Category: 07

 

Last week saw the start of yet another armed anti-government revolt in South Sudan’s Jonglei state.  Reportedly led by Murle militia leader Major General David Yau Yau, there are now fears that the revolt will escalate as a result of longstanding local grievances with the army of South Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

The unrest comes as a result of a widely criticised government-led civilian disarmament campaign in Jonglei state – so-called ‘Operation Restore Peace’ – which was launched after violent clashes between Lou Nuer and Murle communities in January. Carried out by the SPLA, with an additional 15,000 soldiers and 5,000 members of the South Sudan Police Service, the campaign has been condemned by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan and groups such as Human Rights Watch for alleged human rights violations including killings; allegations of torture, simulated drowning and beatings; rape and attempted rape; and abductions. On October 3rd, Amnesty International issued a press statement calling on the government to take immediate action to end these reported human rights violations, launching a new report ‘Lethal Disarmament’ which highlights abuses in Pibor County of Jonglei State.

Not for the first time, the Government of South Sudan’s  civilian disarmament initiative has failed to improve security in South Sudan. In 2006, as described by the Human Security Baseline Assessment at Small Arms Survey, the SPLA’s forcible civilian disarmament operation in northern Jonglei State succeeded in collecting 3,000 weapons from the local community. However, as a result of the campaign’s focus on the Lou Nuer community and martial and poorly planned approach, as well as a lack of subsequent security guarantees for the community, heavy fighting ensued and more than 1,600 people were killed.

In 2008, Interim President  of Southern Sudan, Salva Kiir issued a decree to start a six month disarmament period across the country. Conducted by the SPLA, the aim of the operation was to get all civilians to surrender their weapons in a peaceful manner, although ‘appropriate force’ could be used. However, as operational logistics were not outlined after the decree, a lack of centralised strategy resulted in various outcomes and in many places, an increased sense of insecurity. For example, in Lakes State local police had their weapons confiscated and weapons searches became violent as reportedly drunken soldiers stole from people’s homes.

Thus far, civilian disarmament operations in South Sudan have done little to increase long term security. After decades of war, small arms and light weapons are notoriously rife in the young country, but attempts to solve this problem by confiscating these weapons does little to deal with the root causes of insecurity and communities’ need for self-protection.  Small Arms Survey estimates that prior to the interim separation of Sudan and South Sudan after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005, there were between 1.9 and 3.2 million small arms in circulation, with about two-thirds of these in civilian hands.  While these weapons come from a number of sources – including the SPLA during the Second Civil War – it is also important to understand why civilians feel they must arm themselves.

South Sudan’s severe underdevelopment, lack of infrastructure – with only 300km of paved road  – seasonal floods, and subsequent lack of service provision and security capacity, means that there is a considerable absence of established security services across the country.  Persistent, and often deadly, cattle raiding and escalating inter-communal armed conflict between groups such as the Lou Nuer and Murle in Jonglei State leave individuals and communities to seek ways to protect themselves and their property. Subsequently, informal community security structures are common; ranging from community initiatives to groups such as the Lou Nuer’s ‘White Army’, which was originally formed to protect cattle and now constitutes a major threat to Murle communities in Jonglei. In effect, the Government’s inability to ensure security at the community level means that groups are forced to take matters into their own hands, often challenging the state’s right to a monopoly of violence because of a lack of confidence in its ability to provide adequate protection.

In current approaches to civilian disarmament, communities are often left in a ‘security vacuum’, without the means to protect themselves from immediate security threats but without any guarantees that even short term immediate security assistance will be provided.  This state of vulnerability in turn leads to community backlashes, rapid re-arming or attempts not to turn weapons in.

As stated in a report by Saferworld in February 2012, ‘on its own, civilian disarmament does virtually nothing to address the factors fuelling demand and supply of these weapons, which requires a much more complex and long-term strategy.’  Reducing and managing the proliferation of civilian use of small arms and light weapons will require the Government of South Sudan to create a holistic strategy that addresses the demand for weapons as well as their supply. As has been proven in efforts until now, addressing the single issue of weapons supply without dealing with the underlying need for guns undermines attempts to decrease proliferation of small arms and light weapons. A government strategy would necessarily address structural issues, including the state’s capacity to provide professional security services that can be relied upon for protection, such that communities feel safe from immediate threats.

In no small measure, this will involve degrees of security sector reform, particularly with focused training on civilian interaction and ethnic impartiality in operations if the army is to be used for future operations. As the latest Amnesty report demands, the Government must ‘provide security forces carrying out civilian disarmament with the necessary training and resources to enable them to have a clear understanding of how to carry out disarmament in accordance with international human rights standards’. This must also include measures to address the structural issues facilitating civilian arms possession, including sales of weapons to civilians by government security forces because of lack of pay and porous regional borders that allow illicit trade. Such augmentation of basic infrastructure and security capacity in South Sudan will take years, and so attempts to reduce proliferation must also include measures to address immediate security threats, in addition to tackling longer term structural, capacity and training issues.

Civilian disarmament campaigns in South Sudan currently attempt to tackle one of the many symptoms of the country’s militarised post-war society. Instead, these campaigns must be seen as one aspect of an overarching and sustainable disarmament and security sector reform strategy that must be undertaken long term, while ensuring that the immediate security of communities is safeguarded and that their need for weapons to protect themselves is adequately addressed and reduced.

Zoë Pelter is a Research Officer of Oxford Research Group’s (ORG) Sustainable Security Programme. 

Image Source: ENOUGH Project

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.

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.

Dr Michael Nest has expertise in political and social issues around mining. He is also an anti-corruption expert and formerly worked for the Independent Commission Against Corruption in Sydney, Australia. He has recently focused on building capacity to prevent corruption in community development programmes, including a research paper on corruption in local-level development schemes funded by mineral revenues.  Michael is the author of Coltan (Polity Press, 2011), which is about the changing global supply chain for the mineral ‘coltan’ (or tantalum), the new US legislation focused on conflict minerals, and China’s emerging role in the market for this mineral. In 2012 and 2014, Michael advised African governments on the new certification mechanism for tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold being established to prevent conflict minerals from Central Africa entering the supply chain.  His latest co-authored book, Still a Pygmy: the unique struggle of one man’s fight to save his identity from extinction (Finch, 2015) is the first memoir by a Pygmy ever published.

In this interview, Dr. Nest discusses the political, environmental, ethical and social issues surrounding the mining of columbite–tantalite (coltan).

Q. In the past, arguably very few had heard of coltan. Yet in the past two decades it has entered into discussions in the UN and featured in several international media outlets’ reports. What is coltan and what is it used for?

Coltan is the nickname for the mineral ‘tantalite’.  When processed, the mineral tantalite is called tantalum – so tantalum is the metal.

Coltan – or properly speaking, the metal ‘tantalum’ – has a wide application.  About two-thirds of coltan is used in a device called a ‘capacitor’.  Capacitors are found in electronic products, especially consumer electronic products such as mobile phones, laptops, gaming platforms, and ipads, and are used to store and regulate the flow of electricity from the source of power (such as a battery) to the working parts of the device.  Capacitors have a crucial role in ensuring there is no power surge or fluctuations to the device that could disable or break it.  Coltan is also used for special alloys (mixtures of different metals), in memory chips for electronic consumer goods, and special coatings (such as on camera lenses).

Q. In which parts of the world is coltan mined?

Coltan comes from three sources: as a by-product of tin slag (20% of supply) – ‘slag’ is the waste material that sits in dumps around historic tin mines; recycling (30% of supply); and mines (50% of supply).

Coltan is extracted from tin slag in Brazil, Malaysia and Thailand.  Coltan that comes from recycled scrap materials is extracted at metal recycling plants in many countries around the world.

In terms of mines producing coltan/tantalite, these are found around the world.  In 2016, according to the US Geological Survey, the biggest producers of coltan are Rwanda, D.R. Congo, Brazil, China, and Australia (in this order), although historically Canada and Ethiopia have also been significant producers, and Australia was the largest producer until the global financial crisis in 2008.  There are lower levels of mine production in Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe.  Tantalite deposits have been identified and are being explored in Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Greenland, Madagascar, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

Q. There has been some literature examining the relationship between coltan extraction and violence with a fair amount of discussion focused on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). What role did coltan play in the DRC’s war?

The allegation made by activist organisations focused on reducing conflict in the D.R. Congo is that profits from coltan mining were a primary source of funding for armed militias waging war against the government.  These militias, so the argument goes, used coltan profits to buy weapons and food, which allowed them to wage war.  Militias in the DRC are notorious for their attacks on civilian populations, so the argument was not just that coltan profits perpetuated conflict against the government, but also that these profits were a chief cause of massacres of civilians, systemic rape and widespread destruction of property of civilians who live in Eastern DRC where coltan mines are located.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, activist organisations – as well as some media, academics and the UN – made connections between coltan profits and conflict in Eastern DRC, and focused overwhelmingly on coltan and not other minerals.  Many journalists continue to portray coltan as a major cause of conflict, although other commentators have now backed away from such simplistic claims and talk more broadly about ‘conflict minerals’ and acknowledge that conflict in the DRC occurs for a complex range of reasons.

Conflict in Eastern DRC occurs for multiple reasons, including:

• Local level struggles by powerful individuals for political domination
• Competition for land for agricultural purposes
• Ethnic rivalry
• For control of natural resources, especially minerals
• To protect land from outsiders seeking to exploit it (e.g., miners and loggers)
• Poor men waging war as a means of making a living through theft and looting

There were also broader factors around national-level conflict over the past 20 years that have drawn in local level actors and created incentives for war, including: military campaigns in DRC territory by the Rwandan and Ugandan armies (supposed by their local Congolese allies) focused on security concerns regarding opponents of their respective governments; defensive military campaigns by the DRC armed forces and government-allied local forces against the Rwandans and Ugandans and their proxies in the DRC, including retribution against civilian populations when they have regained territory; and armed groups with regional political agendas that oppose the DRC national government.  Fighting over mineral deposits was a minor element in all of these conflicts (a UN estimate of 1,500 local-level conflicts in the early 2000s was that fighting over natural resources accounted for only 8% of all conflicts), and conflict over coltan deposits was even less significant.

As I argue in my book Coltan (Polity 2011), some armed groups did, however, profit from coltan and undoubtedly these profits were used to buy weapons, food and other material used to wage war.  These profits were gained in four ways: armed groups stole coltan stocks from mine sites and mining companies’ depots; armed groups directly controlled production of coltan by controlling mines themselves; armed groups taxed the trade of coltan into and out of territory they controlled (as they did for other minerals and goods); and armed groups became directly involved in the export of coltan from Central Africa to the buyers on the international minerals market.  Calculating profits made from coltan is difficult, but I estimate that the total amount made by the Rwandan army from coltan in 1999 was approximately US$62m; by the Rwandan army and its Congolese-based ally (the RCD-Goma) in 2000 approximately US$10m; and by all armed groups in 2008 approximately US$11.8m.  Note that the high total in 1999 was largely because the price of coltan on the international market boomed that year and in 2000.

In sum, the war in the DRC was never just about minerals, and was certainly never just about coltan (gold, tin and tungsten were also importance sources of mineral revenue in the 2000s).  Tracing the role of coltan in war in the DRC, however, can tell us a lot about the connections between natural resources and conflict generally and research into these connections have helped broaden our understanding of the relationships between these natural resources and war.

Q. Were any Western corporations responsible for indirectly financing armed groups during the war in the DRC through purchasing coltan from the country?

During the wars between 1998 and 2003 companies from many different countries were involved in the coltan trade, including Western corporations.  The UN’s Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the D. R. Congo (April 2001) identified scores of private trading, brokerage, banking and transportation firms that participated in the illegal exploitation of natural resources from the DRC by trading or importing coltan from the DRC.

While almost none of these transactions were directly with armed groups (with the probable exception of some transactions involving Rwandan and Congolese firms), foreign firms were an important element of the coltan commodity chain that enabled armed groups in the DRC to profit from the production and export of illegally mined coltan to the rest of the world.

Because of the conflicted and dangerous conditions in Eastern DRC at the time, few foreign companies sent representatives into the country.  Instead, smaller Congolese or Rwandan trading firms bought and transported coltan into Rwanda, from where international minerals trading companies then imported it.  The UN identified twenty-seven firms from the following countries that imported coltan from the DRC via Rwanda: Rwanda (2 firms), Malaysia (1 firm), Germany (3 firms), Belgium (10 firms), Switzerland (1 firm), Netherlands (4 firms), UK (2 firms), Kenya (1 firm), India (1 firms), Pakistan (1 firm), and Russia (1 firm).  These firms sold the coltan they imported on to other minerals trading firms, or they sold it directly to processing plants.

Three big minerals processing plants bought much of the coltan that was exported via Rwanda during the early phase of the Congo Wars: Cabot from Canada, HC Starck from Germany and Ningxia Non-Ferrous Metals Smelter from China.  After 2001, Cabot and HC Starck released statements saying they no longer bought Congolese coltan.

Several airlines were involved in flying coltan out of Rwanda to second destinations, including Alliance Express (then 49% owned by South African Airways and 51% owned by the Rwandan government), Kencargo International (20% owned by Martinair), Airflo, Astral Aviation, and Martinair Holland, as well as the former Swissair and Sabena before these airlines collapsed.

The UN’s final report into the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the DRC (published October 2002), recommended placing financial sanctions on 29 companies from Belgium, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC itself, that were identified as being involved in the illegal coltan trade.  The same report identified businesses from OECD countries that the UN considered to be in violation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, including from the UK, USA, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany.  Firms from non-OECD countries that were also identified as having violated these guidelines were from Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, South Africa, and St Kitts.  The UN did not recommend sanctions on these OECD and non-OECD firms.  Rather, it brought attention to the firms’ breaches of these guidelines, presumably with a view to the companies then being reported to the national reporting contact point for such breaches in the relevant OECD country.

Q. In addition to the human rights issues attached to the coltan industry, is the mining process itself environmentally harmful?

Yes, there are environmental harms associated with coltan mining.  In the DRC, coltan mining overwhelmingly uses artisanal and small-scale (and occasionally medium scale) methods, although the harms these methods cause to the environment are not distinctive in that there is nothing specific about mining coltan that creates a different kind of harm to, for example, tin or tungsten.  Compare this to gold, where there are harms associated with the use of mercury.

 

In the DRC when a coltan deposit is found, miners rush in to exploit the site, regardless of whether it is on agricultural land or in a national park, and the mining destroys the potential for the land to be used for grazing or cropping, or as a biological reserve for fauna and flora.  Like other artisanal mining of minerals, artisanal coltan mining involves stripping forest and bush cover, then any topsoil, and digging pits to a depth of about 6m to get access to the ore deposit.  Water, provided through a pump system where a generator can be used, or by diverting a creek or river if a generator is not available, is used to soften the earth and rock, to break it up, and then to separate mineral ore from soil and to wash away the soil.  Water use is a major factor in the environmental harm caused by mining.

As I outlined in my book Coltan on pp.49-50, specific environmental effects of artisanal coltan mining include the following:

• Forest clearance to expose soil for mining;
• Cutting of timber to build worker camps;
• Cutting of firewood;
• Removing the bark from trees to make panning trays to wash coltan;
• Pollution of streams by silt from washing process;
• Diversion of streams from their original course;
• Cutting lianas to make baskets to carry coltan;
• Hunting animals, including for food, ivory and other body parts;
• Animals injured after escaping snares;
• Disturbance of fauna due to people resident in, and moving through, reserves;
• Reduced population of invertebrates and reduced photosynthesis in aquatic plants due to silting of streams;
• Reduced fish stocks in lakes and rivers affected by silt pollution;
• Erosion, including landslides, of unprotected ground during rains;
• Ecological changes due to loss of key species, such as elephants;
• Long-term changes in watershed due to rapid run-off in deforested areas;

There have been some studies that document these impacts.  A study of mining communities in the Kahuzi Biéga National Park in 1999 found that they ate elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, buffalo, and antelope – all poached from the park.  However, a subsequent report in 2001 found that tortoises, birds, small antelope, and monkeys were being eaten because all the big animals had been killed.

Q. Do you feel that there are any plausible ways for companies to be certain that the coltan they use in manufacturing their products is not from a conflict zone or unethically produced?

A company can improve certainty around the origins of any coltan used in its products, if it sources metals directly through a smelter that has an exclusive long-term contract with a coltan producer in a country such as Brazil, China, or Mozambique.  In such smelters, supply from these producers is so consistent there is virtually no likelihood of it being ‘contaminated’ by ore from other destinations.  The conflict-free smelter programme, which works with over 200 smelters, has safeguards in place to verify the origins of minerals processed by its members.  While there is always a chance that these consignments of minerals could be mixed with ore from militia-controlled mines in the D.R. Congo, this would be fairly unlikely as the reputation of the smelter (and the programme) is at stake and there is considerable due diligence around the provenance of minerals.

The challenge of sourcing ethically produced coltan is complicated when companies are buying components, especially components manufactured from yet other components, to manufacture their final goods, e.g., electronic items.  It is impracticable for an end-manufacturer to check the origin of all the metals that are used in all components – because literally thousands of components may be involved – and unrealistic to think that companies are able to do this.  The best they can do, is try to identify component manufacturers that have declared they will abide by ethical standards for sourcing minerals and have systems in place this claim to be verified – and of course end-product manufacturers should insist on seeing evidence of such checks.

It is important that all D.R. Congo coltan is not seen as being a ‘conflict mineral’, in a way that become common after the US Government first passed its conflict minerals Dodd-Frank legislation in 2010.  Civilian Congolese producers of coltan should be allowed to sell their product on the world market, and such production and trade is one of the few economic opportunities available to many Congolese.  The emphasis in terms of due diligence around ethical production of coltan should be on determining if coltan comes from conflict zones and is produced by armed groups, rather than if it comes from the DRC itself – this is an important distinction.  There are various schemes in place, or being established, in the DRC to ensure civilian-produced coltan is traced through to export.  The most well-known of these is the industry traceability and due diligence programme for coltan, tin and tungsten, which is managed by the International Tin Research Institute.

Q. As you mention, there have been a range of international efforts that have endeavoured to address the ethics surrounding coltan mining. Overall, do you feel that current efforts are succeeding or falling short?

Efforts have brought attention to ongoing violence and instability in the DRC, which is a good thing.  The problem is that the focus of activists, and even government initiatives such as the US Dodd-Frank legislation, has often been solely on conflict minerals as a cause of violence rather than a range of factors.  Thus, while there is heightened attention, there is also a simplified narrative being propagated that is detrimental to understanding the causes and consequences of the conflicts.

There is no doubt that international efforts have had an effect on the mining industry in DRC, but also Rwanda.  The passing of US legislation and consequence temporary embargo by the DRC government in late 2011 on any exports of conflict minerals, severely curtailed mining and trading of these minerals in eastern provinces (it was business as usual for mining in other provinces, such as Katanga).  This showed that international efforts can definitely have an impact (presumably President Kabila of the DRC felt that he had to impose the embargo to appear to be doing something about the conflict minerals trade).  New OECD regulations, the conflict-free smelter program and the International Tin Research Institute’s ‘tag and bag’ scheme for tin and coltan in Rwanda and some mines in DRC are also closing opportunities for ‘laundering’ conflict minerals through civilian-controlled supply chains, while also guaranteeing opportunities for civilian-produced and traded minerals.

There are criticisms of these schemes, especially ITRI’s tracking scheme which is expensive for participants, and regional governments and officials feel they are excluded from its data or operations.  Nevertheless, in a complex and difficult political and economic environment, the combination of regional and international efforts have resulted in more mines and more mineral transactions coming under civilian control, and therefore generated economic opportunities for Congolese civilians.  This said, anti-government militias and the DRC army are still involved in some mining and trading of the 3Ts and gold.

The big question is whether current political tensions around President Kabila’s possible election to a third term, will cause the ITRI scheme to be suspended, see renewed militias activity in Eastern provinces, and a resumption of widespread smuggling of minerals out of Eastern Congo into Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

Q. Do you think China will complement the efforts of Western organizations and the DRC’s own efforts at cracking down on the conflict mineral trade or will China’s status as the world’s largest coltan refiner make matters more difficult?

To answer this question properly, we have to pull apart the idea of ‘China’.  The Chinese government may have some interest in protecting its international reputation by participating in or publicly supporting international government initiatives to control the production and trade of conflict minerals.  This might include passing some minimal regulation on its own industry (possibly that it has no intention of enforcing).  It will have no interest in supporting activist initiatives, as it will not to want to fuel or strengthen independent civil society, let alone one that might actually have influence over aspects of international commerce.  The Chinese minerals industry, on the other hand, is aware of its strong and growing position in the global mining and minerals sector – a sector that the Chinese government itself sees as strategic.  Without pressure from its own government to desist from importing, smelting or otherwise trading in conflict minerals, the Chinese minerals industry will see no reason to change the current situation.  Some Chinese consumer product manufacturers, especially in the electronics sector, will be aware of the potential for boycotts by Western consumers to damage their sales and reputation, but Western consumers are not significant for some electronics manufacturers.  Asian (especially Chinese), African and Latin American consumers will be far more important, and awareness or concern by these consumers about conflict minerals is low.  In sum, while Chinese actors may be interested in some international efforts to regulate the trade of certain products, conflict minerals will be low on the list of priorities and there is unlikely to be any Chinese effort in this regard.

Q. Looking to the future, what impact do you feel Donald Trump’s presidency may have on talking the problem of conflict minerals?

Trump made it clear during his campaign that he is in favour of minimal regulation for business and that the US should be more isolationist in terms of spending less time and effort worrying about global affairs.  Given that responses to conflict minerals are based around additional regulations for business (regulations that everyone agrees have a cost in terms of compliance), which also represent an effort by OECD governments to shape conflict minerals production and trade in Central Africa, a Trump administration is highly unlikely to have much, if any, interest in such initiatives.  US business groups have already contested the regulations of the Dodd-Frank Act, and they will see a Trump presidency as creating another opportunity to exert pressure and have the regulations pared back or abolished.  A Trump administration is also likely to cut funding for USAID projects focused on capacity building for Central African governments to regulate production and trade of the mining industry.

States recently embraced a new policy regarding the fight against maritime piracy, and many began authorizing their cargo ships to carry private armed guards to help protect them when travelling through pirate-infested waters. Whilst this approach has yielded some success in protecting ships, it has also produced some major problems.  

Author’s Note: For a more detailed argument about why states should cooperate to regulate armed guards providing anti-piracy protection, see the article “Gunslingers on the High Seas: A Call for More Regulation,” 24 Duke J. Comp. & Int’l Law 105 (2013), written by Yvonne M. Dutton, which is available on SSRN.

In 2011, the fight against maritime piracy changed. Until then, the world’s navies were primarily charged with providing the bulk of anti-piracy protection, and individual ships were encouraged to do their part in deterring piratical acts by employing the industry’s “best management practices” – a set of primarily passive defense measures.  But, in early 2011, the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), the main trade association for the shipping industry, announced that it had changed its previous stance opposing the use of armed guards on ships. Instead, it stated that the decision of whether to hire armed guards should be left to ship owners and their flag states.

States embraced the new policy position, and many began authorizing their cargo ships to carry armed guards to help protect them when travelling through pirate-infested waters. The reason for the change was simple: the world’s navies had managed to prevent many pirate attacks after they began patrolling the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean in 2008, but they simply could not control enough of the high seas to make travel safe for all.  By 2012, some 60% of cargo ships employed armed guards. Hiring the guards is not cheap—costing ship owners about $60,000 for a four-person team to accompany travel through the Gulf of Aden. On the other hand, the evidence suggests that no ship protected by private armed guards has been the victim of a successful pirate attack. In 2009, despite the presence of the world’s navies, Somali pirates attacked more than 200 ships, resulting in more than 40 successful hijackings. The contrast with 2015 is significant, with the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) Piracy Reporting Centre showing no attempted or successful Somali pirate attacks.

Although apparently no ship protected by private armed guards has been successfully attacked, there are reasons to be concerned that the guards will not perform their anti-piracy duties in a way that does not escalate violence, involve unlawful use of force, or cause international incidents.  A March 2011 incident between private armed guards hired to protect the cargo vessel Avocet and alleged pirates in the Gulf of Aden illustrates this point. Video footage shows PMSC personnel firing dozens of shots at an approaching skiff after their team leader ordered them to fire “warning shots.” The guards continued to shoot even after the skiff crashed into the Avocet. The Private Maritime Security Company (PMSC) defended the actions of its personnel as justified, stating that the guards feared for their lives and were acting in self-defense. A maritime industry expert, though, expressed the view that the failure to fire actual warning shots and the rapid and sustained rate of gunfire show the guards used excessive force.

A recent New York Times report suggests that the risk that private armed guards may mishandle potential pirate attacks has increased, rather than decreased, over the last several years. The report centers on a video showing four unarmed men being gunned down at sea by someone who industry experts believe is a private armed guard wielding a semi-automatic weapon. Other private armed guards interviewed for the article lamented a booming $13 billion-a year security business teeming with untrained guards. They stated that many armed guards employed by a shipping industry concerned with cost-cutting “lack combat experience, speak virtually no English (despite a fluency requirement), and do not know how to clean or fix their weapons.”  And untrained guards can panic and fire too soon or hesitate for so long that they miss the chance to employ preventative measures that could prevent resort to deadly force.

However, no coordinated set of international guidelines regulates PMSCs and the hiring and training of private armed guards to aid in the fight against piracy. States instead each make their own rules. Germany and France are examples of states that have taken a more hands-on approach, requiring PMSCs to meet certain criteria to help ensure that guards are thoroughly vetted and well-trained in the use of force before the company can obtain a special license or certificate to provide services on the state’s flagged ships.  The Marshall Islands is similarly hands-on, requiring ship owners to hire only from PMSCs that have been certified to the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) 2015 Guidelines for PMSCs by an accredited certification body. The United Kingdom takes a different approach and refrains from mandating particular licensing or certification standards. It does, however, encourage its ship owners to employ guards from PMSCs that have been voluntarily accredited under the ISO’s 2015 Guidelines for PMSCs. Finally, some states are more hands-off as regards vetting and training of guards. For example, Singapore states that the decision of whether to hire armed guards is a matter for ship owners to decide. It does warn that the decision should be made “after a thorough risk assessment and after ensuring all other practical means of self-protection have been employed.”

A Call for More Regulation and Coordination

States that have employed a more hands-on approach to vetting guards and ensuring that PMSCs meet certain standards of operation and training should be commended. However, unless all states are similarly vigilant, we cannot eliminate the risk that untrained “cowboy” guards will indiscriminately shoot to kill when the law and facts do not warrant that use of force.  All states should accept responsibility for making sure that the world’s oceans are safe from “cowboy” guards by negotiating an international convention establishing one set of regulations to govern PMSCs and the qualifications and training of maritime security personnel. A world where each state’s PMSC standards differ can create an incentive for ship owners concentrating on the bottom line to choose to sail under the flag of a country with looser regulations.  Similarly, absent an agreed-upon international standard, PMSCs may choose to register themselves in a jurisdiction with lax laws.

Getting states to agree on a regulatory scheme for PMSCs will require effort. On the other hand, states need not start with a blank slate: the ISO has already created guidelines for PMSCs.  The ISO’s 2015 Guidelines for PMSC address security management system elements and operational planning for PMSCs providing armed guards in high-risk areas.  For example, Section 4.2.5 of the Guidelines states that the PMSC “should establish and document its processes for compliance with home state, coastal and flag state laws as regards the procurement, licensing and transshipment of firearms for each transit.”  That same section more precisely also states that the PMSC should “comply with any home or flag state or local requirements in respect of identifying and licensing individuals who will use such firearms, including ‘end user certificates’ where national laws apply.” Section 4.3.2 discusses procedures PMSCs should employ for background screening and vetting of guards, stating that “[s]election of qualified personnel should be based on specific competencies and criteria defined by the organization including knowledge, applicable and relevant military, law enforcement or equivalent experience, skills, abilities and attributes.” Section 4.4.3 states that the PMSC “should establish, implement, and maintain procedures to ensure all security operatives carrying out tasks on its behalf are aware of and receive training” on, among other things (1) the maritime environment; (2) ship security systems and defense arrangements; (3) rules on the use of force generally and as they apply for specific transits; (4) competence with specific firearms and how to properly store arms; (5) the prohibition of consuming alcohol or dugs while on the ship; and (6) procedures to document any incidents involving the use or arms. In terms of operational planning, for example, Section 5.1 states that the PMSC “should establish and document processes and protocols for legal authority and licensing, preparation, deployment, command and control and communication with its security personnel.” (ISO makes the Guidelines available for download from its website for a fee.)

As noted above, the Marshall Islands now mandates that its shippers hire armed guards only from PMSCs certified to the standards of the 2015 ISO Guidelines by a United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) authorized certification body.  The United Kingdom encourages its shippers to “use independent third party certification” to the ISO Guidelines “as an important component of their criteria in selecting a PMSC.” States have little excuse not to follow their lead—the ISO standards and certification processes already exist.

Certification, though, should not be the end of the process. To make certain that PMSCs continue to deliver quality, reputable services, states should create a regular monitoring mechanism that can be implemented by either an existing institution or one that is newly-created. And all states should ensure that the PMSCs their shippers hire are subjected to that regular monitoring mechanism. The process of monitoring PMSCs necessarily will not be without costs. But both ship owners and states should be willing to fund the effort. To continue with a system in which each state creates its own rules or not rules at all puts innocent lives at stake and risks escalating levels of violence at sea. All civilized states should instead work towards making the seas safer for all, not riskier.

Yvonne M. Dutton is an Associate Professor of Law teaching international criminal law, comparative law, evidence, criminal law, and criminal procedure. Dutton has practiced law as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, where she tried narcotics trafficking and organized crime cases. She also practiced as a civil litigator in law firms in New York and California.  Dutton’s research interests include international criminal law, international human rights law, and maritime piracy. Broadly speaking, her scholarship examines questions about international cooperation and the role and effectiveness of international institutions in deterring and holding accountable those who commit crimes of international concern. Dutton has published a number of law review articles analyzing issues associated with maritime piracy. 

Jenny Nielsen and Marianne Hanson

The first week of the third Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the 2015 Review Conference (RevCon, held every five years) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has witnessed a heavy emphasis on issues relating to the disarmament pillar. In particular, the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, highlighted by a wide-ranging, cross-grouping, multi-aim initiative which continues to consolidate itself in the non-proliferation regime, has come to the fore. Frustrated with the lack of progress towards NPT Article VI commitments to complete nuclear disarmament, the initiative has invigorated attention to the urgency of nuclear disarmament and a need for a change in the status quo. NPT member states and civil society continue to engage actively in publicizing the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons as an impetus to progress towards nuclear disarmament.

The Humanitarian initiative

Austria has announced the dates of a Third International Conference on the Humanitarian Consequences of Nuclear Weapons, to be held on 8-9 December 2014 in Vienna. This conference will follow the March 2013 Oslo conference and the February 2014 Nayarit conference, which were both notably boycotted by the five NPT nuclear weapons states (NWS: the UN Security Council permanent members, or P5).  Whether any of the five NWS will participate in the Vienna conference, remains to be seen. Given the Chair’s summary of the Nayarit conference, which includes some of the Mexican chair’s personal perceptions on the humanitarian initiative’s aims, the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs may find that appealing to the NWS to attend will be a challenging task.

At the PrepCom, the Mexican delegation explained that the Chair’s Summary of the Nayarit conference, ‘reflects the opinion of the overwhelming majority of delegates, in the sense that these discussions should lead to the commitment by States and civil society to achieve new standards and standards through a legally binding instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons in the same way, as in the past, the weapons that have been eliminated were first banned’. Furthermore, the Mexican delegation to the PrepCom stressed that ‘the time has come to initiate a diplomatic process, to define specific time lines and the most appropriate fora to achieve this work’.

Since the inclusion of the humanitarian consequences issue in the Final Document of the 2010 NPT RevCon and the reinvigoration of this initiative in the PrepComs since then, the NWS have been cautious of the initiative’s coordinated activities and continue to question the aims of the initiative.  In particular, the NWS will not readily engage in the initiative as long as they interpret or perceive it to be the pathway towards a delegitimization process and, ultimately, a ban on nuclear weapons’ possession and use. For this reason, controlling the initiative’s external communication of its aims and activities will need to be carefully managed in order to sustain its broad, cross-grouping support-base and participation. This, in turn, will enforce its credibility and longevity in the regime towards the goal of progress towards nuclear disarmament.

Suing for Nuclear Zero

On 24 April, a few days before the NPT delegations convened at the UN for the PrepCom, the Republic of the Marshall Islands filed cases in the International Court of Justice and the U.S. Federal District Court claiming that all nuclear-armed states—including the four non-NPT states: India, Israel, DPR Korea, Pakistan—‘have failed to comply with their obligations […] to pursue negotiations for the worldwide elimination of nuclear weapons’.  These cases, referred to as the Nuclear Zero lawsuits, are based on treaty law obligations (for the five NPT NWS) and customary international law (for the four non-NPT member states). The Labour Party of New Zealand (currently in opposition) has pledged support for the lawsuits. Civil society groups at the NPT PrepCom have heralded the motion.

As a testing ground for U.S. nuclear weapons (between 1946 and 1958), the Republic of the Marshall Islands bears firsthand experience of the effects of radiation. On the first day of the PrepCom, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, delivered a powerful statement including a personal account of his own childhood memories of U.S. nuclear testing. Given the close US-Marshall Islands economic and defence ties, including an agreement for use of the U.S. Army Kwajalein Atoll missile test range, it is an interesting bilateral development.

In her 29 April statement to the 2014 PrepCom, U.S. Under Secretary Rose Gottemoeller asserted that ‘it is the United States’ deep understanding of the consequences of nuclear weapons use—including the devastating health effects—that has guided and motivated our efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate these most hazardous weapons’. Gottemoeller stressed that ‘it is imperative that we make sure people remember the human impact of nuclear weapons’. In a nod to the Nuclear Zero lawsuits she added that her ‘recent trips to the Marshall Islands and Hiroshima were potent reminders of the need to persevere in confronting this challenge’. The inclusion and attention to these issues in the U.S. statement is an indicator of the prominence and importance of the humanitarian dimension initiative. Notwithstanding universal formal engagement, the initiative is percolating through national statements and embedding itself in discourse widely.

Article VI commitments

Strategically timed for impact during the PrepCom and in furtherance of commitments to transparency, on 29 April, the U.S. State Department released newly classified information on the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. As noted by the Federation of American Scientists, the new figures revealed by the Obama administration boil down to only 309 warheads fewer than the 5,113 reported in 2010. While underwhelming for some in civil society given high expectations on deliverables under Article VI, the U.S. reporting on stockpile figures should be welcomed and acknowledged as a positive move by one of the five NWS.

The New Agenda Coalition (NAC, comprising Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and South Africa) submitted a meaty working paper on Article VI to the PrepCom. As highlighted by the Irish delegation, this suggests four options for the way forward, outlining ‘prospects for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty, a looser framework arrangement of mutually reinforcing instruments, or a hybrid of any or all of the above’. The NAC offers these options for discussion without prescription for one outcome. Ireland argues that discussions must begin immediately in order to identify what is needed and how to frame this. Warning that ‘we will not, under any circumstances, countenance a simple roll-over of the 2010 Action Plan’ at the 2015 RevCon, Ireland stressed that ‘to do so would inflict even further damage on the NPT as a credible driver of disarmament and non-proliferation efforts’.

With 128 states supporting the joint statement on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons at the UN General Assembly First Committee in October 2013, the second week at the PrepCom is likely to witness growing support for the initiative’s statement, but only if its wording can balance the political and strategic needs of all of the wide-ranging states. Notably, at the 2013 PrepCom, Japan opted not to pledge formal support to the statement due to trepidation about a clause in the initiative’s statement which was interpreted as having implications for its strategic alliance and coverage under the US nuclear umbrella. Alienating key states – especially US allies – by expressing views too categorically will not serve the humanitarian initiative well. At the same time, it is hard to deny the frustration felt by most states at the lack of progress towards nuclear disarmament.

Civil society engagement

Akin to the wide range of support and engagement for the humanitarian dimension initiative shown by states parties, civil society groups have made many broad-ranging contributions to highlight the initiative’s aims. Chatham House published a thorough report on the risks of inadvertent, accidental or deliberate detonation of nuclear weapons based on an assessment of historical cases of near nuclear use, offering recommendations for mitigating these risks. The European Leadership Network (ELN) released a group statement (supported by 52 high-level signatories) with a list of broad ranging recommendations for necessary steps for a successful 2015 NPT Review Conference. Warning that the humanitarian dimension initiative ‘has become a deeply divided issue among NPT states-parties’ and arguing that ‘this division is damaging the diplomatic atmosphere’, the ELN calls on the P5 to participate in the initiative’s third conference in Vienna in December.

Across the Atlantic, a coalition of US-based civil society organizations published an open letter to President Obama calling for action on nuclear disarmament, including amongst several suggestions, participation in the Vienna conference. The coalition highlights the deterioration in US-Russia relations, given continuing and foreseeable NATO expansion and in light of the crisis in Ukraine, noting concern for prospects for future bilateral arms reduction negotiations.

Other disarmament advocacy groups including Reaching Critical Will and ICAN are steadfastly calling for a process of negotiations for a new legal instrument prohibiting nuclear weapons. Demanding a nuclear ban, the Geneva Nuclear Disarmament Initiative, aka Wildfire, continues to head-on challenge and mock the status quo of the NPT review process, exposing inconsistencies in nuclear policies by NPT states, with a focus also on NNWS relying on extended nuclear deterrence, particularly Australiaand those NNWS hosting NATO theater nuclear weapons, such as the Netherlands.

A major challenge faced by the PrepCom’s Chair, Peruvian Ambassador Roman Morey, will thus be to reconcile these disparate approaches and views while preserving the essential aims of the humanitarian initiative. There is a clear need to engage the NWS and seek their attendance at the Vienna conference in December and to steer diplomacy as well as civil society activism towards an achievable path for the elimination of nuclear weapons. If the PrepCom concludes with recriminations and division, it will bode ill for next year’s NPT Review Conference.

 

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.

Marianne Hanson is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University Of Queensland and Director of the University’s Rotary Centre for International Studies in peace and conflict resolution. 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.

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.

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.

This post is taken from Paul Rogers’ Monthly Global Security Briefings and was originally posted by Oxford Research Group on 31 March, 2014.

The Russian annexation of Crimea may be in direct contravention of international agreements but is popular in Russia and almost certain to hold. Given tensions within Ukrainian society and its weak transitional government, there remains some risk of further intervention in eastern Ukraine and possibly the Trans-Dniester break-away region of Moldova. Even if there is no further escalation in the crisis, the deterioration in EU/Russian and US/Russian relations is of great concern, not least in relation to two aspects of Middle East security – the Syrian civil war and the Iran nuclear negotiations.

President Vladimir Putin’s recent actions have been generally popular in Russia where recent political developments in Kiev have been seen as a serious encroachment by the EU into a crucial Russian sphere of influence and a massive setback to Putin’s idea of creating a counter-weight Eurasian Union. Putin’s muscular approach to restoring Russia to its historic greatness, readily seen in the huge expenditure on the recent Winter Olympics as well as the Eurasian Union vision to reconnect former Soviet republics, is well received by many Russians.

Whether there is further intervention depends very much on the weak government in Kiev’s capacity to limit civil disorder that might be fomented by ultra-nationalists, including around the 25 May presidential election. This will not be easy since it would be in Russia’s interest to be able to respond to just such disorder and it may well seek to encourage local militias in southern and eastern Ukraine. Understanding the perceptions of the Kremlin (and wider Russian society) towards both the rest of Europe and Ukrainian nationalism is critical in understanding how Moscow may act in the coming months.

The Question of Perceptions

A key issue in the crisis is the question of perceptions.  At the height of the Cold War, there were very few western analysts and politicians who were able to visualise the world from the Kremlin’s perspective. The so-called “Red Team” studies in NATO defence ministries were primarily concerned with how the Soviet Union might fight a war, not with its wider world view.  There was, for example, little understanding of the enduring impact of the Great Patriotic War on Soviet/Russian attitudes towards Germany and elements, including Ukrainian, Romanian/Moldovan and Baltic nationalists, which cooperated with its invasion of the USSR.

While Russia sees itself as a once-great superpower that justifiably seeks to re-establish that status, there remains a deep resentment stemming from the experience of the 1990s.  The embrace of “turbo-capitalism”, the near collapse of the economy and, above all, the disdain with which Russia was treated by the West are all still deeply embedded in the political outlook, and it is this which does much to make the “tilt” of Ukraine towards the EU so unacceptable.

The western perception of Russia, though, is also significant. Anyone over the age of forty, which includes almost the entire western political class, has deep memories of the Cold War era in which the Soviet Union was seen as the head of a hugely powerful bloc that had overwhelming military superiority in Europe, only counter-balanced by NATO’s nuclear forces.  The vision of massed tank armies deployed right into Eastern Europe was deep-seated but it also assumed that there was strength in depth within the Soviet heartland – Russia. Even now, Russia as the successor state of the Soviet Union is seen to retain some of those elements of power, but this is not supported either by its current economic strength or its conventional military capabilities.

Russia: a Paper Bear?

Although Russia has enjoyed reasonable economic growth over the past decade this has been from a very low base and does not bring Russia anywhere near the economic power of the United States, China, Japan or even Germany. Russian GDP is less than a seventh of that of the US, a quarter of that of China and much less than half of that of Japan. In spite of its (declining) population being more than double the size of the UK or France, its GDP matches neither country and is not even two-thirds that of Germany.

Furthermore, much of Russia’s wealth is concentrated in and around Moscow and St Petersburg and is largely in the hands of a small elite. Most of Russia has benefited little from the growth of recent years, but control of the media by the state and its power over political processes limits the extent of the recognition of these divisions and of opposition to Putin.

While Russia is still a substantial nuclear power, its conventional armed forces are singularly weak, as was shown by the considerable difficulties in mounting air operations against Georgia in August 2008. There is substantial spending now devoted to rebuilding Russia’s conventional armed forces but this is still at an early stage. To put it bluntly, Russia’s impressive array of forces used in Crimea and massed close to Ukraine hide a deep-seated conventional weakness in an economy which is heavily resource-dependent.

In the short term, Putin can maintain control of Crimea and may increase Russian influence in the rest of Ukraine, but its recent actions actually militate against the development of the Eurasian Community. Furthermore, Western European states will now be far more cautious in their economic dealings with Russia and will work progressively to limit their dependence on Russian gas and oil. In the long term, the recent popular actions in Crimea are likely to damage Russia, and it is most likely that any further western sanctions will be represented by Putin as further proof of the need for Russia to be strong and independent.

Context Implications for Syria and Iran

Syria: The war in Syria continues to be bedevilled by the double proxy element, with regime support from Iran and Russia countered by rebel support from Saudi Arabia and the West.

Western policy is in disarray:

• Secular elements in the rebellion are weak and disunited, offering limited opposition to the regime.
• Radical Islamist paramilitaries are offering much stronger resistance to the regime but are not themselves united even if some elements now control substantial territory.
• The regime is firmly ensconced even if it is presiding over a terribly damaged country.

Western policy seems now concentrated on providing support for the disunited rebels, especially south of Damascus, while ensuring that advanced weapons do not get into the hands of jihadist elements concentrated in the north and east. This may be so difficult that it is essentially impossible, meaning that the extent of the support will be limited. The Syrian War thus has no prospect of ending unless the major proxy players, the US and Russia, are prepared to work together. The Ukraine crisis makes this far less likely than even a month ago, when the Geneva II peace talks adjourned without progress.

On present trends the war will continue. The main regime tactic is to use its considerable firepower advantage (in terms of artillery, rockets and air-dropped barrel bombs) to so damage rebel areas that they lose control of territory. Since the regime does not have the reliable ground forces available to hold such territory the policy is one of denial, but the human and economic costs are immense. As the regime continues with this approach, it becomes more likely that Gulf States such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia will resist US pressure and return to their policy of backing a wider range of Islamist rebels.

Iran: The negotiations on the nuclear issue between the US and Iran are continuing, albeit at a low level, but have so far survived considerable opposition from within Iran and the US. They may be influenced by the domestic economic problems that the Rouhani government is currently experiencing and his honeymoon period is essentially over.

US/Russian relations are less relevant here but will come to the fore if the negotiations do make progress because this may give Rouhani more room to improve relations with Saudi Arabia. Any improvement in the Saudi/Iranian relationship should be encouraged by any means possible – it is one of the few areas in the region with potential. However, if there is progress and this can serve to diminish the differences over Syria, then Russia’s influence over the Assad regime will become more significant.

Conclusion

The crisis that has erupted in Ukraine is an occasion for just the kind of analysis that was so missing in the Cold War period. Russian behaviour over Ukraine – and Crimea in particular – may be entirely unacceptable in the west but, given the nature of the Putin regime and its recognition of deep-seated and enduring Russian sensibilities over the loss of empire twenty years ago, it is entirely understandable. In spite of the problems it causes, there is a real need for caution, not least because Putin may prefer a continuing crisis in order to bolster domestic support. If the Ukraine crisis escalates further, the impact for European security is likely to be substantial but the limiting of prospects for any kind of progress in Syria will be an even greater human disaster.

European policy-makers can help to mitigate the negative impacts of the crisis in three ways:

• Urging caution on the part of NATO in response to the Ukraine crisis;
• Encouraging in-depth analysis by European states of current Russian attitudes;
• Endeavouring to support improvements in Iranian-Saudi relations in order to bypass the likely new deadlock in US-Russian relations over Iran and Syria.

None is easy – all are necessary.

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

Featured image:Protester wearing Ukraine state flag colors facing the massive fire set by protesters to prevent internal forces from crossing the barricade line  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.

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.

 

Islamic State (IS) has used aerial drones for reconnaissance and battlefield intelligence in Iraq and Syria and has attempted to use aerial and ground drones with explosive payloads to attack Kurdish troops. IS-directed or -inspired attacks in Australia, Canada, Denmark, the United States and France and failed or foiled attacks elsewhere, including the United Kingdom, have demonstrated the group’s desire to attack targets outside the Middle East. Given that threat is a function of capability and intent, should we therefore be concerned about the possibility of Islamic State or another terrorist group using drones to attack Western cities? A recent report from the Remote Control project and Open Briefing examined this scenario, among others.

The Drone Threat

For Hostile drones, the Open Briefing team assessed the capabilities of over 200 commercial and consumer/hobbyist drones capable of operating in the air, on the ground or on or under the sea. Although limited at present, they found that there are consumer drones available today that are capable of delivering an explosive payload equivalent to a pipe bomb (1-4 kilograms) or a suicide vest (4-10 kilograms). Many more could be modified with readily-available components to increase their stated payload capacity. If used in a swarm against the crowd at a major sporting event, for example, they would cause serious injury and multiple fatalities. If one or more of the drones carried on-board cameras to record the event, it would also provide a group such as Islamic State with prime propaganda material.

Using drones for terrorist attacks has several advantages over conventional methods, including removing the need to convince a suicide bomber to carry out an attack and opening up targets a bomber would not usually be able to access due to security. An attacker would not even necessarily need to weaponise a drone, as the vehicle itself could be used as a projectile to target a light aircraft’s engines on take-off or landing, for example. In addition to attack, Open Briefing identified intelligence gathering as another major capability that drones offer terrorists or insurgents, as demonstrated by Hezbollah, Hamas and Donetsk separatists. For example, Donetsk People’s Republic militias reportedly possess and deploy sophisticated Russian-made Eleron-3SV drones for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) in eastern Ukraine. Drones provide insurgent groups with an excellent level of battlefield awareness and provide terrorist groups the ability to reconnoitre a target before an attack These same capabilities are also of interest to criminal, corporate and activist threat groups. For example, aerial drones have been used to transport illicit drugs over the Mexico-US border and in April 2015 a man protesting over the Japanese government’s nuclear energy policy landed a drone containing radioactive sand on the roof of the prime minister’s office in Tokyo.

The same technology Western militaries have been controversially employing to target terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere for years is now being used by various threat groups to target Western interests. This is a prime example of how the tactics and technologies of remote-control warfare have created unintended consequences for those countries that have embraced them.

Towards Drone Countermeasures

No single countermeasure is completely effective at limiting the hostile use of drones by non-state actors. Open Briefing therefore proposes the United Kingdom adopt a hierarchy of countermeasures encompassing regulatory, passive and active countermeasures, which provides a layered defence. Regulatory countermeasures include point of sale regulations, civil aviation rules and manufacturing standards and restrictions. Passive countermeasures include early warning systems and signal jamming. Active countermeasures include kinetic defence systems, such as missiles, rockets and bullets, and less-lethal systems, such as projectile weapons and net guns. Each stage of the hierarchy of countermeasures requires government action, but it is the regulatory countermeasures upon which it can affect the greatest change.

Any changes to the laws surrounding the use of drones need to be proportionate to the risks and balance interests relating to privacy, individual freedoms, safety and commercial interest. In addition to the existing regulations around drones needing to be flown within visual line of sight, below 400 feet and not within 50 metres or a person, vehicle or building, there have been calls from airline pilots and politicians for a registration scheme for consumer drones and for the adoption of firmware limitations that restrict the ability of drones to travel near geofenced no fly zones around sensitive sites, such as airports or nuclear power stations. These are reasonable demands that should be implemented as soon as possible.

However, these regulations may have limited impact beyond reducing accidental incidents. Unless coupled with some kind of identification/tracking technology built in to drones, a registration scheme would not remove consumer drones from the terrorist arsenal altogether (in any case, such technology would be a step too far in terms of state surveillance and could be easily disabled). What registration would do is impose some control on a presently uncontrolled market and impress upon drone operators the responsibility they must take for their actions. It may also reduce the supply of readily-available drones that could be used for nefarious purposes. In the case of geofenced no fly zones, those wishing to carry out an intentional attack could still purchase open-source controllers that can bypass geofencing, and inertial navigation systems (using dead reckoning) would allow a drone to continue to a static target with reasonable accuracy even if it were possible to jam controller frequencies and GPS signals within the target perimeter. What geofencing would allow is for security to assume that any drone operating within the no fly zone is unauthorised and potentially hostile, allowing them to react appropriately (evacuation and/or deploying active defences).

There are two further regulations that have received little attention but which should also be considered. Firstly, the payload capacity of the consumer drones available for purchase or import in the United Kingdom without licence should be legally limited to that reasonably required to carry a camera and nothing else. This would mean these types of drones could not be used to carry explosive payloads without further modification. Secondly, owners of commercial drones capable of carrying heavier payloads for legitimate reasons (such as in agriculture or search and rescue) should be legally required to store them securely (in the same way fertiliser must be appropriately secured to prevent its use in homemade bombs, for example). This would prevent the theft and use of drones capable of carrying considerable explosive payloads by terrorists and other threat groups.

A Layered Defence

The current regulatory regime around drones in the United Kingdom is very limited. The adoption of the four regulations outlined above would balance the various interests and address specific risks without being unduly restrictive. However, regulations are not a panacea – they would merely limit the ability of terrorists and others to acquire drones with the capabilities needed for attack or intelligence gathering. That is why the government must also work with the police, security services and industry to explore the passive and active countermeasures that are needed to protect VIPs or sensitive sites and ensure that procurement and R&D funding is made available to purchase or develop the required systems. This should include the development of less-lethal systems for destroying or disabling hostile drones in urban environments, where little warning of an attack and the risk of collateral damage limits the usefulness of conventional kinetic countermeasures, such as missiles or bullets. Again, though, this will not be a panacea: the less-lethal systems currently available are of limited effectiveness against one or more fast-moving, small drones. As with all the possible countermeasures, such systems – if coupled with early-warning – would form part of an effective layered defence.

Ultimately, the regulations and technology needed to reduce the threat from the hostile use of drones are either available now or are under development. The British government has to act now to bring drone regulations up to date and invest in the technologies needed to keep us safe. In the meantime, the threat from the malicious use of civilian drones is only going to increase.

 Chris Abbott is the founder and executive director of Open Briefing (www.openbriefing.org). Matthew Clarke is an associate researcher at Open Briefing. Hostile drones: The hostile use of drones by non-state actors against British targets was published by the Remote Control project on 11 January 2016.

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.

Originally set up the mid-1980s, the temporary village guard system’s purpose was to act as a local militia in towns and villages, protecting against attacks and reprisals from the insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Has this system been successful as a counter-terrorism strategy and does it still have a role in the Turkey of today?

In any counterinsurgency strategy, the separation of “bad guys” from the rest of the population is a significant objective which has a direct impact on the effectiveness of the campaign. To achieve this objective, forming, arming and using local militias may be a viable strategy, particularly in rural, remote, harshly mountainous and tribal contexts in which security forces face difficult challenges to reach the local population. In recent years, the “Sons of Iraq” or the “Anbar Awakening” case in Iraq and the “Tribal Security Forces (Arbakai)” case in Afghanistan are contemporary examples of this strategy.

Does the strategy of forming local militias yield successful results? The existing, yet limited, literature on this subject has opened the door to speculations and interpretations that are more journalistic than scholarly. To better elucidate the effectiveness of forming local militias, this article presents the case of the “Temporary Village Guard System” (Geçici Köy Koruculuğu Sistemi)” in Turkey, which was first initiated in 1985 and has been fully active since.

Turkey’s Village Guards System

Since being founded in 1978, Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has caused approximately 20,000 fatalities, including about 11,000 civilians and 9,000 security personnel. In the meantime, about 20,000 PKK members were killed and about 6000 were captured and imprisoned. In order to thwart PKK-initiated violence, Turkish authorities have implemented many different countermeasures ranging from repressive to accommodative strategies, including the village guard system. As of January 2016, the monthly salary is approximately the equivalent of U.S. $400, along with clothing expenses and some social security benefits that came with passage of the amendments between the 74^th article and 82^nd article of the Village Law on March 26, 1985.

With this legally founded, centrally appointed, and state-paid “security force,” the Turkish government created a civilian militia in the Kurdish populated southeast provinces of Turkey. Except for 300 Ulupamir Guards, who immigrated to the Van province from Kyrgyzstan, all village guards are ethnically Kurd. To supplement the employed village guard system, a “voluntary village guard” program was added in 13 more provinces, which led to the expansion of this system to 22 provinces in 1993, the year in which violence reached its peak level over the course of the conflict with the PKK. The difference between the two programs is that, while the employed village guards receive monthly salary and health benefits, the voluntary village guards do not receive a salary but are entitled to health compensation and benefits. The size of temporary and voluntary civilian armed force reached almost 60,000 by the end of the 1990s, accounting for almost one-third of the armed forces in the Kurdish region.

As of August 2013, Muharrem Güler, then the Interior Minister of Turkey, announced that there are currently 65,456 village guards, 46,113 of whom are employed (interestingly 337 of them are women) and 19,343 of whom are voluntary (161 of them are women). Currently, the village guard system is implemented in 23 provinces. Most of the village guards are employed on the border between Iraq, Iran, and in the extremely mountainous provinces of Hakkari, Sirnak and Van because PKK has been using safe heavens in Iraq and Iran for years.

All village guards, whether voluntary or hired, work under the supervision of the provincial Gendarmerie Commands and receive two weeks of basic military training from their provincial governor immediately after joining.

To better understand the debate, it may be useful to examine the existing arguments for and against the Village Guard System.

Arguments Favoring the System

1. The village guard system has been seen a success story in Turkey’s strategy against the PKK-initiated violence to such an extent that it has become one of the main pillars of counterterror strategy. If the village guard system had not been initiated, the state authority in the region would have eventually collapsed.
2. The village guards have first denied the mobility of the PKK both by separating them from the rest of the population as a bottom-up means of isolating them, and then prevented them from gaining territorial control.
3. The village guards have provided intelligence to the security forces both on the territory and the activities of the PKK.
4. The village guards have not been forced by the security forces to join this system. The existence of more than 25,000 voluntary village guards, who are not paid by the government, is a proof of this.
5. PKK’s numbers has never exceeded the number of the village guards, even during the early 1990s, the period in which the number of the armed terrorists reached its peak level of 11,000. This is an indicator showing the low level of popular support to the PKK.

Arguments against the System

1. The state pitched brother against brother. If it hadn’t been for the village guards, this conflict would have never reached this intensity.
2. The village guard system is a typical reflection of state tradition on the Kurdish issue. Enmeshed in the Kurds’ tribal networks, it exacerbated the tensions in the region. The equipping of the village guards, who were without even basic military training, increased instability in the entire region. The guard system introduced virtually extinguished social order in Kurdish daily life.
3. The village guard system was used by the state officials as a repressive mechanism to recruit villagers.
4. The village guards are poorly disciplined and inadequately trained.
5. The village guards have been accused repeatedly in past years of drug trafficking, corruption, theft, rape, and other abuses. Inadequate oversight exacerbated the problem, and in many cases the security forces allegedly protected village guards from prosecution.
6. Several reports document concerns regarding human rights violations resulting from the village guard system in Turkey.
7. The village guard system has been responsible for deepening mistrust and ethnic divisions in an already troubled region.
8. The village guards have moved with their families into villages that were evacuated in the 1990s and now the original villagers are returning to their villages to find the Village Guards already living there.
9. The establishment of village guards made civilians more vulnerable to attacks.

Has the village guard system in Turkey really worked as a counterterror strategy?

In military terms, and despite its drawbacks and unintended consequences, the village guard system in Turkey worked well as a counter-terror strategy between 1985 and 1993 and achieved the objectives of separation of the local population from the terrorists and denying the PKK control of their hoped-for secessionist territory. Early success gained just after the implementation of the militia system needed a follow-up before the insurgency adapts. In the following years, however, it gradually waned in effectiveness when considering the increased number of PKK attacks in the period of 1993-1999, and caused increasing socio-economic and political micro-level cleavages in the region. As the big inertia in a dispersed system means resistance to change, the guards system could not easily be modified, meaning the strengthening of the existing micro-cleavages and the emergence of the new ones.

Reasons for the decline in effectiveness

The village guard system in Turkey was originally initiated under the assumption that the emergent threat (PKK bandits) was so local and small that it was not considered to require commitment of national security forces. This perception of PKK fighters as “a few bandits” led the Turkish government officials to the authoritization of the system in a temporally (initially, the system was designed for a two-years long period ) and spatially (only in three provinces) limited setting. However, there emerged many institutional problems as the number of village guards was enormously expanded from 800 men to 40,000 men only within a one-year-long period. The primary sources of these shortfalls would be sorted as follows: the absence of comprehensive vision at the national level and the implementation of the planning and recruitment strategy of the system at the provincial level. The absence of a national-level institutional framework which would standardize the system led to the differentiating practices in the provinces. The dramatic rise within a short period of time, when combined with the attempt of government to micro-manage the village guard system at the provincial level, led not only to confusion about the rights, missions and responsibilities of the village guards but also caused different (sometimes contradicting) practices in the following years. Fast expansion meant both weak control at the national level and different interpretations of the operational use of the guards at the provincial level.

Furthermore, the formation of local militias may not only have pros and cons in the sphere of security but also may lead to implications in the socio-cultural sphere. The persistent characterization of the village guards as “traitor,” and the prevalent use of the term “Jash” (a Kurdish slang word for donkey) by PKK supporters to refer to Kurdish village guards, indicates the significance of the local political structure when analyzing the local dynamics of the conflict in Turkey. It is not hyperbole to suggest that the system has also changed the nature of conflict by first pushing the conflict into new areas and creating new micro-cleavages (whether tribal or at the family level) in the provinces.  These results, which clearly emphasize the explanatory power of local political structures in an ethnic conflict, confirm Stathis Kalyvas’s theorization. That is, when examining the dynamics of an ethnic conflict in a comparative perspective, Kalyvas points out that local political structures and rivalries among local groups have a great impact on shifting alliances, which are considered as acts of treason by rival factions.

The allegation of human rights violations by militias seem to be inevitable. The absence or lack of sufficient legal mechanisms to investigate accusations, especially in combination with low levels of transparency and accountability, may lead to structural legal problems and emotional conflicts over justice in the Afghan and Iraq cases as in the Turkish case.

To demobilize or not to demobilize?

The Turkish government has been in a dilemma when deciding on the fate of the village guard system. Opinions about this issue highlight two options for the government, each of which can take two forms.

The first option is demobilization. One form of this option is “honorable demobilization,” which implies that the government will end the guard system after providing all material and social rights and benefits to the retired and serving guards, and publicly elevating the history of the guards for their role in the Turkish state’s armed struggle against the PKK.  The other form, “dishonorable demobilization,” implies that the government will end the guard system with few rights and benefits for retired and serving guares, and will meticulously search the history of the guards to bring to justice those who allegedly committed crimes.  Interviewees who favor dishonorable demobilization argue the need to establish memorial sites for those crimes and brutalities allegedly committed by the guards, with periodic visits by government officials to these sites to keep the collective memory fresh.

The second option is to maintain and continue the guards system. With this option, there again appear to be two alternative forms.  One form is the maintainance of the system after a comprehensive revision that examinines the strengths, drawbacks and conseuqences of the system in the domains of security, law and politics so as to make it more effective and efficient. The other form is the maintainance of the status-quo which implies the continuation of the village guards as an open-ended commitment not restrained by definite limits, restrictions, or structure.

Currently, the Turkish government seems to embrace the last altenative; that is, maintainance of the system as it is in an open-ended process. With the information at hand, it is difficult to predict which option the Turkish government will embrace in the near future. Sooner or later, however, when the government decides on the village guard system, this decision will surely be a strategic one which directly affects the evolution of ongoing clashes.

Metin Gurcan is an Istanbul Policy Center Researcher specializing in security issues.

In the UK, tens of thousands of deer are poached annually. This has significant implications for the sustainability of British deer populations and human health.

Recessions and economic slumps have effects on various aspects of people’s security and presumably, people’s food security is a part of this. In order to cope with food insecurity, some people may steal food or other items for money to buy food, but there is also the possibility that some people will turn to poaching. The British Deer Society places the number of poached deer in the UK as high as 50,000 each year yet in 2009 only 335 incidents were reported to the police.

In 2013, I undertook a study to gather information as to whether deer poaching in the UK is linked purely to economics or if people who poach deer have other motivations beyond food or money. I sent online questionnaires to all police constabularies and the questionnaire was advertised in the monthly publication of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation. I received responses from 27 wildlife crime officers and six gamekeepers. Drawing on Nurse’s (2013) typologies of wildlife crime offenders, I asked respondents about the change in poaching around the time of the 2008 recession and about their perspective on the motivations of poachers. The four typologies consist of traditional profit motive, external economic pressure, masculinity and as a hobby. In particular, the traditional profit-driven motivation of offenders was explored by attempting to uncover if there is, as suspected, a black market in venison. From this data, I hoped to create a more detailed picture of deer poaching and to further inform wildlife law and poaching prevention.

UK deer poaching: why it matters

Understanding more about deer poaching is important for two main reasons. The first is in relation to human health. Presumably, experienced hunters are trained to inspect the deer they kill or poach for diseases. There is the possibility though of poachers infecting themselves with Bovine Tuberculosis or Foot and Mouth disease, which are known to occur in deer in the UK, though no data indicating deer meat has been found with these diseases. Additionally, if the poacher is selling the meat on the black market, there is the further possibility that any disease could be passed on to other people and the public.

The respondents suspected some poached deer meat makes it way to pubs and restaurants, so disease transmission to the public, whilst unlikely, is not impossible. The second point is in regards to the sustainability of deer populations. It is difficult to manage wildlife populations where there is a significant amount of poaching, such as is suspected in the UK. Hunting licences and potentially other management strategies, like culling, need to be grounded in accurate population numbers in order to not over exploit the species in question. If too many individuals are killed through hunting and poaching, this could endanger the stability and survival of the population. With tens of thousands of deer potentially being poached each year, it is difficult to see how deer populations can be properly estimated and therefore managed.

The police and gamekeepers who responded stated there are individual poachers and groups of poachers who do so for profit and financial reasons. As suspected, poachers personally consume the poached deer, but probably also sell the meat to make money. This fits Nurse’s (2013) first typology, ‘Model A’, where offenders are driven by traditional profit motives. ‘Model B’ wildlife crime offenders are also financially driven, but the pressure on the offender is from an external source like an employer. In the context of deer poaching, this helps to explain the poaching undertaken by some gamekeepers. Landowners pressure gamekeepers to maintain the landscape in particular way. The respondents indicated though there is more driving poaching than simply economics. Nurse (2013) proposes there are also offenders who do so to maintain or assert their masculinity, ‘Model C’, and those who offend as a hobby, ‘Model D’. The data confirm these typologies. Men carry out nearly all poaching. Apparently, often these men poach together as a form of male bonding, as a form of ‘sport’, or as one respondent stated ‘just for the hell of it!’.

Each of Nurse’s (2013) typologies then were found within the respondents’ answers. The implications of this are two-fold. First, deer poaching, and presumably other poaching, is not only driven by food insecurity and money and therefore the motivations, and uncovering those motivations, are complex. Even when money is at the heart of the motivation, there are further distinctions to be made. The food and/or profit from the poaching may be for an individual, for an organized crime group or for an employer. For non-profit driven poaching such as for status, sport and/or fun, the motivations can be equally challenging to uncover.  Uncovering motivations though is an important and useful endeavour as this data can be used to improve policy and prevention strategies. Second, that motivations are varied means that policy and prevention strategies also need to be varied. To have policy interventions and wildlife law enforcement strategies targeted solely at food insecurity or profit motivations are likely to be ineffective.

Addressing the problem

Poaching, of deer and other non-human animals, must then be addressed through a multi-faceted approach. In the first instance, the punishment for poaching in the UK is not a deterrent and the risk of being caught or prosecuted is low (Nurse 2013). This is partly because wildlife crime is not a concern for most police constabularies and not an offense that is prioritized. Making the fines higher, sentences harsher and confiscation of poaching equipment mandatory may help to address this aspect. Nurse (2013) suggests banning hunters and gamekeepers who are caught poaching from being able to receive licences in the future and/or from working in the industry. Second, wildlife crime is viewed as a victimless crime. This is not the case. Deer are shot by bullets and arrows, trapped in snares and/or torn apart by dogs. People can potentially eat uninspected diseased venison.

The environment as a whole or at least the ecosystem where deer live can be disrupted by overexploitation – people and non-human animals are victims of this too from the loss of a healthy environment. Public awareness needs to be raised through concentrated media campaigns as to the value and impact of biodiversity and the environment. Whereas regard for the environment has increased in recent years, there is still much more to be done to increase the knowledge of our connection to the planet. Additionally, there should be wide spread information about the danger of consuming uninspected meat and venison. In conjunction with these strategies in times of particular economic hardship, extra support should be put in place to assist people who may poach because of food insecurity. Addressing the enforcement side of deer poaching can help to impact upon economic motivations. Changing the view that poaching is victimless may help to alter motivations related to status and sport.

Deer poaching and wildlife crime are worthy of being made more of a priority not only because of the victimisation to the non-human animals and the environment, but also because these crimes impact upon people and communities. A multi-faceted approach increasing the attention on and penalties for wildlife crime as well as educating the public to the nature and risks associated with wildlife crime are necessary first steps to reducing the harm and suffering linked to wildlife crime in general and poaching in particular.

Tanya Wyatt is a lecturer at the University of Northumbria.

Foreign fighting in Syria is not driven primarily by devotion to Islam, nor is it motivated mainly by socioeconomic grievances. Rather, foreign fighters join the Syrian civil war to defend their Muslim brethren. Framing the war as a threat to the Muslim (Sunni) community, transnational Islamist movements offer alternative identities and a sense of belonging for alienated people from across the Muslim world.

In recent years the conflict in Syria has become a lodestone for young Muslims who travel to join the fight. According to estimates from the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, and reports by The Soufan Group (TSG), foreign fighters from more than 90 countries have joined the Syrian civil war since its inception in 2011, and their numbers already exceed the rate of volunteers who went to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any point in the last 20 years. While the actual figures of foreign fighters in these and other sources vary, and though we do not know how many of them actually engage in the fighting, there are consistent estimates of the numbers of volunteering fighters and the distribution of their countries of origin.

To be sure, volunteering fighters join various parties in the complex war, like Hezbollah combatants who fight for the Syrian army and foreigners who fight for the Kurdish YPG forces, yet, the concept of foreign fighters relates here to those volunteers joining jihadi movements, mainly the Islamic State and Jabhat Fath al-Sham (formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra) organizations. Special attention is afforded to the growing stream of European Muslims to these jihadi groups in Syria, and their potential extremist actions upon return to their home countries. However, most foreign volunteers have come from Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The recruitment process is generally conducted on an individual basis. Taking place across the world, the recruitment relies largely on social media, with videos and appeals produced in a range of languages, describing the caliphate as a utopian political venture, and providing young men and women with an adventurous trip. Salafi mosques and associations also seem to take an active role in recruiting and trafficking volunteers to fight the Syrian war in the name of Islam.

Although by no means a new phenomenon, the causes of the widening spread of foreign fighting remain unclear. As most of these foreigners are utterly detached from the events in the countries to which they journey, and have little political and material benefit to gain from these wars, the opportunity to attain martyrdom in the next life appears to be a major appeal. Yet, Islam in and of itself is not the primary factor behind foreign fighters joining the jihad. Examination at the individual level indicates that many of those who choose to join extremist groups in Syria have only basic knowledge of Sharia. Islamic State entry forms leaked in early 2016, also demonstrate that while some characteristics of the volunteers (like age and marital status) can be traced, there are no discernible demographic and socioeconomic profiles of foreign fighters in Syria.

An inspection of the foreign fighters’ countries of origin adds to this confusion, as the spate of volunteering warriors does not originate primarily in countries dominated by radical Islamist movements, nor is it confined to countries where economic and political conditions are the worst. Rather, foreign fighters join the Syrian civil war from countries with different profiles in terms of both the role of Islamism in socio-political life, and the political authority of the regime. Four countries are notable among the home countries of the foreign fighters in Syria: Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Jordan. Tunisia, where the “Arab Spring” revolt was initially ignited, has become the largest source of foreign fighters joining the jihadi groups in Syria, with roughly 3,000 Tunisian warriors recorded between 2011 and 2014; Saudi Arabia is next with estimates of 2,500 fighters during that period. On the other hand, countries like Egypt, Yemen and Sudan produced far fewer volunteering fighters.

The role of identity

Why then do foreign fighters travel from the Muslim world to fight in Syria? Foreign fighters are motivated by the quest for identity and belonging. Their recruitment is based on religious sentiments, sparked by Islamist movements striving to defend cultural and religious values of the Muslim community. Alienated individuals who seek alternative identities and a sense of belonging find them in their transnational communities. The combination of these factors has stimulated the shift from nationalist identities to pan-Islamist orientations, promoted through a fear-provoking discourse.

This process was coupled with the emergence of transnational jihadi networks, which carried out political activism aimed at defending the Muslim nation. Recruitment of Muslim fighters thus relies on established messaging practices, by which the recruiting groups frame distant civil conflicts as posing a direct threat to the larger transnational community. Interestingly, these messages are most effective in countries like Tunisia and Saudi Arabia where major Islamist movements are co-opted, taking part in negotiated relations with the ruling elite vis-à-vis implementing Islamic norms in socio-political life. In these countries, legal or semi-legal Islamist movements embrace relatively moderate discourses of sectarian identity, remaining pragmatic and non-violent toward the state. Under such restrained relationships, Islamist sentiments of alienated groups evolve into transnationalist inclinations.

Alienated individuals then aim their rage and frustration at external enemies. That is, restrained relations between the state and Islamist movements at the national level may well explain the relatively large number of foreign fighters recruited from subnational regions that are alienated from the state, as these fighters see transnational jihad as a way to vent socio-political rage and Islamic sentiments that find limited local opportunities for expression.

Possible solutions

To counter the appeal of transnationalist messages, home countries need to establish civic identities and offer competing national narratives. Governments should encourage the inclusion of alienated groups in national discourses and strengthen their sense of belonging to the state. To be sure, the establishment of civic identities is conditioned by state effectiveness and legitimacy — it can be achieved only if the state reconstitutes its position as an institution that provides the needs of its citizens.

Indeed, state ideology and policies also affect people’s choice to join foreign fighting. Preferring to allow troublesome elements to leave the country, some governments turn a blind eye to efforts to recruit their citizens to join transnational wars. Some countries even encourage the phenomenon. Consider for example the dual policy vis-à-vis Islamism which is well-embodied in the Saudi stance toward foreign fighting in the Syrian civil war. While actively involved in the regime’s domestic de-radicalization efforts, Saudi clerics offer contradicting messages about fighting jihad in foreign countries, with some of them openly calling upon the Muslim world to fight Bashar al-Assad’s supporters, including Syrian Alawites, Iran and Hezbollah. Egypt’s clerics, on the other hand, promote clear anti-jihadist ideology, with multiple campaigns launched by Al-Azhar to renounce the radical ideas spread among young people by groups like Islamic State. Directed by Egyptian President al-Sisi, Al-Azhar leaders hold talks with religious leaders in other countries in the region to thwart Islamic State ideology and to diminish the phenomenon of foreign fighters’ volunteering in the Syrian civil war.

The policy implication from the multifaceted causes of foreign fighting in Syria is that governments in the Muslim world should not only raise the constrains on going to Syria but also take preventive measures including information campaigns aimed at radicalized and alienated young people, offering opportunities for local expression of their socio-political needs and encouraging their sense of belonging to the state.

Meirav Mishali-Ram is a lecturer at Bar Ilan University. Her research interests focus on international conflict and civil war, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia. She is the author of many articles and a forthcoming book on the Arab-Israel and India-Pakistan protracted conflicts. Her most recent article on foreign fighting in Syria is available at Taylor and Francis Online: “Foreign Fighters and Transnational Jihad in Syria,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

The beginning of the Arab Awakening and its mass-based social and political mobilizations has spurred a dynamic debate about whether and how the international community should support and back the revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa region. An especially thorny and controversial issue has been that of armed intervention: are there circumstances under which external parties should become militarily involved on the ground? If yes; with what goal? Debates over the legitimacy of direct external intervention have been widely discussed in the past few years; often with a specific reference to the emerging ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) norm.

The concept itself began to be employed in the early 2000s as a term of reference to replace the more ambiguous and controversial ‘humanitarian intervention’ framework. The idea of R2P broadly posits that sovereignty, beyond rights, also encompasses duties; and specifically the obligation for each state to guarantee the safety and protection of its citizens. If the state is unable or unwilling to do so, the international community has a responsibility to assist it, and if these efforts also fail, outside intervention—including but by no means limited to military action—can become justifiable. Since the endorsement of the concept within the international community, first by the United Nations General Assembly and then by the UN Security Council (UNSC), the principle of R2P has been used to both stress individual countries’ obligations towards their own people, as well as to argue in favor of international intervention to uphold the principle.

In this context, the UNSC’s authorization of the use of force in Libya is often cited as a watershed moment in the development of R2P. But did military intervention in Libya assist or hinder in the strengthening of a global ‘responsibility to protect’ norm?

To some observers, the Libyan intervention gave R2P the boost it needed. They argue that the principle itself was invoked to support external military intervention. Accordingly, this gave R2P ‘teeth’ whilst showing its growing international legitimacy and acceptance. Yet, a closer reading of the international community’s reliance on R2P in the weeks preceding Operation Unified Protector may lead to lesser enthusiastic evaluation. On the one hand, it is true that both UNSC 1970 (2011) and 1973 (2011) urged the government of Libya ‘to meet its responsibility to protect its population’ thus openly referring to R2P. On the other hand, when it came to justifying the use of force, the UN Security Council grounded its authorization on Chapter VII of the UN Charter, after labeling the violence taking place in Libya a threat to international peace and security.

On balance, while the period leading up to NATO’s Operation Unified Protector did show a growing role and relevance for the R2P norm in the international arena; still it would be an exaggeration to say that military intervention was grounded solely (or even predominantly) on R2P. This is the case even though it is possible to justify Operation Unified Protector according the ‘R2P’ criteria: the intervention came in response to the Qaddafi government’s manifest brutality and unwillingness to halt targeting of its population and it was encouraged not only by prominent internal defections but also backed by significant regional support. The use of force was also directly authorized by the UNSC, though Resolution 1973 (2011). Finally, the official mandate of the operation, which included employing all ‘necessary means’ to protect ‘civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack’ was—despite being quite broad in its scope—was similarly in line with the R2P framework.

But whether it would be correct to state that R2P was revitalized in the discussions leading up to the beginning of Operation Unified Protector, it is important to look at both the conduct and the legacy of the intervention to make a more long term assessment of its impact on R2P.

Here the record is decidedly mixed. Operation Unified Protector’s mandate was about civilian protection, while explicitly excluding a military occupation of Libya and reiterating the international community’s commitment to ‘Libya’s ‘sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and national unity.’ Yet in its actual military operations it is possible to see how the military mandate was gradually stretched beyond the original (or intended) boundaries, leading to the de facto pursuing of regime change in Libya. By the spring of 2011, military sorties against the regime’s military and communication gradually went beyond merely disabling the government’s capacity to harm the civilian population and directly focused on weakening the regime’s military capabilities, in turn key to shifting the balance of power against Qaddafi. This is especially the case as NATO’s military operations, including air-cover provision for opposition forces, went hand-in-hand with coalition members, like France or the UK, active train and equip programs of rebel groups.

While these actions were not blatantly disregarding UNSC Resolution 1973—they indeed be seen as necessary to prevent and halt targeting of the civilian population—still they certainly stretched the mandate to ‘the absolute limit’—as argued by Gareth Evans. While such ‘mission creep might have been inevitable and dictated by the changing realities on the ground, still in NATO’s gradual expansion of its operations went de facto well beyond the UNSC 1973.

In turn, this fueled criticism from countries like Russia or China, states that were already skeptical about the merits of the R2P framework and championing a much stricter interpretation of state sovereignty and the right to non-interference. Put simply, the ‘generous’ interpretation of the mandate in Libya contributed to further curb the international enthusiasm for the emerging R2P norm. It allowed countries like China to become even more skeptical and reluctant to authorize future ‘R2P’ operations, citing the risk that the limited mandate will be then extra-judicially expanded to pursue regime change. Criticism has also come from countries lacking a strong pro-state sovereignty stance. For example, Brazil has argued for the creation of stricter guidelines and monitoring mechanisms to prevent future unauthorized expansion of the norm.

In this context, the Libyan experience has certainly not helped making the case for R2P or strengthening its popularity on the global stage. The general skepticism towards R2P in Libya undermined the level of international consensus for the R2P norm and laid the basis for the reluctance to authorize a similar mission in Syria. At the same time, it is important not to over-emphasize the link between Libya and Syria. Geopolitics explains the lack of R2P intervention and UNSC agreement on Syria better than international law. Here factors like the Syrian regime’s better air-defense system and military apparatus, the strong economic and political interests of countries like Russia in supporting the Assad regime, the more fractionalized nature of the anti-Assad opposition, and the far less prominent direct national interests of NATO member countries in Syria all help understanding the lack of agreement and decisive strategy to deal with the protracted and blood conflict.

Still, Operation Unified Protector did not strengthen the overall stance of R2P on the global arena, while underlining some of the pre-existing dilemma related to humanitarian intervention, including how to prevent its politicization (or whether that is possible at all); how to ensure strict adherence to the mandate and how to remain engaged in the ‘day after’—another key shortcoming of the Libyan intervention.

Dr. Benedetta Berti is a foreign policy and security researcher, analyst, consultant, author and lecturer. Her work focuses on human security and internal conflicts, as well as on post-conflict stabilization (specifically integration of armed groups, democracy/governance and crisis management and prevention) and peacebuilding. Dr. Berti is the author of three books, including Armed Political Organizations. From Conflict to Integration (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013) and her work and research have appeared, among others, in Al-Jazeera, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She is a fellow at INSS, a TED Senior Fellow, a FPRI Senior fellow, a Young Atlanticist Fellow, a Körber Foundation’s Munich Young Leader and a member of the UN Alliance of Civilizations “Global Experts.” In 2015 the Italian government awarded her the Order of the Star of Italy (order of Knighthood).

There are a number of pressing global problems that we need to address in order to attain sustainable security, such as climate change, increasingly scarce resources, and the surge of violence by globally interconnected non-state actors. If not dealt with, these issues will lead to increased regional instability and perpetual political violence. Although these issues are recognized as pressing concerns, we have not been able to find effective solutions. Underlying this failure is the exclusion of the majority of the global community from policy-making processes. This marginalization can lead to ineffective policies as they fail to consider the interests and values of a large part of the world’s population. Furthermore, given the results of social science research examining the role of values in decision making and in motivated action, policies that are ignorant of core values of the stakeholders will not only fail to garner popular support, they may, in fact, spark resistance and ignite violence.

Background

Most current approaches to negotiation and policy making assume that people make rational decisions – they weigh the benefits and costs of decisions and act in a way that maximizes their payoff. The values people try to maximize can be different for each party but they are assumed to be fungible: people may give up one value for achieving the other. Following these assumptions, policies and interventions often use incentives (e.g., tax breaks) or disincentives (e.g., sanctions) in order to influence the decision making of the stakeholders.

This business-like approach to policy making and interventions has led to the successful resolution of many problems, even very difficult ones. For instance, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979. In general, as long as the values of the stakeholders can be identified, incentives and disincentives can be designed effectively, leading to successful policies.

However, despite numerous attempts and the best efforts by the parties involved, this approach has been attempted in vain in an increasing number of contexts, and it has failed so frequently that some issues are now assumed to be intractable. A prime example is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where the majority of the people involved seem to have lost all hope: according to a 2015 poll by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, 51% of Israelis and 38% of Palestinians believe that the conflicting parties will not even return to the negotiation table. In other contexts, like the Northern Ireland or Kosovo conflicts, solutions devised with current approaches may prove to be unsustainable as they have neglected to address underlying concerns.

Sacred Values

The lack of success of current approaches is due to the underlying assumption that all values are in principal fungible: that they are mutually interchangeable. Social science research over the last 20 years suggests that this is not the case. Instead, people consider some values as so important or absolute that they refuse to even measure them on the same metric as material values. Consider, for instance, how parents may react were one to offer them money for selling their child. Most parents will decline the offer no matter how much money in involved. They will regard even considering the value of their child in monetary terms as immoral. Moreover, they will likely feel insulted and disgusted by the offer. One would get thrown out of the house if not directly reported to the authorities. This result is due to the fact that the offer fails to consider the duty most parents feel towards their child; business-like negotiation will not only be futile but will most likely backfire leading to moral anger and a breakdown of relationships. Such core values that seem to be resistant to tradeoffs with material values (e.g., monetary gains or job security), have been termed “sacred values”.

As the name suggests, sacred values can be religious (e.g., holy land or sanctity of life) but they need not to be (e.g., equality or racial purity). However, religious ritual can transform material values into sacred ones. For example, when land is transformed from an agricultural and residential resource into “holy land.” This seems to be particularly the case in existential conflict between groups when people feel that their very existence is threatened, as is the case in the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Studies conducted before the Iran nuclear deal also found that under high pressure from other countries, a politically meaningful minority of Iranians (14%) have come to consider the nuclear program as a sacred right suggesting that material values can become sacralized in a relatively short time. The process of sacralization, however, is not well understood yet.

When it comes to reasoning over sacred values, neuroscience studies show that decisions relating to sacred values are processed differently in the brain from material cost-benefit calculations. When people reason over sacred values as compared to material values, they are more concerned with the rectitude of their actions than with prospects. In other words, they are more concerned with morality and duties than with expected outcomes. If policy proposals that affect sacred values fail to consider this different mode of reasoning, the expected outcome is not only failure to achieve the intended aims but also resistance by the affected people, which can result in violence.

Seemingly Intractable Issues

Research shows that the core issues in a number of seemingly intractable conflicts are indeed considered sacred values by sizable parts of the populations involved, who show counterintuitive reactions to proposed solutions leading to a failure to resolve the issue. For instance, one research study on the support of peace deals in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict presented a peace proposal that required giving up core demands (e.g., the right of return for Palestinians). It found that “sweetening” deals with material incentives can actually backfire and exacerbate the situation. When presented with the peace deals, only a minority of Palestinians showed increased support when deals were sweetened with material incentives such as compensation payments in the form of development aid for a Palestinian state resulting from the agreement. However, the vast majority of Palestinians (more than 4 in 5) considered their core demands as sacred values and reacted with moral outrage when the deal included material compensation. They also predicted increased violent resistance if such a deal was to be agreed to by their leaders. This “backfire effect” of material incentives has since been demonstrated by Israeli Settlers when asked about giving up settling in Gaza and the West Bank (land they believe was promised to them by God) and in other seemingly intractable conflicts such as the Iranian nuclear ambitions (right to development of nuclear energy), the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India (Kashmir), and militant Jihad in Indonesia (Sharia law).

In addition, across a number of different contexts, sacred values have been shown to incite strong emotions and spur extreme actions in their defense. People are willing to fight for their sacred values well beyond the prospect of success, seemingly disregarding self-interest. The concern for sacred values seems also to be a driving factor for the droves of young people who have been joining Islamists in Syria and Iraq, exchanging the relative comfort of their home countries for a war zone risking life and limb. For instance, a study among potential Jihadis in Morocco – one of the countries with the highest levels of foreign fighters leaving for Syria and Iraq – showed that people who considered Sharia law as sacred, expressed heightened support for militant Jihad and willingness to fight and die for the implementation of Sharia in Morocco.

Achieving Sustainable Security

The reality that sacred values are not fungible with material values and that otherwise reasonable policies and interventions can badly backfire does not mean we need to completely refrain from dealing with sacred values altogether. Conflicts over sacred values are not unsolvable. In fact, the very study that first demonstrated the backfire effect of business-like approaches in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict also found a reason for hope: people who considered the core demands in the conflict as sacred did show willingness to compromise if the other side made some painful concession relating to their deeply held sacred values. In particular, Israelis and Palestinians showed more flexibility regarding their sacred values when the deal included mutual recognition; that is, Palestinians would recognize Israel as a Jewish state and Israelis would recognize the role of Israel in the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe,” a term that relates to the expulsion and flight of Palestinians from what now is Israel). However, identifying these kinds of resolutions requires knowledge of the sacred values of all involved parties and thoughtful consideration of them in devising solutions. Unfortunately, our knowledge of sacred values held by communities worldwide is scarce.

Just like the global clusters of values shown by the recurring World Value Survey, we can expect sacred values to differ considerably across communities and cultures and to change over time. At the minimum, we need to systematically assess sacred values across the world (similar to the World Value Survey), so decision-makers can have access to this knowledge. But for security to be sustainable in the long run, we will also need to bring communities with different sacred values to the table when we seek solutions to the most pressing issues we face today. The world cannot afford a policy-making process with global impact that is dominated by a small exclusive group of countries (e.g., the permanent member states of the UN security council) without regard for the multitude of cultures and values in the world. Because of this ignorance about the core concerns of large parts of the global community, our policies and interventions may not only fail to successfully address the issues at hand, but may actually badly backfire – by accidentally violating sacred values of the people they impact – and lead to more unrest and instability.

Hammad Sheikh is an ARTIS research fellow at the New School for Social Research and a visiting scholar at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflicts (Harris Manchester College, Oxford University). He received a Psycholgie Diplom from the Free University of Berlin and a PhD in social psychology from the New School for Social Research. Prior to his studies at the New School, he conducted research at the Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development in Berlin, the University College Dublin, and the Free University of Berlin. His research focuses on the psychology of intergroup conflict, and uniquely brings together field research (e.g., interviews with combatants in war zones) with traditional psychological methods like questionnaires and cognitive experiments. He is currently examining how commitments to groups and values can lead people to become willing to make extremely costly sacrifices for a cause, including fighting and dying for it.

After decades of largely unsuccessful military interventions against a long-standing Maoist insurgency, India’s large-scale labor market program MGNREGS has helped reduce conflict dramatically.

Other than the conflict in Kashmir, Maoist violence is India’s longest-standing internal national security threat. The Maoists are predominantly active in the eastern parts of India, with strongholds in forest areas and places with substantial tribal populations who have seen little improvement in their living conditions since Indian independence 70 years ago. Over time, more than 160 districts have been affected by Maoist violence, and decades of military force by the Indian government have been largely unsuccessful. Conflict intensity escalated in the mid-2000s, but since then Maoist-related deaths have seen an unprecedented decline to reach the lowest level of violence in The number of districts severely affected by Maoist violence fell from 51 districts in 2007 to 12 districts in 2013, and the total number of Maoist-affected districts declined from 165 to 120 districts in the same time period.

 

 

The Naxalite-Maoist insurgency in India

The conflict started with a peasant revolt in the village of Naxalbari in the state of West Bengal in 1967, which led to a rising insurgency called the Naxalite movement. Naxalites use guerilla tactics in their fight against the government, and aim to overthrow the Indian state to create a liberated zone in central India. They wanted to improve the living conditions of the local population through redistribution of land and the revenue from mining activities.

The intensity of the Maoist conflict rose dramatically in the mid-2000s, when previously competing Naxalite groups came together to create the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Large parts of east India were heavily affected by that violence, and the Indian government lost de facto territorial control over a number of districts. Civilians were often caught in between the Maoists and government security forces, since both sides had to rely on the local population for information and assistance in remote forest areas.

In 2006, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to the Maoist insurgency as the “single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country.” Maoist-related deaths rose rapidly, peaking with a large attack in 2009-10 that killed 76 policemen in Dantewada district. In recent years, fatalities have fallen to some of the lowest levels in decades, and the Maoists have been pushed out of many traditional areas of their control. According to government statistics, Naxalite deaths have risen by 65% and surrenders by 185% between 2014 and 2016. Maoist activities are now almost exclusively limited to 35 districts, although the insurgents retain a presence in 68 districts across 10 states.

What factors explain this sharp rise and fall in violence?

The Indian central and state governments responded to the increased violence after the creation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) with a variety of measures. Personnel and spending on security forces were increased, and central and state paramilitary forces started operations against the Maoists that came to be referred to as Operation Green Hunt by the media. At the same time, expenditures on development programs were increased as well, with the hope of improving the living conditions of the local population and thereby the traditionally strained relationship between civilians and the government in Maoist-affected areas.

One of the first development programs in Maoist-affected areas in this time period was MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), rolled out across India between 2006 and 2008. MGNREGS guarantees 100 days of employment per year for each household at the minimum wage in public-works programs. The work projects focus on drought-proofing, irrigation and infrastructure improvements in Indian villages.

The only eligibility criterion is that a household lives in a rural area and is prepared to work full-time in manual jobs at the minimum wage. This allows households to self-select into the program when they need it and covers about 70 percent of the population, making it the world’s largest public-works program. The annual expenditures under the scheme amount to about one percent of India’s GDP. In addition to its size, the program is unprecedented in India and worldwide because the program provides a legal guarantee for employment, which is enforceable in courts. It was rolled out in three separate phases, and the first implementation phase of the program was targeted to 200 of India’s poorest districts, many of which are in Maoist-affected areas, such as Dantewada and Bastar districts in Chattisgarh, and Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh.

What role did MGNREGS play in tackling Maoist violence?

Comparing districts that received MGNREGS to very similar districts that did not receive the program until later, in our research we find police attacks on Maoists intensified after MGNREGS came into effect. This is consistent with an improvement in the relationship of civilians with the government as a result of the program. Since civilians may have important information about the location of the Maoists, who rely on them for shelter and information on police movements, MGNREGS seems to have helped win civilians over and encourage them to share that information with the security forces. The Indian Home Ministry also attributes the increased success of catching Maoists to better intelligence gathering.

In concurrence with the increase in police-initiated attacks, we find that the Maoists started retaliating against civilians. The rebels traditionally concentrated on attacking government forces rather than civilians, which makes this shift an important change in behavior. In leaflets and other documents, Maoists claim that the killed civilians were police informants and threaten to attack other civilians cooperating with the police.

MGNREGS therefore appears to have contributed to the effectiveness of government forces by winning the “hearts and minds” of the local population. While this improved effectiveness lead to a short-run increase in violence as government forces become more pro-active, violence declined over time as security forces won more battles against the insurgents.

This matches the recent substantial decline in Maoist-related violence. Up until around 2010 when MGNREGS was a relatively new program, Maoist fatalities increased substantially, and many top leaders surrendered. Since then, India has seen an impressive decline in Maoist-related deaths and areas under Maoist control. Anti-poverty programs like MGNREGS can therefore support more traditional counter-insurgency strategies if they manage to improve the local population’s relationship with the government. Since civilians take on large risks when choosing to share information on insurgents with government forces, this strategy will only be successful if civilians believe that the benefits from the program are large and long-lasting enough to be worth potential retaliation by the insurgents.

MGNREGS was set up to be a more permanent program than other initiatives because of the legal guarantee and was enacted partly due to pressure from NGOs and social activists, who also played an important role in monitoring implementation quality. This buy-in from government and NGOs makes the program very different from similar programs elsewhere, and is likely to have contributed to its success.  Lower actual benefits than promised by the government remain a challenge in many developing countries, including India, however. If governments do not ensure a high level of implementation quality, transitory programs and broken promises will sow distrust with citizens, making future investments less effective.

Authors’ Note: This text is based on our article “Guns and Butter? Fighting Violence with the Promise of Development”, published in the Journal of Development Economics in January 2017.

Gaurav Khanna is an assistant professor of Economics at the School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California – San Diego. His research focusses on conflict and the markets for education and labor in developing countries. 

Laura Zimmermann is an assistant professor in Economics and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on the labor-market and political economy impacts of government programs in developing countries, and she has worked widely on effects of MGNREGS in India.  

Summary

April has seen the inexperienced Trump Administration further escalate US military activities from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan and Yemen. Attacking Syrian regime targets for the first time sent a clear signal of muscular change from the Obama era and suggested to President Trump a means to reverse his negative domestic approval ratings. However, it is the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear missile programme that has the greatest potential to escalate suddenly and disastrously into a conflict of global significance.

Introduction

Last month’s briefing, Sustainable Security in the Trump Era, discussed the outlook for the sustainable security approach in terms of the incoming Trump administration, concluding that in all three major areas of concern – economic, environmental and military – the Trump prospect was not positive. It would maintain a highly sceptical approach to climate change even if it might end up getting left behind technologically and economically, and its economic policies would do nothing to reduce the widening wealth/poverty inequalities that cleave American society.

In terms of US security policy, the indications after two months in office were that Trump would expand the military budget and armed forces, give military commanders greater freedom of action, was willing to support an expanded global military posture and saw this as integral to “making America great again”. This briefing continues the overall theme in relation to the military outlook, the main emphasis being on the potential for a crisis involving North Korea.

The Military Posture

The March briefing identified a number of areas where the military posture was being expanded. These included an increased use of air power in supporting Iraqi troops attempting to take control of Mosul, the expanded use of Special Forces in Yemen, more powers for US forces to initiate action against militias in Somalia, and the deployment of additional ground troops to Iraq. In the past month there have been further indications of a military expansion.

• In Iraq, the use of air power in Mosul has increased still further, although the so-called Islamic State (IS) remains entrenched in the western heart of the city.
• In northern Syria, the US Air Force has been establishing an airfield between Kobane and Raqqa to support the looming offensive against this other stronghold of IS. Up to 1,000 more US troops are anticipated to join the 950 US Special Forces, Rangers and Marines already bolstering the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces militia for this offensive.
• In western Syria, the US Navy carried out a major sea-launched cruise missile raid on an Assad-regime air base in response to a suspected government attack on rebel-held Khan Sheikhoun that used chemical agents and killed many civilians.
• In Yemen there have been 85 armed drone and strike aircraft attacks since President Trump’s inauguration, more than President Obama approved in 2015 and 2016 combined.
• In Afghanistan the US Air Force used the world’s most powerful conventional bomb, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Burst (MOAB), for the first time against an IS faction.
• Also in Afghanistan, Trump’s National Security Advisor, General H R McMaster, arrived on a surprise visit that coincided with the deployment of several hundred US Marines to bolster the Afghan National Army, which was suffering increasing losses from attacks by Taliban and other armed opposition groups. There were calls for a further major increase in US military forces in the country at the start of the so-called “fighting season”.
• Reports at the end of the month that the Trump administration has decided to hand more authority to the Pentagon in terms of how it conducts the wars in Iraq and Syria.
• Trump diverted a ‘powerful armada’, including a carrier battle group and a nuclear submarine, towards North East Asia and says he fears a “major, major conflict” with North Korea.

It is in this context that the burgeoning crisis with North Korea requires specific analysis.

A Crisis out of Nowhere?

During the course of the past month the issue of North Korea’s nuclear and missile development programmes has come to the fore for reasons which are not easy to pinpoint. It is true that there have been some additional tests of steadily more advanced missiles (one of which failed completely) and there is a possibility that a new nuclear test is being readied. Beyond this, though, little has changed on the North Korean side, and it is the Trump administration that has started to rethink policy, with this stemming from two factors.

One, as already mentioned, is that Trump’s attitude to security is to focus far more on the use of military force and far less on diplomacy, in marked contrast to the Obama administration. In a sense this harks back to the George W Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent termination of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. In his January 2002 State of the Union Address to Congress, Bush extended the war against al-Qaida and the Taliban to a conflict with the “axis of evil” centred on Iraq, Iran and North Korea. In the past 15 years, the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein has been terminated and the Trump White House is taking a harsh line over the recent Iran nuclear deal. This leaves North Korea and it is here that the second factor comes into play.

Until a few months ago, US policy was to use sanctions and diplomacy in dealing with North Korea, not least in collaboration with China as the one state with serious influence over Pyongyang. This was based on an assessment that North Korea’s progress towards a functioning nuclear force capable of targeting the United States was still quite a few years off.

There are credible reports that recent US intelligence analysis indicates that this is no longer the case and, specifically, that North Korea is progressing to the point where it could produce seven or eight nuclear weapons each year, compared with the previous assumption of one a year. It is also believed to be having success in shrinking the size and weight of warheads so that they can be carried by long-range missiles and that it is within a very few years of producing reliable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could reach the United States. On a worst case assessment the belief is that North Korea might have up to 40 nuclear weapons by the end of President Trump’s first term, as well as being able to deploy the first of a number of ICBMs.

The extent to which this is an exaggeration is simply not clear but that is not entirely relevant since President Trump and his advisors believe that the time to act is now. As he put it a few days ago: “People put blindfolds on for decades, and now it’s time to solve the problem”. This is because the worst case assessment is very much dependent on a very intensive programme of testing of missiles and of warheads and without this the progress of North Korea’s whole nuclear programme will be hugely limited.

How to Act

At the time of writing (28 April) the approach of the Trump administration appears still to be one of seeking much tougher sanctions in order to change the policies of the North Korean regime, but these will have minimal effect without severe sanctions on North Korea’s ability to import fuel. Since China is the dominant supplier, cooperation between Washington and Beijing has to be forthcoming but there are both generic and specific reasons why Beijing is not too sympathetic to putting further pressure on North Korea. The first are that any action which precipitates a collapse of the regime could lead to a war of survival by the regime, including the risk of nuclear use, it would certainly lead to a huge influx of refugees into China and even if the regime collapsed without social catastrophe, the prospect of a unified pro-Western regime on its borders does not appeal to Beijing.

The specific reasons revolve around the manner in which the United States is using its military power in the expectation that the Pyongyang regime will change its policies, and there is a particular concern that the radar linked to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system now being deployed in South Korea has the capacity to gain considerable intelligence on some of China’s key defence capabilities.

China is also likely to be far more aware of the psychology of the North Korean regime and the way it sees its nuclear force as essential to state survival. Like some other states, it is only too well aware that not long after Gaddafi’s Libya gave up its WMD programme the regime was terminated with considerable NATO military support.

In short, rapid action to effect a change in North Korea’s nuclear and missile plans has no chance of success – only longer-term careful diplomatic action may work. If not, then China, the United States and others will have to get used to the idea that a nuclear-armed North Korea will be a feature of the security of the region. It is worth noting that some leading Western military figures from the Cold War era that had experienced the dangers of the East-West nuclear confrontation ended their careers supporting the idea of global nuclear disarmament. That opportunity was lost and the world may have to get used to the consequences, at least in the case of North Korea.

Conclusion

Such a prospect, though, will not appeal to the Trump White House, and given that his administration is already putting far more emphasis on military thinking and options, there really is a risk that in the coming months the decision may be taken to undertake pre-emptive military action against North Korea’s warhead and missile production facilities. This is a highly unwelcome and potentially disastrous prospect but Trump has said that North Korea has to curb its ambitions. In effect he has drawn a red line and, since he criticised Mr Obama for doing so over Syrian chemical weapons and then failing to carry out his threat, President Trump may feel he can hardly afford the opprobrium that would follow should he fail to respond in this case.

Moreover, this has a particular relevance for the UK, where the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, has said that the UK would support further US action in Syria. With the Royal Air Force having conducted its first ever exercises with South Korean and US counterparts in Korea last November, this raises the issue of whether the same would apply in the case of North Korea, an interesting question at the start of a general election campaign.

 

Image credit: Uri Tours/Flickr

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.

by Janani Vivekananda and Shreya Mitra

REDD forestry efforts don’t pay enough attention to their influence on local conflict dynamics. For REDD+ to be an effective mechanism to curb deforestation and strengthen peace opportunities, it has to pay more attention to pre-existing land and forest conflicts linked to tenure, take into account the interests of the local communities and be more sensitive to the local context .

Indonesia has for the first time surpassed Brazil’s historical record of being at the forefront of deforestation suggests a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Despite a government-signed moratorium in 2011 to slow down the pace of deforestation, the study reveals that Indonesia has lost virgin forests of 60,000 sq. km, an area roughly the size of Ireland, over a period of 12 years.

The accelerated rate of deforestation raises concerns about the governance of forests in Indonesia and the effectiveness of the moratorium. It also highlights the missed opportunities to preserve the forests and bring about greater peace dividends, especially in a context where peace remains fragile and unequal forest rights remain unresolved. In conflict-affected areas, availability and access to forest resources can either make conflict worse or contribute to peace. If you accept the case, as many do, that the impacts of climate change make it harder to build peace, there is also a compelling argument that mitigating climate change by reducing deforestation, if done right, could offer significant peace opportunities by addressing inequalities and grievances of marginalised forest-dependent communities.

REDD Programmes and Peacebuilding

Yet despite the importance of forests to both climate change mitigation and peace, deforestation continues at an alarming rate as seen in the case of Indonesia. To combat deforestation and preserve forests as carbon sinks, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2005 introduced a mechanism called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). Under REDD, more developed countries pay for programmes in less developed countries to preserve forests. Later, a ‘plus’ was added to REDD introducing the elements of conservation, sustainable forest management and enhancement of forests as carbon sinks. The financial dimensions are significant. For example, Norway as the biggest contributor has pledged over $1.4 billion to REDD+ funds. Most of the money targets Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. For Indonesia alone, $156 million of REDD+ funding has been approved.

From a peacebuilding perspective, REDD+ and other efforts to promote sustainable forest management offer both peace opportunities and conflict risks. The conflict risks of REDD+ often have to do with land ownership and forest access. The peace opportunities associated with REDD+ are wider recognition of the multiple economic, social and cultural values of forests and a strengthening of the rights of local communities that depend on the forest. Poverty may also be reduced if the financial benefits of REDD+ are shared, and income opportunities created for local residents, who may work as forest monitors and guards.

In 2006, in Aceh, Indonesia, initiatives by the newly formed government on forest protection and supporting smallholder plantations, as well as the social opportunities offered by REDD investment, showed real promise for building a sustainable peace in the conflict-affected region. The REDD investment fell through after investors withdrew, but this experience hints at the potential for REDD to exert a positive influence on politics and power relations in a post-conflict context.

Short-Term Gains

Yet given the prospect of sums of money to be gained (in the short-run at least), there is a very real risk that communities can make decisions based on short-term profit or be bought off by entrepreneurs hoping to capitalise on REDD+. This means that while community involvement is critical, it alone is not sufficient and should certainly not be viewed as a silver bullet for equitable forestry that supports peace.

As a member of the Dhankuta District Community Forest Management committee explained during International Alert’s research in Nepal: “Forest-user groups might plant trees but don’t always protect them. How can a forest grow if you just plant trees and don’t protect them? People have begun to misuse resources. There is too much freedom and too little responsibility. Poverty is also a factor. People want an immediate return, instead of a better long-term gain.” In Papua New Guinea, many landowners are not aware of their rights, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by ‘carbon cowboys’ who gain control of land and forests to capitalise on REDD+ funding. While REDD+ caused this problem, the mechanism also drew international attention to the issue, which in turn helped push the government to improve its policy on revenue-sharing.

During International Alert’s research in Odisha in India, respondents reported that forest degradation is a key challenge for them. Forest conservation projects could help here to develop a forest management that is beneficial to both communities and carbon reduction. On the other hand, there is a risk that governments use REDD+ as an instrument to restrict the access of local communities to forests and thereby undermine their livelihoods. In addition, incoming finance can fuel existing corrupt structures or cause grievances if it is not shared in a transparent and balanced manner.

Striking a balance

Our research in Bangladesh showed that restrictions on access to the Sundarbans mangrove forest may be useful for conservation purposes but local communities perceived them as a direct obstacle to sustain their livelihood, in the short term at least. This highlights the challenge between balancing conservation and community interests. As with the case of Bangladesh, poor Indonesians dependent on forests for their livelihoods have not been provided a viable alternative source of income, which is one reason why deforestation continues.

Compared with Indonesia, Brazil has been much more proactive on the issue of land and forest tenure and therefore better placed to manage issues of illegal logging and deforestation. Brazil has through REDD+ initiatives been recognising and delineating customary lands and creating new protected areas though these have been beset with some problems.

For REDD+ to be an effective mechanism to curb deforestation and strengthen peace opportunities in Indonesia, Brazil and elsewhere, it has to pay more attention to pre-existing land and forest conflicts linked to tenure, take into account the interests of the local communities and be more sensitive to the local context

Janani Vivekananda is Environment, Climate Change and Security Manager at International Alert. Her specific interests include the implications of climate change policies on peace, the links between climate change and community resilience, and opportunities for positive responses to climate and environmental change and disasters.

Shreya Mitra Programme Officer with the Environment, Climate Change and Security team at International Alert. She previously worked as a Research Consultant for ODI, Save the Children and Social Development Direct. 

Featured image: Patchwork mountain landscape of agriculture, forestry, and deforested terrain, Tianlin County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. Source: CIFOR (Flickr)

This post by Oxford Research Group’s Global Security Consultant, Paul Rogers, was originally posted by openSecurity on 3 July, 2014.

The recharged war in Iraq that got underway in June 2014 is moving towards its second month. A remarkable feature of this phase is the formation of a largely unacknowledged coalition of four states opposed to the advance of the extremeSunni paramilitaries across much of northwestern Iraq.

Iran’s involvement is clear enough: senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers are active in Baghdad, and Iranian reconnaissance-drones are being used to aid Iraq’s troubled armed forces. Syria too is active, with Bashar al-Assad’s air-force conducting intermittent (and perhaps largely symbolic) strikes against jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) targets inside Iraq.

This reflects a shift in the Assad regime’s position. As long as ISIL could be considered little more than an irritant in Syria (even if occupying substantial ground), the group had a propaganda value for Damascus, which could project an image of being steadfast in the face of radical Islam and even secure tacit acceptance by western governments in the process.

Now that ISIL is getting stronger and more confident – symbolised in itsdeclaration of an “Islamic State” in the territory it controls – the potential challenge to Damascus’s as well as Baghdad’s security is evident. Assad may therefore continue to encourage periodic cross-border air-raids, but he will also work harder to damage ISIL within Syria.

The late shift

The two other states in this extraordinary anti-ISIL confluence are the United States and Russia. United States forces in the region are being steadily expanded, though it remains difficult to discern the full extent of personnel deployment in Iraq. This is partly because several thousand Americans in Iraq were already in Iraq before the new war erupted –  including diplomats, weapons-technicians and private military contractors. It is sure, however, that three further groups of military personnel are now entering Iraq.

The first is composed of security people (probably around 300 in total) assignedto guard diplomats and civilians; the second (at least 100) to safeguard Baghdad airport, among them probably specialist helicopter-crews available to retrieve aircrew (the potential need is highlighted by the US navy’s regular F-18 reconnaissance sorties off the USS George HW Bush carrier in the Persian Gulf). The third group is troops, mostly special-forces personnel, sent to Baghdad and elsewhere to boost Iraqi government forces in their operations. The key point here is that the overall authority, US Central Command, calculates that its operation is unlikely to yield results for several weeks (see Daniel Wasserbly, “US assesses mission in Iraq, considers military options”, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 2 July 2014). US personnel may already be advising Iraqi army troops in their stalled attempt to retake the city of Tikrit, a political necessity for Nouri al-Maliki’s government to demonstrate that it was seen to be doing something to address a military disaster. But the US military is taking a longer-term view of its work in Iraq.

Russia completes this unlikely anti-ISIS coalition. Its main involvement so far is the provision of a number of Su-25 Frogfoot ground-attack aircraft. The Su-25 is a robust if relatively slow-flying aircraft of the 1970s, roughly analogous to the US’s A-10 Warthog (though less heavily armed). It was widely deployed by the Iraqi air-force in the war with Iran (1980-88), and used by the Soviet air-force in the two Chechen wars (1994-96 and 1999-2002). Few if any survived in Iraqi air-force service after the 1991 war; so it is close to a quarter-century since any Iraqi pilots flew this aircraft – which like all ground-attack planes requires particular skills and much practice. The implication is that if Su-25s are used against ISIL and other militias in the coming weeks, it is near-certain that Russian pilots will fly them.

Thus, both US and Russian forces are preparing to aid the Maliki government at a quite significant level, and may even cooperate more closely than either Washington or Moscow will want to acknowledge. Indeed, that may already be happening: the hundred US troops inserted to help protect Baghdad’s airport will be guarding the very same base from which Su-25s are already flying, no doubt with Russian pilots.

The weeks ahead

If the war is creating strange alliances, a question of timescales may also become relevant as events unfold. Neither US and Russian support for Iraq, nor any from Iran, will have much effect on the situation until mid-July. This means that ISIL’s planners have a short window of opportunity to consolidate their recent gains. Several sources indicate that ISIL already has groups in place in western Baghdad to aid any assault on the city (see “The Iraq Crisis [Part 111]: Is Baghdad at Risk?“, 30 June 2014).

The next two weeks, then, are an acutely dangerous period (see Borzou Daragahi, “Iraqi capital nervously awaits Isis attack“, Financial Times, 1 July 2014). The aim of any ISIS attack will not be to take control of the whole city, for Shi’a militias in the eastern Baghdad districts are strong enough to contest that; instead it will be to damage and demoralise the regime to an extent that Baghdad can’t prevent the Islamic State consolidating itself.

That outcome would give ISIS a further lease of life. It would also be welcomed by many in the region, not least Saudi Arabia. But it would also be no more than a temporary gain in a war which may yet have far more dreadful human consequences.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University and Global Security Consultant at Oxford Research Group.  He is the author of numerous books including Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers