by Caroline Donnellan and Esther Kersley

This article was originally published on openSecurity’s monthly Sustainable Security column on 22 June 2014. Every month, a rotating network of experts from Oxford Research Group’s Sustainable Security programme explore pertinent issues of global and regional insecurity.

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

An MQ-9 Reaper takes off on a mission from Afghanistan. Source: Wikimedia

The past week has marked ten years since the first reported US drone strike in Pakistan. It has also seen the resumption of strikes following a five-month pause. So how effective has the covert programme been and what impact have drones had on Pakistani society?

Since 2004, the US has launched more than 380 strikes in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA). As part of its “war on terror”, they were intended to eliminate mainly al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban from the region. But a report by Dr Wali Aslam, commissioned by the Remote Control project, has found that drone strikes, rather than eliminating “terrorists”, have instead caused militants to leave FATA for other parts of the country to avoid being hit. Although the US deems its programme a success—indeed it has pursued some “high-value” targets and decreased the number of fighters in FATA—this is short-term at best, as drones have simply displaced the problem. In turn, this relocation has brought radicalisation, violence and crime to the regions of Pakistan where the militants have resettled.

Unintended consequences

Drones are deeply unpopular in Pakistan, due to the civilian casualties, psychological damage and infringement of sovereignty they entail. Growing anti-American sentiment has provided an effective recruitment tool for extremists, fuelling rather than minimising radicalisation. And relocation as a result of drone strikes has widened that recruitment pool, as militants have spread to regions with which they previously had no connection.

In the Punjab, for example, there has been increased radicalisation among some Sunni Muslims. In Karachi, countless madrasas have provided a stream of potential recruits, undermining secular political parties such as Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and the Awami National Party (ANP). The attack on Karachi international airport on 8-9 June, in which at least 28 people were killed—supposedly in retaliation for a US drone attack—is a further example of the penetration of the Pakistani Taliban there.

There has also been an escalation in violence more broadly in Pakistan since 2007. There have been an estimated 50,000 deaths due to suicide bombings, improvised explosive devices and gun attacks—an incidence of paramilitary activity unprecedented in the country’s history. Is this upsurge linked to US drone strikes? The Remote Control report shows a correlation between violence in Karachi, the FATA’s Kurram Agency and Punjab province since 2007 and US drone attacks in FATA during this period.

Zooming in, in Karachi, attacks on secular parties, kidnapping and petty crime increased after 2010, coinciding with a dramatic rise in drone attacks in the same year (122, compared with 36 and 54 in 2008 and 2009 respectively). In Kurram Agency, the flight of large numbers of militants from neighbouring North Waziristan coincided with an increase in sectarian violence there (since 2007 the Turi Shia tribe has lost an estimated 2,000 members as a result). And in Punjab, an increase in attacks on Ahmadi, Shia and Christian communities since 2007 again coincided with many militants relocating from FATA.

Of course, the Pakistan army’s own operations in parts of FATA and the north-west have contributed to the relocation of militants but the role played by US drones has been largely neglected. Yet they have exacerbated a delicate, vulnerable and complex socio-political environment.

Remote-control warfare

The decade-long experience can teach us important lessons. It highlights the failure of drone warfare as a “counter-terrorism” strategy and thus the limitations of remote-control methods more broadly to resolve conflict. As armed drones are increasingly used by the US in Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan—and by the UK in Afghanistan—with more reliance also being placed globally on special forces and private military companies, so the remote-control trend spreads.

The latest monthly briefing from the civil intelligence agency Open Briefing illustrates the proliferation of drone activity. The US is facing demands for access to drone technology from security partners—such as Algeria, Niger and Iraq—as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capacity. Iran has unveiled its reverse-engineered version of the US drone, the RQ-170 Sentinel, and its maturing drone-development programme is benefiting from operations in Syria. Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force has been carrying out drills to prepare pilots to shoot down more advanced potential Hezbollah and Hamas drones, expected to be faster and able to stay airborne longer.

The volatile north-east Asia region is also seeing a rapid proliferation of unmanned technologies. The US Air Force will be deploying two Global Hawk drones from Misawa air base in Japan, for surveillance of North Korean and Chinese military activities. The Japanese Air Self-Defence Force is expected to procure three Global Hawks in 2015. South Korean officials have confirmed that drones found near the North Korean border in early April were most likely owned by North Korea. China has a vigorous armed-drone development programme, which appears to be prioritised for maritime security.

Global insecurity

As the military technology for remote-control warfare spreads, there is a need to question whether drones provide significant tactical advantage or whether their proliferation could lead to greater long-term global insecurity. A RAND report in April concluded that medium-range, non-stealth drones only deliver advantage in limited military contexts. Yet rapid growth is forecast in the drone market: in the same month, Forecast International predicted expansion of drone exports from $942m to $2.3 billion per year between 2013 and 2023. It estimated that, by 2017, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China would be the largest manufacturer and, by 2030, half of the aircraft fleets of some militaries could consist of drones.

The use of drones in Pakistan has spread the threat of violence to other parts of the country and detrimentally affected Pakistani society. Rapid drone proliferation raises serious concerns as technological developments and exports widen the range of deployers. Avoiding “boots on the ground” through remote warfare appears an attractive new means of “counter-terrorism”, for obvious reasons. But the unforeseen consequences which could render this counter-productive need to be factored into the equation.

Caroline Donnellan manages of the Remote Control project of the Network for Social Change, which examines and challenges the new ways of modern warfare, including the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Private Security Companies, Special Forces, aspects of cyber warfare and surveillance methods. Caroline has a background in multilateral diplomacy and has worked on international security and human rights issues for a number of years. Before joining ORG, she was Senior Policy Advisor to the Ambassador, Irish Permanent Representation to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna. 

Esther Kersley is the Communications Assistant for Remote Control. Prior to joining ORG, Esther worked in Berlin for the anti-corruption NGO Transparency International as an editorial and online communications officer. She has a particular interest in counter-terrorism and conflict resolution in the Middle East, having previously worked with the Quilliam Foundation and IPCRI (Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information), a Jerusalem based think tank.

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

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

Areas with Naxalite activity in 2007. Image credit: Wikimedia.

Areas with Naxalite activity in 2013. Image credit: Wikimedia.

The Naxalite-Maoist insurgency in India

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

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

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

What factors explain this sharp rise and fall in violence?

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

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

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

What role did MGNREGS play in tackling Maoist violence?

Image credit: Adam Jones/Wikimedia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

Introduction

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

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

The Military Posture

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

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

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

A Crisis out of Nowhere?

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

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

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

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

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

How to Act

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

Image credit: Uri Tours/Flickr

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

by Janani Vivekananda and Shreya Mitra

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

Trucks carrying logs in Gunung Lumut, Kalimantan Timur, Indonesia, November 2005. Source: CIFOR (Flickr)

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

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

REDD Programmes and Peacebuilding

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

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

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

Short-Term Gains

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

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

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

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

Striking a balance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An image grab taken from a propaganda video by jihadist group ISIL shows ISIL militants gathering Iraq. Source: Screenshot from World News Online

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

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

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

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

The late shift

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

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

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

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

The weeks ahead

An image grab taken from a propaganda video by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant shows the group travelling through Iraq. Source: World News Online (Youtube with Creative Commons license)

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

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

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

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