• TERRORISM:Terrorism: What’s Coming, the Mutating Threat • CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Charting the Roads to Peace: Trends in Conflict Resolution • ARMED GROUPS: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency • HUMAN RIGHTS: High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and the Conflict in Eastern Burma • POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION: The Prioritization of Policies in Post-Conflict Countries • CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Strategic Peacebuilding: Issues and Actors • ARMED CONFLICT: Why They Died: Civilian Casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 War • ARMED GROUPS: Côte d’Ivoire’s Forces Nouvelles • POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION: Why Is Liberal Peace-building So Difficult? • PEACE OPERATIONS: A Critical Analysis of Africa’s Experiments with Hybrid Missions • DISPLACEMENT: Iraq: Millions in Flight: The Iraqi Refugee Crisis • GOVERNANCE: State Failure Revisited II: Actors of Violence and Alternative Forms of Governance TERRORISM: Terrorism: What’s Coming, the Mutating Threat Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism This article is about how terrorism has changed over the years and how it hasn’t. It suggests that some developments seen as jihadist innovations are, in fact, neither new nor unique. It discerns some disturbing long-term trends, but it also points out some of the limitations inherent in terrorism. Our inquiry begins almost 30 years before September 11, 2001. In 1974, it seemed appropriate to write about international terrorism as “a new mode of conflict.” Even then, terrorism was not new, of course—terrorist tactics had been used for centuries—but from hideouts in Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro to guerrilla training camps in Lebanon to dormitories in Milan and Berlin, disparate groups with differing agendas were experimenting with new forms of political violence. Terrorists do not periodically descend upon the planet as extraterrestrials. Terrorism has its own natural history, shaped by circumstances and events. New generations draw from and build upon the ideologies and tactics of previous generations. Contemporary international terrorism as we define it today emerged in the late 1960s from a confluence of political circumstances and technological developments. Continue Reading More on Terrorism CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Charting the Roads to Peace: Facts, Figures and Trends in Conflict Resolution Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue This short statistical overview of peace process trends brings together a small selection of the increasing amount of data and analysis on peace processes past and present. Its purpose is to highlight some key trends for the attention of senior mediators and other leading peace process actors at this year’s Oslo Forum. Academic study of peace-making is maturing fast. An increasing number of research and policy centres are now producing a range of data sets on peace processes and using them to interpret trends in the practice and outcomes of peace processes. The arrival of signifi cant hard data on peace is an important and potentially creative complement to the softer qualitative analysis of what works and does not work which has tended to dominate peace policy discussion to date. The advantage of statistical data is that it allows for a strategic discussion of trends and practices across the whole range of international confl icts and peace processes today. One good graph can give a view of progress in all of the world’s current major conflicts. Continue reading More on Conflict Resolution ARMED GROUPS: Can’t Win with ‘Em, Can’t Go To War without ‘Em: Private Military Contractors and Counterinsurgency The Brookings Institution The recent incident involving Blackwater contractors in Iraq has brought to light a series of questions surrounding the legal status, oversight, management, and accountability of the private military force in Iraq. This for-hire force numbers more than 160,000, more than the number of uniformed military personnel in Iraq, and it is a good thing that attention is finally being paid to the consequences of our outsourcing critical tasks to private firms. An underlying question, though, is largely being ignored: whether it made sense to have civilians in this role in the first place. Regardless of whether the Blackwater contractors were right or wrong in the recent shootings, or even whether there is proper jurisdiction to ensure their accountability or not, there is a crucial problem. The use of private military contractors appears to have harmed, rather than helped the counterinsurgency efforts of the U.S. mission in Iraq. Even worse, it has created a dependency syndrome on the private marketplace that not merely creates critical vulnerabilities, but shows all the signs of the last downward spirals of an addiction. If we judge by what has happened in Iraq, when it comes to private military contractors and counterinsurgency, the U.S. has locked itself into a vicious cycle. It can't win with them, but can't go to war without them. Continue reading More on Armed Groups HUMAN RIGHTS: High-Resolution Satellite Imagery and the Conflict in Eastern Burma Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project Since late 2006, the Science and Human Rights Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has compiled a set of high-resolution satellite images to document the ongoing conflict in Karen State and other regions of Burma. This study in Burma follows similar activities undertaken by AAAS on Zimbabwe, Darfur, and elsewhere as part of its Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights project. Monitoring human rights violations in eastern Burma with satellite imagery utilizes on-theground information reported via websites and email from organizations active in the region. These organizations include the Free Burma Rangers, the Karen Human Rights Group, and the Thailand Burma Border Consortium. Their reporting was reviewed by AAAS staff and compared with a set of geospatial data and traditional maps on eastern Burma to precisely locate villages and areas that may have been attacked. These locations were then compared with existing archives of commercial, high-resolution satellite imagery, and in many cases new satellite imagery was ordered as well. Using these sets of satellite imagery, AAAS staff determined if visible evidence of reported attacks was found. Continue reading More on Human Rights POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION: Getting the Policies Right: The Prioritization and Sequencing of Policies in Post-Conflict Countries RAND Corporation One of the most pressing issues in the post-conflict reconstruction field is how to prioritize and sequence political, social, and economic policies to enable post-conflict countries to sustain peace and reduce the risk of violence re-occurring. Analyzing three cases of post-conflict reconstruction (Cambodia, Mozambique, and Haiti) and expert opinions of 30 academicians and practitioners, this study identifies major reconstruction policies, outlines the preferred way to prioritize and sequence them, and develops a framework to help policymakers better navigate the complexities and challenges of forming appropriate policies. Security and development are interdependent: Development fosters security and security fosters development. However, in the early stages of reconstruction in most post-conflict countries, security must be achieved first. Without a sustained improvement in the security situation, other reconstruction efforts, such as relief efforts, political reforms, democratization, economic reform and reconstruction, are not possible. After security, important policy priorities should be building effective, accountable, and inclusive governance institutions, institutionalizing democracy at the national and local levels through free, fair, participatory, and inclusive elections. Continue reading More on Post-Conflict Reconstruction CONFLICT RESOLUTION: Strategic Peacebuilding: Issues and Actors Kroc Institute Today the acute tasks of peacebuilding engage the international community. Liberia is one case where all the problems of peacebuilding are present. Dignity needs to be restored to the inhabitants and the country after a traumatic war experience. The country’s economy must be stabilized and set on a sustainable path of growth. But, foremost of all, strategies must be found that do not lead to a return of war, by old or new actors. In short, peacebuilding for a society is a matter of finding predictable life in safety and dignity. Liberia is not alone in this situation. The Uppsala Conflict Data Program has identified 121 armed conflicts, i.e., small or large wars, since 1989 and 231 since the end of the Second World War. By historical standards this is a staggering amount. At its peak, in the early 1990s, there were 51 armed conflicts waged around the planet at the same time. In 2005 the world was ‘down’ to 31, still a very large number. This means that, since the end of the Cold War, a majority of UN member states have had a war on their territory or have had their nationals in a war. That means peace is something that benefits all. Continue reading More on Conflict Resolution ARMED CONFLICT: Why They Died: Civilian Casualties in Lebanon during the 2006 War Human Rights Watch In this report, Human Rights Watch examines military operations by Israeli and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon during the armed conflict that lasted from July 12 until August 14, 2006. This report seeks to answer three central questions: 1) were the Lebanese who died in Israeli air strikes civilians or combatants?; 2) did Israel abide by international humanitarian law (the laws of war) in its attacks in Lebanon?; and 3) to what extent did Hezbollah’s actions contribute to the civilian death toll inside Lebanon? To answer these three questions, Human Rights Watch investigated over 94 separate incidents of IDF air, artillery, and ground attacks that claimed 510 civilian lives and those of 51 Hezbollah combatants, or almost half of the Lebanese deaths in the conflict. The research shows that the primary reason for the high Lebanese civilian death toll was Israel’s frequent failure to abide by a fundamental obligation of the laws of war: the duty to distinguish between military targets, which can be legitimately attacked, and civilians, who are not subject to attack. This was compounded by Israel’s failure to take adequate safeguards to prevent civilian casualties. Continue reading More on Armed Conflict ARMED GROUPS: Côte d’Ivoire’s Forces Nouvelles Chatham House This paper examines Côte d’Ivoire’s rebel movement, looking at what led to its formation in Burkina Faso, how it runs the areas now under its control and how likely it is to disarm. To answer these questions, the paper discusses the reasons for the outbreak of war, focusing on a bitter power struggle between rival politicians after the death of the country’s founding president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in 1993. The power struggle turned ordinary Ivorians against each other and led to mounting protests, military revolts and crackdowns by security forces. Other factors also played important roles in fomenting war, including periodic pay and employment disputes in the army and competition over land in the southwestern cocoa belt. The latest power-sharing arrangement stems from a March 2007 accord signed by both Soro and Gbagbo at Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. It was the seventh peace agreement aiming to end the division of Côte d’Ivoire, and a string of other national unity governments have come and gone during the Ivorian crisis. Will this deal prove any more successful than its predecessors? The Ouagadougou deal offers new ideas on how to resolve a bitter dispute over the nationality of millions of people living in Côte d’Ivoire. Continue reading More on Armed Groups POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION: Why Is Liberal Peace-building So Difficult? Some Lessons from Central America German Institute of Global and Area Studies The termination of war is mostly seen as a basis not just for recovery but for a fundamental transformation or change in development paths towards peace, stability and development. The Central American peace processes of the last decades were one of the first laboratories for the liberal peace-building paradigm which assumes that the threefold transformation to peace, democracy and market economy is a self-strengthening process leading to sustainable development. Although none of the three countries slipped back into war, serious deficits remain. This paper introduces an analytical framework that aims at interrelating the threefold transformation with the impact generated by four processes. These include the repercussions generated by the international system on a country’s society, its historical, cultural and social foundations, the legacies of violence and the peacebuilding initiatives the country concerned has witnessed. The comparative analysis of changes in the public security sector, the political system, conflict resolution and the use of resources show why there is so much path dependency that can explain the deficits of transformation. Continue reading More on Post-Conflict Reconstruction PEACE OPERATIONS: A Critical Analysis of Africa’s Experiments with Hybrid Missions and Security Collaboration Institute for Security Studies From whatever angle one chooses to look at Africa, there is no doubt that the continent faces a multiplicity of ‘old' and ‘new’ security challenges. The interconnected nature of these security challenges has made it particularly difficult for United Nations peacekeeping operations (UNPKOs) to be effective. The nature of peacekeeping in Africa has changed from classical to complex to address emerging challenges. What one can observe is the emergence of greater security cooperation and hybrid arrangements variously involving combinations of both regional and global powers. In situations where they make a difference, hybrid or cooperative arrangements should be welcome. However, they raise some very critical questions, with particular reference to their legitimacy and impact on the continental and global multilateral security architecture. Do such new approaches to PKOs mean that the UN has finally lost its traditional comparative advantage to new actors? Is multilateralism now being sidelined in favour of unilateral hybrid alternatives to global security? Are Africa’s new experiments in cooperative security the future of peacekeeping? If not, what are the alternatives for the continent’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ security challenges? This article attempts to grapple with these questions. Continue reading More on Peace Operations DISPLACEMENT: Iraq: Millions in Flight: The Iraqi Refugee Crisis Amnesty International In July and August 2007 Amnesty International conducted a survey, through its offices worldwide, of responses to the Iraqi refugee crisis by selected countries with developed asylum systems outside the Middle East.8 It also sent delegations to Jordan (March and September 2007) and Syria (June 2007) to assess the humanitarian situation faced by refugees in the region, and the impact this is having on these states. The troubling conclusion is that despite an increasingly critical situation, contributions from other countries aimed at sharing the responsibility of the crisis remain seriously inadequate. This briefing summarizes the findings of Amnesty International’s analysis of the response by the international community, focusing on a number of selected states. It also provides information on the situation in Syria and Jordan, the main host countries for Iraqi refugees. It includes recommendations addressed to the members of the international community that have a responsibility to respond to this crisis, highlighting the need to live up to their burden and responsibility sharing obligations and ease the strain on the countries currently bearing the weight of the crisis. Continue reading More on Displacement GOVERNANCE: State Failure Revisited II: Actors of Violence and Alternative Forms of Governance Institut fuer Entwicklung und Frieden (INEF) / Institute for Development and Peace This paper on warlordism in the “Westphalian Periphery” reconstructs different waves of warlord analysis (European feudalism; China at the beginning of the 20th century; Africa in the 1990s) and evaluates the usefulness of applying related concepts like praetorianism, organized crime, caudillismo, and insurgency. The article challenges the dominant view that warlords are almost exclusively driven by economic interests and instead looks at warlordism as an alternative form of governance in contexts that are defined by “oligopolies of violence”. Under these circumstances, warlords impact state-building and may even allow for the provision of public goods. Driving factors are the warlord’s need to mobilize a minimum degree of legitimacy within local communities or his aspiration to gain control over society. This contribution concludes that international engagement in security sector reform will remain crucial. But it also argues that a clear understanding of all relevant local players, including non-state actors, is necessitated because their relevance will grow as soon as external actors withdraw their personnel and resources. Continue reading More on Governance Compiled by Robert Hartfiel and Christopher Rusko Human Security Research is produced by the Human Security Report Project at the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University. The Human Security Report Project is funded by the governments of Canada, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. For more information on human security visit the Human Security Gateway, an online research and information database that contains a broad range of human security-related resources. To subscribe to Human Security Research, send an email to hsilist@sfu.ca with 'subscribe HS Research' in the subject field, or click here. To unsubscribe, please reply to this message with 'unsubscribe HS Research' in the subject heading. |
|||||||||||||||||
