Category: 2013

Islamic State (IS) appear to attach considerable importance to dreams and have started publishing dream accounts of martyred jihadists. Do IS see this as a way of ‘calling’ potential lone wolf jihadists to action?

Over the last decade, several studies have shown that militant Islamists make extensive use of reported night dreams to inspire, announce, and validate violent jihad. Bin Laden himself brought up dreams in one of the first videos released after 9/11. Mullah Omar was understood by his followers to have founded the Taliban, and run his campaign, inspired and even guided by his dreams. Dream accounts can be found of numerous other well-known militants, including Richard Reid, the failed shoe bomber, the two core 9/11 planners, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, and the ‘20^th’ suicide bomber, Zacarious Moussaoui.

This tradition has continued with Islamic State (IS) members and sympathisers who appear to attach considerable importance to dreams. This article updates the discussion and analysis of the role of dreams for IS jihadists, and, through looking at some recent case studies, asks whether IS is publishing martyred jihadist dreams as a way of ‘calling’ potential lone wolf jihadists to action.

Dreaming in Islam

To understand the jihadi appreciation for dreams, it is important to first understand that dreams are both historically and contemporaneously important in Islam. Indeed, today, Arabic TV programs are replete with dream interpretation programs and the internet is awash with Islamic dream interpretation websites.

The dream tradition is similar across all the main branches of Islam: Sunni, Shia, Salafi and Sufi, as well as amongst the minority Alevi and Ahmadiyya sects. In the Sufi mystical traditions, dreaming is highly regarded. While Sufis have traditionally paid the most attention to dreams, the more literalist Salafis appear to have become more interested in them over time.

The Islamic tradition distinguishes between three types of dreams: the true dream (al-ru’ya), the false dream, which may come from the devil (shatan), and the meaningless everyday dream (hulm) which could be caused by what has been eaten by the dreamer and comes from the nafs (ego, or lower self).  The interpretive tradition regarding the “true dream” (al-ru’ya) is a fundamental feature of Islamic theology. The true dream tradition is reported more extensively in the hadith. 

Islamic dream interpretation differs from Western attitudes to dreams, which, being largely shaped by a scientific materialist outlook of the world, generally see dreams as bearing little or no relevance for people. But in Islam, dreams are understood as, on occasion, offering a portal to the divine will, and are seen as the only appropriate form of future divination. Dreams have a special authority as they are believed to communicate truth from the supernatural world (dar al-haq).  Lamoreux summarises the importance of dreaming in Islamic societies:

Dream interpretation offered Muslims a royal road that led not inward but outward, providing insight not into the dreamer’s psyche but into the hidden affairs of the world. In short, the aim of dream interpretation was not diagnosis, but divination.

Based on his anthropological research in Egypt, Gilsenan offers further insights:

In dreams began responsibilities. Judgements were made. Commands issues. Justifications provided. Hope renewed. Conduct was commented on by holy figures, by the Prophet himself, by the founding Sheik who had died some years before but who appeared with his son and successor.

Dreams were public goods, circulated in conversational exchanges, valorizing the person, authoring and authorizing experience, at once unique and collective visual epiphanies. Dreams thus constituted a field of force and framed interchange between the living and the only apparently dead.

There is extensive literature on the art and science of dream interpretation in Islam going back over a thousand years, and scholars like Sirriyeh are emphatic about the importance of the Prophet Mohammed’s God-guided interpretation of dreams. Mohammed’s and his companions’ dreams played a significant role before, during and after the Qur’anic revelation. In the six months before the  revelation began, his wife Aisha said his dreams came true like the ocean’s waves. The Prophet’s famous night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem (Laylat ul-isra wal miraj), in which Muhammed ascended to heaven and was initiated into the mysteries of the cosmos, is understood by many Muslims, though not all, as being in a dream vision (al-ruya can refer to vision and or dream). Mohammed would start the day asking about his companions’ dreams as a source of possible illumination and spiritual guidance. The Prophet’s companion, Abd Allah b. Zayd, is understood to have dreamt the Islamic call to prayer. There are three dream reports in the Qur’an, two reported as received by the Prophet Mohammed. One of these directly relates to the decisive Battle of Badr  (624 CE). The Joseph Sura contains the reported dream experiences of the Prophet Joseph, such as that of the seven fat and seven lean cows.

The continued vitality and relevance of dreams in the Islam is well shown in the following examples of Islamic State fighters drawn from Dabiq, the Islamic State magazine.

Recent dream accounts published by Islamic State

In April 2016 (issue 14) Dabiq published three dream accounts purporting to have inspired Khalid El Bakraoui in his martyrdom operation on the Brussels metro killing 14 people. Khalid’s first dream was a ‘life-changing’ dream in prison in which he fought alongside the Prophet Mohammed against unbelievers. After the Paris 2016 attacks he is reported in the same Dabiq as having had two further motivational dreams. In the second, he ‘arose to a high place, as if I was in space, surrounded by stars; but the sky was the blue of night’. He says he heard a voice telling him he was only created to worship Allah and ordering him to fight for his cause and make his word supreme’. The third dream follows on almost in a sequence as Khalid dreams of his own martyrdom:

I saw myself on a boat along with Abu Sulayman and another brother. Each of us had a Turkish soldier as a hostage. I had a pistol and Abu Sulayman had a belt. I told him to give me his belt, as I would feel better having it. So he gave me the belt and I gave him my pistol. I then quickly advanced with the Turkish hostage in order to close in other soldiers, two of whom were in front of us. I detonated my belt, killing the soldiers. My head then descended to the ground. One of the brothers working on the operation and Shaykh al-Adnani took my head and said, ‘check to see if he is smiling or not’. I then saw my soul and those of the three soldiers. All of a sudden, the soldiers souls burned and vanished and, suddenly, the banner of Islam – represented in the dream by the flag of the Islamic State – came out of the earth and was shining brightly. My soul then became full of light’.

He then claimed he heard a voice telling him he had achieved deliverance.

This tripartite dream account sequence evokes familiar Islamic dream tropes, images and ideas. In the first dream we see the dreamt and visualised conversion to violent jihad, including the ‘presence’ of the Prophet Mohammed which is understood in Islam as denoting a holy dream if the dream message is congruent with the teachings of the Qur’an and hadiths. Prison surroundings are famous, or infamous, for religious conversion dreams as many customary behaviours are circumscribed.

The second dream report reads as almost from an ancient holy text; high places and mountain tops are traditionally sites of vision. Indeed Attar’s famous C12 epic Sufi poem ‘The Conference of the Birds’ (Farid ud-Din Attar, 1984 (written 1177) is a tale of Islamic revelation and enlightenment, symbolised by the human journey to the mountain top from where and from within Allah/God can be directly known and joined. The instruction to worship, fight and ‘make his word supreme’ would make excellent sense to a pious Muslim as long as the notion of fighting was referenced to the greater jihad of fighting the lower self, the nafs or selfishly orientated ego. Khalid’s membership of IS and the bloody and relentless killing of all peoples of a different religious persuasion (or none) by IS will have been experienced and apparently shared by militant jihadists as an example of the highest call to arms and martyrdom.

The third dream completes the sequence from the first calling dream to his visualised death and the spiritual testing of the martyrdom operation. Authorisation and sanctity are communicated via the imagery of Khalid’s soul being composed of, or infused with, light while the enemies (Turkish soldiers) clearly have weaker or non-existent souls which may help validate (to themselves and others) their killing even though they are also Muslims. The dream also conveniently defines Islam as Islamic State. And then ‘deliverance’ is signified at the end of this epic dream narration sequence. As propaganda, now to be read by thousands of jihadist and interested potential recruits, almost all of whom may be aware of the potentially sacred nature in Islam of at least some dreams as being divine emanations and commands, this dream story is a classic. Remove the IS context and many Muslims would feel blessed to have received such dreams.

In the following Dabiq (no 15) a future paradise dream example is quoted:

Abul-Muthanna as-Sumali (Ali Dirie) was a man of great character and worship. After being imprisoned by the Crusaders for seven years, he was able to flee Canada despite being banned from travel. Upon the official expansion of the Islamic State to the Levant, he rushed to revive the Muslim Jama’ah through his bay’ah. Several weeks later, he had a dream in which the Hur (the maidens of Paradise) gave him glad tidings of martyrdom on a specific date (one which I have forgotten). A week before his martyrdom, several of our friends decided to go shopping for new military attire. He told them he wouldn’t be going with them, because he was expecting martyrdom soon, and narrated to them his dream. When that day arrived ….Abul-Muthanna rushed to battle ….fighting, until he was severely wounded, bleeding until he surrendered his soul to his Lord….May Allah accept him and add the blessing of caliphate we enjoy today to the scroll of his good deeds and that of all other martyrs.

These issues are the first times Dabiq has contained personal dream reports of significant IS members intending to demonstrate the glorious Allah inspired sacrifice of their martyrs.

Dreams may also feature in decision-making processes at different levels in the Islamic State organization. It was reported that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s decision to withdraw forces from Mosul in late 2014 was inspired by a dream in which Prophet Mohammed ordered al-Baghdadi to evacuate the city.

Both IS leaders and members strongly relate to their night dreams and IS have started recently publishing them. Is there a particular purpose to this new propaganda practice using dreams?

The transpersonal communication of night dreams in Islam

‘Heroic’ (in an Islamic form/genre) dream accounts are now being ‘weaponised’ to influence other IS members, followers and jihadi wannabees. We know the media has enormous effect on our dreams. We also know, though this is maybe irrelevant as IS hate Sufis due to their shrine and Shaykh workship, that in the mystical Sufi Islamic groups it is normative for the top Shaykhs to ‘send’ dreams to their followers.

In April 2005 I interviewed Shaykh Nazim, a famous Naqshbandi Shaykh, who is now deceased, following numerous reports by his UK followers that he was sending them night dreams of spiritual advice. He told me, “Yes, sometimes I send my power in dreams, when necessary.” I asked how he did this, and he said, “First you must take a step, even half a step, away from the material world, and we Sufis have ways to do this”; enigmatic indeed!. Can dreams be implicitly or even explicitly ‘sent’ in some form, or maybe just believed to be so communicated? Such a thought may well seem farfetched and fanciful to Western post-enlightenment minds, but certainly many Sufis think so and such practices have a long history in Sufism.

 Conclusion

The last two Dabiqs have contained personal dream reports of significant IS members seemingly for the first time. IS recognise and value some kinds of night dream accounts and see a role for them in their movement’s public propaganda war; so why now for this high tech, high media skills Caliphate-named organisation? IS are slowly being degraded from without and are ruthlessly striking at Western symbolic soft population centres; IS are now strongly encouraging their followers to attack western centres; we see a rise in the self-inspired, via the internet and perhaps dreams, of the lone wolf who is previous to their attack, untraceable. A few lone wolves in summer 2016 seem to have responded to IS media exhortations to attack western targets and some seem clearly to have a history of prior mental illness. Does this make them more vulnerable to being influenced by dreams? We don’t know yet. But vulnerable young people on the net who spend a lot of time reading about the ‘heroic’ caliphate and its actions may well start having related dreams.

Intelligence agents have spoken to me (2012) of the critical role of dreams in motivating potential jihadis from contemplation to decisive action. I was once told of a jihadi dreaming of his future death during anticipated jihad in Somalia, and another agent told me about a prospective jihadist experiencing two different peoples’ contradictory voices debating with him in his dream about whether he should go on jihad. Such uninterpreted and undigested dream images and accounts may conceivably convince a vulnerable young person, possibly after their consulting an IS dream interpretation twitter account and/or their baqiya (IS ‘family’), that their holy mission is through violent jihad. Is it possible then that potential lone wolves, perhaps with histories of mental health problems, believe themselves as being ‘called’ and then in part recruited not only through the internet, but through the sublime power of ‘glorious’ dream accounts of recent jihadi martyrs? We will have to wait for more autobiographical, media and trial accounts to emerge to know.

Dr Iain R. Edgar is Emeritus Reader at the Department of Anthropology, University of Durham, UK.

This piece by sustainablesecurity.org’s Zoë Pelter and Richard Reeve was originally published on 5 September, 2013 on openDemocracy 

The narrow defeat on 29th August of the UK government’s parliamentary motion on support in principle for military action against the Syrian regime has forced Prime Minister David Cameron to concede that Britain will play no part in any direct attack on Syria. If the UK is to play no military role in ‘punitive’ responses to the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons, what options are open to the UK in terms of resolving the Syrian conflict, protecting civilians and punishing those responsible for war crimes there? And how does Cameron’s overt preference for the military option, with or without UN mandate, condition these non-military options?

Pushing for peace

The possibility of a negotiated peace in Syria should not be dismissed. Neither the regime’s military, militia and foreign allies, nor the variety of armed factions ranged against them (and, increasingly, each other) are exhausted. Nor do the Assad regime’s mid-year successes in central Syria presage any imminent likelihood of it regaining control of the north and east. The strategic stalemate that appeared to set in to the conflict in June, after pro-Assad forces retook al-Qusayr, arguably presented a breathing space for negotiations and the so-called Geneva II conference, proposed by the US and Russia, with UN and Arab League backing, the previous month. As recently as mid-August, the Geneva talks were expected to resume in September.

But even convening these talks will now prove far harder. Expectation of Western intervention against President Bashar al-Assad, as well as their own increasing divisions, gives the Western-backed armed opposition groups an incentive to delay talks. Jihadist groups that have proved effective militarily are largely excluded. US and Russian facilitation of the Geneva process, however fraught, also tends to exclude the voices of regional actors like Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, each of which feels its interests very directly threatened in Syria and gives active support to one or more armed faction.

This calls for a rethinking of the Geneva process, if not the 2012 transition roadmap, to bring in the full range of actors, not the abandonment of peace talks. Threat of US-led intervention and its own increasing international marginalisation, should it be proved to have launched a chemical attack on 21st August, could incline the Assad regime towards a negotiated settlement, perhaps even an exit and exile strategy.

This will not happen without pressure from Iran and Russia. Both have much to lose in Syria, but neither is entirely closed. Iran is still in its post-electoral opening and under severe economic pressure, looking to cut a wider deal with the West. Russia may not be comfortable with its isolated position defending the alleged user of chemical weapons. Like the US, it fears the growing influence of jihadi groups while the current stalemate continues. While there is little hope of Moscow abandoning its Security Council veto over action against Syria, it will be embarrassed if it stands almost alone defending Assad in the Council or against a General Assembly resolution. Neutrally collected and analysed evidence of Syrian regime culpability for chemical weapons attack will be crucial to shifting Russia’s position.

Having made clear its preference for ‘punitive’ military action, and been frustrated by parliament in pursuing such action, the UK government is not ideally placed to broker negotiations. Yet the UK does have influence with Syrian opposition groups, in the Gulf States and, when it acts in concert with its less interventionist EU partners, with Russia, Turkey and Iran.

Fighting impunity

Again, the importance of due investigative and legal process through UN Fora is crucial. When asked on 29 August if he agreed that Assad should be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court (ICC), David Cameron replied curtly that these processes take time. Yes, the wheels of institutional responses turn slowly, not least justice institutions. Yet the most obvious response to any breach of customary international law on the use of chemical weapons (Syria is one of just five states not to have signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention) is a war crimes prosecution through the ICC. It is not important that Syria has not signed the Court’s establishing Rome Statute. Assad and any responsible commanders could still be subject to international prosecution if the Security Council referred Syria formally to the ICC.

The UN has been investigating a wide range of alleged crimes committed by both sides with a view to future prosecutions. Clearly, the presence on the Security Council of Syrian allies and a majority of non-signatories to the Rome Statute presents obstacles to referral, but the Council has overcome such obstacles before, notably China’s reluctance to see its Sudanese allies prosecuted over actions in Darfur. With France and other allies, the UK should take the lead within the Security Council in pushing to refer Syria to the ICC based on the same ‘moral minimum’ or red line that has been deployed in favour of armed intervention. This, in turn, may provide leverage to persuade pro- and anti-Assad factions alike to take peace negotiations more seriously.

Notwithstanding the heavy shadow of its past action in Iraq, the UK’s moral standing is bolstered by commitment to legal and democratic process. The UK should take a breath, step back from punitive reaction and recommit itself to a multilateral, inclusive and legally rigorous approach to resolving the war in Syria and its many affiliated regional conflicts. No other form of intervention will effectively protect the lives and rights of Syrian civilians either in the current war or the difficult peace that must follow.

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

Fragmentation, Displacement and Reconsolidation:  The AQIM Threat in 2014

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

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

French Repositioning in the Sahel

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

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

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

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

US and China Extend Their Presence

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

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

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

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

Compromised Alliances

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

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

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

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

Foundations in Sand

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

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

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

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

The War So Far

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

Support for the Adversaries

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

Cast Lead and Protective Edge

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

What Now?

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

Consequences

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

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

Editor’s note: Remote Warfare and the War on Drugs mini-series: This series of articles explores how remote warfare is being used in the war on drugs. To date, much of the debate on remote warfare has focused on its use in the war on terror. However, the use of drones, private military and security companies (PMSCs), special forces and mass surveillance are all emerging trends found in the US’s other long standing war, the War on Drugs. The articles in this series seek to explore these methods in more depth, looking at what impact and long term consequences they may have on the theatre in which they’re being used. Read other articles in the series.

Ever advancing remote warfare technology is being increasingly used by law enforcement agencies to counter drug trafficking. In response, drug cartels are also adopting new technology to smuggle and distribute drugs. However, the technological superiority of law enforcement-military actors is also causing criminal and militant groups to adapt by employing the very opposite tactic, by resorting to highly primitive technology and methods. In turn, society is doing the same thing, adopting its own back-to-the-past response to drug trafficking and crime.

The history of drug trafficking and crime more broadly is a history of adaptation on the part of criminal groups in response to advances in methods and technology on the part of law enforcement agencies, and vice versa. Sometimes, technology trumps crime: The spread of anti-theft devices in cars radically reduced car theft. The adoption of citadels (essentially saferooms) aboard ships, combined with intense naval patrolling, radically reduced the incidence of piracy off Somalia. Often, however, certainly in the case of many transactional crimes such as drug trafficking, law enforcement efforts have tended to weed out the least competent traffickers, and to leave behind the toughest, meanest, leanest, and most adaptable organized crime groups.

Increasingly, organized crime actors have adopted advanced technologies, such as semi-submersible and fully-submersible vehicles to carry drugs and other contraband, and cybercrime and virtual currencies for money-laundering. Adaptations in the technology of smuggling by criminal groups in turn lead to further evolution and improvement of methods by law enforcement agencies. However, the use of ever fancier-technology is only a part of the story. The future lies as much behind as ahead (to paraphrase J.P. Wodehouse), with the asymmetric use of primitive technologies and methods by criminal groups to counter the advanced technologies used by law enforcement.

The Seduction of SIGINT and HVT

The improvements in signal intelligence (SIGINT) (information gained by the collection and analysis of the electronic signals and communications of a given target) and big-data mining (the extracting of useful information from large datasets or streams of data) over the past two decades have dramatically increased tactical intelligence flows to law enforcement agencies and military actors, creating a more transparent anti-crime, anti-terrorism, and counterinsurgency battlefield than before. The bonanza of communications intercepts of targeted criminals and militants that SIGINT has come to provide over the past decades in Colombia, Mexico, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other parts of the world has also strongly privileged high-value targeting (HVT) and decapitation policies-i.e., principally targeting the presumed leaders of criminal and militant organizations.

The proliferation of SIGINT and advances in big-data trawling, combined with some highly visible successes of HVT, has come with significant downsides. Although high-value targeting has been effective, this has only occurred under certain circumstances. In many contexts, such as in Mexico, HVT has been counterproductive, fragmenting criminal groups without reducing their proclivity to violence; in fact, exacerbating violence in the market. Other interdiction (the targeting of opponent’s organizational structures or disrupting their logistical chains) patterns and postures, such as middle-level targeting and focused-deterrence, would be more effective policy choices.

A large part of the problem is that the allure of signal intelligence has led to the discounting of other key intelligence techniques, including developing a strategic understanding of criminal groups’ decision-making in order to anticipate the responses of targeted nonstate actors to law enforcement actions (here Mexico provides a disturbing example). It also requires the cultivation of human intelligence assets (sorely lacking in Somalia, for example) and obtaining a broad and comprehensive understanding of the motivations and interests of local populations that interact with criminal and insurgent groups (notably deficient in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan). Finally, establishing good relationships with local populations to advance anti-crime and counterinsurgency policies is essential. In Colombia, for example, drug eradication policy antagonized local populations from national government and strengthened the bonds between them and rebel groups.

In other words, the tactical tool, technology – in the form of signal intelligence and big-data mining – has trumped strategic analysis. Instead, strategic intelligence analysis needs to be brought back, to drive interdiction targeting patterns, instead of letting the seduction of signal data drive intelligence, analysis and targeting action. Indeed, the political effects, as well as the anticipated responses by criminal and militant groups, and any other outcomes of targeting patterns, need to be incorporated into the strategic analysis. Questions to be assessed need to include: Can interdiction hope to incapacitate – arrest and kill – all of the enemy or should it seek to shape the enemy? What kind of criminals and militants, such as how fractured or unified, how radicalized or restrained in their ambitions, and how closely aligned with local populations against the state, does interdiction want to produce?

Dogs Fights or Drone Fights: Remote Lethal Action by Criminals

Criminal groups have used technology not merely to foil law enforcement actions, but also to fight each other and dominate the criminal markets and control local populations. In response to the so-called Pacification (UPP) policy in Rio de Janeiro through which the Rio government has sought to wrestle control over slums from violent criminal gangs, the Comando Vermelho (one of such gangs), for example, claimed to deploy remote-sensor cameras in the Complexo do Alemão slum to identify police collaborators, defined as those who went into newly-established police stations. Whether this specific threat was credible or not, the UPP police units have struggled to establish a good working relationship with the locals in Alemão.

The new radical remote-warfare development on the horizon is for criminal groups to start using drones and other remote platforms not merely to smuggle and distribute contraband, as they are starting to do already, but to deliver lethal action against their enemies – whether government officials, law enforcement forces, or rival crime groups.

Eventually, both law enforcement and rival groups will develop defenses against such remote lethal action, perhaps also employing remote platforms (drones to attack the drones). Even so, the proliferation of lethal remote warfare capabilities among criminal groups will undermine deterrence, including deterrence among criminal groups themselves over the division of the criminal market and its turfs. This is because remotely delivered hits will complicate the attribution problem – i.e., who authorized the lethal action — and hence the certainty of sufficiently painful retaliation against the source and thus a stable equilibrium.

More than before, criminal groups will be tempted to instigate wars over the criminal market with the hope that they will emerge as the most powerful criminal actors and able to exercise even greater power over the criminal market – the way the Sinaloa Cartel has attempted to do in Mexico even without the use of fancy technology. Stabilizing a highly violent and contested – dysfunctional – criminal market will become all the more difficult the more remote lethal platforms have proliferated among criminal groups.

Back to the Past: The Ewoks of Crime and Anti-Crime

In addition to adopting ever-advancing technologies, criminal and militant groups also adapt to the technological superiority of law enforcement-military actors by the very opposite tactic — resorting asymmetrically to highly primitive deception and smuggling measures. Thus, both militant and criminal groups have adapted to signal intelligence not just by using better encryption, but also by not using cell phones and electronic communications at all, relying instead on personal couriers, for example, or by flooding the e-waves with a lot of white noise. Similarly, in addition to loading drugs on drones, airplanes, and submersibles, drug trafficking groups are going back to very old-methods such as smuggling by boats (including through the Gulf of Mexico), by human couriers, or through tunnels.

Conversely, society sometimes adapts to the presence of criminal groups and intense, particularly highly violent criminality by adopting its own back-to-the-past response – i.e., by standing up militias (which in a developed state should have been supplanted by state law enforcement forces). The rise of anti-crime militias in Mexico, in places such as Michoacán and Guerrero, provides a rich example of such populist responses and the profound collapse of official law enforcement. The inability of law enforcement there to stop violent criminality – and in fact, the inadvertent exacerbation of violence by criminal groups as a result of HVT – and the distrust of citizens toward highly corrupt law enforcement agencies and state administrations led to the emergence of citizens’ anti-crime militias. The militias originally sought to fight extortion, robberies, theft, kidnapping, and homicides by criminal groups and provide public safety to communities. Rapidly, however, most of the militias resorted to the very same criminal behavior they purported to fight – including extortion, kidnapping, robberies, and homicides. The militias were also appropriated by criminal groups themselves: the criminal groups stood up their own militias claiming to fight crime, where in fact, they were merely fighting the rival criminals. Just as when external or internal military forces resort to using extralegal militias, citizens’ militias fundamentally weaken the rule of law and the authority and legitimacy of the state. They may be the ewoks’ response to the crime empire, but they represent a dangerous and slippery slope to greater breakdown of order.

In short, technology, including remote warfare, and innovations in smuggling and enforcement methods are malleable and can be appropriated by both criminal and militant groups as well as law enforcement actors. Often, however, such adoption and adaptation produces outcomes that neither criminal groups nor law enforcement actors have anticipated and can fully control. Technology cannot fix defecting anti-crime and anti-drug policies, such as preoccupation with drug seizures , or absent rule of law and culture of lawfulness. Advances in technology do not obviate the need to strengthen bonds between citizens and the state and to create law enforcement and socio-economic conditions which allow citizens to internalize laws. Nonetheless, crime and some illegal economies will always persist and law enforcements and criminals will compete with each other in adopting improving technologies and finding measures to counter them, including most primitive but effective ones. The criminal landscape and military battlefields will thus increasingly resemble the Star Wars moon of Endor: drone and remote platforms battling it out with sticks, stones, and ropes.

Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Brookings projects on Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives and UNGASS 2016 and Reconstituting Local Orders. Dr. Felbab-Brown is an expert on illicit economies and organized crime and international and internal conflicts and their management, including counterinsurgency and statebuilding. Her research focuses particularly on South Asia, Burma, the Andean region, Mexico, and Somalia, and she has conducted fieldwork in some of the most dangerous parts of the world. Dr. Felbab-Brown has an extensive publication list of books, policy reports, academic articles, and opinion pieces, including Poached: Combating Wildlife Trafficking, with Lessons from the War on Drugs (forthcoming 2016); Narco Noir: Mexico’s Cartels, Cops, and Corruption (forthcoming 2016); Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-building in Afghanistan (2013); and Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (2010). Dr. Felbab-Brown is a frequent consultant for national, multilateral, and non-governmental organizations and a frequent commentator in U.S. and international media. She also regularly provides expert testimony to the US Congress. Prior to joining the Brookings Institution, Dr. Felbab-Brown was an Assistant Professor at the Georgetown University School for Foreign Service. She received her PhD in political science from MIT and her BA from Harvard University.

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

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

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

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

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

The empirical evidence

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

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

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

The study specified five plausible causal mechanisms linking the phenomena:

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

Cases and Authors

Sudan 1972-1983—Matthew LeRiche

Rhodesia to Zimbabwe—Paul Jackson

Lebanon—Florence Gaub

Rwanda—Stephen Burgess

Philippines—Rosalie Arcala Hall

South Africa—Roy Licklider

Democratic Republic of the Congo—Judith Verweijen

Mozambique—Andrea Bartoli and Martha Mutisi

Bosnia-Herzegovina—Rohan Maxwell

Sierra Leone—Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs

Burundi 2000-2006—Cyrus Samii

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

by Wim Zwijnenburg

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

While the US and its allies have had a monopoly on drone technology until recently, the uptake of military and civilian drones by a much wider range of state and non-state actors shows that this playing field is quickly levelling. Current international agreements on arms control and use lack efficacy in responding to the legal, ethical, strategic and political problems with military drone proliferation. The huge expansion of this technology must push the international community to adopt strong norms on the use of drones on the battlefield.

Media outlets around the world reported on a new Islamic State (IS) video in August, which made use of a quad copter surveillance drone to film a military base near Raqqa, Syria. ‘Drones and Da’ash: a new terror threat’, headlines suggested. But that’s old news. Drones have been operated by non-state armed groups for years. Indeed, IS had already put up a drone-filmed video in February 2014 of a convoy with armoured vehicles, SUVs and trucks in Fallujah, and Hezbollah has been investing in their drone arsenal since before the 2006 Lebanon war.

Carefully planned interventions in the water sector can be an integral part to all stages of a successful post-conflict process, from the end of conflict, through recovery and rebuilding, to long-term sustainable development.

Does the better post-war water resource management contribute to peacebuilding by generating legitimacy within a society and for the state? Research has become increasingly interested in the potential role of natural resources, especially freshwater resources in war affected societies, because the misuse of natural resources is increasingly being seen as one of the key challenges for sustaining and promoting peace. This link has of late received serious traction in research and policy circles as the international community stresses the significance of environment for the peaceful societies by including both in the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Water Management after War

Post-war countries are among the most difficult policy arenas for international agencies and domestic stakeholders. The challenge is not only to bring an end to the war and prevent violence from reoccurring, but also to help countries reset the dynamic among their internal actors on a peaceful path. The long-term adverse effects of wars further amplify this policy challenge.

Many of these challenges for post-war countries relate to political and social aspects. Lasting impressions of human rights abuses committed during wars continue to shape the relations among members of societies for decades to come. Both socio-economic crunch and political churning can challenge the stability of post-war countries for many years if not decades. The public health crisis has been found to be especially severe and affect disproportionately the civilian population in post-war countries. Environmental and climate change exposes war affected people further to new risks, exaggerating the human costs of war long after active combat has ceased.

In order to address public health crisis and to reduce further human costs of war, it is critical for a post-war country to be able to provide access to clean water and sanitation for its population. Often in war times, water storage facilities and installations for water delivery are damaged and sometimes even targeted. Thus, after the end of the war it often needed for the focus to be placed on the rapid restoration of water infrastructure.

When a war affected country fails to swiftly and smartly manage its water resources it amplifies the vulnerability of post-war communities on water and inevitably exacerbates and prolongs the human costs of war. Increasing demand for freshwater and climate change induced variability of its availability are further adversely affecting the agricultural production and the provision of sustainable livelihood for post-war communities. Thus, addressing the war related damages to the water infrastructure are often key to rebuilding a state after war. Then, it is necessary to develop the increasingly scarce water resources in a sustainable manner, which will bring inclusive development and promote peace in the society.

Yet, even though the international community is aware of these tasks, — recent research indicates that while addressing water management in post-war period — the emphasis is usually placed on expert-oriented solutions, which bypass the complex and critical political aspects of it. Ignoring political factors might expedite the implementation process in short run, however, it can possibly create worrying challenges not only for the smooth operation of the water projects, but also for the peace itself.

Lessons from Kosovo and Nepal

A recent analysis of the post-war water resource management in Kosovo shows how the international community, choosing a highly expert driven technocratic approach to rebuild Kosovo’s water sector after the violent conflict came to an end, frequently clashed with political realities in this landlocked and conflict affected territory. The United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), which assumed trusteeship of the territory in 1999 until a European Union mission replaced it in 2008, favored technical solutions and bypassed the political realities. Especially the case of the divided city of Mitrovica exemplifies that UNMIK sought to avoid confrontation. As the central political authority in Kosovo, UNMIK rather paid outstanding water bills for Kosovo Serbs, than facilitating the collection of fees for supplied water. Overall, the empirical analysis shows that UNMIK’s technocrat driven management of the water sector in fact impeded the peace process rather than aided it.

Other recent findings on the water resource development in conflict affected Nepal, show the positive potential of ecologically sensitive service provision as these can yield tremendous socio-economic benefits for rural communities. The provision of energy in Nepal remains a pivotal challenge. In 2010, almost a quarter of the country did not have access to electricity, and even those households that were connected did not receive continuous power. The capital, Kathmandu, experiences scheduled power cuts up to 14 hours a day during the drier winter season, when hydropower ebbs, and two to three hours a day in the water-rich monsoon months. The study of two localities in rural Nepal, shows that micro-hydropower development has had many positive effects for rural communities, especially in regard to socio-economic development. This improved socioeconomic status of households reflects a clear reduction in vulnerability to poverty and even food security as the improved cannels diverting water to the micro-hydropower station have improved irrigation of nearby fields. Though it does not immediately translate into improving the legitimacy of the Nepali state, by helping to bring over all sustainable development of its citizens, the state is most likely going to reap the benefit in the future. The experiences from the study of micro-hydropower development in Nepal show that the state needs to actively pursue and project the ownership of the water sector development process in a post-war period in order to legitimize itself.

Conclusion

There is certainly a need to acknowledge the long-term interplay of social, political, and ecological processes in post-war countries and to understand the potential and dynamics of natural resources and environmental issues in this context. The interactions of these processes decisively shape the post-war landscape. It is therefore prudent to help building a peace that is ecologically sensitive and socially and politically relevant and desirable.

Thus, the carefully planned interventions in the water sector become an integral part to all stages of the post-conflict process, from the end of conflict, through recovery and rebuilding, to long-term sustainable development. A recently published article in the Hydrological Sciences Journal argues that for the best possible use of water resources in the peacebuilding process, there is a need for a comprehensive approach. Both the Nepal and Kosovo cases show the unintended consequences that result from narrow focused interventions in the post-conflict landscape. It is pivotal that the international community engaged in peacebuilding must plan, think and execute with a long-term perspective that sets the conditions for sustainable peace. Drawing on an extensive reading of the current literature, such a comprehensive approach includes a series of measures to be taken in a post-conflict setting: legal reforms and building of sound water institutions; careful planning of water use to achieve sustainable food security; and cooperative involvement of international, national and local stakeholders in the planning and managing of water resources.

Further reading:

Swain, A., & Jägerskog, A. 2016. “Emerging Security Threats in the Middle East.” Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.

Krampe, Florian. 2016. “Empowering Peace: Service Provision and State legitimacy in Peacebuilding in Nepal.” Conflict, Security, and Development 16 (1), pp. 53-73.

 Krampe, Florian. 2016. “Water for Peace? Post-Conflict Water Resource Management in Kosovo,” Cooperation and Conflict. DOI: 10.1177/0010836716652428.

 Ashok Swain. 2016. “Water and post-conflict peacebuilding.” Hydrological Sciences Journal  61 (7), pp. 1313-1322.

Florian Krampe is a political scientist specializing in peace and conflict research, international relations, and political ecology at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University.

 Ashok Swain is Professor of Peace and Conflict Research and Director of the Research School for International Water Cooperation at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University. He is also Professor at the Department of Earth Sciences of Uppsala University.

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

The Interim Deal

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

 A Positive Impact on Diplomatic Relations…

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

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

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

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

…But Not for Everyone

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

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

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

Hurting at home

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

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

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

Moving Forward

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

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

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

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

The fate of Colombia’s Legión del Afecto as a government-financed peacebuilding program is uncertain, but it looks to endure as an independent social movement. Its persistence is due both to its historical development and to its emphasis on affective relationships.

Authors Note:  This material is based upon work supported by the United States National Science Foundation under Grant #1452541. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The Legión del Afecto – translated as the Legion of Affection – is a Colombian social network broadly mobilized around peace. It is arguably the most overlooked, yet broadest-based network, for peace in Colombia. Unlike other more-publicized movement networks like the Congreso de los Pueblos or the Marcha Patriotica, the Legión del Afecto was established as intentionally non-polarized with respect to the left/right politics that have long generated conflict in the country and across Latin America.

Instead, the politics of the Legión del Afecto might best be described as a politics of sentir – a politics of feeling. “Ver, oir, sentir” (to see, to hear, to feel) is one of a few familiar phrases of the Legión del Afecto, which has been echoed in all corners of the country.

The politics of “feeling”

While recognizing and valuing social difference – especially across lines of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation – the Legión del Afecto has emphasized the bodily capacity to sense and feel as a point of social and political convergence for the country’s youth in the face of seemingly insoluble conflicts at multiple scales; the fact that each individual feels differently (because of distinct biographies, identities, and physical experiences) should not matter as long as a politics could be build around respecting and valuing others’ bodily capacity for feeling.

In essence, this respect and valuing of the other is what “affection” has come to mean in the network. As a result, non-verbal means of communicating feelings have become highly valued in the Legión del Afecto. So-called ‘alternative languages’ of dance, music, theatre, clowning, acrobatics, fire-blowing and more, along with shared banquets, journeys, festivals and other shared sensorial events have been central to continued mobilization and motivation of legionarios (Legion participants), often youth between the ages of 15 and 25.

In a country where many have been killed for simply appearing to favor one side or the other, the focus on feeling rather than on political side-taking has been crucial to the survival and thriving of both the network and the leaders within it. Because of this intentional and conspicuous lack of side-taking, the Legión del Afecto has been able to enter and intervene in location and communities across the country where others – e.g., police, military, government – were once unable to go. Of course, it would not be accurate to portray legionarios as lacking political views or direction; the opposite is true. However, as a network the Legión del Afecto has focused on creating space for dialogue and political learning rather than defining or persuading one single way of analyzing current national and global trends.

These spaces of learning and dialogue have been particularly important as the network grew to include ex-combatants from all sides of the Colombian conflict. Intentionally setting down the conflicts associated with polarized national politics meant that the Legión del Afecto could mobilize ex-guerilla, ex-paramilitary, ex-soldiers, ex-gang members as well as many others affected by violence and by the pervasive lack of opportunity for marginalized youth.  These participants enriched the Legión del Afecto through sharing their differences in lived experience, rather than swallowing or forgetting their pasts.

Origins and Evolution of the Legión

The Legión del Afecto began in 2003 (under another name) as a collaboration between different ‘base’ (i.e. grassroots) groups in the city of Medellín, which had many prior years of experience in peaceful social transformation at the community level. In particular, two groups – Casa Mía, a group focused on urban youth, and La Colonia de San Luis, a group serving once-rural families who experienced violent displacement – united their expertise in the formation of the Legión del Afecto. Casa Mía was especially important as many of the Legión del Afecto’s founding antecedents – for example, the focus on afecto or affection – came from its founding leaders’ own collaborative legacy of radically innovative and daring peacebuilding in the Santander neighborhood of Medellín. The earlier peacebuilding of Casa Mia involved building trust and affection among young men pertaining to dueling gangs as well as standing up for justice and non-violence in the face of direct threats from paramilitary groups.  That such strategies were effective in the face of conflict is perhaps best evidenced by the fact that the Legión del Afecto, after first being funded by the UNDP (for methodological development), was scooped up as a government-sponsored program, housed under Acción Social (under president Uribe), and then the Departamento para la Prosperidad Social (DPS) (under Santos).

As a government program, the Legión del Afecto grew a centralized administration, and new rules and regulations to follow, but it was never “just” a government program. As the Legión del Afecto spread from it’s origins in the city of Medellín to over 40 other cities, towns, and rural municipalities across the country, the network tapped into and drew from existing base community groups in each location. In each place, new leaders were nurtured alongside already-established community leaders who grew and gained new ideas. Existing effective ties were used to strengthen the network and bring in new participants. And in each place, the particularities and challenges of the location brought new strategies for peacebuilding that were focused on the traditions, as well as the problems, of each region: for example, a focus on traditional music (gaitas) in San Jacinto, or a focus on memory and ritual in many rural places where violent acts had occurred.

The Legión Today

It is often stated that there are currently “over 2000” young legionarios across the country, but the actual effect of the Legión del Afecto is much larger. behind any official count of participants, there are thousands of families and tens of thousands of friends and community members who have been affected by the peacebuilding efforts of the network. These friends, families, and community members are the ones who came to grand events – like the Carnival del Pan (2009, Cali), or Hip Hop Sin Fronteras (2010, Medellin), which mobilized massive numbers of participants. And these friends, families and community members are also the individuals who know and trust the participants in the Legión del Afecto through their small daily actions, and who therefore have been willing to work together with them in their efforts to build an ‘everyday’ peace in communities across the country.

Today, this expanded and enduring capacity of the network is more important than ever; despite recent funding uncertainty for the Legión del Afecto as a government program, the Legión del Afecto persists as a grassroots network – a potentially powerful, motivated, and emotionally interconnected movement of young and old, who hold some very significant lessons for the development of a truly post-conflict society.

Further Information on the Legión

More information about the Legión del Afecto, its history, activities, and methodologies, is being made available through the grassroots website still-in-progress: www.legiondelafecto.org.

The Legión del Afecto network is present in the following cities and regions in Colombia: La Macarena, Playa Rica (la Y), San Juan de Lozada, San Vicente del Cagüan, La Catalina, Montañita, Puerto y Florencia, Medellín, San Luis, San Fransísco y Sonsón, Samaná Florencia y Pensilvania, Soacha, Bogotá y Viota, Barrancabemerbeja, San Pablo y Puerto Wilches, Chiquinquirá y San Miguel de Sema,  Cartago, San José del Palmar, Bojayá, Quibdó, Buchadó, Pamplona, Cúcuta, Tibú, La Gabarra, Cali, Buenaventura, Armenia, La Tebaida, Manizales, Cartagena, Montes de María, Magangué y Plato, Puerto Tejada, y Villavicencio, Copey, San Juan del Cesar y Villanueva Guajira, Chibolo, Carepa, Turbo, Acandí, Ungía y Carmen del Darién y Mistrató, Tumaco, Líbano y Natagaima, Ovejas, Santa Rosa del Sur y Simití, Puerto López, El Retorno , San José del Guaviare y Mocoa.

Allison Hayes-Conroy is an assistant professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. She has studied the Legion del Afecto as a peacebuilding initiative alongside the other two authors – both participants in the Legión – since 2011. Hayes-Conroy’s has published widely on role of the body in social movements and initiatives. Her work on peace-based social initiatives in Colombia and her work on bio-social pedagogical innovation have both been funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

 Cesar Buitrago Arias, is a community leader and law student. He has worked for 20 years to support the needs of displaced families like his own, who come to the city of Medellin, Colombia from rural areas due to violence.

 Alexis Saenz Montoya, is a Ph.D. Student in the Department of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University. His research interests lie in the intersection of community-based organizations and popular education in Latin America.

Music and dance can be useful means to engage youth in a dialogue for peace.  Music and dance can also provide many unique insights into transforming conflicts and achieving change.

 

“As a musician who works for peace, “unity” holds less interest for me than “harmony.” Unity is when we all sing the same note. Harmony is when we sing different notes, and they are beautiful together.”

– David Lamotte, musician and peace activist

At the same time, as David goes on to say in his book World Changing 101, “Harmony is not homogeneity.” Moreover, he says, “Of course, it is also true that many notes playing together may clearly not be in harmony with one another. Creating that confluence takes attention, patience, and work. It is a beautiful thing when we achieve it, though. And it is not achieved by eliminating difference, but instead by finding ways to work together that are mutually nourishing, that honor and reveal each other’s gifts.” (LaMotte 2014: 113).

In these ways, artistic approaches to building peace like music and dance can offer us the means to embrace pluralism through working together to co-create knowledge rather than attempting to determine one ‘right’ way upheld by those a particular society may deem to be experts.

On Music and Peacebuilding

In the research for my first book, Youth Peacebuilding: Music, Gender and Change I used qualitative case comparison to explore the use of music as a tool for engaging youth in reducing and preventing violence.  More specifically, the research for that book included participant observation and semi-structured interviews with young people involved in musical peacebuilding programs in Australia and Northern Ireland, providing a uniquely deep look at young people’s experiences of everyday violence and how they approached peacebuilding in their local cultural contexts.

In Australia this involved a peace program in a major city engaging Indigenous, non-Indigenous, and migrant and refugee background young people in a collaborative process of music making in order to build understanding across difference, challenge racism, and create safe spaces for recovering from violence already experienced. Similarly, the program in Northern Ireland shared similar goals around addressing both racism and sectarianism in its efforts at peacebuilding through participatory music practice.

This project contributed to theoretical and practical debates and discussions around: youth political participation, the gendered landscape of conflict environments, and creative approaches to pursuing peace. In particular, I explored how music could foster peacebuilding through offering an alternative means for dialogue, helping people create and recreate identities of themselves and others, and offering a tool that could help create safe spaces for such dialogue and identity work, often in challenging circumstances.

While my research has taken me in many directions in the decade since I began the study that underpinned that first book, I always feel drawn to return to reflections on creative approaches to peace, especially the ways they can engage youth. At present, this has taken the form of working to further analyse and share the findings from my research on dance and peacebuilding. While my earlier work dealt with dance to a degree as part of a broader range of musical practices for peacebuilding, since then I have taken up opportunities to explore dance more specifically.

Researching Dance and Peacebuilding

 As Nicole Krauss writes in her latest book,

“More and more it seems to me…that when I write, what I am really trying to do is dance, and because it is impossible, because dancing is free of language, I am never satisfied with writing…to dance is to make oneself available  (for pleasure, for an explosion, for stillness)…The abstract connections it provokes in its audience, of emotion with form, and the excitement from one’s world of feelings and imagination—all of this derives from its vanishing…But writing, whose goal is to achieve a timeless meaning, has to tell itself a lie about time; in essence, it has to believe in some form of immutability…” (Krauss 2017: 136).

While recognizing these challenges, I continue to find meaning in attempting to write about dance or perhaps to dance writing. As such, during my time as a McKenzie Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne I designed and embarked on a comparative study looking at the use of dance in peacebuilding programs across a range of contexts, including Colombia (now commonly deemed a post-conflict site); the US (in inner city locations in Washington, DC and Baltimore, MD where violence is commonly seen as widespread) and in the Philippines, which, despite a peace agreement being signed, continues to face conflict in Mindanao.

Using ethnographically informed methods, including participant observation, interviews, and document analysis, I designed the project and methodological approach and gathered data in the US and Colombia, while a research assistant gathered the data in the Philippines case. This type of intensive data gathering, which included participating in the full global training of the trainers for the program involved, as well as months of participant observation of the programs, offered rich insights into how dance and creative movement can and does engage young people in peacebuilding across a range of diverse contexts.

While the process of writing this into a book proposal and eventually a book is ongoing, over the past several years of working on the project some key themes have started to emerge.

The role of dance in peacebuilding

How, if at all, did dance function as a useful way for youth to take part in peacebuilding? Firstly, participant statements indicated, “that dance can be useful in engaging youth in peacebuilding but that it must be applied in sensitive, reflexive and culturally relevant ways to appeal to and include both young men and young women.” Most if not all participants articulated one or more ways dance had been useful for peacebuilding. Some noted, for example, that dance could serve as a nonviolent means of communication and a way to connect with one’s feelings in a peace education context. Moreover, dance was seen as something that is culturally relevant and familiar, thus many youth could relate to it, and it was also something that did not require lots of expensive equipment or training. At the same time, dance was also seen as a way to release and reduce stress, an important aspect of recovering from violence already witnessed or experienced.

Of course, participants also noted a variety of limitations to what dance could do and how, including pointing to how short term funding cycles, which are common across global peacebuilding initiatives, can at times mean short sighted programs. They also noted that without attention to access and inclusion, efforts to engage youth in dance and creative movement for peacebuilding might overlook the needs of people with disability or people who speak a different language from the one deployed in the dance programs. Still these limitations are not inherent to dance or always present, as seen by the work of VisAbility in Sri Lanka, a country recovering from conflict and where dance programming has been used to engage people with and without disabilities in coordination with a rights empowerment initiative.

Conclusion

Overall, it appears music and dance, when applied in thoughtful ways, can help foster peacebuilding. This is not to say they may not also be used ineffectively or to create exclusions, but when used appropriately they can have much to offer. As one facilitator in programs using dance and creative movement for peacebuilding the Washington, DC and Baltimore programs said when speaking about stepping out of one’s comfort zone to engage within a group:

“When one person takes a positive risk, it shows the rest of us that we can take a positive risk and encourages us to do that also.  So hopefully, after a while they will be able to see that if they can just do one thing that makes them uncomfortable or kind of step outside their comfort zone that it actually helps other people to do the same and get the most out of the experience.”

Surely such steps can be a useful means for reflecting on ways of finding harmony in the dissonance of conflict.

Author’s Note: The research assistant involved with the Philippines work, Erica Rose Jeffrey is a fantastic scholar and dance practitioner in her own right and will soon be awarded her PhD for her own practice-led research in Fiji and the Philippines. More on her work can be found at: http://peacemoves.org

Lesley Pruitt is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Monash University and a member of the Monash GPS (Gender, Peace and Security) Centre. Lesley’s research focuses on peace and conflict studies, especially recognising and enhancing youth participation in peacebuilding and advancing gender equity in peacekeeping. A Truman Scholar and Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, Lesley received her Masters & PhD from the University of Queensland. Lesley’s books include The Women in Blue Helmets: Gender, Policing & the UN’s First All-Female Peacekeeping Unit and Youth Peacebuilding: Music, Gender & Change. She is also an author of Young People, Citizenship and Political Participation: Combatting Civic Deficit?

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.

Sustainable security and peacebuilding remain elusive in northern Uganda. But gender-relational peacebuilding offers a potential avenue to strengthen post-conflict peacebuilding efforts.

Sustainable peacebuilding in post-conflict northern Uganda is intricately interwoven into the fabric of regional security. Intrastate conflicts in South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the multidirectional refugee and rebel army flows across borders contribute to destabilizing regional peacebuilding and security efforts. When taking these regional concerns and ongoing internal problems into consideration, it becomes clear that sustainable security and peacebuilding remain elusive in northern Uganda. One avenue to strengthen current post-conflict peacebuilding efforts is to appropriately gender interventions. Implementing appropriately gendered interventions will need to adequately address ongoing gendered violence that has become central to both regional and internal conflicts.

The Conflict in Uganda

During active conflict between the Government of Uganda (GoU) and Lord’s Resistance Army (1987-2006), approximately 1.8 million northern Ugandans were internally displaced, many of them into poorly maintained internal displacement (IDP) camps. The conflict, displacement, and subsequent return processes have been deeply gendered. During the conflict, young girls and boys were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA); many were forced to fight, carry LRA cargo long distances, and were subjected to sexual violence. Abductions ended in northern Uganda when the LRA was pushed out of the country, but the LRA continues to be a threat to regional security and peacebuilding. Abductions continue in the Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the LRA’s regional presence is but one more complex component of ongoing conflicts in South Sudan, the CAR, and the DRC.

Beyond LRA abductions, women were often subjected to sexual violence both as abductees and while living in IDP camps. During encampment, women, treated as heads of household, were given aid to distribute among their family members; this essentially cut men out of their traditional roles as the breadwinner. The gendered allocation of resources challenged cultural norms – a phenomenon which many rural residents blame as one reason for increasing domestic violence during and after conflict. Many men and women lost access to education and economic productivity during encampment, creating employment crises post-conflict. Simultaneously, people were displaced from their land holdings, devastating their economic livelihoods; this is compounded by the rampant killing and stealing of cattle, a source of economic and social wealth. Thus, displacement decimated men’s ability to be economically productive and their sources of wealth and authority, necessary social capital for rites such as marriage, were all stripped away. Unemployment continues to be a pervasive problem as people lost access to their land and do not have the educational attainment necessary for wage employment.

Despite the far-reaching gendered dynamics of conflict and the post-conflict return process on economic production, political standing, and kin relations, peacebuilding efforts in the region concentrate on physical forms of violence, such as rape.

Research conducted in 2013 shows that many rural residents cited economic violence, such as access to land and resources, equitable employment, and social services, as a pervasive and unaddressed concern. When combined with ongoing dissatisfaction with the current government, the result is a suite of peacebuilding approaches that may fail to generate sustainable peace in northern Uganda, with wider implications for regional security.

Redefining “Gendered” Approaches to Peacebuilding

“Gendered” peacebuilding approaches in past years became synonymous with women and conflict-related sexual violence, such as rape and defilement. Such ostensibly gender-sensitive approaches are inherently problematic; they ignore the experiences of men, the diverse experiences of women, and make women’s narratives valuable only insofar as they narrate conflict-related sexual violence. Resolutions, such as UNSCR 1820 and 1325, have made strides towards recognizing the impact of war on women; however, their operationalized emphasis on physical gendered violence continue to reflect this myopic perspective. Resolutions supporting gendered peacebuilding have historically failed to meaningfully include all genders, stereotype or homogenize the experiences of people in conflict, and may reflect non-local cultural values and understandings.

Sexual violence is a serious concern during and after conflict, especially where it is a wartime tactic, there is little support for survivors of violence, and where local sociocultural norms and communities have broken down. However, homogenizing women as singularly vulnerable, passive, and the subject of violence obscures the diverse experiences of both women and men during and after conflict. These homogenous characterizations are paralleled by only addressing gendered violence among men as conflict is either an assault on or a reflection of masculinity. Both of these perspectives are imbued with often uncritical assumptions that fail to see genders as relational and embedded within complex social, political, and economic contexts.

Thus, scholars developed a gender-relational approach to analyzing conflict and implementing peacebuilding frameworks. Gender-relational approaches stand in contrast to prior perspectives that rely on gender binaries and homogenous categories. Instead, gender-relational scholars examine gender as an intersectional category that is intimately bound up in social, political, and economic contexts before, during, and after conflict. Utilizing a gender-relational perspective allows researchers and peacebuilders to identify the most vulnerable in society, allowing precisely-targeted interventions and more effective implementation. Gendered peacebuilding in this way shifts the focus from women’s sexuality and sexual experiences and men’s masculinity, to identifying and targeting the contextually specific needs of the most vulnerable in post-conflict societies.

Appropriately Gendering Peacebuilding to Promote Sustainable Peace

Gendering peacebuilding in post-conflict northern Uganda must go beyond the censure of physical SGBV, such as rape, to take into account the complex experiences, relationships, and sociopolitical and socioeconomic needs prior to, during, and after conflict. In this local and regional context, gendering peacebuilding appropriately takes into account the various experiences of men and women as they are embedded within ancestral communities pre-conflict, during displacement and in the IDP camps, and post-conflict return process, and as they are affected by age, education, ability, and other intersectional categories.

Engaging a gender-relational framework for peacebuilding in northern Uganda can illuminate a number of discrepancies between local needs and concerns and ongoing peacebuilding efforts. While traditional political systems, which predominately support and were led by men, degraded, the loss of property and cattle – traditionally for economic productivity, social status, and marriage and kinship – have negatively impacted all genders. Although the degradation of sociopolitical systems and loss of agricultural and pastoral productivity have disempowered men, it has simultaneously empowered women. Women have broken traditional gender roles by entering public workspaces and shouldering normatively male responsibilities. However, these shifts along with pervasive poverty have also contributed to domestic violence and local pushback against the implementation of international human rights standards.

For example, although conflict-related sexual violence was, and remains, an entrenched concern in northern Uganda and the region more generally, many rural northern Ugandans are deeply concerned about economic forms of gendered violence. Both men and women cite land wrangling or grabbling – the forceful taking of land – as pervasive concerns that inhibit access to economic livelihoods, spiritual fulfillment, political authority, and kin networks. According to one resident in Nwoya District, “before the war [SGBV] was there. During, it escalated and after has been added on because of land wrangles.” Although land is often wrangled by neighbors or even relatives, many rural residents fear land grabs from South Sudanese and other foreigners who are reportedly buying up large tracts of land for farming. Widows in particular cite the lack of support for them as they make claims with the legal, local political, or religious authorities to have their case heard and get their land back. Widowhood in rural northern Uganda is precarious – normally women rely on their husband for land ownership (not mandated by law) and when he passes away depend on the community to uphold their right to continue living and producing on the land. However, the unique challenges of the post-conflict region, including ongoing security concerns and a lack of arable land more generally, means that there is less support from elders, the legal system, and religious leaders for widows with land wrangling complaints. This example of widows demonstrates the power of gender-relational approaches to post-conflict peacebuilding.

Land wrangling disproportionately affects women, widows, and the elderly, and remains a serious security and peace concern for residents throughout the northern reaches of Uganda. These ongoing conflicts are embedded within a nation-state that has consistent human rights violations and political uncertainty, and a region that is beset by internal and regional conflicts. Utilizing such data-driven approaches, we can better develop, implement, and target peacebuilding efforts towards those groups and the leaders that are in positions to help widows resolve such conflicts. As these conflicts are also intricately bound up in ongoing gendered divisions and reconfigurations, appropriately gendering peacebuilding has the potential to open avenues to contribute to regional conflicts and security concerns. Several organizations in the northern Uganda region have been conducting this difficult work, including the Refugee Law Project, Centre for Reparations and Rehabilitation, and the Women’s Advocacy Network. Each of these organizations were generated and are propelled forward by northern Ugandans and each reflects the myriad needs facing residents in the post-conflict period, such as economic violence and insecurity, education, social inequality, and lack of social services. By addressing these points as part of a gendered peacebuilding program, practitioners can grapple with pervasive concerns, such as land conflict, that affect both women and men; thus, they may also begin to unravel some of the regional security concerns tied to inter- and intrastate conflict.

Amanda J. Reinke specializes in conflict resolution amid displacement. She received her PhD from the University of Tennessee’s Department of Anthropology and Disasters, Displacement, and Human Rights Program. Financial support provided by the W.K. McClure Scholarship and the Minority Health International Research Training Program (MHIRT) at Christian Brothers University (Grant Number T37MD001378; National Institute on Health and Health Disparities). Amanda can be contacted at or @LegalAnthro.

The Somali fishermen’s registration programme was lauched to help Somalia’s fisheries management and to secure its waters against piracy. Though commendable, the programme has yielded serious problems.

Following the end of the civil war, the fisheries sector re-emerged as an important economic activity in Somalia, evidenced by the increase in the number of artisanal fishermen operating in the Puntland, Galmudug, and Somaliland regions. The exact number of these fishermen is unknown since neither the respective Ministries of Fisheries nor the District Fishing Associations register Somalis who fish. The lack of information on the number of fishermen, fishing fleet, services, the state of marine resources, and landings reduces the ability of decision makers to make informed decisions regarding the establishment of a robust fisheries management structure in Somalia.

In support of the various Ministries, the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) is involved in projects to improve the understanding of Somalia’s fisheries sector. One of these activities is the development of a biometrics-based, artisanal fishermen -specific, registration system (Biometric Information Technology System or BITS) for the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources in Puntland, Galmudug, and Somaliland.

The data collected using BITS is expected to help formulate a more nuanced understanding of fishermen livelihoods in Somalia—which is necessary for effective fisheries management at the regional and national levels. The information can also prove useful for the government and international naval forces in the attempt to secure Somali waters against piracy and enable legitimate fishermen to operate more freely at sea.

Piracy and Somalia

Somali piracy and illegal, unreported, and underreported (IUU) fishing are two issues that have long been entangled in rhetoric and practice. According to the grand narrative of Somali piracy, without a government to police the coastline or prosecute offenders, Somali waters and resources were vulnerable to foreign illegal fishers. In order to protect their livelihoods, Somali fishermen took up arms against the illegal fishers as a form of retribution and/or taxation for plundering their fish and natural resources (see also Hansen, 2011; Bueger, 2013; Gilmer 2016).

More than a decade after the perceived beginnings of Somali piracy, the grand narrative is still invoked by pirates and members of the Somali public. As artisanal fishermen, pirates, and foreign illegal fishers continue to operate within the same vast maritime spaces, inevitably, accusations of mistaken arrests began to emerge. Coastal communities claimed their fishermen were being picked up by foreign navies. Piracy prisoners held in foreign prisons maintained they were innocent fishermen who were mistaken as pirates. These stories not only raised questions of possible injustices, but they also spotlighted the issue that other than the members of Somalia’s coastal communities and local fishing organizations, no one could say for certain (or prove) who was or was not a pirate/fishermen/illegal fisher.

Establishing a system for identifying Somalia’s maritime community, and sharing that information with international naval forces, was imagined as a starting point for more objective monitoring of Somalia’s waters (i.e., protecting against further potential injustices).

The Somalia fishermen’s registration programme

From 2013 to 2015, FAO utilized the BITS while conducting the Somalia fishermen’s registration programme (hereinafter referred to as the registration programme). The program is/was funded by the Trust Fund to Support the Initiatives of States to Counter Piracy off the Coast of Somalia of The Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS). Collectively, the registration program consisted of three Trust Fund to Support Initiatives of States to Counter Piracy off the Coast of Somalia projects: Project #55 Fishermen Identification Database System; Project #69 Galmudug and Jubbaland Fishermen Fleet Registration; Project #70 “Somaliland” Fishermen and Fleet Registration.

Via field officers, the Ministries collected basic information about more than 5,000 fishermen from all associations within Puntland, Galmudug, and Somaliland during face-to-face structured interviews. This data was entered into a database held by the Ministries. In 2016, a data analysis workshop was conducted in Bossaso, Somalia to “ground truth” the collected data and to discuss the overall successes and challenges of the registration program. Discussions revealed how the registration program became part of a broader struggle over the power to (re)construct the identities of people, labor niches, and maritime spaces of Somalia.

The registration programme helped shift the site for identifying legitimate fishermen from at sea to onshore in Somalia at the various fishing landing sites where the registration exercises took place. Consequently, landing sites became the new key political sites in the struggle to define and identify legitimate fishermen. More specifically, the process of submitting/entering an individual’s data into the BITS was overseen by the heads of the local fishing associations.

By discouraging the field officers from registering the data of pastoralists and pirates, the heads of the local fishing associations helped create a new group of maritime “others”. These “others” are considered potential criminals (i.e., pirates or illegal fishers) nand will not be afforded the same freedoms of mobilities at sea as legitimate fishermen. Indeed, by not having their data registered, these individuals were also rendered ineligible for future development programming geared towards registered fishermen.

The data linked to those labeled legitimate fishermen is used to design future fisheries sector development programming. Those labeled legitimate fishermen become a target group for future FAO- or other agency-facilitated fisheries development projects. Maritime others, however, are left out of this development target group. As a result, the heads of the local fishing associations not only reshaped future development to exclude pirates (former or current) and pastoralists, but they may also have contributed to a future increase in piracy activity by pushing certain maritime “others” back out to sea without the occupational legitimacy/protections provided by a fishermen identification card (See Gilmer, 2017).

Because who they are and what they are doing in maritime space remains an unknown, they must remain under the watchful eye of law enforcement. Although some individuals do, indeed, return to the sea with the intent to commit crimes, most do not. Thus, this reveals the paradox that the programme that set out to simultaneously develop and decriminalize Somali fishermen has only effectively displaced the criminalization onto a more specific maritime population of Somalis.

Beyond the politics of submitting/entering data, the process of distributing fishermen identification cards also played an important role in reshaping future geographies of development and mobilizing certain bodies. In Puntland, government officials utilized the distribution of fishermen identification cards as leverage to bargain with FAO representatives for future planning meetings in Somalia. By securing these future planning meetings, Puntland officials were also able to secure future patronage in exchange for all-expenses-paid trips for the heads of the local fishing associations.

The future planning meetings were also relocated from the coastline to the inland city of Garowe to maximize the FAO-provided daily service allowance each attendee (i.e., head of the local fishing association) would receive. However, moving the meetings away from the coastline greatly diminishes the likelihood that fishermen will be able to participate in any of the meetings. Thus, the fishermen and their respective communities remain on the margins of development planning for Somalia’s fisheries sector.

Conclusion

The Somali fishermen registration programme is commendable in that it is the first cross-regional attempt to collect data on Somalia’s artisanal fishermen and fishing livelihoods since prior to the Somalia civil war. FAO will continue to support the Ministries but the expectation at this point is that the Ministries continue to register fishermen and collect basic information. Furthermore, FAO in partnership with the Ministries, will roll out additional information systems, such as the landing site and sale system, and vessel registration system.

These initiatives will add to the information gained from the Somalia fishermen’s registration program and continue to develop the knowledge of the fishing sector in Puntland, Galmudug, and Somaliland. However, it is also imperative to analyze the processes involved in these data collection projects to understand the politics of identity as they play out at various sites. These politics and local struggles play a key role in shaping the institutionalization of Somalia’s maritime identities and broader access to future fisheries development aid.

Brittany Gilmer is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Florida International University

Alex J. Bellamy is professor of peace and conflict studies at the University of Queensland. His books include Kosovo and International Society (2002), Security Communities and Their Neighbours: Regional Fortresses or Global Integrators? (2004), Understanding Peacekeeping (edited with Paul D. Williams and Stuart Griffin, 2004), International Society and Its Critics (editor, 2004), Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (2006), and Fighting Terror: Ethical Dilemmas (2008), and Responsibility to Protect (2009). He serves on the editorial board of Ethics & International Affairs.

In this interview Professor Bellamy discusses the successes and failures of the Responsibility to Protect and the future of this doctrine.

Q. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is commonly understood to be a global political commitment, endorsed by all Member States of the United Nations at the 2005 World Summit, to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Since the endorsement of this concept in 2005, how successful do you feel the international community has been in honouring this commitment?

It all, of course, depends on what we mean by ‘success’. To text for underlying progress, I tend to use three measures:

1. Are states more or less likely to commit atrocities? Here we’ve seen a steady decline that, of course, predates R2P (the commitment to R2P itself being a manifestation of changing international commitment to norms) – there’s been a blip in the past couple of years owing largely to Syria and South Sudan but the overall trends are still downwards and the ‘norm’ is a much lower rate of atrocities than in any other decade since WWII.
2. Is the international community more, or less, willing to become engaged when atrocities are committed? For this, I’ve used the simple proxy of whether the UNSC passes a resolution in response to atrocity crimes (my dataset works on a threshold of 5,000 deliberately caused civilian deaths). Here we’ve seen clear progress linked to R2P – in the decade prior to R2P the council responded to around three quarters of all qualifying cases (itself up from two thirds in the 1990s), since 2005 that figure has climbed to 100%. In other words, the Council responds in some way or other to every major case of mass atrocity – that is quite a change from past practice.
3. When the international community responds, is protection a priority? Here the change is still more noticeable. Even when the UNSC did act in times of mass atrocity, until quite recently protection was not a priority. In only around a quarter of its responses to civil wars in the 1990s was some form of protection specifically mandated. That grew to around a half in the 2000s, but has now climbed to somewhere north of 90% – i.e. Since R2P not only is the UNSC likely to respond to atrocities, it is also likely to foreground protection in that response.

So, I think the underlying evidence is that R2P has been associated with positive shifts in international behaviour with respect to protection. That doesn’t, of course, mean that all of these responses are effective (in some senses since we are talking only of the world’s hardest and most difficult crises, we should expect a low success rate) – but if R2P is understood as a ‘responsibility to try’ to take measures at reasonable cost to protect civilians from atrocities then we have seen positive overall shifts.

Q. Looking at a specific case of a response by the international community to a humanitarian crisis, the 2011 intervention in Libya was, at the time, heralded as a successful first true test of the R2P. In this instance, the Security Council authorized an intervention to protect civilians citing the R2P. The intervention may have stopped the massacre of civilians, but since 2011 Libya has experienced serious instability. Do you feel that the Libyan case harmed the R2P norm?

First, I’d start with the caveat that the use of force is always controversial, whether in the name of R2P or not, and it was always going to be the case that the use of force connected to R2P would prove controversial.  Second, it is important to stress how significant Resolution 1973 was not just for R2P but for the UN Security Council – the first time in its history that it had authorised force against a de jure state for human protection purposes – this is an important precedent of principle. Third, that said, this was never going to be a precedent that would be followed very often – it was caused by a range of contingent factors unlikely to be repeated often.

I’d agree with your assessment of the campaign itself – the intervention prevented a massacre and shortened the civil war. By doing these things, it undoubtedly saved a lot of lives. We need only look at Syria to see what happens when a country falls into protracted civil war. As unstable as Libya is today, it is better than Syria.  The problems with Libya were twofold – first, the linking of R2P with regime change, which was done for understandable domestic political reasons, muddied the international normative waters. Second, the failure to sustain the peace raised questions about the efficacy of the intervention. On the latter point, it should be stressed that the UN developed plans for a follow-on mission but these were rejected by the Libyan authorities themselves. Certainly, however, more pressure should have been brought to bear to get peacekeepers on the ground.

As for the longer terms impacts on R2P, the effects were paradoxical. On the one hand, there was significant fallout and criticism of the campaign and the link with regime change. On the other hand and at the same time, the use of R2P has become much less controversial in the UN’s political organs. The UNSC has become much more willing to use R2P post-Libya than it was pre-Libya (in fact, subsequent to 1973, the Council issues two more resolutions on Libya itself that contained R2P) and it has even started writing R2P into mission mandates (UNMISS, MINUSMA). Other organs, such as the Human Rights Council and General Assembly have also become more actively engaged (look, for example, at the UNGA’s resolutions on Syria and DPRK).  So, what’s going on here? I think we need to distinguish R2P from the use of force. The former is, by itself, no longer considered controversial and is now a part of common working practice. The latter – whether it is related to R2P or not – remains controversial. What was controversial about Libya was not the invocation of R2P, but the manner in which force was employed. So we have some additional caution on the latter (though I firmly believe that Syria would have panned out exactly as it did had Libya not happened) – in a context where the bar was already set high – but that hasn’t stymied the progress of R2P short of coercive force.

Q. Obama has recently said that the biggest mistake of his presidency was the lack of planning for the aftermath of Gaddafi’s ouster in Libya. Obviously, effective exit strategies which allow a transition into peace are extremely difficult things to develop. But, aside from putting more pressure on the Libyan authorities to get peacekeepers on the ground, what work could the international community have done to build peace in Libya?

That’s a good question, that I’m not sufficiently well qualified to answer I’m afraid, being an expert on neither Libya nor peacebuilding. I would say two things, however. First, we need to be more modest in our expectations of what outsiders can achieve – incremental change is possible, but rapid development and political harmony was always going to be unlikely. Second, though, clearly the Western powers dropped the ball too rapidly and dramatically, and more could have been done to support the new authorities to establish and maintain order and facilitate political dialogue. Greater and more sustained political engagement might have helped produce better results. Also, the international community – through the UN or EU – could have looked at better options for civilian support for the new authorities.

Q. One of the most notable, and perhaps lamentable, changes to R2P since the 2001  International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty report, was the dropping of the ‘Responsibility to Rebuild’ – which focused on peacebuilding and exit strategies. Do you feel that getting this component of R2P back on the agenda might help avoid situations like those witnessed in Libya and, if so, how likely do you feel it would be for the international community to commit to this responsibility?   

Good question. First, I don’t think that Libya panned out the way it did because of the absence of a responsibility to rebuild – it wasn’t that relevant actors ‘forgot’ about peacebuilding, it was simply that the political commitment, strategy and resources from both sides (Libyan and international) were not present. Second, R2P is not a stand alone principle; it exists within a broader framework of international peace and security. The World Summit may not have included a ‘responsibility to rebuild’ but it did say quite a bit about peacebuilding and established an entirely new architecture within the UN system for it — the Peacebuilding Commission. Last year we had the system wide review of that architecture and there are signs that Member States are quite responsive to, for example, broadening the scope of the Peacebuilding Commission’s work.  In terms of understanding post-intervention Libya, I’d suggest that the best lessons to be learned are those from within this peacebuilding architecture and there does seem to be a sense that the key recommendations stemming from the review have purchase in that regard. So that gets me to the third point, which is about political capital. Since 2005, and especially since 2011, the international community’s deeper consensus on R2P has been prefaced on the precise configuration agreed in 2005. I think there’s no will to consider opening that up to include peacebuilding and doing so would, I think, help neither R2P not the peacebuilding architecture. Much better, I think, to see the two as aligned parts of a common whole agreed in 2005 and to focus on learning the lessons of Libya and reforming peacebuilding as fits that rather than trying to reverse engineer the concepts.

Q. Concerning the legacy of Libya, there have been some analyses that have argued that the Libyan case may have seriously affected the international community’s capacity to respond in a timely and effective fashion to the Syrian crisis. Do you feel that this is the case?

Simple answer; no. I think the international response to Syria would have been pretty much the same had Libya not happened.  That’s because the factors actually driving Russian thinking, Western thinking and the positions of relevant regional actors are very much driven by Syrian related concerns and interests that would have been in play irrespective of Libya.

Q. Looking to the future, what do you see as being the greatest challenges for R2P in the next 5-10 years?

1. Conceptual challenges – clarifying the relationship between R2P and non-state armed groups and the relationship between the R2P, counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism policy agendas.
2. Political challenges – the ongoing challenge of persuading states to comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law and also commit the resources and personnel needed to protect populations in need. This will be an ongoing political challenge requiring leadership and involves not just persuading cautious states to get on board but also working with committed states to deepen their engagement.
3. Practical challenges – a) fine tuning early warning and linking it to good understandings of effective early response, so policymakers can be advised of conditions and options with greater confidence; b) developing evidence based guidance on the steps that different sorts of actors (Int Orgs, states, civil society, private sector etc.) can and ought to take to prevent atrocities; c) developing and implementing better strategies for the protection of people from imminent harm, including better approaches to displacement that puts protection at the fore.

Since the September 11 attacks, the NYPD has seen a rapid expansion into counterterrorism activities. But how effective have these practices been in keeping New York safe?

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is America’s largest police force and emulated by agencies across the globe. For many, the NYPD represents innovative and effective policing. But in the decade following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the NYPD’s rapid expansion into new counterterrorism practices under ex-Commissioner Raymond Kelly raises important questions about the programme’s effectiveness and the potential harms caused to the department’s legitimacy.

Expanding into Counterterrorism

Kelly’s tenure as Commissioner from 2002 to 2013 was in large part defined by the creation of an aggressive counterterrorism programme to combat Al Qaeda (and now ISIS) inspired terrorism. While supporters assert the NYPD counterterrorism programme’s effectiveness during this period is self-evident because it stopped numerous post-9/11 terror attacks in New York, critics counter that the programme was ineffective, involved significant infringements on civil liberties, made New York City much more militarised, and contributed to the further erosion of police legitimacy in targeted communities. One thing that can be agreed is that the NYPD became the first American police force to spend over a billion dollars and countless man-hours to implement a host of new terrorism fighting measures in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

How then did the NYPD become seen as the national leader in domestic counterterrorism? The reasons appear straightforward – after the Al Qaeda attacks in 1993 and 2001, and Kelly and his supporters vowed that New Yorkers would be kept safe from future terror attacks. But the evidence suggests the situation was more complex. Indeed, the NYPD adopted a significant role in defending New York City against terrorism amidst already strained relations with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), America’s traditional lead agency on counterterrorism. Kelly and others asserted that the FBI could not be solely responsible for protecting New York City, which paved the way for the NYPD’s vast expansion into counterterrorism.

Building an NYPD Counterterrorism Model

Insights from former colleagues show Kelly believed the NYPD could create the foot soldiers of its new counterterrorism programme building from the ground up. The programme was structured around what has been described as Kelly’s confidence that effective counterterrorism work was not ‘rocket science’. According to one former NYPD official, Kelly thought effective counterterrorism required neither primary reliance on specially trained elite terrorism personnel nor community-based countering violent extremism officers, but could instead be accomplished through old fashioned police work like recruiting sources, using confidential informants, chasing leads, obtaining search warrants, and following anywhere their information might lead. The NYPD’s initial post-9/11 counterterrorism programme therefore focused significantly on using hard-nosed police work to address the complexities of Al Qaeda inspired radicalisation and plot disruption.

And what NYPD officers did not know about counterterrorism, they could learn. Kelly’s counterterrorism programme was forged through close links with then-current or recent members of the Central Intelligence Agency, including 35-year veteran David Cohen, who sought to blend NYPD know-how with high policing intelligence tradecraft. The data shows that changes within the NYPD’s Intelligence Division and Counterterrorism Bureau included stationing officers overseas from London to Hamburg to Amman, and sending detectives to gather intelligence in Afghanistan, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, among others. The hiring of intelligence analysts with language skills in from Arabic, to Pashto, to Urdu also allowed the NYPD to monitor communications and media accounts that might signal terror threats to New York City. The Intelligence Division also developed independent strategies for identifying vulnerable individuals and potential terrorists. The Intelligence Division also engaged in additional covert surveillance and infiltration operations, the scope and effectiveness of which remain unclear. However, documents leaked in 2011 suggest that the Intelligence Division’s Demographics Unit was likely involved in monitoring and sometimes infiltrating mosques, Muslim-owned businesses, Muslim university associations, community meetings and public libraries, among others. The Demographics Unit was scrapped by Kelly’s successor in 2014. Supporters and critics within and outside law enforcement offer varying opinions about how successful Kelly’s counterterrorism model proved to be.

Measuring Effectiveness

Measuring the true effectiveness of Kelly’s programme is difficult. Much of the information about the scope of potential terror attacks or numbers of vulnerable individuals in New York City remains confidential. But Kelly and his supporters have frequently pointed to 16 allegedly foiled terrorism plots between 2002 and 2013 as evidence of his programme’s effectiveness (as of July 2016 the number stands at 20). Specifics of the thwarted plots cited include plans to detonate explosives on the New York City subway, Times Square, John F. Kennedy Airport, local synagogues, and on the Brooklyn Bridge. Critics, however, have disputed these figures, arguing that the numbers are grossly inflated given that many of these so-called plots did not involve suspects taking substantial actions to put them in motion, and frequently involved entrapment.

Community responses to Kelly’s decade of hard-nosed post-9/11 counterterrorism tactics have been sharply divided. While many New Yorkers supported the NYPD’s aggressive counterterrorism practices, vocal critics including members of New York City’s South Asian, Arab and Muslim American communities, civil liberties groups and even law enforcement officials at other agencies, have argued that the NYPD’s initial counterterrorism model was poorly conceived and ineffective because it was discriminatory, violated civil liberties, and alienated communities with important roles to play in fighting terrorism. Indeed, some went so far as to argue that the NYPD’s approach had actually made New York City less safe from terrorism. The limited data lends support for some of these assertions, as it shows that some members of New York area South Asian, Arab and Muslim American communities became less trusting of the NYPD, less willing to cooperate with NYPD investigations, activities, or less willing to report crimes or suspicious behaviour related to terrorism to the NYPD as a result of its counterterrorism practices during this period.

Conclusion

While the first decade of the NYPD’s post-9/11 counterterrorism programme created under Raymond Kelly remains controversial, it undoubtedly opened the door for local police departments across America to take much more active roles in counterterrorism, roles they will continue to play for the foreseeable future. But the experience of the NYPD’s first decade of its counterterrorism programme should give pause to local policing agencies expanding their duties to include greater terrorism fighting efforts, for it important that they not lose sight of the core Peelian policing tenets of community engagement and community service. For as much as we all share a collective desire to fight terrorism, without police legitimacy across communities, cities may potentially become more vulnerable to terrorism in the longer term.

Dr. Quinlan is a Lecturer in Law and Diversity at University of Sheffield’s School of Law. Dr. Quinlan’s research focuses on policing, terrorism, security and criminal justice, and often involves comparative research between the United Kingdom and the United States. Dr. Quinlan recently completed an empirical study comparing the development of post-9/11 counterterrorism policing programmes in London and New York City. Prior to taking up a role in academia, Dr. Quinlan practiced law in New York City. Dr. Quinlan earned her Doctorate at the London School of Economics and Political Science, her Master of Laws from King’s College London, and her Juris Doctor from Northeastern University School of Law.

In considering security sector reform, questions of affordability have often been subordinated to questions of effectiveness and expediency.  A recent series of reviews of security expenditures by the World Bank and other actors in Liberia, Mali, Niger and Somalia has highlighted several emerging issues around the (re)construction of security institutions in fragile and conflict-affected states.

When in late 2005 a team of international financial experts in Kabul put the numbers together on how much the Afghanistan security sector was costing they were astounded by the results. So were the Afghan government and its partners. Running at some $1.3 billion per year, or 23 % of GDP, just over three-quarters of it financed by donors, Afghan security spending (not including counter-narcotics) exceeded domestic revenues by over 500%.

Simple number crunching put into stark focus the unsustainability of the security sector and the need to look at options for changing the posture of the military and police (the two largest spenders) and bringing costs under control. This analysis did not even touch the international costs of ongoing conflict (such as the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force – ISAF) in the country.

Such a financial perspective is increasingly being added to emerging practice on internationally driven security sector reform (SSR) with interesting results. One particular aspect that has largely been missing from the international SSR agenda since its beginning in the 1990s has been the nexus between financial resources and security. While general aspirations for affordability are often stressed with regard to SSR, there has been little guidance supporting governments to better understand whether security sector financing is sustainable, let alone efficiently and effectively allocated.

National budgets are, after all, the most important policy vehicle for articulating and ultimately meeting a country’s priorities within scarce public resources; it is through the budget process that competing priorities are reconciled and implemented. One of the core priorities for many countries is security and justice provision and yet to date there has not been much work on the composition of security sector budgets as well as the processes of how they are planned and managed.

This is beginning to change for a number of possible reasons, not least that the ‘suits’ responsible for the national purse rather than those ‘in uniform’ are advocating change. A quick overview of a number of recent exercises in conflict-affected African states suggests a number of different contexts in which such scrutiny is being requested.

Transitions and UN peacekeeping drawdowns: Liberia

In a recent example of United Nations, World Bank and government collaboration, a public expenditure review was undertaken for Liberia in mid-2013 in order to identify the funding requirements necessary for a national security strategy to be put in place in anticipation of the gradual reduction and exit of the UN peacekeeping operation (UNMIL).

What this immediately revealed was that there was a financing gap between domestic revenues, anticipated foreign assistance and the targets set by the national strategy. In the short term, recommendations focused upon savings through strengthening public financial management systems as well as mobilising additional resources.

More significantly, the joint review raised questions about the effectiveness of a strategy that relied on the establishment of regional ‘law and order’ hubs which could deploy law enforcement personnel as well as extend the reach of judicial services. Was this the best way to use scarce resources? Were such regional hubs the solution to providing accessible security and justice services to a general public that held in distrust the state and particularly those in uniform? In turn, were there more effective ways to use those scarce resources to address some of the underlying structural causes of grievance and disorder, such as contestation over land and land concessions?

The debates around those policy tensions and trade-offs continue;  but this was an interesting example of how the money question – whether a proposed security and justice model could be paid for – raised more fundamental questions about the effectiveness and ultimately the purpose of the security and justice system.

Interestingly, an important side-question was not asked: the affordability of the national army. The review was simply focused on public order and internal security and not on the small (and largely US funded) Armed Forces of Liberia. Indeed, this omission was characteristic of the bifurcated Liberian SSR process, with US (military) and UN (police and justice) pursuing separate programmes since 2004.

Domestic resource constraints vs existential threats: the Sahel

Long a focus of international support to national militaries and counter-terrorist capacity, the western Sahel region suffered a major crisis in 2012 with a coup in Mali precipitating the take-over of the country’s north by regional jihadist and local Tuareg and Arab nationalist armed groups.

As part of the return to ‘normalcy’ and seeking to address historical concerns relating to public mismanagement, the Malian transitional government requested a review of the defence sector in early 2013. This was in part to respond to grievances that had resulted in the coup, particularly relating to reports of an inflated senior officer corps and poor equipping of frontline troops. In turn, donors that had long treated Mali as an ‘aid-darling’ were becoming super sensitive to reports of public sector corruption.

Across the border, Niger, which to date has managed its ‘northern problem’ and the Libyan ‘spillover’ by ways of political accommodation, was also seeking an expanded security sector and additional resources. In so doing, the Nigerien government realised that the quid pro quo was to conduct a review of its security sector.

Both country reviews were undertaken by the World Bank working on its own; and for its own mandate reasons the Bank reviews were focused exclusively on the public financial management of the sector. This meant that more fundamental policy issues about the effectiveness of the respective militaries and the complementary roles played by key bilateral and multilateral (in Mali’s case) security actors were left aside. However, the reviews did serve to push for more accountable and transparent use of such resources as well as identifying resourcing gaps.

Management of external financial flows and shaping an emerging security sector: Somalia

Somalia in many senses confronts all of the challenges outlined above; the newly selected Federal Government (FGS) faces the existential threat posed by the al-Shabab insurgency while also hosting the African Union’s largest peacekeeping force (AMISOM) as well as a number of other onshore and offshore security interventions, such as by US and French forces. At the same time, the FGS is undergoing its own constitutional review process on how it relates to other entities within Somalia on key questions regarding the nature of the state and in particular the very scope, shape and purpose of a formal security and justice system.

The FGS is keen to take on greater responsibility, expand its remit beyond Mogadishu, and put a variety of external financial flows into the security forces on budget. It is also conscious of the significant resources going to external security providers, such as AMISOM, and would like increasingly to take over the functions of those actors as well as some of their funding.

For this reason it has turned to the World Bank and the UN Assistance Mission (UNSOM) for support in trying to strengthen public financial management systems, particularly but not exclusively for the Somali National Army and Somali Police Force, as well as to examine some scenarios for the sector and issues of affordability. This review is still ongoing but it is clear that Somalia faces similar questions posed in Kabul about what is a sustainable security sector, and are there alternative ‘cost-effective’ means to reach political settlement with other regional entities in Somalia while tackling an ongoing insurgency.

Emerging Issues

It is too early to say whether these recent government requests are turning into a systemic trend; there remain many countries for which such an opening-up of books would be out of the question. However, what this body of work does point to is a number of challenging issues particularly relating to the peace- and state-building agenda.

Accountability of external support: While many African militaries and security forces are still receiving significant external support, little of this is being formalised within the national budget and in turn discussed with parliaments and civil society. While transparent, accountable and open government is part of the official development discourse, foreign bilateral security arrangements are still kept more often closed and off the books. Foreign governments are not speaking with one voice: foreign assistance is coupled with calls for good-governance that can often be trumped or undermined by bilateral security arrangements.

Transparency as a process: Budget amounts to policy; it reflects what states actually do and are accountable for. Such reviews are critical entry points for the civilian side of governments to be more empowered in looking at various financing gaps and pose questions about how those gaps can be filled. Security budgets in developed countries often remain opaque and weakly scrutinised, no less than those in the developing world. There is no doubt that security expenditures can remain secret as they touch upon sensitive issues of national security; yet the sector can also harbour serious corruption, off-budget expenditure and unclear procurement practice. Transparency is therefore a bit-by-bit process. Better use of domestic resources could be one prize of greater scrutiny; another could ultimately be greater sharing of data at the regional level in order to build confidence amongst neighbours.

Revenues, security functions and state-building: Too often, classic SSR approaches can be a Weberian analysis of what a security apparatus should look like in any given country and how external actors can support the establishment of such a system. This is often blind to the actual functions of domestic security actors and their access to resources and exaction of revenues. A political economic inquiry can obtain a better understanding of how security forces raise revenues, from large-scale exploitation of natural resources to illicit taxation, and in turn what the functions of such forces are in practice. A greater understanding of these dynamics enables a clearer policy dialogue around, first, what is affordable in relation to revenues being exacted and, second, what incentives are required to transform those functions into provision of a public good – security.

Two examples come to mind. At the more micro-level, in 2008, a study on checkpoints in Côte d’Ivoire revealed that the military, gendarmerie and police were raising up to $100 million a year in illicit taxes on local traffic. This study enabled a more open discussion on what steps were needed to clear the checkpoints and remove the burden on commerce and public alike.

The more meta-level example is that of Somaliland in which security sector reform without external support has ‘worked,’ in the sense of providing stability and the conditions for successful democratic transitions of power. Local business and political elites forged a co-dependent coalition in the mid-1990s that allowed sufficient funds (initially some $6m) to pay for the stand-down and demoblisation of the clan militias. To this day some 30-50% of the regular budget is estimated to be payments to these forces; the high price for peace. Analysts have remarked on the way in which domestic revenue (business donations) were utilised to pay off militias (to stand-down and secure stability) that, in turn, no-longer exacted revenues from infrastructure points such as air or seaports. This allowed the government to raise its own revenues (albeit with the largest share of expenditures to pay for the army or demobilised militia) and the business sector to flourish.

Standards of affordability and effectiveness: ultimately this work asks questions around what is affordable and what is an effective security and justice sector. The former US Secretary for Defense (1961-68, when US military spending averaged over 8% of GDP) and President of the World Bank (1968-81), Robert McNamara, famously posited the idea of an ideal ceiling of 2% of GDP for security. Although that is a standard no longer referred to, the international financial institutions continue to discuss with client governments the size of the public sector in relation to the fiscal framework (revenues vs spending) and, in turn, the sectoral trade-offs such as those between national defence and provision of basic social services such as health or education.

A more important question is: what is effective security? This relates to a more rigorous management of public finances, greater accountability, transparency and measures against corruption. Yet, it also points to value-for-money performance standards for security and justice providers such as the police. Ultimately, it can potentially pave the way to a more participatory discussion among end-users (citizens) and providers (the state) about how to be cost-effective, which may include sustainable approaches to violence and conflict prevention, including addressing underlying causes of grievance and disorder.

Afghanistan is now going through another turbulent electoral cycle while donors seek some $3.5 billion to meet the costs of the Afghan army and police – now estimated at over $4 billion per year, or 20% of GDP – as the US and ISAF forces exit by the end of 2014. External security imperatives have superseded questions around affordability and effectiveness: and what is working and what is not. However, a number of African governments have at least started asking the right questions to obtain information to begin to address the challenge of creating affordable and effective security systems for citizens.

Bernard Harborne is lead of the Violence Prevention Team in the World Bank, having joined in 2004. He has worked for over 20 years on conflict-affected countries for the UN, World Bank, NGOs and the British Government. He has a background in law, including a Masters in International Law from the LSE, and is an adjunct professor at George Washington University. Opinions expressed in this article represent his personal views and not those of the World Bank.

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

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

Local Peacekeeping

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

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

Bottom-up Peace

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

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

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

A Strategic Approach to Local Peacekeeping

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

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

Pittfalls and Prospects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pegida’s formation and growth

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

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

The importance of Saxony

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

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

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

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

PEGIDA’s future

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

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

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

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

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

A scramble for the Arctic?

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

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

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

Negotiating the Arctic Ocean’s Living resources

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

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

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

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

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

Action sports are increasing in popularity in the Middle East. For youth in conflict zones, these collaborative projects provide space for local voices and means of empowerment.

In 2001, Kofi Annan founded the United Nations Office on Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), advocating sport as having ‘an almost unmatched role to play in promoting understanding, healing wounds, mobilising support for social causes, and breaking down barriers’. Since then, the SDP movement has continued to proliferate with groups and organizations using sport and physical activity to help improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities around the world.

Of the 1000+ organizations currently working under the SDP umbrella, many are focused in sites of war and conflict with the aim of peace building, with growing interest in the potential of sports programmes as psycho-social interventions following natural disaster.

SDP organizations such as Football 4 Peace, Right to Play, Hoops 4 Hope, Skateistan, and Peace Players International have been acclaimed as making valuable contributions to the quality of many individual’s lives in contexts of war, conflict, and poverty.

Despite the best intentions, however, too many SDP programmes adopt a ‘deficit model’ that assumes poor youth in war-torn or disaster stricken contexts need ‘our’ western versions of sport for their empowerment. Sport sociologists Douglas Hartmann and Christina Kwauk, for example, are concerned that officials of sport-based intervention programmemes tend to “ignore the ways in which youth interpret and actively and creatively negotiate poverty and inequality as well as the ways in which their sport-based interventions actually commit symbolic acts of violence while reproducing conditions of marginalization”.

Instead, they advocate a more critical alternative to youth development that pays attention to “local practices, local knowledge, the sociocultural and political-economic contexts as well as the needs and desires of communities themselves”.

My research (funded by a three-year Marsden, Royal Society grant) has been a direct response to this call by focusing on the multiple and diverse ways youth are actively and creatively engaging with recreational, non-competitive sports in their responses to conditions of war, conflict and post-disaster. The case study of Gaza provides an interesting example of the grassroots approaches being developed by youth in contexts of conflict.

Youth Engagement with Sport in Conflict Zones: The Case of Gaza

Parkour (also known as free running)—the act of running, jumping, leaping through an urban environment as fluidly, efficiently and creatively as possible—reached Gaza in 2005 (shortly after the withdrawal of the Israeli army and the dismantling of Israeli settlements), when unemployed recent university graduate Abdullah watched the documentary Jump London on the Al-Jazeera documentary channel in his over-crowded family home in the Khan Younis refugee camp. He promptly followed this up by searching the Internet for video clips of parkour, before recruiting Mohammed to join him in learning the new sport. Continuing to develop their skills, they soon found parkour to be so much more than a sport, “it is a life philosophy” that encourages each individual to “overcome barriers in their own way”.

To avoid conflicts with family members, local residents and police, members of PK Gaza (the name chosen by the group) sought out unpopulated spaces where they could train without interruption. Popular training areas included cemeteries, the ruined houses from the Dhraha occupation, UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) schools, and on the sandy hills in Nusseirat, formerly an Israeli settlement now deserted in the centre of Gaza City. The latter is particularly meaningful for the youth who proclaim that by practicing parkour in the space, “we demonstrate that this land is our right”.

As part of the younger generation of technologically savvy Gazan residents, the founders of PK Gaza are explicitly aware of the potential of the Internet for their parkour practices, and for broader political purposes. “We started filming ourselves with mobile phones and putting the videos on YouTube”, explains Mohammed, and have continued to develop more advanced filming techniques using borrowed cameras and editing the footage on a cheap computer.

The PK Gaza Freerunning Facebook page has thousands of followers from around the world, their Instagram account has almost 3000 followers, and the group also posts regular YouTube videos that can receive upwards of tens of thousands of views. Each of Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are key spaces for interaction and dialogue with youth beyond the confines of the Gaza strip. In so doing, “we contribute very significantly to raising international awareness of what is happening in Gaza. We offer video clips, photographs and writings related to the situation in which we live in the Gaza strip and deliver the message to all the people’s that’s watching online that there are oppressed people here”, proclaimed Mohammed.

As well as raising awareness of the conditions in Gaza and offering a temporary escape from the harsh realities of everyday life, the PK Gaza team strongly advocates the socio-psychological benefits of their everyday parkour experiences. They proclaim the value of parkour for their resilience and coping with the frustrations, fears, anxieties and pains of living in the Khan Younes refugee camp. As Abdullah explains, “I have witnessed war, invasion and killing. When I was a kid and I saw these things, blood and injuries, I didn’t know what it all meant … this game [parkour] makes me forget all these things”. As the following comments from Gazan psychologist, Eyad Al Sarraj (MD) suggest, some medical and health professionals also acknowledge the value of such activities for young men living in such a stressful environment:

Many young people in Gaza are angry because they have very few opportunities and are locked in. An art and sports form such as free running gives them an important method to express their desire for freedom and allows them to overcome the barriers that society and politics have imposed on them. It literally sets them free”.

Such observations are supported by a plethora of research that has illustrated the value of physical play and games for resilience in contexts of high risk and/or ongoing physical and psychological stress (e.g. refugee camps), and the restorative value for children and youth who have experienced traumatic events (e.g. natural disaster, war, forced migration).

Conclusion

To conclude, a key finding from my research to date is the need to move away from the ‘deficit model’ that assumes poor youth in developing or war-torn contexts are victims needing ‘our’ versions of sport for their empowerment. If the SDP community can begin with a recognition of the agency, creativity and needs of local youths, then we can better work with them to achieve their self-defined goals in contexts of conflict.

Dr Holly Thorpe is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health, Sport and Human Performance at the University of Waikato. As a sociologist of sport and physical culture, she has published widely on youth sport, action sports, and critical sport for development, including six books and over 60 journal articles and chapters. In 2016, she founded Action Sports for Development and Peace (www.actionsportsfordev.org), and gave a Ted talk ‘Action Sports for a Better World’. She continues to work on a Royal Society funded project—Sport in the Red Zone—examining the power (and politics) of sport in sites of conflict and disaster, including Afghanistan, Gaza, New Orleans and Christhcurch. She welcomes your feedback, so please feel free to get in contact:

In an important year for the Women, Peace and Security agenda, women’s civil society organising is increasingly being impacted by global and national counter-terrorism regimes.

2015 is a key year for women peace activists around the world. United Nations Security Council members will convene a high-level review in October 2015 to assess progress at the global, regional and national levels in implementing Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325, renew commitments, and address obstacles and constraints.

Fifteen years since UNSCR 1325 was passed, there are still a lot of challenges to overcome. However, women peacemakers and activists are as resilient as ever. They continue to push the Women, Peace and Security agenda’s important message forward, in environments that can be risky, unsupportive, or outright hostile.

However, this resilience is closely tied to the existence of a vibrant civil society space. It is therefore important to assess new challenges to the building of peace and women’s rights posed by counter-terrorism measures.  This assessment must overcome the hesitancy that many peacemakers feel about discussing their experiences openly, fearing damage to their reputation as well as other repercussions.

To this end, in early 2015 the Women Peacemakers Program (WPP), together with Human Security Collective (HSC) contacted a selection of partners in ten countries to gain insight into the multiple ways the counter-terrorism agenda is affecting their work for peace and women’s rights.  This article is based on the perspectives of the respondents from a range of countries worldwide, who were guaranteed anonymity.

Global framework

Post 9/11 counter-terrorism measures have impacted on civil society’s operational and political space in several ways. Legislation, although enacted at the national level, is enacted within, and responsive to, a global framework of measures. Terrorist listing regimes and partner vetting systems may hinder peace work in a variety of complex ways.

One of the most significant areas for peace organizations is the framework that governs the prevention of terrorism financing through the non-profit sector. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a highly influential global consortium established in 1989 by the G7, has developed specific recommendations for non-profit organizations (Recommendation 8 – Best Practices: Combating the Abuse of Non-Profit Organisations) in its Anti Money Laundering/Countering Financing of Terrorism standard. This standard assumes that non-profits are vulnerable to abuse for terrorism financing. To date, over 180 countries have endorsed the standard and as such are subject to a peer evaluation by the FATF every 6 to 7 years. Receiving a low FATF rating immediately influences a country’s international financial standing.

In recent years, a number of countries have started to use the FATF standard, and specifically Recommendation 8, as a pretext to clamp down on civil society space. Although countries often deny that it is the case, evidence is growing that upcoming FATF evaluations can have a preemptive chilling effect on civil society space. This is a direct result of governments’ desire to show the FATF that they are capable of preventing terrorist financing abuse through their non-profit sectors. In addition, some states are starting to pass more restrictive non-profit laws after an FATF evaluation – as if the evaluation itself serves to legitimize the drafting of such laws.

Shrinking space

The WPP research indicates that as a result of these mechanisms, a growing number of women activists around the world are experiencing growing pressures on their capacity to undertake peace and human rights activism, including restrictive NGO legislation, suffocating financial regulations, intimidating surveillance practices and exhaustive reporting requirements.

Many women peace activists engage in civil society work that is critical and political. They often operate in high-risk settings, where they face repercussions because of the very nature of their activist work, which challenges established notions and bastions of patriarchal power. Several respondents reported that their governments are trying to control, limit, or stop critical civil society work through the development and passing of new NGO legislation. This new legislation is impacting on their space to operate, for example by putting restrictions on receiving funding support. As one activist from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region shared:

The Rights and Liberties Committee at the Constitution Drafting Assembly has released their suggestion for the Constitution… namely that local civil society should be banned from receiving any foreign government funds.

A women’s organisation based in South Asia observed a difference between the difficulties experienced by various organisations:

There is enough funding for service delivery organizations and those who follow right wing politicians. However, there is no funding for the rights-based organizations, or for those that work towards alternatives.

Some respondents described nationwide campaigns of invasive NGO inspections undertaken by national governments, using harassment tactics such as personal intimidation and threatening activists with the closing down of their organizations. One respondent reported:

When I received a grant from one (domestic) Foundation, I was getting calls from the intelligence bureau and had to supply them with three-years of audited statements, a list of Governing Board Members and staff members. […] They visited my home three times, to ask me questions.

Some women’s groups also faced demanding reporting requirements because of government regulations:

In some locations, all civil society organizations have to submit a copy of their annual report to the police, armed forces, and intelligence offices of the state.

Better safe than sorry?

Aside from the general worsening atmosphere for political or rights-based peace work in many contexts, the FATF standard has also had a great impact on the financial service industry, particularly on banks. Banks can be sanctioned when not abiding by the FATF standard, which may include the withdrawal of their banking license, freezing of assets, or hefty fines.

There is a growing body of evidence that shows that banks’ risk averse behavior has resulted in the withdrawal of bank services to civil society active in conflict areas. As a result of this “better safe than sorry” attitude of the banks, a growing number of civil society organizations are experiencing great difficulties in making or receiving money transfers. Over the years, many donors have become cautious  with grants. Some donors are avoiding partners in high risk, terrorist prone areas, and a number of others are tightening their own due diligence.

Women’s peace organizations more easily fall prey to these restrictions. This is partly because women’s organizations usually operate on small budgets, which means they often do not have the leverage to negotiate a solution with their banks, which big donor organizations and charities are often still able to do. Several respondents mentioned facing challenges with their banks, ranging from delays in receiving their funds to banks requesting additional project information before releasing the funds. Some activists reported that certain banks would no longer release foreign funds to their organizations or had refused to provide their organization with a bank account. One activist reported that another organization in her network had had its account closed by the bank. A respondent from the MENA region shared:

Sometimes we are facing difficulties during the money transfer process, it takes a long time for us to receive the funds, and some correspondent banks reject the amount. Recently a new system has been introduced: there is a limit on the amount we can withdraw on a weekly basis from the bank. This means we cannot pay all our organizational expenses on time, such as staff salary, rent, activity expenses… Everyone is calling us for their money, and we have to promise them that we will pay them next week… Sometimes we are taking loans from other people just to cover our expenses.

In addition, several reported that direct access to funding is getting more difficult. This is partly due to donors increasingly prefering to channel funds via large organizations capable of producing grant proposals according to their demanding guidelines, as well as able to absorb rigorous reporting and auditing requirements. An organization based in Europe reported significantly increased pressures on human resources regarding donor reporting. Staff found themselves working overtime to meet the requirements of this related additional bureacracy, and on some occasions had to seek external advice.

Cumulative effect

Increasingly, these complex and time-consuming requirements are clashing with the reality on the ground: that many women’s organizations are operating on very modest budgets with a combination of limited paid staff capacity and/or volunteer efforts, in a demanding environment that is at best challenging and at worst highly insecure and hostile.

As such, counter-terrorism measures – whether subtly or bluntly – are having an impact on a number of levels that, in combination, restrict civil society space. As one respondent, whose organization had been severely impacted, summarized:

We face an increase in expenditure (because we want to avoid targeting, we now travel in groups, which is more costly); increased surveillance of our movement and programs (officials are asking for reports and bank advices, including that of our personal bank accounts); postponing or cancelling of some of our programs or keeping low profile for some time; mental unrest of our members; impact on the reputation of our organization as our work was projected as “anti-national”, which has affected the outreach of our member organizations. Also, a few partner organizations have left the network fearing repercussions by the government.

The cumulative effect of the range of pressures is that the enabling space for women’s civil society work is shrinking and therefore progressive and pioneering work for inclusive development, peace and women’s rights becomes frustrated. The implications for broader security concerns are worrying. When alternative civil society voices and constructive seeds of change are not provided with the soil to take root, threats to the daily security of people and communities are given free reign. As such, opportunities for actors looking to exploit these vulnerabilities increase.

It is important for civil society to come together to exchange experiences as well as document and monitor the impact counter-terrorism measures are having on their peace and human rights work, in order to engage in collective advocacy. It is equally important for the Women, Peace and Security community to engage with the different counter-terrorism measures and stakeholders. Conversely, it is crucial to raise awareness about the importance of safeguarding critical civil society space worldwide so that women’s voices and actions for peace and human rights can continue to change the world for the better.

Isabelle Geuskens serves as Executive Director of the Women’s Peacemakers Program (WPP), a Dutch NGO that works for the nonviolent resolution of conflict, and the inclusion of women’s voice and leadership in nonviolent conflict resolution processes. In early 2015 the WPP, together with Human Security Collective (HSC), contacted a selection of partners in the field, to gain insight into the multiple ways the counter-terrorism agenda is affecting their work for peace and women’s rights. The findings are summarised in WPP’s Policy Brief: Counterterrorism Measures and their Effects on the Implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda.

Featured Image: Women’s group in Badakhshan, Afghanistan. Source: Flickr | Canada in Afghanistan

 

There will be no sustainable security if we do not equally value the needs, experiences and input of men and women. A new report published by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), funded by ActionAid and Womankind Worldwide, examines the role women play in local community peacebuilding in Afghanistan, Liberia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sierra Leone. The report states “despite the increased international attention to women’s participation in peacebuilding, the achievements and challenges facing women building peace at the local level have been largely overlooked”.

Last week’s Guardian article entitled Who creates harmony the world over? Women. Who signs peace deals? Men points to some surprising data on female participation in official peacebuilding initiatives. “There have been no female chief mediators in UN-brokered peace talks and fewer than 10% of police officers and 2% of the soldiers sent on UN peacekeeping missions have been women”, reports the article. Furthermore, “fewer than one in 40 of the signatories of major peace agreements since 1992 have been female […] and in 17 out of 24 major accords- including Croatia, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Burundi, Liberia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo- there was zero female participation in signing agreements”.

An excerpt from The Guardian datablog:

The IDS report found that “women are more likely than men to adopt a broad definition of peace which includes the household level and focuses on the attainment of individual rights and freedoms such as education, healthcare and freedom from violence. In contrast, men have a greater tendency to associate peace with the absence of formal conflict and the stability of formal structures such as governance and infrastructure”. It is important to include women in formal peace mediations and agreements as “peace means different things to women and men because of their unique experiences as a result of war”.

Additionally, the research established that women have a lot of experience, and are principal actors, when it comes to mediating and decision making within the home and the family. Women are also more likely to come together collectively to create change. However, their “experiences building trust and dialogue in their families and communities are frequently dismissed as irrelevant or are not sufficiently valued by national governments, and the international community”.

Some barriers to women’s participation in peacebuilding include: restrictive social norms and attitudes, violence against women and girls, poverty and economic inequality and inequality in access to education. The report suggests empowering women through access to justice, creating safe spaces for women’s participation and changing attitudes towards peace and valuing women’s contribution as key elements to support women peacebuilding.

The 2000 United Nations Security Council resolution 1325 calls for “equal participation for women in the maintenance and promotion of sustainable peace”.

Only yesterday, Foreign Secretary William Hague called upon UN Security Council resolution 1325, announcing to the UN General Assembly that the UK  “will contribute £1 million this financial year to support the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict”. “It’s our purpose in gathering here this morning to ensure that preventing sexual and gender-based crime in conflict and post-conflict situations is an urgent priority for the international community”, William Hague declared, and went on to say “We are convinced in the United Kingdom that we can do more to help […] we can do it as a permanent member of the Security Council, a leading member of NATO, the European Union and the commonwealth and as a nation with one of the most extensive international development programmes in the world.”

The IDS report states that although Security Council resolution 1325 was passed in 2000, it has since then been almost totally ignored, not least by the UN itself. Hopefully this time, the international community, including the UK government, will take serious steps towards its implementation. At the same time, it is important to commit to preventing sexual and gender-based crimes, not only in “conflict and post-conflict situations”, but also in times of “peace”.

No sustainable peace and security will ever be possible, if women’s voices are marginalised and if women and men do not work together equally on national and international peace mediations and agreements.

Anna Alissa Hitzemann is a  Peaceworker with Quaker Peace and Social Witness. She currently works with Oxford Research Group as a Project Officer for the Sustainable Security Programme, with a focus on our ‘Marginalisation of the Majority World’ project.

 

IDS, ActionAid, Womankind Worldwide report From the Ground Up can be read here.

The Guardian, Who creates harmony the world over? Women. Who signs peace deals? Men is available here

The Guardian, datablog Women’s participation in peace- how does it compare is available here

Remarks by the Foreign Secretary William Hague to the UN General Assembly can be read here

UN Security Council resolution 1325 is available here

Image Source: UNAMID

 

This piece by sustainablesecurity.org’s Zoë Pelter and Richard Reeve was originally published on 5 September, 2013 on openDemocracy 

The narrow defeat on 29th August of the UK government’s parliamentary motion on support in principle for military action against the Syrian regime has forced Prime Minister David Cameron to concede that Britain will play no part in any direct attack on Syria. If the UK is to play no military role in ‘punitive’ responses to the regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons, what options are open to the UK in terms of resolving the Syrian conflict, protecting civilians and punishing those responsible for war crimes there? And how does Cameron’s overt preference for the military option, with or without UN mandate, condition these non-military options?

Pushing for peace

The possibility of a negotiated peace in Syria should not be dismissed. Neither the regime’s military, militia and foreign allies, nor the variety of armed factions ranged against them (and, increasingly, each other) are exhausted. Nor do the Assad regime’s mid-year successes in central Syria presage any imminent likelihood of it regaining control of the north and east. The strategic stalemate that appeared to set in to the conflict in June, after pro-Assad forces retook al-Qusayr, arguably presented a breathing space for negotiations and the so-called Geneva II conference, proposed by the US and Russia, with UN and Arab League backing, the previous month. As recently as mid-August, the Geneva talks were expected to resume in September.

But even convening these talks will now prove far harder. Expectation of Western intervention against President Bashar al-Assad, as well as their own increasing divisions, gives the Western-backed armed opposition groups an incentive to delay talks. Jihadist groups that have proved effective militarily are largely excluded. US and Russian facilitation of the Geneva process, however fraught, also tends to exclude the voices of regional actors like Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, each of which feels its interests very directly threatened in Syria and gives active support to one or more armed faction.

This calls for a rethinking of the Geneva process, if not the 2012 transition roadmap, to bring in the full range of actors, not the abandonment of peace talks. Threat of US-led intervention and its own increasing international marginalisation, should it be proved to have launched a chemical attack on 21st August, could incline the Assad regime towards a negotiated settlement, perhaps even an exit and exile strategy.

This will not happen without pressure from Iran and Russia. Both have much to lose in Syria, but neither is entirely closed. Iran is still in its post-electoral opening and under severe economic pressure, looking to cut a wider deal with the West. Russia may not be comfortable with its isolated position defending the alleged user of chemical weapons. Like the US, it fears the growing influence of jihadi groups while the current stalemate continues. While there is little hope of Moscow abandoning its Security Council veto over action against Syria, it will be embarrassed if it stands almost alone defending Assad in the Council or against a General Assembly resolution. Neutrally collected and analysed evidence of Syrian regime culpability for chemical weapons attack will be crucial to shifting Russia’s position.

Having made clear its preference for ‘punitive’ military action, and been frustrated by parliament in pursuing such action, the UK government is not ideally placed to broker negotiations. Yet the UK does have influence with Syrian opposition groups, in the Gulf States and, when it acts in concert with its less interventionist EU partners, with Russia, Turkey and Iran.

Fighting impunity

Again, the importance of due investigative and legal process through UN Fora is crucial. When asked on 29 August if he agreed that Assad should be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court (ICC), David Cameron replied curtly that these processes take time. Yes, the wheels of institutional responses turn slowly, not least justice institutions. Yet the most obvious response to any breach of customary international law on the use of chemical weapons (Syria is one of just five states not to have signed the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention) is a war crimes prosecution through the ICC. It is not important that Syria has not signed the Court’s establishing Rome Statute. Assad and any responsible commanders could still be subject to international prosecution if the Security Council referred Syria formally to the ICC.

The UN has been investigating a wide range of alleged crimes committed by both sides with a view to future prosecutions. Clearly, the presence on the Security Council of Syrian allies and a majority of non-signatories to the Rome Statute presents obstacles to referral, but the Council has overcome such obstacles before, notably China’s reluctance to see its Sudanese allies prosecuted over actions in Darfur. With France and other allies, the UK should take the lead within the Security Council in pushing to refer Syria to the ICC based on the same ‘moral minimum’ or red line that has been deployed in favour of armed intervention. This, in turn, may provide leverage to persuade pro- and anti-Assad factions alike to take peace negotiations more seriously.

Notwithstanding the heavy shadow of its past action in Iraq, the UK’s moral standing is bolstered by commitment to legal and democratic process. The UK should take a breath, step back from punitive reaction and recommit itself to a multilateral, inclusive and legally rigorous approach to resolving the war in Syria and its many affiliated regional conflicts. No other form of intervention will effectively protect the lives and rights of Syrian civilians either in the current war or the difficult peace that must follow.

Young people are frequently ‘othered’ in discussions about on conflict. This is a dangerous practice as youths can play a very positive role aiding peacebuilding in societies recovering from conflict.

The UN World Population Prospects statistics estimate that there are 1.3 billion 15-24 years olds in the world and nearly one billion live in developing countries where conflict is more likely to have taken place.

In such demographic realities, the potential youths hold for change and positive action is the subject of growing research agenda, and this is particularly the case with the recent wave of social upheavals and humanitarian crises in different parts of the world.

For much of human social interaction, the category called ‘youth’ has been perceived as a historically constructed social category, a relational concept, and as a group of actors that is far from homogenous. A myriad of factors make childhood and youth highly heterogeneous categories in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, political position as well as age.

They also have multi-faceted roles. Youths can be heroes as well as victims, saviours and courageous in the midst of crisis, as well as criminals in the shantytowns and military entrepreneurs in the war zones. Yet, as a category, youth are often approached as a fixed group or demographic cohort.

Youth, peace and conflict

Youths as a conceptual category are frequently ‘othered’ in the discourse on conflict. They are seen as potentially dangerous ‘subjects’ and policy approaches often regard them as ‘a problem’. Often, male youths in the age group 16-30 have been observed as the main protagonists of criminal and political violence. In other words, much of contemporary thinking on youth and conflict tends to be overly negative. It focuses on the dangers posed by disaffected youths as is evident in the negative connotations of the ‘youth bulge’ or ‘at risk youth’ concepts.

A number of dangerous assumptions about the role, position, and contribution of youths appear to plague thinking among national and international elites driving recovery efforts within societies in transition. The majority of national and international policy pronouncements or security-related programmes in post-conflict and fragile contexts reflect a polarised discourse.

The young vacillate between the two extremes of ‘infantilizing’ and ‘demonizing’. On the one hand, youths are viewed as vulnerable, powerless and in need of protection. On the other, they are feared as dangerous, violent, apathetic and as threats to security. Youths are subjected to stereotypical images of being angry, drugged and violent and as threat, especially those who participated in armed conflict as combatants.

On the other hand, recent literature on youth in post-conflict societies marks a shift in thinking about youth. It underlines the agency perspective, and acknowledges the importance of making the connection between youth and peacebuilding for transforming a predominantly negative discourse on the role of youths in societies recovering from conflict.

Youth as peacebuilders

The positioning of youth in society has a bearing on their leadership potential and their possible role in peacebuilding. The tension between young and old has been one of the key features of inter-generational shifts pertaining to the control over power, resources and people.

The tension lies in the palpable impatience of youth, their desire to strive for more, their willingness to be seen as responsible and capable, and the structural barriers to their social mobility. Independence from others and responsibility for others, such as taking care of a family or household, can be seen as defining markers of pre-requisites of social adulthood.

In this sense, dependency, exclusion, and social or political marginalization become prominent sources of social contest. At the same time, it should be recognised that such societal dynamics, challenges and opportunities vary across different cultural contexts whether it is in Africa, Europe, Asia or Latin America.

Within the challenging fluidity of post-conflict environments, which are nothing but contexts where the politics of war continue through different means, the young would need to show great ‘navigational skills’ in order to respond to such power dynamics. Their social, political and economic navigation is about their identity transformation as well as the negotiation or re-negotiation of societal norms, values and structures so that they can find a voice and place in the emerging structures of post-conflict environments.

What needs to be underlined is that youth should be conceptualized and studied as agents of positive peace in terms of addressing not only the challenges of physical violence, but also the challenges of structural and cultural violence, and the broader social change processes to transform violent, oppressive and hierarchical structures, as well as behaviour, relationships and attitudes into more participatory and inclusive ones.

The key point to remember is that without recognizing youths as political actors, their trajectories in peacebuilding would likely be ignored, wasted and at best, under-utilized. To recognize their agency as a political actor in peacebuilding, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding of their conflict trajectories, and this is particularly important for those young people who have taken direct participation in an armed conflict as combatants.

To understand the engagement of youth in peacebuilding, first of all, the youth mobilization and reintegration factors such as who they are, what they did before the conflict, how they were recruited, what specific fighting roles they undertook, what they experienced physically, socio-economically and psychologically, during the armed conflict, and what ‘home’ context they will be reintegrating into will all be critical for the youth’s trajectories in peacebuilding.

Second, the involvement of youth in non-violent politics, and from a wider perspective, the enablement of their political agency in a more positive and peace-oriented role in post-conflict environments, is likely to depend on how these trajectories are shaped by the overall political and governance context.

Third, the enablement of youth as an active agent in peacebuilding cannot be considered without considering such challenges they tend to face due to the armed conflict such as the loss of education, a lack of employable skills and the destruction of a stable family environment. The wider socio-economic needs of youths are often ignored in post-conflict contexts as they are not seen as a ‘vulnerable’ group.

Fourth, it is important to provide youths with training opportunities to take an active part in peacebuilding. With their youthful energy and capabilities, and ability of adaptation to new technological trends, for example, youths could act as mediators, community mobilisers, humanitarian workers and peace brokers. Like any particular conflict affected population group, the mobilisation of youths’ capacities requires a targeted and long-term approach.

At the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, an annual event called Global Peace Workshop is held in Turkey every year. Around 70-80 young participants from across the world get together in this one-week training, networking and solidarity event, and it is incredible to see the transformation of those young people in a such a short span of time as peacebuilders and start undertaking a wide range of peacebuilding projects in their own communities, schools and work places.

Fifth, the engagement of youth in peacebuilding in a wider perspective can be ensured through the arts, culture, tourism, sports and education. The innovativeness and creativeness of young people in those areas could be mobilised effectively by connecting them with wider peacebuilding objectives such as building bridges between divided communities and ensuring a viable process of reconciliation.

There are many examples across the world of the contributions that the young make towards peacebuilding such as the strengthening of community cohesion and reconciliation in South Sudan, civic awareness for peaceful social relations and development programmes in Nepal,  trust-building across different ethno-religious groups in Sri Lanka, and community entrepreneurship and livelihoods programmes in Burundi. Furthermore, the UN Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development  Report entitled ‘Young People’s Participation in Peacebuilding: A Practice Note’ presents a number of policy and programme examples from different conflict affected countries that would facilitate such participation more effectively.

Finally, in undertaking all of these objectives it is also pivotal to avoid the well-known cliché of referring to youths as the ‘future leaders’. Leadership should not be considered as a factor of age and providing appropriate governance contexts would likely enable young people to flourish as leaders today. In other words, they need to be treated as leaders today without postponing it to an elusive future whether it is in governance in general or peacebuilding programmes specifically.

To achieve this objective there have recently been a number of critical developments such as the UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security of December 2015 which makes a clear recognition of positive contributions of youth to peace and sets an overall framework to support their efforts. In May 2016, the UN Peacebuilding Fund started its first Youth Promotion Initiative, which could play a key role to encourage youth leadership in peacebuilding. Therefore, the current trends show that there will be many more similar youth leadership programmes across the world in the near future, but the key point for their successes will depend on whether or not such initiatives can also respond to wider socio-economic, cultural and political barriers that young people face in their quest of becoming an active agent of positive change, peacebuilding and reconciliation.

Professor Alpaslan Ozerdem is Co-Director of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University.

The True Finns Party have surged to the forefront of Finnish politics and fundamentally turned the nation’s political discourse in a more nationalist direction. What are the causes of this rise in Finnish populism?

The populist Finns Party, formerly known in English as the True Finns party (Finnish: Perussomalaiset), rushed to the surface of Finnish politics in the 2011 parliamentary election, snatching a remarkable 19 per cent of the vote. Its charismatic leader Timo Soini positioned himself on the side of the ordinary man and against corrupt elites. Referring to ethno nationalism and Christian social values, Soini emphasized Finnishness and the need to protect the national culture from being contaminated by immigrants and other foreign influences. The Party’s surge to the forefront of Finnish politics has fundamentally turned the political discourse in Finland towards a more nationalist direction. In order to gain a fuller understanding of the drivers behind this growth of Finnish populism, it is necessary to examine Finland’s recent history.

A sense of suffering

Traditionally, Finnish society was split on a double axis: urban and rural, landowners and peasants. Through history, it was the bloodiest area in the Nordic region. The Finnish national identity, including a sense of common suffering, was at least partly defined by being locked between powerful and often aggressive neighbours, Sweden and Russia, who repeatedly took turns in dominating Suomi, the Finnish heartland. Nationalistic movements grew strong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and, though it was rather a by-product of the Bolshevik revolution, Finland finally won its independence in 1917. Authoritarian movements soon emerged; for example, the nationalist Lapua movement. Nationalist sentiments were growing fast in the interwar years, but this was also a period of internal conflict, spurring into a full-blown Civil War between authoritarian Nationalists and Social Democratic groups.

Surviving under constant threat from its eastern neighbour, Finland aligned with Germany for a period in the Second World War. Tensions on the Finnish–Soviet border also grew leading up to the Second World War, breaking into the Winter War between the two in autumn 1939. After showing surprising fighting resilience, Finland had still lost 12 per cent of their land in the war in Karelia. When the Germans invaded Russia in 1941, the Finns fought alongside them, in what is referred to as the Continuation War, in an attempt to regain lost territories in Karelia. They were beaten back by the Soviets once again three years later and devastated by repeated conflicts. Over the course of these repeated and prolonged conflicts a militaristic mentality developed in Finland, still evident in contemporary life.

Finland emerged humbled from the war, surely with a sense of suffering but also one of perseverance. The country was not only in dire straits economically but also firmly within the sphere of strategic influence of the Soviet Union. Finnish diplomacy revolved around appeasing their powerful eastern neighbour. The geopolitical balancing act, of constructing a Nordic liberal marked orientated welfare state while appeasing the Soviets, paid off, and Finland became a prosperous Nordic state. Crisis, however, hit once again in 1990 when the Scandinavian banking crisis coincided with loss of markets in the East when the Soviet Union dissolved in the wake of collapse of communism.

Still, Finland emerged from the crisis with a growing self-confidence in international affairs, not only by joining the EU but also by adopting the Euro and seeking a core position with the EU. Finland was a homogeneous country with a low level of immigration. Right-wing nationalist populist politics were thus not prominent in the latter half of the twentieth century. Still, agrarian populist versions existed since the 1960s with a noteworthy support. Right-wing populist parties like those that emerged in Denmark and Norway did not, however, gain much popular support until after the Euro crisis hit in 2009.

The Finnish Agrarian Party

Although nationalist extreme-right politics similar to those on the European continent only became prominent in Finland with the surge of the True Finns party in the new millennium, agrarian populism had been present in Finnish politics ever since the beginning of the 1960s. The Finnish Agrarian Party (Suomen Maasedun Puolue – SMP) established in 1959 was founded in opposition to the urban elite and claimed to speak on behalf of the common man in rural Finland, those that they referred to as the ‘forgotten people’ (unohdetun kansa) in town and country, against the detached ruling class in the urban south.

The SMP exploited the centre-periphery divide in Finland. Its greatest electoral success came in 1970, 1972 and in 1983 when the party won approximately a tenth of the vote each time. Their main appeal was with rural workers and the unemployed, who felt alienated in the fast moving post-war society. In a rapid social structural change, Finland was transformed from being predominantly agricultural to a high-tech communication-based society. The SMP ran into serious financial difficulty and a new nationalist populist party, the True Finns Party, absorbed its remains in 1995. In 2011, the party’s English name was shortened to the Finns Party.

Timo Soini and the True Finns

In 1997 the charismatic Timo Soini took the helm of the True Finns Party. Soon, the party found increased support, rising from 1.6 per cent in the 2003 parliamentary election to 4.1 per cent in 2007. It was, though, only in wake of the international financial crisis, that the party surged, winning 19.1 per cent of the vote in the 2011 parliamentary election and becoming the third largest party in the country, behind only the right-of-centre conservative National Coalition Party (NCP) and the Social Democrats (SDP). This was also referred to as the ‘change election’ or the ‘big bomb’, when Finnish politics, to a significant degree, came to revolve around the Finns Party and its populist politics.

The party had increased its vote five fold since the 2007 election, adding full 15 percentage points, which was the biggest ever increase of a party between elections in the Eduskunta, the Finnish Parliament. Its initial rise had, however, started two years earlier, in the European Parliament election of 2009, when the True Finns grabbed 9.8 per cent of the vote. In 2015 the party saw only limited decline in its support, clearly reaffirming its strong position in Finnish politics, and entering coalition government for the first time.

Previously, the True Finns had been widely dismissed as a joke, a harmless protest movement, and a nuisance on the fringe of Finnish politics. Their discourse was aggressive and rude and the media mostly only saw entertainment value in them. After the 2011 election, however, it had surely become a force to be reckoned with. During the election campaign, they had clashed with the mainstream parties and called for ending of the one-truth cosy consensus politics of the established three parties. The Finns Party had now become a forceful channel for the underclass.

Contrarily to most similar parties elsewhere, the Finns Party accepted being branded as populist. Soini, however, refused to accept that his party was extreme-right. Contrary to the progressive parties of Denmark and Norway, the Finnish populists never flirted with neo-liberal economic policies. Rather, the Finns Party inherited the centrist economic policy of the SMP. Its right wing populism was thus never socio-economic, but rather socio-cultural.

Three themes emerged as the main political platform of the Finns Party:

• First to resurrect the ‘forgotten people’, the ordinary man, to prominence and speaking in their name against the elite;
• second, to fight against immigration and multiculturalism;
• thirdly, to stem the Europeanization of Finland.

The forgotten people

Finland has been historically prone to polarization; for example between East/West; Socialism/Nationalism; Urban-rich/Rural-poor; Cosmopolitan/Local. Building on the SMP’s politics, the Finns Party kept exploiting the centre-periphery divide, effectively exchanging the agrarian focused populism for a more general cultural divide based on a more ethno-nationalist program. Timo Soini, for example, adopted the phrase of the ‘forgotten people’, which refers to the underprivileged ordinary man, which, he argued, the political elite had neglected.

The political elite was continuously presented as corrupt and arrogant, having suppressed the ordinary blue-collar man. Positioning themselves against the urban Helsinki-based cosmopolitan political elite consolidated around the south coast, the Finns Party representatives claimed to speak in the name of the ‘forgotten people’, mainly working in rural areas.

Drawing on traditional Christian values the ‘forgotten people’ were discursively depicted as pure and morally superior to the privileged elite. This sort of moralist stance was widely found in the party’s 2011 election manifesto, including claims of basing their politics on ‘honesty’, ‘fairness’, ‘humaneness’, ‘equality’, ‘respect for work and entrepreneurship’ and ‘spiritual’ concerns.

The Finns Party was also staunchly socially-conservative on matters such as religion, morality, crime, corruption, law and order. It is thus more authoritarian than libertarian. They are surely anti-elite, but not anti-system. Indeed, it firmly supports the Finnish state, its institutions and democratic processes, including keeping the relatively strong powers of the president to name but one example.

Finnish ethno-nationalism

Timo Soini and his followers have offered a clear ethno-nationalist focus, strongly emphasising Finnish national cultural heritage. It was suspicious of Swedish influence, dismissive of the indigenous Sami’s heritage in Suomi – often referred to as Lapps in English – and outright suppressive in regard to the small gypsy population. In a classical populist ‘us’ versus ‘them’ style a running theme of the Finns Party’s disourse was to emphasise Finnishness by distinguishing Finns from others.

The Finns Party promoted patriotism, strength and the unselfishness of the Finnish people and argued that the Finnish miracle should be taught in school in an heroic depiction; that is, how this poor and peripheral country suppressed by expansionist and powerful neighbours was, through internal strength and endurance, able to fight their way from under their oppressors to become a globally recognised nation of progress and wealth.

More radical and outright xenophobic factions have also thrived within the party. Jussi Halla-aho, who became perhaps Finland’s most forceful critic of immigration and multiculturalism, led the anti-immigrant faction. He has referred to Islam as a ‘totalitarian fascist ideology’ and for example wrote on his blog in 2008 that, ‘since rapes will increase in any case [with inflow of immigrants], the appropriate people should be raped: in other words, green-leftist do-gooders and their supporters’ He went on to write that prophet Muhammad was a paedophile and that Islam as a religion sanctified paedophilia.

Many similar examples exist. A well-known party representative, Olli Immonen, for example, posted on Facebook that he was ‘dreaming of a strong, brave nation that will defeat this nightmare called multiculturalism. This ugly bubble that our enemies live in, will soon enough burst into a million little’.

Many other prominent populist and extreme-right associations also existed in Finland, some including semi-fascist groupings. Indeed, a few MP’s of the Finns Party belonged to the xenophobic organisation Suomen Sisu. In early 2016, in wake of the refugee crisis hitting Europe, mainly from Syria, a group calling themselves Soldiers of Odin took to patrolling the street of several Finnish towns. Dressed in black jackets, decorated with Viking symbolism and the Finnish flag, they claimed to be protecting native Finns from potential violent acts of the foreigners.

Riding the Euro-crisis

Finns Party’s rise was helped significantly by their opposition to the EU and the European Central Bank, who seemed powerless in dealing with the Euro-crisis. They depicted the EU as unworkable and claiming that democracy cannot work in the context of supranational EU governance, and that it favoured elites over ordinary citizens in the European countries. There was a clear demand for a EU critical party, a void the Finns Party was happy to fill because the mainstream parties then held a pro-EU stance.

Leading up to the 2011 elections he Finns Party turned opposition to bailouts for debt-ridden Euro countries into their main issue. That also helped in securing good results in European Parliament elections in 2014, after which they joined the radical-right European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) in the EP.

After coming into government in 2015 the Finns Party found diminished support in opinion polls. Still, their influence had steadily grown and they had found much greater acceptance than before. They clearly led in the growing anti-EU discourse in the country. Soon, many of the previously pro-EU mainstream parties began to adopt their anti-EU rhetoric, and some, subsequently, also became increasingly anti-immigrant.

Eirikur Bergmann is Professor of Politics at Bifrost University in Iceland and Visiting Professor at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. He is furthermore Director of the Centre for European Studies in Iceland. Professor Bergmann writes mainly on Nationalism, Populism, European Integration, Icelandic Politics and on Participatory Democracy. He has also written two novels which are published in Icelandic.

Aidan Hehir is a Reader in International Relations, and Director of the Security and International Relations Programme, at the University of Westminster. He has published a number of books on humanitarian intervention/R2P including Humanitarian Intervention An Introduction 2nd Edition (Palgrave 2013); Libya, the Responsibility to Protect and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention (with Robert W. Murray, Palgrave 2013); The Responsibility to Protect: Rhetoric, Reality and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention (Palgrave, 2012); and Humanitarian Intervention After Kosovo (Palgrave, 2008).

In this interview Dr. Hehir discusses the Responsibility to Protect and Libya, post-conflict peacebuilding, the need for UN Security Council reform and the prospect of a UN standing army.

Q. In 2011, the intervention in Libya was seen as a successful first true test of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The Security Council authorized a military intervention citing the R2P and Western leaders justified intervention on the grounds of stopping Gaddafi’s threats of imminent mass murder in Benghazi. However, the recently released House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee’s report on the Libya intervention has called into question the humanitarian case for intervening. Do you feel that the intervention in Libya ultimately represented more of an abuse of R2P rather than an actual implementation of the doctrine?

While the 2011 intervention in Libya may well have looked like “R2P in action”, in my view, R2P had negligible influence on the decision to take military action. Naturally, those who believe that R2P influences state behaviour heralded the intervention as evidence for their claims, but I believe they conflated correlation with causation. There is simply no evidence to suggest that the decision of the Security Council was in any way influenced by R2P.

The reference to R2P in Resolution 1973 mentions only the internal aspect of R2P; in other words, it simply states that the Libyan government has a responsibility to protect its own people. It did not identify R2P as the basis for the action the international community was taking. This determination to avoid using R2P as the justification for intervention, and exclusively referring to it in the context of Pillar I, has been a common theme running through all Security Council Resolutions. Using R2P in this way places the onus on the host state to deal with the issue and thereby enables the Security Council to deflect responsibility away from itself.

The key influence on the decision to act in 2011 was the statement made by the League of Arab States calling for intervention; this was, as Hilary Clinton declared at the time a “game-changer”. It pushed the previously unwilling President Obama into supporting intervention – albeit in a half-hearted fashion – and also convinced the Russians and Chinese not to block the intervention through the use of their veto. The idea that the League of Arab States was motivated by their commitment to R2P to call for action in Libya is of course implausible; they took this decision on the basis of realpolitik.

With respect to the French and British position, again a coincidence of factors aligned to convince them to take action; a genuine desire to prevent a slaughter may indeed have been one of these factors, but that in itself was not a sufficiently powerful incentive.

This is not to suggest that the decision to intervene was inherently wrong or singularly mendacious, but rather that the chorus of delight emitted from R2P supporters was premature. Prior to 2011 there had been instances when collective action was taken in response to a looming or actual intra-state crisis; the problem has always been, however, that these instances are a function of a correlation between national interests and humanitarian suffering. As a result, the record has always been inconsistent. Libya was a case where all the stars aligned so to speak and not evidence of a “new” disposition motivated by a determination to abide by R2P. The manifestly inconsistent record since 2011 highlights this.

So, the question as to whether it was an “abuse” of R2P is, to my mind, built on a false premise. It had nothing to do with R2P. Of course, the fact that so many of R2P’s proponents declared it to be “R2P in action” has meant that it is widely associated with R2P. Given that the intervening coalition so obviously exceeded the mandate granted by Resolution 1973 – by engaging in “regime change” – and the nature of the chaos in Libya since the intervention, R2P has certainly been tainted by association with the intervention in Libya. But I wouldn’t describe it as an “abuse of R2P” because this gives the concept more credit than it’s due. R2P is a hollow slogan that states insert into speeches every now and again; it’s not in any sense clear what it means, and thus it’s difficult to see how such an inherently malleable, vacuous concept can ever be “abused”.

Q. Since the intervention, Libya has descended into anarchy and civil war, which the Islamic State is looking to exploit and use as a ‘gateway to Europe’. Do you feel that this situation would have occurred had Gaddafi not been removed?

The current situation in Libya – the political chaos, the civil war and the presence of ISIS – was certainly avoidable. The manner in which the intervention occurred did not, to my mind, inevitably lead to the post-intervention situation; the fact that the intervening coalition so quickly abandoned Libya, and put their faith in the National Transitional Council, was the key factor in the collapse which followed the intervention. In this sense, I don’t think that Gaddafi’s removal caused the situation we now face; rather the absence of planning for post-Gaddafi Libya was the issue. Obviously his removal left a vacuum that needed to be filled but this was not impossible to do (though it would have required significant political will and expenditure of resources from the intervening states).

Had Gaddafi not been removed would ISIS have been able to exploit the situation? I think it very much depends. There are two scenarios that could have resulted in him staying in office but really only one is plausible.

The first scenario that may have seen Gaddafi retain power would have been some form of negotiated settlement; South Africa in particular tried to pursue this during the intervention. The talks were essentially scuppered by the intransigence of both parties; the TNC understandably felt they would achieve more if Gaddafi was forced out of power by NATO, while Gaddafi appeared to be unwilling to cede control. So it’s difficult to imagine that it was in any way possible that a political settlement could have been reached which kept Gaddafi in power.

The second scenario would have come to pass if there had been no intervention and Gaddafi’s forces had been able to defeat the rebels in Benghazi. While he may have “won” and retained power, the slaughter that would have likely accompanied a Gaddafi victory would surely have generated even more anti-government sentiments and the east of Libya would potentially have become a zone of prolonged civil war. ISIS may well have exploited this and moved into this part of the country. It’s worth remembering that ISIS entered Syria while Assad was in power and therefore the idea that having a “strong man” in power would have prevented ISIS from gaining a foothold in Libya is not necessarily true. Once the uprising in Libya had reached a certain point – certainly by mid-February 2011 – the chances of there being a peaceful return to the previous status quo were negligible. Given Gaddafi’s reluctance to accept that change was necessary, conflict within Libya thus became inevitable and with civil conflict in Libya comes the potential for ISIS to enter the fray.

That said, it is possible that Gaddafi may have “crushed” dissent in such an emphatic way that rebels fled and “order” was restored. If this had happened then it may well have influenced the Syrian rebels. Given that they were to a large extent encouraged by the experience of the Libyan rebellion – and especially the NATO intervention – a brutal crackdown in Libya may well have tempered their tactics. Obviously, if the Syrian rebels hadn’t engaged in a civil war against Assad, then ISIS would have found it more difficult to enter Syria and naturally that would have meant it would have been more difficult for ISIS to move towards Libya. This “don’t intervene and make the situation worse” is the kind of thinking that Alan Kuperman has advanced. It’s somewhat plausible though it would mean tolerating dictatorship and repression but, given what’s happened in Libya and Syria since 2011 one could certainly make the case that as bad as these are they are preferable to the mass slaughter and prolonged suffering we are now witnessing.

Q. Ineffective post-intervention planning seems to a recurrent trend and problem. Are there any examples of exit strategies and post-intervention peacebuilding initiates that could be deemed effective?

It all depends on how one defines “effective” I think. Between 1994 and 2004 expectations regarding the efficacy of post-conflict/intervention statebuilding were ridiculously high. During this period operations were launched in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq with totally unrealistic aims. Obviously the “reconstruction” in Afghanistan and Iraq failed quite spectacularly but even in Bosnia and Kosovo it would be difficult to class the statebuilding as a success, if judged according to the original aims.

These experiences were in large part responsible for the far less intrusive statebuilding operation implemented after the intervention in Libya. Yet, while toning down the aims and intrusive nature of post-conflict reconstruction makes sense, in Libya the scaling down clearly went too far. As a result the country spiralled into crisis.

I think the primary aim for any such operation must be to ensure order; to prevent civil war and provide safety for all groups, ethnicities, religions etc. That naturally requires the presence of foreign troops, which of course raises a number of ethical and logistical dilemmas. But I think the old model of “traditional” UN Peacekeeping where the aim was to simply stop violence – as opposed to new ideas around “peacebuilding” – could work here and it would transfer the operation to the UN rather than ad hoc coalitions of states that – as so apparent in the case of Libya – can become distracted.

So ultimately, I think we need to be more realistic about what can be achieved after civil war and external military intervention; the key measure of effectiveness should be the suppression of violence and of course maintaining basic welfare provisions such as water, electricity etc.

Q. Recently, several emerging powers have contributed to the R2P debate with their own versions of global human rights initiatives. What do you feel are the implications of these developments for the future of R2P and, more broadly, global human security?

None of the BRICS are keen on R2P; each have advanced quite lukewarm positions on it. That said, they have tended to avoid declaring the concept to be “dead” or irrelevant; rather their statements have endorsed those aspects of R2P that cohere with their interests, while ignoring or warning about the others. This has generally manifest as supporting Pillars I and II while rejecting Pillar III (certainly the notion of military intervention).

I don’t think any state will ever come out and say they think sovereign states don’t have to protect their people from the four crimes, so the BRICS, and others, are happy to declare their support for Pillar I and II as both are predicated on the consent of the host state. In this sense, “declaring support for R2P” actually means reiterating the principle of sovereign inviolability while accepting that the international community should help states that ask for assistance. This is increasingly what R2P has become; an essentially irrelevant reaffirmation of the status quo dressed up to sound ethical.

Of course, significant differences exist amongst the BRICS; even though Russia and China tend to be lumped together – in large part because of the repeated “double-vetoes” cast over the past five years in the context of Syria – they actually have a quite different approach to these issues. China is a major contributor to UN Peacekeeping missions and has consistently declared its aversion to the use of force; Russia has not had the same level of engagement with Peacekeeping and clearly has a different perspective on the use of force.

Certainly, as these states become more powerful the likelihood is that R2P will continue its evolution away from anything approximating genuine international regulation of state compliance with human rights; in this sense R2P is likely to continue to exist, but only as an empty phrase used instrumentally.

Q. You mention Russia and China’s vetoes on Syria, a situation that could be described as one of the worst humanitarian crises of recent times. Does the structure of the Security Council inhibit the consistent application of R2P and, more generally, the enforcement of international human rights law?

Proponents of R2P often make expansive claims about its transformative impact and revolutionary potential. It is important to remember, however, that R2P has not in any way changed the existing means by which compliance with international human rights law is regulated or enforced. The process by which the international community responds to an intra-state crisis or mass atrocity is exactly the same today as it was prior to R2P. In this sense, the institutional architecture highlighted as problematic by the end of the 1990s – particularly after the intervention in Kosovo – has not been altered.

In particular, the powers of the Security Council remain unchanged. The Security Council is very obviously a political body; it was designed not as a means by which to ensure justice but rather as a way to maintain order. As a result, the way the Security Council responds to an intra-state crisis – which in effect determines the “international” response – is a product of the P5’s national interests. As a result inconsistency is inevitable; if the P5 are divided there can be no effective coordinated response (as we see in Syria); if the P5 are simply not interested, or indeed support the aggressor state, then there will be no meaningful response (as was the case with Sri Lanka in 2009). Thus, a meaningful, robust response will only ever occur if there is a coincidence between the P5’s national interests and mass human suffering. These are, of course, exceedingly rare occurrences.

Prior to the emergence of R2P the Security Council’s record was widely criticized as inconsistent; by definition this implies that sometimes the P5 reacted in a meaningful way, but only in exceptional cases. This inconsistency is clearly still in evidence. It is not, therefore, that the Security Council will never – or has never – reacted to a crisis in a timely and effective manner, but rather that they will only ever do so in a highly inconsistent fashion.

As a result, the scale of the atrocities being committed matters less than who is perpetrating them; some governments will always get away with committing one or more of the four crimes proscribed by R2P as they are allies with one or more of the P5. A good example is Bahrain; it has consistently been shielded from external censure by the US and UK despite its clear record of systematic human rights violations and crimes against humanity since at least 2011.

When R2P’s more vocal proponents – like Simon Adams – express wounded outrage at the Security Council’s inaction over Syria, their arguments lack credibility; the Security Council was not designed to respond in a timely and consistent manner to intra-state crises. Supporting the systemic status quo while expecting revolutionary change in the behaviour of those who consciously designed the system to enable the realization of their narrow geopolitical interests, is wilfully naive at best. So long as the powers of the Security Council remain unchanged, and the existing international legal order more generally is preserved, there is no way R2P can achieve the highly ambitious goals it has set.

Q. Reform of the Security Council has arguably been an issue since its inception, but is certainly not an easy matter. Taking into consideration the major obstacles to this process, are there any genuinely plausible pathways to reform?

As soon as anyone suggests reforming the Security Council there is a collective sigh and a shaking of heads. Clearly it’s been suggested many times and literally hundreds of proposals have been advanced to no avail. It’s not hard, therefore, to be fatalistic about this. Personally, I don’t see the Security Council reforming anytime soon.

However, I don’t agree that because something is difficult to do or hard to imagine happening it should not be considered; that’s a depressing blueprint for inertia. Historically, there are numerous examples of institutions or governing structures that appeared immutable but later collapsed. Often, existing power structures appeared at their most supremely powerful just before they fell.

The only hope with respect to the Security Council stems, I think, from the fact that at present there is a huge disjuncture between its behaviour and what is expected of it. During the Cold War few people held out much hope that the Security Council could do anything but that’s changed now; expectations on a number of issues – not least human rights – have been raised considerably in the post-Cold War era. Even with the demise of the West people across the globe still increasingly feel that the “international community” should help free them from oppression. So even the new systemic alignment can’t put that genie back in the box. We are left therefore with a dramatic disconnect between the existing institutions – their remit and behaviour – and the expectations/needs of the people they are established to represent. That is not sustainable in the long-term. In 1945 Hans Kelsen described the UN system as “primitive”; it’s the same system today, but there are some signs that momentum behind change is building, albeit not among the “Great Powers”. It’s important, therefore, to at least consider what the parameters of a new system should be. That’s not utopianism; it’s pragmatic. To scoff at the idea of reform is ultimately to claim that the status quo is in some sense irrevocable; this is both miserably fatalistic and ahistorical.

Q. You’ve previously discussed the concept of a standing UN army for peacekeeping. What would this force consist of and in what sort of situations would it be deployed?

People have been writing about a standing UN force since the organisation was established; few in fact realise that this was (and still is) part of the Charter (Article 47). Generally people have written about this in the context of Peacekeeping; as a means to ensure there is a force ready to be deployed when authorisation is given. In certain cases – such as Darfur – the authorisation has been given but the troops have not been volunteered promptly. My suggestion in The Responsibility to Protect: Rhetoric, Reality and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention was to build on the basic idea and mandate the force to also engage in military operations sanctioned without the consent of the host state (in contrast to Peacekeeping deployments). However, simply having an army doesn’t necessarily overcome the problem that its deployment would be a function of the P5’s national interests. There is little point in having a standing army if it can only ever be used if the P5 agree. So my suggestion included the establishment of a judicial body that would be called into action in the event of Security Council paralysis; namely in situations where there is incontrovertible evidence that one or more of the four crimes are being committed by a state, diplomacy has failed and yet the P5 are divided about how to respond. In such situations the matter would be devolved to the alternative body to determine whether a military intervention is warranted. In this sense the body would not take over from the Security Council but rather serve as a substitute for it in particular situations (and only with respects to intra-state mass atrocity crimes).

Of course, the logistics of this would need to be worked out in detail and I didn’t engage with this in any great depth. My intention, rather, was to defend the principle and outline the contours of the institutional change required. From talking to members of various national militaries, it would seems that there is nothing inherently impossible about forming or deploying a standing international army, in terms of the logistics. The problem of course is the absence of political will. That said, at various General Assembly debates on R2P states have advocated the idea of a standing force and lamented the politicized nature of the current means by which remedial action is authorised. Also, in terms of the P5’s likely response to this, it need not be wholly negative; one could argue that this proposal would not remove their power and status, and in fact in certain cases would take the burden of responding away from them. Obviously, the new body charged with authorising the deployment of this force would never engage in a military action likely to incur the wrath of one or more of the P5; prudence would clearly have to be exercised.

Ultimately, all legal systems are fundamentally flawed if there is no objective means by which their laws are enforced; there must be a separation between the executive, the judicary and the police/army. Currently, the three are conflated and so it can’t come as a suprise that international law – particularly with respects to human rights – is routinely flouted without censure. This is an unsustainable situation; unless one believes in the immutability of the present system – which, though understandable is as I said earlier ahistorical and fatalistic – it is surely incumbent on those of us unhappy with the present systemic architecture to think about progressive reforms.

With conflict causing much political instability and human suffering in parts of the world, there is a need for preventive diplomacy which stops the outbreak, relapse or escalation of organized violence. Frontline diplomats have potentially crucial roles to play in early preventive efforts.

Conflict prevention is popular in international political circles these days. In April 2016, the UN Security Council and General Assembly passed concurring resolutions on the review of the UN peacebuilding architecture in which they confirmed the essential role of the UN in “preventing the outbreak, escalation, continuation and recurrence of conflict”. On 5 July, the German Federal Foreign Office launched a public outreach process for the development of new guidelines on civilian crisis prevention, an area for which it increased its funds by 260% from 2015 to 2016 to 248.5 million €. Last year, the British government announced plans to increase its Conflict, Stability and Security Fund from 1 to 1.3 billion pounds by 2019/20.

The political reasoning behind the call for prevention is simple: if the escalation of political disputes into organized violence or even outright civil war can be stopped in its tracks, it not only saves lives, but also keeps refugee flows created by war at bay and helps leaders avoid making difficult and potentially unpopular decisions about whether to launch military interventions to quell conflicts. Despite what seemed like a long-term decline of organized violence, the number of armed conflicts has ticked up again in the past few years: 2014 saw 40 armed conflicts, the highest number since 1999, and 126,059 conflict-related fatalities, the highest number since 1994, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. At the end of 2015, 65.3 million people were either internally displaced or international refugees, the highest number since the Second World War. Yet many UN member states tend to view conflict prevention with suspicion, as they fear international meddling in what they perceive to be their domestic political affairs.

Putting high-flying international commitments to conflict prevention into practice and “sustaining peace” throughout the conflict cycle, as the SC and GA affirmed in their parallel resolutions, requires an astute handling of sensitive matters with intelligence and tact, prudence and patience. In short: diplomacy. While government ministries can, of course, reach out to their foreign counterparts directly and permanent representatives negotiate mandates for international organisations in New York or Geneva, frontline diplomats, i.e. members of the foreign service posted abroad, have potentially crucial roles to play in early preventive efforts. Preventive diplomacy aims at the short- to medium-term prevention of the outbreak, relapse or escalation of organized violence, through both coercive and non-coercive means serving a political purpose. Taking preventive diplomacy seriously requires a different, more active and principled kind of diplomacy. In order to do adjust to this profile, frontline diplomats need to be better equipped, trained, and organisationally empowered.

Frontline preventive diplomacy: benefits and risks

Frontline diplomats may be able to resort to thematic expertise, funds or international networks that they can employ to tweak political dynamics in a country. As some diplomats are repeatedly posted to conflict regions, they may draw comparative conclusions and show domestic parties the risky trajectories of their actions. And diplomats are, theoretically at least, trained in the very skills of facilitation, brokering and negotiation that might be needed to cool down heated tensions.

As the International Crisis Group lays out in an excellent recent report, preventive diplomacy is fraught with dilemmas and considerable challenges. Usually, the elites in a given country carry the main responsibility for the escalation of political conflicts, and even high-level officials of major powers have limited entry points when positions have become deeply polarized and parties are entrenched in a zero-sum logic. As the Crisis Group succinctly observes: “Outsiders must tread carefully when pursuing these goals. All early action involves engaging in fluid political environments. There is a high chance of political friction, with misunderstandings and miscalculations derailing plans. No form of crisis response is neutral.”

Frontline diplomats may grant insurgent groups unwarranted legitimacy simply by meeting them. Officially mediating between parties may raise expectations about peaceful conflict resolution, that, when disappointed, may embolden domestic actors to pursue their goals by violent means. Short-term goals of stabilization may conflict with long-term goals of democratisation and transitional justice. Thus, preventive engagements must be based on continuing political analysis and do-no-harm principles.

A different diplomacy

More fundamentally, an active pursuit of conflict prevention requires a different kind of diplomacy. Conventionally, diplomats pursue a narrowly conceived “national interest”, acting on explicit instructions from the capital. They concentrate on the governing authorities as official partners in their bilateral relations. As a result, their engagement is reactive and ad hoc, while preventive diplomacy requires a forward-looking and principled approach, as David Hamburg already wrote in 2003.

“I am not the person who sits all day at the office. I want to see how people live out there,” is how German Ambassador to South Africa Walter Lindner introduces himself in a video message on the embassy’s website. It sums up the kind of spirit diplomats need to embrace are they to further the ambitious objective of conflict prevention. Christopher J. Stevens, the US Ambassador to Libya murdered in 2012, represented the skills of a “guerrilla diplomat” (Daryl Copeland): multilingual, frequently speaking to people on the street, and showing respect and compassion for local cultures, traits which President Obama highlighted in his speech at the UN General Debate in September 2012.

Yet these diplomats are usually seen as “unconventional”. If governments want to take their stated objective of crisis prevention seriously, they need to embrace the following policies that support and empower their agents in the field. Political leaders and senior officials need to foster an organisational culture that grants ambassadors and other frontline diplomats more autonomy, based on frequent reporting on their activities. Leaders need to highlight bold behaviour, even when diplomats encounter hostility from host governments despite their most sensitive efforts; rewarding best practices can start horizontal socialization processes. Ministries need to provide frontline diplomats with the authority to quickly disperse small development funds and include them in internal discussions on government-wide country strategies.

Lastly, they need to offer training to their diplomats in conflict analysis, mediation and critical thinking. The German Federal Foreign Office, for example, only started to provide dedicated mediation courses to its attachés and more senior diplomats a few weeks ago. Similarly, a recent reform report of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office argued to increase training in stabilisation and mediation as core skills for diplomats posted to fragile areas. Many intra-state conflicts are based on disputes within a country’s political elite; foreign diplomats trained in peace mediation may be able to facilitate conversations between polarized parties. As external third parties, they may help local stakeholders to identify mutually acceptable ways that lead out of their conflicts.

Conclusion

Historically, Western biases and wilful ignorance of domestic politics and cultures have marred international engagement in conflict prevention and resolution. A healthy dose of scepticism towards a renewed push for preventive diplomacy is therefore warranted. Diplomats need to overcome a rigid binary of local stakeholders whose actions need to be prevented and international actors who conduct preventive diplomacy.

If foreign services embrace a bolder, innovative style of (preventive) diplomacy that rewards local sensitivity, autonomy and innovation, however, they may improve the implementation of their foreign policy overall. Frontline diplomats need to travel in their host country extensively, collecting information about local grievances through first-hand observation. They need to reach out to the host population directly, through personal use of social media, as many British diplomats already do. And they need to maintain reliable relationships with key political actors that continue to function in crisis situations. If diplomats do that, they will find that an increased attention towards conflict prevention entails benefits – a deeper understanding of elite politics, influence beyond the capital and credibility with a broad spectrum of a country’s society – that continue to exist when a crisis ends.

Gerrit Kurtz is a postgraduate research student at the War Studies Department of King’s College London, where he researches the role of frontline diplomats in conflict prevention. He is also a non-resident fellow with the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, where he worked between 2012 and 2015 on the policies of emerging powers on a responsibility to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes. He also conducted research in South Sudan on local conflict management by UN peace operations. Aside from preventive diplomacy, conflict management and peacekeeping, his research interests include protection of civilians, transitional justice in the conflict in Sri Lanka, the conflict in South Sudan, as well as German and Indian foreign policy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The UK is the state of registration for a large number of land-based and maritime PMSCs. How compatible is the UK regulation model for PMSCs with international norms, especially those concerning human rights?

Author’s note: this commentary draws upon work found in a previous article written by the author – ‘Regulation of the Private Military and Security Sector: Is the UK Fulfilling its Human Rights Duties?’ in (2016) 16(3) Human Rights Law Review 585-599.

There are a large number of Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) registered in the UK. In 2011 the Security in Complex Environments Group (SCEG) was appointed by the UK government as its partner for the development and accreditation of standards for the UK private security industry when operating overseas. SCEG is a special interest group within Aerospace Defence and Security (ADS), a trade organisation advancing the UK aerospace, defence, and security industries. SCEG lists nearly 60 UK-registered PMSCs as members. Separately, 21 UK-registered PMSCs are currently listed as members of the International Code of Conduct Association (ICoCA), set up in 2013 to oversee the implementation of a non-binding international code for private security companies, although a much larger number of UK PMSCs, over 150, had signed up to the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers of 2010. This emerging system of national and international self-regulation was a political choice by the UK government based on free-market thinking and limited resistance to a powerful and profitable industry.

Options for Regulation

The post-Cold War peace dividend, which led to a surplus of well-trained former armed forces personnel, combined with the damage done to the UK’s reputation in the late 1990s by Sandline International, led to some soul searching about the regulation of the overseas operations of an emergent private military and security industry. Sandline was a private military company with a previous history of involvement in conflicts in Africa, headed by former British Army Officer Tim Spicer, that had breached a UN and UK arms embargo against Sierra Leone by supplying arms to President Kabbah. The recommendations of the Legg Report of 1998, that the government consider introducing a system of licensing for PMSCs operating out of the UK, were a direct outcome of the ‘Sandline Affair’.  The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) Green Paper, ‘Private Military Companies: Options for Regulation’ of 2002, provided a thoughtful examination of the reasons for growth of the industry, including a convincing rationale for regulating what was at the time still a fledgling industry:

Bringing non-state violence under control was one of the achievements of the last two centuries. To allow it again to become a major feature of the international scene would have profound consequences. Although there is little risk of a return to the circumstances of the 17^th and 18^th centuries when privateers were hard to distinguish from pirates, and Corporations commanded armies that could threaten states, it would be foolish to ignore the lessons of the past. Were private force to become widespread there would be risks of misunderstanding, exploitation and conflict. It would be safer to bring PMCs and PSCs within a framework of regulation while they are a comparatively minor phenomenon.

In outlining the options for regulation, the Green Paper clearly favoured a system of government licencing over a system of self-regulation based on a voluntary code of conduct. The Montreux Document (on Pertinent International Legal Obligations and Good Practices for States Related to Operations of Private Military and Security Companies During Armed Conflict) of 2008, a non-binding document agreed to by a number of countries (mainly those with a PMSC industry such as the UK or those that were hoisting significant number of contractors such as Iraq), also expressed a preference for a licensing system. The Montreux Document identifies exiting legal obligations incumbent upon states in their relationships with PMSCs when either acting as the host state, home state (state of registration) or contracting state, but it did not take the form of a binding treaty. It also recommends good practices for governments to adopt when engaging with PMSCs, but there is no supervision or enforcement of any aspect of the Document.

Given this support, the creation of a system of licensing seemed likely, particularly as such a regime had been introduced for UK domestic private security operators in the 2001 Private Security Industry Act, after a period of ineffective self-regulation. Indeed, when considering the Green Paper later in 2002 the Foreign Affairs Committee stated that, while self-regulation would establish better standards of PMSC conduct, it would not by itself prevent rogue or disreputable UK companies from acting against or, indeed, damaging UK interests or policies. Therefore, the Committee recommended a mixed system of general and specific licences.

However, the UK’s experience with contractors during its involvement in conflicts in Afghanistan from 2001 and Iraq from 2003 had significant effects. By the time the government came to reconsider the matter in 2009, a much more powerful PMSC industry in terms of reach, capability and lobbying influence, combined with a new climate of austerity following the financial crisis beginning in 2008, to push  the Conservative-led government rapidly towards the least burdensome, least interventionist and, moreover, least expensive option of self-regulation.

Despite further consultations revealing concern with a system of self-regulation, when the government re-engaged with the issue of regulation, it proceeded to create a system in which government backing for a national system of self-regulation was keyed into voluntary international codes. Concerning the latter, the UK government has been a keen supporter of the Montreux Document 2008, which provides a non-binding framework for states, as well as the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Providers of 2010. The latter contains a set of standards for security companies to respect human rights and humanitarian law, and which provides for a non-binding international form of self-regulation for the companies themselves. On the other hand, the UK has opposed any form of binding treaty requiring states to legislate for the regulation of PMSCs as proposed by the UN Working Group on Mercenaries, an item that has been on the agenda of the UN’s Human Rights Council since 2010.

Flaws in Self-Regulation

Ignoring the Rogue Traders

In 2009 the FCO optimistically estimated that in time 90% of PMSCs would opt-in to a system of voluntary self-regulation. Even if this happened, it would still leave 10% of unregulated rogue companies, potentially trading on their willingness to engage in shady operations rather than on their corporate social responsibility. A voluntary system may raise standards in the industry as a whole but it ignores the central point of regulating the industry: to deter and punish those most likely to commit abuses.

Nemo Judex in Causa Sua (no-one should be a judge in his own cause)

Self-regulation in its pure form means that the industry is essentially being given the task of acting as a judge in its own cause. This basic injustice has been partly addressed in the regime within the UK by creating a national system of monitoring, inspection and enforcement through SCEG, separated from the industry association (ADS). This has also been duplicated at the international level, with PMSC membership of the International Code of Conduct being separate from the system of monitoring and enforcement in the hands of the ICoCA. At national level, the SCEG consists of a mixture of PMSCs, with some legal and insurance industry membership, as well as representatives from the FCO and the Department of Transport. At the international level, the ICoCA comprises states (Australia, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, US), civil society and industry representatives, with equal representation of the three pillars in the Board of Directors. Clearly it is not solely a case of the industry judging the actions of its members, but a truly independent body would not include the industry at all.

Under the voluntary system put in place in the UK, the auditors comprise individuals from bodies accredited by the UK Accreditation Service (UKAS) as being able to measure the management, performance and activities of PMSCs against national (PSC1 US National Standard, 2012), and international standards (ISO 18788/28007, 2015), and these individuals and bodies are presumably approved because they are independent of PMSCs.

Limited Sanctions for Non-Compliance

Sanctions are limited, the main one comprising exclusion of a non-compliant PMSC, a sanction that ultimately does not stop the company in question from trading, as shown by the US experience of transition from ostracised ‘Blackwater’ (responsible for the 2007 Nisour Square lethal shooting of 17 civilians in Iraq), to the renamed ‘Xe Services’ in 2009, and then to ’Acedemi’ in 2011.

Applicable Standards?

The question of what standards are to be applied is not as straightforward as the documents (International Code of Conduct, PSC and ISO standards) suggest; that this system will be upholding human rights, humanitarian law and other applicable principles of international law. Given that these laws are not directly applicable to PMSCs, indeed most are designed to cover states not business actors, there is a certain amount of picking and choosing, adapting and interpreting, of standards. This is found at the international level, where the International Code of Conduct (ICoCA) covers some human rights but not others; and in the adoption of PSC1 (2012) as the national standard and ISO 18788/28007 (2015) as the international standards. These standards are not formulated in inter-governmental fora where the development and application of international norms normally take place. PSC1 was formulated by ASIS (an organisation for security professionals), and approved by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI); while ISO 18788/28007 was produced within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a non-governmental international organisation consisting of national standard-setting bodies.

Failure to Close the Accountability Gap

The UK government shows limited willingness to engage with its positive responsibilities under international law to ensure that private actors within its jurisdiction respect relevant national and international laws in foreign countries in which they operate. Arguably, the government’s presence on both the SCEG at national level and the ICoCA at the international level may address this deficiency, but its critical scrutiny of the practices of PMSCs in these fora is difficult to ascertain or gauge. In any case, it is certainly not as robust as a system of licencing that would require all UK-registered PMSCs to demonstrate to the licensing authorities due diligence in vetting, training, deploying and controlling personnel in conflict zones and other fragile situations. This must be backed up by a system of penalties and fines on companies and their directors for breach of the licence conditions and, ultimately, punishment for individual contractors committing serious crimes over which the UK authorities can, despite government protestations to the contrary, exercise criminal jurisdiction.

The rapid implementation of soft voluntary standards that might have been expected does not appear to have materialised as the number of certified UK registered companies is low (at just over 40 land and maritime PMSCs according to the SCEG website). This means that a majority of UK-registered companies remain unregulated. Given that such companies often operate in unregulated spaces in other countries, there remains a major accountability gap. In these circumstances it is very difficult to see how the government’s backing for a system of voluntary self-regulation for UK-registered PMSCs, no matter how sophisticated the system appears to be, has worked to close this gap.

Nigel D. White is Professor of Public International Law at University of Nottingham.

Author’s Note: This post is based on a journal article which first appeared in International Peacekeeping in 2016.

During the Cold War, Denmark was a staunch supporter of UN peacekeeping. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, Denmark gradually turned its back on peacekeeping. More recently, Denmark has given priority to NATO- and US-led operations. This shift was driven by a number of interweaving factors. 

In its 2015 input to the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) chaired by Ramos-Horta, Denmark characterized itself as ‘a dedicated and engaged contributor to United Nations (UN) Peace Operations’. It also stated that ‘UN peace operation activities remain a central pillar of Denmark’s foreign and security policy’, and that Denmark since 1948 has provided more than 84,000 soldiers and staff members to more than 30 UN peacekeeping operations. The input to HIPPO did not mention that since 2001 Denmark has primarily made symbolic contributions of some 40-60 military observers, staff officers and advisors to UN operations, or that Denmark since 1995 has prioritized military operations led by other actors, notably the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United States (US).

Two drivers have shaped Denmark’s evolving support for UN-led blue helmet peace operations since the beginning: a national interest in preserving Denmark’s security and welfare and an altruistic desire to do good. The mutually reinforcing interaction between interests and altruism meant that peacekeeping became internalized into Denmark’s foreign policy identity. As a result, a third driver materialized by the late 1950s: an identity-driven urge to contribute to peacekeeping because it was the ‘natural’ thing, which constituted a source of national pride and made Danish policy makers feel good.

When these three drivers “clicked” and reinforced one another, support for UN peace operations was strong and internalized as a major component of Danish foreign policy. When they stopped doing that, support for UN peacekeeping fell dramatically. This is the situation now, and it seems unlikely to change in the near future.

Denmark’s history of peacekeeping during and after the Cold War

Denmark began supporting UN peacekeeping during the Cold War because it allowed Danish decision makers to promote their interests and values at the same time. UN peacekeeping was regarded as good for national security because it lowered international tension and provided a way of supporting Denmark’s key NATO allies without angering the Soviet Union. UN peacekeeping was also good for Danish values as it supported Denmark’s vison of a rule-based international society characterized by peaceful conflict resolution. The successful peacekeeping operation launched in 1956 in order to defuse the Suez crisis strengthened Denmark’s support for peacekeeping.

The praise earned for the participation in this mission made Danish decision-makers realize that UN peacekeeping also provided an effective way of enhancing Denmark’s international prestige and influence. By the late 1950s peacekeeping had been internalized as part of Denmark’s foreign policy identity. Danish governments now portrayed UN peacekeeping as something ‘natural’ that Denmark should be proud to support. In 1964, Danish Foreign Minister Per Haekkerup even stated that it was a ‘duty’ for small nations like Denmark to support UN peacekeeping. This was not mere rhetoric. A feeling that one could not turn down a UN request thus influenced the 1964-decision to provide 1,000 personnel for a new UN peacekeeping operation on Cyprus.

This mutually reinforcing interaction between interests, values and identity meant that Danish support for UN peacekeeping operations became routine. The absence of operational setbacks and casualties allowed this routine to produce a steady supply of Danish peacekeepers for the remainder of the Cold War. 34,100 Danish soldiers served on UN operations in the 1948-1989 period. Denmark had an average of 811 soldiers continuously deployed abroad and contributed eight percent of the total number of UN peacekeepers (419,100) during this period, making it one of the largest UN troop contributors per capita.

The operational difficulties that the UN encountered in the Balkans in the early 1990s broke this routine. They served as an external shock undermining Denmark’s positive perception of UN peace operations. NATO’s successful bombing campaign and subsequent takeover of the UN operation in Bosnia in 1995 made the UN less attractive from an interest perspective. Denmark had always used UN peacekeeping as a way supporting its great power allies in NATO, and when they chose to abandon the UN in favour of NATO, Denmark followed suit.

The strategic failure of the UN operation in Bosnia, culminating in the Srebrenica massacre, also gave rise to the perception in Denmark that UN peacekeeping was ill-suited for ‘doing good’ in the post-Cold War era. The tactical success enjoyed by the Danish tank squadron in Bosnia in 1994 reinforced this perception. One engagement (Operation Hooligan Buster) made international headlines. On 29 April 1994, the Danish tanks successfully fought their way out of a Serb ambush firing their 105 mm canons 72 times. They also blew up an ammunitions depot killing an estimated 150 Serb soldiers. This skirmish became a watershed. Denmark’s great power allies showered Denmark with praise, and the Danish use of tanks influenced NATO’s and UN approaches to ‘robust peacekeeping’. The charismatic Danish tank commander, Lars R. Møller, became a national hero, and Danish decision makers became convinced that peacekeeping was best conducted with combat capable units; a perception subsequently reinforced by NATO’s successful enforcement missions in the Balkans.

Operation Hooligan Buster set in motion a process that in the course of the next two decades transformed Denmark’s foreign policy identity. The Danish peacekeeper, hailed for his ability to keep the peace without firing his weapon, was replaced by a new hero: the Danish warrior who made a difference on the battlefield. After Operation Hooligan Buster Danish politicians displayed far greater willingness to use force beyond self-defence. Denmark made large army contributions to NATO’s enforcement operations in the Balkans, advocated military invention in Albania as OSCE chairman in 1997, and allowed Danish fighter aircraft to conduct strike missions during NATO’s Kosovo War in 1999. Public support for the Kosovo war was higher in Denmark than anywhere else, and a large majority favoured contributing to a land war in case the air campaign failed. The strong public support for the war took Danish decision makers by surprise. Danish Minister of Defence Hans Haekkerup interpreted it as ‘a breakthrough in the history of Denmark’ and as proof that the Danish foreign policy identity had changed.

Denmark and the War on Terror

The US-led war on terror launched in response to the September 11 attacks in 2001 reinforced the Danish preference for NATO- and US-led operations and the emerging warrior identity. Denmark provided forces for the US-led wars against the Taleban and Iraq as well as the subsequent stabilization missions. The lion’s share of the approximately 20,000 Danish military personnel serving on international missions in the decade following 9/11 served in these two missions.

The Danish participation in the NATO and US missions in Afghanistan proved very costly. Denmark lost more soldiers in Afghanistan (43) than on all other international missions conducted by the Danish armed forces since World War Two, and a 20 billion DDK price tag (2001-2017) made it the most expensive international operation ever conducted by Denmark.

Surprisingly, the high costs and the less than satisfactory outcome of the Afghanistan war did not undermine domestic support for the mission. By 2011 when all 43 fatalities had occurred and it was clear that the mission would not succeed, 46% of the Danish population and a large majority in parliament continued to support it.

The predominant understandings of Danish interests, altruism and foreign policy identity explain why. The government narrative portrayed the war as being in Denmark’s interest because it supported the United States and NATO and reduced the risk of terror attacks on Danish soil. The narrative also emphasized that the operation enhanced Denmark’s standing and influence in NATO and in Washington. The mission was portrayed as the right thing to do in altruistic terms, because it helped the Afghan people and in particular the Afghan women. Finally, the war reinforced the warrior ethos in the armed forces and their martial prowess, highlighted in a series of bestselling books, was a source of considerable national pride.

Conclusion

The current high level of Danish support for NATO- and US-led operations is driven by a mutually reinforcing combination of interest, altruism and identity that resembles the one that underpinned Denmark’s strong support for UN peace operations during the Cold War. An interest in supporting Denmark’s great power allies was an important driver then and now. A major Danish return to UN peace operations NATO has enhanced its military presence in Eastern Europe significantly since then, and it is currently asking Denmark to make a greater army commitment to deter Russia in Eastern Europe than it ever made in Afghanistan. This makes it impossible for Denmark to contribute to UN-led operations with anything but small personnel contributions officers and critical enables. In sum, all indications are that Denmark’s military support for UN peacekeeping will remain at the low level that has characterized it since 2001.

Dr. Peter Viggo Jakobsen is an Associate Professor at the Royal Danish Defence College and a Professor (part-time) at the Center for War Studies at University of Southern Denmark. His is the author of Nordic Approaches to Peace Operations: A New Model in the Making? (London and New York: Routledge, 2009) and several other publications on (UN) peace and stabilization operations.

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

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

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

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

The past and future of liberal democracy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paris and domestic politics

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

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

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

Contagion: from a domestic politics issue to an international problem

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

The misuse of gacaca

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

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

According to another Hutu participant, Huey:

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

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

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

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

Coercion within gacaca

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

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

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

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

Genocide ideology, a tool for vengeance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Despite suffering major losses of territory and personnel, Islamic State (ISIS) has continued to produce propaganda. Understanding the strategic role of propaganda in the group’s campaign strategy offers telling insights into the ISIS phenomenon and what it may do next.

As Islamic State (ISIS) continues to hemorrhage personnel, resources and territory across Syria and Iraq – the heartlands of its so-called ‘Caliphate’ – the world is witnessing another bloody chapter in the group’s ‘boom-bust’ history. ISIS’s propaganda machine has not been immune from this destruction with recent airstrikes killing two crucial figures: the charismatic spokesman Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani on 30 August and the self-declared Minister of Information Wa’il Al-Fayad on 7 September. Nevertheless, ISIS has continued to churn out messaging designed to lure friends and foes alike into exaggerating its waning strengths while deflecting from its mounting losses.

Just this month, ISIS released a new online magazine called Rumiyah (Rome) – a mix of rehashed content from its Arabic newsletter Al-Naba and segments drawn from Dabiq such as ‘Among the believers are men’ which eulogizes Western foreign fighters. Meanwhile, ISIS videos continue to capture global media attention. In the last fortnight, videos commemorating Eid Al-Adha were released by several ISIS wilayats, including Wilayat al-Khayr’s ‘The making of illusion’ showing captives being slaughtered like animals, while another video (‘But if you return, we will return’) featured child executioners. Whether ISIS’s propaganda efforts are ramping up or down in response to its losses, the central role of propaganda in ISIS’s politico-military campaign strategy will remain unchanged even as messaging themes shift with its fortunes. Understanding the strategic role of propaganda in ISIS’s campaign strategy and how messaging trends reflect this relationship offers telling insights into the ISIS phenomenon and what it may do next.

ISIS’s war of meaning and control

ISIS are the great strategic plagiarists of modern asymmetric warfare. As Dr Craig Whiteside’s excellent analysis highlights (also here), whatever is unique about the ISIS phenomenon is significantly outweighed by what it has cannibalized (knowingly or unknowingly) from insurgency/revolutionary war doctrinaires like Mao Tse-Tung, Che Guevara or Abu Musab Al-Suri. Like other modern insurgencies, ISIS’s war is characterized by two interrelated contests: a ‘battle of control’ between opposing politico-military apparatuses (e.g. ISIS versus the Iraqi government) and a ‘battle of meaning’ for the ‘hearts and minds’ of local, regional and even transnational populations. ISIS fights the former battle with a spectrum of politico-military actions that results in the group looking remarkably state-like in its shrinking areas of dominance (i.e. bureaucratized governance, conventional military capabilities), more like a guerrilla warfare movement in contested areas (i.e. informal governance functions, asymmetric warfare) and a terrorist network on the fringes of its regional and global reach (i.e. terrorist violence, no governance initiatives). The ‘battle of meaning’ occurs largely in the ‘information theatre’ and it is a contest for not only the dominant narrative (i.e. how the conflict is described), but to shape the perceptions and polarize the support of audiences (i.e. how the conflict is understood and judged).

While it may be popular to point to ISIS’s use of social media and flashy production to explain the allure of its propaganda, far more important is how ISIS uses a diversity of messages to leverage powerful psychosocial forces and strategic factors that are pertinent to its audiences. Indeed, ISIS propaganda is characterized by two broad categories of messaging: rational-choice appeals (highlighting how ISIS are pragmatically addressing supporter needs via politico-military actions) and identity-choice appeals (interplaying identity, solution and crisis to influence how the conflict and its actors are perceived). Of course, ISIS’s battles of meaning and control are deeply interrelated and strategic success is often reliant upon how seamlessly both can be intertwined. As Robert Taber argues in War of the Flea: ‘The guerrilla fighter is primarily a propagandist, an agitator, a disseminator of the revolutionary idea, who uses the struggle itself – the actual physical conflict – as an instrument of agitation.’

Success in modern small wars is largely dependent on winning popular ‘support’. But support operates on a spectrum where, at one end, there is ‘behavioral’ support (compliance with a group’s politico-military system) while, on the other, is a deeper ‘attitudinal’ or ‘perceptual’ support (adherence to a group’s agenda). Research has shown that armed groups are not necessarily strongest where support is highest but rather support tends to be highest in places where armed groups are strongest. This points to a dominance of ‘behavioral’ support under such circumstances. Having conducted dozens of field interviews as part of my research with civilians, migrants and activists, as well as former and current fighters, from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya, almost all described the civilian population as largely apolitical whose ‘support’ tended to follow whoever was in control. But another trend emerged: interviewees regularly cited the influence of what could be described as ‘decisive minorities’ who had a disproportionate influence – perhaps as a consequence of their social status, access to resources, social connectedness or zeal for the ‘cause’ (i.e. deep attitudinal/perceptual support) – on how the broader population assigned their support.

This dynamic was particularly prominent amongst those who had lived in or near ISIS-controlled territories. ISIS wanted the behavioral support (acquiescence) of local populations but knew that it would be important to ‘win’  and mobilise their ‘decisive minorities’ while killing those ‘decisive minorities’ that were committed to its opponents (ISIS often describes the latter as ‘harvesting’). ISIS messages to potential foreign fighters and ‘lone wolf’ terrorists globally fundamentally appeals to ‘decisive minorities’. After all, ISIS are broadly despised by Muslim populations, as evidenced by polling, and so their propaganda is often designed to drive wedges between not just friends and enemies but tacit and active supporters. While every violent non-state political group appeals to ‘decisive minorities’ to varying degrees, it seems particularly important in ISIS strategies. Trends in ISIS propaganda offer useful insights into these dynamics.

The ISIS sirens

While ISIS messaging regularly draws upon a diverse range of themes and issues, what is given priority and greater emphasis will inevitably depend on strategic calculations and circumstances. In the year after ISIS captured Mosul in mid-2014, certain themes were more pronounced than others in its propaganda. For example, ISIS tended to frame its politico-military successes as manifestations of divine-approval and their enemies’ defeats as proof of divine punishment. A central feature of this messaging was ISIS’s regular promotion of how it was pragmatically addressing the needs of populations under its control thanks to its politico-military prowess and the ineptitude of its opponents: “In the midst of a raging war with multiple fronts and numerous enemies, life goes on in the Islamic State. The soldiers of Allah do not liberate a village, town or city, only to abandon its residents and ignore their needs.” Particularly prominent during this period were communiques showing the variety of ISIS’s bureaucratized governance initiatives and the successes of its hybrid military operations. To local audiences, ISIS promised security, stability and livelihoods. To regional and transnational audiences, ISIS messaging wove together rational- and identity-choice appeals to lure supporters to its ‘caliphate’ or, as a secondary option, to pledge allegiance to ISIS before committing acts of terrorism ‘at home’.

Since late-2015, however, the themes of ISIS messaging have shifted in ways that may seem subtle but telling. As victories and signs of strength dwindle, a noticeable trend in ISIS messaging, particularly to transnational audiences, has been a greater prioritization of identity- over rational-choice appeals (e.g. see the latest issue of its English-language magazine Dabiq). For instance, an increasingly prominent theme in recent ISIS messaging is that human and material losses are ultimately fleeting and prophesied so should not deter ‘true believers’. Where victory was once framed as proof of God’s blessing, ISIS narratives focus increasingly on the value and honor of the struggle. As al-Adnani declared earlier this year: “And victory is that we live in the might of our religion or die upon it. It is the same, whether Allah blesses us with consolidation or we move into the bare, open desert, displaced and pursued.” Where ISIS once placed primacy on foreigners traveling to support its ‘Caliphate’, it now tends to stress ‘lone wolf’ terrorism.

Sure, ISIS continues to promote how it addresses the needs of its ‘citizens’, especially in ‘offline’ messages for local audiences, but increasing emphasis is being placed on influencing and mobilizing. A powerful strategy ISIS continues to use is the depiction of extreme violence in its propaganda. Such messaging not only helps to coerce complicity from local populations and intimidate rivals, but inevitably works to polarize ‘true believers’ from all others. Reciprocity is a dominant theme in this messaging. Whether it is a Jordanian pilot being burned alive, a captured soldier being run-over by a tank or spies being executed like sheep or by children, the gruesome execution scene is preceded by emotive narratives, jurisprudential justifications and graphic imagery that frames the killing as a reciprocal act, performed by the victim (or their representative) in response to the aggressor’s violence. The calmness on the face of ISIS executioners helps symbolically reinforce these points.

Conclusion

The final article in Rumiyah was titled ‘The Kafir’s blood is halal for you, so shed it’ and in the following fortnight ISIS released some of its most graphic messaging. Look beyond the gore, though, and this messaging is in fact quite sophisticated. This is not for the masses. This is for the ‘true believers’. It has and will continue to be partnered by narratives condemning ‘moderate’ Muslim clerics as sell-outs, chastising Western powers for their ‘brutality’ against Muslims and calling for supporters to mobilise. As the antecedents to ISIS demonstrated almost a decade ago, ISIS understands that as areas of control shrink its survival is dependent on using propaganda synchronized with whatever politico-military capabilities remain to keep their ‘decisive minorities’ committed, motivated and ready to mobilise. ISIS may not be able to live up to its slogan of ‘remaining and expanding’ but it understands that so long as it can ‘remain’ the potential to ‘expand’ always exists.

Haroro J. Ingram is a research fellow with the Australian National University and a research associate with the International Centre for Counter-terrorism – The Hague (ICCT). His Australian Research Council funded project analyses the role of propaganda in the campaign strategies of violent non-state actors with Daesh and the Afghan Taliban as major case studies. Ingram is also a visiting researcher with the Naval Postgraduate School’s Defense Analysis Department. He can be followed on Twitter @haroro_ingram.

 

Generally, the Arctic has elicited only minor attention outside the countries whose borders or territories fall within the loosely-defined region. But that is changing rapidly. As Kuupik Kleist, the former Prime Minister of Greenland, put it,

 “The Arctic used to be the last frontier. Now it seems we are at the center of the world.”

While rapidly deteriorating environmental security in the region poses a grave threat to many regions of the world, the focus on militarized control of the area masks the very real need to mitigate further damage to the climate and increase our adaptive capacities to the inevitable climatic changes that will come in the 21st century.

Realpolitik or Environmental Security?

Indeed, much has been made lately about the ongoing and profound changes that are reshaping the Arctic region. There is no shortage of reports that detail the ways that climate change is forcing the region’s physical, social, and political environments into flux. Arctic sea ice is melting at an increasingly rapid rate, with the very real possibility that sometime between 2020-2050, the Arctic will soon experience its first (and undoubtedly not its last) sea ice-free summer. The effects of warming temperatures are likely to be dramatic: it will degrade habitats for vulnerable species, including polar bears and seals, and will accelerate and compound the effects of climate change, like volatile weather patterns and rising sea levels. A recent article in the journal Nature concluded that the long-term economic costs from a warming Arctic could reach $60 trillion, almost equal to the entire economic value of the world economy in 2012.

But in the face of these worrying trends, discussion has instead focused on the economic opportunities offered by the ‘opening up’ of the Arctic, including the creation of new shipping routes and increasing the accessibility of fossil fuel reserves. The area north of the Arctic Circle is said to contain about 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas and 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil. The Governance of newly opened shipping lanes like the Northwest Passage will remain a contentious political question. While the region has thus far suffered from general neglect and inattention, it is unrealistic to expect that to continue in the future.

Indeed, it is already becoming clear that the Arctic is the site of ongoing militarization. Recent security maneuvers have increased state control over the farthest reaches of state territory. In 2007, Russia planted its flag underneath the North Pole and resumed strategic bomber patrols over the area, echoing  its Cold War past. Canada’s official Arctic Foreign Policy proclaims “the first and most important pillar towards recognizing the potential of Canada’s Arctic is the exercise of our sovereignty over the far north.” Border disputes in the Arctic have led to strained relations for decades between Canada and Denmark as well as between Russia and Norway. Both cases have been peacefully resolved in the last few years. Yet, sovereignty and security have both been used to justify the proliferation of military ice-breakers, patrol ships, the creation of new deep water ports, and the deployment of military personnel including the Northern Rangers in Canada and the Danish Arctic command (which are both relatively small in terms of active personnel). Joint military operations conducted by Arctic countries (excluding Russia) such as Operation Cold Response and Operation Nanook have also contributed to the militarization of the Arctic.

It is worthwhile then to examine how sustainable forms of security are useful in the Artic context. What is needed principally is an increased awareness of the integrated connections between the natural environment and security. Large-scale changes to the natural environment are security threats.  Whether through an increase in extreme weather events causing enormous health and economic costs; rising sea levels leading to coastal flooding and climate-induced migration; or desertification, which devastates crop production, the effects of environmental change are severe. The task then in the Arctic is to combat the tendency to view environmental degradation as an opportunity for national gain, which will do little to counter-act the severe global effects. Such conventional, strategic responses inevitably lead only to further suspicion, distrust, and discord. The Arctic is one of the clearest manifestations of this tendency.

The Arctic will be without question a region of high strategic importance in the 21st century. Unfortunately, countries are likely to view the Arctic with an eye to using the region to bolster domestic support for increased militarization, surveillance, and sovereign control over vast, distant, territorial ‘frontiers’.  All told, Arctic security remains wedded to traditional, state-centric military threats despite the fact that the threat of outright conflict is as remote as the farthest reaches of the Arctic region itself. These approaches may be predictable, but they will contribute little to alleviating the complex, interrelated, and underlying drivers of insecurity in the Arctic region.

Demilitarizing the Arctic

So is the goal then to “demilitarize” the Arctic? Would the diverse sets of international issues arising from changes in the Arctic be better positioned in political terms, away from the exceptional demands that military thinking requires? Perhaps strengthening political institutions like the Arctic Council can alleviate the Arctic “rush” and ensure a lawful forum for state and indigenous negotiations in the Arctic. Formed in 1996, the Arctic Council has been the primary diplomatic forum used to facilitate cooperation, discussion, and negotiation. It was formed by eight Arctic countries (Canada, Denmark [Greenland], Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States) and includes six Arctic indigenous organizations and other Arctic inhabitants. Recently, the Council accepted six new non-Arctic states as non-voting Observer states, joining six others already granted observer status. The new inclusions, China, India, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, may appear at first glance to be curious admissions. Certainly they represent important economic and military powers but most exist far from region itself. However, after initial reticence from members like Canada, the Council accepted their inclusion on the basis of strengthening the Council’s legitimacy by undercutting any emerging alternative organizations, like the Arctic Circle Forum from usurping its authority.

We should celebrate the decision by Council members to include new observer states: it allows these states to increase their awareness of Arctic issues and vulnerabilities, it opens up new avenues for cooperation and confidence-building measures, and it rightly spreads the responsibility for protecting the Arctic across the world. But while the Arctic Council remains an enduring and hopeful sign for managing political relations, the Council alone should not be expected to transform the underlying logic that continuously renders environmental security in strategic terms, obscuring the practices which have led to Arctic insecurity in the 21st century.

The driver of Arctic insecurity is not simply the continued militarization or the politicization of the region by its encircling states. The reality is much more complex and multifaceted. In effect, by continuously focusing on security in these strategic terms, we can’t see the forest for the trees. The Arctic “great game” is not simply a metaphor we might use to romanticize geopolitical maneuvers; it is an expression of the profound material environmental shifts that are occurring rapidly and are a result of anthropogenic drivers related to modern carbon-based societies. The continual free-fall in terms of Arctic ice levels and the fact that the region has been warming twice as fast as lower latitudes is likely to have far more important, long-lastingand damaging global effects than a hypothetical, always-over-the-horizon conflict between states competing to protect their localized interests. That is a popular story that obscures the much more difficult and insidious problems related to diagnosing and combatting climate change.

The fact that most states view the opening up of new Arctic sea lanes as a means to exploit vast and newly accessible energy sources reflects long-dominant understandings of both security and the environment. If our understanding of both Arctic security and the Arctic environment continues to be reduced to the international scramble for untapped resources and for newly opened “shipping lanes” (or melted sea ice, if you will), it is unlikely that the hugely alarming and damaging environmental effects of climate change will ever be truly overcome.

It is essential then that environmental security in the Arctic is recast away from traditional and dominant security practices of resource development, national sovereignty promotion, and increased surveillance. While these practices will remain in the future, we still should encourage a much more profound rethink that places greater value not simply on increasing cooperative intergrovernmental forums (though these are important), but on greater collaboration with indigenous populations, on studying the global environmental interconnections between the Arctic and other regions, and on aggressively combatting climate change. Adaptation to the inevitable changes occurring in the region will of course require coordination and strategic planning, and the potential for conflict will be ever-present. But an overreliance on familiar narratives of climate change-induced conflict obscures the much more complex drivers of Arctic insecurity, namely our destructive relationship with the environment and its connection to conventional, strategic security logic.

Cameron Harrington is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at King’s University College and Brescia University College, at Western University (Canada), where he teaches in the areas of environmental politics and international relations. His Ph.D thesis, (pending completion September 2013) builds a framework to combat water insecurity in the 21st century by focusing on the ethics of security.

Cameron tweets via @camharrington and can be reached at [email protected] 

Image source: lafrancevi (HMCS CORNER BROOK on arctic patrol during Operation Nanook)

Jenny Nielsen and Nathalie Osztaskina

With geopolitics and deterrence doctrines back in the ascendant, the prospects for multilateral nuclear disarmament look worse than for a generation; many options are on the table but whether states will engage constructively and pursue any of these proposals remains an open question.

Following the failure of the states parties to the NPT to adopt a consensus Final Document at the 2015 RevCon due to significant divisions on key issues, the voting and statements at the UN General Assembly First Committee (which deals with disarmament and threats to peace) highlighted the ‘even stronger polarisation and hardening of positions’ between the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) and NWS given the latter’s refusal to make meaningful progress on their disarmament obligations.

As recently heard at the 2015 EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Conference, ‘the First Committee has confirmed the polarisation and also the deep mistrust that is there between nuclear-weapon states and a considerable part of the non-nuclear weapon states’. To aggravate this, no state or group of states seemed to be capable of playing ‘a bridge-building role’. As a result, the world was left without a consensus on how to begin disentangling the tight knot of nuclear politics so that NWS could move towards their NPT commitment to disarmament.

The re-emergence of nuclear deterrence

Following Moscow’s aggressive actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, the salience of nuclear weapons and the role of nuclear deterrence in security and defence doctrines is re-emerging in European political discussions, particularly regarding NATO’s posture.

At the 2015 EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Conference, Russian analyst Alexei Arbatov stressed the regrettable paradox that despite the lower number of nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War, ‘the probability of their use is now higher’. Chillingly, Arbatov added ‘it is not only higher than 25 years ago, it is probably higher than at any time since the early 1980s’.

Based on ‘the resurgence of state-based threats’, Professor Wyn Bowen argues that the UK’s recently published 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) has ‘brought deterrence back to the centre stage for the United Kingdom more than any other time since the end of the Cold War’.

At the same time, in the UK, the recently elected leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn — a long-standing opponent of nuclear weapons and vice president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) — has stated that he would not condone the use of nuclear weapons if he were elected prime minister. Corbyn’s Trident statements have clearly ruffled feathers amongst some in the military and political establishment, with a parliamentary ‘Main Gate’ decision on renewing the UK’s nuclear weapons system confirmed for 2016.

Despite Corbyn’s recent statements, elite debates have largely remained limited to discussions of whether the UK should build four new nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines in order to ensure continuous at sea deterrence (CASD).

Another key debate within NATO concerns how the alliance might re-articulate, refresh and clearly communicate its nuclear posture to reflect the current geo-strategic environment. NATO’s former Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Weapons of Mass Destruction Policy and Director for Nuclear Policy, Guy Roberts, recently argued that ‘to be fully credible, NATO’s nuclear posture and policy needs to be firmly articulated and communicated to Russia and other would-be adversaries’.

Furthermore, it was recently argued at the 2015 EU Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Conference that ‘we no longer have a debate about the potential withdrawal of’ the 160-200 theatre nuclear weapons (TNW) still in Europe. The debate instead now focuses on the role of nuclear deterrence in the broader defence posture of the NATO alliance. Guy Roberts argues that ‘if Russia continues to use nuclear threats and intimidation tactics, then the West will need to plan deterrence, response, and escalation control options that are credible and particularly tailored to the mindset of the Russian leadership. Otherwise, Russia may see its own rhetoric as validated and NATO as weak’.

Possible ways forward

So, what are possible ways forward vis-à-vis multilateral nuclear disarmament goals as mandated by the NPT in the current security environment? Given the re-ascendance of perceptions of imminent state-based security threats, how can we move from increasing frustrations among NNWS and procrastination or obstruction by states towards constructive engagement? Technical, legal and normative proposals exist to further progress towards nuclear disarmament commitments by NPT member states.

Legal Approaches

Many NNWS that are supporting the evolving Humanitarian Initiative are pursuing a legal measure that would ultimately delegitimise nuclear weapons use and possession. Proposals exist for a group of NNWS to pursue such a legal ban on nuclear weapons even without the participation of the five NWS and the other four non-NPT nuclear possessors (Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea). Proponents argue that by concluding a legal ban, an international norm delegitimising nuclear weapons will be established, regardless of engagement by states with nuclear arsenals. The multilateral fora addressing nuclear disarmament have been subject to intense contention given the postures on this issue.

As voted for by 135 states at the 2015 session of the First Committee, the 2016 sessions of the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) could serve as a multilateral forum for discussions on nuclear disarmament. This is a measure specifically taken to avoid the polarisation that has characterised the Humanitarian Initiative and the refusal of the NWS to engage with it. Since 2009, the five NWS have been pursuing their own discussions on disarmament, known as the P5 Process, with limited results even before the NATO/Russia schisms over Ukraine. It is still unclear whether the five NWS and some NNWS under extended deterrence arrangements (i.e. the other 25 NATO members plus other allies) would participate in the OEWG.

In 2014, the Marshall Islands initiated a different legal approach towards demanding accountability vis-à-vis nuclear disarmament progress through the Global Zero lawsuits. Whether this approach through the lawsuits filed in the International Court of Justice will bring effective results – other than grabbing headlines and elevating the issue of nuclear disarmament on the international agenda – remains to be seen.

While a nuclear ban may be a key long-term normative and legal aim for some NNWS, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) (and its sophisticated International Monitoring System) is a realistic short-term objective. The CTBT is a developed and available legal and technical step towards nuclear disarmament. With the 20^th anniversary of the CTBT due in 2016, its entry into force should be a policy priority for states looking to bolster the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

In democracies at least, civil society and disarmament advocacy groups could funnel their energy and passion to promoting the establishment of the CTBT, educating the electorate on this issue and lobbying parliamentarians. With broad declaratory support voiced by NPT states parties (and Israel) for the CTBT, further ratifications of this treaty by states with some nuclear capabilities (called ‘Annex II’, including signatories China, Egypt, Iran, Israel and the US) would significantly strengthen the non-proliferation regime and states’ commitment to disarmament. Recent declaratory support by US officials (including Kerry, Gottemoeller and Moniz) and efforts to re-energise the CTBT debate in the United States are therefore a positive development.

Technical Approaches

Another approach to furthering progress vis-a-vis nuclear disarmament is the US-launched International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification (IPNDV). This initiative aims at addressing the technical challenges of disarmament verification, bridging NNWS’ and NWS’ understanding of the key measures and practical issues involved in verifying disarmament agreements. At a recent Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation event following the IPNDV’s November meeting in Oslo, US Assistant Secretary of State Frank Rose, provided an overview of the IPNDV. The Partnership made progress in establishing three Working Groups and authorised them to move forward with their important technical assignments. Rose believes that, by concentrating on technical tasks, the Partnership ‘can make real and important progress’ in achieving multilateral cooperation and towards realising disarmament goals.

Several other pragmatic, technical proposals exist in support of reducing nuclear salience in security doctrines, including de-alerting arsenals and reducing stocks of delivery systems. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, former Defense officials William J. Perry and Andy Weber argued against the implementation of a US nuclear-armed cruise missile system which could heighten the risk of miscalculation by an adversary.

From entrenched postures to dialogue

Given the current deep divides on how to move forward on nuclear disarmament goals amidst heightened strategic discontents, pragmatic and confidence-building measures, including dialogue and trust-building activities, which enjoy broad support by international actors should be pursued. Frustrations, ineffective criticism and outright obstructions need to be channelled into constructive efforts, at the core of which should be frank and respectful dialogue. This applies to both sides of the debate. Only through unpacking the core assumptions underlying the extreme postures and perspectives on the perceived value of nuclear weapons, can these social constructs begin to be appreciated.

Effective progress towards a secure world without nuclear weapons as the ultimate security guarantee and ultimate insurance policy remains a long and arduous journey that will require open minds, constructive dialogue and a mix of various technical and legal measures at the right time. The dislodging of deeply entrenched postures and institutional cultures won’t happen in the short-term, even if a normative and legal ban is attained by a group of NNWS.

Following the outcome of the 2015 NPT RevCon, the five NWS are faced with the challenge of soothing perceptions of their lack of commitment to their Article VI obligation to pursue “a treaty on general and complete [nuclear] disarmament”. Whether the current international tensions between Russia and the West will test the NWS’s solidarity within the NPT P5 Process, as well as bilateral arms control measures, remains to be seen.

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Jenny Nielsen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP). Previously she was a Visiting Scholar at the NATO Defence College (NDC), Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland (UQ), Research Analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and Programme Manager for the Defence & Security Programme at Wilton Park.

Nathalie Osztaskina is an Intern at the VCDNP. Her research focuses on disarmament efforts and the humanitarian movement, nuclear security, and promotion of CTBT’s entry into force. She worked previously at the Geostrategic Forecasting Corporation, doing research on the Russian-Ukrainian crisis.

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

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

Securing Syrian participation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Securing international commitment

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

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

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

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

Judicial pressure

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

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

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

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

In May 2014, Cameroon declared war on Boko Haram at the Paris Summit. Since then, Boko Haram has intensified its activities in the Far North Region of the country, making Cameroon the second most targeted country, in terms of attacks, by the sect. Hans De Marie Heungoup, Cameroon analyst at the International Crisis Group, provides insights on the rise of Boko Haram in Cameroon, the stakes for the country and efforts made by the Government to overcome the jihadist organisation.

How would you describe the rise of Boko Haram in Cameroon?

The penetration of Boko Haram in Cameroon took place gradually and in several phases. At each phase, the group has been able to change its modus operandi and adapt to the response of Cameroonian defence forces. While the first frontal attack of Boko Haram against Cameroon dates back to March 2014, the presence of members of the sect in the Far North was signaled as far back as 2009. In fact, in July 2009, after clashes between Boko Haram militants and security forces at Maiduguri in which more than 800 members of the sect were killed, including the founder Mohamed Yusuf, several members of Boko Haram found refuge in and/or transited through the Far North of Cameroon. But up until then, Cameroon had shown only little interest in the Islamist group.

Boko Haram’s interest in Cameroon grew between 2011 and 2013. This is an interesting phase because it is during this period that Boko Haram started spreading its religious ideology, mainly in the Logone and Chari and Mayo Sava divisions of the Far North, recruiting Cameroonians as fighters and using this part of the territory as a rear base or safe haven. Specifically, from 2011, in addition to seeking refuge on Cameroonian territory after attacks in Nigeria, members of Boko Haram regularly bought foodstuffs on different markets in the Far North. They also infiltrated former networks involved in trafficking, smuggling of motorbikes, adulterated fuel (zoua-zoua) and Tramol (drug) in the far north. It was also between 2011 and 2013 that they established most of their networks of arms caches on Cameroonian territory, with Kousseri serving as their logistics base. At the same time, like Chad, the Far North of Cameroon served as transit points for weapons bought by Boko Haram from Libya and Sudan. Fotokol in Cameroon has been one of the entry points of these arms into Nigeria.

While until 2012 the presence of Boko Haram in the Far North was rather passive and unknown to the public, despite a few targeted killings and abductions of Cameroonians in the Mayo Sava and Logone and Chari divisions, the practice of kidnapping of foreigners, adopted from February 2013, marks a shift by Boko Haram to a more active approach on Cameroonian soil. Between 2013 and 2014, the jihadist group abducted 22 foreigners (French, Chinese, Canadians and Italians) in Cameroon and released them each time after the payment of ransoms the total amount of which was at least $11 million and the release of about forty of its members detained in Cameroon. In 2014, Boko Haram moved from the active approach to a frontal approach with attacks on police stations and military bases. Thus, from March 2014 to March 2016, Boko Haram carried out more than 400 attacks and incursions in Cameroon, as well as about fifty suicide bombings that left 92 members of security forces dead, injured more than 120 others and  killed more than 1350 civilians.

Over the last two years, Boko Haram has been able to alternate between low-intensity attacks requiring only about ten fighters on motorbikes and conventional attacks that can mobilise more than 1000 fighters, as well as armored vehicles and mortars. Up to now, the abduction of the Vice-Prime Minister’s wife in July 2014, the thirty or so conventional attacks on Fotokol, Amchide and Kolofata in 2014 and 2015, as well as a series of suicide attacks that hit Maroua in July and August 2015 are the most spectacular actions carried out by Boko Haram in Cameroon.

After this peak period, Boko Haram, whose firepower was at its best between July 2014 and March 2015 when it also controlled more than 30 000 square kilometers of territory in northeast Nigeria, gradually declined from January 2015 following renewed engagement of the Nigerian army ahead of the presidential election, and then the coming to power of Muhammadu Buhari who overhauled the apparatus to fight Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Furthermore, the engagement of Chadian and Cameroonian troops, who inflicted huge losses and setbacks on Boko Haram, significantly weakened the group to the extent that, for the past nine months, it has not been able to carry out any conventional attacks in Cameroon and has lost most of the territories that it was holding in Nigeria (Cameroonian troops declare that they have killed more than 1500 members of Boko Haram in fights and arrested more than 900 suspected members. The Islamist group has also suffered huge logistical losses). Conscious of the new power balance, the jihadist organisation has resorted to purely asymmetric warfare, giving preference to suicide bombings and low-intensity attacks. From July 2015 to March 2016, Boko Haram carried out more than 50 suicide attacks in Cameroon, killing more than 230 people and wounding 500 others. This war has had an adverse effect on the economy of the Far North of Cameroon which was already the poorest and the region with the lowest school enrolment rate in the country before the war. It also led to an influx of 65 000 Nigerian refugees to Cameroon and caused the internal displacement of more than 93 000 people.

Why did Boko Haram start attacking Cameroon?

Boko Haram started launching a frontal attack on Cameroon because the Government strengthened the security apparatus in the Far North and dismantled about ten arms caches of the sect, as well as corridors for the transit of weapons. In fact, Cameroonian authorities were in an increasingly untenable situation at the beginning of 2014. Despite the head-in-the-sand policy adopted at the beginning which consisted of turning a blind eye on the presence of Boko Haram members in the Far North in the hope that they would not take on Cameroon, the sect continued to abduct foreigners and Cameroonians. Moreover, the Nigerian Government and press accused Cameroon of serving as a rear base and support for Boko Haram. Faced with such pressures and following the abduction of ten Chinese nationals at Waza, the only rational option for Cameroon was to declare war on the sect. Of course, once war was declared in May 2014, Boko Haram, in turn, increased its attacks in Cameroon to the extent that the country became the second major target of the Islamist group.

How effective are the Cameroonian government’s counterinsurgency efforts?

To combat Boko Haram, Cameroon has deployed two military operations, namely Operation EMERGENCE 4 made up of units of the regular army and Operation ALPHA comprising of units of the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), the elite corps of the Cameroonian army. In addition to these operations, we have the multinational joint task force whose first military sector is based in Mora and comprises of 2450 Cameroonian troops. On the whole, about 7000 men have been deployed by Cameroonian defence forces in both operations they and the regional joint task force have efficiently warded off conventional attacks by Boko Haram. However, Cameroonian troops find it more difficult to thwart suicide bombings.

Moreover, the weakness of Cameroon’s response against Boko Haram is the absence of a policy and measures to combat radicalization and a program for de-radicalization. Similarly, given that this region is the poorest and has the lowest school enrolment rate in the country, and that these factors have facilitated recruitment and indoctrination by Boko Haram, the Government’s response on the socioeconomic development level in the Far North is still fragmented, poor and ill-adapted to the stakes.

How do you analyse the state of the regional cooperation against Boko Haram?

To address the threat posed by Boko Haram, the states in the region (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin) under the aegis of the Lake Chad Basin Commission set up a multinational joint task force. The regional task force has been slow to put in place, but after several delays, the multinational task force was set up and only finally went operational later in 2015. However, the multinational force is witnessing financial and logistical difficulties that are affecting its full operationalisation and few donors have so far delivered on their pledges. As such, only the first sector of the force is operational as of now.

The other specificity of the regional response is that it has assumed more of a bilateral rather than multilateral orientation: like the military cooperation between Chad and Nigeria or Nigeria and Cameroon that, despite the bottlenecks recorded at the beginning, has improved significantly over recent months to the extent that the right of hot pursuit is now a reality. However, the major shortcoming of this regional response is that it focuses on military aspects. No serious brainstorming is done on development issues and the fight against radicalization at the regional level. In the same light, no reflection has been initiated on the ways to end this crisis now that Boko Haram is weakened.

What do you see as the future of Boko Haram in the region and what will this mean for counterinsurgency efforts?

The most likely scenario, in my view, is that Boko Haram will become a sort of criminal network with several small independent leaders. This network will comprise of fake religious leaders, real traffickers and criminals and remain in the area for several years until the states of the region resolve to adopt an African Marshall plan to boost trans-regional development: that will require investestment in social sectors such as schools, health centers; and development of high intensity labor force projects in the region to sustain fishing and agriculture around Lake Chad, to support the local industrial sector and build roads between and within provinces of the area. All these should be accompanied by a de-radicalization and counter radicalization project at the transregional level.

Hans De Marie Heungoup is Cameroon analyst at the International Crisis Group. He conducts field research and provides analysis on prevailing security, social, legal, governance and political issues; proposes policy initiatives for governmental, intergovernmental, political, and nongovernmental stakeholders to address and resolve sources of conflict; and prepares detailed reports and briefing papers setting out relevant research findings and policy recommendations.

Islamic State is one of the most revolutionary and dangerous political movements of modern times, but its attraction it often highly misunderstood. How and why does Islamic State appeal to some?

The Islamic State (also known as ISIS and Daesh), seemingly enjoyed a meteoric rise to power and infamy. ISIS was simultaneously an entity that was admired and/or feared, as this new force attracted vast media attention and reporting. It appeared an unstoppable force, sweeping aside armed forces opposing them in Iraq, Syria and Libya. During 2015, 15 vast tracts of territory in Iraq and Syria were taken. But there was another side to ISIS, some kind of attraction that lured a wide variety of people, including those from the West, to their cause. It was something that many found difficult to understand, let alone adequately explain. When trying to analyse this from the point of view of competing norms and values, between the West and ISIS it may superficially  seem to be an ‘obvious’ choice between the projection of freedom and liberty in the West, and oppression and violence by ISIS. However, the realities of this case, both actual and perceived, are more complex. Understanding the lure of ISIS requires some critical self-reflection from the West, and not only on what has been done by ISIS. How and why does ISIS appeal to some Western publics?

ISIS as a Brand

A brand is a psychological and emotional short-cut that creates immediate associations and expectations in an audience with a product, service, person or organisation. Although the brand aspect of ISIS is not totally ignored, it is still under rated by many. Viewing ISIS not simply as an illegal terrorist organisation that needs to be wiped out, or extreme nihilists, but as something more than its tangible form and deeds is necessary. Otherwise, the task of understanding and ultimately countering ISIS becomes more problematic as it ignores the intangible and emotionally significant aspects of ISIS’s appeal.

In a recent global brand rankings index, there was a great deal of surprise and shock expressed by those that had compiled the index. The 2016 rankings showed that ISIS was a more recognised brand than the Vatican! In 2016, ISIS stood at 107 on the Western Perception index, which was up 56 places from 2015. This does not mean that the ISIS brand has a better reputation than other country and organisation brands, but it does mean that it is more widely recognised. Even though ISIS is shown to be mostly hated in countries with large Muslim populations, there are sufficient potential recruits there and in the West to lure with different grievances or causes. This process will be made easier if a backlash against Muslims in general is precipitated as a result of various terror attacks that have been occurring in Belgium, France and other countries. Some other polls seem to contradict the mentioned trends and show that there is support for the terror group, which was shown in an Al Jazeera poll, where 80 per cent of respondents seemed to support them.

Signature atrocities and war crimes by ISIS are widely disseminated in video format by media outlets that are associated with or sympathetic to ISIS or by Western media covering a ‘newsworthy’ soundbite that is given in an infotainment format. The ISIS logo has been used widely to increase brand recognition and association. It is full of political and social (such as an equal and ideal society in the making) symbolism, which places and positions the organisation within an environment of competing jihadist organisations. Part of ISIS’ means to project itself in terms of its brand and reputation, to attract attention, supporters and recruits is through one of its means of public relations, the Internet-based magazine Dabiq. This magazine is produced in a very familiar glossy magazine format that is commonly found in the West, yet the content is extremist in nature, attempting to appeal to a variety or discontent or angry individuals and groups. Its message may not only appeal to Muslims, but those isolated and discontent individuals or groups that find the ISIS messages of revenge , building a new society or becoming socially significant appealing. This is the means of public outreach to turn its propaganda of the act into the propaganda of the word, to rhetorically publicise what it stands for and against, and to convert the idea of ISIS into some form of political movement.

ISIS as a Political Movement

Currently the nature of politics and political relationships is evolving. Traditionally politics has been measured by using a left-right political scale. This is a now somewhat obsolete way to accurately understand the events and processes that are currently taking place in global political environments. Politics in its current form is the result of a culmination of time periods of discontent and disconnection with mainstream political and public policy. Various people and groups have gradually become increasing discontent, frustrated and seek alternatives in political movements, something that breaks the status quo. Those political movements are able to offer something different and situate themselves as being opposed to the incumbent political elite that can resonate with some of those groups and individuals. This does not mean that ISIS is ‘simply’ a political movement (which is the basis for forming its political relationships), but it is also a revolutionary one that seeks to alter existing political, social and economic relationships through violent means. They are attracted to messages that offer an alternative, pledge resistance to the current political environment, and offer a new and inclusive society. These messages and visions of a promised utopia attract many, and these groups and individuals create what they believe to be mutually reinforcing and ‘beneficial’ political relationships with the likes of ISIS. The realisation of the ISIS Caliphate gave tangible visualisation to a previously intangible set of ideas and ideals. Underlying reasons can be found in human needs for self-actualisation, esteem and a sense of belonging that is explained in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Events and Processes that Influence the ISIS Appeal

There are a mixture of internal and external influences – processes and events – that combine to influence the level of appeal of ISIS to different individuals and groups. These form a mixture of push and pull factors that can make an organisation with such a brutal track record as ISIS appealing. In the sum of things, it is not only a matter of what ISIS says and does that makes it attractive to some individuals or groups, but also what the West says and does. This is an example of negative politics and political interaction at its worst. ISIS has made very effective use of the Internet and social media to spread its message and influence around the globe, rendering the old geopolitical constraints of time and space ineffective. This has enabled them to bypass the traditional gatekeepers of the information space. It has also enabled them to enact three significant geopolitical shifts: 1) from states to individuals/organisations; 2) real world to virtual world mobilisation and power; 3) old media to new media.

In the West

Politics and policy in the West has had profound, and often negative, effects on the issue of equality of its citizens. There is a growing disparity of economic and political opportunity in many countries, which is problematic when there is a growing sense of alienation and outrage in society, and those higher human needs that Maslow discussed remain unfulfilled. The United Kingdom received a shock on 7 July 2005 when domestic terrorists attacked. It was not the first time the UK had been attacked by terrorism, the IRA ran a long campaign. Within the Global War On Terrorism that the UK joined the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks, it was assumed that any kind of Islamic-based terrorism was simply happening somewhere else.

However, the New Public Management policies had created an ideal environment. Social services (such as health, education and policing) were gradually withdrawn from marginalised communities. The British state withdrew its presence and care of these people in the name of budget cuts. This political and social vacuum was soon filled by non-state actors, including some radical ones, which offered basic health and ‘policing’ services, educated children in madrassas. This is not to say there is necessarily a link between madrassas and violent extremism, but when one form of government vacates territory the resulting vacuum is soon filled by other forms and sources of social and political order that move in to occupy that space. The social and political relationships were created, which can also form mutually reinforcing trends, such as the rise of right-wing populism that feeds sets of radicalisation (in the Muslim and right-wing groups).Thus the different forces try to politically mobilise their constituent audiences through fear of the other. However, some research shows that there has been little impact so far.

In a similar tone to the Western understanding of the practice of Hearts and Minds, there are the five aspects of Jihad. There is Jihad of the sword, hand, tongue, knowledge and heart. Jihad of the Sword (combat) carries the least weight, of more importance are Jihad of the Tongue (including propaganda) and Hand (humanitarian operations).

When looking at recruits that have fought and died for ISIS, it has included some ‘surprising’ individuals, drawn from very non-Islamic backgrounds. There are those that have been recruited to fight for the ISIS cause. From 2011 onwards, an estimated 27, 000 – 31, 000 foreign recruits have gone to Syria and Iraq. There are those that have gone for a sense of ‘adventure’, because they feel there are personal opportunities for them or to be part of a community and to build something significant and special. In their home communities they felt left out, isolated, marginalised, held back or somehow insignificant. Audiences from Western countries have followed the news in disbelief as various stories of young men and women have been leaving, what they believe is a comfortable life, straight to the dangers of joining ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

ISIS makes a sustained and deliberate effort to attract youth to its cause. The attraction has not been only about destruction and death, but the promise or hope to build a special community. This has been spread by some very slick advertising and public relations, such as the example provided by someone claiming to be an Australian doctor recruiting professionals to join him.

When one thinks of Islamic-based terrorism, immediate associations normally revolve around concepts of brutality and violence as being the key elements. However, this is not the case. In terms of how information is used by these organisations, military operations are subordinate to information operations. The importance is found in the value of the information that is derived from an action. This differs from most Western governments, where information operations are secondary to military operations, information is used to try and legitimise those military ventures.

In the Middle East and North Africa

One of the now seemingly defunct stereotypes of ISIS recruits from the Middle East and North Africa was that they were poorly educated and highly religious. However, field research conducted by Dr Noha Bakr from Cairo, reveals that they are in fact well educated and from well-to-do families in the Middle East/North Africa region. Research also confirms this trend among Western recruits. Those factors that motivated them to join ISIS included a deep rooted sense of different injustices (political, social and economic inequalities) experienced in the Middle East and North Africa. It should be noted that ISIS attempt to project themselves as fighting a defensive war, in the defence of Islam and Muslims, which more likely appeals to those dispossessed and disconnected individuals and groups. This narrative differs greatly from the Western narrative of an aggressive and offensive ISIS.

Those senses of injustice have been further compounded by decades of self-destructive US-led foreign policy in the region. Regime changes that were nominally fought in the name of peace and freedom have brought anything but these qualities. Some of those dictators, as brutal as they were, kept terrorism in check and generally people enjoyed a greater level of collective human security, with Iraq and Libya providing good examples. A lot of anger has also been generated in the Muslim world concerning the occupation of Muslim lands by Western armies. To some extent, the damage done by Western foreign policy and its long-term effects have been privately spoken about, but rarely publicly acknowledged. An example of this was found in the August 2012 report by the US Defence Intelligence Agency that gave a confidential assessment of the security situation in Iraq and Syria that was (and still is) very much at odds with what key political and military officials publicly stated. The regime changes have also unleashed massive waves of refugees and ethnic cleansing and persecution in those newly ‘liberated’ areas. This in turn is likely to create fertile grounds for further disconnected and vulnerable groups that are susceptible to the subversive propaganda of groups, such as ISIS. Not to mention the gradually escalating counter-reactions from citizens in the West.

What Does the Future Hold?

When ISIS transformed itself and its way of waging war, moving from irregular warfare to regular warfare and declaring a Caliphate after the capture of Mosul, it was both a tangible and intangible symbolic change. It was likely intended to signal itself as an emerging power with a physical state-like structure. In the long-run this seems to have been a strategic miscalculation as the tangible military power of the multiple military forces arrayed against ISIS is much stronger.

Since the Russian military began their direct involvement in Syria from September 2015, ISIS has become increasingly pressured and their territory held is shrinking. It is likely that they may very well be defeated in this regular style of warfare, however, it is unlikely to be the finish of ISIS. There seems to be a move back towards irregular forms of warfare and an increasing reliance on the use of terrorism in core Western countries as a means to offset their tangible disadvantage, and to try and create a political demand among Western publics to cease military action against them.

ISIS’s strength is found in its intangible qualities and abilities and not in the tangible world where it is challenging a much stronger opponent, and where it is very likely to lose an openly fought military-style of conflict. Thus reverting to an intangible basis in order to create doubts in the publics concerning their confidence in their political and military leadership, and degrading the will to fight seems to be a logical path to follow. They are also likely to continue exploiting any forms of existing weaknesses or divisions that are to be found in Western society or even to create new ones in order to attract the next generations of recruits, supporters and sympathisers.

Currently, the number of foreign recruits to ISIS seems to be declining. This may well be a reaction to the military setbacks that ISIS has been experiencing recently. The territory it had previously gained is now shrinking under increasing military pressure from different forces arrayed against them which has shattered their reputation as an unstoppable force. Success breeds greater operational possibilities and popularity, and the reverse seems to have an opposite effect. Assad’s fall in Syria would have rapid and significantly negative consequences for political and security developments in the region, Europe and the wider world. It is too early to say if the soft strategies employed by the coalitions against ISIS have been successful as these means usually are medium to long-term enterprises. The military defeats inflicted upon ISIS, which have shaken the brand and reputation of the group, have also made it more physically difficult to join them. Therefore, a continued combination of hard and soft strategies need to be maintained.

Associate Professor Greg Simons is a researcher at the Centre for Asymmetric Threat Studies (CATS) at the Swedish Defence University. He specialises in research on Information Operations and hybrid warfare.

Increasingly, non-traditional threats to maritime security are linked to resource scarcity and conflict. An overriding challenge for policymakers is how to address these threats.

The relatively new concept of ‘maritime security’ has received increasingly greater attention both within the marine resource management and national security communities, particularly since the early 2000s.  While definitions of maritime security vary, there is broad agreement that maritime security generally encompasses the policies, regulations, and operations designed to secure the governance and management of a nation’s maritime jurisdiction (e.g., exclusive economic zones or territorial waters). This definition is broad enough to attract the relevant interest of and contributions from several fields of study, including: global policy; defense and security; natural resource economics; criminal justice; international development; and environmental management.

During the last two decades, a number of investigations have been conducted into the threats facing maritime security, particularly within the transnational waters of three regions: the Gulf of Aden and Horn of Africa in East Africa (see Sumaila and Bawumia 2014; Bueger 2013; Hansen 2011; Gilmer 2017); the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa (see Jacobsen 2017); and the South China Sea and Sulu-Sulawesi Seas of Southeast Asia (see Pomeroy et al. 2016; Chapsos and Malcolm 2017; Pomeroy et al. 2007).

Such research has encouraged careful analysis by the international community to identify relationships between relevant political, socioeconomic, and environmental factors with regional stability and maritime security.  Such investigations are of increasing interest to those addressing national security, international policy, and sustainable development concerns.

Linking Marine Resource Scarcity and Maritime Security

Maritime security can be viewed as a non-traditional security threat, defined by Caballero-Anthony as “challenges to the survival and well-being of peoples and states that arise primarily out of nonmilitary sources, such as climate change, environmental degradation and resource depletion, infectious diseases, natural disasters, irregular migration, food shortages, people smuggling, drug trafficking, and other forms of transnational crime”. Increasingly, non-traditional security threats are linked to natural resource scarcity. Whether considering energy, food, or freshwater shortages, such resource scarcities exhibit common attributes.

• First, they share common drivers, or factors that influence and cause or exacerbate scarcity, such as poverty, food insecurity, ecological degradation, human population growth, and ineffective governance and enforcement.
• Second, they are linked to each other through feedback loops, which create a major risk of unintended consequences when one scarcity issue is tackled without reference to other scarcity issues.
• Third, they have common impacts. That is, they disproportionately impact poor and fragile states, cause economic stress, and result in the potential for increased and strategically-targeted resource competition and conflict.

Bueger identifies four, interrelated concepts as an analytical foundation of maritime security: national security; human security; economic development; and the marine environment.  Building from this economic-environment-security framework, other research has investigated the relationship between the relative abundance (or scarcity) of available marine resources, the type and degree of extractive effort for such marine resources, and the level of resource competition and conflict (see Pomeroy et al. 2016; Bueger 2015b; Pomeroy et al. 2007).  These studies highlight how various political, socioeconomic, institutional, and cultural factors are linked to and cumulatively influence maritime security.  This research also illustrates how maritime insecurity can influence broader trends related to civil unrest (nationally or locally) and regional peace and order.

In this work, there is growing recognition of how increasing fisheries scarcity, competition, and conflict exacerbates rates of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in central Indonesia, Liberia, eastern Malaysia (Sabah), the southern Philippines, and Somalia.  In turn, IUU fishing further increases scarcity, competition, and conflict over remaining resources, eroding peace and order and decreasing maritime security.  Declining marine resource availability and decreasing maritime security also threaten the conservation and sustainable management of in situ marine biodiversity within these regions.

The Role of Non-State Actors and Transnational Crime

Investigations into marine resource scarcity, competition, and conflict have also highlighted how non-state actors and non-traditional threats are influencing maritime security.  Transnational crime has a notable influence on both marine resource scarcity and maritime security.  For example, illicit maritime commerce (such as human trafficking and the smuggling of narcotics or small arms via ocean vessels in Southeast Asia and West Africa) and piracy (including armed robbery at-sea, kidnapping for ransom, and oil bunkering off Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Somalia, and Yemen) committed by non-state (and in some cases, stateless) actors are linked both to marine resource scarcity (via both illegal fishing and piracy of post-harvest fishing vessels) and increased armed conflict and civil unrest (via increased rates of armed conflict/violence at sea and logistical and supply support for insurgencies and acts of terrorism).

As highlighted recently by an INTERPOL study (2016), 80% of the world’s nations today recognize environmental crime as one of their nation’s highest national security priorities (INTERPOL and UN 2016).  INTERPOL investigations reveal how environmental crimes are linked to both transnational criminal networks and terrorism.  Such crimes include the illegal exploitation of high-value natural resources from conflict areas (and in some cases, to fuel or sustain conflict in such areas).

Criminal supply chains trafficking in high-value natural resources (e.g., timber, oil, fisheries, diamonds, and gold) are documented as often converging under broader, networked operations of organized transnational crime.  Such transnational crime networks include actors operating within high-value fishery supply chains, including those for tuna, shark fins, and live reef fish.  Such criminal supply chains illustrate how closely linked marine resource scarcity and maritime security are.

Moving from Investigation to Prediction and Intervention

Building upon the recommendations outlined by INTERPOL and the UN, we propose that the international community move beyond investigating the relationships between political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors with maritime security (now documented), and move toward supporting three, focused interventions to bolster maritime security, particularly in sensitive or destabilized regions of transnational waters.

First, we propose the development of a predictive model of observed versus forecasted changes to the relative level of maritime security within a specific nation or region.  To do this, an empirical approach must be taken to build a predictive, multivariate model of national and regional maritime security trends (as the dependent or outcome variable), based on observable, real-time data related to political, socioeconomic, and cultural factors that are known to be correlated (independent variables).

By periodically monitoring such multivariate models at the national and regional levels, ‘tipping points’ in maritime security and regional stability can be identified prior to being reached, thus allowing opportunities for timely and focused interventions.  Such a model would require identification and measurement of an adequate, sensitive, reliable, and practical set of maritime security indicators across relevant dimensions; for example, Germond identifies geopolitical indicators of maritime security.

Next, we argue that current and future maritime security operations be redesigned from being largely specialized, narrowly-defined efforts to becoming broader, multidisciplinary efforts that account for the correlation and interdependence of relevant political, socioeconomic, institutional, and cultural factors present.  This will require the deliberate and focused recruitment, consultation, and active participation of non-traditional actors (e.g., fisheries managers; resource economists; rural development experts) into national security operations and defense policy.

By redesigning such maritime security activities, they can interfere with the ability of such factors to converge and cumulatively exacerbate civil and environmental insecurity.  Such maritime security activities include: coastal defense and security operations or missions; national marine resource management policies and actions; ‘good’ governance programs relating to nautical jurisdictions; economic development programs for coastal and marine industries; international foreign aid and development programs.

To be effective, redesigned security activities must address a broad suite of relevant factors rather than narrowly focus in on a specific aspect of maritime security; e.g., redesigning counterterrorism activities within coastal areas of unrest to include targeted marine resource livelihood and community-supported enforcement projects.  Case studies of successful models of broader, multidisciplinary maritime security operations can be documented and shared across nations and regions.

Finally, we propose that maritime security operations move away from being largely single country-specific efforts that are driven by national security agendas to that of collaborative, multinational efforts that are driven by a mutual, regional maritime security strategy.  Addressing transnational maritime threats and regional criminal networks in the seafood supply chain requires a collaborative approach that relies on coalition building and shared (negotiated) tactical objectives.

In some cases, such regional processes and multinational policy fora already exist, and can serve as a platform for targeted, collaborative, multinational maritime security operations; e.g., transnational security forces patrolling regional seas under the Regional Plan of Action to Combat IUU Fishing by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).  Such collaborative, multinational efforts to reduce marine resource conflicts and improve maritime security would be a logical, strategic, and high-value approach commensurate with addressing the multiple operating conditions.

Conclusion

Maritime security is an important but often overlooked dimension of the broader “sustainable security” framework.  A complex web of multivariate drivers influencing maritime security are increasingly documented and recognized as being interconnected with the emerging security challenges of the 21^st century, including by non-state actors through non-traditional threats.  Addressing the contributions of marine resource scarcity, competition, and conflict in eroding maritime security is an important step that must be taken to uphold the rule of law, strengthen national security, and promote regional peace and order.

Robert Pomeroy is currently a Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Connecticut Sea Grant College Fisheries Extension Specialist at the University of Connecticut – Avery Point in Groton, Connecticut USA. Dr. Pomeroy has his PhD in Resource Economics from Cornell University. His areas of professional interest are marine resource economics and policy, specifically small-scale fisheries management and development, coastal zone management, aquaculture economics, international development, policy analysis, and seafood marketing. Dr. Pomeroy has worked on research and development projects in over 70 countries in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America.

John Parks has worked, for more than twenty years, with local communities, indigenous leaders, resource users, government agencies, non-governmental groups, and donors to design and implement marine resource management solutions that strengthen both environmental and civil security within coastal communities around the world. He has served in a number of non-government and government organizations, including as a federal officer with the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and as senior staff with the Nature Conservancy, the World Resources Institute, and World Wildlife Fund. John assists government and non-government clients around the world design and implement marine management solutions, including for fisheries management, marine protected area design and management, citizen-supported maritime enforcement, and climate change adaptation in coastal communities. John earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at the University of Miami, with a dual focus on behavioral science and tropical coastal ecology. He is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, and has been a contributing or lead author on numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, books, and other publications.

by Marianne Hanson and Jenny Nielsen

Deep tensions and frustrations are rising to the fore as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York gets underway. All parties must act bravely to bridge these deep divides if they are to make progress towards a nuclear-free world.

This year marks several important events in the international nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime, including the 2015 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (NPT RevCon) being held in New York currently, the hoped-for finalization of the Iran deal with the P5 +1 states, and the 70th commemoration of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. It also marks five years since international humanitarian law was first mentioned explicitly in the NPT process, prompting some states to pursue a ‘humanitarian initiative’, a framing of the discourse on nuclear weapons away from a purely strategic context and towards an emphasis on the catastrophic human, health, resource and environmental consequences which would result from any use of nuclear weapons.

The RevCon, held every five years, is an important diplomatic process for international security. It takes stock of what has been done in the preceding period to curb nuclear proliferation and to implement measures for disarmament, but also looks forward and sets goals for driving these processes further. Since the ending of the Cold War, the divide between those NPT member-states which do not have nuclear weapons and the ones which do possess them (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France) has grown, with many in the former camp deeply disillusioned about the prospects for getting the latter group to disarm. The Conference aims to reach consensus in its final outcome document on what actions should be taken, but it is far from assured that such consensus will be possible this month.

The US administration continues to stress that ‘as long as nuclear weapons exist, the US will maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal’, and this sentiment is echoed by other nuclear weapon states. It is important to note, however, that while we have been lucky in avoiding a nuclear conflict since 1945, given the evidence and research on the risks associated with nuclear arsenals, as long as nuclear weapons exist, there is no guarantee that our luck will hold. As politicians, strategists, diplomats, and civil society groups convene at the UN, they may wish to reflect on what type of brave new nuclear world they want to create.

Divisive issues

The 2015 RevCon  takes place  20 years after  the NPT—widely regarded as the cornerstone of the nuclear non-proliferation regime—was indefinitely extended  through a compromise package deal (of three decisions and a Resolution on the Middle East). The Middle East resolution specifically called for efforts towards the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear and all other WMD and their delivery systems. With the elusive Helsinki conference mandated by the 2010 NPT Action Plan yet to be held, due to diverging postures by the regional parties, this issue remains a challenge for states at the New York meeting.

Not surprisingly, there exists a divergence of views on the pathway and measures needed to work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons, including on which proposals are feasible in today’s strategic and political environment. The nuclear weapon states continue to insist that only an incremental, step-by-step approach, with slow reductions, is realistic, given the security tensions present in many parts of the world today. It seems to many non-nuclear weapon states and civil society groups however that this approach has not produced results, and they fear that disarmament will always be postponed and held hostage to such claims. These advocates of disarmament stress the dangers of continuing to rely on nuclear weapons; for a growing number of them, creating a legal ban against nuclear weapons is seen as desirable and feasible, even if the nuclear states do not sign  up to such an agreement at the outset.

Any serious efforts to address these divides will require engagement and informed dialogue between the various constituencies involved in the nuclear weapons policy debate. These constituencies include:

• Strategic nuclear communities of nuclear weapon states who devise, implement and sustain nuclear deterrence policy, and who inevitably argue for continuation of the status quo;
• Non-nuclear weapon states and civil society groups driving and advocating nuclear disarmament (including those driving the humanitarian initiative);
• Non-nuclear weapon states – including those in NATO, East Asia and Australia – relying on extended nuclear deterrence.

It appears very difficult to bridge the diverging views held by these constituencies. A nuclear ban and the stigmatization of nuclear weapons will surely not be acceptable to those individuals and states who still promote nuclear deterrence as a core component of defence doctrines. Some in these strategic communities may perceive the NPT RevCons as merely high-level diplomatic theatrics that take place every five years and which have no direct relevance to infrastructure and ‘real’ policy on nuclear deterrence. Efforts to consolidate a stigmatization of nuclear weapons through a legal framework, such as a proposed nuclear weapons ban treaty—without the engagement of the nuclear weapon possessors and their respective strategic communities will not garner internalized changes. At the 2015 NPT RevCon, the nuclear weapons states will argue that proposals for a nuclear ban at this time will divert focus away from the agreed 2010 Action Plan and the P5 ‘step-by-step’ process.

But many non-nuclear states and civil society groups argue that the lack of implementation of the 2010 Action Plan is undermining the credibility of the regime and the entire NPT review process. They suggest that a nuclear weapon ban treaty ought to be considered. Their argument is that while this will certainly not create a risk-free world in international security, neither will continuation of the status quo provide us with long-term security and stability. Indeed they argue that the status quo carries with it far higher levels of risk to human security and will inevitably lead to discord in international cooperation on non-proliferation priorities.

Opportunities

States parties to the NPT, the nuclear armed states outside the NPT and civil society groups should act bravely to bridge the deep divides on preferred and promoted pathways towards implementing nuclear disarmament, in order to move towards a frank dialogue and progress. This will require balanced assessment by all constituencies of perspectives and priorities. A continuation of the status quo vis-à-vis implementation of Article VI commitments to disarm will not be acceptable to many non-nuclear weapon states whose frustration has been simmering for decades over perceived unfulfilled ‘empty promises’ made in 1995, 2000, and 2010.

At present, the discourse on nuclear weapons policy remains engaged only in ‘enclave deliberation’, perpetuating the views within and excluding external or opposing views and arguments. Palpable frustration and miscommunication abounds within and between these various constituencies, making it imperative to engage and stimulate meaningful dialogue between them. There is a real need to promote informed, respectful, and frank engagement and dialogue between these camps.

Perhaps a way to inch closer to establishing such a dialogue would be to convene key stakeholders in a non-binding, Track II forum, with informed individuals from these separate constituencies, and with a progressive yet balanced agenda which addresses the underlying social constructs, assumptions and rationales of the role of nuclear weapons in security strategies and defence doctrines. An informed forum across the spectrum of diverging perspectives could help to bridge these deep divides.

If the important discussions on framing a humanitarian narrative regarding nuclear weapons which are taking place in New York (as well as in Geneva, and recently in Oslo, Nayarit and Vienna) are to have an actual impact on nuclear deterrence policy, efforts need to be focused on promoting these ideas to the stakeholders within the defence and strategic communities of the nuclear weapon states (as well as to those four nuclear weapon states who remain outside the NPT framework).

The evidence highlighted so far by the humanitarian initiative describes catastrophic scenarios of devastation and nuclear winter. Such dystopias are not inevitable; we have the means to avert them. A nuclear-free world is surely a worthy goal to aim for, but moving these efforts forward will require an understanding of and engagement with alternatives to nuclear deterrence as well as the courage from all constituencies to engage with one another.

Marianne Hanson is Associate Professor of International Relations at the School of Political Science and International Studies, University Of Queensland. She has published widely in the field of international security, with a focus on weapons control, and is currently engaged in a book project examining the emergence of the humanitarian initiative in nuclear weapons debates. 

Jenny Nielsen is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Political Science and International Studies. Previously, she was a Research Analyst with the Non-proliferation and Disarmament Programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a Programme Manager for the Defence & Security Programme at Wilton Park, and a Research Assistant for the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies (MCIS) at the University of Southampton. She holds a PhD from the University of Southampton which focused on U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy vis-à-vis Iran in the 1970s.

Featured image: US nuclear test detonation in 1952. Source: WikiMedia

Due to a conflict within policy circles between those who want more inclusive approaches to resolving conflict in Africa and those who want robust responses to violent jihadism, a problematic imbalance in African security governance is being created.

Introduction

African peace and security policy-makers and intellectuals within and beyond the continent are calling for more inclusive political approaches to resolving conflict in Africa. Yet, patterns of decision-making, most evidently by the African Union (AU) Peace and Security Council, indicate that proactive, robust and joint responses to jihadist terrorism and radicalized armed non state actors are preferred because these threats pose particularly urgent challenges to Africa’s security and political order. This argument has important transnational echoes and an imbalance in African security governance is being created as a result of these developments. The more implementation of the African peace and security architecture (APSA) is measured by how well the AU together with global partners fight global terrorism, the more likely an excessive over-reliance on military responses to political problems seems. Such over-reliance risks militarizing the people, ideas and institutions of Africa’s security governance. Many voices in AU peace and security circles are pulling in a de-militarizing direction and are attempting to mobilize behind an enhanced prevention and mediation-agenda, and a value-driven vision of African ownership.

The preventive pivot

Preventing armed conflicts is a strategic priority for the African Union Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) as seen in APSA Roadmap 2016-2020. This follows on from the Windhoek Declaration and AU-adopted commitment to end all wars and ‘Silencing the Guns in Africa by 2020’ which forms part of the continent-wide Agenda 2063. The Agenda 2063 document, adopted by the AU Assembly of African Heads of state and government in May 2013, sets forth a value-based vision of a united and prosperous Africa. Understood as one leg of the pan-African political body, the APSA should arguably first and foremost facilitate Africa’s unity, development and prosperity through early conflict prevention.

The Roadmap sets out the objective for the AU and the Regional Economic Communities (REC) and Regional Mechanisms (RM) to contribute to the prevention of conflicts and crises. Early warning systems with state of the art data collection and monitoring tools exist at continental and regional levels. Enhancing capacity means that they must coordinate and collaborate better with each other and other relevant component parts of APSA. The sometimes sensitive information that these early warning bodies gather is only as good as the use decision-makers and the AUPSC make of it.

The use of special envoys, senior mediation panels and networks of elders is one of the AU’s ‘best kept secrets’.  To underscore their importance, the APSA Roadmap sets out as one objective to show evidence of frequency, relevance and efficacy of preventive diplomatic missions undertaken by the AU and the RECs. On a case by case basis, it has always been possible to gather knowledge about the roles and outcomes of preventive mediation efforts. Only a select few can claim to have the overall picture of their scales, roles and achievements. Most often mediation missions are set up rapidly and with an ad hoc initial role. At times, the AU Panel of the Wise is used, yet in other conflicts a high-level panel is tailored to the specific conflict by comprising former heads of state with high moral standing in the eyes of the conflicting parties.

The Roadmap notes that early warning capacity and inclusive mediation-capacity must be connected with the strategic security priorities of decision-makers. Early warning systems cannot collect equally in-depth and actionable data on all forms of conflict in Africa. However, concerning the most geo-strategically sensitive conflicts their reports are not likely to be as welcome or as frequently used by decision-makers. Might intellectuals and policy experts help change the mindset of decision-makers if they could point to research and verified information showing that prevention at early stages of conflict is most sustainable and effective? There exist examples of early warning/information sharing mechanisms which bridge the ‘soft’ approach with ‘hard’ security issues. For instance, the ‘Nouakchott process’ aims to enhance security cooperation between intelligence and security-services of states in the Sahelo-Sahara region. However, the political oversight and support of this process must be ensured. Early warning data can otherwise of course be narrowly used towards the military approach of regional states.

The preventive mediation tool has been used extensively, especially in the most geo-strategically important conflicts. However, their tasks, roles and achievements are less well known outside APSA’s decision-making circle. Often, references are made to Africa’s rich tradition of culturally aware and dialogue-centered ‘Baobab tree’ meetings. But it remains hard to access best practices and the gold standard of AU’s recruitment, support, as well as linking its preventive mediation to other external mediation initiatives. Changing this should be a key priority, especially since high-level gatherings and summits on Africa’s peace and security argue that prevention is the most cost-effective and the most successful form of conflict management for Africa. References are often made to the vital importance of inclusivity in African mediation culture. Dialogue must occur with all conflict actors. Talking to terrorists and non-state radicalized actors is therefore not excluded. The Windhoek Declaration argues that reflection is needed on the direction of the counter-terrorism agenda in Africa and importantly forefronts the value of Africa’s rich tradition of mediation. This offers a possible bridge between ethical-political arguments (advocates of the preventive pivot) and interest-based arguments (advocates of robust action on global terrorism).

Reflection is required on how to calibrate prevention as a core phase in traditional conflict resolution with emerging specialized notions such as preventing mass atrocities (in line with the Responsibility to Protect), preventing acts of terrorism, and perhaps also preventing electoral violence. Diverging prevention agendas under conditions of resource scarcity might otherwise compete and bring with them rivalling perspectives and bureaucratic silos on prevention. More strategic discussions are needed about conflict patterns and structural as well as direct causes of wars and security threats. The Windhoek Declaration discusses how state fragility when considered a structural cause of radicalization of youth indicates that efforts aimed at enhancing democratic governance, security sector reform and state-society relations will prevent radicalization more effectively than military efforts because these only focus on ‘symptoms’ of state fragility.

A preventive turn might also be detected in global policymaking. The UN Secretary-General has placed prevention of atrocity crimes and the roles of regional actors in achieving this as a core priority in his July 2015 report on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The UN General Assembly and UN Security Council on 27 April this year endorsed as a framing concept ‘sustaining peace’ in the recognition of the finding by the advisory group of experts’ review of the peacebuilding architecture that peacebuilding must be an inclusive endeavor, and necessitates holistic approaches and global commitment starting with preventive mediation efforts.  At the 24 May UN Security Council meeting on UN cooperation with regional and sub-regional organisations, a number of state representatives actually referred to the concept of ‘sustaining peace’ and/or the crucial role of UN-regional partnerships as glimmers of hope at this time of heightened pressure on global institutions to respond to several extremely complex conflicts. Some argued that the current global security situation requires a new mind set, even a ‘paradigm shift’ in global affairs.

Militarized institutional narratives and practices

The joint fight against violent extremism featured primarily at the first ever Africa-based core group meeting of the Munich Security Conference in April this year. The framing of the discussion was that global terrorism in North Africa, East Africa and the Sahel needed urgent, robust and joint action. The readiness of Africa’s own peace and security institutions to lead on terrorism and other sources of insecurity was emphasized. The dominant position was starkly defensive: a strong perception is that the sovereign’s role as main provider of territorial order and security is under unacceptable assault by non-democratic forces. Given the importance attached to stable African governments, such a perceived assault justifies military responses short term. ‘Combat’, ‘fight against’, and ‘counter’ violent terrorism and extremism were the common terms used at this event, and further echoed in relevant AU PSC meeting communiqués (for example on 29 Jan 2016), as well as at the 5^th Tana Security Forum in April 2016.

Present were representatives of academic institutions and CSOs that objected to the dominant trope and the prioritization of heavy handedness. These actors preferred to talk about historical and structural causes of terrorism (such as weak state-society relations, demographic challenges and unemployment rates). Or, they raised the acute absence of knowledge surrounding radicalization and recruitment into extremist groupings. Additionally, it was argued that strengthening or stabilizing central government and its ruling capacity by itself would not change the structural causes of marginalization and exclusion in many African societies.

It might be argued based on the assumption that global terrorism requires a global fight that it is a lesser ill that hard approaches overshadow alternative political, developmental and humanitarian-based approaches. Certainly, part of the global push towards strategic partnerships with African regional actors is linked to seeing African states and institutions as playing specific useful roles in world order. France and the US have most candidly expressed that the AU and certain African states play very useful combat roles in active conflicts, and that partnerships are strategic in so far as they help all involved partners identify and secure their respective interests. Partnerships offer one way to strengthen a global hybrid coalition of counter-terrorism. This is the predominant trend, even as counter-strategies and counter- arguments exist and will hopefully take hold. Prevention and responding to terrorism-rationales are not mutually exclusive, but are better understood as mirror images. The trick for the foreseeable future is how to rebalance APSA, and develop legitimate and sustainable ways to prevent/respond to terrorism.

There is a serious danger that context-driven, root-cause based values embedded in AU foundational documents and the APSA are being pulled in a direction to serve short-sighted militaristic values. In the medium to long term this will favor autocratic modes of governance on the continent and already extends a level of international legitimacy to autocratic leaders (for example Chad’s Idriss Déby, Djibouti’s Ismail Omar Guelleh and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni). This will also infer the AU with legitimacy and capacity building packages chiefly on basis of counter-terrorism practices. Consequently, other APSA programmes rank lower on the global priority ladder unless they are coupled with the ‘fight’ on terrorism. Adding to the pressures on APSA policy mechanisms to demonstrate capacity is the argument by certain African leaders and external partners that the African Standby Force and its rapid reaction capability must become more efficient. This line of argument has increased incentives for states to favor state-to-state relations and hybrid regimes to enable rapid and more efficient forms of political and security cooperation.

African peace operations receive external recognition due to their militarized characteristics. Most AU peace operations are stabilization missions, using combat operations against specific aggressors (sometimes terrorist groups) in bounded conflict theatres. The troop contributing countries to the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) have been commended and supported by the international community for the willingness to combat Al-Shabab fighters. As noted by Yvonne Akpasom in a book on Africa-led peace operations while this combat readiness may be necessary, it is crucial for APSA and for host populations in conflict-affected states that these stabilization missions are always linked to a political objective. AU-led missions to date have demonstrated operational readiness, but have been insufficiently streamlined with political strategic-level direction. In need of development are: realization of protection of civilians policies and guidelines, human resources to plan for, for example, policing components and human rights observers, reflection on security sector reform and law and order efforts.

Conclusion

For AU member states and APSA policy organs, the first strategic priority is really the achievement of full ownership over regional security governance. The counter-terrorism developments referred to do not aim to settle whether global terrorism poses the biggest security threat to Africa’s societies and populations. What is at stake is Africa’s political authority to define conflicts and threats on the continent. To achieve a bigger impact on global governance, the AU has to balance the different pressures on it to demonstrate authority and capacity to manage security threats in Africa.

Linnéa Gelot is a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI), Sweden and a Senior Lecturer at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, Sweden. Her most recent publication is The Future of African Peace Operations: From Janjaweed to Boko Haram, co-edited with Cedric de Coning and John Karlsrud, with Zed Books. She is currently leading the project ‘AU Waging Peace? Explaining the Militarization of the African Peace and Security Architecture’ in which the concept of militarization and security practice theory are employed to study militarizing/de-militarizing institutional discourses and practices. Additionally, she has worked as a consultant and substance matter expert (African peace and security and the protection of civilians in UN peace operations) for UNITAR in Geneva, as well as other consultancy firms.

President John F. Kennedy once said:

“You cannot negotiate with people who say what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.”

However a small group of states (including the state of which Kennedy was President) have done just this in relation to the possession of nuclear weapons for decades. Five of them (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) have held the position of being the privileged few allowed to possess nuclear weapons under the terms of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)  while all others agree to forego developing the ‘ultimate weapon’ in return for access to civilian nuclear technology. Three others have refused to sign the treaty (India, Israel and Pakistan) and instead developed their own nuclear weapons (overtly in the cases of India and Pakistan after 1998 and covertly in the case of Israel from the late 1960s) happy to free-ride on the lack of global proliferation ensured by the treaty. To paraphrase Kennedy, the decision of these eight states (nine if you include North Korea from 2003 onwards) to inflict mass destruction on an adversary is theirs, but everyone else’s decision to acquire the same capability can be negotiated away.

What is perhaps most extraordinary about the NPT ‘grand bargain’, as it is often called (although given that the five nuclear weapon states have exactly the same access to civil nuclear technology as the rest of the signatories, ‘bargain’ here really is a polite term for ‘scam’), is that it has remained largely intact for so long. For something built on such a seemingly unsustainable basis as an institutionalised double standard (particularly one that relates to the ultimate survival of nation states), the fact that its indefinite extension was negotiated in 1995 and that the treaty is still with us defies most conventional wisdoms about the ‘dog-eat-dog’ nature of self-help politics in an anarchical international system. Yes, the treaty may have been abused by some states and used as a cover to develop covert weapons programmes (Iraq, Libya, North Korea and possibly Iran) and one state has even withdrawn from the treaty under Article X (North Korea in 2003), but these are four cases in a treaty that boasts 189 signatories.

Challenging sustainable security

In many ways the success of the treaty regime provides one of the most robust challenges to the whole concept of sustainable security. Why bother addressing the root causes and underlying drivers of nuclear proliferation if you can effectively stem the flow of nukes by maintaining a treaty which promotes a ‘norm’ of non-proliferation as good international behaviour, and allows you to deflect charges of hypocrisy as long as you make encouraging noises about ‘eventual’ nuclear disarmament at some unspecified point in the future?

However, like a building with rotten foundations, it may be that what has appeared to be a relatively sustainable global non-proliferation regime is far less stable than many believe it to be. Recently, Egyptian negotiators walked out of the UN talks that are held in the lead-up to each five yearly review conference of the NPT. This dramatic move from Egypt was a public expression of the long-held private frustrations of its diplomats who, after being effectively promised serious negotiations towards a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone (WMDFZ), in return for their support for the indefinite extension of the Treaty in 1995 (and re-affirmed explicitly at the review conference in 2010), face the continued postponement of such talks. The problem is, Israel has no interest at all in such a zone – why would it? A combination of the NPT and Western action against would-be proliferators such as Iraq, Libya and Iran have meant that the construction of a WMDFZ in the Middle East would mean that Israel would either have to join and give up its position as the only state in the region with nuclear weapons, or be the one state in the region that refuses to join. Either way, it would also mean attracting global attention to its nuclear weapons arsenal, something Israel has managed to successfully avoid of late in all the focus on the weaponisation concerns over Iran’s civil programme.

Calling it like it is

Before leaving the NPT preparatory talks, Egypt’s Ambassador Hisham Badr explicitly referred to the resolution passed in 1995 that called for negotiations on a Middle Eastern WMDFZ, and called out those that thought they could get away with Egypt sticking to its side of the bargain and getting little in return. His comments challenged the idea that the double standard could be maintained indefinitely when he stated clearly that “we cannot wait forever for this resolution to be implemented.”

Perhaps the most worrying signs here are the responses to Egypt’s move. Israeli diplomats have effectively said that with the security situation in Syria, in Egypt itself and elsewhere in the region, a WMDFZ is the least of its concerns. The United States has referred to the episode as “theatrics” and in the meantime has pushed on with negotiating a nuclear trade pact with Saudi Arabia. These trade deal talks are taking place at a time when experts are tracking an increase in the acquisition of strategic ballistic and cruise missiles by the Kingdom. The other nuclear weapons states have been conspicuously quiet throughout.

So rather than seeing this as a sign of the potential unravelling of an unsustainable regime based on a double standard, those who have most to gain from the NPT arrangement (both inside and outside the regime), are betting on this being just another ‘NPT in crisis’ – a moment they assume will pass. Whether this storm will blow over (like a mushroom cloud over the Pacific Ocean…no, sorry that bad pun is stopping right there!) is now THE big question for those concerned about nuclear threats. If the regime falls apart and 189 states are no longer happy to give up nuclear weapons, the simple days of dealing with Iranian and North Korean nuclear ‘crises’ will be looked back upon with great fondness.

Time for regime change?

While the NPT regime story is one of a continuing death foretold, it is difficult to see how the all-important 2015 review conference can outrun the double standard that sits at the heart of the regime without all signatories applying some degree of what could be called a ‘sustainable security’ approach. As Egypt’s actions make clear, anything less than a regime specifically geared towards addressing the reasons why some states seek nuclear weapons  – including regional insecurity, conventional weapons imbalances and the prestige attached to nuclear arsenals by their possessors – is a regime existing on borrowed time.

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

Image source: Wikimedia

Summary

After three years and over 22,000 air strikes, the Levantine ‘Caliphate’ manifestation of the Islamic State seems destined for destruction in 2017. Yet the revolt of radicalised Sunni Arabs is unlikely to abate in Iraq or Syria, with the battlefield shifting to localised guerrilla insurgency, increasing attacks within western states, and the opening of new fronts in the global margins, not least Asia and Africa. Such revolutions of frustrated expectations will be a major part of the geopolitical landscape for decades to come.

Introduction

By 28 June the Iraqi Army had largely re-established control of the city of Mosul which had been taken over by the so-called Islamic State (IS) three years earlier. In the process the army was aided hugely by coalition air power and artillery support, as well as the actions of a number of Shi’a militias and assistance from personnel linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. This closing phase of the Mosul operation coincided with the early stages of an assault on the city of Raqqa in northern Syria by a range of Kurdish and Syrian militias, again supported by the coalition. The two operations seemed likely to mark the end of the IS “caliphate” and raised the question of the future of the movement.

Oxford Research Group has tracked and analysed the development of IS and its predecessor groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) since the early 2000s, and two monthly briefings last summer (July and August 2016) made an initial assessment of the status of IS through a two-part analysis – A World After IS. There was some updating of this analysis in the briefings of January and February 2017, but the rapid changes in the status of the movement make it useful to take a broader view once more.

The four articles taken together covered the recent experience and the current direction of IS and this briefing seeks to develop the analysis further, with an emphasis on longer term trends in global Jihadist movements, especially the advance of IS affiliates in South and South East Asia.

Context

IS as a territorial movement is under severe pressure as a result of the coalition’s extensive use of air power since August 2014. There have so far been over 22,000 air strikes, mostly on multiple targets and using over 80,000 precision bombs and missiles. Six months ago, the US Department of Defence reported that over 50,000 IS personnel had been killed, and the independent AirWars monitoring group has recently given a figure of close to 4,000 civilians killed. That last number will most likely have to be revised upwards substantially when the number of civilian casualties in Mosul is known.

IS has lost control of most of its territory in Iraq and a substantial part of its territory in Syria. At the time of writing (28 June) the Iraqi government is reporting that the final defeat of IS in Mosul is only days away, albeit not the first time it has made (and revised) such projections. There remain reports of IS personnel staging attacks in parts of Mosul that have supposedly been liberated by government forces. Meanwhile, the battle to retake Raqqa, in Syria, is in its early stages and while Syrian and Kurdish forces backed up by coalition air strikes are reported to be making progress, independent verification is difficult.

The operation to defeat IS in Mosul has actually taken over eight months rather than the two and a half months planned, and the elite Iraqi Army forces spearheading the attack have taken serious casualties. Since these forces will be crucial in ensuring the stability of the country after IS loses Mosul, the transition of IS from a force controlling territory to an anti-government insurgency will be easier for it.

That task will further be aided by the near-certain role of Shi’a militias and Iranian forces in maintaining national stability, as well as the creeping advance of the Iraqi Kurdish presence in northern Iraq. These eventualities are deeply worrying to Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority and likely to make some elements of that minority more sympathetic to IS as it re-embraces an insurgent role.

The Evolving IS Strategy

It is clear that IS is in the process of re-inventing itself for the post-caliphate era and it is useful to tease out the more significant elements of its post-Mosul and post-Raqqa evolution.

Firstly, it is probable that it will modify its claim of ruling a caliphate that is, from its perspective, a true exemplar of a new Islamist world order. Instead it will change that to a demonstration of what it was possible to achieve for three years, even against overwhelming force used by regional regimes strongly supported by the western coalition – the “near enemy” allied to the “far enemy”. Thus, the short-lived caliphate will be presented as a rich symbol of another world which will surely develop again and will eventually be victorious.

IS propagandists will most likely focus on this approach and will also make much of the numbers of young people who were willing to die for the cause. In relation to that last point it is certainly the case that the Iraqi government and its coalition partners have been shocked and daunted by the sheer numbers of suicide bombers, well over a thousand, that could be gathered together to help defend Mosul. It is strange that the eschatological nature of IS is still not fully appreciated by its opponents.

While the transition of IS in Iraq and Syria into a guerrilla force is one element of its strategy, the other two are also important. One, which has been much discussed in recent briefings, is the move to encourage, incite and even assist in attacking the far enemy. This is reminiscent of the al-Qaida approach between 2002 and 2006 and differs fundamentally from the IS focus on an actual caliphate prior to 2015. Then it was concentrating on the creation and strengthening of this caliphate and had little interest in attacking the far enemy. The sheer intensity of the coalition’s air assault changed that and one outcome was that attacks on western states increased substantially, as shown first in France, Belgium and Germany and more recently by the Westminster Bridge, Manchester and London Bridge attacks and the failed attempt in Brussels which, had it succeeded, would have killed many people.

These attacks have three aims. One is demonstrating that IS remains a significant part of the response to what is seen as the western threat to Islam, and another is to show revenge and a capacity for retaliation against the perpetrators of the air assault in Iraq and Syria. Most important, though, is the intention of damaging community relations and catalysing Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry. The aim is to polarise, destabilise and damage western societies by inciting inter-communal violence. In this context the substantial increase in the number of hate crimes in Britain, and especially the recent terror attack on a group of Muslim worshippers during Ramadan at the Finsbury Park Mosque, will have been welcome developments for the IS leadership.

IS and the Global Margins

Finally, there is the manner in which the IS outlook is gaining adherents in other parts of the world, especially across the Global South. Again, this trend has been touched on in some recent ORG briefings but may now be the most important element in IS’s revised strategy. As well as Bangladesh, northern Nigeria and the Lake Chad basin, Yemen and Somalia, there are three other countries to watch.

In Afghanistan the US Department of Defence is concerned at the effectiveness of IS paramilitary groups and sees this as an added reason to deploy several thousand more US troops into the country, reversing the long-term withdrawal undertaken by the previous Obama administration. This ‘Khorasan’ branch of IS is also increasingly active in Pakistan, particularly against civilian Shi’a targets.

In Egypt the Sisi government is reacting to the increased threat of violence from Islamist groups linked to IS with a firm policy of suppression, but this is being applied to a wide range of Islamic movements, not least the Muslim Brotherhood, and it is highly likely that it will simply increase support for more extreme elements. Egypt’s growing anti-Islamist intervention in Libya has at best dispersed IS elements there into the cities or neighbouring countries.

Of even greater concern is the Philippines, where a coalition of extreme Islamist groups pledging links to IS took control of the southern city of Marawi in late May. Since then the Philippine Army has struggled to regain control, even though it is being supported by US Special Forces and US and Australian navy surveillance aircraft. The operation is now in its sixth week with mortar fire and air strikes directed largely at paramilitary sniper positions resulting in a rising toll of civilian casualties. Although not much covered in the western media, the Marawi situation has caused consternation across South East Asia, not least in Indonesia and Thailand.

Conclusion

As IS loses its caliphate it is making the transition to a guerrilla insurgency in Iraq and Syria, is escalating its attempts to damage social cohesion in western states and it is doing what it can to spread the message and gather supporters across the Global South.

While the emphasis among western security analysts may be on the first two trends it may actually be the third which is most significant. This is because of underlying demographic and socio-economic trends that have been discussed repeatedly in ORG analyses over nearly two decades. A movement such as IS can successfully draw support from what may be described as the “majority margins” across the Global South – many tens of millions of mostly young people, fairly well-educated but with minimal life prospects. In the Middle East and Africa, in particular, this is exacerbated by the demographic bulge, with an especially high proportion of the population under the age of 30, but this also applies to an extent across South and South East Asia.

While most of the focus is on IS and a presumed problem with Islam, it is worth noting that neo-Maoist movements persist, not least with the Naxalite rebellion in India. Perhaps the wise conclusion has to be that IS, the Naxalites, Boko Haram and others should all be seen as examples of an evolving era of revolts from the margins, revolts that may simply not be amenable to control and suppression by military action.

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Paul Rogers is Global Security Consultant to Oxford Research Group and Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. His ‘Monthly Global Security Briefings’ are available from our website. His new book Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threats from the Margins will be published by I B Tauris in June 2016. These briefings are circulated free of charge for non-profit use, but please consider making a donation to ORG, if you are able to do so.

Raphael Cohen-Almagor received his DPhil in political theory from Oxford University. He is Professor/Chair in Politics, and Founder and Director of the Middle East Study Group, University of Hull. He was the Director of the Center for Democratic Studies, University of Haifa, Fulbright-Yitzhak Rabin Visiting Professor at UCLA School of Law, Visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.  Raphael is the author of more than 200 publications in politics, law, media and ethics, including most recently Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side (NY and Washington DC.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 2015), the first comprehensive book on social responsibility on the Internet. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/book/confronting-the-internets-dark-side-moral-and-social-responsibility-the-free-highway. Blog: http://almagor.blogspot.com Twitter: @almagor35

This interview examines the rise of hate speech on the Internet, how it can be countered and how the battle against hate speech can be balanced with freedom of expression.

Q. Your recent book, Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side: Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway, examines the dark side of the internet and the issue of social responsibility on the net. Why did you choose to examine this subject as a research project?  

In answering the question, I will explain three issues: Why I chose to write about the Internet? Why I emphasise the concept of responsibility? Why the themes of terrorism, child pornography, hate and cyberbullying are at the center of attention? 

Why the Internet?

This is my fifth book in a series of books in the fields of tolerance, freedom of expression and media ethics. It started with The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance (1994) continued with Speech, Media and Ethics: The Limits of Free Expression (2001) and then The Scope of Tolerance (2006) and The Democratic Catch (2007). Upon completing my research for the last two books in 2006, it was clear to me that my next big project would concern the Internet, a fascinating growing phenomenon that required close probing. I wished to examine the extent to which the mode of communication makes a difference, and whether the Internet constitutes a totally different issue that makes the theory that I have been developing over the years, the Democratic Catch, irrelevant.

Why responsibility?

I have done the majority of research during 2007-2008, when I was a Fellow at The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC. The United States puts great emphasis on freedom of expression. The First Amendment is enshrined in the nation’s psyche. I was looking for a way to connect with my American colleagues in addressing the very delicate issue of boundaries to Internet’s freedom of expression. My book acknowledges the great importance assigned to the value of freedom of expression and supports balancing it against no less important value: social responsibility.

The forefathers of the Internet had the vision of creating a free highway, a public space where everyone can say what he or she has in mind. This wonderful innovation of unfettered platform has backfired. The Internet is open for use but unfortunately also for abuse. We should provide and promote responsible use and we should also fight against those who abuse. The abuse corrupt public space and has posed many challenges on all levels: individual, the community, the state and the international community. We are in the early stages of learning how to cope and how to combat Internet abuse. Slowly we are developing the necessary tools to enjoy innovation and freedom while, at the same time, we are adopting safeguards and rules of responsible conduct.

Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side makes a distinction between Netusers and Netcitizens. The term “Netuser” refers to people who use the Internet. It is a neutral term. It does not convey any clue as to how people use the Internet. It does not suggest any appraisal of their use. On the other hand, the term “netcitizen” is not neutral. It describes a responsible use of the Internet. Netcitizens are people who use the Internet as an integral part of their real life. That is to say, their virtual life is not separated from their real life.

Even if they invent an identity for themselves on social networks, they do it in a responsible manner. They still hold themselves accountable for the consequences of their Internet use. In other words, netcitizens are good citizens of the Internet. They contribute to the Internet’s use and growth while making an effort to ensure that their communications and Net use are constructive. They foster free speech, open access and social culture of respecting others, and of not harming others. Netcitizens are Netusers with a sense of responsibility.

Why the themes of terrorism, child pornography, hate and cyberbullying are at the center of attention?

At the outset, it was clear to me that I cannot possibly tackle all the problematic information that we find on the Internet. I asked myself: What troubles you the most, and what issues may present a compelling case for social responsibility? I thought that if I am able to reach some conclusions and suggestions about confronting some highly problematic issues, maybe the discussion can then serve as a spring-board to drive forward a motion for Internet social responsibility. After long and careful probing I decided to concentrate attention on violent, anti-social forms of Internet expression: hate speech and racism, use of the Internet by terrorist organizations, and child pornography. Later, another concern was added: Cyberbullying.

When I started my research for this book in 2006, cyberbullying was not on my radar. In 2010, I could no longer ignore it. Cyberbullying became a major concern. I changed the book structure to accommodate comprehensive research on this sensitive and most tragic topic.

Q. Sometimes the line between free speech and hate speech is not as clear cut as we would like it to be. How do you identify hate speech?

There is no single definition of hate speech and hate speech legislation varies from one country to another. The same speech might be illegal in the United Kingdom and legal in the United States. The United Kingdom passed the Public Order Act 1936 to protect minorities from hate speech and harassment while the United States permits the American Nazi Party and allowed them to march in Skokie, a Jewish neighbourhood that was heavily populated with Holocaust survivors. I find it hard to believe that such a march would be allowed in the UK. My definition of hate speech is: Bias-motivated, hostile, malicious speech aimed at a person or a group of people because of some of their actual or perceived innate characteristics. Hate speech expresses discriminatory, intimidating, disapproving, antagonistic and/or prejudicial attitudes toward those characteristics which include sex, race, religion, ethnicity, colour, national origin, disability, or sexual orientation. Hate speech is intended to injure, dehumanize, harass, debase, degrade, and/or victimise the targeted groups, and to foment insensitivity and brutality towards them.

Q. There could be a counter argument made that much information could be interpreted as “bias-motivated, hostile, malicious”. So, for example, a person could publish a study or statistics on the internet which claims that a certain racial, ethnic or religious group is less intelligent or commits more crime than another group. It is highly likely that some individuals would see this as “bias-motivated, hostile, malicious” behaviour. Yet the publisher of the data might simply claim that they are merely presenting their evidence and that they had no intention to “injure, dehumanize, harass, debase, degrade, and/or victimise the targeted groups”.  Where would a case such as this fall in the hate speech/free speech distinction?

This is a very interesting question. Let me answer it with an example. For many years, I have related in my teaching on freedom of expression the case of Jean-Philippe Rushton, a Canadian psychology professor who has argued about hierarchy of races: Asians are smarter than whites, who are in turn smarter than blacks. In his 1999 book Race, Evolution, and Behavior, Rushton explained that brain and genital size are inversely related, and that races differ in brain size, intelligence, sexual behaviour, fertility, personality, maturation, lifespan, crime and in family stability. He explained that blacks are less intelligent than Orientals and Whites and they are more involved in criminal activities. While the IQ of Orientals is about 106, the IQ of Black people is around 70 to 75. Black people are also more sexually promiscuous and they lack social organization.

The science behind these assertions is debatable. Rushton’s theory evoked much criticism and has been perceived as racist. His theory attempts to explain everything by the sole criterion of race. It ignores social circumstances and social construction. It does not take into account other, no less important factors, such as individual abilities, class, poverty, education and family infrastructure. But is it hate speech?

In the spirit of the liberal marketplace of ideas, the search for the truth and open disputation of ideas with contrasting ideas, one may think that Rushton’s theory is problematic but it should be tolerated and debated. Its scientific facade needs to be exposed and simultaneously the true motives that guide Rushton should be explored. This, indeed, is my belief. Rushton’s theory is a hard case. It is opened to interpretations but it should not be silenced.

I also believe that Rushton’s theory was not guided only by scientific methods, that it had underpinning agenda which was not innocent, that it was motivated by other reasons rather than the urge to discover a scientific truth. Rushton was asked “Weren’t theories about race differences the reason for racism, genocide and the Holocaust?” Rushton answered: “The Nazis and others used their supposed racial superiority to justify war and genocide. But just about every idea – nationalism, religion, egalitarianism, even self-defence – has been used as an excuse for war, oppression or genocide. Science, however, is objective. It can’t give us our goals, but it can tell us how easy or difficult it will be to reach our goal. Knowing more about race differences may help us to give every child the best possible education and help us to understand some of our chronic social problems better”.

With this answer, Rushton was trivializing the Nazi crimes. Nazism was equated with nationalism, religion, egalitarianism, “even self-defence”. Rushton says nothing about the evil ideas of Nazism per se but how they were used for evil deeds, in the same way that other ideas, including noble ideas such as egalitarianism and well-established ideas such as self-defence, have been used for evil deeds. Then Rushton declares that his science is objective. His commitment is to scientific truth, no matter how crude that truth might be. And then he goes on to argue that his ideas may better children education. But surely not the education of every child. No matter how much you invest in the education of black children, they would not be able to escape their lot. They belong to the inferior race and therefore they are doomed to suffer the consequences of their brute luck.

What can help us understand Rushton’s reasoning is his behaviour and conduct outside the scientific world. Rushton was embraced by anti-black associations, by racists and bigots. Rushton not only did not flinch; he accepted their attention and the honour of being their star scientist.

In 2002, Rushton was appointed president of the Pioneer Fund, which has for decades funded dubious studies linking race to characteristics like criminality, sexuality and intelligence. Pioneer has long promoted eugenics, or the “science” of creating “better” humans through selective breeding. Set up in 1937 and headed by Nazi sympathizers, the Pioneer Fund’s mission was “to advance the scientific study of heredity and human differences”. It strove to improve the character of the American people through eugenics and procreation by people of white colonial stock. Rushton has spoken on the alleged IQ deficiencies of minorities at conferences of the racist American Renaissance magazine and website, and he has published a number of articles in the group’s newsletter. His work is often published on racist websites, including the anti-immigrant hate site, Vdare.com.

While appearing before and in support of racist groups, the above-mentioned sensitive and debatable statements then amount to hate speech. The context, as we learned from JS Mill’s theory On Liberty makes a great difference. A questionable race theory when invoked in Nazi and other radical extremist rallies is the fuel for their raging hatred, the validating force for their twisted beliefs, the scientific cloth that legitimized crude beliefs about hierarchy of races. Expressed in such forums, Rushton’s ideas become hate speech.

Q. Staying with the distinction between hate speech and free speech, religious criticism is commonly seen as an area where the lines become blurred. For example, sometimes actual bigotry towards religious minorities is dressed up as critique of religious beliefs and scripture. Where do you see the line being drawn on this issue?   

Two separate issues are relevant:

1. A speaker uses religion to incite violence against others.
2. A speaker defames and offends a certain minority because of its religion.

Both have taken place in Britain. As for the first scenario:

The state cannot sit idly by while religious authorities incite violence. Such public figures need to decide: either they are public servants who adhere to the laws and values of the state or they incite to violence. If they chose the latter, they should resign immediately. And if they do not see the necessity in doing so, then the state should discharge them from all public responsibilities. This is true for all religious authorities and more so for popular public figures with a large crowd of adherents. The justice system should act and crack down on the phenomena that might lead to violence. Violent religious preachers might pose a real danger to the well-being of society.

As for the second scenario, I think offence should be taken more seriously than it is considered today. Much blood was shed unnecessarily because of the Danish cartoons. We should be respectful of all religions, understand and appreciate the power of religion to bring about change, positive and negative. One of Karl Marx’s greatest mistakes was underestimating the power of religion. Religion can motivate people to help others, and it can motivate people to destroy. This is true for any religion. Pushed to its extreme, fundamental religion can create a lot of damage. As extremes tend to feed each other, speakers should be cautious of the power of the word and avoid inflaming tensions, emphasising those things that bring people together, not that divides them, creating bridges rather than obstacles and alienation.

In this age, many terrorists were Muslim. But, of course, not all Muslims are terrorists. Only a small number of Muslims are terrorists and they represent Islam to the same extent that the KKK represents Christianity and the Kahane movement represents Judaism. To tag Islam as a terrorist religion is to defame religion unjustly. Such statements are unwarranted and only inflame an already tense environment.

Let me mention the work of organisations such as ‘TELL MAMA’, an Anti-Muslim Hatred group that seeks to consider and takes forward proposals to tackle anti-Muslim hatred. Its action plan aims to create an environment that prevents hate crime from happening.

Free expression is not a recipe for lawlessness. The balance between free speech and protecting the public should not, on such matters, lean to the former. Liberal democracies have an obligation to secure the well-being of its population, especially vulnerable minorities. Indeed, the litmus test of a decent or civilized liberal democracy is the status of minorities.

Q. In your research, have you observed a connection between hate speech and violent acts?

Yes, I did.

In 1999, 21-year-old Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, an avowed Aryan supremacist, went on a racially-motivated shooting spree in Illinois and Indiana over the July 4th weekend. Targeting Jews, African-Americans, and Asian-Americans, Smith killed two and wounded eight before taking his own life, just as law enforcement officers prepared to apprehend him. Smith embarked on his killing spree after being exposed to Internet racial propaganda. He regularly visited the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC) website, a notorious racist and hateful organisation founded in Florida in the early 1970s. Smith was so consumed by the hate rhetoric of WCOTC that he was willing to murder and to take his own life in pursuit of his debased hate devotion.

The same year there were two other hate-motivated murders. Buford Furrow used to visit hate sites, including Stormfront.org and a macabre site called Gore Gallery, on which explicit photos of brutal murders were posted. Whether inspirational or instructional, the Internet supplied information that clearly helped fuel the explosion of a ticking human time bomb. Furrow decided to move to action. He drove to the North Valley Jewish Community Center and shot an elderly receptionist and a teenage girl who cared for the young students attending the summer day school. He continued shooting, hitting three children, one as young as 5 years old, before leaving the facility. Shortly thereafter Furrow fatally shot a Filipino American postal delivery worker because he worked for the federal government and was not White.

In turn, Matthew Williams, a solitary student at the University of Idaho, turned to the Internet in search of a new spiritual path. Described as a “born fanatic” by acquaintances, Williams reportedly embraced a number of the radical-right philosophies he encountered online, from the anti-government views of militias to the racist and anti-Semitic beliefs of the Identity movement. He regularly downloaded pages from extremist sites and continually used printouts of these pages to convince his friends to also adopt these beliefs. At age 31, Matthew Williams and his 29-year-old brother, Tyler, were charged with murdering a gay couple, Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder, and with involvement in setting fire to three Sacramento-area synagogues. The police discovered boxes of hate literature at the home of the brothers.

In early 2001, Richard Baumhammers, another Aryan supremacist, shot down six people, all members of minorities, in suburban Philadelphia, inspired by material on the Internet. Tim Haney of the Allegheny County Police Department in Pennsylvania testified that computer records confiscated at Baumhammers’ home indicated his frequent visits to white supremacist Internet sites.

Michael Brad Magleby burned a cross on an interracial couple’s property. He also visited hate sites prior transmitting this hateful message. In 2002, Michael Kenneth Faust, a  white supremacist who spent several hours a day on the Internet soliciting teens to take his classes on firearm use, shot and killed a teenager.

More recently, a 22-year-old man Keith Luke murdered two black people, and raped and nearly killed a third, on the morning after Barack Obama was inaugurated as president (January 21, 2009). When he was captured, Luke told police that he intended to go to a synagogue that night and kill as many Orthodox Jews as possible. Luke told the police that he had been reading white power websites for about six months (in other words, from about the time that Obama won the Democratic nomination) and had concluded that the white race was being subjected to a genocide in America. Therefore he had to act. This is a clear-cut case of propaganda translating directly into criminal violence.

Later the same year, on June 10, 2009, James von Brunn entered the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and opened fire, killing Security Guard Stephen Tyrone Johns before he was stopped by other security guards. Von Brunn, a die-hard white supremacist anti-Semite, was an active neo-Nazi for decades long before the Internet became a viable public platform during the early 1990s. He utilized the Internet to publish his tracts and to spew hatred. Von Brunn ran a hate website called holywesternempire.org and had a long history of associations with prominent neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. For a period of time, he was employed by Noontide Press, a part of the Holocaust denying Institute of Historical Review, which was then run by Willis Carto, one of America’s most prominent anti-Semites.

In Canada, Craig Harrison was found guilty of an assault causing bodily harm to an individual whose race he did not like and was sentenced to two years less a day in jail. Observing the content of messages posted on the Net by him, the Canadian Human Rights Commission concluded that the materials were likely to expose those of the Jewish faith, Aboriginal peoples, francophones, blacks and others to hatred and contempt: “They are undoubtedly as vile as one can imagine and not only discriminatory but threatening to the victims they target”.

In 2014, The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) published a two-year study that details incidents in which active users on one website, Stormfront.org, murdered nearly 100 people in the last five years. These incidents include: (a) the killing of three Pittsburgh police officers by Richard Poplawski in 2009. (b) Two years later, in 2011, Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous journey in which he detonated a truck bomb in front of a government building in Oslo, killing eight, and then went on a shooting spree in Utoya Island, murdering 69 others. (c) In May 2012, Jason Todd Ready killed four people before killing himself. (d) That same month, Eric Clinton Kirk Newman, also known as Luca Rocco Magnotta, was accused of torturing and dismembering a Chinese immigrant; (e) three months later, Wade Michael Page shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple before killing himself during a shootout with police.

Q. What practical actions can be taken to counter hate on the Internet and are there any promising initiatives currently underway to tackle this issue?

Speech v. Speech – This is the favourite American response, espoused by many Internet experts and human rights activists who argue that the way to tackle hate on the Net is by more communication, by openness and by exposing the problem. We need to show that all human beings deserve respect and concern, all have dignity, and that a racially based society negates liberal-democratic values that we all hold dear: pluralism, diversity, individuality, liberty, equality, tolerance, justice. Counter-speech includes expressive support for the targets of hate, highlighting the values of tolerance, pluralism, individualism and respect for others.

Education – activity at primary and high schools alerting about hate on the Internet; its forms and attractions (music, video games, activities for kids); why racism is logically incoherent, empirically unattainable, anti-democratic and inhumane; why it is harmful; who is targeted; history of hate and the connection between hate and some of the most horrific human catastrophes men inflicted upon other men.

In the USA, Partners Against Hate, an innovative collaboration of the Anti-Defamation League, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, and the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, offers promising education and counteraction strategies for young people and the wide range of community-based professionals who work and interact with youth, including parents, law enforcement officials, educators, and community/business leaders. In turn, Family Online Safety Institute focuses on making the online safer for kids through the promotion of best practices, tools and education.

Adopting and enforcing school, university and workplace policies – institutions and organizations should adopt policies that exclude hate and bigotry off and online. They should ascertain that their computers are not used for purposes that are incompatible with these policies. Students and workers should not abuse their time at the education system and at the workplace and exploit the technology that is made available to them to preach hatred against others, or to engage in expressions that contravene and undermine civility and respect for others. Hate is destructive. There is no reason to provide scope for hate speech in schools and the workplace.

Netcitizenship – the term “Netcitizenship” means good citizenship on the Internet. It is about developing responsible modes of conduct when surfing the Internet which include positive contributions to debates and discussions, and raising caution and alarm against dangerous Net expressions. Netcitizenship encourages counter-speech against hate speech, working together to provide a safe and comfortable virtual community, free of intimidation and bigotry. One example is Wipeout Homophobia (WHOF) which was originated as a response to gay hatred on the Internet. Wipeout Homophobia provides communal support and promotes a vision of a more tolerant and just world. In 2012, this Facebook page had more than 300,000 members and 6 million visitors.

ISPs’ responsibility – ISPs and web-hosting companies should develop standards for responsible and acceptable practices for Net users. They should adopt clear and transparent hate speech policies and include them in their terms of service. ISPs should also devise friendly and easy-to-use mechanisms for Netusers to report violations of their terms of service. With continued development of technical solutions and innovation and with increased awareness of and adherence to basic Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) we will assure a certain security level on the Internet, like in any other industry. What is required is more structure. CSR should be part of the web company’s strategy, in the frame of mind of the day-to-day operations. Indeed, CSR is a continuous living process.

Social media companies have teams of only a few hundred employees to monitor networks of billions of accounts. This is insufficient and it is also irresponsible. Social media companies need to address the problem far more seriously. Each company should have a group of highly-talented software engineers to devise a search algorithm that would flag out a string of words that may indicate that a person is engaged with anti-social and dangerous expressions. Facebook has such a team of specialists to deal with suspected fake identities. Facebook takes this issue very seriously. It is suggested to adopt a similar attitude to combat radical, extremist expressions as human lives are no less significant than fake identities. After flagging a string of violent words, a team of people who monitor social networks will then look at the context and, if they come to believe that the speech is dangerous, they will swiftly intervene, remove the dangerous content and block the extremist from continuing the dangerous activity. By such proactivity, social media companies can save many lives.

Affecting search engines results — If you Google the words “Martin Luther King”, one of the results you will receive is http://www.martinlutherking.org/, a hate site masquerading as an objective historical source about the American human rights leader. High school students who are asked to conduct research on the life and leadership of Mr King are likely to come across this site. Some of them might think this is a legitimate site, with credible eye-opener information. The Google algorithm used to determine search ranking does not evaluate the accuracy of information thus the site’s high ranking can potentially mislead many users, especially young users who conduct their very first research.

Google was under pressure to manipulate its search engine so as to boost or reduce websites’ page ranking. The controversy revolved around a clearly anti-Semitic website, http://www.jewwatch.com/, which sometimes was ranked first if you searched the word “Jew”. Thousands of netusers petitioned Google to remove the site.

Labelling, naming and shaming – Web-hosting companies like First Amendment, Go Daddy and Xanga.com (blog hosting) that are friendly to racial propaganda should be named and shamed.

International cooperation – In Europe, a continent that suffered a great deal from the horror of hate and bigotry, much less tolerance is afforded to such phenomenon compared to the United States. In 1996, a governmental organization in Germany, Jugendschutz.net, and a non-governmental organization in the Netherlands, Stichting Magenta, were the first organizations in the world to start a dedicated team to address the problems of racism, anti-Semitism, hate against Muslims, gays, and other discrimination or incitement to hatred, each in their own country.

In 2002, they founded the International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH) whose vision is the international co-operation between complaints bureaus against discrimination, which allows the sharing of knowledge, the exchange of best practices and coordinated measures against hate speech, promoting respect, citizenship and responsibility, enabling Internet users to exercise their right of freedom of speech with respect for the rights and reputations of others, and to freely use the Internet without experiencing cyber hate. The mission of INACH is to unite and empower organizations fighting cyber hate, to create awareness and promote attitude change about on-line discrimination and to reinforce the rights of all Internet users. INACH monitors the Internet and publishes overviews and reports about the situation in different countries. INACH acts as an umbrella organization for hotlines specializing in racist and hateful content.

Other notable organizations fighting against hate are LICRA.org and the Dutch Centre Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI). LICRA is the French International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme). It was created in May 1926 in Paris. LICRA fights discrimination, racism and xenophobia especially as they are manifested on the electronic and print media. CIDI is the Netherlands’ prime source of information about Israel and the Jewish people. CIDI has published instructions explaining how to get anti-Semitic material removed from the Internet. CIDI believes that individual surfers have a responsibility to take action against hate.

Publishing overviews and reports on a regular basis –- publishing names of hate sites, highlights of their content, their locations, their ISPs, both successful and unsuccessful attempts to curtail their activities.

Law and adherence to international conventions — On global issues such as hate there is a need for international cooperation to respond to global concerns. As the Internet is an international medium, countries realize the urgency for transnational coordination. The Ministerial Council Decision 9/09 of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) of December 2, 2009, on Combating Hate Crimes calls on the participating States to seek opportunities to co-operate and thereby address the increasing use of the Internet to advocate views constituting an incitement to bias-motivated violence including hate crimes and, in so doing, to reduce the harm caused by the dissemination of such material, while ensuring that any relevant measures taken are in line with OSCE commitments, in particular with regard to freedom of expression.

Further research may analyse the ways social media apps are used in spreading hate speech, the way modern technologies are exploited to spread hate speech and whether search engines and social networking sites should continue to assist hate groups in their agenda.

Future research may also compare between the utilization of the Internet to spout hatred to the way the Internet is being utilized to other anti-social groups: criminals, paedophiles and terrorists. There seem to be many commonalities between the modes of operation of these groups. Such comparative studies may help security agencies in the fighting against these phenomena.

 

When does a serious environmental problem become a security threat?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week marks the 69^th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, still the only two cases of nuclear weapons use. On these dates each year the media reminds the wider public about the destructive power of these inhumane weapons. The ‘humanitarian dimension’ initiative highlighting the consequences of nuclear weapons is evolving and consolidating itself in the non-proliferation regime. It has been shining a bright and constant light on the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons use – whether accidental or deliberate – at multilateral fora on nuclear weapons policy since the last Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference (RevCon) in 2010.

The initiative has held two international conferences, hosted by Norway and Mexico, addressing issues relating to the impact, consequence management, and risks of nuclear weapons detonation (March 2013 in Oslo and February 2014 in Nayarit). At these conferences, the powerful testimony of the hibakusha (Japanese witnesses to nuclear bombing) served as a solemn reminder of the physical and psychological long-term effects for these survivors.

The five nuclear weapons states (NWS or P5) under the NPT – China, France, Russia, UK and US – boycotted the first two of these international conferences. The third international Conference on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons will be held in Vienna on 8-9 December 2014. Below are five reasons why the P5 should consider participating in some capacity in the Vienna conference.

1. To improve atmospherics before the 2015 NPT RevCon

The P5 have a vested interest in a smooth and “successful” 2015 NPT RevCon, to be convened at the UN in New York next May. After all, the NPT has conveniently served their security interests by limiting horizontal nuclear proliferation whilst designating them as the only recognized NWS. As various non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS) stressed at the April-May 2014 NPT Preparatory Committee (PrepCom), patience is running incredibly thin with the NWS and the credibility of the regime is in question. Some states starkly warned that a roll-over of the 2010 NPT RevCon Action Plan will not be acceptable at the 2015 NPT RevCon.

So the pressure lies heavily on the P5 to engage – or at least to show a willingness to engage – more genuinely with the demands of the NNWS towards addressing disarmament commitments. One simple way to improve atmospherics in the regime would be engagement and participation in the Vienna conference by at least some of the NWS. The most detrimental behavior to the regime would be a repeat of the cartel-like approach to decision-making on participation at the Vienna conference by the P5. Such P5 solidarity, as was evidenced in bloc P5 decision-making vis-à-vis the Oslo conference would almost certainly have negative implications for the 2015 NPT RevCon.

2. To encourage NNWS to affirm humanitarian concern as a non-proliferation pledge

The active reaffirmations of abhorrence and concern with the catastrophic consequences of nuclear use by NNWS are of positive benefit as commitments both to disarmament and non-proliferation. These formal declarations and affirmations by states parties in the NPT review process and in the UN General Assembly can serve as confidence-building measures. Such declaratory statements could be construed to be affirmations akin to the Iranian fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. Such formal statements in multilateral diplomatic fora could indeed serve to confirm the declaratory views of states in regard to nuclear weapons.

3. To engage the non-NPT nuclear-armed states

Given the cross-regional and cross-grouping support for the humanitarian initiative within both the NPT review process and the broader non-proliferation and disarmament regime, the initiative could help to forge new dialogue channels for the regime. As evidenced by India and Pakistan’s participation in the Oslo and Nayarit conferences, such fora, separate from the NPT review process, can include engagement of nuclear-armed non-NPT states on issues and dialogue relating to nuclear weapons in the broader non-proliferation and disarmament regime.

Given the continued deadlock at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva, processes such as these conferences can circumvent the current stalemate in the CD and facilitate dialogue on these salient issues away from the formal confines and political stages of Geneva and New York.

4. To showcase consequence-management capabilities

The five NPT NWS could contribute to the humanitarian impact discussions at the initiative’s conferences by sharing their technical research and insight on emergency and disaster response preparedness and capacity. Then again, these states may find it difficult to participate in conferences which may lead to uncomfortable conclusions about the inability of states or any institution to address the consequences of nuclear use and the associated risks of possession and use. Whilst considering participation options at the earlier international conferences, some NWS apparently suggested narrowing the conference agenda to addressing the consequence management of limited/small-scale nuclear exchanges.

5. To engage the initiative and attempt to shape the discourse and pathway

If the P5 wish to shape the discourse and the future aims and agenda of an evolving initiative with increasing momentum and sophistication, they could do so more effectively by participating in its non-binding, non-consensus-reaching international conferences. Not to do so is to miss an opportunity to steer the initiative in or at a more comfortable direction or pace. Whether the momentum and aims of the initiative are now beyond “a point of no return” and heading towards a ban treaty, could be the reality the NWS face.

One thing is certain, dismissing the initiative and trying to discredit its activities as “diverting” from the P5 step-by-step process will only antagonize those NPT states parties already frustrated by the lack of progress on nuclear disarmament commitments. This would surely make the 2015 NPT RevCon more challenging for all parties.

 

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

Featured Image: Aftermath of the 6 August 1945 nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Source: Wikipedia

 

Author’s Note: All views in this piece are the author’s own and do not reflect her employer’s views or anyone else’s.

In 1996, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) opened for signature. The CTBT is a multilateral treaty that bans all nuclear explosions on Earth. Its predecessor, the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), banned nuclear explosions except for underground testing. Between 1945 and 1996, over 2000 tests were conducted by the five NPT nuclear-weapon states. Since 1996, India, Pakistan and the DPRK have conducted around half a dozen tests. A ban on testing limits further development of nuclear explosive devices. Twenty years since the CTBT opened for signature, the Treaty has not yet entered into force given the pending necessary ratifications by eight Annex 2 states (China, the DPRK, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and the United States).  Annex 2 states are the 44 states that participated in the negotiations of the CTBT and possessed nuclear power or research reactors at the time.

Marking the 20^th year of the CTBT, I attended the 2016 CTBTO Symposium, including several panel events on the treaty in Vienna, and organized a public panel event at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP). Last week, I attended a high-level CTBTO public discussion panel featuring the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, among other dignitaries. The following are a few reflections and musings on issues surrounding the CTBT at 20 to stimulate discussion. These include issues and questions which continue to irk me—an analyst—and which remain unanswered.

Trite but true: political will vs policy priorities

Twenty years on, the bottom line ultimately remains languishing political will. Let’s be honest—the CTBT is not a priority for most states who have yet to sign or ratify this treaty. If this issue had been a policy priority for states, there would have been positive progress towards ratification by now, despite domestic hurdles. Some Annex 2 states may be increasingly perceived to be holding CTBT entry-into-force hostage to other regional issues and priorities.

Political will is again tested when those few windows of opportunity for exerting political leverage on other states vis-à-vis non-proliferation and disarmament are dismissed for more pressing policy objectives. In bilateral nuclear cooperation deals with India, NPT states who advocate routinely for the entry into force of the CTBT—including the US and Australia—could have used the negotiation of a bilateral commercial cooperation deal to include some requirement for India to progress on its CTBT status. More significantly, if the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has to take a decision in the future on admitting India into the NSG as a participating government, then the pre-condition of adhering to nuclear non-proliferation conditions such as ratifying the CTBT could be pushed. Yet these small windows of opportunity for bilateral or multilateral leverage on non-proliferation priorities are squandered.

In a similar vein, one could wonder whether requiring Iran to ratify the CTBT was sacrificed early on in the negotiation process of the multilateral deal seeking to curtail Iran’s nuclear activities. Of course, more pressing objectives vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program were at stake. The CTBT and missile development issues were expendable.

If CTBT entry-into-force is indeed a priority for states of the international community, as oft heard in high-level declarations of support and urgency for this issue, political will and determination for the CTBT should align with policy priorities. It currently doesn’t and, as evidenced by bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements, securing trade policy objectives seem instead to be prioritized.

With the DPRK’s continued defiance of the nuclear testing moratorium, more than high-level statements of condemnation and expressions of regret need to take place following suspected nuclear tests and missile-related activities. China seems to be finally exerting some pressure on the DPRK in the UNSC and via bilateral channels after all these years of acquiescence. Concerted and united action by the international community and the UN Security Council needs to be taken against the DPRK. Such action should include curtailing bilateral trade relations with the DPRK. Again, this will require policy priorities—trade versus non-proliferation—to be assessed by governments.

CTBT: is it a disarmament, non-proliferation, or an arms control treaty?

Throughout the various sessions of the CTBTO Symposium, there were comments and unanswered questions posed by speakers on their views of how to categorize the CTBT. For example, is it a disarmament, non-proliferation or arms control treaty? Or possibly a hybrid of these? There was no clear consensus of views on this issue which was recurrently woven throughout sessions and presentations. An academic assessment of this issue would be useful and may have implications on practicalities.

During a session on the CTBT and nuclear security, I posed a politically sensitive question which remains unanswered. What are the prospects of the CTBT contributing to issues of the broader nuclear security agenda given the existing apprehension and political sensitivities by IAEA member states to link any aspects of nuclear disarmament in addressing nuclear security issues post the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) process? The “d” word inside certain corridors of the Vienna International Center (VIC) seems to raise apprehension and discontent, with arguments voiced by member states of certain international organizations that nuclear disarmament is not covered by the mandates. Disarmament seems to traditionally not be a Vienna issue, and belongs to the enclave dialogue in the NPT and First Committee bubbles in Geneva and New York. Until, that is, 2017, when the NPT PrepCom is due to roll into town for the kick-off of the 2020 NPT review cycle. How states parties view the CTBT—as a disarmament, non-proliferation or arms control treaty—may have implications for this question on whether the CTBT can contribute towards the broader nuclear security priorities.

Is testing necessary?

During the CTBTO Symposium there was a very interesting panel discussion between scientists elaborating the technical rationale for why states conduct nuclear tests. One passing comment on the Vela Incident—a 1979 event which is believed to be a nuclear test conducted by Israel and South Africa over the ocean between the southern part of Africa and the Antarctic–prompted  me to think the unthinkable quietly to myself. Given the existing moratorium on testing (not including subcritical)—which only the DPRK defies–and based on the technical assessment that testing is not necessary for certain devices, would the potential sharing of nuclear test data amongst allies be a preferable solution to testing?

Although this would strictly not contravene the testing moratorium and the text of the CTBT, assisting proliferation and nuclear weapons advancement to NPT non-nuclear weapon states and non-NPT states would still contravene the NPT and the spirit of the CTBT. Although states could potentially avoid international condemnation by transgressing the established testing moratorium e.g. by relying on allies for the required testing data and expertise in relation to simple devices, this would still be contradictory to the spirit of the established non-proliferation treaties which underpin the broader nuclear non-proliferation regime. Moreover, some Annex 2 states seem to be debating domestically whether computer simulations, subcritical tests and activities not specifically prohibited by the CTBT are sufficient for the maintenance of their safe, secure and reliable nuclear arsenals. A comment by a Chinese Ambassador at this week’s recent CTBTO discussion panel, alludes to this debate as the National People’s Congress deliberate the Treaty.

Definitional issue: does nuclear testing constitute nuclear use?

There is a definitional issue which remains to be addressed adequately: does nuclear testing constitute nuclear use? Individuals affected by nuclear testing definitely consider the testing of nuclear explosives and devices as nuclear use. In his intervention at this week’s CTBTO discussion panel, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon argued that bringing the CTBT into force would honour the victims of nuclear testing. The Secretary-General noted that nuclear testing poisons water, causes cancers and pollutes the environment with radioactive fallout for generations.

Whilst most states, academics and analysts would consider the explosion of nuclear devices at Hiroshima and Nagasaki the two instances of nuclear use, many —including victims of nuclear testing— would argue that nuclear testing actually constitutes nuclear use. This is based on the detrimental effects and impact that nuclear testing has had on individuals, communities and the environment where these tests were conducted. In Australia, “nuclear nomads” from aboriginal communities have been forced to leave their spiritual lands. In the South Pacific, including the Marshall Islands, many communities are still living with the long-term reproductive health implications from the nuclear testing that was conducted on their territory.

During this year, marking the 20^th anniversary of the CTBT, it may therefore be fitting to have an honest conversation about whether the international community ought to start considering and reframing our understanding and discourse of what actually constitutes nuclear use. This wouldn’t be politically popular, given the many states who have conducted nuclear tests. Given the highly contentious discord and fractures in the multilateral nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament fora—the NPT review process,the UNGA First Committee and the Open Ended Working Group taking forward multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations (OEWG)—in multilateral discussions of pathways towards nuclear disarmament and the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, discussions of reframing the discourse on nuclear testing as nuclear use may add further contention. It could, however, also serve to discursively elevate the issue of nuclear testing, and strengthen the case for entry-into-force of the CTBT. Additionally, it would raise the political costs of future nuclear tests. It does however remain an issue—along with several others raised in this short piece—which ought to be assessed and adequately discussed, even if only in wonky academic circles.

Jenny Nielsen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP). Previously she was a Visiting Scholar at the NATO Defence College (NDC), Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland (UQ), Research Analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), and Programme Manager for the Defence & Security Programme at Wilton Park.