Category: Article

SIPRI has published a policy paper examining arms flows into sub-Saharan Africa. The summary of the report below indicates that even legal transfers into the continent have implications for peace and security, not only because many SALW (small arms and light weapons) make their way illicitly to rebel groups or countries under UN embargo, but also because, “The supply of arms can be argued to to have been an incentive for the recipients to try to achieve their goals via violence instead of dialogue.”  The summary also touches on the motives behind supplier countries’ weapons sales, which include securing access to natural resources in the mineral-rich continent.

There is a general need for more clarity throughout the arms-transfer process, as African governments themselves are not necessarily forthcoming in their reasons for wishing to purchase weapons, despite regular expressions of support for international arms control initiatives. With the waters this muddied, arms purchased both legally and illegally pose a serious threat to security in Africa.

(To view or purchase a copy of the full policy paper, please go to the Publications page on the SIPRI website)

Pieter D. Wezeman, Siemon T. Wezeman and Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, SIPRI Policy Paper 30 – Summary, December 2011

Concerns regarding arms transfers to sub-Saharan Africa are widespread and have motivated worldwide efforts to control arms flows. Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) accounted for 1.5 per cent of the volume of world imports of major arms in 2006–10. Although this is low by global standards, with little indigenous arms-production capacity in the region, most countries are fully dependent on arms imports.

States in sub-Saharan Africa have received major arms from a wide variety of countries all over the world. China, Russia and Ukraine are consistently among the largest suppliers. Other countries that play a relatively modest role as arms exporters globally are significant arms suppliers to individual countries in sub-Saharan Africa or provide a significant proportion of the major arms supplied to the region as a whole. Due to a lack of accurate information, no comprehensive picture of transfers of small arms and light weapons (SALW) and other military equipment to the region can be given, but available open source information shows that transfers of such equipment to the region in 2006–10 was common.

The motives for arms transfers to sub-Saharan African destinations are diverse, including direct financial revenues—even if they are small compared to revenues from sales to other regions—and strengthening political influence in sub-Saharan Africa in order to gain access to natural resources and to further the security interest of the supplier.

Intergovernmental transparency is necessary for an informed debate about how the military needs of sub-Saharan Africa states should be taken into account in discussions on arms control in the region. While countries in the region regularly express support for conventional arms control initiatives, their low level of participation in the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms (UNROCA)—the key intergovernmental reporting instrument on conventional arms—casts doubts on their willingness to actively control arms. Public debate about arms procurement is often based on incomplete and confusing information which emerges only after key decisions have been made. Even those governments that have been more forthcoming with public information about their arms procurements tend to remain reluctant to discuss the rationale and underlying threat assessments in public or in the parliament.

Case studies show that supplies of SALW and major arms play a role in armed conflict in sub-Saharan Africa; even supplies of relatively small quantities of older weapons can have a notable impact on conflicts. The uncertainty about the impact of arms transfers to conflict areas in sub-Saharan Africa is reflected in the experience of 2006–10. In several cases it could be argued that arms supplies have contributed to a government’s ability to legitimately maintain or restore stability in its country, including with the use of force against rebel groups. In a number of cases, exporting countries have supplied arms to governments in the region which supported efforts to achieve these objectives and in line with UN statements or actions. The least controversial arms supplies are those aimed at improving African states’ capabilities to participate in peace operations, even though these supplies remain insufficient to fulfil the needs of regional peacekeepers.

However, in many cases arms supplied to sub-Saharan Africa have had clearly undesirable effects.

1. The supply of arms can be argued to have been an incentive for the recipients
to try to achieve their goals via violence instead of dialogue.
2. Arms have been used in human rights violations.
3. Arms recipients often do not have the capability to secure their stockpiles
and weapons have been lost or stolen, including by rebel groups.
4. Arms recipients have deliberately diverted weapons to targets of UN arms
embargoes or rebel groups in neighbouring countries.
5. Arms supplied to governments have been turned against those governments
in military coups d’état.

As a result of ambiguity about the impact and desirability of arms transfers, arms export policies by individual supplier countries vary widely. Some suppliers appear reluctant to supply arms to most countries in the region; others seem to consider only UN arms embargoes as a reason not to supply arms. The ambiguity is also reflected in the inconsistent approach of the international community to conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa: whereas arms embargoes have been agreed in relation to some conflicts, in other cases no embargo has been imposed.

Weapons used in conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa by government forces have in general been delivered with the consent of the governments both in the supplier and recipient countries. Nonetheless, it appears that the illegal arms trade continues to play a role in the procurement of arms by both government and rebel groups in the region even though there is no hard evidence of widespread large illegal supplies from outside the region into sub-Saharan Africa in 2006–10. However, there have been regular instances of weapons flows within the region to, in particular, rebel groups in violation of UN embargoes. To better understand the nature of the illegal arms trade in sub-Saharan Africa, information about interceptions by government authorities of illegal arms transfers and related legal activity should be centrally collected, for example in the annual national reports
on the UN Programme of Action on SALW.

The lack of transparency in arms flows to sub-Saharan Africa obstructs an informed debate on the proposed arms trade treaty (ATT) and would be a serious obstacle to its verification. A starting point for improving transparency would be to support initiatives on corruption in the arms trade. Interest in the corruption issue and increasing willingness by governments to discuss it could be a stepping stone towards more transparency in arms procurement. If sub-Saharan African states want to persuade arms suppliers—which regularly hinder arms exports by refusing export licences—that they have legitimate reasons to procure arms, they should be more forthcoming about their motives.

Article Source: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Image Source: Enough Project

A report published on the 30th September by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) estimates that 25 million more children will be malnourished by 2050 due to the effects of climate change. The report predicts that climate change will lead to price increases for the most important agricultural crops: rice, wheat, maize and soybeans. Wheat prices are projected to increase globally by 170 – 191% whilst rice prices may increase by 113 – 121%.

The study: Climate Change: Impact on Agriculture and Costs of Adaptation, uses the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report’s A2 scenario with a best estimate temperature rise of 3.4 degrees centigrade and a likely range of 2.0 to 5.4 degrees centigrade. However, the report does not account for: the effects of increased variability in weather caused by climate change; the loss of agricultural lands due to rising seas levels; climate change induced increases in pests of diseases; or increased variability in river flows as glaciers melt.

“Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change, because farming is so water-dependent. Small-scale farmers in developing countries will suffer the most” not Mark Rosegrant, director of IFPRI’s Environment and Production Technology Division and report co-author. Gerald Nelson, IFPRI senior research fellow and report lead author suggested, “This outcome could be averted with seven billion U.S. dollars per year of additional investments in agricultural productivity to help farmers to adapt to the effects of climate change. Investments are needed in agricultural research, improved irrigation, and rural roads to increase market access for poor farmers. Access to safe drinking water and education for girls is also essential.”

The full report can be downloaded here.

As the long running tensions over the set of islands in the East China Sea appear to be coming to a head, the time for thinking through the alternatives to the militarisation of this conflict seems to be well and truly upon us.

The conflict raises interesting issues about sovereignty claims based on offshore territories, particularly as we face a climate-constrained future as well as the increasing importance of competition over scarce resources. The latter is fast becoming one of the most important global trends if one thinks about the potential ‘drivers’ of conflict and even war.

Spiralling naval spending in the region has been tracked by analysts for some years now, and flashpoints such as the dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands could show rampant military spending and arms racing for the dangerous trends that they are if things deteriorate rapidly. Arms racing helps to reinforce security dilemmas (the problems of interpreting the motives of potential adversaries and responding in-kind by arming yourself thus creating a spiral towards ever increasing militarisation). Arms racing also discourages the development of what Ken Booth and Nicholas Wheeler refer to as ‘security dilemma sensibility’ – the ability to “perceive the motives behind, and to show responsiveness towards, the potential complexity of the military intentions of others. In particular, it refers to the ability to understand the role that fear might play in their attitudes and behaviour, including, crucially, the role that one’s own actions may play in provoking that fear.”

But what is particularly important to note in relation to this crisis is the interaction between the trends of increasing militarisation and competition over resources. The potential hydrocarbon resources beneath the ground around the islands as well as the rich fishing grounds in the surrounding waters gives the competing claims to sovereignty a particular strategic bite.

Imposed on top of this is the effect of unresolved historical tensions and fierce nationalist sentiment in some quarters of both Japan and China. The coverage of the dispute in the media has been particularly important. Kevin Clements and Ria Shibata have noted that “this might be expected in China, which has a state-run media. In democratic Japan and Taiwan, however, the media have also promoted official and unofficial nationalist positions on the conflict. This has been accompanied by a marginalising or silencing of moderate voices favouring negotiated non-violent solutions to the conflict.” Interestingly, the most constructive voices calling for calm who have been able to cut through the jingoism and sabre rattling have been the business community concerned with the bigger picture issues of losing trade and tourism between China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. 

Clements and Shibata have outlined five initial steps that could be used to de-escalate the issue and begin the difficult but unavoidable process of a negotiated solution. In the longer-term, both regional powers and important external players will need to put addressing the inter-linked trends of militarisation and increasing competition over strategic resources at the heart of any attempts to avoid the worst case scenarios playing out.

Image source: Al Jazeera English. 

Climate-related disasters could significantly impact military and civilian humanitarian response systems, so “an ounce of prevention now is worth a pound of cure in the future,” said CNA analyst E.D. McGrady at the Wilson Center launch of An Ounce of Preparation: Preparing for the Impact of a Changing Climate on U.S. Humanitarian and Disaster Response. The report, jointly published by CNA and Oxfam America, examines how climate change could affect the risk of natural disasters and U.S. government’s response to humanitarian emergencies.

Connecting the Dots Between Climate Change, Disaster Relief, and Security

The frequency of – and costs associated with – natural disasters are rising in part due to climate change, said McGrady, particularly for complex emergencies with underlying social, economic, or political problems, an overwhelming percentage of which occur in the developing world. In addition to the prospect of more intense storms and changing weather patterns, “economic and social stresses from agricultural disruption and [human] migration” will place an additional burden on already marginalized communities, he said. 

Paul O’Brien, vice president for policy and campaigns at Oxfam America said the humanitarian assistance community needs togalvanize the American public and help them “connect the dots” between climate change, disaster relief, and security. 

As a “threat multiplier,” climate change will likely exacerbate existing threats to natural and human systems, such as water scarcity, food insecurity, and global health deterioration, said Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, USN (ret.), president of CNA’s Institute for Public Research. Major General Richard Engel, USAF (ret.), of the National Intelligence Council identified shifting disease patterns and infrastructural damage as other potential security threats that could be exacerbated by climate change.

“We must fight disease, fight hunger, and help people overcome the environments which they face,” said Gunn. “Desperation and hopelessness are…the breeding ground for fanaticism.”

U.S. Response: Civilian and Military Efforts 

The United States plays a very significant role in global humanitarian assistance, “typically providing 40 to 50 percent of resources in a given year,” said Marc Cohen, senior researcher on humanitarian policy and climate change at Oxfam America. 

The civilian sector provides the majority of U.S. humanitarian assistance, said Cohen, including the USAIDOffice of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. These organizations provide leadership, funding, and food aid to developing countries in times of crisis, but also beforehand: “The internal rationale [of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance] is to reduce risk and increase the resilience of people to reduce the need for humanitarian assistance in the future,” said Edward Carr, climate change coordinator at USAID’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance.

The U.S. military complements and strengthens civilian humanitarian assistance efforts by accessing areas that civilian teams cannot reach. The military can utilize its heavy lift capability, in-theater logistics, and command and control functions when transportation and communications infrastructures are impaired, said McGrady, and if the situation calls for it, they can also provide security. In addition, the military could share lessons learned from its considerable experience planning for complex, unanticipated contingencies with civilian agencies preparing for natural disasters. 

“Forgotten Emergencies” 

Already under enormous stress, humanitarian assistance and disaster response systems have persistent weaknesses, such as shortfalls in the amount and structure of funding, poor coordination, and lack of political gravitas, said Cohen. 

Food-related aid is over-emphasized, said Cohen: “If we break down the shortfalls, we see that appeals for food aid get a better response than the type of response that would build assets and resilience…such as agricultural bolstering and public health measures.” Food aid often does not draw on local resources in developing countries, he said, which does little to improve long-term resilience. 

“Assistance is not always based on need…but on short-term political considerations,” said Cohen, asserting that too much aid is supplied to areas such as Afghanistan and Iraq, while “forgotten emergencies,” such as the Niger food crisis, receive far too little. Furthermore, aid distribution needs to be carried out more carefully at the local scale as well: During complex emergencies in fragile states, any perception of unequal assistance has the potential to create “blowback” if the United States is identified with only one side of a conflict.

Engel added that many of the problems associated with humanitarian assistance will be further compounded by increasing urbanization, which concentrates people in areas that do not have adequate or resilient infrastructure for agriculture, water, or energy. 

Preparing for Unknown Unknowns

A “whole of government approach” that utilizes the strengths of both the military and civilian humanitarian sectors is necessary to ensure that the United States is prepared for the future effects of climate change on complex emergencies in developing countries, said Engel. 

In order to “cut long-term costs and avoid some of the worst outcomes,” the report recommends that the United States:

• Increase the efficiency of aid delivery by changing the budgetary process;
• Reduce the demand by increasing the resilience of marginal (or close-to-marginal) societies now;
• Be given the legal authority to purchase food aid from local producers in developing countries to bolster delivery efficiency, support economic development, and build agricultural resilience;
• Establish OFDA as the single lead federal agency for disaster preparedness and response, in practice as well as theory;
• Hold an OFDA-led biannual humanitarian planning exercise that is focused in addressing key drivers of climate-related emergencies; and,
• Develop a policy framework on military involvement in humanitarian response.

Cohen singled out “structural budget issues” that pit appropriations for protracted emergencies in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Darfur against unanticipated emergencies, like the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Disaster-risk reduction investments are not a “budgetary trick” to repackage disaster appropriations but a practical way to make more efficient use of current resources, he said: “Studies show that the return on disaster-risk reduction is about seven to one – a pretty good cost-benefit ratio.” 

Edward Carr said that OFDA is already integrating disaster-risk reduction into its other strengths, such as early warning systems, conflict management and mitigation, democracy and governance, and food aid. However, to build truly effective resilience, these efforts must be tied to larger issues, such as economic development and general climate adaptation, he said. 

“What worries me most are not actually the things I do know, but the things we cannot predict right now,” said Carr. “These are the biggest challenges we face.”

Article source: The New Security Beat

Image source: Oxfam International

The term “global war on terror” has long since been dropped from the United States’s official vocabulary. The phrase that came to be proposed as a replacement even when George W Bush was still in office, the “long war”, has similarly fallen by the wayside, to be succeeded in March 2009 by a less overtly combative Pentagon formulation: “overseas contingency operation”. But it is easier for the Barack Obama administration to redefine the conflict it is involved in than to change the bleak current reality in three main flashpoints – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq:

* the coordinated suicide-attack and rocket-attack in the early morning of 28 October 2009 on two high-profile civilian targets in Kabul – the Bekhtar guest-house and Serena Hotel – are a sign that the deepening insecurity in Afghanistan reaches even to the heart of the capital. The Bekhtar incident ended in the deaths of twelve people, including five United Nations staff who were helping to oversee the re-run of the presidential election on 7 November

* the devastating market-bombing in Peshawar, also on 28 October, are part of a widening insurgency in Pakistan. The attack killed over ninety people, and coincided with the arrival of United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton in the country for high-level talks with Pakistani leaders

* the suicide-bomb operations against Iraq’s justice ministry and the administrative headquarters of Baghdad’s region on 25 October – which killed at least 155 people and wounded over 500 – are a reminded that violence in Iraq remains endemic and that insurgents retain the capacity to strike close to the heart of power.

The rising tide

In Afghanistan, the great concern over the Kabul assaults is accentuated by awareness of four serious security developments elsewhere in the country:

* the war is continuing to spread to previously peaceful areas. German troops in Kunduz province in the north of the country, for example, are involved in direct combat for the first time in over six decades (see Nicholas Kulish, “German Limits on War Face Afghan Reality”, International Herald Tribune, 27 October 2009)

* the increasing effectiveness of the attacks on foreign troops. United States forces are suffering relentless casualties: sixty-seven troops have been killed so far in October 2009, including seven on 27 October in multiple, “complex” bomb-attacks on an armoured vehicle in Kandahar province

* after the United States withdrew troops from four bases in Nuristan province in northeast Afghanistan (and adjacent to Pakistan), it has effectively fallen under the control of a Taliban network led by Qari Ziaur Rahman, a leader with close links to al-Qaida (see Syed Saleem Shahzad, “Taliban take over Afghan province”, Asia Times, 28 October 2009)

* it is now becoming ever more clear that the United States forces and the wider Nato/International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) coalition is facing military opposition from groups that extend beyond Taliban militias and some loosely associated warlord networks; these include scores of local militias that have very little to do with the Taliban but work to protect their own power-bases and resist what they see as a foreign occupation.

All war is local

The implication of these trends is that a transition from insurgency to a broader insurrection may be occurring – and that deploying even more American and allied troops (as Barack Obama and his advisers are currently discussing) risks increasing rather than diminishing the military challenge (see “Afghanistan: from insurgency to insurrection” [8 October 2009] and “AfPak: the unwinnable war” [16 October 2009]).

Some US military and political officers on the ground are beginning to register these dynamics. Matthew Hoh, a senior US state department official and former marine who was based until recently in Zabul province, explained his resignation on 10 September 2009 by referring to his experiences in the Korengal valley and elsewhere. These, he is reported as saying:

“taught him ‘how localised the insurgency was. I didn’t realize that a group in this valley here has no connection with an insurgent group two kilometres away.’ Hundreds, maybe thousands, of groups across Afghanistan, he decided, had few ideological ties to the Taliban but took its money to fight the foreign intruders and maintain their own local power bases. ‘That’s really what shook me,’ he said. ‘I thought it was more nationalistic. But it’s localism. I would call it valley-ism’” (see Karen De Young, “U.S. official resigns over Afghan war”, Washington Post, 27 October 2009).

The Barack Obama administration has yet to decide whether to deploy up to the 40,000 additional troops requested in General Stanley A McChrystal’s report; it still appears to want to delay the decision until political stability can be established in Kabul (through the 7 November re-run of the presidential election, and perhaps the formation of a national or emergency government). But the core dilemma remains: that deploying more troops is in current conditions likely to prove counterproductive, and only deepen the military quagmire.

There is a close parallel here with what is happening across the border in Pakistan. An extensive operation by the Pakistani army in Waziristan, launched with a certain fanfare on 17 October 2009 as attempt to occupy this key region and decisively curb Taliban control there, is too facing the reality of an intractable and well-organised opposition resistant to straightforward military solutions.

The Pakistani offensive lacks the equipment, the flexibility and the combat-troop levels (perhaps as many as 50,000) that would all be required to subdue the entire district; as a result, it now has the more limited aim of neutralising the influence of some important militia leaders. Even this will be hard enough. In addition, cities such as Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore as well as Peshawar have endured high-profile insurgent assaults; and the Peshawar explosion on 28 October is further evidence that the army’s well-publicised operations cannot prevent (and may indeed provoke) violent incidents elsewhere in Pakistan.

The Baghdad blues

Amid this comfortless prospect, the situation in Iraq has appeared to present more hopeful evidence that here at least – both before and since United States forces started their partial withdrawal from Iraq’s cities on 30 June 2009 – Washington’s military strategy was showing the desired results.

At the same time, the very concentration of focus on “AfPak” during much of 2009 has tended to mean that the continuing severe violence and tension in parts of the country have been underplayed. There has, for example, been a series of bombings against Shi’a-populated areas whose resulting carnage is barely conveyed by the death-tolls: over 120 killed in the strikes against markets in Sadr city in April and June, seventy-one dead at a Shi’a shrine in Baghdad in April, forty-four  killed at a Shi’a mosque in Mosul in August. This is but a partial list.

The intention seems clear: to polarise Shi’a and Sunni communities and provoke further conflict. But those responsible have other targets, including the Iraqi government’s infrastructure and its security forces (which are supplemented, despite the ending of full-scale American patrols in urban areas, by US troops in what amount to joint operations).

It is in these circumstances that the insurgents have expanded their tactics by launching large-scale assaults against major government centres. In August 2009, these destroyed or inflicted serious damage on the foreign, finance and health ministries (with 102 people killed and more than 500 wounded); the 25 October attacks hit two more centres. An especially serious aspect of this approach is the suggestion that the militants’ ability to penetrate government buildings is possible only with a degree of collaboration from inside Iraq’s security forces.

The real debate

The death of the United Nations staff in the Kabul attacks on 28 October is a further significant aspect of the current situation. It shows that some militant groups deliberately target the more neutral expatriates precisely because their work involves efforts to resolve conflicts in times of intense difference. The input of UN agencies – such as the World Food Programme, five of whose officials were killed in an attack at its Islamabad offices on 5 October 2009 – can help provide space for limited progress even amid conflict, and this is what the more extreme elements in a dispute can find intolerable.

In this respect the Kabul incident belongs to a pattern includes the assassination of Count Bernadotte by militants of the Israeli rightwing Lehi group in Jerusalem in September 1948, and the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003 which killed the envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and twenty-one others. In the latter case, the Baghdad canteen of the UN complex was in the early months of the Iraq war was one of the very few “neutral spaces” where Iraqis and expatriates of widely differing backgrounds and attitudes could meet informally. That was reason enough for it to be vulnerable; the human and psychological damage hugely diminished the UN’s role in attempting to heal wounds and avert the continuation of violence.

This adds a problematic element to the argument that the United Nations should play a more prominent and strategic role in current and future “international interventions” (see Pierre Schori & Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, “Afghanistan: peacekeeping without peace”, 26 October 2009). This is difficult enough to achieve when a military conflict has become rooted or where powerful trends point in that direction; it is made even harder when insurgent factions precisely seek to destroy UN personnel and disrupt their activities.

All this focuses a chilling beam onto the troubles of the United States and its allies (see Ahmed Rashid, “Trotsky in Baluchistan” [National Interest, November-December 2009]). There seems little hope of immediate respite. The conflict in what has become known as “AfPak” has since 2006-07 continued even through the winter months, while the hoped-for peace in Iraq is looking brittle.

If there is a way ahead, it rests not on short-term calculations about troop numbers but on a larger reassessment by the Barack Obama administration of the entire US security posture in the middle east and southwest Asia (see “A world in need: the case for sustainable security”, 10 September 2009). This will have to do more than crisis-manage the dire problems inherited from George W Bush; what is needed is no less than a move beyond military-led thinking to an integrated understanding of what security in the 21st century actually is. 

EU attitudes to peacebuilding have always assumed that it essentially applies to other people, who live outside of the Union’s developed borders. However, since the financial crisis of 2008 and the austerity that followed, the certainties underpinning western models of aid and conflict-resolution have taken a knock from the riots and protest movements shaking cities from Athens to London. While not equating the various reactions and levels of violence across the continent, Dan Smith suggests in both this piece and a follow-up post that EU peacebuilding efforts would be well-directed inwards. In particular, he highlights a growing alienation from professionalised political systems, and how a very small number of actors can cause havoc against a background of marginalisation, both real and perceived. He therefore recommends that we focus our attention on the context against which people act, rather than on the actors themselves, because it is only through ‘mobilising social energy for building peace’ that individuals can find a place in society and disaffection can be tackled at its root cause.

In 2001 – a different time and a different world – the EU Gothenburg summit agreed to make the prevention of violent conflict a priority for the EU. Measured by money, it’s now the world’s biggest player in peacebuilding. But look around Europe now and we can ask, should peacebuilding also start to be a priority inside the EU?
The EU’s peacebuilding

Since 2001 the European Commission has spent €7.7 billion on conflict prevention and peacebuilding, more than any government or other international organisation and about 10 per cent of its total spending on external aid.

A recent evaluation concluded the money has been well spent overall, albeit with room for improvement – the sort of balanced conclusion you expect from a review like that. The report finds that the EC has undertaken and supported some pretty good work in places as different as the western Balkans, the DRC, Nepal and Central Asia. Not everything works, but nothing has been done that is actually harmful, much that is distinctly beneficial to the common good, and important lessons have been learned.
That was then

The Gothenburg decision was taken at a different time. The Euro and the big enlargement had been decided. Confidence, expansiveness and optimism were in the air. If confidence was shaken by 9/11, the beginning of “the war on terror” and the start of the build-up to invasion of Iraq, nonetheless it was an era of growth and of projecting the EU’s core mission of enlarging the zone of peace to far flung corners of the world.

But in 2007 came the sub-prime crisis in the US and the start of the international credit crunch. In September 2008 Lehman Brothers went down and the world started to be very, very different.
Tragedy and reflection

In fact, for my own organisation, International Alert, things had already started to change. In 2005, the day after London was awarded the Olympic Games of 2012, the city was visited by the worst terrorism it has experienced, far more lethal than anything inflicted in 25 years of war by the Provisional IRA – in four bomb attacks (one on a bus and three on underground trains), 52 people were killed (plus the four bombers) and over 700 severely injured. The city was quiet for the next few days and people worried about whether it was safe to use the bus and tube and go to work.  Two weeks later four more bombs were discovered before they detonated.

In that over-heated atmosphere, on the next day, a policeman shot and killed a young Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes. It has since been proven that he had no connection with terror groups of any kind. It has been proven that the police had no basis in fact for following him. They panicked and a young man lost his life. I reflected on this and its implications in a post on the day a permanent memorial was dedicated to his memory.

For me and for colleagues at Alert, this awful incident was very immediate: our office happens to be five minutes’ walk from the station where Menezes was shot. Like many others we reflected on these events and we wondered whether skills we have learned in trying to build peace in Africa, Eurasia and Asia since we started up in 1986 might be useful in Britain. We made contact with groups working on community conflict and cohesion and compared notes. Might what we do in Beirut, Monrovia or Kathmandu have some bearing, some relevance in Bradford, south London or Bristol?

The answer was yes (and we now have a programme of activities in the UK), not because we have a magic technique but because we start with a dispassionate analysis of the context of conflict and use a vision-based approach. We don’t only start with ‘what’s the problem and how do we handle it?’ – but with ‘where do we want to be in x years’ time?
This is now

In the summer of 2011, England had its riots. We look around Europe and we see different sorts of disaffection and action: the anger in the anti-austerity, anti-government riots in Greece, the thin patina that people tell me stands between order and a similarly angry chaos in Ireland, the youth movements in Spain, the simmering anger in Italy. Even in a country self-proclaimed by an opinion survey to be among the 2two or three happiest in the world* – Denmark’s capital has been scarred by school-burning and gang warfare in the last couple of years. And at the psychotic and extreme end,  Breivik’s monstrous massacre on the island of Utoya in July 2011 and the discovery of a series of murders of immigrants by right-wing extremists in Germany;

I am not equating these events. This atmosphere of dissatisfaction and violence does not arise everywhere from the same source, the same social groups or the same politics.

But they are nonetheless connected, not by motive or participants, but by the political and social landscape in which they occur.

It is a landscape where people’s sense of social belonging and engagement in the common good is challenged as never before. It is challenged by economics as job opportunities and the belief in a better future diminish before our eyes. Politics is professionalized and in most countries is ever more distant from growing segments of the population, especially among the poor and among the young. Ordinary people feel they are paying the price for mistakes they did not make while those who had the biggest part in the errors in politics and finance are paying a much smaller price.

Some people direct their anger about the injustices at the political establishment, some at the finance world and some – in their confusion at this diminished sense of belonging – against immigrants. But even when the anger is mis-targeted and even when the accusations are false, the feelings that lie behind are real. And sometimes lethal.
Bringing peacebuilding home

How might a peacebuilding approach look? Standard procedure for working in fragile states – rule number one – is to start with context. Which means starting with questions and an open mind.

This makes it very difficult for politicians to bring a peacebuilding approach to their own home patch. At home, they are supposed to know the answers. That’s what we have politicians for – and then we get to choose which answers we like best. Or who answers best, which is not always the same thing.

A peacebuilding approach would not look necessarily at the numbers involved in each action, even the riots. It is a staple of peacebuilding to acknowledge that in countries with a population of tens of millions, it only takes a few hundred unemployed young men, some leaders ready to act, and access to weapons – and you have a war. The IRA’s active forces probably numbered well below 1,000 throughout three decades of war in and over Northern Ireland.

No, rather than the numbers, it’s the background that counts, the social, political and economic context in which this occurs. And the question is whether that background fosters peaceful relations or not.

Last year the UK government brought out its Building Stability Overseas Strategy to guide its approach to peacebuilding in developing countries. Here is some of its analysis, full of resonance for Europe’s current social and political challenges. I have already drawn on it for clues for its resonance for the English riots. But its clues about what questions to ask are so useful it’s worth repeating them (but hurdle over the bullet points if you remember them) (and also get a life – come on).

    * ‘The stability we are seeking to support … is built on the consent of the population, is resilient and flexible in the face of shocks, and can evolve over time as the context changes…
    * ‘Effective local politics and strong mechanisms which weave people into the fabric of decision-making – such as civil society, the media, the unions, and business associations – also have a crucial role to play.
    * ‘All sections of the population need to feel they are part of the warp and weft of society, including women, young people and different ethnic and religious groups.
    * ‘Jobs, economic opportunity and wealth creation are critical to stability. Lack of economic opportunity is cited by citizens as a cause of conflict, and is often the most significant reason why young people join gangs…
    * ‘Without growth and employment, it is impossible to meet the basic needs of the population, and people’s aspirations for a better life for themselves and their children…
    * ‘While an inclusive and legitimate political system is a requisite for stability, confidence in the future comes when people see that their needs and expectations are being met on the ground.’

On the basis of this kind of analysis, you would look at social inclusion/exclusion and marginalisation; at the degree of hope and confidence in the future – or their opposites; at our political institutions – both national and local; at the condition of the economy and whether economic policies are creating opportunities; and at the space for civil society and for bodies such as business associations and trades unions to represent people, articulate concerns and influence politics.
How peacebuilding at home would look

Peacebuilding looks different from one country to the next. But the golden thread that connects it all, expressed in abstract terms, is mobilising social energy for building peace. We work out what form this will take based on need, opportunity and ability in the country where we’re working: police reform, starting new institutions to promote transparency, cultural peace festivals, women’s forums, joint  micro-investment projects involving genocide victims and perpetrators in Rwanda, getting multinationals and community organisations round the table together, communications across the conflict lines, getting conflict-divided communities to cooperate on adaptation to climate change – and much more. Consistently, the theme is people coming together, their energy becoming synergy.

In our atomised societies, bringing people together, asking questions, listening carefully for answers, and shaping common actions: never in the past 60 years has there been such a shortage of this, never has it been more needed.

Growing youth unemployment is causing hurt and anger that a return to economic growth will not be enough to calm. Something else is needed too. It really does seem time to expand the mandate of peacebuilding to include the EU countries themselves.

___________________________

* Denmark was ranked top in 2010 in a Gallup poll reported by Forbes in 2010 but more recently may have been shaded out by Norway.

Article Source: Dan Smith’s Blog

Image Source: how will i ever

Living in an era plagued by a nuclear threat and arms race, wherein nations continue to nurse the ambition of producing nuclear weapons or acquiring the means to do, nuclear disarmament is possibly the most vital issue in the field of global security.

There has been a global realization that nuclear disarmament is an important first step towards achieving general and complete disarmament at a later stage. A number of important steps have been taken towards achieving this end. However given the current international environment, the global non-proliferation regime faces challenges on the Korean peninsula and in the Middle East and when progress towards nuclear disarmament appears to have stalled, some believe that traditional instruments of non-proliferation policies have lost their relevance.
  
In the light of the above, Nuclear-Weapon-Free-Zones (NWFZ) seem to be one of the most promising disarmament mechanisms. They have been recognized by the international community as a “step by step” approach in the process of arms control and disarmament . They are regarded as an effective non-proliferation tool as they fence off one entire region from nuclear weapons. In doing so, they rectify a ‘loophole’ in the NPT which allows the deployment in non-nuclear weapon states of nuclear weapons controlled by the nuclear weapon states . In this sense, NWFZ stop one form of horizontal proliferation.
  
The rationale behind setting up NWFZ is the direct correlation between denuclearization and peace.  All states seek nuclear weapons for their deterrent potential, often pursuing them because they fear that that their neighbours are developing such weapons. In the light of such concerns, many a time, countries refuse to sign global disarmament treaties; if the neighbour that concerns you the most has not joined, what do you gain by joining?  The NWFZ play a significant role in acting as a possible solution for fixing such problems. This agreement, generally in the form of an international treaty prohibits the deployment, use, production, transfer and possession of nuclear weapons within a specified geographical region by all countries within that region. In addition to this, the treaty prohibits nuclear weapon states from deploying weapons in these areas and permits the IAEA to conduct regular inspections of the region’s nuclear activity.  Such treaties act as restraining forces on countries of that region preventing them from building or acquiring a nuclear arsenal by removing the danger of other countries doing the same.
  
The idea of NWFZ was conceived with a view to prevent the emergence of new nuclear weapon states. As early as 1958, the Polish government, which feared the nuclearization of West Germany and wanted to prevent the deployment of Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory, put forward a proposal called the ‘Rapacki Plan’ for a NWFZ in Central Europe. In the political climate of the 1950s, the plan had no chance of becoming an international agreement. Nonetheless, several of its elements were later adopted as guidelines for the establishment of NWFZ and several such zones came up in different parts of the world in the subsequent years. 
  
The first of such zones was established in Latin America in 1967 through the Treaty of Tlatelolco. All 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries are parties to this treaty (however, all countries became parties to this treaty over a period of 30 years), which bars nuclear material from the area except for peaceful purposes.  Since then the regions adopting NWFZs have been expanding. Following the Treaty of Tlatelolco, a similar treaty was adopted for the South Pacific region in 1985 known as the Treaty of Rarotonga. This zone includes Australia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Western Samoa and prohibits the use of nuclear energy even for peaceful purposes. The treaty of Bangkok was signed next in 1995, whereby a NWFZ was established in Southeast Asia covering the seven members of the ASEAN, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos . 
  
The Pelindaba Treaty was concluded in 1996 creating a NWFZ in Africa but has not yet come into force as it has not been ratified by the required number of states. Austria and Mongolia announced their non-nuclear posture in 1999 and 2000 respectively making them single state zones, while the fifth NWFZ was created in Central Asia covering the five former Soviet Central Asian republics- Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan- in September 2006. 
  
Certain uninhabited areas of the globe have also been formally denuclearised. They include the Antarctica under the 1959 Antarctic Treaty; Outer Space, the moon and other celestial bodies under the 1967 Outer Space treaty and the 1979 Moon agreement; and the seabed, the ocean floor and subsoil thereof under the 1971 Seabed Treaty .
  
Some experts have questioned the relevance and benefits of NWFZs. They believe that the role of NWFZs has been grossly exaggerated. However, NWFZs are only the means towards an ultimate aim; they are not the sole method to eliminate nuclear weapons.  Moreover, experts claim that only the “easy” areas have been included within NWFZs, while areas such as Europe, North America, Northeast Asia, South Asia and the Middle East, which either include an existing Nuclear Weapon State (NWS) or border with them have not been included into NWFZs.  Even in the so-called ‘easy’ areas, NWFZs have not been fully implemented, the case being Africa, where the treaty has still not come into force. Despite these limitations, the role of NWFZs towards disarmament and a general peace building process can not be minimised. 
  
The objective of this paper is to trace the development of the idea of a NWFZ in the Middle East and to analyse the factors and elements which have stood in the path of the creation of such a zone despite the fact that enthusiasm and initiatives for a NWFZ have come from both sides- Israel and the Arab world. 

A report from the South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics to the al-Qaida Strategic Planning Cell (SPC) on the progress of the campaign.

The last report we presented to you was commissioned and prepared in the wake of President Obama’s speech in Cairo in June 2009 (see “The SWISH Report (15)”, 11 June 2009). At the start of his second year in office, we are pleased to offer you a further analysis. As per as your instructions, we will once again be frank in our assessment of your movement’s prospects.

We will start by summarising the main points of our more recent work for you. For some time we have emphasised that the George W Bush administration was very good for you – much of the United States military activity could easily be represented by your associates as an assault on Islam, with the United States/Israeli links being particularly useful. Iraq, especially, could be represented as a “crusader/Zionist plot aimed at the heart of Islam”. We advised you that a John McCain administration would be greatly preferable to one led by Barack Obama (see “The SWISH Report (11)”, 11 September 2008); and we suggested that Obama’s election would present you with difficulties (see “The SWISH Report (12)” (6 November 2008). The impact of his Cairo speech confirmed this view.

We indicated that from your perspective there were promising developments in a range of locations: among them Somalia (where Washington might become more deeply involved in assaults on local enemies), Iraq (where a continuing war might interfere with planned US troop withdrawals), and Afghanistan (where the new administration showed signs of pursuing what it regarded as a “good war”). There was therefore still the prospect that your “far enemy” would become even more mired in intractable difficulties, with conflict in Afghanistan carrying the added potential for instability in Pakistan.

We also noted aspects of Israel’s behaviour that were of value to you. Among them was the Gaza assault of December 2008-January 2009. “Operation Cast Lead” was widely covered by the Arabic TV news channels and provided sustained and concentrated evidence of Arab suffering. This was highly useful to you, even if your movement receives little direct support from Palestinians.

We highlighted too the the risk for you that Iran might elect a moderate president, thus downgrading the perception in Israel of an existential threat and exposing Israel in turn to the risk that the Obama administration would exert serious pressure on it to compromise with the Palestinians. A settlement would, in our view, be very damaging to your movement. It was then a favourable outcome for you that Iran’s incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, did enough in June 2009 to ensure that he would stay in office.

We further reported – recalling your invitation to be unvarnished in our analysis – the problem that ensued when Islamist governance of the kind you espouse was implemented briefly in some parts of Pakistan: namely, that it had initially delivered stability but rapidly became unpopular. This had echoes of Afghanistan’s experience in the late 1990s, where the early welcome to and acceptance of the incoming Taliban did not last.

We therefore concluded by strongly doubting that your plans for a radical caliphate can be realised as long as you pursue your current approach to governance; and thus recommending that you review your ultimate aims in this area. This, in our view, remains your fundamental long-term predicament. You cannot achieve your aims in governance without a degree of moderation that we think, given your present culture and experience, you are unlikely to develop. Yet that does not mean that your enemy is winning.

A movement in decline?

Many western analysts have for some months taken the view that yours is a movement in decline. Your losses of middle-ranking leaders to drone attacks have been serious; the instability in Pakistan has little to do with the actions of your paramilitary cohorts; the Saudi crackdown on dissidents and the accompanying re-education programme has had some effect; and your movement has not staged any direct attacks on your “far enemy” or those associated with it for many months.

We acknowledge this view but think it is mistaken. You have indeed lost many key people, but they have been rapidly replaced by members of a younger generation. Moreover, whereas many of the older generation had experience against Soviet conscripts in 1980s Afghanistan the new generation has fought highly professional and exceptionally well-equipped American troops, as well as being more radical in outlook.

We would also point to the near-success of the Detroit attack on 25 December 2009; the destruction of key members of a CIA team in Khost province on 30 December; and, above all, the consolidation of your movement in Yemen, where the 3,000 Yemenis who have fought US troops in Iraq in recent years have brought you great benefits.

We would mention too the ongoing violence in Iraq, especially the manner in which your associates in that country have become adept at destroying government offices, despite the levels of security that such operations have to overcome.

The “far enemy” and your prospects

These elements of current experience largely counterbalance the claims that you are in retreat. At the same time, we judge that events may move against you in three respects. The first is that the Barack Obama administration has not yet expanded its military operations in Yemen, even though the Detroit attack was designed to do just that. John McCain would undoubtedly have “gone in big” but Obama has not done so, and is unlikely to greatly expand operations. For your movement this is a real setback.

The second trend is that the modification of the American troop presence in Iraq is not in your favour. In a rather clever move, the US army is establishing a series of support-brigades that are designed to aid the development of Iraqi national forces but also have immediate combat-potential. The number of troops in the country will, we expect, fall from around 120,000 to 50,000 during 2010; this smaller number will have relatively low visibility while being readily available should your associates maintain their activity. The artful part of the US plan is that it will appear that such activity is being controlled by government forces, thus reassuring most Iraqis in a manner that is thoroughly unhelpful to you.

The third circumstance relates to an environment that is more congenial to you, Afghanistan and Pakistan; but there are problems here as well. The Pakistani army’s activities will almost certainly not extend to taking full control of the border districts, so their effects will not incite the levels of violence that you would most wish to see across the country.

Again, the major expansion of foreign troops in Afghanistan is excellent news for you. But there are indications that these forces will make determined efforts to win over elements of the insurgency with bribes, roles in government and other inducements. As we have made clear in the past, the George W Bush administration was your greatest ally, but the new administration is far more intelligent.

Two elements, as yet existing in potential only, may influence the evolving situation. The first is whether Barack Obama has understood that the Afghanistan war is essentially unwinnable, and will require a degree of compromise that is much greater than currently contemplated. The second is that any appearance of serious compromise in the country might cause domestic opposition on a scale that would threaten Obama’s re-election in 2012.

We conclude by drawing a lesson from the experience of recent years: that you cannot achieve your ultimate aim of a radical caliphate founded on your particular understanding of Islam’s distant past, but that you will continue with the conflict even so. Your enemy, for now at least, will pursue its strategy in a manner that delivers real value to you. We suspect, though, that this enemy may be more intelligent than you believe. For you, hubris may turn out to be the greater threat.

We rather think that, given this conclusion, you may not require more work from us; but rest assured that we stand ready to provide further assessments should you so desire.

Wana

South Waziristan

21 January 2010

“The only risk is wanting to stay,” beams a Colombian tourism ad, eager to forget decades of brutal internal conflict; however, the risk of violence remains for many rural communities, particularly as the traditional fight over drugs turns to other high-value goods: natural resource rights.

La Toma: Small Town, Big Threats

In the vacuum left by Colombia’s war on drugs, re-armed paramilitary groups remain a threat to many rural civilians. Organized groups hold footholds, particularly in the northeast and west, where they’ve traditionally hidden and exploited weak governance. Over the past five years, their presence has increased while their aims have changed.

A recent PBS documentary, The War We Are Living, profiles the struggles of two Afro-Colombian women, Francia Marquez and Clemencia Carabali, in the tiny town of La Toma confronting the paramilitary group Las Aguilas Negras, La Nueva Generacion. The Afro-Colombian communities the women represent – long persecuted for their mixed heritage – are traditional artisanal miners, but the Aguilas Negras claim that these communities impede economic growth by refusing to deal with multinationals interested in mining gold on a more industrial scale in their town.

For over seven years, the Aguilas Negras have sent frequent death threats and have indiscriminately killed residents, throwing their bodies over the main bridge in town. At the height of tensions in 2010, they murdered eight gold miners to incite fear. Community leaders know that violence and intimidation by the paramilitary group is part of their plan to scare and displace residents, but they refuse to give in: “The community of La Toma will have to be dragged out dead. Otherwise we’re not going to leave,” admits community leader Francia Marquez to PBS.
La Toma’s predicament is further complicated by corruption and general disinterest from Bogota. Laws that explicitly require the consent of Afro-Colombian communities to mine their land have not always been followed. In 2010, the Department of the Interior and the Institute of Geology and Minerals awarded a contract, without consultation, to Hector Sarria to extract gold around La Toma and ordered 1,300 families to leave their ancestral lands. Tension exploded between the local government and residents.

The community – spurred in part by Marquez and Carabali – geared into action; residents called community meetings, marched on the town, and set up road blocks. As a result, the eviction order was suspended multiple times, and in December 2010, La Toma officially won their case with Colombia’s Constitutional Court. Hector Sarria’s mining license as well as up to 30 other illegal mining permits were suspended permanently. But, as disillusioned residents are quick to point out, the decision could change at any time.

“Wayuu Gold”

Much like the people of La Toma, the indigenous Wayuu people who make their home in northeast Colombia have also found themselves the target of paramilitary wrath. Wayuu ancestral land is rich in coal and salt, and their main port, Bahia Portete, is ideally situated for drug trafficking, making them an enticing target. In 2004, armed men ravaged the village for nearly 12 hours, killing 12, accounting for 30 disappearances, and displacing thousands. Even now, seven years later, those brave enough to lobby for peace face threats.

Now, other natural resource pressures have emerged. In 2011, growing towns nearby started siphoning water from Wayuu lands, and climate change is expected to exacerbate the situation. A 2007 IPCC report wrote that “under severe dry conditions, inappropriate agricultural practices (deforestation, soil erosion, and excessive use of agrochemicals) will deteriorate surface and groundwater quantity and quality,” particularly in the Magdalena river basin where the Wayuu live. Glacial melt will also stress water supplies in other parts of Colombia. The threat is very real for indigenous peoples like the Wayuu, who call water “Wayuu gold.”

“Without water, we have no future,” says Griselda Polanco, a Wayuu woman, in a video produced by UN Women.

The basic right to water has always been a contentious issue for indigenous peoples in Latin America – perhaps most famously in Cochabomba, Bolivia – and Colombia is no different: most recently 10,000 protestors took to the streets in Bogota to lobby for the right to water.

Post-Conflict Land Tenure Tensions

Perhaps the Wayuu and people of La Toma’s best hope is in a new Victims’ Law, ratified in June 2011, but in the short term, tensions look set to increase as Colombia works to implement it. The law will offer financial compensation to victims or surviving close relatives. It also aims to restore the rights of millions of people forced off their land, including many Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples.

But “some armed groups – which still occupy much of the stolen land – have already tried to undermine the process,” reports the BBC. “There are fears that they will respond violently to attempts by the rightful owners or the state to repossess the land.”

Rhodri Williams of TerraNullius, a blog that focuses on housing, land, and property rights in conflict, disaster, and displacement contexts, wrote in an email to New Security Beat that there are many hurdles in the way of the law being successful, including ecological changes that have already occurred:

    “Perhaps the biggest obstacle is the fact that many usurped indigenous and Afro-Colombian territories have been fundamentally transformed through mono-culture cultivation. Previously mixed ecosystems are now palm oil deserts and no one seems to have a sense of how restitution could meaningfully proceed under these circumstances. Compensation or alternative land are the most readily feasible options, but this flies in the face of the particular bond that indigenous peoples typically have with their own homeland. Such bonds are not only economic, in the sense that indigenous livelihoods may be adapted to the particular ecosystem they inhabit, but also spiritual, with land forming a significant element of collective identity. Colombia has recognized these links in their constitution, which sets out special protections for indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups, but has failed to apply these rules in practice. For many groups, it may now be too late.”

As National Geographic explorer Wade Davis said at the Wilson Center in April, climate change can represent as much a psychological and spiritual problem for indigenous people as a technical problem. Unfortunately, as land-use issues such as those faced by Afro-Columbian communities, the Wayuu, and many other indigenous groups around the world demonstrate, there is a legal dimension to be overcome as well.

Article Source: New Security Beat

Image Source: Philip Bouchard

SustainableSecurity.org Associate Editor Professor Paul Rogers’s latest article for openDemocracy highlights the fact that many leading military analysts in the United States are increasingly alert to the link between security and climate change. If, at the same time, these analysts could expand their view of whose security is at risk, the policy consequences could be immense. 

Read the full article here.