vote. From the mid-1980s, the party maintained a sort of electoral stability (between 11 and 15% of electoral support). Since 1984, the FN has also fielded candidates in all local and regional elections, winning representation in regional, departmental and municipal councils, as well as in the European Parliament.

The change of leader in 2011 reinforced the party’s electoral appeal: the FN under Marine Le Pen has enlarged its base of support, reaching new heights in the 2012 Presidential election with about 18% of the vote. The FN also topped the 2014 European election winning a quarter of the national vote and 24 seats, which allowed Marine Le Pen to establish leadership over the pan-European nationalist right. Success at the national level has been corroborated locally. In the 2014 municipal election, the party won 11 municipal councils and 1,544 councillors, outperforming its previous record (1995). The departmental elections of March 2015 showed another surge in FN support at 25% of the vote, with 62 local councillors. In 2015 again (December) the party participated in the regional elections and it obtained a new record. In particular in two regions (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie) the FN arrived at 40% of the vote during the first round of elections.

Under Marine Le Pen’s leadership, party change has been embedded in the concept of “de-demonization” (dédiabolisation). As Gilles Ivaldi suggests, de-demonization is primarily characterized by the attempt to detoxify the party’s extremist reputation, while simultaneously preserving its populist radical right potential for voter mobilization. The current FN seeks to improve its credibility through party modernization and professionalization. Whilst the 2011 leadership election represented a first notable step towards greater intra party democracy, there is little evidence of a more substantial move towards a party “normalization”, neither ideologically nor organizationally. Instead, the party has taken a process of “Marinization” (personalization) whereby Marine Le Pen has successfully replaced her father as charismatic leader, both inside and outside the party.

The 2011 congress represented probably the most important change in the French Front National organizational path, with Marine Le Pen taking over the party. Following Jean-Marie Le Pen’s decision to step down, the party had initiated an internal leadership campaign. During the same campaign against Bruno Gollnisch, Marine Le Pen had indicated that she would turn the party into a professionalized and more effective party organization: “I want to create a renewed, opened and well-functioning party”, she said. In 2011, the FN had experienced its first change of leader since 1972, together with a new executive team and a new logo. The “new” FN has pushed an agenda, which aims primarily to shed its extreme right profile and to achieve agency credibility.

A “Europe of Nations”

The FN articulates a strong populist anti-establishment agenda. It opposes European integration, exemplifying the “hard Euro-scepticism” defined by Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart as “a principled opposition to the EU and European integration”. Its opposition to Europe concerns a wide range of institutional, economic and national identity issues. The FN’s concept of a “Europe of Nations”, argues that institutional cooperation should only take place between sovereign nation-states, opposes the EU as a supranational entity, and criticizes the EU as elitist and bureaucratic. A pledge for a return of competences and powers to the national level has been central to the FN electoral platforms since the early 1990s. The 2014 FN ’s programme featured primarily the promise to shed the Euro which was portrayed as “ a jail” serving the “sole interests of bankers and the wealthy”, and from which the French people “should free themselves”.

The FN’s distrust of European integration revolves around immigration and issues of national identity, and it is often linked with welfare-chauvinist positions. The FN’s hostility towards the EU is underpinned by the party’s traditional ethno-nationalist policies. As Mudde suggests, the FN’s anti-EU positions are incorporated into a typical populist radical right agenda, which combines nativism, authoritarianism and anti-establishment populism.

The party is notorious for its politicization of immigration issues. During the 1980s, Jean Marie Le Pen laid out the basis for a potent ethno-nationalist and welfare-chauvinist “master frame”, which later diffused throughout Europe. In 2014, the European campaign by the FN was marked by the continuation of xenophobia and welfare-chauvinism, showing no significant departure from the party’s traditional ethno-nationalist ideology.

The FN committed to “defending, in all circumstances, France’s values, identity, traditions and way of life” against what would be stigmatized as a “sieve Europe”. The party’s 2014 platform lashed out at the Schengen agreement, campaigning on withdrawal, and claiming that the FN would close France’s borders to “stop uncontrolled immigration and put an end to the free movement of Roma and delinquents across Europe”. In line with its 2012 manifesto, the FN proposedpolicies, which would remove the possibility within French law to regularize illegal migrants. The party’s 2012 presidential platform featured a range of nativist policies, including the FN’s traditional “national preference” scheme, which seeks to give priority to the French people over foreigners in welfare, jobs and housing.

A product of France’s political system and climate?

French political parties are characterized by their instability, organizational weakness and fragmentation. As one of the oldest parties in France, FN has shown greater signs of stability over time. Since 1972, it has experienced only one change at the top and it has retained its name. The Parti Socialiste (PS – Socialist Party), currently the most important centre-left party in France, underwent important organizational changes since 1971 as it opened itself to other political forces. Parties of the right exhibit an even greater degree of volatility over time. In 2002, the loose electoral alliances of the 1980s and the 1990s between the Gaullists and the Centre-Right gave way to organizational merger with the creation of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP – Union for a Popular Rally), which was an attempt by the centre-right to consolidate its identity.

In 2007, the new president of the UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected in the presidential election. In 2011, however, disgruntled liberals and Christian Democrats left the UMP to form an independent party, the Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI). Following Sarkozy’s defeat in 2012, the UMP entered a period of high ideological, leadership and strategic factionalism. In November 2014, Sarkozy returned to the UMP and won the leadership election with a large internal consensus. He pushed important changes to the party statutes, including a renaming of the party to Les Républicains (The Republicans). Recently, the party reorganized itself around a new right-wing leader, François Fillon, who became the Presidential candidate in view of 2017 appointment and after a victory during an open primary election.

The same event has generated a new political and social weakness in France, also fuelled by the election of Donald Trump as US president in November 2016. In current context, France is faced with another crucial battle between populist radical right and establishment (right again) forces. The unexpected victory of Fillon in the Republican primary, Socialist President François Hollande’s decision not to run again, may be complicating Le Pen’s efforts to turn her political success into an electoral victory in the two rounds of voting scheduled for April 23 and May 7, 2017. In fact, there are themes, such as Islam, insecurity and immigration, with which the FN is able to rule the debate in general and worry public opinion.

The FN has been able to aquire a new agenda, a sort of “cultural hegemony”, a “vocabulary” even more used also by other traditional party from the centre-right area. France remains, therefore, pervaded by a strong wave of right-wing extremism. In this changed and menacing context, the FN maintains a high appeal and it is ready to prepare its battle in the 2017 Presidential election and probably it is going to reinforce its campaign and its strategies. In any case, it has become (and  remained) a constant presence in the French political system.

Maria Elisabetta Lanzone, PhD, is Research Fellow and Teaching Assistant at University of Genoa (Italy). She is expert in comparative populism, Euro-scepticism and migration policies. She is the author, with Gilles Ivaldi, of the book chapter From Jean-Marie to Marine Le Pen: Organizational Change and Adaptation in the French Front National (2016, Palgrave Macmillan). From April 2015 she is also member of the ERMES Laboratory at University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France).

Authors’ Note: The opinions expressed by the writers are theirs alone and not necessarily those of the United States government or any of its departments.

As a response to the attacks by violent extremists around the world, policymakers have invested considerable effort into comprehending terrorists’ use of the Internet and initiating counter-measures.

The internet is undeniably an important factor in understanding the radicalization trajectories of many violent extremists. A senior official at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently observed that extremists’ “deft use of Internet propaganda, together with that content’s wide availability, has broadened the population of potentially vulnerable individuals, and shortened the timespan of their recruitment.” Supporting this statement, terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp lists social media as one of nine factors that may exacerbate causes of an individual’s radicalization, including individual and social factors as well as cultural and ideological motivators.

Research has also shown that the internet facilitates both early engagement with violent ideologies and opportunities for learning and sharing criminal information. For instance, a study by the University of Maryland’s START terrorism consortium found that “the internet played a primary or contributing role in the radicalization of 86%” in the cases of over 200 U.S.-based foreign fighters. These individuals used the internet to “view extremist materials, research conflicts, groups and attack methods, and participated in online communities of like-minded individuals.” Moreover, results from the same dataset show that the internet “may be speeding up the radicalization timeframe” as compared to radicalization before the advent of the internet. Similar findings from a study of over 200 terrorist offenders in the United Kingdom found that 54% of the perpetrators used the internet to learn about their intended criminal activities and, in 44% of the cases, extremist media (e.g., videos, audio lectures and photographs) were found, viewed, or downloaded by the perpetrators.

The authors of the UK study, however, recognize that terrorists’ use of the internet “is perhaps unsurprising given the ubiquity of Internet usage in the most benevolent activities across wider society.” Indeed, a good deal of research has examined terrorists’ expansive use of the internet, such as the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to build a network of ideological conformity through social media platforms like Twitter. A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue has shown not only how life under the Islamic State is romanticized through social media postings, but also how important digital connectivity can be to those in the field, describing young women in ISIS controlled territory who resort to “climbing pine trees to gain Internet reception.”

Countering extremism online

Image credit: Andres Eldh/Flickr.

These studies shed light on the particular ways that terrorists use the internet and underscore the importance of law enforcement intervention into online criminal activities. However, an ongoing challenge for researchers and policymakers engaged in preventing and countering violent extremism (CVE) is how to proactively address the role of the internet and social media in the context of violent extremism before criminal activity has occurred. To respond to that challenge, two broad policy approaches have emerged.

One approach advocates for online content removal and account suspension in order to reduce the supply of non-criminal but potentially extremist content. The European Commission recently instituted content-flagging mechanisms modelled after an initiative by the British government’s Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit. Outside of government, technology companies also have taken steps to remove terrorist content. In December 2016, social media companies announced their own cooperative efforts to use hashing techniques to quickly identify and take down extremist images and content that violate terms of service agreements. In their latest annual transparency report, Twitter suspended around 636,000 accounts between August 2015 and December 2016 for promoting extremist content.

Research studies that have assessed whether content removal and account suspension efforts work to curb the propagation of violent extremist messages suggest promising outcomes. For instance, a report from the George Washington’s Program on Extremism found that “over time, individual users who repeatedly created new accounts after being suspended suffered devastating reductions in their followers.” While ISIS users quickly learn how to overcome account suspensions and restore some followers, the study suggests these actions to reestablish followers have only “limited benefits” once a suspension has occurred.

Yet, as technology companies like Twitter, Microsoft, and Facebook become more effective at detecting extremist content with tools that recognize unique “fingerprints” of extremist content, terror groups have also become more agile in how they use the internet to facilitate their work. Terrorism researcher Audrey Alexander describes how attempts to limit terrorist content online have pushed extremists away from public platforms and to encrypted tools like WhatsApp, Telegram, and ProtonMail. Indeed, Telegram now “appears to be the top choice among both individual jihadists and official jihadist groups.” The covert nature of these platforms poses significant barriers to researchers and authorities seeking to understand, track, and measure the terrorist threat.

Another method for combatting online violent extremist content suggests creating counter narratives to refute terrorist claims. The idea is to craft messages that will appeal to vulnerable individuals to persuade them that violence is not the answer.  To explore this approach, the U.S. government has sponsored an initiative along with support from Facebook that known as the Peer to Peer: Challenging Violent Extremism program to engage young people, who may be most vulnerable to violent extremist messages, to create credible counter message for their own peers. Since the program launched in 2015, over 5,000 students have taken part. The 2016 winning team from Rochester Institute of Technology developed an awareness campaign called “Ex-Out Extremism” to “open people’s eyes” to violent extremism and to encourage them to take a stand against it. While initiatives like Peer to Peer typically reach broad audiences, foster educational engagement and increase public awareness, researchers have pointed out that continued work is needed to understand what can inoculate or prevent radical ideologies from taking root in the first place.

A more targeted approach for reaching at-risk individuals online has been piloted at Jigsaw, Alphabet’s technology incubator focusing on geopolitical challenges, to redirect users from ISIS propaganda to curated YouTube videos that credibly debunk ISIS recruiting themes. Similarly, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue conducted a pilot study to direct individualized online intervention services to those demonstrating affinity to violent extremist groups through their online activities. The results found that intervention messages that reached at-risk individuals were “highly likely” to cause behavior change, either by prompting radicalizing individuals to change their privacy settings or to send direct messages to the intervenors for more engagement.  While these results are based on a very small sample, directed intervention programs may offer options for providing “off ramps” to individuals at critical points.

The value of partnerships

Whether intervening online to remove content and suspend accounts or developing credible counter messages or intervention options, effectively addressing violent extremism will require innovative partnerships inside and outside government.  To this end, in 2016 the United States government launched an interagency task force to address countering violent extremism with representation from both security and non-security agencies along with engagement from civil society groups.  While these multidisciplinary partnerships are challenging bureaucratically, they underscore the need for developing networked approaches to emerging security challenges. Similar cooperative agreements might span across national boundaries, not only for the purposes of information sharing between law enforcement officials, but also to include cooperation, such as the recent announcement by the Netherlands and Kenya to build a comprehensive partnership around a range of security related issues including deradicalization efforts.

Although some have suggested that there is little evidence that terrorism prevention works, there is a small but growing literature providing support for the application of prevention science to the problem of violent extremism. Without question, more attention is needed for rigorous assessment of these programs, especially with regard to evaluating the effectiveness of online campaigns. To fill this gap, the RAND Corporation recently released an evaluation toolkit for countering violent extremism, which includes guidelines for assessing programs’ social media metrics. The London-based Royal United Services Institute has published a guide to CVE program design and evaluation, which provides guidance for articulating relevant impact measures. Ultimately, these resources, coupled with innovative public and private sector partnerships, will contribute to preventing radicalization to violence both online and offline.

Tackling online radicalization will undoubtedly be a major security priority for policymakers in the future. Following the deadly May 22, 2017 bomb explosion in Manchester, leaders of the G7 convened in Taormina, Italy to reaffirm their efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism.  In a statement, members underscored several areas for continued engagement, not only through traditional counterterrorism measures like “knowledge-sharing” and cutting off “sources and channels of terrorist financing,” but also through technology sector engagement “to substantially increase their efforts to address terrorist content” and well as civil society engagement to promote “alternative and positive narratives rooted in our common values.” The future war against online extremism may prove to be a long and difficult one, but it is a fight that must be won.   

Dr. Susan Szmania has served in government and academic positions addressing violent extremism.  She is currently a senior research analyst at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the Office for Community Partnerships.  In this capacity, she leads the research and analysis line of effort on the U.S. government’s interagency Countering Violent Extremism Task Force.  Prior to this work, Dr. Szmania was a senior researcher at the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, and she served in government positions at U.S. Embassies in Sweden and Spain to implement programs to counter violent extremism. She received her Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004.

Matthew Conway has served in various research capacities focusing on conflict and extremism, both independently and with two London-based think-tanks. He is currently a research adviser for the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Community Partnerships, where he focuses on Countering Violent Extremism research. He received his Master’s in Conflict, Security and Development from King’s College London in 2015 and his Bachelor’s in Political Science and International Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013.

This article is part of the Remote Control Warfare series, a collaboration with Remote Control, a project of the Network for Social Change hosted by Oxford Research Group.

The use of security forces to protect merchant vessels from piracy has led to a rise in ‘floating armouries’: vessels that are used for weapons storage, often moored in international waters. This growing trend raises a number of concerns over security, oversight and transparency. 

From 2005 onwards, cargo ships traversing the seas off the coast of Somalia into the Gulf of Aden have become targets of maritime piracy.  One of the responses has been to station armed guards on the ships, or on support vessels travelling with the ships to protect them. On commercial ships these guards have generally been provided by Private Maritime Security Companies (PMSCs) with weapons owned by the PMSCs themselves or leased from governments or other PMSCs in the region.

PMSCs need to have storage for the weapons when not in use. One option is to store them in land-based armouries, the other is to store them in ‘floating armouries’. A new report by the Omega Research Foundation commissioned by the Remote Control project examines the issue of floating armouries and offers recommendations for how they could be regulated.

What are floating armouries and why are they used?

Floating armouries are ships that store weapons, ammunition and other equipment such as night vision goggles and body armour for use by PMSCs engaged in vessel protection. They also provide other logistics support including accommodation, food and medical supplies storage. They are typically commercially owned vessels, and are often anchored in international waters. These vessels are not purpose built, but ships that have been converted and retrofitted.

Due to the tightening of state regulation over the use of land based armouries, restrictions on weapons in some territorial waters, as well as the fees levied at PMSCs to move weapons through ports, PMSCs have increasingly turned towards floating armouries.

What are the issues?

Whilst PMSCs have dramatically reduced piracy off the coast of Somalia, the Omega Research Foundation’s report sheds light on an underexplored issue: the lack of regulation, oversight and security of floating armouries. It is not known how many floating armouries there are in operation – due to the lack of information on these vessels it is hard to verify their numbers. In 2012 a UN report detailed 18 floating armouries; other reports put the number at between 12 and 20 (See an industry newsletter and a Guardian article quoting the EU Naval Force). In September 2014 the UK Government published a list of floating armouries that UK PMSCs were licensed to use, stipulating 31 armouries. As this number only represents floating armouries licensed for use by UK companies, there may well be other armouries in operation.

In 2012 the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea highlighted concerns over the safety and security of floating armouries, citing the lack of national and international regulations. The Group stated:

This new and highly profitable business for PMSCs is uncontrolled and almost entirely unregulated, posing additional legal and security challenges for all parties involved.

Two years on there is still no international regulation and only limited national regulation. As the floating armouries are often moored in international waters, they operate in a ‘legal grey area’ with, in some cases, the only regulation coming from the states that register the vessels (the flag states). There are at least 3 states (Djibouti, Mongolia, and St Kitts and Grenadine) that give explicit approval for vessels to operate as floating armouries. Other states do have some regulation regarding the carrying of weapons on board ships but it mainly relates to PMSCs rather than floating armouries specifically.

Some of the vessels operating as floating armouries are flagged to countries that are on the Paris MoU or Tokyo MoU ‘black lists’. These black lists are derived from the Port State Control authority’s inspection of ships for compliance with international conventions and international law. Port State Control publishes an annual list evaluating the performance of flag states and assigning each a white, grey or black classification. The Omega Research Foundation has raised concerns that some floating armouries are flagged to states where there are serious concerns over the regulation of ships that fly under their flags.

There are also concerns over the construction and physical security standards of the floating armouries. None of the vessels currently used as floating armouries have been purpose built for that function. Existing vessels have been adapted, which means they may not have acceptable storage facilities for arms and ammunition. As a minimum, floating armouries should have an armoury contained within the structure of the ship and should have a secure entrance. Arms and ammunition should be stored separately, and should be kept in a weatherproof, ventilated and shelved environment.

What are the solutions?

Whilst states can introduce legislation to regulate floating armouries operating within their jurisdiction, the most effective regulation needs to be at an international level. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) as well as international trade bodies, such as the Security Association for the Maritime Industry (SAMI), should review current regulation and implement the necessary changes.

As a first step there should be an international in-depth study into the number of floating armouries currently in operation and the establishment of a central registry that contains information on the vessels used as floating armouries and the companies that operate them. The IMO or another international body should also review any existing national regulations and examples of best practice. Subsequent work should focus on establishing an international regulatory framework for floating armouries and an effective monitoring and compliance mechanism.

The Omega Research Foundation (@Omega_RF) is an independent UK-based research organisation dedicated to providing rigorous, objective, evidence-based research on the manufacture, trade in, and use of, military, security and police (MSP) technologies. Their report, ‘Floating Armouries: Implications and Risks’ is available here.

The Remote Control project is a project of the Network for Social Change hosted by Oxford Research Group that looks at the current developments in military technology and the re-thinking of military approaches to future threats.

Featured image: Offshore tug, the same kind of vessel used for floating armouries. Source: Flickr | Luc Van Braekel

As established by UN General Assembly resolution 64/35 of 2009, the 29^th of August marked the International Day Against Nuclear Tests. This date serves to enhance public awareness about the harmful effects of nuclear weapon test explosions (of which at least 2,046 were conducted between 1945 and 1996: an average of one every nine days) on people and the environment, and reminds the international community about the importance of banning nuclear tests through the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

CTBT: Verification outpaces Ratification

Opened for signature in September 1996, the CTBT has yet to enter into force, pending the final eight ratifications by all of the Annex II states. These are the 44 states which participated in the negotiations on the CTBT and possessed nuclear power or research reactors at the time. Although five – China, Egypt, Iran, Israel, the US – of these final eight states have signed the Treaty, three have not: North Korea (DPRK), India and Pakistan.

While some argue that CTBT ratification by the US would be a “game changer” and trigger a cascade of ratifications, it may rest on President Obama’s successor to invest domestic political capital and concerted engagement to shepherd through a successful ratification. With recent studies such as the 2012 National Research Council’s updated assessment of technical issues related to the CTBT serving to inform and allay previously voiced national security and verification concerns, strategic efforts to educate Congress, media and the US public could assist in highlighting the benefits of ratifying the CTBT.

Performing maintenance at CTBTO infrasound station IS55, Windless Bight, Antarctica. (Source: CBTBO via Wikipedia)

Pending those eight ratifications for the CTBT entry into force, the Preparatory Commission for the CTBT Organization (CTBTO) is building up an extensive and sophisticated global International Monitoring System (IMS) which will serve to monitor and verify compliance with the Treaty. With over 85% of the IMS’ facilities in operation, the CTBT is already providing ‘a firm barrier against a qualitative and quantitative development of nuclear weapons for both nuclear weapon-capable states and then would-be possessors‘.

Proof of the partially complete verification regime’s detection capability has been showcased by the three nuclear tests conducted since 2006 by the DPRK, the only remaining state defying the established international anti-testing norm. Since the international community unanimously condemned the 1998 round of tests by India and Pakistan, defying the non-testing norm and global de facto moratorium established by the CTBT, the two states in South Asia have implemented and observed unilateral moratoria on nuclear testing.

Concerns about a DPRK fourth test

The urgency of reaffirming the importance of the CTBT and re-energizing efforts to bring the Treaty into force, should be ever present with concerns about a possible fourth nuclear test as threatened by the DPRK earlier this year. The DPRK is the only state that has disregarded the testing moratorium and non-testing norm since 1998 with its three successively larger nuclear tests (in 2006, 2009 and 2013). South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se warned earlier this year that a fourth test by North Korean would be a “game changer” for the region.

Even with the DPRK remaining a wildcard on prospects for ratification, not least given the shaky political conditions for regional resumption of dialogue on the nuclear issue while Kim Jong Un consolidates his regime, the other seven Annex II states can lead in responsibly committing to shore up their legal commitment to the non-testing norm.

Improving regime atmospherics for the 2015 NPT Review Conference

The CTBT and the NPT are interlinked and thus progress on the CTBT would serve to garner positive atmospherics for the NPT review process, in 2015 and beyond. The 1995 NPT Review Conference (RevCon) indefinite extension of the NPT and the 2000 NPT RevCon’s ‘13 steps’ (steps 1 and 2) called on states for action and commitment to a CTBT. More recently, five of the 64 action points in the 2010 NPT RevCon’s Action Plan stress bringing the Treaty into force. Given the growing discontent within the NPT review process due to the perceived lack of progress on disarmament commitments, a renewed and reinvigorated commitment to the CTBT by NPT states parties could ameliorate the atmosphere and help to build confidence and momentum.

Two initiatives within the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime—the Helsinki Conference for discussing the establishment of a Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East, and the humanitarian consequences initiative concerning the impact of nuclear weapons—could provide an impetus for renewed focus to the importance of legally committing to the CTBT. Both of these initiatives, which continue to enjoy a broad divergence of views, could serve to channel attention on ratification of the CTBT as a key trust- and confidence-building measure and a foundational first-step for progress on the aims of the two initiatives.

Given the active civil society engagement of the humanitarian initiative, some of these agents could focus efforts on promoting the entry into force of the CTBT, channelling campaigns to lobby and engage their elected parliamentarians on the importance of the CTBT.

If any of the three remaining Annex II states from the Middle East region – Egypt, Iran and Israel – were to legally commit to refrain from nuclear testing, it would be a hugely significant political and confidence-building gesture for the high-profile efforts to convene a conference which was mandated by the 2010 NPT Review Conference to take place in 2012. Given the ongoing P5+1 talks with Iran, such a step by Iran would further serve to reassure the international community about the intent and peaceful nature of its nuclear programme.

Multilateral initiatives

UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Angela Kane encouraged states to seize the high-profile opportunity to sign or deposit their instruments of ratification at an event held on the margins of the UN General Assembly this month. As an interim step, short of signing or ratifying the CTBT, other proposals to further consolidate the anti-testing norm and moratorium include a suggested UN Security Council resolution condemning nuclear tests as a threat to international peace and security, and regional pledges committing member states to refrain from nuclear tests or even sub-critical experiments not prohibited by the CTBT.

Notably, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) endorsed such a regional commitment in its declaration on nuclear disarmament at a meeting in Buenos Aires in August 2013. Such effort could be replicated by other regions or via multilateral negotiating groupings operating in the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Regional and other groupings could pledge to highlight this issue at every nuclear-relevant forum and opportunity in efforts to cross-germinate this message.

Annex II states particularly, as well as other states and groupings, should welcome, engage and promote the efforts of the CTBTO’s Group of Eminent Persons (GEM), comprised of high-profile experts and former officials aiming to promote the CTBT’s entry into force. Through the support of such initiatives, awareness can be raised. Further to raising awareness and educating civil society, efforts such as the CTBTO’s public training courses and NGOs’ public information and awareness efforts should be supported, promoted and even replicated regionally as force multipliers.

J. Robert Oppenheimer recounted of those witnessing the Manhattan Project’s first atom bomb test (the 1945 Trinity test), “we knew the world would not be the same; a few people laughed; a few people cried; most people were silent.” Indeed, the world has not been the same and the proverbial nuclear genie cannot be put back in the bottle. But states can make the legal commitment to ban all nuclear tests, anywhere. 18 years after the CTBT opened for signatures, responsible states should commit efforts to facilitate the ratification of this Treaty.

Jenny Nielsen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland. Previously, she was a Research Analyst with the Non-proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a Programme Manager for the Defence & Security Programme at Wilton Park, and a Research Assistant for the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies (MCIS) at the University of Southampton, where she co-edited the 2004-2012 editions of the NPT Briefing Book.

Following President Rouhani’s success in last August’s election, relations between the United States and Tehran have improved substantially, partly because of the election result but also because the Obama administration has a more positive view of Iran. There is no guarantee that the US election in 2016 will result in an administration sympathetic to further progress. This element of uncertainty will be factored into the policy-making process of the Rouhani administration. Even so, prospects for a negotiated settlement to the nuclear issue are the best they have been for a decade and it follows that if an agreement is concluded, this is likely to have a pronounced effect on Iranian foreign policy as it finds itself in a more positive international environment.

The Ahmadinejad Legacy

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is greeted by the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Source: Wikipedia

The flamboyance and the sometimes inflammatory rhetoric of the Ahmadinejad administration (2005-13) disguised a pragmatic foreign policy that combined a degree of confrontation on the nuclear issue with the enhancing of contacts with many countries across the global south, including left-leaning states in Latin America and numerous states in sub-Saharan Africa. It also sought to maintain reasonable links with Russia and China while limiting links with the West. While acceptable to much of the “Iranian street”, it was at odds with the liking of elements of western culture by young Iranians and the nuclear issue was deeply problematic in terms of the impact of sanctions.

While much is made of their role in bringing Rouhani to power and then to the negotiating table, the reality is rather different. Sanctions were effective, in part, because of the parallel impact of internal economic mismanagement by the Ahmadinejad government. Thus, if the Rouhani government improves the management of the economy then even the modest sanctions relief already promised will combine to enable the government to benefit through early respite from recent economic woes.

One other key factor is that Iran’s standing in the region, including the Arab world, has been damaged by its support for the Assad regime in Syria. Under Ahmadinejad, Iran saw the Assad regime as a strong and necessary ally, especially in combination with the Maliki government in Iraq. But as the war in Syria has worsened, and as the violence in Iraq degenerates towards a civil war, many states blame Iran. Regional powers such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt hold Iran partly responsible for the violent suppression of the Sunni majority in Syria, and states beyond the region believe Iran bears some responsibility not just for that but also for the possible spread of the war to Lebanon.

Conservative Strategy

Hassan Rouhani speaks in Mashhad during his presidential campaign Source: Wikimedia

Rouhani’s victory was singularly impressive in that he gained an absolute majority on the first ballot against four relatively conservative opponents on a 72% poll turnout. While this has given him considerable authority, most power still lies with the Supreme Leader. However, Ayatollah Khamenei has to be aware of the popularity of Rouhani, a matter made more difficult for him by Rouhani’s preference for avoiding a personality cult. While the election gave Rouhani a clear mandate for negotiating with the US, conservative elements are regrouping.

For these elements a particular concern is the election of the Assembly of Experts – the parliamentary upper house, which selects the Supreme Leader – that are due in September this year. Their fear is of a buoyant Rouhani government that will damage conservative prospects still further following last year’s reversals. It appears to be for this reason that they have sought to persuade the Supreme Leader to expand the negotiating team at the Syria peace talks in Geneva to include more hard-line elements and to have a Majlis (parliamentary) oversight body for the whole process. This would be dominated by conservatives. Rouhani’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Seyed Abbas Araqchi, has stated officially that the negotiating group remains accountable to the Supreme National Security Council, not a Majlis body, but there are reports of more members recently being appointed to the group.

What this means is that the Rouhani government will have a strong interest in developing policies that are attractive to the domestic constituency as soon as possible. The emphasis will undoubtedly be on the nuclear issue and getting further sanctions relief which, in combination with better economic management, could ensure palpable improvements in the economy and consequent political popularity. This, though, is not enough and liberalising economic reforms such as removal of subsidies may even exacerbate short-term economic difficulties. It follows that the Rouhani government will be looking closely at ways of increasing Iran’s standing in the region and beyond.

Developing Foreign Policy: Iran in the world

A key aspect of the Iranian outlook is a belief in Persia’s very proud history, one that extends over thousands rather than hundreds of years, and the consequent belief that Iran has not been realising its potential as one of the world’s potential great powers. This view of historic greatness transcends religion, even if Iran sees itself also as the centre of the Shi’a Muslim world. Iran has a population of 80 million, a little less than Egypt at 85 million and Turkey at 81 million. Egypt has formidable internal problems and a weak non-oil-based economy; Turkey is far stronger in terms of economy, even if it, too, lacks significant fossil fuel reserves. Since its 2013 counter-revolution, Egypt is also increasingly reliant on Saudi Arabia, Iran’s greatest rival for influence in the Gulf and wider Middle East.

Iran has all the problems of a near-moribund economy but has remarkable potential for development given that it has close to 10% of world oil reserves and 15% of gas reserves. The latter is largely shared with Qatar because of the huge reserves under the Gulf. There have so far been few problems of delineating boundaries – indeed relations with Qatar remain quite good despite major differences on other issues such as Syria, where Qatar, with Turkey, strongly backs the anti-Assad rebellion.

Asia or Europe?

Iran Foreign Minister Javad Zarif walks with EU High Representative Catherine Ashton at the EU +3 and Iran talks, November 2013. Source: EEAS (Flickr)

The issue for Iran relates largely to where it seeks to develop its economic and political alliances. To the immediate east the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan are hugely significant, especially in the case of Afghanistan where opium and refined heroin smuggling across the border has cost the lives of hundreds of Iranian border guards. Iran has close links with the north-west parts of Afghanistan and has no liking for the Taliban. It is suspicious of Pakistan because of radical Sunni Islamist elements within the state, its long-term support for the Taliban, close security ties to Saudi Arabia and the precarious security predicament of the Pakistani Shi’a community, but still seeks to improve relations, not least through exporting gas. The originally planned Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline is going ahead as far as Pakistan. Iran will further increase its links with Afghanistan, where it has greatly increased aid in recent years, especially to projects in the north-west of the country.

India and China are both significant importers of Iranian oil and gas and China has been particularly useful to Iran in two respects. One has been long-term investment in the development of new oil and gas fields, and it remains much appreciated that China persisted with this when relations with the US were at their lowest. The other has been China’s supply of carefully selected weapons, especially shore-based anti-ship cruise missiles. Iran will maintain close links with China, but will not eschew improved relations with India, seeing it as a useful counter-balance to Pakistan.

The links with southern and eastern Asia will remain highly significant in terms of Iranian foreign policy but it is already clear that a priority will be to improve relations with neighbouring Turkey, already demonstrated by the meeting between Foreign Ministers Mohammad Javad Zarif and Ahmet Davutoglu in Tehran last November. In spite of considerable differences over Syria, the countries have good relations in other respects, and Turkey’s past role in trying to defuse the nuclear issue remains appreciated. Trade relations between Iran and Turkey have expanded greatly in the past decade.

It is highly likely that Iran will seek a much closer relationship with Turkey, seeing the two countries together comprising an axis of influence linking Europe and Asia. The Turkish attitude to this is likely to be very positive, seeing it as a useful factor in increasing Turkey’s significance for the European Union. This does mean that the Rouhani government has an added interest in seeing a scaling down of the Syrian War. It is probable that a Turkey/Iran connection is more important to Tehran than the much vaunted Lebanon/Syria/Iraq/Iran “Shi’a crescent”.

The rivalry with Saudi Arabia remains pervasive and is a crucial proxy element in the Syrian conflict but Rouhani’s personal links with Saudi diplomats in the past, combined with Iran’s need to see the war scaled down, means that even here there may be potential for progress. Further improving relations with the US will be a priority but the Rouhani government recognises the risk of sudden changes in US leadership in less than three years time. This means that European links remain useful but Iran does not look to the west to ensure its standing in the world. Turkey, China and India are more significant and this will remain as long as Rouhani is in power. Of these, Turkey is probably the most important.

Implications

Rouhani has barely a year all told to build on the considerable support he gathered last year, and this is against a background of entrenched conservative and theocratic elements that will work hard to limit his capacity. While he will give ground on nuclear issues and may work towards a Syrian settlement, if Iran is allowed to participate in Geneva ll, there is a risk that this can be presented by his opponents as a sign of weakness. Economic progress might blunt this but an additional way forward is to engage in a much more active foreign policy. One consequence of such a shift to the north and east is that Iran may not see Europe as important to its interests to the extent that Europe sees Iran. This is a reflection of more general global changes, bringing its own challenges.

Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group, for which he writes monthly security briefings.  He is Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford and author of numerous books including ‘Beyond Terror’. Paul writes a weekly column for openDemocracy  and tweets regularly at @ProfPRogers.

Featured image: President Rouhani delivers remarks at the Hilton Hotel in New York City, September 2013. Source: Asia Society (Flickr)

One year on from the French intervention in Mali, Saharan jihadist groups continue to threaten not only Mali but Algeria, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Tunisia. Will French and US plans to expand their military presence in the Sahel combat, contain or exacerbate the threat from militants displaced from Mali?

Fragmentation, Displacement and Reconsolidation:  The AQIM Threat in 2014

French General Pillet, Chief of Staff of MINUSMA, Kidal, during the visit of the Joint Security Committee in charge of the observance of the cease-fire between the Malian army and armed groups from the north. Source: MINUSMA (Flickr)

Last January, the French military, supported by African troops and 10 non-African air forces, intervened militarily in Mali at the request of its transitional government. Over the following four weeks they recaptured all of the towns in the northern half of Mali. This vast desert region had been seized by Islamist and separatist militia in March-April 2012 and declared independent as the ‘State of Azawad’, the Tuareg name for their homeland in northeast Mali. Since then, French troops have continued to conduct security operations across northern Mali to locate and ‘neutralise’ militants associated with Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a jihadist group of Algerian origin, and its West African splinter groups. Reduced numbers of French forces now support Malian and African forces within the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             However, the final quarter of 2013 saw an increase in violence in northern Mali, including terrorist attacks, violent protests and inter-communal violence. Moreover, the French advance into northern Mali displaced rather than destroyed AQIM and its two local allies, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and Ansar Dine, a Tuareg Islamist group. Their impact has been particularly felt in Niger and Libya and may also have bolstered jihadist groups operating in northern Nigeria, Tunisia and Egypt’s Sinai. The lawless desert of southwest Libya is believed to be the new stronghold of AQIM.

A new group, al-Murabitun, combining MUJAO and the most active elements of AQIM’s Saharan front, now appears to pose more of a threat to western and West African interests than AQIM. This is because its strategic direction is towards the weak states of West Africa, including Niger, Mali and Mauritania, where critical infrastructure and individuals are more difficult to protect. It is also better connected to the kidnapping and trafficking enterprises that fund Saharan militancy, and more deadly. During 2013, its militants were behind frequent raids on Gao (northern Mali’s main town), on a prison, garrison and French-owned mine in Niger, and on the Algerian gas plant at In-Amenas. These audacious operations attest to its range, training, discipline and cosmopolitan membership. If it finds common purpose with the larger jihadist groups in northern Niger, as some analysts suggest, it could represent a severe threat to stability in the already shaky regional power.

French Repositioning in the Sahel

In recognition of the expansion of jihadist groups, France announced a major repositioning of its forces in Africa in January. The new French military posture will refocus from large coastal bases, designed to train, transport and supply African Union and regional rapid reaction forces, to smaller forward deployments in the Sahel and Sahara. 3,000 French troops will now be based indefinitely in Mali, Niger and Chad.

U.S. soldiers and French commandos marine conduct a reconnaissance patrol during a joint-combined exercise in Djibouti. Source: Wikipedia

The new posture is heavily influenced by US ‘War on Terror’ strategy in Africa, Yemen and south-west Asia, relying heavily on Special Forces, air strike capacities and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). French and US forces (including contractors) already share facilities in Djibouti, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, and there is a small US liaison detachment with the French Combined Air Operations Centre in Chad. The French repositioning is explicit about confronting Islamist terrorist groups and the threat to regional security posed by the security vacuum in southern Libya. While the repositioning focuses on Mali, Niger and Chad, supplied via a coastal base in Côte d’Ivoire, it will actually include deployments to over a dozen small bases and elite detachments in the Sahel and Sahara, covering at least seven countries. In some cases it will mean French Special Forces reoccupying desert forts long abandoned by the Foreign Legion.

There will also be greater use of aerial reconnaissance and targeting. French Navy patrol aircraft already criss-cross the Sahara and two MQ-9 Reaper UAVs arrived with French forces at Niamey airport in December after the US fast-tracked French acquisition of and training on these ‘hunter-killer’ drones. These double the effective range of the Harfang target-acquisition UAVs formerly used by the French in the Sahel, bringing all of Mali, Niger, almost all of the rest of West Africa and much of Algeria, Chad and southwest Libya into range.

France also makes greater use of combat aircraft in the Sahel-Sahara, deploying fighter aircraft from its long-term base in N’Djamena, Chad to Bamako and Niamey airports. This brings northern Mali into range. Since October, French fighter-reconnaissance aircraft have deployed to Faya-Largeau in northern Chad, which brings southern Libya well within range. French Special Forces and armed helicopters have also operated from Burkina Faso, Niger and Mauritania in pursuit of AQIM.

US and China Extend Their Presence

French and US Reapers now operate from the same facility at Niamey airport, set up by the US in February 2013. While US UAVs in Niger are unarmed, it is unclear if French Reapers will be used for strike missions. US armed UAV bases in Djibouti, Ethiopia and Seychelles currently bring all of the Horn of Africa, East Africa and most of Arabia within range. US private military contractors have also flown unarmed, unmarked light aircraft on surveillance flights all across the Sahel belt since at least 2007. Using covert hubs in Burkina Faso and Uganda and smaller airfields in Mauritania, Niger and South Sudan, they have sought AQIM and the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Since 2011, US Special Forces have established small bases in the Central African Republic (CAR), South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to assist Ugandan forces seeking the LRA there. They also provide training to several African militaries countering the LRA. As with programmes in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Chad, these programmes have focused on creating elite counter-terrorism units. Unfortunately, all of these countries plus the CAR and South Sudan have experienced coups d’état or major army mutinies since this assistance began.

In order to combat Boko Haram, a Nigerian Special Operations Command was announced on 14 January with the US military providing advice, training and equipment. Massive attacks by Boko Haram since December suggest that the Nigerian army’s use of indiscriminate force in the northeast has not weakened the insurgency. Rather, the state of emergency is likely to have strengthened the recruitment base of Boko Haram since May.

China and Japan are also increasingly active in the Sahel. Chinese parastatals are the dominant actors in the oil industries of Sudan/South Sudan, Chad/Cameroon and Niger. They also mine uranium in Niger, and China is the primary buyer of iron ore from Mauritania’s vast desert complexes. So far, China is the only non-African state to deploy more than a few dozen troops with MINUSMA.  Japan, which saw ten of its nationals killed in the January 2013 militant attack on Algeria’s In-Amenas gas plant, has pledged $1 billion to stabilise the Sahel, including training of counter-terrorism units.

Compromised Alliances

This expansion of deployments and offensive operations relies on the status of forces agreements between western powers and’ friendly’ states such as Algeria. France, for example, depends on an air corridor across the Algerian Sahara. Securing such access puts host governments in a position of greater power. The highly authoritarian regime in Algiers – the world’s fifth or sixth largest arms importer – no longer faces western pressure to improve its dismal human rights record. Indeed, it has received friendly visits from the leaders of France and the UK and the US Secretary of State since late 2012. Mauritania’s military-based government faced little criticism over its unfair elections in November.

Chad, Uganda and Ethiopia may be the biggest regional beneficiaries of the militarisation of the Sahel. Each has been governed for a quarter-century by a former armed movement. They face little censure of their authoritarian and undemocratic internal policies and have become more assertive as regional military powers. Ethiopia has forces in Somalia while Uganda now has combat troops in operation (by agreement) in Somalia (under AU command), South Sudan, the DRC and the CAR.

Boosted by expanding oil revenues, French alliance and the demise of Libya’s Gaddafi regime, Chad has greatly expanded its military reach into Mali, Niger and the CAR, where its troops and citizens now face a violent backlash. It is also a Security Council member for the next two years and will be expected to help guide decisions on UN peacekeeping operations in Mali, South Sudan and potentially the CAR and Libya.

Burkina Faso, long relied on by Paris to negotiate with armed groups in francophone West Africa, is also facing unaccustomed turbulence in 2014 as its president seeks to permit himself an additional term of office. Algeria, which is wary of France’s military deployments on its southern border, is set to take over from Burkina the mediation of talks between Mali’s government and secular Tuareg and Arab rebels.

Foundations in Sand

In some respects, the eviction of AQIM and its allies from northern Mali has made the wider Sahara a less safe place, without obviously impeding the capacity of jihadist groups to threaten Europe. In 2014, southwest Libya and parts of Niger are not necessarily less safe havens than northern Mali was in 2012. The insurgency has moved closer to the Mediterranean and closer to critical European energy infrastructure in Algeria, Libya, Tunisia and Niger (uranium). Unlike heterodox Mali, controlling Libya’s chaotic state is likely to be of interest to Arab Salafist groups, including AQIM.

As elsewhere, the western military approach to countering Islamist insurgency in the Sahel rests on very unsteady foundations. This applies to the political legitimacy of allied regimes, the stability and security of locations hosting French and US bases, the traumatic historical legacy of France as the former colonial power, and the potential for counter-insurgency tactics to provoke wider alienation and radicalisation. However asymmetric its military technology, reinforcing a new line of castles in the Saharan sand may be as futile a gesture in France’s long retreat from empire as the UK’s last stand in Afghanistan.

Richard Reeve is the Director of the Sustainable Security Programme at Oxford Research Group. He has researched African peace and security issues since 2000, including work with ECOWAS and the AU. Richard’s most recent security briefing ‘Security in the Sahel (Part II): Militarisation of the Sahel is available here.

This post is based on Paul Rogers’ Monthly Global Security Briefings for Oxford Research Group and was originally posted  on 31 July, 2014. At the time of writing (31 July), Israeli Operation Protective Edge had exceeded the previous major operation, Cast Lead of 2008-9. Both operations have involved intensive use of air strikes combined with major ground incursions. The current war is already longer than the 2008-9 war, with no end in sight. Indeed, by the end of July, positions were hardening and prospects for anything longer than brief further humanitarian pause seemed remote. This briefing provides some context for the conflict together with a preliminary analysis of possible consequences.

The War So Far

Iron Dome in Operation Protective Edge Source: Wikipedia

The current war started on 8 July with intensive Israeli air and artillery assaults on Hamas paramilitary targets, intended primarily to destroy or greatly limit the Hamas ability to fire unguided rockets over much of Israel. In spite of the level of force used, the rocket fire continued, amidst growing concern within the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) that paramilitaries had constructed many more infiltration tunnels than had been realised. A ground assault followed the initial air assault, with this being intended to destroy rocket launch facilities and stores and also interdict tunnels. As a consequence of this assault, the IDF suffered many casualties, including the deaths of 13 men from the elite Golani Brigade in a single day (20 July). Even after 10 days of conflict, with intensive IDF operations against the infiltration tunnels, Hamas paramilitaries managed to get under the border and in a brief attack killed five young IDF sergeants on a leadership training course. One Hamas paramilitary was killed but others appear to have returned to Gaza. Over the course of the war so far, Israeli forces have struck at over 3,700 targets in Gaza while more than 2,700 rockets have been launched by Hamas and other groups from Gaza towards Israel. The death toll among Palestinians exceeds 1,350 and is rising markedly each day. At least 6,000 people have been injured. Israel has lost 56 soldiers and three civilians, and more than 400 soldiers have been wounded. On 31 July, the 24th day of the war, Israel announced the calling up of a further 16,000 reservists, to bring the total call-up to 86,000. There has been considerable controversy over the numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza, especially the hitting of schools, hospitals and a market. UN figures indicate that at least 70% of those killed are civilians, and nongovernmental international support for Hamas has increased substantially. Public opinion in Israel remains very strongly in favour of continuing the war as a means of stopping the rockets and destroying the infiltration tunnels.

Support for the Adversaries

Hamas: In the past three years, Hamas has lost much of its international support from governments in the region, even though Gaza has existed in what amounts to an open prison controlled by Israel. The Egyptian government of President Sisi is strongly opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood and regards Hamas as a part of this wider movement. The consequent near-total closure of the common border with Gaza and the control of access tunnels has had a marked economic effect on Gaza, exacerbating its siege status. Furthermore, Hamas’s support for Islamist paramilitaries in Syria has lost it the support of the Assad regime in Syria and, to an extent, of the Iranian government. The recent rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah survives, if currently strained, but causes the Israeli government considerable concern. In spite of all the limitations, Hamas’s paramilitary wing has been able to assemble many thousands of rockets and mortar rounds and has also built a network of robust infiltration tunnels that has greatly exceeded Israel’s pre-war estimates. Hamas as a movement retains considerable support in Gaza, with even the impact of the Israeli air and ground assaults having little effect. Israel: Israel retains a measure of support of many western governments but there are growing concerns at the civilian losses in Gaza. The IDF and the defence industry as a whole have very close connections with their US counterparts. The key missile defence system, Iron Dome, is essentially a US-Israeli joint production, including current plans to set up a new production line in the US. Israel is also able to use US munitions stored in Israel. The US is in a position to put very heavy pressure on Israel but is deeply reluctant to do this at present, mainly because of domestic support for Israel. This support remains high but is declining

Cast Lead and Protective Edge

Both the 2008-09 and 2014 Israeli operations have had similar aims – to so damage Hamas that it is massively restricted as a threat to Israeli security. A comparison of the operations so far is indicative. Cast Lead lasted 23 days and ended with a ceasefire brokered largely by Egypt. During that period, Hamas and other groups launched 750 rockets and mortars, all relatively short-range. Israelis lost 13 lives, four of them to friendly fire. Israel killed 1,440 people in Gaza, claiming that half were militants, though Hamas denied this. Since the 2008-09 operation, Israel has deployed the Iron Dome system, and this has intercepted the great majority of approximately 2,700 rockets and mortars fired during Protective Edge.  Hamas has, though, hugely increased its capabilities over the past six years, in spite of its recent political isolation, and has exacted a much higher toll on IDF soldiers during the current ground assault than in 2008-09: 56 so far compared with 13 before. In this sense, the aim of Cast Lead – to substantially degrade Hamas’s crude offensive systems – was a singular failure. Even with the Iron Dome system, vulnerabilities have been demonstrated by the closure of Ben Gurion Airport to several international carriers for several days last week, following a rocket which penetrated the missile shield and landed within a mile of what is Israel’s gateway airport. The loss of so many Israeli soldiers may still seem small compared with the huge losses in Gaza, but the IDF is held in very high regard in Israel.  Indeed, support for the war has likely increased because of these losses and the partial closure of the airport. These appear to have combined to convince many Israelis that, though Hamas is weak and hugely restricted in its location, it represents such a threat to Israel that a protracted war is, if need be, fully justified. The phrase “impregnable in its insecurity” has sometimes been applied to Israel and it is useful in understanding the outlook of a very powerful country that still feels vulnerable.

The home of the Kware’ family, bombed by IDF forces. 8 civilians, including 6 minors, were killed. Gaza, 8 July, 2014. Source: B’Tselem

What Now?

At the time of writing (31 July) it is possible that another humanitarian pause might be agreed and might lead to something more substantial. Assuming that this does now happen, the indications are that the IDF will continue its operations to destroy rockets and tunnels, and Hamas paramilitaries will resist. Given the IDF casualties to date, a pattern is likely to emerge in which urban counter-paramilitary operations will prove both difficult and costly, and the IDF will rely much more on its huge firepower advantage. This is very much what happened with US and coalition forces in Iraq from 2003, and even more so with the Israeli siege of West Beirut in 1982 when at least 10,000 people were killed, the great majority of them civilians. It is already evident that targeting has moved on to the more general Hamas infrastructure, but the very nature of the densely populated Gaza Strip means that the infrastructure for the whole community is also hugely affected. Given the existing impoverishment of the area, the human consequences will be severe, as UN staff have been pointing out repeatedly.

Consequences

In all of its operations against Hamas – Cast Lead in 2008-09, the more limited air assault in 2012, and the current war – Israel has sought to severely damage Hamas’s paramilitary capabilities, and decrease its domestic support. In the first two conflicts that objective was not achieved, and it is unlikely that Israel’s current operation will succeed this time around. In spite of Hamas’s greater international isolation, its paramilitaries have this time had a substantial impact on the IDF, and the movement retains domestic support. Moreover, international public opinion has moved heavily against Israel. One of the major changes in comparing the current war with the two previous wars is that the use of social media has hugely expanded, resulting in graphic images being distributed across the region and beyond in near-real time. One effect of this, in turn, is that the more conventional western media reporting is itself becoming more graphic. In spite of a very efficient Israeli information operation, this change is working against Israel’s interests. It also means that Islamist propagandists across the Middle East and beyond are easily able to present the war as a further example of “Zionist aggression”. Indeed, they will also relentlessly point to close US-Israel links, further developing their long-term image of a “Crusader-Zionist war on Islam”, in spite of Secretary of State Kerry’s undoubted personal commitment to achieving a ceasefire. The long-term consequences of this are difficult to read, but could give a boost to radicalisation well beyond Israel and the occupied territories. That alone is an added reason why a ceasefire at the earliest opportunity is not only desirable but essential.

Does military integration make renewed civil wars less likely? Evidence from several cases of postwar military integration over four decades reveal little evidence that it contributes to the durability of postwar peace.

Author’s Note: This article derives from a larger project which was intellectually indebted to the Security Sector Reform Workgroup of the Folke Bernadotte Academy and funded by grant BCS 0904905 from the Social and Behavioral Dimensions of National Security, Conflict, and Cooperation, a joint program of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense/Department of the Army/Army Research Office (the Minerva program). That grant funded a conference on military integration after civil wars, which the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute of the U.S. Army War College graciously provided hospitality for and supported; special thanks are due to Raymond Millen and Col. Stephen T. Smith. I am especially grateful to all the participants in that conference, whose research and thinking so deeply informed the project.

Military integration following a civil war is a common practice, evidenced by the fact that nearly 40 percent of peace settlements for the 128 civil wars from 1945 to 2006 called for some form of integration of combatant military forces. It has become accepted wisdom that integration is crucial to preventing a society’s relapse into war and there is much about this that feels like common sense. After all, a professional, communally representative force could conceivably diminish vulnerable groups’ security fears in a post-civil war environment by:

• serving as a credible signal of the government’s commitment to power sharing which would make an army less likely to employ violence against the society’s constituent communal groups;
• protecting populations against potentially dangerous militias;
• providing employment to former fighters from all sides;
• and facilitating, through symbolic power, popular identification and unity with an inclusive vision of a nation.

But is this faith regarding military integration and civil wars actually true based on the research or is it fundamentally misplaced?

The empirical evidence

Image credit: US Army Africa/Wikimedia.

Quantitative studies generally find a correlation between military integration and the likelihood of renewed civil wars (Walter 2002; Hoddie and Hartzell 2003; DeRouen, Lea, and Wallensteen 2009; Toft 2010).  However, aside from one notable dissent (Glassmyer and Sambanis 2008) the studies assumed that all military integration efforts were equivalent. They focused on agreements to integrate rather than their actual implementation, and it was possible that the causal arrow was reversed, that easier cases would allow military integration than those more likely to fail.  Two comparative case study analyses reached opposing conclusions (Knight 2011; Call 2012).

My study of eleven cases began with the expectation that military integration would be difficult to carry out (bringing people who have been killing one another with considerable skill and enthusiasm and giving them weapons did not seem like a bright idea) but that doing so successfully would reduce the likelihood of renewed civil war.  I ended with precisely the opposite conclusions.

The study – does military integration make renewed civil wars less likely?

The study specified five plausible causal mechanisms linking the phenomena:

1. The willingness of leaders on both sides to commit to this risky strategy persuades others that they are sincere in desiring peace and can be trusted on other difficult issues.
2. The new force provides security for the elites (and perhaps the masses), allowing them to resolve other issues.
3. The new force employs substantial numbers of veterans who might otherwise be available for recruitment by spoilers planning to restart the war.
4. It is a powerful symbol of legitimacy and integration for the new regime—if people who have been killing one another can work together, surely civilians should be able to as well.
5. The successful negotiation of military integration would build trust among members of the different groups, making it easier to resolve other issues.

Cases and Authors

Sudan 1972-1983—Matthew LeRiche

Rhodesia to Zimbabwe—Paul Jackson

Lebanon—Florence Gaub

Rwanda—Stephen Burgess

Philippines—Rosalie Arcala Hall

South Africa—Roy Licklider

Democratic Republic of the Congo—Judith Verweijen

Mozambique—Andrea Bartoli and Martha Mutisi

Bosnia-Herzegovina—Rohan Maxwell

Sierra Leone—Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs

Burundi 2000-2006—Cyrus Samii

In lieu of more sophisticated methodologies, case authors were asked whether they had observed these mechanisms in their cases.  The only one which received even a few assents was increased legitimacy of integration in other functional areas, perhaps the most difficult to observe.

None of our cases collapsed from violence among the new recruits but even successful integrations could not withstand the actions of civilian politicians which created new violence in places like Zimbabwe and Sudan.  Moreover, creating a strong security sector in a weak government is a recipe for military domination and less democracy in places like Rwanda.  So why do combatants adopt this policy after civil wars so often?  The single best predictor that a civil war would end with military integration was international mediation of the conflict (Hartzell 2014).

Conclusion

Ronald Krebs and I concluded that this suggests an ethical problem for peacemakers.  Military integration is relatively easy for outsiders to implement; we have substantial numbers of unemployed military to do the work, and it requires much less adaption in the target society than other actions like creating a working justice or taxation system.

Moreover, in some wars the nature of the postwar military is a critical issue (Burundi is a good example) and in such cases, when the locals have decided they want military integration, internationals can give useful assistance.  But military integration is expensive to implement and support over time and may have regrettable political consequences so outsiders should not actively advocate it.  At this point, the evidence does not support the assumption that military integration will make renewed civil war less likely.

Roy Licklider is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar in the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.

Implementation of the interim deal with Iran, which freezes the country’s nuclear enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief, began last week. As an initial outcome of this deal, we are witnessing a substantial shift in diplomatic relations and relationships between Iran and its regional neighbours – some positive, some not. This deal marks a significant step for the international non-proliferation regime, but will it achieve the trust and confidence-building goals intended? As the US and Iran face increasing domestic pushback on the terms of the agreement, questions remain on the interim deal’s impact on relations in the region and abroad, and the effect these relations may have on the prospects of coming to a full comprehensive follow-up agreement between Iran and the P5+1 countries.

The Interim Deal

P5+1 foreign ministers — as well as European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif — at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, after the group concluded negotiations about Iran’s nuclear capabilities on November 24, 2013. Source: US State Department (Flickr)

The current deal, in which Iran will halt further progress on its nuclear programme and roll back key elements in return for temporary and limited sanctions relief from the P5+1, was originally negotiated at the end of November in Geneva, but the details of implementation were confirmed in early January. After a decade of negotiations to solve the Iranian “nuclear crisis”, the implementation of this deal marks a significant step forward for the international non-proliferation regime, and is an important success story for international diplomacy. Despite the misgivings of a number of sceptics, this six-month interim deal brings countries together to work towards developing assurances around Iran’s nuclear programme, acting as a trust and confidence building exercise with the intention to create opportunity and space for a more ambitious longer term agreement in the future.

 A Positive Impact on Diplomatic Relations…

As an initial outcome of this deal, we are witnessing a substantial shift in diplomatic relations and relationships between Iran and its regional neighbours. While the outset of the interim deal saw a number of sceptics, encouraging reactions have developed, including positive official responses from Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. Even the Prime Minister of the UAE officially welcomed the deal and called for lifting sanctions and a partnership with Iran.

Relationships between Iran and Western partners have also begun to restore themselves as a result of the deal. After three decades of no sustained direct contact, back channels were set up prior to and early on during Rouhani’s presidency to help unlock the negotiations and in a pinnacle moment in September, Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani spoke on the phone after the UN General Assembly.

The United Kingdom also hasn’t had bilateral diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic since 2011, when the British Embassy in Tehran was stormed.  However, the UK and Iran agreed to renew direct diplomatic links during November’s Geneva talks and shortly thereafter, a newly appointed British chargé d’affaires, Ajay Sharma, travelled to Iran as the first British envoy since 2011. It was announced on the 28^th of January that a delegation of Iranian parliamentarians will visit London during the summer months. This follows a visit by British Members of Parliament, led by former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw MP, to Tehran that took place in early January.

This overall confidence-building between regional states and diplomatic restoration between Iran and the P5+1 negotiating partners promises to improve the chances of negotiating a comprehensive nuclear deal next month.

…But Not for Everyone

US President Obama with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Source: The Israel Project

However, the possible détente between Iran and Western countries – the US in particular – may be a game changer for some regional states and parties. Israel’s response to the interim deal has been continuously vocal and disapproving from the start, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemning the deal as a “historic mistake”. It comes as somewhat of a personal defeat for the Israeli Prime Minister, who has been campaigning to strip Iran from all of its enrichment capability. Some analysts have hinted that this deal will damage the prospects for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East as it will pull Israel even further away from the negotiation table. Perhaps, though, the fear of losing US interest will bring them even closer to it.

Responses in Saudi Arabia have also been less than enthusiastic: while the official response labelled the deal as a good solution to the Iranian nuclear programme, the unofficial response fears proliferation in the region and the enhancement of Iran’s role as a regional power. Members of the Saudi royal family have labelled Obama’s strategy with Iran as flawed and claimed that sanctions relief was a huge mistake that will now give Iran the upper hand. The Saudis see this deal as giving Iran more power, which threatens their status as a regional hegemon. In an unusual turn of events, this sees Saudi Arabia’s and Israel’s interests aligning—both feeling disappointed and outraged towards the US and fearing Iran’s potential.

Hints of a rift between Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have also been noticed as a result of this deal. Unlike Saudi Arabia, most of these states have signalled their modification in policy to match US goodwill towards Iran. This is especially seen in Oman, a state with strong historic ties to Iran and which helped broker the initial back channels established between the Islamic Republic and US in early 2013. At the IISS Manama Dialogue in December 2013, Omani Foreign Minister Youssef bin Alawi candidly spoke out against the Saudi proposal to upgrade the GCC union. The Sultanate state has always intended to pursue an independent foreign policy path, careful to balance relationships on both sides of the Gulf. The proposal, which strengthens the union of the GCC, was rejected by the Omani Sultanate on the grounds that there is a failure to agree on the foundations of the GCC and economic integration, but it would also force Oman to align more closely with Saudi Arabia which might in turn antagonise Oman’s relationship with Iran. With the complex combination of global and regional structural shifts and intersecting economic interests, this is perhaps the first of many small fissures between the Gulf States and regional partners that will come as unintended consequences of this deal.

Hurting at home

Even within Iran, the reaction has been mixed, and Rouhani has faced criticism for being too close to the West. Since his election in June of last year, he and his administration have been leading a public relations campaign to repair relations with the West, but he has faced problems with hardliners who are sceptical of US motivations or hold on to historical grudges.  While this deal helps to relieve some of Iran’s economic hardship, Rouhani has gone out on a limb in easing off enrichment, a capability which is seen by many within Iran to be entrenched within their national identity.

Obama faces similar problems in Washington, as lawmakers in the Congress come dangerously close to causing the collapse of the deal by supporting the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act (S.1881) in the Senate. This bill, introduced in December by New Jersey Democratic Senator, Robert Menendez, imposes additional financial sanctions against Iran if it were to default on the terms of the interim deal, or if a long term deal was not agreed to after the end of the six months. Terms of the initial deal with Iran stipulates there will be no new nuclear related sanctions but core sanctions will remain intact for now and Iran will continue to lose $4-$5 billion in revenue per month.

Crucially,  the Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act would require zero enrichment from Iran, which is a red line for Iranians. Under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, all Parties have the inalienable right “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination”. Blatant discrimination against these rights is a deal breaker for Iran and in response (or perhaps retaliation) to Menendez’s bill, Iranian parliament has proposed new legislation that would allow for Iran to increase uranium enrichment to 60 percent, enough for weapons grade uranium. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has threatened that if bill S.1881 is passed in Congress, “the entire [interim] deal is dead”.

Moving Forward

The next round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 to negotiate a more comprehensive nuclear deal is reportedly to be held in New York in mid-February. However, with domestic and regional backlash from the deal threatening to collapse the interim deal – and worse, threatening to prohibit the agreement of a more sustainable deal in February – the chance of achieving further negotiations now depends on successful physical implementation of the interim deal Joint Plan of Action.

While many remain sceptical of the parties involved or the implications on the region and beyond, this interim deal is a positive breakthrough for the international non-proliferation regime, which has needed a major boost like this for some time. We have a major opportunity ahead of us for restoring trust and strengthening Iran’s partnership on the global non-proliferation and disarmament agenda. This potential for such positive outcomes must now be the focus of the next month, because losing the momentum of this deal and starting from scratch would be a setback that global security cannot afford.

Rachel Staley is currently the Programme Manager for the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) in their London office. Since 2011, Rachel has managed the operations of the office and assisted in developing the organisation’s programmes working on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in the Middle East, as well as engaging directly in the Trident renewal debate in the United Kingdom. Rachel holds an MA with Distinction in Non-Proliferation and International Security from King’s College London and a BA with Honours in International Affairs and Anthropology from Northeastern University.

Featured image: British Foreign Secretary William Hague, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, US Secretary of State John Kerry, on early November 24, 2013 in Geneva. Source: European External Action Service (Flickr)

The United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor Leste (UNMIT) represents an interesting case when discussing the impact of local peacekeeping on the overall success, or failure, of peacekeeping operations. Although not without its share of problems, this mission is a good example of the promise of local peacekeeping.

Timorese policemen used to refer to peacekeepers as ‘really useful cabbies’ whose 4x4s could get you anywhere, which provides a stark contrast with the official United Nations (UN) version that peacekeepers had been building the capacity of the local police. The United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor Leste (UNMIT) is particularly interesting when discussing the impact of local peacekeeping on the overall success, or failure, of peacekeeping operations.  This large mission in a relatively small and, following the departure of Indonesian troops, relatively peaceful country followed an integrative approach to peacekeeping. The UN also strongly supported community policing in Timor Leste, which is a good example of the promise of local or ‘bottom-up’ peacekeeping. Generally seen as successful, the peacekeeping operation ended in December 2012. Although not without its share of problems, Timor Leste has remained relatively stable and secure.

Local Peacekeeping

Local peacekeeping refers to the activities of peacekeepers throughout the whole area of operations and thus corrects for a biased focus on a country’s capital and the official, internationally recognized government. It emphasizes interactions between local communities and peacekeepers and considers the improvement of local conditions as crucial to stabilizing post-conflict situations. Communities often experience specific conflict dynamics because of uncertainty about entitlements to land and property, exacerbated by the movements of internally displaced people. A common legacy of the civil conflict is the undermining of traditional authority, leading to generational conflicts, as the experience of Liberia illustrates.

These parochial, often even partially private conflicts and grievances not only lead to increased insecurity locally, they can also have a wider impact because they are easily exploited to obstruct national peace processes. Recently, Séverine Autesserre highlighted the failures of the international community, among them UN peacekeepers, to adequately deal with such local conflict dynamics in the DRC, and it has become common to talk about the need for bottom-up peacebuilding.

Bottom-up Peace

Image by UN Photo via Flickr.

Even though they are obviously related, local peacekeeping is not the same as bottom-up peacebuilding, and the differences matter when evaluating possible contributions of local peacekeeping to the overall success of missions. First of all, even when peacekeepers are deployed throughout a larger area, they may still predominantly engage with national tensions, for example, when they monitor possible military activities of the government and rebels. In such cases, local communities may simply be caught in the crossfire between the government and rebel groups, and the interaction between peacekeepers and locals will remain largely of an economic and social nature.

Secondly, a very large peacebuilding community tends to operate in post-conflict countries, involving representatives of global organizations such as UNICEF and UNHCR, but also from international NGOs such as the Red Cross, as well as local activists and local NGOs. This community, rather than the peacekeepers, initiates and supports local peace initiatives and has more readily accepted the importance of bottom-up peacebuilding. Even when they are not directly involved, the presence of peacekeepers can still matter. for example, by guaranteeing the general security situation. Unfortunately, the record of peacekeepers to effectively protect humanitarian workers remains mixed as illustrated by recent events in South Sudan  and the DRC. To find out whether local peacekeeping works, we need to know where peacekeepers go, what they do, with whom they interact, and how locals respond to them.

Regardless of the recent attention paid to local peacekeeping, it is important to be aware that peacekeeping remains predominantly ‘top-down’. In our research, we have found that UN peacekeeping missions in Sub-Sahara Africa report mainly on interactions with government representatives. Their collaboration is presented as essential to realizing a key goal of the UN, namely to rebuild central administration. There are not only fewer reports of engagement with rebel groups, but these reports also mention conflict more often. The picture is not uniform: relatively weak rebel groups are more cooperative towards larger UN missions, possibly because the latter are able to offer protection. Even more rare are reports of dealing with independent local authorities; in fact, there are too few to be able to say anything about the quality of the interaction.

A Strategic Approach to Local Peacekeeping

Currently, there is also little evidence to suggest that the UN recognizes the relevance of local peacekeeping as a strategy. Instead, peacekeeping operations deal with local violence in response to specific events and mainly at the tactical level to contain such events. Peacekeepers definitely respond to flare ups of violence and they are concerned about protecting civilians. Stories about peacekeepers hanging around hotel pools or spending their time on the beach are largely urban myths. Even though they are commonly positioned near cities, they are deployed to, and more active in, conflict zones. The lack of strategy, however, leads to considerable and systematic delays in their response to violence. Once peacekeepers arrive on the scene, they appear able to largely contain the violence but they may well have missed valuable opportunities to limit damage and save lives.

Operations also lack high-quality information about local conditions hindering the development of an effective local peacekeeping strategy. At the local level, allegiances and antagonisms are often complex and subtle, and may shift quickly. It is not only necessary to gather intelligence about the local context prior, during and even post deployment, but also to coordinate this intelligence with ongoing operations. Stefano Costalli similarly argues that the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) failed to develop a strategy for Bosnia based on features of the terrain, warring factions and ethnic composition of the population that would have allowed them to intervene in a timely manner. He also recognizes that creating strategies is particularly difficult for multinational missions.

Pittfalls and Prospects

Local peacekeeping thus requires a number of difficult choices. First of all, not all peacekeepers are equally suited for local peacekeeping. Regional peacekeeping forces will often have a better understanding of local conditions, but local actors may also perceive them, rightly or wrongly, as biased. Secondly, local peacekeeping benefits from long-term commitments, allowing contingents to understand local conditions better and to be able to complete the projects they have initiated.  Peacekeeping forces, however, regularly rotate, since they often have to operate in difficult circumstances. The support for community policing in Timor Leste provides several useful lessons. Peacekeepers from New Zealand took prime responsibility for this task throughout the duration of the mission and even following its completion. They were credible because the local population, including local policemen, appreciated their commitment to and understanding of community policing. Interestingly, locals recognized the different approaches to policing taken by police officers from, for example, Portugal, Japan and New Zealand.

Even though it is too early to say that local peacekeeping has become a strategic approach to peacekeeping, the importance of building good relations between peacekeepers and local communities is by now broadly accepted. The United Kingdom is experimenting with training for its peacekeeping mission within local communities in Malakal and Bentiu in South Sudan. This approach, if successful, can be expected to transform into a new policy looking to improve the interaction and integration of the mission within the communities. There are also initiatives within ongoing peacekeeping missions; for example, while deployed as UN police officer, Kristin Konglevoll Fjell set up a women police support network in Liberia, which created a channel for communication between local women police officers and women UN officers.

It is important to realize that whether with or without a strategic approach to local peacekeeping, peacekeepers always have had a local impact. First of all, already a modest deployment of peacekeepers shortens the duration of conflict episodes in a particular locality. There is also evidence that it makes attacks against civilians by armed factions less likely. The ‘Blue Helmets’ provide a basic level of security in situations where insecurity is the norm rather than the exception. Peace, however, is more than the absence of conflict. Moreover, the endemic insecurity in post-conflict situations creates a dependency on peacekeepers—even while cooperation with, and appreciation of, peacekeepers declines the longer peacekeepers are present in a particular country.  The need for a peacebuilding, rather than peacekeeping, strategy seems evident, and the value of local peacekeeping may well be that it recognizes the importance of harnessing the local capacity to build peace.

Han Dorussen (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is Professor of Government at the University of Essex (UK). He is associate editor of the Journal of Peace Research. Current research interests include peacekeeping and the governance of post-conflict societies, the relationship between trade and conflict, and policy convergence in the European Union. Recently his research has focused on the impact of peacekeeping on local communities and on the perception of insecurity among the local population. The latter research based on fieldwork in Timor Leste. He has published in (a.o) International Organization, World Politics, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Peacekeeping, and the British Journal of Political Science. 

Since October 2014, thousands of people have gathered weekly in Dresden to protest against immigration and Islam which are both perceived by them as deadly threats to German society. What is the background of this unique mobilisation known as PEGIDA and what are the drivers behind its growth?

Since 20 October 2014, the East-German city of Dresden, capital of the state Saxony, has hosted rallies organized by a group named PEGIDA (German: Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, English: Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West). While PEGIDA attracted some hundred supporters to its earliest rallies, numbers quickly peaked in late January 2015 with 25,000 attending. Up until the end of 2016, at least some 2,000 followers showed up week-on-week.

With the number of refugees seeking refuge in Germany rising since 2013, the extent of anti-immigrant protest, often organised by extreme right groups such as the National Democratic Party of Germany, has increased. For example, in the Saxon town Schneeberg, mobilization brought more than 1,500 people to the streets three weeks in a row in late 2013 at the accommodation used for hosting refugees. Speakers at such rallies depicted asylum seekers as a threatening Other in xeno-racial terms by arguing that Muslims cannot adopt to ‘Western civilized standards as they are not hygienic’, and that there is a ‘jihad of births’. Following a call for action by a group named Hooligans Against Salafists, 4,500 gathered in Cologne on 26 October 2014 with a significant minority clashing heavily with the local police. While these activities remained occasional events, Dresden became the location of the most successful extra-parliamentary right-wing mobilization in post-war Germany.

Pegida’s formation and growth

Image credit: Metropolico.org/Flickr.

In Dresden, a group of close friends, some of them soccer fans, others already known for their racist and derogatory remarks on refugees, Muslims, and people from Turkey and Kurdistan on the Internet, started weekly rallies mid-October 2014. The initiators of PEGIDA, Lutz Bachmann being primus inter pares and other founding members such as Siegfried Däbritz and Thomas Tallacker, had understood that there was potential for street protests against migration, intercultural coexistence and religious diversity. Speakers again and again invoked the destruction of Germany as a result of the refugees coming to Germany, and accused the media for false reporting on the situation. They accused the government in general, but chancellor Angela Merkel especially, of being traitors to the German people. Quite often, references to ›1989‹ were made. By referring to the mass demonstrations that contributed to the overthrow of the socialist regime in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989, PEGIDA tries to strengthen the belief that it would once again be possible to overthrow a political regime by mass action.

Like many social movements, conflicts related to leadership, competing concepts of strategy and framing, and narcissistic behaviour started to play a role within PEGIDA effecting its unity,  capacity for mobilization and outreach. The original plan of the Dresden group to directly control the many offshoot splinter groups that appeared in many German cities did not work. By the end of 2016 there have been racist and anti-Islamic rallies in hundreds of cities and smaller towns organized by groups such as Mönchengladbach – Get up, Commitment for Germany, Eichsfeld fights back, People’s Movement North Thuringia, or Together Strong Germany. While it is true that Dresden was the only place where this right-wing mobilization reached numbers above 20,000 with an astonishing regularity, the many other rallies also contributed to spreading racist and Islamophobic hate speech, and inflaming acts of aggression not only against those belonging to minority groups but also against social workers and volunteers who supported refugees.

The importance of Saxony

Scientific studies and surveys show that there is a relevant minority of the German population holding hostile attitudes against asylum seekers, homeless people, Roma, and long-term unemployed. The exceptional mobilization capability of PEGIDA Dresden is the result of the specific political culture of the city and the state of Saxony. It consists of several narratives such as the belief about a unique and phenomenal cultural heritage, the beauty of the landscape, and urban cleanliness; and other stories that emphasize a distinct Saxon identity comprising of a special self-confidence, astuteness, and avant-garde action. Finally, it is argued, a strong feeling of solidarity exists among Saxons, this togetherness was demonstrated by the floods in 2002 and 2013 both of which had caused major damage in the country. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that has ruled the country continuously since 1990 labels itself as the Saxon Union contributing to a kind of regional nationalism and solidarity.

It is also noteworthy that the CDU in Saxony belongs to the decidedly conservative part of the party regularly speaking up for a German patriotic self-awareness. Leading representatives of the CDU in Saxony have publicly blamed the same political forces, developments and ideas as being responsible for the decline of morals in the same way that PEGIDA speakers have. Not surprisingly, then, appeasing the far-right has a long tradition in Saxony going back into the early 1990s when Kurt Biedenkopf the then-Prime Minister in Saxony claimed, in light of pogrom-like violence in the Saxon town Hoyerswerda, that the citizens of Saxony are immune to right-wing extremism. Despite ten years of parliamentary representation of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) in the state parliament of Saxony, leading politicians from the Saxon CDU like Frank Kupfer, chairman of the Christian Democratic faction in the Saxon parliament, argued that people from outside Saxony cannot understand the situation, overestimate the problem and intend to purposely discredit the political course of the regional branch of the Christian Democrats.

Another dimension which helps explain the PEGIDA phenomena is the fact that the population in Saxony played a major role in the final phase of the GDR’s fall. Leipzig and, to a lesser extent, Dresden hosted Monday demonstrations in late 1989 bringing huge numbers to the streets and contributed to the downfall of the socialist regime. Public statements of the time, especially the ones given by then chancellor Helmut Kohl on the evening of 19 December 1989 contributed to a nationalist interpretation of events. In the 1990s and 2000s, Dresden also became the site of several heavily attended neo-Nazi rallies, where the Allied bombing of the city in mid February 1945 which killed some 24,000 people was framed as another kind of holocaust. This re-framing of the Allied bombing, which was actually created by the Nazi propaganda machine in the aftermath of the bombing, was used by the former GDR government in the Cold War.

Discourses of victimization by protest organizations exist in several variations in the city. Some lament the political and economic consequences of German reunification which caused fundamental structural and demographic changes especially in the more rural East Saxon regions. Open borders with Poland and the Czech Republic has changed the perception of crime. Rising levels of theft and burglary is attributed by many to the opening of German borders, which, some argue, allows foreign criminals to easily return after committing crimes on German territory. In both cases, the idea of ‘Germans as victims’ is given discoursive empirical evidence and fosters exclusionist interpretations.

PEGIDA’s future

In early January 2017, the Leipzig branch of PEGIDA declared that it had decided to not hold any more demonstrations. While relieving police forces was given as the reason, media comments and political observers widely agreed that the decreasing number of participants has been the real reason behind this decision. With only a few places left in which weekly rallies are organised, albeit with not more than a hundred people taking part, PEGIDA in Dresden is still the most important site of action. Yet, the weekly meetings have become a mere ritual with the same content of the speeches, the same faces and no idea of new impetus. With Lutz Bachmann meanwhile living in Tenerife only to fly in for the Monday rallies and growing criticism of the transparency of the use of donations, it might well be the case that PEGIDA Dresden will die a slow death toll in 2017.

Dr. Fabian Virchow is Professor of Social Theory and Theories of Political Action at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf where he also directs the Research Unit on Right Wing Extremism. He has published numerous books and articles on worldview, strategy and political action of the far right.

Author’s Note: The authors of this comment piece are involved in the scientific project called “Arctic Ocean ecosystems – Applied technology, Biological interactions and Consequences in an era of abrupt climate change” (Arctic ABC). This project is led by the Department of Arctic Marine Biology at University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, and comprises the development and operation of new technology for biological studies, as well as interdisciplinary components where researchers from the disciplines of Law of the Sea and international relations are deeply involved.

Climate change has meant that the living resources of the Arctic Ocean have become more accessible. Will this be a source of cooperation or conflict? 

Global warming is not only increasing temperatures on land and melting glaciers around the globe, but also resulting in rising water temperatures in the oceans. This is particularly true for the Arctic Ocean – the northernmost of the world’s oceans – where temperatures are rising more rapidly than the global average. Warmer temperatures in the Arctic have triggered a northwards expansion of boreal marine organisms, including several commercially harvested fish species. Concomitantly to an increase in Arctic temperatures, the permanent ice cap is shrinking rapidly, possibly leading to ice free summers within a few decades. As the Arctic ice cover diminishes, the resources of the Arctic Ocean become more accessible for exploration and exploitation.

A scramble for the Arctic?

Image credit: US Department of State/Flickr.

The increased accessibility to now ice-free areas has led to speculations about a new “scramble” for potential unclaimed Arctic resources. Although such reports should generally be viewed as exaggerated alarmist warnings, the “high seas” of the Arctic Ocean – defined as areas beyond 200 nautical miles from Arctic costal states northernmost shores – do indeed comprise living resources beyond any state’s national jurisdiction. According to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, living resources of high seas belong to no one and could hence be exploited by anyone. The potential for conflicts between states regarding resource harvesting in the Arctic is therefore real. Interstate negotiations on how to regulate living resources in the “high seas” of the Arctic Ocean have been ongoing since 2010. The five Arctic Costal states (USA, Russia, Norway, Canada and Denmark – including Greenland and the Faroe Islands) are actively participating in the negotiations, together with five additional key stakeholders (Iceland, China, South Korea, Japan and the EU) and form the so called 5+5 group. While indigenous peoples have been represented in the delegations from Denmark (Greenland), Canada and the USA, their role have in practice been rather limited as the central part of the Arctic Ocean are very far away from the areas inhabited by these people and no historic rights exists.

The current format of state negotiations is evolving as a two-tier process, where scientists are actively involved. Because the central Arctic Ocean is, so far, permanently covered by ice and hardly accessible, knowledge of the extent and volume of marine organisms populating this area has been identified as an important data gap. Particularly, there is a need to assess the presence and abundance of both Arctic species adapted to this environment and boreal species migrating northwards. A key task in the negotiation process has therefore been to establish a joint scientific project, with the long-term goal of assessing the potential for future commercial fisheries. Discussions between scientists from the 5+5 stakeholder group have complemented meetings at the diplomatic level, demonstrating a practical example where science plays a major role in a political negotiation process.

The main fish species known to colonize the high Arctic Ocean is the polar cod Boreogadus saida. Polar cod is a small (<40 cm) mainly benthic fish with low commercial interest and high ecological importance for the ecosystem. Adult specimens seem to be restricted to the shelf region, but younger individuals are frequently encountered in connection with sea ice in the central Arctic Ocean. Despite its relative small size, its ecological importance is great as they can channel up to 75% of the energy between zooplankton and marine birds or mammals. So far, commercial fisheries of polar cod are limited and restricted to Russian waters. Being restricted to shelf regions, it is unlikely that it will extend its distribution into the central Arctic Ocean. As such, its direct economic importance is likely to be low. However, as commercially harvested boreal species, such as Atlantic cod and halibut, expand northwards, the region could possibly become of interest for fishermen from Arctic costal states as well as from other nations with expertise in high-sea fisheries, in particular from Eastern Asia. Through ecological cascading effects, the ecological and economical role of polar cod may also be shifted, with hitherto unknown consequences and influence on future fisheries in the Arctic Ocean.

Negotiating the Arctic Ocean’s Living resources

Negotiations to regulate the harvesting of marine living resources in the Arctic Ocean comprise of several conflicting topics. As these negotiations involve resources with potentially significant commercial interest not owned by anyone and a geopolitically important and highly symbolic region, it appears impossible to take for granted that the process will go smoothly. However, thanks to scientific cooperation and responsible state behavior, the negotiations are taking into account ecological vulnerabilities of the region and the need for maintaining peace and stability. While not concluded yet, signals from the negotiators indicate that a common declaration or agreement can be expected soon, perhaps even in 2017.

In a broader context, these negotiations represent an interesting first example where fisheries regulations could be implemented before harvesting takes place and where the precautionary principle could be applied. This result is also interesting as the participating state actors (+EU) have different interests, and the settlement of an agreement carries a high symbolic value. Why should for example Russia, which through sea and land possessions hold almost 50% of the Arctic, view a tiny stakeholder like Iceland, or the remote high sea fishing nations like S. Korea or China as equal legitimate participants in these negotiations? While the central part of the Arctic Ocean indeed is high seas, great powers like Russia or the US could have acted less constructive in the talks. Similarly, as different national priorities exist with respect to whether the potential resources should be utilized or protected, these obstacles have gradually have diminished. As the years of negotiations have shown, the states have concluded on a multilateral and including approach, giving scientific advice a key role, taking into account the many uncertainties and the vulnerability of the region, rather than only pushing forward narrow national interests. Obviously, further monitoring of the living resources inhabiting the “high seas” of the Arctic Ocean is critically needed to define this precautionary principle.

Dr. Njord Wegge is Associate Professor- II, Political science, University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway

Dr. Maxime Geoffroy is Postdoctoral researcher, Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway.

Dr. Jørgen Berge is Professor, Department of Arctic and Marine Biology, University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway. Project leader Arctic ABC.

Philippine Army servicemembers stand alongside a pallet of bottled water as they prepare to board a U.S. Marine Corps KC-130J to support victims of Super Typhoon Haiyan at Villamor Air Base, Manila, Republic of the Philippines Nov. 11.
Source: U.S. Marine Corps. (Photo by Lance Cpl. Stephen D. Himes/Released)

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has ordered the USS George Washington and her battle group from Hong Kong to the Philippines to provide humanitarian assistance in the aftermath of the Typhoon. Already, about 90 U.S. Marines and sailors have deployed from Okinawa to the Philippines and are on the ground providing support. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered the Royal Navy’s HMS Daring to the region as well. This disaster response mission is part of the Department of Defense’s growing humanitarian response mission to help affected regions. Simply put, if the U.S. military and allies did not provide fast-acting logistical support to relief missions like this, there are no other entities that can provide the heavy lift or logistical expertise necessary to get large quantities of aid to a region in time.

Last week, prior to the storm, in reference to Pacific Command’s disaster response mission and capability, the PACOM Commander Admiral Locklear said:

It’s the right thing to do… Also, if something is going to happen in the Pacific that is going to create a churn in the security environment, the most likely thing will be a humanitarian disaster problem of some kind – whether it is horrific typhoons or tsunamis or floods or something else.

He’s right. Beyond the clear threats to the human security of the residents of the affected area – loss of life, home, food, electricity, and clean water – natural disasters can act as a clear threat to national security, especially when the government is unable to respond effectively. That’s because a government failure can create the opportunity for other security threats to develop, ranging from crime and corruption to insurgency or terrorism. Unfortunately, we may already be seeing this in the Philippines; there are reports of massive looting after the storm passed over, and unverified reports that the Filipino military has engaged and killed a group from the New People’s Army, a communist rebel group in Leyte, as they tried to attack a government relief convoy.

I’m not going to spend much time debating whether or not man-made climate change was responsible for this storm in particular.  There is an ongoing debate about whether climate change will both increase the number of tropical cyclones as well as their intensity. The latest IPCC report only expressed a ‘low confidence’ in the impact of climate change on tropical cyclones – that doesn’t mean there’s no impact, but it means we don’t know. What we do know is that the water in the Pacific has been warmer than average –and that warmer water is an important part of cyclone intensity. Phil Plait’s blog, Bad Astronomy, has a good explanation of the climate-cyclone link. Suffice it to say that climate change is another risk that must be considered when planning for security threats in the region.

These are precisely the reasons that the U.S. Department of Defense has labeled climate change as an “accelerant of instability” in the 2010 QDR. PACOM, which has responsibility for all American forces in the Pacific region, has operationalized that guidance from the QDR to include real and significant planning for the many natural disasters that happen around the Pacific Rim. Admiral Locklear has stated that climate change “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

As ASP has determined in our Global Security Defense Index on Climate Change, the U.S. is not the only country that is planning for the security threats of climate change; over 70% of the world also deems climate change to be a security threat. The Philippines’s National Security Policy specifically gives the security forces the mission to “Help Protect the Country’s Natural Resources and Reduce the Risks of Disasters” and goes on to say that “the government must focus on establishing disaster and calamity preparedness and effective response mechanisms.” Clearly, Typhoon Haiyan has overwhelmed the ability of the Filipino security services to effectively respond to this calamity; it is appropriate for the U.S. and international community to help as much as possible.

Climate change acts as a threat multiplier and an accelerant of instability. Whether this storm was ‘caused’ by climate change is a moot point now. Even with concerted international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, like those proposed at the UNFCCC negotiations in Warsaw, the Pacific will likely see these disasters for decades to come. Efforts to reduce risk should include military preparations for response, readiness that increases the capacity to prevent such harm, as well as greenhouse gas mitigation to reduce the chance of future storms. The net effect, unfortunately will be that the military is likely to have many opportunities to practice disaster response: it should be treated as a key mission.

Andrew Holland is Senior Fellow for Energy and Climate at American Security Project, a Washington D.C based think tank. He is an expert on energy, climate change, and infrastructure policy. He has over seven years of experience working at the center of debates about how to achieve sustainable energy security and how to effectively address climate change. He tweets regularly via @TheAndyHolland.

Donald Trump’s presidency has called into serious question the role of the US in the Paris Agreement, the direction of international cooperation on climate change, and the role of the US in the liberal international order.

Just one year ago, the world was celebrating the adoption of the Paris Agreement as a new foundation for global cooperation on climate change. The North/South firewall that created asymmetrical obligations under the Kyoto Protocol was removed, leaving in its place, a level playing field upon which to build efficient international regulatory cooperation. As Prime Minister David Cameron remarked, “What is so special about this deal is that it puts the onus on every country to play its part.” The more optimistic among us were already discussing how the voluntary aspects of this hybrid agreement could be strengthened to advance the effectiveness of the treaty regime.

The election of Donald Trump as the 45^th President of the United States, however, has called into serious question the role of the US in the Paris Agreement, the direction of international cooperation on climate change, and moreover, the role of the US in the liberal international order and its cohesiveness moving forward. On climate change, for example, Trump and his cabinet vacillate between outright denial and “lukewarmism” (open to the possible existence of climate change but denial of its importance or the urgency of a response).

As such, most of us who take international cooperation seriously are filled with more than a little anxiety and/or dread at the prospect of a Trump presidency but it is important to view Trump as a symptom of a systemic problem: a struggle at the heart of liberal democracy.

The past and future of liberal democracy

Winston Churchill’s remark that, “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter” gets to the heart of the post-Cold War rebalance between the paternalism of liberal autocracy (or undemocratic liberalism) and the recent growth of populist illiberal democracy.

As Fareed Zakaria reminds us, “The tension between constitutional liberalism and democracy centers on the scope of governmental authority. Constitutional liberalism is about the limitation of power, democracy about its accumulation and use.” The purpose of liberalism’s controls on democracy is to create a long-term structure that is resistant to the short-term solutions of individual leaders to placate the short-term thinking of the people. The liberal international order seeks to do the same between states.

The recent pendulum swing towards illiberal democracy reflects the shortened time horizon of the electorate in the West and their resentment of the longer time horizon of the elites necessary for a liberal international order.

Foreign policy and the willingness of the electorate to pay for it

Image credit: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia.

Trump has been able to tap into a populist resentment of the costs Americans are paying to support international public goods, in particular a global trade regime that is perceived to have benefited Mexico and China at America’s expense and “collective” security arrangements in Europe and Asia that have provided US allies a far greater peace dividend at a disproportionately lower cost than for Americans. For many Americans, ungrateful allies but also America’s challengers are free riding on an international order shouldered by the American taxpayer.

There are, of course, virtually no benefits and considerable costs for America to withdraw from the international economic order or its security alliances, but Trump may be able to increase the cost for other states of participating in the international order secured by the US.

The Republican Party has been trying to limit disproportionately high financial obligations to the UN since the 1980’s, but with an electorate choosing to give them control of the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court, the credible threat of US isolationism has not been this great since the rejection of the League of Nations.

By threatening to walk away from international agreements that provide others benefits reliant on American beneficence, Trump, who has made a career out of rent seeking in real estate development and personal branding, will seek to extract greater rents from the international order.

The danger for Trump is that reduced obligations for Americans, or unreasonably high costs for free riders, create incentives for them to seek other sources of global leadership. However, there is reason to believe that Japan and South Korea see much larger costs from Chinese domination; middle-eastern allies see much higher costs than benefits from a US withdrawal; and post-modern Europe will realize it is mostly defenseless without American security guarantees.

None of this “deal making” will improve the lives of the Americans who voted for Trump, but it will likely force US allies to come to terms with their contribution to the peace benefit they’ve enjoyed for so long.

Paris and domestic politics

The Trump administration has begun the process of rolling back the implementation of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and is likely to reduce donations to international climate funds. In the short term, this will appease many in the Republican Party who feel that responsibility for addressing climate change creates short-term costs that disproportionately fall on Americans and provides benefits primarily to non-Americans. That said, these policy changes are likely to result in more coal plants outside the US than within it.

Article 28 delays the possibility of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement for four years, but the US could repudiate the ratification of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a process that would only take one year. As the Paris Agreement creates no binding mitigation obligations for the US, it is not clear what the Trump administration gains from walking away from either treaty, especially when it is clear that the US would lose a seat at the table it could use to stall the progressive development of the regime.

With former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, the US is likely to continue to support the transition away from fossil fuels (or decarbonization of the global economy) but work actively to slow the pace of implementation to a crawl.

Contagion: from a domestic politics issue to an international problem

In the West, the long-term thinking of liberal democracies facilitated increased prosperity among partners in the international order.

And that prosperity empowered undemocratic liberal elites to expand national rights and responsibilities and translate them into international rights and responsibilities. Tacit approval for these measures, however, was reliant on continued domestic prosperity. But as that prosperity has faltered, it is unsurprising that support for liberal internationalism has declined among the electorate.

The vote for Brexit typifies the impulse of the people to support measures described by illiberal democrats as necessary to regain control of their uncertain economic and cultural destiny. The EU’s migrant crisis and austerity measures from the financial crisis have strengthened illiberal nationalists across Europe, weakening the normative power of the liberal autocracy at the heart of supranational Europe.

In all cases, the excesses of undemocratic liberalism, followed by reduced domestic prosperity, have eroded popular support for international cooperation where the domestic costs are perceived to exceed the benefits.

Conclusion

Trump’s formal repudiation of the TPP and rejection of the TTIP reflect the shortened time horizon of an electorate unwilling to invest in potential future economic gains, but these decisions don’t inherently threaten the international economic order. If, on the other hand, Trump imposes 45% tariffs on imports from China (another ill-advised campaign promise) or walks away from US security guarantees these actions would present serious systemic risks.

It’s worth considering, however, that by painting the worst-case scenario of US withdrawal from the international order so vividly, Trump has highlighted the benefits provided by American leadership that are frequently taken for granted.

In seeking to protect US sovereignty (by reducing what are viewed as asymmetrical obligations) Trump may reinforce the importance of reciprocity in international cooperation and diminish the desire to internationalize Western liberal values. An international criminal court with the support of the US, China, and Russia would be stronger than the current European incarnation. The UN Security Council would be stronger if each member of the P-5 paid the same proportion of UN dues, and the UN General Assembly (where two-thirds of the members collectively pay less than 2% of the total UN budget) would be more legitimate if it were unable to determine the UN budget with a two-thirds voting majority.

Scaling back liberal excesses need not result in authoritarianism, isolationism, or gunboat diplomacy. If addressed prudently, illiberal democratic rebalancing may produce more sustainable liberal democracies and a better liberal democratic foundation for international cooperation.

Murray Carroll is a co-founder and director of the International Court for the Environment Coalition. He has a law degree from the London School of Economics, and is a graduate student of international relations at Harvard University and international law at the University of London. Responsibility for the views expressed in this commentary rest exclusively with the author.

The Gacaca courts were set up in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide to try and help Rwandans live together in peace. But research suggests that this system has been used as a tool for vengeance, and political and economic gain. 

In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government was faced with the task of bringing justice and reconciliation to a divided and devastated country. Gacaca, meaning “justice amongst the grass”, a traditional justice system once used to try local disputes between neighbours, was restored to relieve the overwhelmed prison system.

Initially, it was well received. For those accused of genocide crimes, it was a long awaited step towards justice, an opportunity for the truth to be heard and them to be judged (see Tertsakian 2008: 376).  For the survivors, it meant that they would be able to tell their story and have justice for their loved ones.

Between 2001 and 2012, gacaca processed nearly two million cases.  Most, if not all have involved Hutu as defendants. Gacaca was set up to try only genocide crimes. Crimes committed by RPF and out of revenge were excluded from the mandate. Waldorf notes that:

Early on Penal Reform International warned that the implementation of gacaca was emphasizing legalistic retribution over socio-political reconciliation.  Since then, gacaca has become increasingly retributive, both in design and practice

As a result, the legal system is perceived as being used against Hutu to not only criminalize them, but to obtain their wealth and resources. This paper examines the ways in which gacaca has been used as a tool for vengeance and to serve political or economic interests.

The misuse of gacaca

Beginning in March 2008, I carried out ethnographic research in Gisenyi and Cyangugu Rwanda as well as Goma and Bukavu Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). My research has emphasised that Hutu participants did not outright reject gacaca, rather they rejected how the system was being misused, as Zach, a Hutu participant, argued

Gacaca is good idea, but those who work in the government are bad. The rules are written in a book but they are not obeyed. …Gacaca would be very good, if the government didn’t influence the decisions.  But this is not the case; judges are influenced by soldiers, genocide survivors and others.

According to another Hutu participant, Huey:

Some Hutu begin a business and the government will stop them.  There are many example of this.  One man had a very successful business of selling materials for repairing cars.  However, people took him to gacaca because he had lots of money.  He gave them money even though he wasn’t guilty.  He gave them lots of money.  Now he had to change the way he conducts business.  He doesn’t like to show the materials he has, because he’s scared that he will get dragged back to gacaca.

Alphonse, another Hutu participant, agreed “They (the government) like to charge rich Hutu. When they don’t find anything, they take that Hutu to a different district and charge him with the same crimes there.” Robert was a Hutu participant arrested for genocide crimes in 1997 and for ‘genocide ideology’ in 2008. He believes the underlining cause for both arrests centred on property disputes:

I was accused of killing my neighbour by his brother.  During the genocide, my neighbour was caught at a roadblock.  I explained to the men there that this man was my brother, but he didn’t have his identity card to prove it.  They told me they wouldn’t kill him, but to find some way to prove his identity.  I went to the District Office and paid for an identity card that said my neighbour was Hutu and my brother.  It was a lot of money. They released my neighbour, who fled to Congo.  When he arrived at the border, the Interahamwe killed him.  I fled with my family to Congo after the genocide.  When I returned, I was arrested on genocide crimes for this man’s death.  I had spent years in prison when the formal courts found me innocent.  I told them everything and they found that my neighbour’s brother had lied. Next the brother brought me in front of gacaca for the same crimes [killing his brother]. The gacaca judges were confused as to why this case was in front of them.  They agreed with the previous ruling and I was released.  [Why was your neighbour’s brother going to all these lengths to charge you?] Because, while I was in Congo, my neighbours had moved into my house and did not want to give it back.  When I returned, I reclaimed my house, but it was stripped of all windows and doors.  Two days later I was arrested for the death of his brother.

Robert was in fact lucky. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), Rwandan law protects an individual from double jeopardy. However, the practice has been allowed due to a loophole in the 2004 Gacaca law. HRW reported a case that was nearly identical to Robert’s, where a man was cleared by the formal courts and then given a thirty-year sentence in gacaca. He was released upon a successful appeal. In another case, in the district of Huye, a gacaca judge told how there were two cases where the men were acquitted in conventional courts, but convicted with lengthy prison sentences through gacaca (ibid).

Coercion within gacaca

Image credit: Elisa Finocchiaro/Flickr.

According to Douglas, a Hutu participant, who was also a RPF member and gacaca official, guilt and innocence are often determined by the government. He told me “For those Hutu who are rich, the decision is always made before he is charged, before the judges reach a decision.” The involvement of the government became evident when I was allowed to attend a gacaca proceeding in Douglas’s jurisdiction.

The accused was a former leader, who had been convicted by the formal courts of killing someone during the genocide. Upon appeal to the Supreme Court, the man’s conviction was overturned. He was finally released from prison and freed for only one night, when the police arrested him again. People from surrounding areas had accused him of killing and stealing a motorcycle during the genocide. However, some of those murder charges were the same accusations that the Supreme Court had previously overturned.

Douglas explained that a genocide survivors’ organisation had initiated a campaign to mobilise survivors to accuse those who were ‘guilty’ of genocide crimes. However, the organisation and gacaca officials were unable to find anyone to accuse this particular man. As a result, the trial was cancelled and the case was postponed for a month. I asked Douglas if this was a form of coercion:

Oh for sure, I’ve already been contacted. …I was told that I have to convince the judges and that we must charge this former leader and find him guilty.  We have to do this.  This is a heavy burden… As a team, we say that he is guilty. But in private we know this prisoner is innocent, we have no choice.  That prisoner was my neighbour.  I had seen everything that happened.  A former local leader took him to the market, where those Tutsi were.  He did nothing! He didn’t kill or hurt anybody!

Genocide ideology, a tool for vengeance

In all likelihood the ending of gacaca will not offset the misuse of the legal system as a tool for vengeance. In 2008, the Rwandan government passed Law No. 18/2008 that defined genocide ideology as:

an aggregate of thoughts characterized by conduct, speeches, document and other acts aiming at exterminating or inciting others to exterminate people basing on ethnic group, origin, nationality, region, colour, physical appearance, sex, language, religion or political opinion, committed in normal periods or during war.

Human rights organisations have been concerned with the imprisonment of Rwandans on vague accusations of ‘genocide ideology.’ Amnesty International argues that ‘genocide ideology’ legislation, like gacaca, ‘is compounded by the reality and perception that most accused come from one ethnic group.’  Furthermore, it is not uncommon for individuals to use ‘genocide ideology’ laws for personal gain.

In fact, Amnesty was only able to find one case where a Hutu attempted to bring ‘genocide ideology’ charges against a Tutsi. The individual was offended after a Tutsi neighbour had called him a Hutu. The case was dropped by the prosecution. Robert believed that in connection with gacaca, ‘genocide ideology’ becomes a weapon that is used to discriminate and imprison innocent Hutu:

Gacaca is used for stopping those Hutu who are rising up in society.  It allows Tutsi to take their property.  It helps to promote young Tutsi to occupy jobs.  A Tutsi can claim genocide ideology as a way of forcing a Hutu out of their post. It is like a business, anyone who gets into an argument at work can be accused of genocide ideology. Then they get put into prison.  Just ask why charges of genocide ideology only exist against Hutu, but Tutsi have genocide ideology as well.

In 2008, Robert was arrested on allegations of ‘genocide ideology’ made by the same man who accused him of murder. Robert felt that having failed to obtain his property through accusations of genocide crimes, the man now turned to ‘genocide ideology.’

I decided to rebuild a granary, after a few days the community leader came to me and told me that I must destroy the granary, because it was in the road.  I told him he didn’t have the authority… My neighbours sent that official, the same ones who had me arrested before, those that accused me before. They called the police and told them I had insulted them [a way of saying that a racial/ethnic epithet was used].  It was planned! The leader had told them that I had beaten him.  I am an old man; the leader is a young man. I cannot beat him!  When I got to prison, they charged me with crimes of genocide ideology and opposition to the government’s programmes. My wife’s brother came to intervene on my behalf.  He told me that I must be quiet; because they have many things they could charge me with.  The Police Commissioner also told me to go home and keep quiet.  Now I’m quiet.

The other man involved was a neighbour, with whom Robert was having a boundary dispute with.  According to Robert, the men believe that if Robert returned to prison, he wouldn’t be able to pay back a bank loan and his house would be repossessed, solving both problems. Robert’s testimony highlights how the misuse of the legal system through gacaca and genocide ideology presents challenges to reconciliation. While, at the same time, demonstrating that there is a desire and a demand for it, he states,

Those Tutsi were looking for any reason to condemn me to prison.  I didn’t do anything.  If I say anything, they will get me again and put me in prison. Everyday they accuse me.  Their (genocide survivors) agenda is like revenge there was no reason for them to do what they did.   They see me and their hearts accuse themselves.  When I was released (the first time) they were not happy to see me…In 2002, after I was released, I had electricity and water and my neighbours didn’t.  They came to me asking me for water.  They say, “This Hutu has TV, water, we have nothing”.  They think of me as being rich.  They say, “this Hutu, who has all these things, how can he get these things”? It’s a major reason why they want to punish me.  I put myself in Allah’s hands. …The best thing for all Rwandans would be to share power and forget.  To work for the nation, forget about the divisions or favouritism and use the same Arusha Accords as a power sharing agreement.  Only then can Rwanda be one house with one parent, to care for all children.

Conclusion

Much has been written and debated about whether or not gacaca has achieved reconciliation in Rwanda. While most would agree and recognize that gacaca was “one of the most ambitious transitional justice experiments in history”, it was also developed and carried out within the context of “deep political and ethnic division, fear, suspicion, intimidation and corruption” (see Tertsakian 2008: 362). The consequences of this is that gacaca was never going to be able to bring about reconciliation for all Rwandan, but rather contributed further wounds of mistrust and division.

Larissa R. Begley received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Sussex. She is currently a lecturer in African and African American Studies at Iowa State University. Her research focuses on understanding the implication of genocide ideology laws as a form of state violence in Rwanda.

This article by Sustainable Security’s Richard Reeve was originally published on openDemocracy on 29 November, 2013.

Bab Amro, Homs
Source: Freedom House (Flickr)

All wars end, sooner or later. With an interim deal signed on Iran’s nuclear programme, the great powers, Middle Eastern diplomats and the mediators of Geneva are returning their attention to ending the war in Syria. As figures released by Oxford Research Group on 24 November reveal, at least 113,735 Syrians had been killed by August, one-in-ten of them children. No conflict is currently deadlier. The 25 November announcement that the so-called Geneva II conference would finally convene on 22 January is thus overdue but good news. But what are the chances of it bringing peace?

Securing Syrian participation

If the responsibility for making peace rests with the Syrian actors to the crisis, the Geneva process has not yet secured domestic participation, let alone commitment. Convened in June 2012, the original Geneva conference was a meeting of the Action Group for Syria, an initiative co-sponsored by the UN and League of Arab States and including the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (‘P5’), the EU, Turkey and, as office-holders within the Arab League, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar. The ensuing Geneva Communiqué set out a six-step plan to peaceful transition. But this was a commitment of the Action Group, not the Syrian parties to the conflict.

Geneva II, by contrast, is all about brokering agreement between Syrians. This has become very much more difficult since mid-2012, when up to 25,000 Syrians had died in the conflict. Based on data up to end of August 2013 analysed by ORG and ongoing casualties recorded by Syrian civil society, this casualty figure is now around five times higher. Levels of destruction, displacement and brutality have similarly multiplied.

The Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque south of Damascus is a major pilgrimage site for Shia Muslims from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and beyond. Attacks on the shrine in 2013 have reportedly motivated many regional Shia to fight in Syria.
Source: Wikimedia

The character of the war has also changed since 2012. It has increasingly become sectarian and internationalised. Sunni militants from across the Arab world and beyond have transformed the nature of the armed resistance. Shi’a militia from Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and Syria’s Alawite community have played a decisive role in recent regime offensives. Secular Kurdish militia control the northeast.

Healing these divisions may take generations. Peace or a cessation of violence is an immediate imperative. Securing a deal in Geneva is likely to be a case of a ‘good enough’ compromise from an ‘inclusive enough’ coalition of interests. This is likely to have at least three dimensions.

First is the problem of securing meaningful participation in even initial talks. The largest and most widely recognised opposition political force, the National Coalition insists that President Bashar al-Assad must leave power. The regime insists it will neither ‘talk to terrorists’ nor negotiate surrendering power. The National Coalition faces greater internal resistance to negotiating, while the Assad regime is reassured by negotiating from a position of increasing strength on the battlefield.

Second is the problem of linking political settlement with battlefield realities: without the buy-in of combatants, no peace deal will be ‘good enough’ to hold. The National Coalition and its Free Syrian Army (FSA) have never coalesced the myriad of armed local resistance units into a capable force. Pulverised by regime armour, artillery and air power, opposition forces have increasingly rallied from secular to Islamist command to access more effective leadership and resources. The Islamic Front merger of the largest such groups on 22 November hugely undermines the National Coalition’s credibility. Conversely, association with the main armed Kurdish party has boosted the National Coordination Body, a moderate coalition of otherwise unarmed opposition parties still operating within Syria. The question of how civil society groups or minorities opposed to armed struggle can be involved in Geneva II remains unresolved. These should not be considered niche perspectives.

Third, ‘inclusive enough’ probably means side-lining some Jihadist groups that in 2013 have become dominant in the east and major players on the northern (Idlib and Aleppo) and southern (Daraa) fronts. Funded, organised and to a significant extent manned from abroad, the extent to which these groups represent Syrian interests is debatable. Affiliation with al-Qaida suggests these groups’ leaders are opposed to political compromise. As with AQ affiliates in Somalia and Mali, their radicalism may not be shared entirely by the Syrians who fight with them. The consolidation of the Islamic Front could serve to divert resources from al-Qaida affiliates.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on September 12, at beginning of Syrian chemical weapons talks.
Source: Wikipedia

Securing international commitment

If the responsibility for making peace rests with the international actors who have waged a war through armed Syrian proxies, the Geneva process so far looks equally constrained. Global rivals Russia and the United States play a leading role in the Action Group, but this leaves unrepresented the far more heavily committed (in military and financial terms) rivals for influence in the Persian/Arabian Gulf region: Iran and Saudi Arabia. Turkey and Qatar are also key supporters (and hosts) of the armed opposition but their presence adds to the sense that the Action Group is weighted against the Assad regime, which may count only Russia, Iraq and, more loosely, China as allies in Geneva.

Bringing the Iranians and Saudis into the process is thus crucial to the success of Geneva II. Iran’s opening to the west since the election of President Hassan Rouhani is partly driven by the draining of Iranian resources in Syria. With the Assad regime advancing on the battlefield, and Russia and the western powers sharing its concern over the rapid rise of Sunni extremists on the Syria/Iraq border, Iran is more likely to back peace in Syria. Its interests include a veto on Sunni dominance and continuance of its access to Hezbollah in Lebanon. However, with Shi’as and Alawites representing under 15% of Syria’s population, it is unclear how it can secure these interests without the Assads in charge.

Saudi Arabia looks a harder sell, not least because it feels its privileged status as US regional ally slipping as Iran pursues rapprochement. Recent Saudi tensions with Turkey and Qatar over influence in Egypt further undermine the unity of foreign pressure on the opposition. Yet reshuffles within the National Coalition and Islamic Front since July suggest that pro-Saudi elements have gained prominence in both. Riyadh may have the influence to bring these rivals together, but only if the Coalition assumes a more overtly Islamist identity. Reconciling Syria’s Sunni Arab majority and an Islamist agenda with either the Assad regime or western expectations is an enormous challenge, although the Geneva Process foresees a National Dialogue followed by constitutional and legal reforms to determine just such issues.

What way forward, then? It seems axiomatic that the rivalry between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbours needs to be addressed directly through talks and confidence-building rather than through proxies over Syria. This is of particular urgency as talk re-emerges of a Saudi nuclear weapons programme to counter Iran. It could also be that the National Coalition is overly constrained by its disparate backers’ demands for opposition unity. The divisions that have hampered it in making war may also hamper it in making peace. Representation in Geneva that allows disparate Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood, secularist and pacifist currents to express themselves may be beneficial.

Judicial pressure

While the parties and their regional backers remain far apart in their expectations, international judicial mechanisms have potential importance as leverage towards peace, in restraining the behaviour of combatant parties, and eventually pursuing post-conflict justice. Although Syria has not signed the Rome Statute, international war crimes prosecutions could be brought if the UN Security Council refers Syria formally to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Due legal process and systematic gathering of evidence, including data on casualties, is crucial if the threat of prosecutions is to be realistic. The UN Commission of Enquiry has been investigating a wide range of alleged crimes committed by both sides, with a view to future prosecutions. Growing P5 consensus on the need for conflict settlement could make referral to the ICC possible in the case of Syria, as it did over Sudan in 2005.

As with the now dissipated threat of military intervention, at least the threat of prosecutions could increase pressure on Syrian combatants to curb the most egregious atrocities and negotiate peace. With both Iran and Russia appalled at the use of chemical weapons in Syria, pressure of prosecution could even be used to unstick the question of whether Bashar al-Assad presides over any transition government.

Richard Reeve is the Director of Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme. He works across a wide range of defence and security issues and is responsible for the strategic direction of the programme. Richard has particular expertise in global security, Sub-Saharan Africa, peace and conflict analysis, and the security role of regional organisations.

When does a serious environmental problem become a security threat?

Professor Tim Flannery, a leading scientist and public intellectual in Australia wrote a piece in the Guardian newspaper a few days ago reflecting on the links between climate change and the extreme temperatures and bushfires ravaging Australia at present. He notes that “Australians are used to hot summers. We normally love them. But the conditions prevailing now are something new. Temperature records are being broken everywhere.” What is important for thinking about the security consequences of climate change is that towards the end of the article, Flannery reflects:

“Australia’s average temperature has increased by just 0.9 of a degree celsius over the past century. Within the next 90 years we’re on track to warm by at least another three degrees. Having seen what 0.9 of a degree has done to heatwaves and fire extremes, I dread to think about the kind of country my grandchildren will live in. Even our best agricultural land will be under threat if that future is realised. And large parts of the continent will be uninhabitable, not just by humans, but by Australia’s spectacular biodiversity as well.”

Conditions in which large parts of the continent are threatened in such a way would appear to raise some pretty serious questions about Australia’s national security (let alone the human security of those individuals living in areas where agriculture has failed or fires threaten homes and livelihoods). Yet recently a number of commentators have become particularly concerned about the so-called ‘securitisation’ of climate change, largely due to a sense of there being “alarmist views about climate change on conflict risk.” This has led some to argue that rather than helping to raise the profile of the issue in terms of the need for urgent policy change, we in fact now need to “disconnect security and climate change.” According to Professor Betsy Hartmann of Hampshire College, “A fear of imminent doom runs deep in popular culture and, like the grim reaper, stalks the environmental movement.” This, she argues allows “security agencies and analysts” to distract us from feelings of empathy towards those affected by climate change and to instead cause us to fear them and to “turn to the military to protect us.” According to Professor Mike Hulme of the University of East Anglia,

“What climate change means to us and means to the world is conditioned by what we do, by the way we govern, by the stories we tell. Presenting climate change as the ultimate security crisis is crudely deterministic, detached from the complexities of our world, and invites new and dangerous forms of military intervention.”

All of this matters as the potential world in which Flannery is imagining that his grandchildren might have to live in is becoming more and more likely the longer multilateral efforts drag on. Richard Haass, the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, when asked to look ahead to the big global governance challengers for 2013 recently stated that: “It is becoming increasingly clear that efforts at mitigation are not just falling short but that the gap between what is needed and what is likely to happen is widening.”

The whole notion of the ‘securitisation’ of climate change pre-supposes that we get to choose whether climate change is a security threat or not – it emphasises what political scientists refer to as human agency. Of course we can choose to label something as a threat or not (yes, perhaps it may even not be the end of the world if we use the dreaded T word!). But in the face of increasingly extreme weather and related natural disasters (let alone serious discussions about whether states such as Kiribati can survive within their own national borders), it does seem that we can sensibly talk about the security threats posed by climate change in the decades to come regardless of whether we can specifically link particular instances of conflict and climate change in the past.

The point is that simply because something may pose a security threat does not mean that we have to respond in the traditional way – to throw military force at it. It’s abundantly clear that there is no military solution to climate change and that addressing the problem at source means changing (among other things) the ways we use energy. But that doesn’t mean that our current energy policies are not a fundamental security threat. They are. And why can’t we use better energy policies to ensure our security?

Ben Zala is a Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Leicester.

Golden Dawn, a Greek Neo-Fascist party, has gradually enjoyed greater success in Greek and European parliamentary elections. What are the drivers behind this development?

The Greek Golden Dawn, a violent neo-Nazi party, has remained in the margins of the Greek political system for most of its political life. However, within the context of the emerging economic crisis both in Europe and in Greece, the party marked an electoral breakthrough in May and June 2012, receiving 7 per cent of the vote in May and 6.9 per cent in June, translating into 21 and 18 parliamentary seats out of 300 respectively. As the economic crisis unfolded, and societal upheaval in Greece became reinforced by the emerging migration crisis, the party retained its support in the 2014 European Parliament Elections receiving 9.38 per cent of the vote; and in the January and September 2015 general elections, when it retained third place in the party system with 6.28 and 6.99 per cent of the vote respectively.

The ideology of Golden Dawn

Image by Wikimedia Commons.

The Golden Dawn is unlike all other parties in the Greek parliament; and most other far right parties in Europe. While the party itself rejects the fascist label, it nonetheless espouses all core fascist- and more specifically Nazi- principles. In our book, we show the party rejects liberalism and socialism and endorses what it terms the ‘third biggest ideology in history’, i.e. nationalism, combined with support for an all-powerful state premised on ‘popular sovereignty’. In its manifesto the party states that being a member of the Golden Dawn entails the acceptance of the following principles: the establishment of the state in accordance to nationalism; the moral obligations that derive from this ideology including the rejection of any authority that perpetuates societal decline; the acceptance of nationalism as the only authentic revolution; the establishment of the popular state in which there are no inequalities on the basis of wealth; racial supremacy and more specifically the belief in the continuation of the ‘Greek race’ from antiquity to the modern day; the idea that the state must correspond and be subservient to the nation/race; and the nationalization of all institutions.

The fascist myth of palingenetic ultra-nationalism constitutes a key ideological premise underpinning the party’s discourse. The ideology of the Golden Dawn may indeed be categorised within the ‘ethnic nationalism’ variant, emphasising blood, geneaology and the perennial nature of the Greek nation. The party emphasises ties with ancient Greece, past wars, imperial experience during the Ottoman years and invasion in the 1940s. In this context, the party makes frequent references to ancient Greece, emphasising the heroic traits of those belonging to the Greek nation. Historical figures, whether heroes of ancient Greece, Byzantium, the Greek War of Independence, the Second World War or Cyprus are glorified for their heroism, bravery and sacrifice. By referring to a very large array of officially recognised historical events, personalities and national identity traits and placing them within the ethnic election framework, the Golden Dawn successfully integrates them into its ultra-nationalist palingenetic ideology.

The Golden Dawn seeks ‘catharsis’. The party’s key goal is to eliminate all political divisions and cleanse the nation from outsiders. Communists are identified as those internationalists that seek the annihilation of the Greek nation. Contributing to this ethnocide are also Greece’s external enemies, which include all foreigners who according to the Golden Dawn contribute to the moral and cultural decay of Greece, for example people of Jewish origin and all immigrants.

Militarism hence is the key to both the Golden Dawn’s ideology and organizational structures. The army is the ultimate value, they claim. A value that encloses within it ‘blood, struggle and sacrifice’. The party’s members see themselves as ‘street soldiers’ fighting for the nationalist cause. This places violence at the heart of Golden Dawn’s activities and illustrates their distinctive view of democracy as a bourgeois construct only to be used as a means for achieving their ultimate goal: its abolition, as its leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos claims. It also explains the link between Golden Dawn members and army officials, as well as the organization of ‘paramilitary orders’ or ‘battalions’.

Therefore the party should be understood as neo-Nazi, not because of its past use of Nazi paraphernalia, but rather because its ideology and organizational structures fulfil the criteria of what constitutes a neo-Nazi group. Its association with a large number of violent acts resulted in the imprisonment of the majority of its MPs including the party leader in 2013/2014. 70 defendants, which include the party leader and the party’s MPs, went on trial in Spring 2015 on charges including murder, grievous bodily harm and sustaining a criminal organization. The trial remains on-going.

Accounting for the rise of Golden Dawn

How may we explain the rise and sustained support for the Golden Dawn? The Golden Dawn’s electoral fortunes have coincided with both the economic and migration crises that have affected Europe as a whole. For example, in 2012 during the peak of Greece’s economic crisis, the country’s unemployment was at 24.5 per cent with youth unemployment at 55.3 per cent. In 2013 these figures increased to 27.5 and 58.3 respectively. The government deficit was -8.6, which increased in 2013 to -12.1. In addition, Greece experienced the bulk of the migration crisis as the entry point for a high number of refugees who travel from Turkey to the islands of Kos, Chios, Lesvos and Samos. For example, an estimated number of 856.723 refugees arrived by sea in 2015 and 169.459 in 2016.  It would make sense to seek causal links between the economic and migration crises on the one hand, and the rise of the Golden Dawn on the other. However, the adoption of a comparative logic suggests that this argument does not hold when subjected to empirical scrutiny. Other European countries that were also severely affected by the Eurozone and/or migration crises have not experienced a comparable rise in support for the far right. For example, Spain’s unemployment levels are second in the EU after Greece with 24.8 per cent in 2012 and 26.1 per cent in 2013. Youth unemployment in Spain is also very high at 52.9 per cent in 2012 and 55.5 in 2013. Portugal’s somewhat lower unemployment rates at 15.8 per cent in 2012 and 16.4 per cent in 2013 are still above the EU average. The same goes for the country’s youth unemployment rates at 37.9 per cent in 2012 and 38.1 in 2013.

We posit an alternative explanation that takes into account the broader implications of the crises of Greek society. We understand the rise of the Golden Dawn as a response to a perceived breach of the social contract in Greece. Therefore, we see this rise not as question of intensity of economic and/ or migration crisis, but rather as a question of the nature of the crisis, i.e. economic and/migration versus overall crisis of democratic representation. Extreme right parties such as the Golden Dawn are more likely to experience an increase in their support when a societal crisis culminates into an overall crisis of democratic representation. This is likely to occur when severe issues of governability impact upon the ability of the state to fulfil its social contract obligations. The perceived inability of the state to mediate the effects of the crisis and to deliver services based on the redistribution of the collective goods of the state. When state capacity is limited or perceived to be limited, then the result is the delegitimization of the party system as a whole. This is because the system is perceived as incapable to address the crisis and mediate its socioeconomic effects. This breach of the social contract is accompanied by declining levels of trust in state institutions, resulting in party system collapse.

Conclusion

If we are right, then the Golden Dawn is a specific symptom of a broader institutional pathology. Therefore in order to contain this phenomenon, political actors should focus on institutional reform in order to restore the domestic social contract and reintegrate key social groups back into the political mainstream. More specifically:

1. Empower the middle class: because the middle class is key to both economic prosperity and democratic stability. Weak democratic institutions and widespread corruption have resulted in the weakening of the middle ground and this is what allows extremist groups to co-opt middle-class voters. Unless we address this institutional pathology at its core, extremism will keep recurring.
2. Welfare reform: because the appropriation of key social groups into the mainstream depends on social security. The greater the insecurity, and the broader the populace it affects, the greater the potential of extremist elements to co-opt these social groups that would otherwise support mainstream alternatives.
3. Strengthen civil society institutions: Because civil society fosters tolerance. Greek civil Society is weak at all levels: weak structure, limited impact and limited membership. There is a wider sentiment of public distrust towards this type of organisations in Greece because of the long tradition of corruption and clientelistic relations that prevail.
4. Reform the education system: Because education is a key means of socialisation that institutionalises political culture. The type of socialisation that occurs from an early age at the school level is the one that becomes most embedded. And, because people of a younger age are more easily moulded into violence and extremism, they tend to occupy a large portion of far right party membership. As long as the Greek education system promotes exclusion and vilifies the other through official textbooks, it will continue to offer opportunities for right-wing extremism.

Dr Sofia Vasilopoulou is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of York.

Dr Daphne Halikiopoulou is an Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Reading.

Dr Ben Zala provides a brief overview of some of the main security implications of climate change and stresses that policymakers must be careful not to militarise the issue.