Category: 2016

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

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

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

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

Frontline preventive diplomacy: benefits and risks

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

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

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

A different diplomacy

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Options for Regulation

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

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

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

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

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

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

Flaws in Self-Regulation

Ignoring the Rogue Traders

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

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

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

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

Limited Sanctions for Non-Compliance

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

Applicable Standards?

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

Failure to Close the Accountability Gap

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

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

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

One of the main problems for supporters of nuclear disarmament, in terms of their advocacy efforts, is that the experience and process of disarming will be unique for each nuclear possessor state and constitute a journey into the unknown. Thus while South Africa and former Soviet states Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus dismantled or gave up their nuclear arsenals, there is a limited amount we can learn from their experiences in terms of how existing nuclear possessors may disarm.

What’s more, nuclear disarmament can seem negative and intangible, perhaps because there is no common idea of what it would look or feel like. In order to address this it is useful to explore different approaches to abolition, for example, the debate between unilateralists and multilateralists, so we can be clearer about the causes and consequences of disarmament. This article therefore focuses on what the UK can do to help create a nuclear weapons free world (NWFW) as a vital public good.

The fall and rise of unilateralism 

Labour’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn has long been committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament and has recently revived the debate over whether the UK should be a nuclear weapon state (NWS). Unilateralism would entail the UK eliminating its nuclear arsenal without seeking concessions from other states. From the late 1980s up to the Scottish National Party’s breakthrough in 2015, all of Britain’s main political parties rejected this stance. The parliamentary consensus has instead favoured multilateral disarmament, commonly understood to mean a step-by-step negotiating process involving the other nuclear powers with Trident as a bargaining chip. Other steps the UK has taken in order to support this approach include ratification – unlike the US – of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and support for a verified Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty, albeit one which only limits future production of such materials.

This approach might appear, at first glance, to be practical, with the US and Russia taking the lead, based on the fact that they have 93% of the world’s nuclear weapons, and to align with public opinion. For example, whilst some surveys show that a majority of voters (54%) would prefer Britain to abandon its nuclear weapons and not replace them, other surveys show that a larger majority (81%) favour an international plan ‘for totally eliminating nuclear weapons according to a timeline’. Thus, as a 2007 study by the Simons Foundation found, the UK ‘boasts a high level of support for elimination of nuclear arms and nuclear testing all over the world’.

Given the significant public support for abolition and the fact that the UK, like all other NWS, has dual obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) – firstly to eliminate its own nuclear arsenal and secondly to help create the conditions for a NWFW – it is apparent that the UK could be doing much more and without waiting for reconciliation between China, Russia and the US.

As the NPT makes clear, the elimination of nuclear weapons and the achievement of general and complete disarmament will be facilitated by ‘the easing of international tension and the strengthening of trust between States’. This should lead the UK – both as an NWS and a permanent member of the UN Security Council – to consider how it may act responsibly, both enabling nuclear possessors to move towards disarmament and reducing the incentives for others to seek non-conventional deterrents.

British interpretations of multilateralism

During Gordon Brown’s tenure as Prime Minister the Foreign and Commonwealth Office produced an information paper entitled ‘Lifting the Nuclear Shadow: Creating the Conditions for Abolishing Nuclear Weapons’, wherein the government outlined how it would fulfil its commitments under the NPT. The document stated that the UK would ‘continue to work towards the total elimination of our own nuclear arsenal and all others through multilateral, mutual and verifiable agreements’. Furthermore, when ‘useful’, the government would willingly include in any negotiations ‘the small proportion of the world’s nuclear weapons that belong to the UK.’

Using such vague and misleading language to wriggle out of national responsibilities is an unedifying but unfortunately common trait of official documents, with the government having previously stated that the NPT ‘does not establish any timetable for nuclear disarmament’. Firstly, as former US Ambassador for the NPT Lewis Dunn notes, the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement ‘has long argued for negotiation of a time-bound framework for eliminating nuclear weapons’, yet this has been strenuously resisted by the UK and other nuclear powers.

Secondly, does the UK’s stance mean it concurs with NATO’s 2012 Deterrence Defence Posture Review, which declared that ‘as long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance’? The question here is how soon Trident would be put on the table in a multilateral negotiating process for disarmament given that it is assigned to NATO. For example, does the UK government think that including Trident would only be ‘useful’ after Russia and the US agree bilaterally to reduce their nuclear arsenals from over 7,000 weapons each to low numbers approaching the 200-300 weapons that China, France and the UK each maintain? The need here is for more clarity from the government so the public can get a better sense of the timescale that is being proposed.

Lifting the Nuclear Shadow goes on to acknowledge that NWS have a ‘special responsibility’ to lead on eliminating nuclear weapons, but that this first requires certain ‘political and security conditions’ to be met, via ‘a co-operative project with the active engagement of the entire international community.’ If it is accepted that a more cooperative and peaceful world will benefit multilateral disarmament efforts how can we judge whether the UK has lived up to its ‘special responsibility’ in this area?

Creating the conditions for a NWFW 

A brief review of the UK’s actions in recent years shows that in several ways the UK has directly undermined efforts for disarmament to make headway. This point is most obviously illustrated by the fact that the UK is planning to spend tens of billions of pounds on replacing Trident – an immensely powerful type of nuclear weapon integrated within an aggressive military alliance that does not rule out the first use of nuclear weapons. Significantly, the UK does this whilst seeking to portray itself as the most progressive NWS and an active supporter of a NWFW in its public diplomacy.

In reality the UK has, so far, not taken any unilateral or multilateral disarmament steps. What the UK has done, since the end of the Cold War, is to make quantitative reductions to its nuclear forces whilst acquiring, as Nick Ritchie points out, a nuclear weapons system – Trident – that provides an increased capability over its predecessor – Polaris. The reductions trend continued with the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, which announced that ‘the number of warheads on board each submarine would be reduced from a maximum of 48 to a maximum of 40, the number of operational missiles on the Vanguard Class submarines would be reduced to no more than eight, and the number of operational warheads reduced from fewer than 160 to no more than 120.’

These reductions, while unilateral, cannot be described as disarmament, because they have not taken place in a verifiable, irreversible and transparent manner as envisaged by the 2000 NPT Review Conference’s 13 steps. While the UK has so far not undertaken disarmament, it has begun to investigate how this might occur in future through initiatives with Norway and the US. These projects have brought together experts aiming to address the technical and procedural challenges of verifying nuclear warhead dismantlement.

Understanding how nuclear possessors think

Adopting truly progressive policies capable of fostering international cooperation would require the UK to develop an understanding of other state’s threat perceptions. For example, disarmament advocates and scholars often assert that the UK’s nuclear status legitimates nuclear possession for all, encouraging proliferation, and that this undermines the NPT.

While it is true that Russia sees the UK’s nuclear arsenal as part of NATO’s overall military capabilities, the UK’s nuclear arsenal alone cannot be considered, from a strategic point of view, a key factor in the decision-making of any state currently possessing or with the potential to acquire nuclear weapons. Rather, it is clear from the strategic studies literature that US conventional superiority – at the head of the NATO alliance – and domestic political dynamics are far more important considerations for states, including China and Russia, because nuclear weapons are ‘force equalisers’. China and Russia thus primarily see their nuclear weapons as deterrents against the West’s overwhelming conventional military superiority and policies of containment and expansion. This should lead British decision-makers to consider carefully the legal and political consequences of overseas power projection.

Take, for example, the UK’s involvement in NATO’s 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia (code named Operation Allied Force), which was, according to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee ‘contrary to…the basic law of the international community – the UN Charter’. According to Russian defence analyst Nikolai Sokov, the significance for Moscow of NATO’s bombing campaign was that it showed how the US could use force without the authorisation of the UN Security Council. Such considerations, for Sokov, led Russia to ‘enhance reliance on nuclear weapons in a departure from all documents adopted in the 1990s’ in order to deter the West from conducting ‘limited conventional wars’, principally in Russia’s near abroad.

More widely, as Raju Thomas notes, NATO’s ‘unrestrained use of force’ gave ‘an additional post-hoc justification for an Indian nuclear deterrent’, in the ‘context of the new Western-dominant world order’, bringing nuclear powers China, India and Russia together in protest against the bombing. These three states shared concerns about aggressive intervention being justified on humanitarian grounds, as each had to deal with a potentially secessionist region with parallels to Kosovo. For China this was Tibet and Xinjiang, for India, Kashmir, and for Russia, Chechnya. Subsequent US- or NATO-led regime-change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya have also stoked concerns, not least in Iran, about where the West would seek to intervene next.

Profiting from proliferation 

Perhaps as a means of placating Indian anger and drawing it into the Western orbit, in 2008 Washington made a highly controversial deal with New Delhi, providing assistance to India’s civilian nuclear energy program, and greater help with other energy and satellite technology, despite India refusing to join the NPT. The UK followed the US in July 2010, sealing an agreement with India for the export of civil nuclear technology that continues to this day. As Nicolas Watt reported, this move raised ‘fears of leakage’ to India’s ‘military nuclear programme’, meaning the UK would be engaged in blatant proliferation which would likely lead to responses from New Delhi’s rivals in Beijing and Islamabad.

The British government has also in recent years lobbied for India to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which was interpreted as a way of boosting India’s standing as ‘an atomic power’ and thus provide a larger export market for Western technology. Yet, as Fredrik Dahl explains, China and other states have questioned whether India should be given exceptional access ‘into a key forum deciding rules for civilian nuclear trade’ despite being outside the NPT, under which it would have to commit to disarmament.

The UK could also support non-proliferation by carefully considering how arms transfers affect political dynamics in regions suffering from conflict. For example, arming human rights abusing regimes in the Middle East contributes to tensions and reduces the chances of establishing a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone, which the government claims to support.

Overall, if progress on non-proliferation and disarmament is to be made, short-term economic and political goals must not be allowed to trump critical national and international security concerns. Advocates of multilateral disarmament therefore need to produce and enact policies that make sense across government. Moreover, without a clear understanding of the various economic, psychological and strategic factors driving proliferation and what might enable disarmament, it will be a meaningless exercise for politicians to argue that Britain favours the international elimination of nuclear weapons.

Tim Street is the Senior Programme Officer on the Sustainable Security programme at Oxford Research Group (ORG) and a PhD student at Warwick University.

 

Published last week, Myanmar: Storm Clouds on the Horizon is International Crisis Group’s latest Asia report. It focuses on the potential for political violence and social instability as Mynamar’s leaders are undertaking reforms “to move the country decisively away from its authoritarian past”. For most of the past 50 years, the government of the Republic of the Union of Mynamar (also referred to as Burma) has been under direct or indirect control by the military. Since independence in 1948, the people of Myanmar have suffered civil wars which have mainly been struggles for ethnic and sub-national autonomy. The country has consistently been in the news for human rights violations. Perhaps one of the world’s most well-known political prisoners, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi, also chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) was released in 2010 after 21 years under house arrest.

Thein Sein, current president of Myanmar, has put in place a far-reaching and radical reform agenda. The ICG’s report focuses on what reforms have been achieved and what this may mean for a possible resurrection of violence because “political prisoners have been released, blacklists trimmed, freedom of assembly laws implemented, and media censorship abolished. But widespread ethnic violence in Rakhine State, targeting principally the Rohingya Muslim minority, has cast a dark cloud over the reform process and any further rupturing of intercommunal relations could threaten national stability.” With former political prisoners being released, 2,000 high-profile activists and opposition politicians being allowed to return home, and further liberalization of the media, “social tensions are rising as more freedom allows local conflicts to resurface”.

The report notes that “The easing of authoritarian controls has created the space for the population to air grievances, the ability to organise in a way that was not possible before, and the opportunity to have a real influence on government policies and decisions” which has led to an “exponential growth in civil society activity”. In order for the transition from authoritarian rule to democracy to be stable, and for peace and security to be sustainable, the government of Myanmar will have to face and resolve major challenges. Widespread militarization and the political and social marginalization (past and present) of ethnic and religious groups will have to be addressed. For example, it has been estimated that the recent 2012 violence between Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine State led to an estimated 90,000 displaced people in addition to dozens of casualties. It will not be sufficient to react to past and present violence by allowing more freedom of speech and liberalizing the press. Trying to contain the violence and reducing state repression alone will not address the underlying drivers of insecurity. The government will have to take a sustainable security approach and make great efforts in order to actively address the causes of long-standing grievances. Addressing only the symptoms cannot lead to long-term stability and the rebuilding of trust between communities.

The ICG offers several options to minimize the risks associated with single party dominance during Myanmar’s political transition. These include changing the electoral system to some form of proportional representation, building coalitions between the NLD and other political parties, and building bridges between the NLD and current president Thein Sein as well as other political forces- particularly the old guard. The ICG recommendations underscore the importance of all parties, and the majority of people, to feel involved in the political process. The marginalization of any political or ethnic/religious groups will most probably lead to further violence and insecurity in the future.

ICG’s full report and details of the policy recommendations can be read here.

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

Image source: Rusty Steward

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. 

Why has the US failed so dramatically in Afghanistan since 2001? Dominant explanations have ignored the impact of bureaucratic divisions and personality conflicts on nation-building in Afghanistan. These divisions meant the battle was virtually lost before it even began.

This article presents alternative findings about US efforts to construct a stable and prosperous Afghan state. It concentrates on the bureaucratic conflict surging beneath the surface of the mission, which compromised state-building goals and bedevilled the implementation of policies across a wide range of issues linked to law and order, development, governance and counter-narcotics. The fact that internal bureaucratic problems were an important explanation for the lack of progress has been underestimated in the current scholarship. With this in mind it is stressed here that the machinations of the agencies and individuals who make up the US foreign policy bureaucracy must be recognised alongside external factors in order to provide a complete picture of the difficulties and frustrations characteristic of US state-building in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan: a twenty-first century state-building project

Afghanistan has been considered the first major test case for state-building in the twenty-first century. From 2001 onwards, there were some significant achievements as a result of efforts on the part of the United States and its allies. A variety of actors collaborated to sink hundreds of wells and construct many health clinics. According to some estimates, death rates among adult males have declined, and access to clean water has helped to curb disease and improve life expectancy. Millions of Afghan children are now enrolled in schools.

But given the vast expenditure of the international community these achievements are underwhelming. Close to a quarter of Afghanistan’s population still do not have access to clean water, and nearly half of Afghan children are malnourished. Hunger is widespread and there is rampant unemployment. Schools lack equipment and sometimes even a schoolroom, and sewerage or electricity infrastructure outside of Kabul is practically non-existent.  Corruption is endemic at all levels of government and brutal strongmen, such as the capricious Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, continue to play a central role in national politics. Afghanistan also remains a narcostate that produces an alarming 90% of the world’s heroin with the Taliban now functioning a veritable drug cartel.

What, then, explains this lack of progress? A smooth transition to Western-style democracy was always an unlikely, given Afghanistan’s ethno-sectarian fissures, economic underdevelopment and institutional fragility. It is now widely accepted that the strength of cultural, religious, and political traditions was underestimated. US insouciance in the years immediately after the invasion, thinly disguised beneath the euphemistic language of having a ‘light footprint’, also contributed to the rise of a ferocious and destabilizing insurgency. This heralded the return of the Taliban as a violent, tenacious and seditious force. In a more general sense, externally generated state-building would have been an ambiguous and difficult process in any country, let alone Afghanistan; the graveyard of empires.

A bureaucratic tangle

All of the above issues have been mentioned in media reports and scholarly works. Less attention, however, has been directed to the fact that the responsibilities of the various actors within the US state remained undefined or ambiguous. State-building was compromised by each agency’s unique culture, interests, norms and past experiences; all of which encouraged particular patterns of behaviour. In Afghanistan bureaucratic conflict circumscribed the capacity of the US government to act as a homogeneous and purposeful unit. The impact of this disorder was widespread, but it was particularly problematic in respect to counter-narcotics, law & order and infrastructure projects.

The US government was not paralysed by the complexity of Afghanistan’s drug problem; however, there was no common conception or understanding of that problem between the relevant parties. During the Bush Administration’s time in office in particular, eradication, interdiction, and the Alternative Livelihoods Program were not subjected to a single calculated counter-narcotics policy, nor was there consensus in regards to the strengths and weaknesses of the three strategies. A lack of leadership from the White House and Congress augmented the capacity of agency rivalry to ensure that the United States failed to pursue a counter-narcotics effort that was united or reflective of Afghanistan’s needs.

The Bush Administration’s approach to Afghanistan’s drug problem was not only ambiguous but also sporadic, and congressional engagement was not simply selective but also obsessive, advocating short-term solutions that revealed a limited knowledge of the situation on the ground (akin to the 10,000 mile screwdriver). Meanwhile, elements within the civilian wing of the US foreign policy bureaucracy, meanwhile, had their own ideas about Afghanistan’s drug problem. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) was influenced by its previous experiences in Columbia and elsewhere, so it prioritized eradication above all else.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) favoured interdiction, but much like the INL, the agency struggled to convince other bureaucratic factions that its conceptualization of Afghanistan’s drug problem was the most accurate one. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an actor not normally associated with drug prevention, and it was more concerned with the preservation and protection of its developmental mandate than using agricultural projects to prevent poppy farming. For the US military, counter-narcotics was only valid if it was subordinate to counterinsurgency, and even then both the Defense Department and the US Armed Forces were reluctant to commit resources and manpower to the task.

The disharmony that plagued the US counter-narcotics program was also characteristic of US efforts to promote the rule of law. US agencies were placed under no significant pressure to initiate rule of law projects by the White House, nor was it in the interest of any agency to spearhead legal reform, given the array of other (often competing) responsibilities that they had already accepted. Other issues took priority: development projects for USAID; diplomacy for the State Department and counterinsurgency for the military. The State Department employed separate contractors and also paid prosecutors on loan from the Department of Justice, who operated independently; while USAID ran its programs through separate contractors. No effort was undertaken by any agency to identify duplicate or conflicting programs and none of them could provide a clear picture of US expenditures.

Competing ideas about how infrastructure development should be undertaken engendered another web of conflict. Namely, USAID’s perspective clashed with that of the rest of the State Department and US military. USAID considered projects that were conducted by the State Department and the military to be out of tune with the ‘developmental reality.’ Its preference for long-term initiatives coupled with a perceived lack of man-power fostered the impression among military officials that it was ineffective and unreliable. Similarly, the relationship between the State Department and USAID was often characterized by indecision and competing priorities, which precluded the two agencies from establishing a united development front.

As the insurgency intensified, the US military and the State Department used their influence in Washington to convince USAID to prioritize road-building and agriculture projects in Afghanistan’s most dangerous provinces: Helmand and Kandahar. Often, but not always, USAID yielded to the pressure of more powerful bureaucratic forces and implemented projects that it perceived to be cosmetic. But in order to fulfil these obligations, USAID relied on contractors. These contractors operated in a nebulous area between the private sphere and the foreign policy bureaucracy. They added another layer of confusion to already divided development efforts. Many of the contractors left an array of unfinished school, roads, power supplies and medical clinics. USAID was criticized by the State Department and the US military for delegating projects to Berger, Chemonics and other contractors, but then failing to sufficiently monitor their activities.

Lessons learned

No single US official or agency is to blame for the problems outlined in this article, but it meant the battle in Afghanistan was virtually lost before it began. To overcome such bureaucratic conflict, more effort—both in Washington and the field—must be directed toward encouraging a whole-of-government approach to complex foreign policy issues. This should involve staff exchange programs, compulsory inter-departmental meetings and a greater emphasis on aligning interests with policy platforms from senior figures within each agency and, most importantly, the White House. Political will and dedication from the US leadership is certainly essential, but government-based training programs must also infuse prospective US public servants with an understanding of the structure and nuances of the foreign policy bureaucracy in order to promulgate practices that encourage empathy and flexibility. Given the criticism the United States has faced for its state-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is unlikely that a similar mission will be attempted in the near future. However, US policy-makers should be careful not to forget these experiences; as was the case following the Vietnam war. The United States still considers ‘fixing’ failed states to be an important foreign policy goal. With is in mind, it is probable a situation will arise requiring the mobilisation of resources and agencies towards state-building. In such a scenario, a cohesive intra-governmental front will be help the US to avoid the bureaucratic disorder that pervaded state-building in Afghanistan.

Dr Conor Keane has degrees in law and politics, and a doctorate on nation-building in Afghanistan from Macquarie University. His research interests include counter terrorism, state building, bureaucratic politics and US foreign policy. He has published several articles on these topics in journals such as Armed Forces & Society and International Peacekeeping.

Due to the absence of a functioning government, a counterinsurgency in a failed state can be a difficult enterprise. Since Somalia’s state collapse in 1991, various actors have been combating the threat of Al-Shabaab with mixed results.

Counterinsurgency measures, as the name suggests, are meant to suppress an insurgency and in the long run create an enabling political environment for the establishment of a functional state capable of ensuring sustainable security. These goals are, however, difficult to achieve under conditions of state collapse given the virtual absence of a functional government. As a collapsed state that has had no functional government since the end of Siad Barre’s rule in 1991, Somalia represents an interesting case.

Since 1991, many of Somalia’s counterinsurgency operations launched have been driven by concerns regarding the impact of Somalia’s conflict on regional security and the desire to create a functional state capable of providing basic human and physical security to its citizens. Given that Somalia is a collapsed state, the initiative of adopting and effecting counterinsurgency measures in the country has been externally driven by regional and international organisations such as the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN), as well as Western countries such as the United States (US) rather than by the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS).

This article focuses on the military component of the peace enforcement African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), which has positioned itself as a counterinsurgency force against the armed insurgency group Harakat Al-Shabaab Al Mujaheddin group, commonly known as Al-Shabaab.

Somalia’s insurgency and counterinsurgency

The nature of insurgency and counterinsurgency in Somalia is complex as it involves a variety of non-state, state and international actors. The militant Islamist group Al-Shabaab, the most significant armed non state actor, describes and perceives itself as an insurgent movement but is labelled and depicted by the FGS and external actors as a terrorist group as they see it as a transnational violent armed non-state actor. The conceptualisation and labelling of Al-Shabaab both simultaneously as an insurgent and terrorist group only complicates counterinsurgency operations in the country. This is so, in that it is not effective enough to conduct counterinsurgency as counterterrorism to suppress a group that perceives itself and thereby conducts its operations as an insurgent rather than a terrorist one.

The combination of state collapse with the complexity and paradoxical nature of insurgency and counterinsurgency operations in Somalia has adversely affected human and physical security in the country and has provided Al-Shabaab with new political opportunities to sustain violent action. The AMISOM’s strategic concept of operations (CONOPS) and rules of engagement (ROE) indicate that its short-term repressive security measures are better clarified as counterterrorism rather than counterinsurgency, as they appear to focus on both simultaneously national and transnational terrorist activities, rather than efforts to defeat the insurgency in Somalia and ultimately create a functional state.

The AMISON’s CONOPS combine all ongoing separate military operations in Somalia into a coordinated and coherent effort against Al-Shabaab so as to extend the authority of the FGS country-wide. It also aims at creating an enabling environment for the effective implementation of AMISOM’s mandate. AMISOM’s CONOPS have, however, been adversely hindered by the mission’s lack of adequate financial, human and military resources, thereby rendering it ineffective in its mandated operations. AMISOM’s ROE are key to ensuring that military operations are conducted in compliance with international humanitarian law obligations in Somalia’s socio-political context.

Though the ROE are in conformity with the operational realities of the mission, AMISOM continues to operate in extremely volatile conditions created by state collapse, whereby Al-Shabaab’s asymmetrical warfare targets civilians within populated areas. This situation makes it extremely difficult for AMISOM to ensure civilian protection in the conduct of its operations and to consistently apply the mission’s ROE Counterinsurgency operations that cannot consistently sustain themselves for long periods are ineffective and will not achieve the intended outcome of enhancing sustainable security.

A success or failure?

The successes or failures of insurgency and counterinsurgency operations in Somalia depend on population support.  So far, the counterinsurgency strategies in Somalia conducted by AMISOM and its coalition forces, especially the Somali National Army, have been unable to gain the support of the people. Al-Shabaab’s led insurgency has gained popular support among the local-level communities, largely due to the social services and more importantly the local-level security governance it provides, in the absence of a functional state. All these strategies of Al-Shabaab, which are aimed at legitimising itself, are implemented through variants of Islamism. The movement was very effective in the provision of alternative governance structures at the local-level prior to the pre-2010 military intervention of AMISOM. The literature on counterinsurgency operations in Somalia indicates that the security vacuum created by Al-Shabaab’s departure as a result of AMISOM’s operations in these areas has led to an increase in the levels of insecurity thereby questioning the legitimacy of the latter’s operations.

The Somali populace also perceives these counterinsurgency efforts as externally driven and extremely hesitant to engage, positively, with the fundamental Somali socio-political structures such as the clan structure and Islam. In order to be effective counterinsurgency measures, should take into account the legitimacy of these socio-political structures that play a significant role in local-level peacebuilding and governance processes.

Doomed from the start?

Counterinsurgency operations in Somalia have also been adversely affected by poor planning and their inability, so far, to create an enabling environment which enhances state capacity. Any credible counterinsurgency operation with a military component requires careful planning before any military incursion begins. A number of indicators suggest that, in the early stages, AMISOM neither planned nor implemented an effective counterinsurgency strategy. The initial objective of Kenya’s military incursion into Somalia through Operation Linda Nchi and subsequent incorporation into AMISOM was not peace enforcement countering the direct physical threats posed by Al-Shabaab on its territory.

Counterinsurgency measures were later driven by socio-political and economic interests rather than peacebuilding in Somalia. Kenya’s military intervention in Somalia can be perceived as counterterrorism rather than counterinsurgency efforts given that they were initially driven by short-term strategic interests.  The establishment of a functional state has so far not been achieved in Somalia as it has been has been compromised by the manner in which regional and international peacekeeping efforts, have been conducted in the country. Most of these, if not all have been characterised by failures rather than successes. For example, the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia constantly accuses the Kenya Defence Forces component of violating AMISOM’s mandate. AMISOM has not been effectively taking the appropriate measures aimed at supporting the creation of a functionally effective state due to the strategic interests of its member states. This has compromised peacebuilding and security governance in the country.

The resilience of Al-Shabaab as a transnational violent non-state armed actor, is partly a function of ineffective repressive counterinsurgency measures in Somalia. The repressive counterinsurgency operations conducted largely by external actors in the country are reactive, achieve unintended consequences ande hence counterproductive. A political strategy supported by security operations in the formulation and implementation of counterinsurgency operations is still ideal for any country facing an insurgency.

Counterinsurgency measures, however, that do not require repressive security operations that focus on causes not symptoms are best suited for Somalia in the medium and long-term.  Since Somalia does not have a functional government capable of providing effective counterinsurgency operations let alone human and physical security, non-repressive measures would best be conducted by non-state actors such clan leaders and clans, and Islamic civil society organisations.

Non-state actors are appropriate in the implementation of non-repressive counterinsurgency measures in that they not only located within fundamental Somali socio-political structures, but also have the capacity to use informal process oriented means rather than formal goal-oriented ones. Informal process-oriented methods are more appropriate when it comes to addressing the root causes of the insurgency while formal goal-oriented ones are reactive focussing on symptoms. These measures, such as those that focus on countering violent extremism, take into account fundamental Somali socio-political structures, and their corresponding customs norms and traditions thereby gaining population support and subsequently legitimacy. Such counterinsurgency measures will achieve their intended outcome of dealing with insurgency, the grievances of that insurgency and ultimately create the socio-political environment required to establish a functional state.

Oscar Gakuo Mwangi (PhD) is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political & Administrative Studies National University of Lesotho.