Texts and Reports
- Development Policy and the Armed Forces - Speeches and Issues Notes
Issues
Note
Susan
Woodward
Professor
of Political Science
The Graduate Center
The City University of New York
New York, USA
The two key actors
in any post-conflict peace operation are the military and the development
people. Without security and jobs, the peace will fail. But these two
actors work within a context. All issues of organizational autonomy,
division of labour, cooperation, and complementary or integrated strategies
must be framed within that context and the goal of building a viable
peace. That context has 3 crucial elements: (1) the political and strategic
framework; (2) the doctrinal and operational habits of the armed forces
and development agencies; and (3) the local population. This note aims
to generate discussion on the relation between development policy and
the armed forces by confronting the lessons from the Balkan conflicts
and the reasons why the relevant three - Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo,
and Macedonia - are currently so troubled.
The Balkan conflicts
are unusually important for this policy dialogue because European and
transatlantic capacity and practice developed in response to the Balkan
cases.1) Whether through the reaction of headquarters
to failures and criticisms or the application of field experience and
operational innovations by the thousands who worked in Bosnia-Herzegovina
to subsequent missions, all peace operations now bear the marks of lessons
learned in the Balkans since 1991. Nor is this learning process at an
end, with the full Europeanization taking place of the three current
missions - Macedonia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina, eventually Kosovo
- as well as the crisis-management missions to Serbia and Montenegro.
Political and
strategic framework
A post-conflict
peace mission is about implementing some political agreement, however
detailed or vague, negotiated or imposed. All activities, both planning
and operations, must relate to that framework and the terms of its legal
mandate. Neither security nor development objectives happen in a vacuum;
they should be designed to support that political goal. That peace process
is also an intense, high-stakes political contest (often a continuation
of the war itself with other means), and the resources and policy approach
contributed by both the armed forces and the development agencies directly
affect the outcomes in that contest. As a rule, neither actor calculates
this effect.
No country engages in such a mission without its own political objectives,
and those national goals translate directly into the policy of its development
agencies and the rules of engagement of its troops and police. While
the heightened sensitivity of humanitarian and development actors to
the recent dominance of strategic considerations and actors is understandable,
this is a problem shared by both the armed forces and development officials.
The result is not to subordinate civilian aid-workers to the military,
but to generate conflict and disagreements among national units within
peace forces and among development agencies in the field, not so much
between the two.
The Balkan conflicts
transformed our concept of peace operations. As a result primarily of
US policy, although it had many supporters in these changes, the shift
to peace enforcement had both political and military consequences.
Politically, in
all three cases (Dayton, SCR 1244, Ohrid), a settlement was imposed,
the necessary consent was only enough to placate foreign-office lawyers,
and over time, the fiction that civilian administrations were there
to assist the local population in implementing their agreement became
increasingly apparent as the international administrations assumed ever
greater authority to make decisions for recalcitrant locals and sanction
those who were not seen to cooperate. Political conditionality -- tying
development assistance to specific provisions of the peace accords --
became accepted practice. In Bosnia, for example, this prevented half
of the country (the Republika Srpska) from receiving any assistance
in the first two years, while all development assistance after 1997
was channelled in support of refugee return.2) Military
tasks evolved in response to political directives, from standard demobilization
tasks (separation of forces, weapons cantonment, confidence-building
measures) to assistance during elections, protection of returning refugees
and IDPs, arrest of indicted war criminals, protection of cultural sites,
political negotiations, and multi-varied "policing."
Militarily, UN peacekeeping principles were replaced by heavily militarized,
robust rules of engagement and doctrine, extensive use of airpower,
intelligence assets, and heavy artillery, and a separate military chain
of command from the civilian hierarchy and even national ROE. There
are now two types of peace operations - those where the U.S. is involved
militarily on the ground and those where it is not. The differences
affect planning, mission structure, and conceptualization of security,
including the concept and operations of civil-military cooperation (for
example, that civil affairs/CIMIC for the US is part of war-fighting
doctrine, to win "hearts and minds" against an enemy and as
force protection, contrasting sharply with peacekeeping doctrine). The
strategic interests of the US and its allies jettison the principle
of neutrality, often to the point of war-fighting alongside "peacekeeping"
missions. Any discussion of relations between development policy and
armed forces must begin with which type of operation it will be.
Nonetheless, two
aspects of the strategic context for the Balkan operations should caution
against applying its lessons elsewhere. Presence in Europe has given
European security interests a strong (and some argue distorting) influence
on development policy and on the concept of security which would not
apply elsewhere. Consider the Stability Pact, the role of Justice and
Home Affairs on organized crime and border control, the stabilization
and association agreements, and eventual EU membership and its criteria
as an incentive in the peace processes. Second, the sheer amount of
resources available to Bosnia and Kosovo has no parallel except Palestine
and is unlikely ever to be repeated. Even UNPROFOR, usually dismissed
as totally inadequate, was endowed with troops and finances beyond anything
seen before. Political reasons also led the World Bank to be heavily
involved in the region, from early (wartime), detailed planning for
recovery and reconstruction to organizing multiple, multi-year donors'
conferences and innovating instruments for risk insurance, decentralized
operations, and regional frameworks.
Doctrinal and operational habits of the armed forces and development
agencies
Our current understanding of the relation between development policy
and the armed forces is based on practices and innovations from the
Balkan operations. Driven by high politics at the strategic level, European
and US organizations (e.g., NATO, OSCE, the EU, Council of Europe) as
well as UNHCR, IOM, OCHA, the World Bank, bilateral aid agencies, and
many others, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, police,
professionals, and secondees to this theatre, developed new capacities
and reformed earlier practices in response to the opportunity opened
up by the heterodox and trial-and-error operations of these three cases.
These reforms were largely operational, particularly refinements in
the delivery of aid, in donor coordination, and in more targeted conditionality.
The current emphasis
on the need for cooperation and coordination also derives from these
conditions. In contrast to standard UN operations, with their single
mandate and mission planning, unified chain of command, civilian leadership,
and clear roles and SOPs for civil affairs officers, UNHCR, military
forces, etc., the American insistence on the separation of military
and civilian commands and the multiple, parallel civilian hierarchies
aimed at capacity-building for European organizations complicated the
tasks of coordination (e.g., in Bosnia, between OHR and OSCE as well
as IFOR, and in development policy, among the World Bank, the EU, the
OHR task forces resulting from American impatience, and the many well-funded
bilateral donors such as USAID, DFID, the Dutch, and the Japanese; in
Kosovo, among the four pillars of UNMIK3). This organizational
novelty reinforced the tendency to focus on operational improvements.
The primary doctrinal,
or policy, lesson drawn from the Balkan experience is the importance
of rapid response. This influences nearly all of the current reform
efforts and capacity-building in Europe and at the UN -- the capacity
to plan and deploy integrated force packages rapidly. Emergency response
units within development agencies gained prominence and resources, and
development activities are increasingly focused on the first 3 to 18
months after a peace agreement, now considered the make-or-break period
of peacebuilding. The bureaucratic and financing gap between relief
and development was replaced conceptually (and in small part organizationally,
such as the post-conflict unit created at the World Bank) by a relief
to development continuum. The task of refugee return gave significant
boost to area development approaches (originating in Cambodia and central
America) and especially to the idea of Quick Impact Projects (QIP).
The fact that the military can deploy faster than civilians and the
belief that an initial "peace dividend" in economic recovery
is decisive in preventing a return to war generated, in Bosnia, the
now standard use of the military (largely CIMIC units) to deliver aid
and initiate small-scale repair and reconstruction projects in the first
year or two of peace.4) The blurring of formerly
iron-clad autonomies went further in the relief operation during NATO's
air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, when assertive national NATO
units took over responsibility for protecting Kosovo refugees from an
inadequate UNHCR operation.
The consequence,
besides blurring the lines between military and civilian actors, was
to create new distinctions within the concepts of security and development.
On security, the military were now robust and resourced but risk averse;5)
their entrance into reconstruction and enhanced CIMIC activities was
primarily for the purpose of force protection, not economic recovery,
and their highly militarized concept of security and reluctance to do
what they called "policing" (providing security for civilians)
led to a shift in the mission concept of security - to the rule of law
and law enforcement, international police missions, police academies
and training, courts, judges, prisons, and human rights offices and
ombudspersons.6)
The concept of
development, on the other hand, has bifurcated. Its centre is now on
early recovery, "peace-dividend," crisis-oriented activities,
which, on evaluation, are notable for their lack of sustainability and
waste in development terms. Indeed, no one tries to justify them on
development terms. By contrast, long-term development projects and plans
are still designed autonomously, on universal templates and neoclassical
assumptions, without local consultation, and with little or no accommodation
to the particular needs of war-torn societies and peacebuilding -- despite
the well-documented conflict between IFI-led economic strategies and
liberal models of economic reform and statebuilding, on the one hand,
and the political goals of peacebuilding, on the other. Neither security
nor development has resulted in the Balkan cases.
Local population
The most consequential
aspect of peace operations is the neglect in planning and operations
of the "targets." Aid, both military and development, is supply-driven
and resource-led, not needs-driven or locally tailored. Yet power in
the first stages of a peace mission comes either from access to foreign
aid or from filling the vacuums created by the multiple delays of international
military and civilian deployment, economic aid, and the creation of
a government with whom internationals can work. Early winners tend to
shape the path of statebuilding and peace consolidation. The greatest
influence, and often threat, comes from those who are locally organized
to offer security and jobs in these first days; in the Balkan cases,
for example, the power of the wartime politicians and military in shaping
postwar Bosnia is blamed on early elections but is actually due far
more to the need for IFOR and the development agents for partners and
to disperse assistance fast; in Kosovo, the KLA filled the power vacuum
easily in June-July 1999 and even now is rarely challenged by KFOR;
the deadlock in Macedonia could have been prevented if development assistance
(instead of blockade and sanctions) and national security (keeping the
UNPREDEP mission and accepting a civic definition of citizenship) had
taken priority in 1992-8 over EU interests and conceptions.
The Balkan conflicts
now
The three current
Balkan cases are very different kinds of conflicts, types of peace and
reconstruction efforts, and stages toward sustainability. All three,
however, suffer from two common characteristics: (1) imposed political
agreements that do not have popular support, imposed implementation
that did not focus on building that popular support, and imposed state
and economic models that did not allow the development of an autonomous
democratic politics that would have had built-in incentives to generate
compromises and build alliances in support of the peace process, and
(2) serious unemployment that threatens all political plans.
Rather than creating
countries capable of governing themselves, with an autonomous politics
and a capacity to manage differences without recourse to violence and
to provide basic services to citizens, beginning with security, the
peace missions have created a local politics focused on "us [locals]
vs. them [internationals]." There is no development in Bosnia and
the state hardly functions; there is no security in Kosovo and the economy
is failing rapidly; and the Ohrid agreement in Macedonia is unravelling
because its economic preconditions do not exist and its opponents are
able to mobilize on popular fears for their security. Yet external interests
and political disagreements are still driving the political agendas,
and it is difficult to see how a change of course is possible. There
is an urgent need in all cases to generate local employment.
Lessons
The resources available
in the Balkans overwhelm and shame all operations in Africa and provided
a critical focus on the resources actually deployed (as opposed to committed)
in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the Balkan cases do not support the
new conventional wisdom based on them, that the key to successful peace
operations is resources, particularly a match between resources and
mandate. More robust and resourced militaries do not automatically provide
the secure environment needed for other activities to take place, and
the lack of development and clear stability implications of large-scale,
long-term unemployment in all three cases, despite the careful planning
and huge investments, demonstrate clearly that it is not the quantity
of resources per se that matters, but what they finance and how they
are used.
Severe distortions
of the local economy, financially unsustainable projects, aid dependency,
capricious projects and overdetermination of governmental structure
by donor policies, huge transaction costs for technical procedures and
reporting requirements, lack of donor trust of local authorities, confusion
among the population about who the real authorities are - these are
common outcomes of peace missions. Far greater use and development of
local resources from the very beginning, particularly people, an understanding
that peacebuilding takes a long time and goes through stages, and a
more modest focus on security and jobs would be more likely to succeed.
The new consensus
on peace enforcement also needs debate, first because it requires military
resources that will never be available in most cases, and second because
the military are not even providing the security that is necessary for
statebuilding and development activities. It is worth asking, for example,
whether the sophisticated art of UN peacekeeping tradition, with its
emphasis on psychological instruments, confidence-building among the
parties rather than as a means of force protection, military doctrine
aimed at avoiding the dynamic of force, and dynamic peacekeeping, has
been lost, or whether Europeans can employ that alternative in operations
where the US is not involved (e.g., in Africa) or in European-led operations
(such as KFOR or ISAF). A serious dialogue with those armed forces from
alternative traditions and with development workers with extensive field
experience on how to reconceptualize and provide security is urgently
needed. For example, how can the two use their resources together to
establish functioning local administrations that can re-establish control
over arms and the use of violence and begin to generate jobs? In place
of the debate over who gets development funds (e.g., the military, NGOs,
or development agencies), can one ask what the consequences are for
locals of using each channel - to which locals, which projects, with
what political consequences?7)
In sum, security
and development are goals, not organizations. As the key actors on the
ground, can there not be a creative dialogue between those with experience
in peace missions in the armed forces and in development work about
how to create security within the limited resources available, taking
advantage of local norms and people, and how to give early priority
to employing the population, not only for income but also for occupation,
political autonomy, and dignity? The result will transform peace missions.
Notes:
1)
The influence is equally great on the academic literature and on popular
perceptions of the issues at stake in civil wars and post-conflict reconstruction,
but those are subjects for another discussion.
2) Under the leadership of the Reconstruction and
Return Task Force of the Office of the High Representative. That political
conditionality created distortions is clear, but what those remain to
be examined fully; for example, current evidence suggests, counterintuitively,
that neglect was a blessing.
3) The same structure was repeated in East Timor.
4) On the origins of this approach, see "Evaluation
of the Western Bosnia Rehabilitation Programme 1996-1998" (Centre
for Defence Studies, King's College London, November 25, 1999, for DFID)
and its Interim Report of May 1999. A recent study of the Provincial
Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan raises similar concerns to those
expressed in that evaluation; see Charlotte Watkins, Provincial Reconstruction
Teams (PRTs): an analysis of their contribution to security in Afghanistan,
MSc Thesis in Development Practice, Oxford Brookes University, 30 September
2003 (available at: www.institute-for-afghan-studies.org/Contributions/Projects/Watkins-PRTs/index.htm).
5) The reason for risk averseness varies among national
units, for example, a concern to keep casualties low for some, while
for others, a cover for political disagreement with the force command.
6) The Brahimi Report registered this change with
a call for a "doctrinal shift" toward civilian security.
7) Bosnian experience with CIMIC micro-projects does
demonstrate ways to make them more effective (e.g., co-location of civil
and military offices, civilian dominance in setting priorities and for
greater continuity and experience, clear monitoring procedures for military
units), but this does not alter their marginal impact and the question
of goals.
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