Security sector reform and statebuilding: lessons learned

University of Birmingham Security sector reform and statebuilding Jackson, Paul Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (Harvard): Jackson, P 2012, Security sector reform and statebuilding: lessons learned. in A Schnabel & V Farr (eds), Back to the Roots: Security Sector Reform and Development. LIT Verlag, pp. 251. Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. 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Nov. 2021 Chapter 9 Security Sector Reform and Statebuilding: Lessons Learned Paul Jackson Introduction Research shows that the number of wars and their lethality have been declining since 1992, and over the same time the worst conflicts declined by over 80 per cent.1 However, research also shows that the improvements result from more wars ending: the onset of new wars, regrettably, remains constant.2 ‘Failed’, ‘weak’ or ‘fragile’ states, home to the poorest billion of people living in fewer than 60 countries, 70 per cent of which are located in Africa,3 are still most at risk of falling into conflict. Many of these states may also have a dysfunctional security sector that is either politically compromised, chronically underfunded or subject to conflict and unable to control sovereign territory or criminal activity. From an international donor perspective, ignoring such states risks furthering their decline, while carefully designed interventions, including the reform of their security apparatus, may help them develop. There is a danger, however: adding a security component to overseas development aid could affect strategic decisions about aid allocation and shift objectives to meet Western security concerns. This would amount to a full securitisation of aid. Given scarce resources and global political realities, difficult decisions must be made and a clear agenda set to ensure that development and SSR overlap and support each other. By highlighting the conflict-development link, donors like the UK may be in a better position to show that aid money not only helps prevent poor countries from declining into conflict, but contributes to keeping the West safe. The assumption is that the recurring cycle of violence that derails development and human security in general could be broken by a more strategic use of international funding aimed at developing opportunities for those in conflict-affected areas to make a living other than by resorting to 252 Paul Jackson violence to survive. In this approach, a post-conflict agenda based on a broader definition of security and its relationship to development could set out a new strategic logic for development aid that may make sense for both the West and the poorest and most vulnerable. This approach, however, raises the question of what or who development is for. Are development and support for failed states intended to maintain the status quo of existing governance systems and the interests of the donors, or do they aim to assist the people on the ground in the affected countries? The history of interventions that attempt to construct governance systems that deliver development outcomes to the general population, as opposed to primarily security outcomes for the general community of states, is not necessarily a good one, although such interventions continue, as in the international efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. This chapter outlines a series of challenges to post-conflict security sector governance, understood as management of the national security sector. It is written within a conceptual framework that emphasises ‘governance’ rather than ‘government’, and recognises the large diversity of actors and processes and the multiplicity of contexts in which security sector reform (SSR) takes place. Making the post-conflict environment more secure involves managing, demobilising and integrating militias, establishing the rule of law (and justice more broadly), ensuring that past crimes are redressed and constructing a security governance system that prevents future threats to the general population.4 The security governance perspective facilitates a comprehensive approach to delivering legitimate, accountable and publicly owned security. This goes to the heart of what it means to govern well. The post-conflict environment places extreme pressure on the relationships within the national security sector, incorporating both uniformed and non-uniformed security services (military, police, intelligence) and the state institutions and government oversight mechanisms that monitor those organisations authorised to use force. Functioning oversight mechanisms create a useful pressure to govern the security sector accountably, particularly where the military has a history of brutality. Delivering appropriate security remains critical to the core functioning of governance more broadly. This chapter works within a framework that moves beyond institutionbuilding as exclusively Westphalian. It attempts to place current approaches to state-building within a broader historical process and also show that the reconstruction of governance following conflict is best understood as a function of political networks rooted in substate and regional networks. SSR and State-building 253 The post-conflict environment In post-conflict environments, security sector governance is frequently seen as part of the broader development of public administration and governance. However, ministries of defence are not always part of unified governance reform agendas. In Sierra Leone, for instance, Ministry of Defence reform was an integral part of SSR programming, but was completely excluded from the more general public sector reform programme within core ministries.5 As another example, the post-conflict environment within Nepal is dominated by military tension between the Maoist Army and the National Army, and a political situation in which the core political parties find it extremely difficult to agree. The Ministry of Defence, as far as it exists at all, is not capable of policy formulation and the political impasse effectively prevents it from developing governance powers. What this means in practice is that the discipline of the two forces is achieved by informal political agreements and a general commitment to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. In Nepal’s mistrustful post-conflict atmosphere, the security governance system remains fragile and risky, notwithstanding the fact that the peace has held for some five years and there has been very little violence by international standards.6 Security governance itself has been seen as an integral element of SSR programming within a number of countries. In fact, the development of SSR itself (and security governance) has been shaped by engagement in postconflict situations. The UK’s experience in Sierra Leone coincided with its leadership of the OECD/DAC group that produced the guidelines on SSR, for example. As discussed in Chapter 10, while this initially reflected a security-driven view of post-conflict intervention, it also incorporated a number of broader governance and development objectives, including recognition that economic and political development is necessary to support security more broadly.7 However, security sector governance did not start with the OECD/DAC, and as the early example of Zimbabwe shows clearly, poorly executed security policies aiming, for instance, to reintegrate former combatants following civil wars can have political consequences later on. In Zimbabwe the political allegiance of the security services has steadily undermined the possibility that development gains can be achieved.8 To prevent further situations like this, holistically designed post-conflict SSR is important in setting the future political agendas of the state and ensuring that development trajectories do actually contribute to lasting peace. 254 Paul Jackson The study of post-conflict states is blessed with a wide and varied lexicon of terms that overlap, contradict and confuse while trying to describe varying forms of state collapse. Whether fragile, weak, collapsed or neopatrimonial, dysfunctional states all suffer from vulnerability to external shocks, internal conflict, competing economic and political structures and an inability to exercise effective legal control within state borders. A postconflict state may exhibit all these features and be subject to continuing, cyclical violence, making the prospect of lasting SSR all the more difficult. For an inexperienced designer of SSR, the challenge may be that dire conditions create the illusion of a ‘blank slate’, which may appear attractive for reconstruction and SSR. However, this notion is dangerous and illusory, as it leads those designing SSR interventions to ignore existing norms, structures and the country’s previous history. This may result in a ‘one-sizefits-all’ approach that can undermine long-term security and development sustainability. While SSR donors should be cautious of treating post-conflict states as a ‘blank slate’, there remains nonetheless a window of opportunity for reform through the provision of a series of entry points. For instance, there may be a national will to accept some forms of external support, even in sensitive areas like security. This may be complicated when the environment is not actually ‘post-conflict’ at all, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, where SSR is taking place under combat conditions. However, when closely examined, in many ways the current process within Afghanistan is not fully SSR, but rather comprises various SSR-related elements (e.g. security sector training, development of a national security strategy) that when combined with a broader and more holistic approach could then more closely resemble SSR. There are usually four core areas identified as central for assessing the moment for appropriate intervention:9 context, politics and socio-economic position of the population; political will and commitment of international actors; local ownership and tension with external interventions; and integrated and coherent sequencing. However, given that post-conflict interventions are so contextual, it is likely that there is no one set methodology or timing, and these four will not be the same in each intervention. This means that any international intervention needs to be essentially political in terms of picking the right moment to intervene, intervening in a sensitive and diplomatic way and taking into account domestic political sensitivities within a heightened political situation. What has tended to happen is that many interventions have been fundamentally technically focused rather than politically aware. The US-led SSR intervention in Liberia, for example, was driven partly by technical SSR and State-building 255 approaches to efficiency and capacity within the armed forces through a private contract between DynCorp and the US government.10 In other interventions there has been a tendency to carry out the ‘easier’ technical tasks of training police and military while neglecting the more difficult governance aspects.11 From this perspective, it is all too easy to overlook the political environment in which the intervention occurs, which may be a serious obstacle to it progressing effectively. SSR undertaken in a post-conflict state always needs to deal with the legacy of the past, which often includes a long authoritarian regime. In such cases both the governance structure and the institutional framework will need to be reformed. In many African contexts, for example, armed conflict resulted from an authoritarian, individualised, political structure that excluded specific members of the population (Sierra Leone, Liberia) or involved the replacement of a colonial-authoritarian regime with an indigenous-authoritarian state (Zimbabwe). The main distinguishing features of such post-conflict environments are usually the need to provide immediate security, to demobilise and reintegrate combatants, to manage post-conflict increases in violence, particularly against women, and to downsize security institutions while instituting civilian oversight mechanisms that will hopefully prevent the security forces from taking over too much authority again in the future. Additionally, political considerations come into play due to the variety of actors involved in post-conflict reform and governance processes. These include international agencies, international militaries, private companies and non-statutory security actors, encompassing parties such as insurgent groups, religious transnational actors and warlords, as well as civil society and government itself. State-building as the practical face of the security-development nexus The debates on the security-development nexus are vast, and are set out in Chapter 2 of this volume. However, what do they mean in practice? The World Bank identifies a number of different reasons why security should be incorporated into poverty reduction strategies.12 Importantly, the betterment of their security is identified as a major issue by poor states themselves. Clearly there may be ulterior interests in declaring security as an issue for a government caught up in an armed conflict, particularly, in the current global context, if a terrorist threat can be defined. However, the importance of security at a community level is demonstrated in the World Bank’s Voices of 256 Paul Jackson the Poor survey, which shows that poor people also identify insecurity and access to justice as two core concerns.13 It is not made clear, however, exactly what is included in their definition of security. Understandings of what it means to be secure can also, of course, shift. In Sierra Leone there was a very noticeable change in local views of security in the post-conflict period, from an immediate desire to stop the killing and re-establish order to more development-oriented concerns, including reducing crime (particularly drug smuggling), economic insecurity (particularly employment opportunities) and domestic and sexual violence.14 The World Bank goes on to cite studies from Paul Collier that show the extent to which conflict affects the economy, but then, perhaps unsurprisingly, moves on to identify security as a core government issue, a public good and an issue of service delivery. It thus returns to the idea of security being defined by the capability of the state to provide a service to its citizens in a very Hobbesian way.15 This view demonstrates the strong link between SSR, security sector governance and state-building as a global project. Unsurprisingly, state-building has become a focus of much international aid, but unfortunately attempts at realising its goals in practice have frequently been problematic. A core reason for this is the methodology of state-building. As argued earlier, the vast majority of states that have been subject to contemporary state-building approaches have received interventions that concentrate very much on technical issues, especially effectiveness and functionality, rather than on the idea of what a state actually is and should deliver to its citizens. There is a clear difference between constructing a state apparatus and building a state that delivers rights to its citizens, including the right to live free from harm, not least in separating the technical process of what states do from the political processes involved in what states actually are. In Iraq, for example, the United States attempted to construct a Western-style state armed with an entire range of neoliberal theories that view the institutions of the state as being technocratic and separate from politics. As a result of this thinking, the United States dismantled the existing state and started all over again, constructing a new set of ahistorical institutions alien to the local population.16 Similarly, examples such as East Timor (see Chapters 6 and 8) and Kosovo point to the limitations of an externally led UN approach that incorporated local elites but marginalised the majority of the population, effectively producing states that exist legally and are managed by an elite, but remain hollow because they are unrelated to local political processes or representation and may lack legitimacy beyond SSR and State-building 257 the ruling elite or the United Nations (see Chapter 4 by Kunz and Valasek, who argue this point through a gender analysis).17 Both these examples show that externally led, technocratic solutions do not necessarily result in a successful state.18 Much state-building is dominated by the construction of exit strategies for the intervening party, which often designates a ‘democratic election’ as the end point. However, holding an election does not mark the successful conclusion of state formation, even though technocrats might argue that democracies can be created in this way. Apart from the problems in establishing a multiparty democracy in a post-conflict situation, there may be a fundamental misunderstanding of what the project of state-building actually means in practice. This has important implications for security governance, because security institutions are a core element of the state and are often identified by poor people as a major threat to their security. Constructing security institutions that are representative is therefore critical to the future stability of the state and the human security of the population. There is much literature on state-building, but it is useful to look at representative illustrations of some main approaches.19 Fukuyama, for instance, outlines a set of approaches posited on a completely ahistorical and technocratic view of states.20 One of the initial points he makes in his analysis concerns the lack of institutional memory about state-building within policy bodies such as the United Nations. This is complemented by the point that state-building takes a long time – it is a long-term commitment and requires sustained investment in time and resources. Other analysts add to these ideas, but many of these generalised comments do not really provide a comprehensive theoretical framework for state-building. For example, Hippler outlines a three-point plan based on improving living conditions, structural reform of ministries and integration of the political system.21 Again, this is a depoliticised version of reality that takes the politics out of state-building. In addition, such interventions are frequently carried out by bureaucrats, or in the case of security governance by military officers from the international community whose concerns are primarily technical rather than political.22 What does this actually mean in practice? Into what is the political system being integrated? If it means (as it usually does) integration of the political system into the international order, then who owns this process? Is it something that enjoys some form of local ownership among those who are supposed to benefit, or does it benefit international states relying on a state system? A significant silence in Hippler’s analysis is that no attention is given to the role of a functioning security sector capable of maintaining a 258 Paul Jackson safe environment in which state-building can actually flourish. While virtually all current analysts accept that there are problems with the nation-state in many of the contexts in which states are failing, there is still a tendency to accept the technocratic parameters of state-building as laid out by Fukuyama. This casts the nation-state as the norm in international relations, ignoring the broadening and deepening of security at international and subnational levels, particularly the intra-state nature of much conflict, international conflict actors and also the role of the state itself as an actor in non-state conflict. There remains an assumption that if we can develop the right mixture of policies, then we can create a healthy nation-state that can exist in the international order. Rebuilding states on paper does not mean that they exist in reality. All states rely on people to make them work, and this means that states need to be political structures as well as institutional bodies. The implications of this begin with people needing to buy in to the state at some level. Commonly related to ideas of legitimacy, there has to be some level of support for the state as an institution that represents something its populace recognise as a state. In a liberal sense this is realised by multiparty democracy, but in reality this type of democratic structure may not deliver representation in conflict environments, partly because nascent democratic institutions take time to bed down. Somalia is the archetypal collapsed state, but this is not simply a function of its own history but also a problem of contemporary international relations, particularly the universalisation of one model of the nation-state.23 UN-sponsored external state-building in East Timor, as mentioned earlier and argued in Chapter 6 in this volume, is another example of a failure to embed legitimacy within government beyond local elites; and, as the example of Zimbabwe shows, replacing one autocracy with another can have dire consequences for the population more generally.24 This raises the second main point, namely that the construction of a new state requires a significant cultural change in terms of how people relate to that state as well as how they conduct everyday business. In Iraq, for example, attempts by the United States to construct a Western state, and its initial emphasis on deconstructing Saddam’s state and political party, effectively superimposed an artificial state over subnational political systems. That state existed solely because the United States supported it, and not because there was an underlying belief in it in Iraqi society.25 The risk now is that the new Iraqi state will effectively become another faction rather than an oversight mechanism for controlling warring factions at subnational level. SSR and State-building 259 Thirdly, state-building is extremely ‘capacity hungry’. In Sierra Leone, for example, the UK provided a lot of technical support for the security institutions without giving many resources to building the corresponding political support – mainly because it would have been difficult to secure. The technical support offered resulted in many UK officials taking decisions because those inside Sierra Leone lacked the capacity to do so. Ten years of SSR in Sierra Leone have effectively created an overdeveloped security force, including intelligence, but without the culture of civil oversight to control it.26 This problem is also discussed in Chapter 6 on Australian technical capacity-building in the South Pacific. Fourthly, given the fact that modern state-building is so resource intensive, it is usually externally funded. Because of the degree of financial investment, on a political level the process becomes externally driven. This creates significant problems with regard to funding and funding priorities, particularly when considering local ownership – or lack of it – and, most recently, the more limited availability of funds from countries affected by the current financial crisis. It raises serious questions about the long-term sustainability of reform and security, and also the relative balance between different activities; for instance, should donors fund the military more than development activities? This remains a core dilemma of international intervention. The example of the shifting definitions of insecurity over time within Sierra Leone, cited above, shows that the balance of donor intervention also needs to change over time to account for changes in the security situation, but entrenched interests and the inflexibility of many donor planning systems effectively mean that states may be locked into set trajectories for some time. Fifthly, the creation of functioning state institutions can be very uneven. Even where states have had a functioning core before, during or after conflict, this core rarely penetrates into the rural areas.27 As a result, many people simply do not receive services directly from the state. In the area of justice provision, for example, the majority of the population may receive justice from customary authorities such as chiefs or village headmen, legitimised because a local leader controls local security by controlling the local police, militias or ‘vigilantes’.28 At best this can produce a functioning governance system in which local people have both a say and a choice in terms of accessing services, including security. However, there is a risk that such hybrid systems, relying on both traditional approaches and modern systems of governance, will also reinforce the position of local elites and shore up the kleptocratic tendencies of neopatrimonial rule to the detriment of the population.29 260 Paul Jackson Lastly, there are inconsistencies between state-building, security and development. There is an (unwritten) assumption that human security can be best served by creating a functioning state that will, it is theorised, provide security as a public good. Then, it is conjectured, development will provide benefits to the general population. However, there is a problem with exactly how diverse individuals fit into this picture. It is clear that the history of institutional development within state-building has not been a happy one for many people in terms of guaranteeing their security, and access to security has a sad tendency to remain uneven between states, groups and individuals. Human security, or ‘freedom from fear’, which implies an entitlement to protection by the state in which they are citizens, remains elusive for many people. Moreover, states’ (and by extension the international community’s) responsibility to protect citizens is yet to be realised in many places. This sets up a vicious cycle that justifies or legitimises international intervention in failed states.30 State-building, SSR and security governance The development of SSR has been closely intertwined with the growth of state-building as a set of activities that coalesced following the collapse of many states in the post-Cold War era. In recent years, building the capacity of civil servants to provide oversight of defence ministries in particular has become more entwined with the development of civil service reform programmes as a whole, while security in general has remained central to the entire state-building approach from the point of view of both individual citizens and the international community, however that may be defined. Furthermore, SSR is now understood as an integral part of the international community’s approach to conflict management. The reconstruction and reform of security institutions following conflict have become central elements of international intervention, bolstered by the belief that ‘relatively cheap investments in civilian security through police, judicial and rule of law reform … can greatly benefit long-term peacebuilding’.31 SSR is intended to improve the performance and accountability of police, military and intelligence organisations, among others, with the aim of improving the basic elements of security for individuals. As a process, SSR should ideally move far beyond narrow technical definitions of setting up functioning security institutions and follow a more ambitious agenda of reconstructing or strengthening a state’s ability to govern the security sector in a way that serves the population as a whole rather than the narrow SSR and State-building 261 political elite. As argued by Hudson in Chapter 3, this involves a radical restructuring of values and cultures within usually secretive and insular institutions that are inaccessible to particular subgroups within the population, particularly women and youth. The process usually takes place in contexts where the general population are mistrustful of security services and hostile to organisations that may be viewed as a direct threat to their individual security. An SSR process must therefore encompass an ambitious set of approaches that can contribute to restoring the social contract. Despite obvious difficulties resulting from the political nature of these interventions, many international actors are currently involved in SSR programmes, including the UK, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union. The programmes they deliver employ an array of approaches and involve a complex mixture of international organisations, governments, non-state actors and private companies. While there are significant differences between the US approach in employing DynCorp to carry out ‘SSR’ in Liberia and the UN intervention in security and police reform in East Timor, there is a family resemblance in terms of the general approaches adopted. Some of the challenges of this ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ are discussed in Chapters 3, 6, 8 and 11 in this volume. There has been much written about SSR, but, as mentioned above, it has been subject to what Peake et al. refer to as ‘benign analytical neglect’.32 This neglect has emerged despite the concept having been developed partly from an academic pre-history of civil-military relations. However, much of what has been written on SSR has tended to focus on practical policy-related analysis rather than being rooted in conceptual or theoretical approaches.33 Particular activities have received attention rather than looking at wider interventions as an expression of and in relation to broader social and economic reform.34 In particular, specifics of case studies have been used as gateways into discussions surrounding security without really reflecting on broader implications. Governance, development and security In a recent article on the macro-history of the security-development nexus, Björn Hettne posits three possible futures: neo-Westphalian, neo-medieval and post-national.35 In a neo-Westphalian scenario the current system would effectively continue to function through a state-based structure (with gaps), greatly enhanced by stronger multinational organisations with greater and more 262 Paul Jackson securitised powers. Such a structure could be multipolar, and might involve the inputs of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as active security hegemons in their respective regions. Such a system may be violent, and create revolution and reaction within non-core areas of the global economy. Neo-medievalism, on the other hand, represents a less violent option in terms of scale, but offers no solution for those areas that are outside organised nation-states. With neo-medievalism there is a loosening of the state to allow smaller units based on primitive accumulation or warlord economics in the short term, leaving those who live in localised pockets of violence to suffer that violence. Lastly, Hettne posits the idea of a post-national future based on global development, which in turn is built on the inter-regional approach proposed by the European Union, among others. In this scenario regional governments act as vehicles to promote human rights, democracy and conflict prevention, and such arrangements are (at least in theory) cooperative and voluntary. However, none of these offers a practical solution to developing a security-development nexus that provides freedom from fear. Clearly the first two scenarios are linked, with the first being both more aggressive and perhaps less certain to protect individuals from violence. In the first scenario one may be subject to international violence, and in the second to localised ‘low-scale’ violence (of course, it is not low scale to those suffering the violence!). The third scenario may offer some way forward, but there is a real problem with an EU-inspired solution, namely that EU decisions are based on an arrangement between functioning states that share a great deal of common ground, including the collective experience of a European war that no one wishes to repeat. This is not the case in, for example, Africa, where the experience of regional organisations has been woeful, partly because the states that sign up to regional agreements are frequently the first to break them. Prospects for the development of comprehensive regional actors remain bleak precisely in those areas where conflict is greatest.36 Regional approaches may offer some way forward in terms of renegotiating the colonial boundaries that have contributed to conflict (in the Horn of Africa, possibly in the Middle East and clearly in Sudan), but the fundamental issue is the nature of the state and the close ties between the state, the regime and the individual at the head of the regime.37 Failed states incorporate varied political orders, some more legitimate than others. A failed state typically lacks a monopoly of force and is unable to extend its authority across its entire sovereign territory. It may also suffer from a lack of legitimacy, be fragmented by alternative sources of power and face SSR and State-building 263 continual threats to its authority. ‘Traditional’ and state functions coexist, but may form avenues to political power that the existing regime is concerned about. When faced with regimes that have a tendency to creeping authoritarianism, the construction of alternative sources of security (paramilitaries rather than militaries) and use of the security services to protect regimes rather than protecting the state or the population are often a problem.38 All these scenarios offer diverse sets of challenges for SSR approaches to tackle if they are to contribute to development and security. If SSR is to work, it has to derive from the political structures and history of the place it is working in. This is frequently acknowledged in donor documentation but not carried out in practice. I argue that the SSR intervention in Sierra Leone, despite its shortcomings, was more successful than that in Liberia because the Liberian/US approach was effectively to contract SSR out to a technical provider and not to engage with the government. This echoes the approach taken in East Timor and Kosovo, where failure to understand and then engage with the population (as opposed to receptive elites) has resulted in states that are not representative and may perhaps provide security for the elite/regime but questionable results for the population.39 In the case of Kosovo this may be alleviated by accession to the European Union, but in East Timor, as in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the long-term survival of the state is at least partially dependent on the international community. Given this set of problems, at least in the short term, we are left with the state as the basic building block of any international approach to security and development and also as the main means of delivering both security and development to national populations. A more nuanced, patient and flexible approach to constructing states – a development approach – is therefore necessary, as outlined below.40 Firstly, there should be proper recognition that security is a political entitlement of citizens as part of a social contract with the state. It is an obligation of the state to provide security for its citizens, not to protect personal regimes. It needs to be recognised that this will require substantial change on the part of security services, including individual security actors committing to not becoming agents of insecurity themselves. Secondly, interventions need to be rooted in the specific historicalcultural-political situation of the country itself, and not just derived from the international experience of donors or non-governmental organisations. Statebuilding has become problematic partly because it does not take into account the specific contexts of its application, and the emphasis on multiparty 264 Paul Jackson elections as an indicator of the legitimacy of states (or as an exit point for donors) is a mistake that may become dangerous, since it may worsen civil conflict and entrench it for years to come.41 Thirdly, it is important to provide a voice to those who are subject to violence and support access to justice for victims of state and other forms of violence. Poverty imprisons people in situations of extreme vulnerability, as do the social and economic roles assigned to those with a lack of employment opportunities. Development in the form of functioning delivery of justice must be combined with access to income-generating opportunities. Both would open a route to emancipation for those trapped in vulnerable situations. Fourthly, it is important to ensure that security from below is grounded in evidence, not idealism or ideology. This applies to the ‘off-theshelf’ interventions of some development agents, but also the highly romanticised view of some grassroots organisations. Warlords may provide a degree of governance, but only in so far as it benefits them and only to the limits of state power. Traditional authorities and chiefdom systems may be cheap and easily understood, but traditional systems usually discriminate against some loser groups at a local level. Not everything at local levels is positive or enjoys universal support.42 The state itself may also be seen as complicit in either making people more insecure, through using security services or militias to oppress people directly, as in Zimbabwe, using violent organisations to enforce political power and patronage, as in Sudan, or through links between criminal gangs and state security organisations such as terrorist groups, as in the case of the Pakistan secret services. In short, ‘smarter’ and more targeted interventions are needed and, above all, a far deeper understanding of the politics of intervention over and above the technical expertise required to design an SSR intervention. Security is an integral element of governance more generally, and the provision of security is a key element of legitimacy. Those subject to poverty identify security as a key need. In essence, it does not matter what the academic debate says about the separation between security and development: those who are beneficiaries of development at the lowliest levels have already made that decision and accept security as a core need. SSR and State-building 265 Conclusion Contemporary state structures, this chapter argues, are not always the best models to deliver security to their citizens. The only way forward, then, is to realise the expected connections between the social contract and inclusive security. Current neoliberal state-building models are creating more poverty and exclusion. If we concede that state-building as social engineering has failed, then a discussion of the alternatives is overdue. Just leaving states to evolve themselves through some form of ‘historical logic’ is clearly not an option if the immediate security of the population is a concern. Politically, economically and ethically, it would be extremely difficult to cordon off an area of the world and label it ‘failed’. This calls for a way forward that relies on pluralistic solutions to different contexts and an understanding of the state that does not merely rehash medieval Europe. However, this is typically left unsaid in contemporary development and security approaches. Shifting colonial boundaries is not the only solution, although that may make a difference in specific circumstances like Sudan. In particular, there must be an acknowledgement of the pluralism of institutions at local level within areas labelled as ‘states’. Politically hybrid institutions, combining traditional approaches with modern notions of successful governance, exist across most failed states and provide services to populations, including security and justice. The question is how can the provision of services to the population be delivered without simply generating power for local elites? Western political theory finds it difficult to engage with failed states in which governance institutions continue to function at some level. There is a reality of political order that exists with or without the state. Surely nonstate providers offer an alternative approach that may accommodate heterogeneous polities and social organisation and therefore strengthen peace-building?43 It is clear that governance does exist beyond the formal state sector in many areas, and it is the incorporation of these social institutions into security management that remains important. For example, intelligence organisations existed right down to the village level in places as diverse as Sierra Leone and Nepal. These locally based organisations functioned far better than the state versions.44 At the same time, there is a sometimes uneasy coexistence between state and ‘traditional’ authorities in the security area.45 The delivery of security and justice at the local level can be dominated by local leaders, including tribal chiefs, who generally exercise considerable power.46 They might be able to appoint a customary court, be involved in social regulation 266 Paul Jackson through membership of a secret society, have at their disposal a range of actions they might take against non-conformists and see the dispensation of justice as an exercise of power.47 It is important to note that local authorities such as chiefs see the provision of security as a means to maintain their power, and they therefore need to be consulted closely when local-level SSR is envisioned. The idea of hybrid political orders and the incorporation of non-state institutions into SSR and security governance overall rests on a number of key assumptions about those institutions. In particular, there is a critical question of seeing local institutions as far more legitimate than an externally imposed state-building solution. One solution may be to incorporate competing claims to legitimacy and authority, and recognise that ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ institutions may coexist. However, it is also necessary to recognise that those forms of hybrid governance have differing dynamics, and may not only be coexisting but mutually influential or even mutually reinforcing. As von Trotha points out, this concept of a hybrid order is too frequently seen as being static, downplaying the continuing conflicts within such systems to produce variable outcomes as part of an ongoing political process.48 These existing social and power structures are usually seen as obstacles to the successful implementation of SSR programmes, rather than sources of energy that can be assimilated into security governance or development programmes. Indeed, without the incorporation of some of these networks it may be impossible to achieve many desired development outcomes or to construct a sustainable structure of security governance. A negative view of such actors tends to ignore what security apparatuses look like in those areas beyond effective state control. Whenever states abandon an area, other actors step in to fill the vacuum, ranging from predatory warlords to traditional authorities and ‘other non-state actors’.49 Consequently, alternative (to the state) sources of violence emerge and develop as proto-states. Contemporary wisdom argues that intervention is necessary in such cases, and should centre on state-building since failed states have largely failed through succumbing to continual conflict. SSR itself, taking security governance as being central, has a tendency to follow particular blueprints based on assumptions of what states are. In addition, SSR programmes are usually guided by service personnel of donor countries, who bring their own experience to bear but usually have no experience of the local politics and history in the area where they are operating. As a consequence, many officers tend to be naive in their assessment of local partners. They also tend to take command themselves, creating internal weaknesses in capacity once they return home. SSR and State-building 267 Poorly regulated governance systems are open to abuse, vulnerable as they are to developing neopatrimonial tendencies which benefit the local elite and maintain patterns of social exclusion. Such structures offer little distinction between public and private, state and non-state and public and secret organisations. In particular, such clientalist systems tend to undermine security governance, replacing ‘security for all’ with security for the ‘regime’ at a local level. This is usually reinforced by control over local power encompassing security, justice and also development decisions in the local area. Many ordinary people in the countryside may not be in favour of a hybrid solution that just replicates a neopatrimonial system.50 Indeed, many people want a just outcome rather than a particular system, and the usual claims of local systems being cheap, easy to access and easy to understand might be neither true nor a guarantee of justice for groups outside local elites. A genuinely hybrid system needs to provide security to both state and non-state actors. Such a system will differ from place to place. The question arises as to what balance needs to be struck when a hybrid system of security governance is encouraged in order to maximise the security and development opportunities of the population. Clearly, this question opens a Pandora’s box. Nevertheless, I have identified a number of potential ways forward, all of them pragmatic. I would suggest that interventions by external actors need to be carefully contextualised and, in particular, take into account the politics surrounding security. Secondly, there has to be some realism regulating how we work with hybrid institutions. There is no simple dichotomy between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ security systems (however these are defined), and in practice these two systems are closely intertwined. In accepting just one or the other there is a risk of leaving significant groups of people isolated from services, including access to justice. In addition, acceptance of traditional or customary systems implies acceptance of a number of elements that may not conform to desired development outcomes, including the enforcement of human rights. There is no reason why a local community should not provide local security (and many do), but there is a thin line between local security and thuggish vigilantism. The answer may not be to sweep away systems that are imperfect and replace them with another imperfect system based on formal law, but to make the existing systems work better so they provide more security for more people, more reliably. 268 Paul Jackson Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Human Security Centre, Human Security Report, 2005: War and Peace in the 21st Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). Joseph Hewitt, Jonathan Wilkenfeld and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2008 (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and Conflict Management, 2008). Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). At the same time, eight out of ten of the countries ranked lowest on the Human Development Index have been recently or are at war. All of the top ten failed states in the world are experiencing conflict and eight of them are in Africa. Major causes include a heady cocktail of dysfunctional governance; political, economic and social inequalities; extreme poverty; economic stagnation; poor government services; high unemployment; and environmental degradation. Alan Bryden, Timothy Donais and Heiner Hänggi, ‘Shaping a Security Governance Agenda in Post-conflict Peacebuilding’, DCAF Policy Paper no. 11 (Geneva: DCAF, 2005). Peter Albrecht and Paul Jackson, Security System Transformation in Sierra Leone, 1997– 2007 (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2009). The author is currently an international adviser to the Nepali Parliament on the military integration of the Maoist combatants. OECD/DAC, Handbook on Security System Reform: Supporting Security and Justice (Paris: OECD, 2007). The author was part of the discussions on the handbook and Sierra Leone was frequently cited as an example of ‘good practice’, even if this was not reproduced within the text. Rather, it forms a subtext of the original version of the handbook. See, for example, Paul Jackson, ‘Military Integration from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe and Beyond’, in Military Integration, ed. Roy Licklider (Oxford: Routledge, 2011), which is a collection of historical and contemporary examples of integration, security governance and the consequences of intervention. See Bryden et al., note 4 above. Adedeji Ebo, The Challenges and Opportunities of Security Sector Reform in Postconflict Liberia (Geneva: DCAF, 2005). See, for example, Albrecht and Jackson, note 5 above. Donata Garrasi, Stephanie Kuttner and Per Egil Wam, The Security Sector and Poverty Reduction Strategies (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009). Further discussion on the World Bank can be found in Chapter 10 in this volume. See World Bank ‘Voices of the Poor’ project, available at http://web.worldbank.org/ WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/0,,contentMDK:20622514~menuPK:33 6998~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:336992,00.html. Albrecht and Jackson, note 5 above. Hobbes’s Leviathan is credited as the model for an all-powerful sovereign state. However, Hobbes himself, having just experienced the English Civil War, understood that governments could be dangerous and grounded his philosophy in a social contract whereby loyalty of citizens was repaid by a state guarantee of the safety of citizens, including from itself. SSR and State-building 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 269 Martina Fischer and Beatrix Schmelzle, eds, Building Peace in the Absence of States: Challenging the Discourse on State Failure, Berghof Dialogue Series no. 8 (Berlin: Berghof Research Center, 2009). Nicolas Lemay-Hebert, ‘The “Empty-Shell” Approach: The Setup Process of International Administrations in Timor-Leste and Kosovo, Its Consequences and Lessons’, International Studies Perspectives 12, no. 2 (2011): 190–211. Susan L. Woodward, ‘A Case for Shifting the Focus: Some Lessons from the Balkans’ (Berlin: Berghof Research Center, 2009), available at www.berghof-handbook.net/ documents/publications/dialogue8_woodward_comm.pdf. See Mark T. Berger, From Nation-building to State-building (Oxford: Routledge, 2007) for a very good discussion of these issues. Francis Fukuyama, State-building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004); Francis Fukuyama, Nation-building: Beyond Afghanistan and Iraq (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006). Jochen Hippler, ed., Nation-building: A Key Concept for Peaceful Conflict Transformation? (London: Pluto Press, 2005). See Albrecht and Jackson, note 5 above; Andreas Mehler, ‘Hybrid Regimes and Oligopolies of Violence in Africa: Expectations on Security Provision “From Below”’ (Berlin: Berghof Research Center, 2009), available at www.berghof-handbook.net/ documents/publications/dialogue8_mehler_comm.pdf. Wolfgang Heinrich and Manfred Kulessa, ‘Deconstruction of States as an Opportunity for New Statism: The Example of Somalia and Somaliland’, in Nation-building: A Key Concept for Peaceful Conflict Transformation?, ed. Jochen Hippler (London: Pluto Press, 2005): 57–67. Lemay-Hebert, note 17 above; Jackson, note 8 above. Similar comments could be made of Afghanistan. This fundamental tension was also evident in later disagreements between the nascent, emerging Iraq state and US authorities. Albrecht and Jackson, note 5 above. See Paul Jackson, ‘Reshuffling an Old Deck of Cards? The Politics of Decentralisation in Sierra Leone’, African Affairs 106, no. 422 (2007): 95–111. See Bruce Baker, ‘Beyond the Tarmac Road: Local Forms of Policing in Sierra Leone and Rwanda’, Review of African Political Economy 35, no. 118 (2008): 555–570. This is not a new argument. It stems from work by Olsen on the difference between static and mobile bandits, the theory being that one wishes to be ruled by a static bandit since they have an interest in keeping you alive – basic feudalism. Mancur Olsen, ‘Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development’, American Political Science Review 87, no. 3 (1993): 567–576. See also Paul Jackson, ‘Warlords as Alternative Forms of Governance System’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 14, no. 2 (2003): 131–150; Mehler, note 22 above. See Robin Luckham, ‘Introduction: Transforming Security and Development in an Unequal World’, IDS Bulletin 40, no. 2 (2009): 1–10. UN High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility (New York: United Nations, 2004): 74. Gordon Peake, Eric Scheye and Alice Hills, Managing Insecurity: Field Experiences of Security Sector Reform (New York: Routledge, 2007). See for example, Gavin Cawthra and Robin Luckham, eds, Governing Insecurity: Democratic Control of Military and Security Establishments in Transitional Democracies 270 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 Paul Jackson (New York: Zed Books, 2003); Michael Brzoska, ‘Development Donors and the Concept of Security Sector Reform’, DCAF Occasional Paper no. 4 (Geneva: DCAF, 2003), available at http://se2.dcaf.ch/serviceengine/Files/DCAF/18353/ipublicationdocument _singledocument/8ac3f8ba-cce6-43c3-be56-e14e8549152e/en/op04_developmentdonors.pdf. See Alan Bryden and Heiner Hänggi, eds, Security Governance in Post-conflict Peacebuilding (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005). Björn Hettne, ‘Development and Security: Origins and Future’, Security Dialogue 41, no. 1 (2010): 31–52. James Hentz, ‘The Southern African Security Order: Regional Economic Integration and Security among Developing States’, Review of International Studies 35, supplement s1 (2009): 189–214. Trutz von Trotha, ‘The “Andersen Principle”: On the Difficulty of Truly Moving Beyond State-centrism’ (Berlin: Berghof Research Center, 2009), available at www.berghofhandbook.net/documents/publications/dialogue8_trotha_comm.pdf. Laurie Nathan, ‘Domestic Instability and Security Communities’, European Journal of International Relations 12, no. 2 (2006): 275–299. Lemay-Hebert, note 17 above. See Luckham, note 30 above, who constructs an argument for rethinking security around four main points, which are included here as part of the analysis. Luckham’s four points are unequal distribution of security; recognition of agency; empirical evidence; and complicity of the state. Burcu Savon and Daniel Tirone, ‘Foreign Aid, Democratization and Civil Conflict: How Does Democracy Aid Affect Civil Conflict?’, American Journal of Political Science 55, no. 2 (2011): 233–246. See Jackson, note 27 above; Ulrich Schneckener, ‘Spoilers or Governance Actors? Engaging Armed Non-state Groups in Areas of Limited Statehood’, SFB Governance Working Paper Series no. 21 (Berlin: SFB Research Centre, 2009). See Fischer and Schmelzle, note 16 above, for an articulate approach to these issues. The initial premise of this Berghof Dialogue is precisely to put the case for the incorporation of hybrid political institutions. Albrecht and Jackson, note 5 above; author’s own interviews in Nepal, 2010–2011. See, for example, Peter Albrecht and Lars Buur, ‘An Uneasy Marriage: Non-state Actors and Police Reform’, Policing and Society 19, no. 4 (2009): 390–405. See, for example, Richard Crook, Kojo Asante and Victor Brobbey, ‘Popular Concepts of Justice and Fairness in Ghana: Testing the Legitimacy of New or Hybrid Forms of State Justice’, African Power and Politics Working Paper no. 14 (London: ODI, 2010): 1–31; Bruce Baker and Eric Scheye, ‘Access to Justice in a Post-conflict State: Donor-supported Multidimensional Peacekeeping in Southern Sudan’, International Peacekeeping 16, no. 2 (2009): 171–185. Richard Fanthorpe, ‘On the Limits of the Liberal Peace: Chiefs and Democratic Decentralization in Sierra Leone’, African Affairs 105, no. 408 (2006): 27–49; Jackson, note 27 above. von Trotha, note 37 above. See Jackson, note 29 above; Crook et al., note 46 above; Baker and Scheye, note 46 above; Schneckener, note 42 above. Crook et al., note 46 above. Back to the Roots: Security Sector Reform and Development Back to the Roots: Security Sector Reform and Development Albrecht Schnabel and Vanessa Farr (Eds) 2012, 376 p., EUR 39.90 ISBN 978-3-643-80117-3 There has now been more than a decade of conceptual work, policy development and operational activity in the field of security sector reform (SSR). To what extent has its original aim to support and facilitate development been met? The different contributions to this volume address this question, offering a range of insights on the theoretical and practical relevance of the security-development nexus in SSR. They examine claims of how and whether SSR effectively contributes to achieving both security and development objectives. In particular, the analyses presented in this volume provide a salutary lesson that development and security communities need to take each other’s concerns into account when planning, implementing and evaluating their activities. The book offers academics, policy-makers and practitioners within the development and security communities relevant lessons, suggestions and practical advice for approaching SSR as an instrument that serves both security and development objectives. Order the book from the publisher’s website: www.lit-verlag.ch DCAF DCAF a centre for security, development and the rule of law Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces The Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) is an international foundation whose mission is to assist the international community in pursuing good governance and reform of the security sector. The Centre develops and promotes norms and standards, conducts tailored policy research, identifies good practices and recommendations to promote democratic security sector governance, and provides in‐country advisory support and practical assistance programmes. DCAF PO Box 1360 CH-1211 Geneva 1 Switzerland www.dcaf.ch