Category: 29

In February 2016, two former military officers of the Guatemalan army were convicted of crimes against humanity based on cases of sexual and domestic slavery, perpetrated in the 1980s during the civil war. Together they received sentences of 360 years in prison, and ordered to pay reparations to the eleven victim-survivors on whose testimonies the case rested. The case, known as Sepur Zarco after the community where these crimes took place, is unique; it is the first domestic trial successfully prosecuting former military for sexual violence in conflict in the world. What happened in Sepur Zarco is less unique: the witness statements echo the experiences of women who gave their testimony to the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Committee (2001-2003), where women in embattled communities during the war between Shining Path and the state (1980-2000) were also systematically raped and/or enslaved. And there are other experiences; other genocides, war contexts, and rape camps in contemporary history, which would allow for a solid comparison with Sepur Zarco. Such an observation confirms the importance of the Sepur Zarco trial for the future of accountability and justice in cases of war-related sexual violence, in Guatemala, in Latin America, and indeed, globally.

The testimonies of victim-survivors in the Sepur Zarco trial against military commanders in Guatemala shows once more that rape in war has specific meanings and intentions that are informed and shaped by the specific coordinates of conflict. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan military repeatedly attacked the population of the rural community Sepur Zarco. Local indigenous leaders who were trying to get their land titled by the state were kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Women who went to search for disappeared family members at the military base were captured, beaten and raped, and enslaved as sexual and domestic servants of soldiers. Several witnesses at the trial told details about how they were raped and beaten multiple times, in front of or alongside their children, sometimes in a pit where their husbands would be held before being buried. They also told about other victims, abused, enslaved, raped and killed in their presence. The statements show a world of extreme cruelty and suffering, facilitated by racism and sexism, and encouraged by a military campaign against indigenous communities that lasted three decades. All evidence shows that in the case of Sepur Zarco, rape was used as a weapon of war: to conquer, to reinforce victory, to send a message, humiliate, and fragment entire communities, in sum, to control.

Of course, military commanders can only be prosecuted for systematic rape if we accept that rape in war is exceptional, different, and not inevitable. Perpetrators can only be held accountable if we recognise their agency in the act, their authority in allowing (or ordering) certain acts to happen. The extreme cruelty and violence that accompanies many of these acts further confirm that rape in war represents a rupture in a community’s history and in the lives of both perpetrators and victims. This is not normal, and hence, we can prosecute.

And yet, there are others, including myself, who have emphasised the continuity in the history and possibility of sexual violence against women. I have argued, based on the testimonies of victim-survivors of rape in the Peruvian conflict, that while much of the scale and cruelty of these experiences were certainly exceptional and strongly conflict related, the script for these acts – immersed in racism and sexism, as in the case of Guatemala – pre-dated the conflict, and has yet to be dismantled. There is a continuum in the persistence of sexual violence against women that supersedes the categories of war and peace.

In contemporary Guatemala, around 700 women are murdered each year because of sexism, killed by intimate partners or unknown others. This is what is known as femicidio in the region. Impunity is not absolute, but it is certainly very high and contributes to its prevalence, as public institutions are uninterested in pursuing cases of ‘private’ violence. The idea that violence against women, even if so large scale as in contemporary Guatemala (or elsewhere), can be private and thus irrelevant to national security (police, judiciary, policy) is strongly tied to perceptions of women being responsible somehow for the domestic sphere, the home, including the sexual gratification of men. Women are often perceived and portrayed as somehow complicit in their own abuse. Similar patterns of the domestication of violence are seen in conflict.

For example, women held at military bases to sexually serve men are often also required to wash and cook. The Sepur Zarco case also heard a former military commissioner tell the court how the then head of the military base and the accused in the trial, Lieutenant Esteelmer Reyses Girón, ordered soldiers to gang rape a woman, and that the Lieutenant himself “took” this woman as his “wife”. In similar vein, in the case of Peru, few women used the words ‘rape’ (violación) to describe their experiences. Instead, some said ‘he used me as his wife’, indicating how domestic and sexual enslavement were part of the package of abuse. One witness even stated ‘he started to beat us as if we were their wives’, further blurring the boundaries between the domestic and the political, between wartime abuse and peacetime abuse, and arguably, between husband and abuser. In Sierra Leone, and Uganda, similar patterns can be found: sexual and domestic slavery go hand in hand, and is made possible because of the peacetime structures in which women’s roles are already defined by their service to men. Hence, girls forcibly recruited into rebel armies soon became ‘wives’.

The idea that those who are violently enslaved could in fact be in a consensual relationship, albeit unequal, such as a marriage, provides a veil of legitimacy to an otherwise exceptional situation. It does, indeed, suggest a level of normality, a continuum, of life as one knows it. It might be the veil that makes survival possible. But many victim-survivors of conflict-related rape and sexual slavery are ostracised from their communities, exposed to a postconflict life of continuous abuse from their intimate partners, or choose to hide their trauma out of fear of retaliation. The women who testified in the Sepur Zarco case either did so behind closed doors, or they hid their faces behind veils during public sessions. What happened in war might have been exceptional, but not sufficiently so to erase the suggestion of complicity entirely, less so, stigma.

In my book Sexual Violence in War and Peace, I identify a continuum in how sexual violence is understood and perpetrated in both war and peace, and hence, how such violence is dealt with post-conflict. The characteristics of rape regimes perpetrated by military in the high Andes of the 1980s and early 1990s showed many known features of power relations along lines of race, sex, class, age, and gender. Sexual violence, because of its intimate and potential reproductive qualities, helps produce and reproduce those unequal power relations. In war this might be strategic and large-scale, or it might be facilitated and condoned, in order to dominate over others (i.e., both to affirm power as well as subordination, both to destroy communities, as well as consolidate military loyalty and masculine strength). But in peacetime, it does the same: sexual violence produces dominance and subordination between genders, races, sexualities, classes and ages, be that catcalling, sexual harassment, marital rape or other forms of highly gendered and sexualised violence.

Understanding sexual violence along a continuum does not say anything about the gravity of the violence or even how it might be experienced. On the contrary, while recognising and naming the differences between forms of sexual violence, experiences can be named as violence and as harmful, instead of normal or deserved. What the concept of a continuum of violence intends to highlight is how all forms of sexual violence are part of gendered social structures and patterns that have to be identified and transformed. Highlighting, combatting and prosecuting rape in war should arguably be part of a similarly linked set of measures that aim to eradicate gender inequality and the (often intersecting) violence with which such inequality is maintained and perpetuated, be that in war or in peace, at the level of families or in public space, in Guatemala or in the UK.

Thinking in terms of a continuum does not aim to minimise rape in conflicts, gang rape, or the femicides we are seeing particularly in parts of contemporary Central America. But it gives us an analytical tool that allows us to connect sex, male violence, and gender inequality, both in the everyday as well as during armed conflict. Thinking in terms of a continuum allows us to see how much violence is hidden, institutionalised, and/or normalised in everyday life, both in peacetime and wartime, in homes, in intimate relationships, and in public spaces. The term allows us to see parallels between the extreme and the everyday, the public and the private, thereby not undermining the seriousness of the extreme, but undercutting the normality of the everyday.

As such, the Sepur Zarco case is a milestone, and is hopefully a further step towards accountability for acts of sexual violence, and more broadly, gender-based violence, in both war and peace, in Guatemala and beyond.

 

Jelke Boesten is Reader in Gender and Development at International Development Institute, King’s College London.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

In January 2016, the government of Honduras and the Organization of American States (OAS) formalized the creation of a new international organ to help fight corruption in this country. The Mission of Support Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH, in the Spanish acronym) is a welcome step. However, it is very early to estimate whether it will be able to make a positive contribution to solving the daunting challenges facing justice and security in this country.

Honduras experiences what can be called a “perfect storm” of interrelated problems: violence perpetrated by diverse actors (gangs, drug traffickers); human rights abuses, in the context of a steady militarization of public security; impunity; corruption at the highest institutional levels, and widespread poverty and inequality. For years, it has been the most violent country in the world, with an average rate of 90 homicides per 100,000 people according to estimates by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Bank, which is significantly higher than the international average intentional homicide rate of 6.2 per 100,000 people.

Gangs, Drugs, and Corruption

Honduras, like El Salvador and Guatemala, has a serious problem with gangs. These are territorial groups involved in extortion and other crimes, exerting social control and who are connected to other criminal actors. The prevailing narrative from politicians and the media puts the blame of violence on the gangs, whose members are highly stigmatized as a result. Different governments have adopted iron-first and militarized approaches to deal with them. Casa Alianza, a charity that works and campaigns for the rehabilitation and the defence of street children, has documented that even children become victims of extrajudicial executions, carried out by death squads sometimes linked to the security forces. In January 2016, Casa Alianza denounced a monthly average rate of 81 children victims of extrajudicial executions.

However, the figures of homicides attributable to gangs are highly disputed, and national and international actors diverge in their interpretations about the share of responsibilities for violence. This is a strategic corridor for drug trafficking, and the local markets are growing. According to the OAS, around 70% of homicides are perpetrated by drug cartels involved in wars for the control of routes, sometimes using gang members and youth as sicarios (a Spanish term for hit men). By January 2014, estimates were that 87% of the drug planes heading from South America to North America passed through this country. Transnational groups, especially from Mexico, have established bases here. Then, there are local groups and transportistas (carriers), contracted by the cartels and connected to Honduran political and economic elites, including land owners and mayors.

In 2012, when the news about the gang truce in El Salvador spread throughout Central America, the Honduran gangs explored the possibility of starting a similar process. In May 2013, they delivered their first public statements from jail, announcing that they would stop violence in exchange for a series of demands. This was the first public event of a process accompanied by the Bishop of San Pedro Sula, Rómulo Emiliani, and the Secretary of Multidimensional Security of the OAS, Adam Blackwell.

Dialogue never advanced for many different reasons, including the decentralized nature of the Honduran gangs (that makes it difficult to enforce discipline among the ranks), the lack of political maturity of their leadership, and the weak legitimacy of a government that had emerged from the 2009 coup d’état,. But Bishop Emiliani had warned, from the beginning, that even a successful truce could never emulate the sudden drop of homicides of El Salvador, where the daily rate plummeted from 14 to 5. n Honduras, he warned, the range of actors involved in violence for different purposes is extensive, and the balances of power among them very distinct from those of the neighbour country.

It is worth remembering that in the 80s, amidst the wars that ravaged Central America, the Honduran territory was used for drug and arms trafficking with the aim of supporting the US allies in these wars, among them the Contras, who fought against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The illicit networks and connections created have survived well after these conflicts ended, including in sectors of the elite and security forces. Interpeace states that this is the country with more denounces of complicity between police members and illegal actors for the commission of crimes.

Militarization as a Response

President Juan Orlando Hernández, who took office in 2014, has followed others by trying to respond to these threats with an iron first strategy of crime suppression. But he has elevated the militarization of law enforcement to new levels. The military is now in charge of most aspects of public security.

The most prominent example is the creation of the Military Police of Public Order (PMOP), which currently has around 3,000 soldiers deployed throughout the country. A special law has been approved to prevent the Attorney General’s Office from investigating and prosecuting their potential abuses. It is the National Council on Defence and Security, under the control of the Armed Forces, who appoints judges and prosecutors for that role. The resources for the PMOP are collected through a security tax and allocated through a classified and ultra-secret budget.

Another emerging actor is FUSINA (Fuerza de Seguridad Interinstitucional), a task force composed of representatives of different security units. Led by the military, and with no formal status as an agency, FUSINA manages various bodies and organs, such as an anti-extortion unit that controls phone intercepts. Added to this is the US-backed Special Comprehensive Government Security Response Unit (TIGRES), a SWAT-style militarized police force.

Militarization takes place in the streets and also in the top-down institutional structures, with more military in charge of security positions, including the Security Ministry that has power over the armed forces and the police. The military also controls the penitentiary system, with soldiers guarding prisons. The trend is worrying in itself and for the lack of transparency and accountability implied. Civil society groups have denounced a trend that might be bringing the country back to the ‘80s, when the military had extended powers and human rights abuses were rampant, and reversing the efforts to advance civilian power during the 90s.

On the other hand, the national police experienced only limited reform in the past and are often accused of corruption and complicity in crime. Recently there have been limited purges of corrupt officers, but the situation could get even worse as they receive less equipment, salaries, and benefits than the PMOP. The priority given to the military threatens the feasibility and viability of a much-needed profound transformation of the police forces.

There have been some successes in the fight against drug trafficking, such as the dismantlement of the leadership of the crime organization Los Valle while Los Cachiros surrendered to US authorities. The head of operations of the Sinaloa Federation, who operated from San Pedro Sula, has also been captured. But efforts to cut the links of powerful elite sectors with narco-trafficking and crime have been far less evident despite the US efforts in this matter. The US Treasury Department has included some of them in their “kingpin list”, including the Rosenthal family, one of the most influential in the country. Jaime Rosenthal, former vice-president and head of an economic conglomerate, has been asked for extradition on charges of money laundering.

Corruption Shocking the Country

In 2015, a corruption scandal shook the country. Members of the President-related Liberal Party diverted more than 335 million dollars from the Institute of Social Security, at least in part to fund the party’s electoral campaign. Citizens protested for months in the streets of Tegucigalpa, the nation’s capital, and other cities against corruption, impunity, and human rights abuses. They claimed for the President resignation and asked for international support to fight corruption, through an initiative similar to the International Commission to Combat Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which has achieved significant results including the case against President Otto Pérez Molina on corruption charges.

The Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH), tasked with “the prevention and fight against corruption and impunity in the country”, is now a reality and could be accompanied by a permanent UN human rights monitoring mission in Honduras. The MACCIH shares some similarities with the CICIG. Both are hybrid agencies, international and domestic, but composed by international civil officers accountable to international organs (the UN, and the OAS). Both are tasked with the fight against corruption and impunity with the hope of bringing justice where the national counterparts cannot for different reasons (pressures, corruption, lack of resources).

The MACCIH is expected to include independent judges and prosecutors to supervise and support their national counterparts, promote a review of the effectiveness of the public security system, create a civil society observatory to evaluate progress and a role for the Justice Studies Centre of the Americas in proposing legislation reform. But their powers will be more limited than those of the CICIG, which can initiate and conduct criminal proceedings against anyone without approval of the national authorities.

The MACCIH can promote transparency and reforms, but much will depend on the political will to follow and implement (instead of resisting) its recommendations and proposals. National and international voices have questioned whether it will have enough power to fight effectively institutional corruption. Honduran elites will probably resist any effort directed at reform and accountability. In April 2015, the investigator that uncovered the ISS corruption scandal received death threats and had to flee the country. And the former head of the National Commission for the Fight Against Drug Trafficking, Alfredo Landaverde, was shot dead days after condemning the links between police and organized crime.

With all those factors in mind, it becomes clear that repressive iron first policies and militarization cannot substitute the fight against illicit networks, corruption and impunity, nor the effort towards institution building, particularly in the rule of law and justice. They have been popular in electoral terms and have received substantial international backing, but are incapable of supressing crime connected to gangs or drug trafficking, and fail to guarantee human security. Furthermore, they do nothing to address corruption at all levels of the state and cut the links between elites and different forms of organized crime. Ivan Briscoe, of the Clingendael Institute, summarized the dynamic as follows: “Informal relationships, money and fear have initiated a vicious cycle of emergency responses, militarization and corruption that only virtuous policies with public backing can replace”. Of course, that will be a long-term endeavor.

Mabel González Bustelo is a Fellow of the Global South Unit for Mediation (BRICS Policy Centre, Brazil) and author of Mediation with non-conventional armed groups? Experiences from Latin America.

With nearly 870 million people chronically undernourished, and progress towards the Hunger Millennium Development Goal ebbing since 2008, feeding the world will continue to be a major global challenge. The limitations of arable land availability, water accessibility, and humanity’s increasing population trajectory further compound the problem. Addressing the challenges to global food security while ensuring the sustainability of the planet will require changes to the way we interact with agriculture and a clear understanding of the driving factors behind it.

Food and Energy Price Volatility

The industrialisation of agriculture over the last five decades has contributed to massive gains in productivity, but it has also made food increasingly susceptible to energy supply and price fluctuations. Energy in the form of oil and gas is needed to run industrial farm equipment and to ship food around the world. Fertilizers, the driving factor behind most yield increases, are intimately tied to energy and therefore price volatility. Nitrogen fertilizers are particularly significant and are created through a process that combines natural gas and inert nitrogen from the atmosphere in a high-energy reaction to create ammonia. Fertilizer production is estimated to account for more than 50 per cent of total energy use in commercial agriculture (Woods, et al 2010). While shale gas has had a significant impact on the US natural gas market, globally, energy prices are expected to rise in the long term and become increasingly volatile, as shown by the graph to the right. Fertilizer costs will follow a similar trend, leading to variability in cost and availability. This can be especially difficult for small farmers in developing countries, whose resilience to price fluctuations is low.

Locking Ourselves In to Volatility

Natural means of increasing agricultural yields are possible through recycling manures and planting crops that add nutrients to the soil. However, barring a radical change in agricultural practices, globally we are locked into chemical fertilizer use, especially nitrogen fertilizers in the short and medium term. Approximately 45 per cent of the world’s food supply is grown using chemical fertilizers, and that number is growing. Meat consumption, which requires large amounts of grain for animal feed, is on the rise. Consumption of animal protein in Europe and the United states together is double the world average (FAO 2006), and is expected to grow 10 per cent between 2005 and 2030. However, demand in developing countries for animal proteins is projected to increase 60 per cent in the same period (Reay 2011). Pressure from biofuel legislation in Europe and the United States puts further pressure on land and drives up global food prices.

Global land deals have increased dramatically in the last ten years, with an area of land eight times the size of the UK sold off globally in that time (Geary 2012). In addition to causing landlessness and poverty for local communities, the land is often used to grow large areas of single-species crops such as soy or eucalyptus, which use industrial agricultural methods requiring a high amount of chemical fertilizer, thus increasing dependence on global energy markets and locking new land into fertilizer dependence. Furthermore, nutrients and pesticides can make their way into local water supplies, degrading the environment upon which local communities depend. For example, water contamination from agricultural runoff can force communities to buy bottled or trucked water at higher prices, reducing their resilience to price fluctuations even further.

Fertilizer as a Means of Reducing Poverty

But fertilizers are not evil. Increasing yields (either through better access to fertilizers or implementing natural yield improvement practices) can greatly impact poverty and inequality. There are many regions of the world in which more nutrients are urgently needed in order to ensure the land is not degraded. When fertilizer is introduced to degraded soils, it can have enormous trickle down effects for poverty reduction, health, and education. In the early stages of development, when a country is primarily agrarian, the most consistently effective methods to reduce poverty and improve equality involve the agriculture sector, particularly through methods that raise small farm productivity (Berry 2010, Deininger and Byerlee 2011). For example, a recent review of coffee grower data from Mexico and Peru, published in the World Development journal, found that increasing yields are most important for growers (Barham and Weber 2011).

Nitrogen: The Missing Link

So where does that leave us? The very thing that reduces poverty and hunger through increasing yields can cause insecurity through energy price volatility. Add increasing pressure from consumption choices, land degradation, population pressure and climate change and we have a situation of increasing food insecurity globally.

There is no silver bullet answer to this conundrum. However, the solution will likely be a combination of improving the efficiency of chemical fertilizer use and increasing the productivity and adoption of natural methods. Cross-cutting all of these solutions is the main driver of yields: nitrogen. Phosphorous and potash are also important elements of fertilizer, but nitrogen is the nutrient needed in the largest quantities. Just as a basic knowledge of how CO₂ impacts climate change is important for developing solutions to the problem, so is knowledge of nitrogen important for developing solutions to food security.

Nitrogen is critical for all plants and animals to grow. Some plants build it naturally into the soil through a symbiotic process between bacteria and their roots called ‘biological nitrogen fixation’ (beans and clover, for example), but the majority comes from chemical fertilizers and as a by-product of burning fossil fuels.

For those that remember the nitrogen cycle from science class, we know that 78.1% of the atmosphere is inert nitrogen (N₂). In the 20^th century, we developed a way to convert this inert, atmospheric nitrogen into a form of nitrogen accessible to plants and animals (known as “reactive nitrogen”). This has enabled food production to roughly keep pace with the explosion of population growth over the last fifty years. Whether through fertilizers or biological fixation, nitrogen will play a key role in meeting the food needs of the future.

When there is not enough nitrogen in the soil, loss of soil productivity and degradation occur. Because it is small farmers that often lack access to nitrogen, their yields decline year over year, reducing their annual income and thus exacerbating inequality within the global food system. This pushes them further into poverty, and in many cases can force them to purchase food when they cannot grow enough. Degraded land forces them to go in search of new, more fertile land, breaking apart families and communities.

However, the solution is not as easy as simply adding more nitrogen in areas where there is not enough. Too much nitrogen can cause serious problems for human health and the environment. While nitrogen is required by plants in order to grow, there is a limit to how much any plant can use. Beyond this “critical load”, nutrients that cannot be absorbed by plants will leach into the water and air. Once in the environment, nitrogen can change forms over an extremely long life (average of 120 years) and detrimentally affect many different systems before finally becoming denitrified back into atmosphere. Nitrogen exacerbates climate change, depletes the ozone layer and drives biodiversity loss. It causes low-oxygen zones in water systems that weaken or kill fish and marine habitats (known as eutrophication or hypoxia). Reactive nitrogen can also be very detrimental to human health through air and water contamination. It is a major contributor to smog, which is estimated to take six months off the life expectancy of over half the population in Europe (Sutton et al 2011). It is even worse in areas like China, where the density of air particulates have registered at twice the level considered “dangerous” in metropolitan centres like Beijing. Ingesting high levels of water-borne nitrates has been associated with cancer, diabetes and adverse reproductive outcomes (Ward et al. 2005).

The graph below shows nitrogen fertilizer application globally. In the red areas of the graph, many of the main water bodies suffer the detrimental effects of too much nitrogen, and the people that live in those areas suffer as a result of nitrogen pollution. Many of the green areas could benefit from more nitrogen to increase soil productivity.

The key is balance. On the one hand, improving the efficiency of fertilizer use will maintain crop yields while protecting the ecosystems humans and animals depend upon. On the other hand, developing biological nitrogen fixation methods or pro-poor fertilizer programmes to increase yields for small farmers will improve their situation economically and strengthen their resilience to price shocks and weather events. In both cases, proper nitrogen management will be a crucial part of solving our global hunger crisis while ensuring sustainability for future generations.

Lisa Dittmar is the CEO and founder of NitrogenWise,  a website that brings together research and straightforward communication to explain the complexities of nitrogen in a meaningful and relevant way.

Citations

Barham, B. L., & Weber, J. G. (2011). The Economic Sustainability of Certified Coffee: Recent Evidence from Mexico and Peru. World Development, 1269-1279.

Berry, A. (2010). What type of global governance would best lower world poverty and inequality? In J. Clapp, & R. Wilkinson, Global Governance, Poverty and Inequality (pp. 46-68). London: Routledge.

Deininger, K., & Byerlee, D. (2011). Rising global interest in farmland. Washington DC: World Bank. Retrieved November 30, 2012, from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/ESW_Sept7_final_final.pdf

FAO. (2006). Livestock Report 2006. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Geary, K. (2012). Our Land, Our Lives: Time out on the global land rush. Oxford: Oxfam. Retrieved November 2, 2012, from http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bn-land-lives-freeze-041012-en_1.pdf

Reay, D. S. (2011). Societal choice and communicating the European nitrogen challenge. In M. Sutton, The European Nitrogen Assessment (pp. 585-602). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sutton, M. (2011). Too much of a good thing. Nature, 472, 159-161

Ward, M. (2005). Workgroup report: Drinking-water nitrate and health-recent findings and research needs. Environmental Health Perspectives, 113, 1607-1614

Woods, J., Williams, A., Hughes, J. K., Black, M., & Murphy, R. (2010). Energy and the food system. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2991-3006

Front page image source: Organic Fertiliser for sugar cane – Shell

This post is based on Paul Rogers’ Monthly Global Security Briefings and was originally posted by Oxford Research Group on 29 April, 2014.

The Syrian War is now in its fourth year and the indications are that the regime will survive and consolidate its position in 2014. This is radically different from early last year when many analysts thought it was under serious pressure, and it should be recalled that in mid-2011, a few months into the war, the prevailing view was that the regime would not last to the end of that year. The costs have been huge, with around 140,000 killed, twice that number injured and more than a third of the population displaced, millions of them refugees in other countries.  This article seeks to put this appalling conflict in a longer term regional context as an aid to looking at possible policy options in attempting to bring the war to an end.

The Regional Context in 2011

At the start of 2011 the region was struck by remarkable political upheavals as people in a number of countries reacted against autocratic rule and demanded political change. It commenced with the rapid and unexpected fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia on 14 January and was followed on 11 February by the quite startling collapse of the Mubarak regime in Egypt. Across the region there were public uprisings of varying intensities in Oman, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria and political uncertainty in several countries including Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco.

In broad terms, those political authorities that did not immediately collapse reacted in different ways that may be summarised as concession or repression or a mixture of both. In Oman, demonstrations were repressed with force but concessions were also offered and the innate wealth of the authorities was available to “buy off” resentment. In Bahrain the royal house opted for repression, aided by army and police support from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.  Saudi Arabia treated Shi’a opponents harshly but distributed many billions of dollars of resources across most of the population.

In Morocco, King Mohammed sped up the pace of reform with some effect, and across the border in Algeria some economic concessions, including increased food subsidies, were made.  In Libya, Gaddafi used repression but western, and a few Gulf Arab, states intervened on the part of the rebels; a six-month war ended with regime collapse and Gaddafi’s lynching. This has been followed by huge insecurity, including rise of Islamist and local tribal militias.

The Syrian regime faced extensive nonviolent demonstrations, most commonly after Friday prayers, and faced an escalation in dissent at a time when two regimes in the region had already fallen and in the same week that Saudi and Emirati forces intervened in Bahrain and the UN approved foreign intervention in Libya. The fate of Mubarak was particular striking for the Assad regime given Syria’s long-term historical relationship with Egypt, and it is probable that this meant the regime believed its only course of action was vigorous repression. It became progressively more vigorous and determined in its pursuit of control.

Underlying Causes

Although most of the individual anti-government actions across the Arab World were responses to persistent and long-term autocracy, these were in the context of a number of other factors:

• Outside of a small cluster of oil-rich states, the wealth-poverty divide has become huge, often with the majority of populations marginalised.
• Even in countries of modest wealth, much of the economic power has been concentrated in the hands of small groups of elites, often less than a tenth of the population. The world economic downturn from 2007 onwards exacerbated these socio-economic divisions.
• The demographic transition is still in progress across much of the Middle East, meaning that a large proportion of the population is under the age of 30.
• Although educational standards are highly variable and there is a still a marked gender gap, in most countries most people now go through high school and there is an increasing proportion of graduates among people under 30. There is frequently a serious lack of job opportunities, not least for well-educated young people. At the time of the changes in Tunisia it was reported to have 140,000 unemployed or seriously underemployed graduates out of a population of 11 million.
• The surge in world grain prices in the late 2000s, not least following China’s harvest difficulties, added to the economic problems for many, not least in Egypt. Syria had a specific problem of drought stretching over many years, leading to an influx of the rural poor into urban areas.

As a whole, these factors mean that there are trends across the region that point to the risk of longer-term social upheavals. These will persist and must be factored into any policy formulation that might relate primarily to Syria. Instability is highly likely to be a feature of the region in the coming years.

Syria’s Perspective

In the light of the regional upheavals, the Assad regime used high levels of violent repression from the start, which led to a transition from nonviolent to violent protest. From the start the regime presented itself as the guardian of stability against opponents that were essentially terrorists. This may have been a travesty of reality at that time, but in the context of the extraordinary upheavals and uncertainties across the region – as well as a keen understanding of the shared sectarian and geopolitical rivalries that tore Lebanon apart within recent memory – the need for a strong regime was more widely accepted within Syria than most diplomats and external analysts appreciated.

The regime’s stance was aided by internal and external factors. Internally it had the strong support of the Alawi minority but most other Shi’a, Christians and Druze were also willing to accept the regime as guardian of the security of the state. In combination this represented close to a quarter of the population but there was also support from many in the Sunni business community who feared that regional upheavals would spread to Syria. By and large these elements persist, although the great majority of Syrians just want an end to the war.

Externally, the regime has had support from three quarters. One is the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon that has long been heavily dependent on Syria for weapons and other support.  Hezbollah militias have become a crucial part of the paramilitary support base of the regime.  Second has been the continuing support of Iran, including weapons, training and supplies, and an important sub-set of this has been the increase in paramilitaries from Iraqi Shi’a communities, backed by Iran. Finally there has been the long–term relationship with Russia, with the Putin government seeing Syria as the key centre for remaining Russian influence in the Middle East.  In the past year Russia has been particularly useful in its support for repairing and upgrading military equipment, especially aircraft and related weapons systems.

The Islamist Dimension

In the past year, radical Islamist paramilitary groups such as ISIS, the Islamic Front and al-Nusrah have come to the fore among the rebellion, offering the strongest opposition to the regime. There has thus been an element of self-fulfilling prophecy for the regime. In 2014, internal conflicts among the Islamists have weakened them. They may still offer the strongest resistance but their relative decline is one reason why the regime is likely to survive long-term.  Western states, whatever their public stance, would now prefer to see the regime survive than lose control to al-Qaida-linked Islamists. This is clearly the case for Putin, where fear of an Islamist spill-over to the Caucasus is now considered less likely following the safe conclusion of the Winter Olympics and the internal Islamist conflicts within Syria.

Policy Implications

In a very pessimistic environment, there are two more positive elements. One is that relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are showing signs of improvement, including reports of unofficial Saudi/Iranian discussions on Syria. The second is that a number of local ceasefires have been developed, not least in some parts of Damascus.  There may be scope for these to develop further, especially in parts of the country where Islamist groups are not prominent.

The international community must seek to increase pressure on the UN to enhance multilateral processes, and specifically seek to engage Tehran and Riyadh. In addition, given that this war has many months and possibly years to run, states must commit to improve aid to refugees and to any initiatives that increase the possibility of gaining and embedding local ceasefires – not least by immediate aid for those districts where ceasefires take hold. Approaches to the region must now take a much longer-term view, based on the likely survival of the regime and the fact that the underlying elements behind changes in the region will persist.

Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group and Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford.

Since the 9/11 attacks, and the ensuing “war on terrorism,” the U.S. government has engaged in a series of controversial counterterrorism policies. One such policy has been targeted killings, which have been used to try and eliminate the senior leadership of the global jihadist movement. How effective has the practice been?

The recent high profile terrorist attacks perpetrated in the U.K. have generated a resurgence in the debate surrounding counterterrorism tactics. Targeted killings, defined by Alston as the “intentional, premeditated and deliberate use of lethal force, by States or their agents…against a specific individual who is not in the physical custody of the perpetrator,” are one such tactic; frequently employed, yet extremely controversial.  This practice most often takes two forms: kill/capture missions and unmanned aerial vehicle assaults (UAVs). Certainly the most well known of the former is that of the May 2nd, 2011 Navy SEAL raid on Usama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound. The use of UAVs has become much more common, with a recent Director of National Intelligence report indicating that 473 drone strikes had resulted in the deaths of around 2,500 terrorists and between 64-114 civilians.  Such civilian fatalities, criticized by independent organizations to be a low estimate, illustrate the largest criticism of the policy; that it can be, as it is even from China’s perspective, “a blank space in international law (that is) subject to abuse”.

These issues have kindled a spirited discussion among scholars, but have yet to influence the policy’s role as a favoured strategy amongst policymakers.  Former President Obama, whose administration was responsible for the program’s significant expansion, declared just last year that “none of ISIL’s leaders were safe” and they were “going to keep going after them”. President Trump has also indicated that he plans to continue with the program, recently noting that “the terrorists and extremists and those who give them aid and comfort must be driven out from our society forever”.

It would seem that the moral and legal consequences of targeted killings have been, at the very least, overlooked given the intense focus and leeway that has been granted to combating the global jihadist movement (GJM). However, this preference for the use of targeted killings as counterterrorism has become increasingly hard to rectify given the mounting lack of empirical evidence to support its effectiveness.  Indeed, a host of previous investigations into contexts both within and outside of the GJM has yielded a complex picture. This picture is one that does not necessarily indicate resounding ineffectiveness, but one that does not garner particularly strong support for the strategy either. Rather, conclusions regarding the capability of targeted killings vary by how the incident is perceived (discriminate vs. indiscriminate violence), what outcome is studied (group desistance; frequency versus severity), the type of leader killed (position in the group; presence of a tribal elder), and characteristics of the organization (size, structure, and ideology).

Evaluating effectiveness

Taking into account these nuances, my own work demonstrates that this policy has largely failed to decrease GJM-related terrorism, utilizing the Global Terrorism Database’s definition of, “the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.” Rather, such killings, in the form of both kill/capture and UAVs, have been unsuccessful at decreasing the especially noxious outcomes resulting from jihadi terrorism; namely, casualties, along with the more detrimental attacks involving high civilian deaths and suicide attackers. Perhaps even more disconcerting, the deaths of certain al Qa’ida leaders like that of al-Awlaki, the infamous cleric responsible for many a terrorist’s radicalization, have led to an increase in incidents, or a backlash effect.

Examining a slightly varied predictor in the form of monthly killings has yielded similar conclusions, again in the form of an increase in casualties. Still other al Qa’ida leaders’ deaths have produced decreases in terrorism incidents, while at the same time increasing other types of attacks. This displacement phenomenon is not new to studies of crime and terrorism, but adds to the general conclusion that targeted killings have yet to render consistent successes.

While I have also discovered support for the notion that targeted killings are an effective deterrent, these findings are largely outweighed by the above. It would appear that this tactic, as one of the leading scholars on leadership decapitation Jenna Jordan notes, “is not enough to effectively fight a strong and emboldened terrorist organization.” Nevertheless, it may be too early to designate targeted killings a complete failure.  As Brian Forst has argued, “a failure to find is not at all the same as a finding of failure.” Certainly, other research has noted the short-term benefits like those present in the work of Patrick Johnston and Anoop Sarbahi, the lack of attacks on the U.S. Homeland, and the possibility that there are other purposes to the policy like that of retribution.

Although not directly assessed in my work, the totality of countermeasure evaluations have become increasingly supporting of Laura Dugan and Erica Chenoweth’s contention that conciliatory, rather than punitive efforts, are the key to fighting terrorism. Actions like that of removing curfews, releasing prisoners, or even meeting to discuss issues have demonstrated their effectiveness in decreasing violence within the Israel-Palestine conflict. Even investigations outside the context of terrorism, like Matthew Dickenson’s study of Mexican drug-traffickers, are similarly reflective of the idea that incentives rather than punishments offer the most promise. Specifically, Dickensen has suggested that improving both the economic and law enforcement environments are better counter-narcos strategies than that of leadership removal. Jordan has also suggested that al Qa’ida’s organization, which tends to be bureaucratic, and its communal support, have been integral to its ability to rebound from killings. While such killings have the potential to affect the former, it is the opinion of this researcher that conciliatory efforts may have the best shot at addressing the latter.

Conclusion

All in all, and given the issues surrounding terrorist negotiation coupled with an ideology that is fraught with human rights’ violations, conciliatory actions are likely to remain unpopular. As the U.S. continues to fight a movement that has been responsible for a quarter of all deaths and injuries from terrorism, the policy of targeted killing is likely to remain.  Perhaps, at the very least, this strategy could be coupled with other efforts that address the larger causes and correlates of terrorism, like that of larger macro-level predictors.

Jennifer Varriale Carson is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and the Coordinator of Undergraduate Research at the University of Central Missouri.  She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in Criminology and Criminal Justice.  Her work focuses on policy evaluation, particularly the use of quasi-experimental methods in assessing counterterrorism efforts, and can be found in a number of outlets including Criminology and Public Policy, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and Deviant Behavior.

Introduction

The international community is currently underperforming when it comes to integrating the environment into matters of peace and security. Climate change and contemporary armed conflicts are forcing a re-evaluation of this at times complex relationship but in general, the environment remains under-prioritised – as evidenced by its absence from Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But could the process towards the SDGs as a whole finally encourage greater consideration of the environment throughout the conflict cycle – as both a question of state security, and human security?

Goal 16 of the SDGs seeks to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. Like many other investigations before and since, a 2011 study by the World Bank clearly showed that conflict and insecurity hamper sustainable development. It would, therefore, have been unusual for peace and security not to be included in the SDGs. Russia nevertheless objected to their inclusion on the grounds that it would introduce an “artificial politicization” and that “…peace-building, rule of law and human rights have their own well-established intergovernmental processes”. For their part, NGOs were adamant that the SDGs, like peace itself, required the attainment and assurance of fundamental human rights. They would receive a major endorsement when Ban Ki-moon’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons made “peace and effective, open and accountable institutions for all” one of their five key objectives for the SDGs.

Whither the environment?

Interpreted loosely, the targets comprising SDG 16 could relate reasonably well to some of the environmental dimensions of armed conflicts. However, the performance indicators currently being developed by a UN committee will introduce a level of specificity that could preclude this. A proposal that governments must record all conflict-related deaths is welcome, but what of ill health or lost livelihoods caused by conflict pollution or wartime environmental degradation? Similarly, the environment is absent from any indicator for the promotion of the rule of law and access to justice – for example, on land rights or resource management. For natural resources in conflict settings, the only directly relevant draft indicator is the requirement on governments to improve the recording of illicit financial flows.

On participatory rights, which are crucial elements of environmental human rights, the indicators simply require States to record the diversity of individuals in public institutions, rather than empowering communities to participate in environmental decision-making. Meanwhile, the goal of ensuring access to information – be it environmental or otherwise, will only be tested by measuring the rates of detention and arbitrary killings of media representatives and human rights defenders. Of environmental rights defenders, there is no mention.

Does this matter?

Naturally, some may argue that the environment is dealt with by the other SDGs, such as those dealing with terrestrial and marine ecosystems, chemicals or health. Yet here again, few of the proposed indicators under these SDGs relate specifically to armed conflict. But it is the environment’s absence from SDG 16 which is perhaps most symptomatic of the low priority afforded to the environment in matters of peace and security. This is a troubling oversight as UNEP has found that at least 40 per cent of all violent conflicts in the last 60 years have been linked to natural resources, resources that are set to be further degraded by climate change and increasingly intense natural disasters. During the development of the SDGs, this led UNEP to argue that the sound stewardship of “…resources, including access to information, inclusive decision-making, equitable benefit sharing, and rule of law are essential to mitigate these risks and help create resilient and peaceful societies.”

Is there a reason for the environment’s apparent exclusion from SDG 16? Reviewing the recommendations from many of the leading human rights and development NGOs that advocated for the inclusion of a strong SDG on peace and security, it’s clear that its environmental dimensions were low on their agendas; whereas for the environmental NGOs, attention was largely focused elsewhere – on marine life, forests or conservation. This siloing was unfortunate because current crises continue to highlight the importance of integrating the environment more fully into our thinking about the causes and consequences of conflicts.

Lessons from Syria on the environment and security

The Syrian crisis is a clear demonstration of why we must better integrate the environment into peace and security policy-making and practice. When researchers argued that climate change and an ensuing drought had played a role in creating the instability that led to the conflict in the run up to the Paris COP21 climate talks last year, the world’s media took note. For some, Syria was merely the latest stage in a process to securitise climate change, and in so doing help create a compelling state-centric narrative for global action. This was a process initiated by military think-tanks and which has now seen climate change defined as a “threat multiplier” – rather than a direct cause of conflict in and of itself. Meanwhile those opposed to the securitisation of climate change argue that this framing risks overwhelming humanitarian priorities such as adaptation, mitigation, resilience and justice for affected communities.

The attempt to link climate change with the Syrian conflict, as earlier with the conflict in Darfur, elicited a backlash from some climate scientists, particularly when public figures like Al Gore and Prince Charles promoted the idea. Opponents argued that the studies were speculative, that the data were incomplete and that the political context of the urgency behind the Paris deal was skewing interpretations. The scientific jury remains out, with some arguing that the link between climate and conflict is clear, others that it is yet to be conclusively proven based on the historical record. Studies have shown that the region has suffered a drought more intense than could be expected by natural variation alone but the data linking this to the outbreak of the conflict are less clear. Beyond the specifics of the Syrian conflict, it is inescapable that climate change is happening and that the effects that are predicted have the potential to negatively influence the socio-political conditions in affected countries. Therefore in all likelihood, climate change will interfere with the objectives set out in SDG 16.

Human displacement and migration allow the consequences of environmental problems associated with conflicts, climatic change and variability to be transmitted locally and regionally. This can translate into environmental consequences for neighbouring countries, as well as political instability for governments far removed conflict-affected areas. This is a pattern of connectivity that seems likely to become ever more apparent as climate change intensifies; as UNEP’s Disasters and Conflict Coordinator Oli Brown recently observed: “When you look to the root causes of migration, more often than not environmental change or mismanagement is in there somewhere.”

For Jordan and Lebanon, rapid urbanisation, fragile and resource-scarce ecosystems and huge refugee populations are combining to create environmental risks that threaten stability. As its population has surged in the wake of the Syrian conflict, Jordan has seen rapid increases in illegal timber collection, overgrazing and wildlife poaching. Levels of air pollution from vehicle and industrial emissions have risen and its waste management sector has been stretched by growing levels of hazardous waste. The government has made tackling these issues a priority so as to minimise threats to public health and environmental quality and defuse community grievances.

Within Syria, the precise extent of the damage to the resources upon which the civilian population depends for life and livelihoods is yet to be fully assessed, although early indications show that the environmental degradation caused by the conflict has been significant. When coupled with the pollution caused by the widespread destruction of urban and industrial areas, the collapse of environmental management and services and the future health and economic inequalities this will create, it seems inevitable that environmental quality and access to resources will strongly influence Syria’s chances of recovery and its eventual transition into a peaceful and inclusive society.

The jury may still be out on the precise role that climate change played in Syria but it seems impossible to exclude it as a risk factor for future conflicts. Climate aside, it’s clear that displacement and the direct environmental damage caused by the conflict within Syria will have repercussions for the goals and spirit of SDG 16. These are not problems unique to the Syrian conflict and serve to underscore the importance of the environmental dimensions not only of peace and security but also of sustainable development itself.

Sustainable development: not just a set of targets

That the proposed SDG 16 indicators risk failing to specifically address many of the environmental dimensions of armed conflicts and insecurity, be they on resource management, migration, human rights or environmental degradation, is unfortunate. All the more so because for many countries it will be conflicts that invariably present the greatest challenge to them achieving the SDGs.

But the true value of the SDGs is unlikely to be found in their rigid targets or indicators. Their greatest strength could instead be as a framework through which to understand and communicate the interconnectedness of all these themes. The path towards the SDGs should therefore encourage governments and civil society to more fully consider the role that the environment plays throughout the conflict cycle – from trigger to victim – and how the consequences of environmental change care little for national borders.

In this respect, while the SDG indicators may lack the precision necessary to fully articulate the environmental dimensions of peace and security, as a process the SDGs should serve to encourage the long-overdue mainstreaming of the environment in this field. However, because of the low prioritisation afforded to the environment across many sectors, but particularly in peace and security, there will inevitably be a temptation to present the environment as part of a traditional state-centric security threat, rather than a question of human security. While this could help increase visibility and engagement in the short-term, as with the securitisation of climate change, it could also risk ignoring the needs of the communities and individuals who bear the brunt of the environmental causes and consequences of conflicts.

Doug Weir manages the Toxic Remnants of War Project, part of a global coalition of NGOs advocating for a greater standard of environmental and civilian protection before, during and after armed conflict. The project is on Twitter: @detoxconflict

Award-winning reporter Jakob Sheikh talks about his work interviewing the Danes who travelled to Iraq and Syria to join the jihad. 

Q. Since 2001, there has been much written on terrorism and more specifically the global jihadi movement, and this trend has continued with the rise of Islamic State. Your research is quite unique as it has involved interviewing those who have joined the Jihad. Why did you decide to take this approach to understanding jihadism and what did you hope to learn from talking to jihadis?

When I started covering militant Islamism in 2012, I noticed that the great bulk of articles written on this topic dealt with jihadists quite superficially. Most often, reporters where talking about jihadists; not with jihadists. So I began building trustful relations with Danish militant Islamists. I put a lot of time and effort in meeting consistently with figures—even rather unimportant ones— in the Danish militant Islamists milieu, enabling me to get access to  otherwise unavailable sources and interview foreign fighters in Denmark, in Syria during their time with the Islamic State, and even back in Denmark when some of them had returned.

The goal of my reporting is quite simple. In order to deal with a challenge that is generally considered a threat to national security in most Western countries, we need to understand the very nature of this challenge.

Sadly, we often tend to simplify or generalize when it comes to foreign fighters. We alienate radical Islamists from ourselves as if they have nothing to do with our society. However, the fact is that most European foreign fighters are born—or at least raised—in Europe. They are shaped by upbringings in European societies; they attend public schools, play in the local football club and so forth. By many measures, they are products of modern Europe.

This leads to a very important question: How does modern Europe deal with this ever-evolving problem? I hope that my reporting has shed light on the backdrop of this question.

Q. In your research, have you noticed any common traits in the backgrounds of Denmark’s foreign fighters (age, gender, profession, geographical location) and their pathways into joining the Jihad?

This is an interesting question as some of the foreign fighter traits are in fact quite counter intuitive. It’s easy to state the obvious: most foreign fighters are young men and the vast majority have family roots outside the European continent.

But there are other interesting traits to mention. When I started collecting socioeconomic background data on Danish foreign fighters, I was expecting to find individuals from poor families who were economically and educationally marginalised. However, while the main part had struggled with social challenges of some sort—their parents’ divorce, a mental diagnosis, deaths in the near family, etc.—I discovered that a great number of Danish foreign fighters were average middle class kids, not raised at the bottom of society (one even played the cello and lived in a sumptuous villa with his well-educated parents).

Also, I would have assumed that most foreign fighters would come from strictly conservative Muslim families. But in fact, a significant number of Danish foreign fighters with non-Western backgrounds came from families that were remarkably secular and liberal. I find this particularly interesting as it says something important about the way we deal with the notion of converts. We generally consider converts to be ethnic Danes or ethnic Swedes or ethnic Brits who suddenly converts to Islam and get radicalised—as opposed to individuals with Muslim family backgrounds. But what we see now is that most foreign fighters are in fact converts—some may just have Muslim family roots. In many ways, these converts from Muslim families share their pathway into the jihadist milieu with that of “regular” ethnic Danish converts; they do not feel strongly about religion, something happens along the way, they are socially marginalized, perhaps they enter a criminal environment, and at a certain point in time they are intrigued by Islam as a way out of their problems. Often, the radicalisation process that follows completely changes their approach to Islam—just as with the Danish converts who have no previous experience with Islam whatsoever.

To me, this shows that we need to study the inner motivations of jihadists. Common socioeconomic traits simply doesn’t do the job when it comes to explaining why foreign fighters decide to wage jihad. Despite many so-called experts’ attempts to tell you otherwise.

Q. In terms of the motivations of Denmark’s foreign fighters, you’ve previously stated that grievance over Denmark’s activist foreign policy has been an important driver. Yet one of the things that stands out in your interviews with foreign fighters is this idea of “the state” as a cause. What does this concept of “the state” mean to the foreign fighters you spoke to and why is it such a powerful idea that it is worth travelling many miles across the world to fight and die for? 

As mentioned, many of the things the foreign fighters told me during interview ran counter to common assumptions. My own, at least.

The very idea of a state was a recurrent narrative among IS fighters. In fact, several fighters consider this notion a direct motivation for joining the battlefield.

They stress the fact that they are not just joining an insurgency; they are joining a state. As much as they see themselves as fighters, they see themselves as immigrants who want to settle down and build a future.

As I have pointed out before, when jihadists use the term “dawla” [“state” or “nation”] they are often not referring to the group, but rather to the so-called caliphate itself. They speak of a place that represents a home to them. This also explains why foreign fighters usually are more likely to refer to propaganda videos released by IS about the daily life in IS held areas rather than brutal executions and so on.

A Danish born Salafi with Pakistani roots named Shiraz Tariq, who is perhaps the most prominent jihadi figure in Denmark, often spoke of the state as a goal in itself.

“My goal is to fight the infidels until the state is implemented,” he told me in an interview from Syria.

To at least some parts of Danish foreign fighters, institutional aspects such as economic systems, schools, and legal systems are key in their justification of violent jihad. They talk about “protecting the state” rather than protecting Islam, or protecting the group.

That said, the fall of Raqqa completely changes this motivation. In many ways, I see the fall of Raqqa as way more decisive than the fall of Mosul. It is a major blow to IS’ ability to mobilize and recruit soldiers to the local war in Syria and Iraq. Not just because of the military defeat but even more so because the defeat destroyed the notion of state building that IS offers to its followers.

Q. How did the fighters you interviewed describe life inside the state and what sort of roles did they undertake?

Like in many other countries, Denmark has foreign fighters in the upper ranks of IS and regular foot soldiers in the fields. I spoke to jihadists who were very close to the local “emir” or “wali” and to jihadists who were not even taking part in the fighting.

I’ve met with returnees who’ve returned further radicalized in terms of both ideology and fighting skills. But—and this is important—I’ve also met several jihadists who’ve returned to Denmark deeply disillusioned about what they experienced in Syria and Iraq. A prominent 28 year old jihadist told me upon his return to Denmark that he’d “never seen anything that un-Islamic”. The notion of “takfir” is taken to a level where some jihadists—despite the official IS narrative about jihadists having no scruples killing non-IS-fighters—are left in deep disagreement with the strategy.

To me, this disillusion upon return may be the best chance in terms of aiding counter-radicalisation efforts.

Another important aspect we need to be aware of is the mindset of foreign fighters. Before and after our talks, several jihadists would often send me pictures and videos that would somewhat glorify the daily life in the caliphate. Here, we’re talking about videos of children fooling around and playing in a fountain, women shopping in the bazaar, pictures of toyshops, and so on.

What’s striking about these pictures and videos is that they often ran counter to the actual situation and reality of life inside the IS-held territories. While IS as a group were losing ground and were severely hit by drone strikes, the propaganda spoke of harmony and almost heavenly peace.

The question, then, is: Were the jihadists I interviewed consciously neglecting the fact that they were on the verge of losing their war? Or were they simply not aware of what was going on?

In my opinion, the answer is none of the two. In fact, it seemed to me—though psychiatrists may need to study this further—that the “real” world and the “imaginary” world of peace and harmony existed side by side, next to each other. In the mind of a jihadist, it is not necessarily contradictive to live in a real world of fighting and a virtual world that enables you to dream about how a perfect caliphate should look like or how a new Islamic golden age should look like. These two perceptions actually seem to complement each other. The frightening thing, however, is that when the border between these two perceptions gets blurred, some jihadists don’t seem to be able to separate the two.

Q. There has been a lot of discussion about the role of religion as a driver of the foreign fighters, including the role played by mosques. How influential have Danish mosques been in the radicalisation of foreign fighters?

Interestingly, very few militants mention that they get their religious inspiration from the mosques. In fact, militant Islamists—at least in Denmark—are quite skeptical towards the mosques, especially mosques that are considered to be “moderate” by mainstream society. I would assume this goes for other European countries as well. This is due to widespread conspiracies that the mosques are in fact right-hand men for the Danish government or the intelligence service.

Rather than trusting what is preached in the mosque, many Danish foreign fighters rely almost exclusively on their close friends—and certainly not open communities such as mosques where rumors are spread quickly.

That said, I think it would be a huge mistake to underestimate the role of religion when it comes to foreign fighter mobilization. While you can argue that the social and political dimension were more prevalent driving factors during the first years of the Syria civil war, I find religion—or at least arguments rooted in Islamic texts—to play a quite decisive role today and even since early 2015.

The fundamental ideology of IS is deeply Islamic.

Jakob Sheikh is a multi-award-winning investigative reporter who worked as staff writer with Danish daily Politiken, one of Scandinavia’s leading newspapers. Since 2012, he has focused on radicalization and foreign fighters. In 2015, he released his book on Danish Islamic State fighters based on numerous interviews with returned and current jihadists as well as key figures in the militant Islamist environment in Scandinavia. In February 2017, he joined the Danish Ministry of Justice as a special advisor to the minister.

This interview was conducted by the Remote Control project. 

Dr. Jon Moran is Reader in Security and the School of History, Politics and International Relations at the University of Leicester. He is interested in the role of the state and military and intelligence agencies both domestically and internationally. He has conducted field research with police and security agencies and civil society activists in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Africa and East Asia. For three years he conducted training for the EU for security professionals on the reform of intelligence agencies as part of a programme on Security Sector Reform. He wrote a Briefing Paper on understanding and evaluating Remote Warfare in 2015 for the project. It is available here and organised a conference on remote Warfare in conjunction with the Remote Control project in February 2015.

Dr. Moran’s last book was ‘From Northern Ireland to Iraq: British Military Intelligence Operations, Ethics and Human Rights’ which covers the role of army intelligence and special forces since the 1970s. He is currently working on a book concentrating on the use of intelligence and special forces in the most recent phase of the War on Terror.

In this interview, Dr. Moran discusses the use of remote warfare in Libya, its effectiveness and some of the key problems yielded by the use of this tactic.

Q. In 2011, the UK took part in the NATO military intervention in Libya which led to the overthrow of Gaddafi. Official government statements suggest that the UK’s military operations in Libya both began and ended with this campaign. Since then, however, evidence has gradually surfaced suggesting that the UK has been conducting ‘remote warfare’ in Libya. What is remote warfare and how has this tactic been used in the case of Libya?

Remote warfare is a term used to describe a group of tactics that allow states to prosecute military activities from a distance rather than using conventional warfare. These tactics include:

1. the use of special operations forces (SOF) either directly, or as trainers or mentors to local forces
2. the use of airpower (including drones)
3. the use of intelligence assets to direct forces on the ground and
4. the use of local security forces, either official forces or militias or paramilitaries.

One important thing to note about remote warfare is that it is a set of tactics that can be very effective. Remote warfare was employed in Libya in 2011. United Nations Resolution 1973 called for the protection of civilians against threats by the Gaddafi regime. However, the use of airpower for this purpose was then expanded by Western and other powers into remote warfare in order to overthrow the Gaddafi regime.

In 2011 the civil war between Gaddafi and the rebels was in a stalemate. It was not just airpower that made the difference to the rebels. In addition to airpower, special forces from France, the UK and Qatar were deployed not just for forward air control, but to help the rebels become a more professional force. Special forces and UK intelligence assets were used to support the rebels as they advanced. This involved assistance to them in developing combat plans, gaining tactical skills, identifying Gaddafi forces, and supporting them with air strikes on Gaddafi forces. Foreign intelligence support was particularly important in the final operation to take Tripoli. It is my assessment that without this remote warfare support the rebels would have been unable to defeat Gaddafi.

However, this also highlighted one problem with remote warfare. Although as a set of tactics it can be very effective, it cannot by its nature involve long term planning. Following the overthrow and execution of Gaddafi, Libya descended into chaos. This chaos, involving the development of militias, organised crime, widespread general crime and the collapse of public services led to such instability that Islamic State (IS) identified Libya as a suitable base for its operations outside Iraq and Syria. Such has been the instability in Libya since 2011 that the West is now engaging in a second round of remote warfare to defeat IS forces in Libya and promote one of the competing governments as a stable political actor. This is having success in defeating IS but it still leaves the future of Libya in doubt.

Remote warfare can have strategic effect (in overthrowing Gaddafi and defeating IS) but it is not a strategy in itself. If it is not part of a long term strategy it may end up creating more problems than it solves.

Q. So what are the problems that remote warfare can create?

Remote warfare can have a short term strategic effect (e.g. in stabilising or overthrowing a regime). But by its nature it cannot have a long term strategic effect. Remote warfare involves small numbers of specialist troops (special forces, intelligence, air control) and air power which by their nature cannot be deployed over the long term and can only have a limited effect. Even if remote warfare operatives work with local security forces or militias they cannot control them over the long term since they are small in number and that is not the point of a remote warfare mission. With this is mind remote warfare can create a number of problems:

• Long term instability. The overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 was a classic example of a successful remote warfare operation. But the operation had no plans for the aftermath. Libya descended into political and security chaos with rival governments, militias and criminal groupings all contributing to a situation in which citizens became more insecure. By 2016 Western and other states were again engaging in remote warfare in Libya, this time to try and stabilise the area and defeat IS – aiming to solve the problems created by the first phase of remote warfare in 2011.
• Perpetuating conflict. In places such as Yemen remote warfare may assist local forces but not in a game changing (strategic) way. It may end up creating a stalemate where no side is strong enough to prevail and ongoing conflict continues to cost civilian lives and create insecurity.

Overall, remote warfare is no substitute for a long term commitment, either politically (though aid and diplomacy) or militarily (large scale deployment in conjunction with local forces – itself a serious decision).

Q. Given the problems that remote warfare can create, why is the use of remote warfare by states on the rise?

For a number of reasons. One is the lack of success of long term deployments of regular troops by Western countries in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq approximately 4500 US military troops were killed and over 30,000 wounded. In Afghanistan the casualties were fewer but the conflict dragged on for a long time. Both conflicts have to be judged as a failure. Iraqi security was only evident for a period after the surge in 2007 and then the rise of Islamic State showed how weak public security was, and is, in Iraq. In Afghanistan the Taliban remain undefeated and indeed the period after 2010 saw the UK and US negotiating with the Taliban and redefining them as insurgents rather than terrorists in the global jihad against the US. Remote warfare is a way for the US to maintain its pressure on jihadist groups without necessitating massive troop deployments and long term counter insurgency operations. It saves money also – both wars cost the US perhaps $3 trillion dollars.

For the UK, remote warfare is way of keeping up its security profile and assisting the US as its conventional power has declined. The UK military was, in a sense, exhausted after Iraq and Afghanistan and then military cuts imposed by the Coalition government further reduced its capacity for large scale deployments. Further, the UK public would not support any large scale ground force deployment for the next few years or in the absence of direct major terrorists attacks on the UK. They are more inclined to support remote warfare.

The French have used remote warfare in Mali and Libya because again it is way to maintain a security presence without the large deployment of troops that the French public might not support even after the IS attacks in France. The French already had a crucial experience with large scale troop deployments and drawn out conflict in Indochina and Algeria in the 1950s and 1960s, and since then have often relied on airpower and paratroopers to support friendly local regimes in Africa.

It should also be pointed out that although remote warfare by Western states has been patchy in its success, elsewhere countries are using remote warfare very effectively. The Russians have used remote warfare very effectively in Ukraine. They have used special operations forces, military advisers and local militias supported where necessary to take the Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine under effective Russian control.  Remote warfare seems to have been a success in Syria. The Iranians developed remote warfare against the Coalition forces in Iraq after 2003 and have been involved in remote warfare in the Lebanon supporting Hezbollah for a long period.  Recently, they have joined with Russia in using local or other forces (such as Lebanese Hezbollah) and their own operatives to stabilise the Assad regime, while Russia has employed surveillance, reconnaissance and airpower to batter the rebels. These are successful operations because they have been used by Russia and Iran not as an antidote to the failure of large scale operations – they have seen what disasters this can bring and they also want to avoid direct conflict with the USA. Rather, for them, remote warfare allows them to achieve their objectives – it’s a useful way of achieving foreign policy objectives. For the West, remote warfare is often a reaction to previous failures at invasion, occupation and nation building.

Q. So is remote warfare better at achieving political stabilisation or destabilisation?

I think overall remote warfare is better at destabilisation. This is not to say that remote warfare cannot stabilise countries. There are examples including the US in Afghanistan (2001-02), the UK in Sierra Leone (2001), and the French in Mali (2011) where remote warfare successfully defeated local militias or terrorist groupings and prevented the further development of conflict. In Afghanistan the Taliban, never viewed as legitimate and not in full control of the country, was deposed and a fragile democracy imposed; in Sierra Leone remote warfare helped to defeat the militias who were opposed to the UN brokered peace agreement; and in Mali remote warfare prevented the overthrow of the government by a combination of insurgent and terrorist groups.

However, remote warfare only started these processes. In all three cases extra support in the areas of security, aid, civilian assistance etc. was provided to make sure the stabilisation was secured in the longer term. In areas where remote warfare has been the start and the finish of the operation it has created far more instability. Libya is the prime example, where intervention successfully overthrew Gaddafi but left the country in anarchy. In Yemen it is also the case as is the remote warfare conducted on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Remote warfare operations in these two areas have ‘managed’ conflict and have not reduced it.

Remote warfare is only the start of any process of intervention. It might be seen as useful tactic but it cannot operate in a vacuum. Russian remote warfare has been effective because the Russians have been working with strong local forces to effectively wrest parts of the Ukraine away; these territories will now need continuing Russian support (like other breakaway areas such as Transdnistria). In Syria the Russians (and Iranians) have been able to bolster Assad’s exhausted but still coherent national army. But a long term peace process will determine the future of Syria and Russia and Iran realise this – they have just used remote warfare to ensure Assad will be a big player in this and that rebel forces will not be negotiating from a position of strength. In Iraq, the rise of IS exposed the weakness of the Iraqi security forces. The US could only work with the Kurdistan Peshmerga and the reliable US-trained Iraq Special Operations Forces, assisted by Shia militias. The disparate group of local forces has been able to stop Islamic State’s advance but with far more difficulty than should have been the case. US and UK remote warfare support has allowed this but this is not any long term solution to the weakness of the Iraqi state.

Q. Taking into consideration the mixed results of remote warfare, how do you see its use evolving in the future?

Remote warfare will not replace conventional warfare but it is likely to be the dominant form of warfare for the next decade at least. There are differing reasons for this depending on the country involved. In the USA, the UK and France there is little public support for any large scale conventional intervention in other countries. So remote warfare remains the main way that countries such as these can maintain some sense of control. Taking into consideration the limits of remote warfare, this will probably remain reactive and have limited success. (It will remain a response to the long term problems of the West ‘Losing Control’ of international security as Paul Rogers pointed out in his book of the same name some years ago). For other countries such as Russia and Iran remote warfare has been effective and is a sign of their gaining more control as the West loses it. Russia used remote warfare effectively in Ukraine and now controls a substantial part of the east of the country and will likely use remote warfare to intervene where it feels necessary to protect its security interests. Iran effectively used remote warfare to destabilise the US intervention in Iraq after 2003 and to support the Assad regime in Syria. Other countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar have employed remote warfare techniques in Yemen and Libya. It is possible that countries like China in its territorial disputes in Southeast Asia may use remote warfare to gain control of the islands involved.