Environmental changes in the Arctic are making the region more accessible which many believe will lead to competition and conflict over its resources. But is this really the case?

The Great Game moves North

A battle to ‘carve up’ the Arctic

‘Ice Wars’ heating up the Arctic

Melting ice caps open up Arctic for ‘white gold rush’

Warming Arctic opens way to competition for resources

Conflict ahead in Arctic waters

The above are just some of the many headlines and titles that have described the state of the Arctic over the last decade. Ever since a Russian flag was planted on the seabed at the North Pole in 2007, media outlets, academics and policy-makers have been pondering the conflict potential of a warming Arctic.

Their concerns surely have a dramatic background. The Arctic, the region commonly defined as all land and water areas above the Arctic Circle at 66 degrees north, has over the past 50 years warmed twice as fast as the global average. Consequently, the Arctic ice sheet has retreated significantly. In September 2012, the ice extend dropped to around half of what it was in the late 1970s, and is lingering on low extent numbers ever since. The diminishing sea ice has made the resources of the Arctic, such as oil and gas, increasingly accessible for exploration and exploitation.

This increasing accessibility of the region combined with, thus far, inaccessible and high-in-demand resources and still existing boundary disputes between the Arctic coastal states, made (and still makes) many believe that we are heading towards a region of conflict.

But is this really so? Should we expect the region in the north to erupt into hot conflicts about access to oil and gas, shipping lanes and fishing grounds that the retreating ice lays open? Does a warming Arctic inevitably mean increasing conflict potential with little hope for cooperation to emerge?

Cooperation and conflict: a misleading dichotomy

Image credit: Fulbright Arctic Initiative/Flickr.

Most of the debates aiming to answer these questions circle around the issue of whether the Arctic is a region of “conflict” or “cooperation”. The cardinal error of this debate is that “cooperation” and “conflict” are taken as two sides of the same coin. Taking cooperation and conflict as the two ends of a continuum inadequately twists the empirical perceptions and expectations as to future developments in the Arctic.

As a matter of fact, cooperation and conflict are part of two different coins. Conflict is first of all a situation in which the interests of two or more actors overlap in the sense that they pursue different goals or that they prefer different means to achieve a specific goal. The opposite of conflict is then harmony, a situation in which actors’ interests do not touch each other. This is one coin.

If there is a case of conflict, actors can react to this situation in different ways. Roughly speaking, they can either react with “cooperation” or “confrontation”. They can decide to solve the conflict through negotiation and looking for compromises, or they can revert to using force of some kind, such as sanctions or military actions. These possible options for actions in a situation of conflict are the second coin.

Once one has understood the difference between these two coins, it is possible to analyze how actors have reacted to Arctic conflict cases in the past (like open boundary disputes, of which many have been solved since the 1970s), and which options for resolution exist in response to possible future Arctic conflict cases (like still open boundary disputes, competing interests for access to resources or shipping lanes etc.).

Unfortunately, in the past and current Arctic conflict debate the existence of a conflict is usually treated the same as a confrontation– a situation in which breakdown of relations and even violent actions are imminent. But if we equalize conflict and confrontation, we face a very alarming situation in the Arctic since there are cases where the interests of Arctic actors (including those from south of the Arctic Circle) overlap. The open maritime delimitations around the area of the North Pole and the question how much of the Arctic is to be legally treated as a common heritage of mankind are just two examples of Arctic conflicts.

But if we were to conduct a sound analysis with the two-coin understanding as outlined above, we would understand that conflict is the very prerequisite to make cooperation and confrontation happen in the first place. In other words, there is no cooperation or confrontation if there is no conflict (since actors do not interact in a situation of harmony). Then we can look at the Arctic world out there and check which options for action Arctic actors choose to react to conflict situations.

The Arctic Council – A prime example of Arctic cooperation

We find a multitude of examples for actors choosing cooperative options for actions, especially among the members of the Arctic Council, which are the eight Arctic states Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States. Since the flag-planting in 2007, and also since Russia’s more recent assertive actions elsewhere in the world, cooperation in the preeminent political forum of the region, the Arctic Council, has been strengthened. The Council has evolved from a forum for debate to a policy-shaping body through the adoption of several intergovernmental agreements under its auspices. These range from provisions for preparedness and response for oil spills in Arctic waters, a search and rescue cooperation agreement, and will soon be added by an agreement on Arctic scientific cooperation.

On the international level, an “International Code of Safety for Ships Operating in Polar Waters” or short “Polar Code” has been negotiated under the International Maritime Organization to regulate the increasing shipping activity in the Arctic. Arctic countries are working on their submissions to the UN to verify their extensions of their continental shelves, and have in unison pledged to settle any overlapping claims peacefully and in close consultation with each other.

All these cooperative actions have included the Arctic states as well as many state and non-state actors beyond the region, for example in the form of observers to the Arctic Council. The short result of this analysis is: Yes, the Arctic is full of conflict but also full of cooperation since across the board actors are reacting cooperatively to cases of conflict.

The crux is that these instances of cooperation can be observed. In contrast, most foreboding of a confrontation in the Arctic only refers to what could happen now that the Arctic is accessible and its resources up for grasp. In other words, these contributions can only be speculative.

A lingering problem of the Arctic conflict debate is that a conflict over Arctic issues is usually very easily and quickly proclaimed and seldom reflected upon or questioned again. So once a conflict is said to exist, it is hard to get rid of again, even if observations show that there is no real ground for the conflict or if actors react cooperatively to it. A prominent example is the rising Chinese interest in Arctic issues, which peaked 2013 when China was admitted as an observer to the Arctic Council. Since then, many have depicted Chinese Arctic interests as a “conflict” since China as a powerful player would undermine other Arctic voices and generally would bring turmoil to Arctic affairs. In contrast, when talking to the members and Permanent Participants (the representatives of Indigenous Peoples’ Organizations) of the Council, one hears that after some initial concerns everyone is pretty happy about the presence of important players like China. Not least, China has to be part of the solution to the global climate change problem, which heavily affects the Arctic. And having China present at Arctic Council meetings is a rare opportunity for small, Indigenous organizations to get into a direct conversation with countries like China.

Conclusion

In sum, if we consider how often the “next Cold War” in the Arctic has been proclaimed now that we have entered the tenth (!) year after the Russian flag-planting, one keeps wondering why this war has failed to materialize. This may be sign that the assessment of the Arctic as a region of confrontational conflict is not for nothing predominantly based on speculation. In fact, the predication of a next Cold War in the Arctic may be exactly that: a wild guess.

Dr. Kathrin Keil is Scientific Project Leader at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, where she is leading the Arctic research work on Sustainable Arctic Futures: A Regional and Global Challenge. She is also Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute – Center for Circumpolar Security Studies where she regularly writes about and comments on current Arctic developments. Further, Kathrin is part of the official German observer delegation to the Sustainable Development Working Group (SDWG) of the Arctic Council.

Research from social media accounts suggests that Western women who travel to join Deash do so for largely the same reasons as male recruits – the ideological pull of extremist Islam. But this radicalization does not happen in a vacuum.

Since Daesh (ISIS) emerged in 2014 as a meaningful threat, policymakers have lambasted the organization’s treatment of women. The group’s dogmatic enforcement of its interpretation of ‘Islamic’ law has created harsh restrictions on women’s dress, movement, and public life, and the horrific enslavement and extensive sex trade of Yazidi women has drawn international condemnation. Despite this violence, Daesh has been surprisingly successful in recruiting both local and foreign women. Nearly 600 women from Western countries have left reasonably gender equitable states to join Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Women compose approximately 12 percent of all Western recruits, and French intelligence officials estimate that 35 percent of French Daesh fighters are female. What explains this unprecedented flow of foreign female recruits? Why are middle-class, educated, Western women voluntarily joining Daesh?

Explaining recruitment

Image by Hani Amir (cropped) via Flickr.

Western women in Daesh pose an uncomfortable tension for feminist and international relations scholarship: they pursue paths and laud virtues which keep women subjugated and they do so from comparatively progressive and gender-equitable societies. Unable to reconcile Daesh’s patriarchal, religious, and political ideology with Western women’s desire to participate, researchers assume that female recruits are irrational, deluded, love-struck, and naïve. Western commentators infatuated with the idea of ‘jihadi brides’ emphasize sexual motivations and reduce female recruits to sex objects for male insurgents. Intelligence officials in Australia, Britain, Malaysia, and Tunisia accuse women of performing a “sexual jihad,” migrating to perform sexual favors for Daesh fighters. Counterterrorism experts and government officials almost exclusively view women’s participation as the result of deception by online recruiters. This explanation treats female participants as peripheral actors and assumes that no woman would willingly join Daesh if she fully understood the organization’s true nature.

Nevertheless, data from the social media accounts of Western women who have moved to Iraq and Syria to join Daesh suggests that women travel to join for largely the same reasons as male recruits. Western women are pulled by an ideological commitment to Daesh’s brand of extremist Islam and pushed by violence and isolation in their home countries. However, while their motivations may track with male fighters, female recruits are using social media to articulate explicitly gendered spaces for themselves within the organization. Daesh’s radical beliefs are tied closely to a rare and fundamentalist interpretation of the Islamic faith that calls for believers to make hijra (migration) to the Muslim world. Western women’s mobilization in Daesh results from religious commitment to a certain form of piety and the radical and physical move that it embodies. For women, the hijra mandate intertwines general requirements of faith with a gendered call to support the caliphate from infancy as its mothers, reproducers, and historical couriers. Much scholarship and Western commentary on women in Islamist movements emphasize that this participation is patently not feminist. However, Western women in Daesh feel agentive, valued, and essential in their supportive roles. Evidence suggests that marrying fighters, witnessing their martyrdom, bearing children, and educating others about Daesh are roles enthusiastically embraced by female recruits. These women view their contributions as political actions that are vital to the organization’s survival.

But Western women do not become radicalized to these ideas in a vacuum. Instead, they are often pushed towards Daesh propaganda by feelings of isolation and anti-Muslim violence in their home countries.  Although many claims about Muslim radicalization highlight the ease of finding likeminded communities, many women actually have difficulty identifying Daesh sympathizers in Western states. Many recruits believe Western Muslims are not properly pious and that there is a lack of opportunity to follow a deeply fundamentalist strain of Islam in Western countries. Women further feel a particularly gendered form of oppression linked directly to wearing hijab or niqab and openly practicing their faith in the West. They report feeling isolated and discriminated against in their home countries because of their public displays of Islamic piety. Many believe that non-Muslim society ‘contaminates’ women with sexualized expectations and public feminism. Reclamation of modesty is a key concern for female recruits, and many express feelings of safety and belonging after moving to Daesh-controlled territory where veiling is strictly enforced.

Muslim women in the West also face uniquely gendered forms of violence. Civilian violence often aims to forcibly remove women’s headscarves or threatens their reproductive capabilities. In 2015, a London woman was convicted after calling two women ‘ISIS bitches,’ accusing them of having ‘bombs up their skirts,’ and threatening to kick one, who was 34 weeks pregnant, in the uterus. Legislatively, countries like France enforce anti-veiling bans that target Muslim women and illegalize their displays of religious devotion. Western women in Daesh reference this violence on social media and contend that their home states make them feel alone, unsafe, and discriminated against. It is in this isolation that they seek out online and non-contiguous communities, creating a breeding ground for radicalization through acceptance on Daesh platforms.

Gender and counterterrorism

Recognizing both the ideological pull of Daesh and the isolating and violent push of anti-Muslim sentiment in the West has key political and social implications. First, we believe that by victimizing and infantilizing these women, Western policy makers are overlooking vital political actors sustaining Daesh and spreading Islamic extremism. Second, these accounts force us to reevaluate the central role of anti-Muslim discrimination in radicalizing Westerners. Therefore, we advocate for political and social change – we must consider these women real political actors and we must work to shift the social attitudes that isolate them from their Western communities in the first place.

Many policy makers view women who travel to Daesh controlled territory as naïve or confused. This perceived deception leads legal actors to treat female recruits as peripheral. While Western states are preemptively stripping citizenship from male foreign fighters and imposing heavy sentences on online supporters, judges and legislators are often taking a more sympathetic approach to women. When Shannon Conley, a 19-year old woman from Colorado, was convicted for conspiracy to support Daesh, her attorneys stressed that she is a ‘wonderful person,’ who had been mislead by falsities about the Islamic State. During trial, the prosecutor labeled her ‘pathologically naïve.’ Even though the judge ruled she was not mentally ill, he also noted that she was ‘a bit of a mess…not a terrorist.’ This type of treatment reinforces the idea that these women are not fully aware of what they are doing, despite the fact that social media data suggests otherwise.

In a second case, the Anti-Terror Chief of London’s Metropolitan Police offered immunity to Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana, three young women who left for Syria in February 2015. He noted that the police have no evidence that these women are responsible for terrorist offenses despite joining the organization. This marks the first time the police have offered immunity from prosecution to a returnee from Daesh and is a stark divergence from increasingly harsh punishments for male recruits from Western countries. An immunity deal suggests that policy makers and legal counselors think of these women as less dangerous domestically than their male counterparts. However, if we view these women as real Daesh sympathizers, motivated by a deep ideological commitment and purposefully acting on political goals, it is necessary to reevaluate this approach. This is not to say that women are never victims of manipulation or deception, or to say that they should be convicted and sentenced in every case. Rather, this critique begs Western policy makers to more equally consider the agency, choices, and political efficacy of these actors.

In addition to these political implications, our analysis emphasizes the importance of anti-Muslim sentiment in alienation. Openly considering the ways in which stigma, overt discrimination, and sexual harassment of Muslim women are connected to Daesh recruitment should be a central part of counterterrorism strategies. U.S. president Barack Obama recently acknowledged that responding to Daesh attacks by stirring anti-Muslim fears was ‘doing the terrorists’ work for them.’  Despite the fact that policy makers and counterterrorism experts agree there is ‘no place for bigotry in effective counterterrorism,’ levels of Islamophobia and violence against Western Muslims – particularly women – continues to rise. Such treatment creates a space of isolation, alienation, and resentment. Therefore, broader social acceptance of Muslim women in the West may foster a sense of inclusion and alleviate the need to seek community abroad or with terrorist organizations.

Moving forward

This argument is certainly not exhaustive.  There are complex motivations behind the movement of Western women to Iraq and Syria, and our work only begins to explore this phenomenon. Nevertheless, even an initial exploration of social media data shows that these women must be taken seriously as social and political actors. They appear to have a deep understanding of Daesh and its ideology, they are willing to take extreme action to support this cause, and they are motivated in part by perceived hate, abuse, and rejection within their home communities. Taking these factors seriously will be an important step in stemming the flow of female recruits to Daesh and counterterrorism policy more broadly. Future research must incorporate scholarship and data on discrimination and Muslim social identity into theories of Daesh recruitment. At baseline, researchers should interview and reach out to Muslim women in Western states about the isolation and violence they experience. Other critically undervalued resources for understanding why Western women join the organization are defectors and women who are apprehended during their journey to Daesh-controlled territory. Most importantly, academics must genuinely take into account these women’s voices and explanations instead of relying on theoretical narratives or media assumptions.

Meredith Loken is  a Ph.D student in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. She was the 2015-2016 Chair of the UW International Security Colloquium, the Richard B. Wesley Fellow in International Security, and is an affiliated researcher with the Missing Piece Young Scholars Network on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. Her research focuses on the intersections of gender and political violence in domestic conflicts. Meredith has conducted fieldwork in Sri Lanka, Croatia, and at the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia. She is actively involved in data collection efforts concerning women in the Islamic State and female combatants in civil wars.

Anna Zelenz is a PhD student in the political science department at the University of Washington, Seattle. She studies international relations, comparative politics, and public law. Anna’s work focuses primarily on violence, criminalization, state repression, insurgency formation, and the Middle East.

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

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

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

Image of RAF Typhoon pilot climbing into the cockpit before a mission over Libya by Defence Images via Flickr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Interim Deal

P5+1 foreign ministers — as well as European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif — at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, after the group concluded negotiations about Iran’s nuclear capabilities on November 24, 2013. Source: US State Department (Flickr)

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

 A Positive Impact on Diplomatic Relations…

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

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

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

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

…But Not for Everyone

US President Obama with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Source: The Israel Project

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

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

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

Hurting at home

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

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

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

Moving Forward

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

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

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

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

The peace process in Mindanao between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was an important step towards ending four decades of conflict in the south of the Philippines. But this initiative now faces many challenges.

On March 27th 2014 the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro. This ended an armed conflict that began in 1969, which saw at least 120,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands displaced.

Civil society groups on Mindanao have played key roles in supporting a comprehensive and sustainable peace process. However, civilian groups and communities face challenges in the context of new outbreaks of Islamic State-inspired violence, and the recent (re-)imposition of martial law.

The peace process in the southern Philippines carries great geopolitical importance, as an example of a Muslim armed group engaging in structured dialogue to address and resolve key political grievances. It is important that the Mindanao peace process succeeds, as it carries great significance beyond the Philippines.

The Moro struggle

The population of the Philippines is approximately 100 million, with twenty-two million people living on Mindanao, the largest island in the country. Of these, approximately 10% are Muslims, divided into thirteen ethnolinguistic subgroups, known collectively as the Moro; another 5% are upland ethnic minorities, generally referred to as indigenous people. To denote continuity with precolonial ethnic-religious identity, since the late 1960s Mindanao Muslim nationalists have used the epithet ‘Moro’ to describe themselves and ‘Bangsamoro’ for their homeland.

Armed groups representing the predominantly Muslim Moros have been struggling for greater autonomy from the Philippines government since the late 1960s. Although narratives of the Spanish and American colonial periods often overplay the extent of conflict between Islamic and Christian communities, Moro groups nevertheless share a strong sense of historic injustice. For many conflict-affected Moro communities, the state is perceived as politically and economically intrusive and predatory, embodying a religious and cultural majority bent on forced assimilation of Muslim minorities. Moro grievances focus in particular on Manila-sponsored ‘internal colonization’, including transmigration of large numbers of Christian Filipinos to the southern Philippines, settled on land originally belonging to Muslim and other indigenous communities.

A troubled peace process

Image credit: Wikimedia.

The 1976 Tripoli Agreement between the government and Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) seemed a breakthrough at the time, but was not properly implemented – although a subsequent 1996 agreement granted some autonomy to Muslim areas (in addition to decentralisation under the 1987 Constitution). However, the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao was a largely hollow entity, undermined by poor governance. These setbacks discredited the MNLF, leading to a new round of insurgency by the 12-15,000 strong MILF, which adopted a more overtly Islamic identity.

The following two decades in western Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago were characterized by low-intensity armed conflict, with occasional steep upsurges in fighting associated with human rights abuses and consequent episodes of forced migration. During this period, the MILF consolidated control over key elements of the Moro resistance, reinforcing its Islamic credentials, but always open to structured political engagement with the government.

A 2008 pact with the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration focused on Moro rights to their ‘ancestral domain’, or traditional lands. This could have been an important breakthrough addressing key grievances, but the agreement was struck down as unconstitutional by the Philippine Supreme Court, in part at the instigation of powerful politician-oligarchs on Mindanao. Following the breakdown of the 2008 peace agreement, the Armed Forces of the Philippines launched a major offensive against the MILF displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians.

During this protracted period of progress towards peace, followed by relapses into violence, relations between civil society and Moro armed groups underwent important changes. Civil society actors have in the past complained about their lack of input in the peace process. One striking difference between the situation since 2012 is the extent to which the MILF has undertaken concerted and systematic efforts to engage with civil society actors, including through a series of community consultations. Nevertheless, questions remain regarding whether it will be possible for community-based organizations to work at the grassroots level without undue political interference or co-optation.

How will civil society activities, some of which are framed within liberal-democratic norms and values, fit the Islamic agenda of some MILF leaders and supporters? Past experience of ineffective government-implemented development projects, and their appropriation by clientelist networks, has led grassroots activists to be sensitive about corruption and the politicization of aid, and the risks of being co-opted by powerful interests. Moro community activists are often wary of outsider (particularly secular) aid agencies, and sceptical about the international community being able to understand and respond effectively to local needs in the peace process – although some external actors have worked diligently to win local trust.

Despite such challenges, the MILF has maintained its ceasefire – in part thanks to effective ceasefire monitoring on the ground. Mindanao civil society groups have played key roles in ceasefire monitoring, including networks such as the Bantay Ceasefire local volunteers, and through civilian participation with the International Monitoring Team (IMT). The IMT coordinates closely with the MILF and Armed Forces of the Philippines, on several occasions successfully preventing local incidents flaring up into large-scale clashes.

For the MILF, internationalisation of the peace process has resulted in significantly enhanced legitimacy and political credibility, on the national and regional stages. Domestically, one of the MIF’s major challenges is to demonstrate its ability to represent not only Islamic Moro communities, but also the indigenous peoples of Mindanao. The MILF (and, to a degree, the MNLF) have included indigenous leaders in political discussions, and the sharia law envisaged for the Bangsamoro under the BBL would not apply to non-Muslims. Nevertheless, some indigenous people fear marginalization in the future Bangsamoro. There are important roles here also for civil society actors, to represent the often excluded voices of indigenous people, and continue building trust and confidence between ethno-linguistic and religious communities.

Conclusion

A key lesson from the southern Philippines for other peace process is the need to consult extensively with civil society actors, to ensure sustainable buy-in from local stakeholders. This is particularly important given the risks of widespread lawlessness in the post-conflict period, as government and non-state armed groups relax their authority on the ground.

Ashley South is an independent researcher and consultant, specializing in peace and conflict, humanitarian and political issues in Southeast Asia (primarily Myanmar/Burma, and Mindanao). He has a PhD from the Australian National University, and is a Research Fellow at Chiang Mai University, Center for Ethnic Studies and Development. For a full list of Dr South’s publications, https://www.ashleysouth.co.uk

Women have been leading contributors to ISIS’s strength and capabilities. Female operatives have held influential positions in the group’s proto-state which have been crucial to the advancement of the group’s cause.

The self-proclaimed caliphate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), poses the greatest terrorist threat to the international community today. ISIS’s goal is relatively simple – establish a global caliphate. However, the group’s state-building ambitions have faced recent setbacks due to counter-terrorism successes – the group’s territorial claims in Syria and Iraq and foreign recruitment has declined substantially. Faced with the loss of its caliphate, ISIS has become more reliant on local populations to maintain its stronghold. As a result, many Syrian and Iraqi citizens are left vulnerable to ISIS’s terror tactics, especially women and children.

ISIS’ treatment of women has placed the organization among the world’s worst perpetrators of gender-based violence. Their brutal tactics include: imprisonment, torture, sexual abuse, and the execution of thousands of Syrian and Iraqi women. Such barbaric treatment is not reserved for non-Muslims; fellow Muslim women are abducted and exposed to horrendous sexual atrocities.   Many women become sex slaves and are sold in markets for a little as $13 USD. Despite their inhumanity towards so many women, ISIS successfully recruits a substantial number of marginalized Syrian and Iraqi females to the caliphate. In fact, ISIS depends on its population of local female to obtain their state-building ambitions.

Incrementally, Syrian and Iraqi women have attained influential roles in the caliphate despite the inhumane treatment of women in the caliphate. ISIS utilizes the local women residents and their cultural expertise to advance its cause. Their responsibilities include caring for ISIS soldiers as wives, birthing the next generation of jihad fighters, and maintaining order within ISIS’S network of women. Despite their work, international media outlets and counter-terrorism reports have primarily focused on the participation of Western women in ISIS, thereby undermining the role of Syrian and Iraqi women.  To gain better insight on Syrian and Iraqi women’s role in ISIS, delving into the underlying motivations of these women can enable experts to assess and comprehend ISIS’s seduction and lure.

Motivations of Local Women to Support ISIS

Image credit: David Dennis Photos

Women are motivated to support terrorist organizations for multiple reasons. It is important to realize that every woman is motivated for a different, or combination of, reasons. Therefore, it is challenging to determine the exact motivation of any one individual. ISIS’s three year long terror campaign has spread fear and demonstrated its power to control the community. During an ISIS raid on Syrian and Iraqi towns, many households were permanently destroyed – the group harassed, tortured, and murdered individuals that were not compliant. Often, male family members are killed, leaving females to be easily targeted by ISIS. Many women joined the group in order to stay alive.

The absence of an effective government has allowed ISIS to exploit the local resources and infrastructures. As a result, ISIS is able to operate a quasi-state — developing an Islamic court, a functioning military, and a law enforcement force. Leveraging this advantage, the group controls the local public facilities and services including banks, transportation systems, post offices, grocery markets, etc. ISIS’s ability to rule the land make joining the organization a viable solution for the deprived. Many women turn to support the caliphate for access to basic necessities, such as food, water, and shelter.

The Roles of Local Women in ISIS

A) Domestic Roles

According to ISIS’s Manifesto for Women, a woman’s highest achievement is being a dedicated wife, mother, and nurturer. Her primary functions are to take care of her husband and birth the next generation of jihadists that will continue ISIS’s legacy. Women are expected to remain in the house, hidden and veiled, while they undertake chores such as providing daily meals, cleaning uniforms, and keeping a spotless house. Girls are expected to submit to marriage by sixteen or seventeen years old while they are youthful, pure, and attractive. In the caliphate, younger women are quickly married off to ISIS operatives. However, in true ISIS fashion, the group continues misuse outdated Quranic scriptures to its advantage by legalizing the marriage of nine-year-old girls by glorifying the life of Prophet Mohammed and his young wife. Young girls that are be subjected to this perverted act are locals under ISIS’s rule.

B) State Building Roles

While ISIS is notorious for its hardline position on marriage and motherhood, the group’s state-building ambitions permit certain women to undertake jobs outside of the home. Unprecedented in its scopes, ISIS is critical in explaining the importance of recruiting career professionals to help the group attain its objective of creating a jihadi proto-state. In fact, in 2014, an audio recording of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi surfaced, urging scientists, preachers, judges, doctors, engineers, and scholars to join the caliphate.  Currently, ISIS controls the public and private facilities, which provides them with access to unlimited resources, including existing employees. ISIS’s need for skilled professionals is not limited to men; both genders are responsible for fulfilling their “civil duties”. Nonetheless, regardless of a male’s prior occupation, the majority are placed in ISIS’s military, leaving women to handle the daily activities. Subsequently, there is a larger presence of women undertaking instrumental roles; there are growing numbers of female nurses, educators, and administrators from the area.

C) Operational roles

Women of ISIS are also able to participate in offensive combat operations and defensive military activities. In 2014, ISIS created Al Khansaa — an all-female brigade that predominately consisted of Syrian and Iraqi women. The female unit was reportedly formed to enforce ISIS’s strict conception of Islamic morality. ISIS has imposed a dress code requiring all women to wear two gowns to conceal their body shape, black hand gloves, and dark layers of two face veils year-round. No makeup is allowed. To enforce the rules, the brigade patrols towns with AK-47s to ensure that women are compliant. However, the force responsibilities have drastically expanded, which demonstrates how influential women are in the terrorist group. The women perform a variation of activities, including recruiting, intelligence gathering, and overseeing prisoners. ISIS depends on the brigade to lure women; spy on the community and bring in individuals that voice unfavourable sentiment about the organization; and monitor detention camps detention camps where thousands of kidnapped Yazidi Christian and foreign hostages are imprisoned.

To date, one of the most influential women of ISIS has been a Syrian national, Umm Sayyaf. Before capture by the U.S. military, Sayyaf was a principal advisor to the caliphate leadership on all critical matters relating to women. Her elevated rank highlights how heavily the insurgency has come to rely on certain women to retain soldiers and run day-to-day operations. In her later interrogations by U.S. military personnel, she revealed information regarding the inner-workings of the network including recruitment, intelligence, and sex slavery. Umm Sayyaf also disclosed that the ISIS leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, appointed her to supervise the American hostage Kayla Mueller.

Conclusion

Although international news has reported that ISIS has recently faced some setbacks in their territorial claims and foreign recruitment, anticipating the immanent demise of ISIS is a stretch. The group will be maintained for years to come, as a result of its sophisticated network of Syrian and Iraqi women. The participation of local women exponentially raises the threat due to an increasing number of operatives, a unique tactical advantage, and additional technical expertise. Despite their impact, counter-terrorism studies tend to ignore the involvement of Syrian and Iraqi women and in doing so exclusively focus on the participation of foreign recruits. This omission leads to incomplete counterterrorism objectives and possible unbearable consequences.

ISIS has successfully recognized that empowered women are the foundation of a resilient and stable community. Female operatives will continue to participate at all levels, and the international community must not ignore such contributions. Failure to implement significant changes could lead to the regrowth of ISIS territorial claims and capabilities. By understanding the motivations of, and the roles held by, local women in ISIS this article can help initiatives to counter the group.

Amanda N. Spencer currently works in the counter-terrorism and anti-financial crime division at Deutsche Bank Securities.  She holds a master’s degree in global affairs from New York University and is passionate about contributing to the world of counter-terrorism. Her research explores the multifaceted roles of women in violent extremism. Her most recent research study on the women of ISIS is available at the Journal of Strategic Security: “The Hidden Face of Terrorism: An Analysis of Women in the Islamic State.”

Authors Note: This article summarises key findings of my book Malte Brosig (2015) Cooperative Peacekeeping in Africa: Exploring Regime Complexity. London & New York: Routledge.

Introduction

Peacekeeping enjoys an unprecedented popularity amongst policymakers at the moment. At no point in history have there been more peacekeepers deployed worldwide. The United Nations (UN) and regional organisations are currently deploying more than 100,000 troops and police in missions around the globe but most are located in Africa. The challenges individual missions are facing are well-discussed among experts. Much of the relevant literature focusses on dos and don’ts of peacekeeping practices. Regardless of individual cases we can observe the emergence of a larger inter-organisational peacekeeping system which I refer to as African peacekeeping regime complex in which the most relevant organisations such as the UN, the African Union (AU), Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and European Union (EU) are intimately inter-connected. Thus, the challenges actors are facing are not only individual ones and so solutions to these challenges are increasingly based on multi-actor coordination. How the peacekeeping regime complex emerged and how actors are positioned within it will be explored in this contribution.

Peacekeeping Today

Modern peacekeeping is confronted with high expectations and an enormous task complexity. Peacekeeping activities reach far beyond ceasefire monitoring, and also involve countering rebel and terror groups, protecting the civilian population, disarming combatants, supporting elections, reforming the security apparatus, state building and engaging in humanitarian relief. In sum, the expectation is that peacekeepers are not simply administering fragile peace, but also working to prevent a relapse into conflict by addressing its root causes. Naturally, these activities are conducted under considerable insecurity in a fragile environment where conflict has not often ceased, but is instead suppressed. Progress is uncertain and backlashes are likely.

Zambian peacekeepers from the United Nations Mission in Sudan. Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr.

The demand for peacekeepers and the existing complexity and high expectations peacekeeping is confronted with in practice lead to an overburdening of single actors. For the African continent, we can identify a group of relevant organisations which play a central role within the African peacekeeping regime complex. These are the UN, AU, RECs and EU. None of these actors are capable of dominating the regime complex fully. They all are facing the harsh realities of resource scarcity. Resources can be material goods (financial, military) or social kinds like competences or political (in) capacities or deployment doctrines.

Examples of this resource scarcity and its effects are easy to find. While the UN remains the most essential actor, it does not have command over the resources which would allow it to outperform regional organisations. This becomes very clear when looking at deployment times and/or the issue of peace enforcement. With its heavy bureaucracy in the background, the UN’s response times are on average around six months which is far from a rapid response. Issues of peace enforcement and counter-terrorism are also politically controversial within the UN and thus the UN’s missions find it difficult to engage in this kind of activity. In practice, there remains a considerable gap in the UN response to severe crises.

On the part of African actors, much has been achieved within the last decade. An African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) has been erected which builds on close cooperation between the AU’s headquarters in Ethiopia and RECs. Considerable efforts have been made to establish the African Standby Force (ASF). Indeed, the AU is now actively involved in practically all emerging conflicts on the continent. Still, it falls short of being able to independently respond to crises in a sustainable and comprehensive manner. The design of the ASF which consists of around 25,000 troops only makes up a minority of all deployments to the African continent. While the AU is willing to deploy in situations where the UN is reluctant to do so, the AU’s resource constraints are significant. The lack of funding is a compelling example. Despite efforts of the Commission chair to reduce external dependencies, the peacekeeping budget is predominately being financed by international donors. AU peacekeeping missions are not sustainable to maintain and can only operate with much reduced task complexity. Thus, because of resource constraints, they are neither long-term nor comprehensive in nature.

In the case of the EU, the situation is different. It is the most well-resourced organisation of all but does not have a global mandate. While the EU has deployed around 17 missions to Africa since 2003, these have been rather small in ambition, scale and duration. Most missions train security forces, but only a few are actively engaging in operational peacekeeping. This does not result from an absence of resources but is wanted politically.

How the Multi-Actor Approach is Shaping Modern Peace Operations

Given the very visible limitation of each single actor, it is hardly surprising that peacekeeping today is a multi-actor game forming a regime complex. A regime complex can be characterised as a form of decentralised and non-hierarchically organised governance. Actors are overlapping with regard to their membership and/or operational ambit and are tightly interconnected which makes it difficult to decompose the system into individual units. What a regime complex constitutes is mostly defined in terms of the relationship of its constituent parts which are constantly interacting with one another. In the case of peacekeeping in Africa, we can detect such a system.

In the overwhelming number of cases, we can observe forms of cooperative peacekeeping in which actors are pooling their resources. The most pervasive forms of cooperation are the sequential and co-deployment of troops. This has also led to a division of labour and institutional specialisation between the involved actors. For example, the AU often functions as a first-deployer, sending out troops in situations which are not consolidated and remain hostile and fragile. These deployments which are rather short-term oriented aim to prepare the ground for a larger more comprehensive and longer-term engagement from the UN. The UN’s response is often slower but more sustainable and also covers complex peace building tasks and stays in countries for an extended period of time. The role of the EU is less ambitious, but not less important. In the operational peacekeeping theatre, the EU contributed a high number of missions which are targeted and confined in terms of deployment times (short-term) and tasks (usually training missions). They aim from the beginning not to take over comprehensive tasks but are designed to fill in functional niches other actors leave. Financially, the EU is one of the main donors for AU peacekeeping missions. Since 2004, the EU’s African Peace Facility has provided €1.9bn for institutional capacity building and peacekeeping missions. Recent peacekeeping missions deployed to the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali broadly follow this track of interaction.

However, the exchange of resources between the AU-EU-UN which forms the backbone of the peacekeeping regime complex is not a simple functional mechanism. The exchange of resources is, for example, also influenced by peacekeeping doctrines. These are not automatically complementary. In the case of the AU and UN, the AU’s exit strategy is not necessarily compatible with the UN’s entry strategy. While the AU deploys in situations of continuing hostilities and aims at stabilising the situation, the UN takes a more conservative approach aiming to deploy only in situations where at least a ceasefire is in place. What happens if the AU stabilisation efforts do not lead to tangible progress can be seen in Somalia. Although the AU has called for UN take over since the deployment of AMISOM in 2007, no UN takeover occurred.

Doctrinal divisions also exist with regards to robust peacekeeping in already deployed missions. While the AU and African states often accept that within peacekeeping missions the use of force is sometimes needed to actively deter and encounter rebels or terrorists, this view is mostly not shared by the UN and EU. As a consequence, active peace enforcement in cases of deployed UN missions (CAR, Mali, DRC) tend to be outsourced. In case of the DRC, a Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) was set up and staffed by African countries or France continued its military operations hunting down terrorists in Mali.

Apart from questions of doctrinal complementarity, the supply and demand for resources varies significantly between actors. An organisation which is stronger on the supply side can chose how to design its involvement in peacekeeping while an organisation which is experiencing a strong demand but little supply is in an inferior position. This can be seen when comparing the EU and AU. The EU is in the position to provide what it deems adequate (many small scale targeted missions), the AU is in the complete opposite situation. It cannot maintain longer-term missions on its own and relies both on external funding and operational handover to the UN.

Conclusion

Modern peacekeeping operates in a multi-actor environment which displays decentred governance structures to which we can refer as a regime complex. Apart from the fact that the UN Security Council bears a general responsibility for peace, there is no overarching or strict hierarchy between the UN-AU-EU. Despite the absence of externally delegated roles within the regime complex, assumed roles emerged as a consequence of individual institutional resource scarcity, doctrinal compatibility and the size of demand vs supply of resources. Certainly politics is not missing in this system. There is no formally agreed script according to which organisations can be expected to act and thus the exact mode of interaction varies between cases. Domestic conflict dynamics leave their imprint too.

In the end, taking an inter-organisational perspective to peacekeeping is not a trivial under-taking because it constitutes a form of global governance which transcends the individual organisation. While we have long accepted that the classical nation state has lost parts of its domestic sovereignty to the forces of globalisation we also have to recognise that the same is true for international organisations. In this regard actorness and governance qualities do not exclusively rest in actors themselves but also in how they organise interaction with one another. The peacekeeping regime complex is one example and one that is shaping the lives of millions who live in some of the most vulnerable situations.

Malte Brosig is Associate Professor in International Relations at the Department of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He joined the Department in 2009 after he received his PhD from the University of Portsmouth. His main research interests focus on issues of international organization interplay and peacekeeping in Africa. He is the author of Cooperative Peacekeeping in Africa: Exploring Regime Complexity which was published at Routledge. Prof Brosig is a rostered consultant for the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research in Tokyo and holds fellowships at the Canadian Centre for R2P at the University of Toronto, the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Hamburg.

Authors Note: This article summarises key findings of my book Malte Brosig (2015) Cooperative Peacekeeping in Africa: Exploring Regime Complexity. London & New York: Routledge.

Introduction

Peacekeeping enjoys an unprecedented popularity amongst policymakers at the moment. At no point in history have there been more peacekeepers deployed worldwide. The United Nations (UN) and regional organisations are currently deploying more than 100,000 troops and police in missions around the globe but most are located in Africa. The challenges individual missions are facing are well-discussed among experts. Much of the relevant literature focusses on dos and don’ts of peacekeeping practices. Regardless of individual cases we can observe the emergence of a larger inter-organisational peacekeeping system which I refer to as African peacekeeping regime complex in which the most relevant organisations such as the UN, the African Union (AU), Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and European Union (EU) are intimately inter-connected. Thus, the challenges actors are facing are not only individual ones and so solutions to these challenges are increasingly based on multi-actor coordination. How the peacekeeping regime complex emerged and how actors are positioned within it will be explored in this contribution.

Peacekeeping Today

Modern peacekeeping is confronted with high expectations and an enormous task complexity. Peacekeeping activities reach far beyond ceasefire monitoring, and also involve countering rebel and terror groups, protecting the civilian population, disarming combatants, supporting elections, reforming the security apparatus, state building and engaging in humanitarian relief. In sum, the expectation is that peacekeepers are not simply administering fragile peace, but also working to prevent a relapse into conflict by addressing its root causes. Naturally, these activities are conducted under considerable insecurity in a fragile environment where conflict has not often ceased, but is instead suppressed. Progress is uncertain and backlashes are likely.

Zambian peacekeepers from the United Nations Mission in Sudan. Image by United Nations Photo via Flickr.

The demand for peacekeepers and the existing complexity and high expectations peacekeeping is confronted with in practice lead to an overburdening of single actors. For the African continent, we can identify a group of relevant organisations which play a central role within the African peacekeeping regime complex. These are the UN, AU, RECs and EU. None of these actors are capable of dominating the regime complex fully. They all are facing the harsh realities of resource scarcity. Resources can be material goods (financial, military) or social kinds like competences or political (in) capacities or deployment doctrines.

Examples of this resource scarcity and its effects are easy to find. While the UN remains the most essential actor, it does not have command over the resources which would allow it to outperform regional organisations. This becomes very clear when looking at deployment times and/or the issue of peace enforcement. With its heavy bureaucracy in the background, the UN’s response times are on average around six months which is far from a rapid response. Issues of peace enforcement and counter-terrorism are also politically controversial within the UN and thus the UN’s missions find it difficult to engage in this kind of activity. In practice, there remains a considerable gap in the UN response to severe crises.

On the part of African actors, much has been achieved within the last decade. An African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) has been erected which builds on close cooperation between the AU’s headquarters in Ethiopia and RECs. Considerable efforts have been made to establish the African Standby Force (ASF). Indeed, the AU is now actively involved in practically all emerging conflicts on the continent. Still, it falls short of being able to independently respond to crises in a sustainable and comprehensive manner. The design of the ASF which consists of around 25,000 troops only makes up a minority of all deployments to the African continent. While the AU is willing to deploy in situations where the UN is reluctant to do so, the AU’s resource constraints are significant. The lack of funding is a compelling example. Despite efforts of the Commission chair to reduce external dependencies, the peacekeeping budget is predominately being financed by international donors. AU peacekeeping missions are not sustainable to maintain and can only operate with much reduced task complexity. Thus, because of resource constraints, they are neither long-term nor comprehensive in nature.

In the case of the EU, the situation is different. It is the most well-resourced organisation of all but does not have a global mandate. While the EU has deployed around 17 missions to Africa since 2003, these have been rather small in ambition, scale and duration. Most missions train security forces, but only a few are actively engaging in operational peacekeeping. This does not result from an absence of resources but is wanted politically.

How the Multi-Actor Approach is Shaping Modern Peace Operations

Given the very visible limitation of each single actor, it is hardly surprising that peacekeeping today is a multi-actor game forming a regime complex. A regime complex can be characterised as a form of decentralised and non-hierarchically organised governance. Actors are overlapping with regard to their membership and/or operational ambit and are tightly interconnected which makes it difficult to decompose the system into individual units. What a regime complex constitutes is mostly defined in terms of the relationship of its constituent parts which are constantly interacting with one another. In the case of peacekeeping in Africa, we can detect such a system.

In the overwhelming number of cases, we can observe forms of cooperative peacekeeping in which actors are pooling their resources. The most pervasive forms of cooperation are the sequential and co-deployment of troops. This has also led to a division of labour and institutional specialisation between the involved actors. For example, the AU often functions as a first-deployer, sending out troops in situations which are not consolidated and remain hostile and fragile. These deployments which are rather short-term oriented aim to prepare the ground for a larger more comprehensive and longer-term engagement from the UN. The UN’s response is often slower but more sustainable and also covers complex peace building tasks and stays in countries for an extended period of time. The role of the EU is less ambitious, but not less important. In the operational peacekeeping theatre, the EU contributed a high number of missions which are targeted and confined in terms of deployment times (short-term) and tasks (usually training missions). They aim from the beginning not to take over comprehensive tasks but are designed to fill in functional niches other actors leave. Financially, the EU is one of the main donors for AU peacekeeping missions. Since 2004, the EU’s African Peace Facility has provided €1.9bn for institutional capacity building and peacekeeping missions. Recent peacekeeping missions deployed to the Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali broadly follow this track of interaction.

However, the exchange of resources between the AU-EU-UN which forms the backbone of the peacekeeping regime complex is not a simple functional mechanism. The exchange of resources is, for example, also influenced by peacekeeping doctrines. These are not automatically complementary. In the case of the AU and UN, the AU’s exit strategy is not necessarily compatible with the UN’s entry strategy. While the AU deploys in situations of continuing hostilities and aims at stabilising the situation, the UN takes a more conservative approach aiming to deploy only in situations where at least a ceasefire is in place. What happens if the AU stabilisation efforts do not lead to tangible progress can be seen in Somalia. Although the AU has called for UN take over since the deployment of AMISOM in 2007, no UN takeover occurred.

Doctrinal divisions also exist with regards to robust peacekeeping in already deployed missions. While the AU and African states often accept that within peacekeeping missions the use of force is sometimes needed to actively deter and encounter rebels or terrorists, this view is mostly not shared by the UN and EU. As a consequence, active peace enforcement in cases of deployed UN missions (CAR, Mali, DRC) tend to be outsourced. In case of the DRC, a Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) was set up and staffed by African countries or France continued its military operations hunting down terrorists in Mali.

Apart from questions of doctrinal complementarity, the supply and demand for resources varies significantly between actors. An organisation which is stronger on the supply side can chose how to design its involvement in peacekeeping while an organisation which is experiencing a strong demand but little supply is in an inferior position. This can be seen when comparing the EU and AU. The EU is in the position to provide what it deems adequate (many small scale targeted missions), the AU is in the complete opposite situation. It cannot maintain longer-term missions on its own and relies both on external funding and operational handover to the UN.

Conclusion

Modern peacekeeping operates in a multi-actor environment which displays decentred governance structures to which we can refer as a regime complex. Apart from the fact that the UN Security Council bears a general responsibility for peace, there is no overarching or strict hierarchy between the UN-AU-EU. Despite the absence of externally delegated roles within the regime complex, assumed roles emerged as a consequence of individual institutional resource scarcity, doctrinal compatibility and the size of demand vs supply of resources. Certainly politics is not missing in this system. There is no formally agreed script according to which organisations can be expected to act and thus the exact mode of interaction varies between cases. Domestic conflict dynamics leave their imprint too.

In the end, taking an inter-organisational perspective to peacekeeping is not a trivial under-taking because it constitutes a form of global governance which transcends the individual organisation. While we have long accepted that the classical nation state has lost parts of its domestic sovereignty to the forces of globalisation we also have to recognise that the same is true for international organisations. In this regard actorness and governance qualities do not exclusively rest in actors themselves but also in how they organise interaction with one another. The peacekeeping regime complex is one example and one that is shaping the lives of millions who live in some of the most vulnerable situations.

Malte Brosig is Associate Professor in International Relations at the Department of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He joined the Department in 2009 after he received his PhD from the University of Portsmouth. His main research interests focus on issues of international organization interplay and peacekeeping in Africa. He is the author of Cooperative Peacekeeping in Africa: Exploring Regime Complexity which was published at Routledge. Prof Brosig is a rostered consultant for the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research in Tokyo and holds fellowships at the Canadian Centre for R2P at the University of Toronto, the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Hamburg.