CIAO DATE: 02/2012
Volume: 1, Issue: 2
March 2010
Security Is More Than "20" Percent (PDF)
Ronald Neumann
Security is only 20 percent of the solution; 80 percent is governance and development." "There is no military solution to insurgency." These and similar statements have rightly refocused counterinsurgency doctrine and popular thinking away from purely military solutions to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet these catchphrases have become substitutes for deeper consideration of the role of security in the current conflicts and in insurgency in general, hiding some important points and leading to assumptions that are an insufficient basis for policy.
Adjusting to Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (PDF)
Robert Hoekstra, Charles Tucker Jr.
Drawing on the lessons learned from coalition interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, by mid-2004, a consensus developed within the executive branch, Congress, and among independent experts that the U.S. Government required a more robust capacity to prevent conflict (when possible) and (when necessary) to manage “Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations [SROs] in countries emerging from conflict or civil strife.”
Leaving the Civilians Behind: The "Soldier-diplomat" in Afghanistan and Iraq (PDF)
Edward Burke
The militarization of aid in conflict zones is now a reality and is likely to increase exponentially in the future. Stability operations are critical to the success of any viable counterinsurgency strategy. Yet in much of Afghanistan and Iraq, civilian officials working alone have proven incapable of successfully distributing and monitoring stabilization funds or implementing associated operations; thus, they have required close cooperation with the military. Many North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries have not adequately addressed deficiencies in models of civil-military cooperation, with severe repercussions for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and some government development agencies complain that the delivery of aid by the military can exacerbate the targeting of civilian aid workers. Highlighting the failure of civilian agencies to cooperate effectively with the military may provide temporary vindication to skeptics within the NGO community, but such criticism does not solve the critical dilemma of how to deliver reconstruction and humanitarian assistance to the most violent parts of Afghanistan and Iraq or other nonpermissive environments.
Organized Crime in Iraq: Strategic Surprise and Lessons for Future Contingencies (PDF)
Phil Williams
After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the United States encountered a series of strategic surprises, including the hostility to the occupation, the fragility of Iraq’s infrastructure, and the fractious nature of Iraqi politics. One of the least spectacular but most significant of these surprises was the rise of organized crime and its emergence as a postconflict spoiler. This development was simply not anticipated. Organized crime in Iraq in the months and years after March 2003 emerged as a major destabilizing influence, increasing the sense of lawlessness and public insecurity, undermining the efforts to regenerate the economy, and financing the violent opposition to he occupation forces. In 2003, the theft of copper from downed electric pylons made the restoration of power to the national grid much more difficult. In 2008, the capacity to generate funds through criminal activities enabled al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to continue resisting both the U.S. military and the Iraqi government. Moreover, with the planned U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, organized crime in the country will continue to flourish by maintaining well established crime-corruption networks. It might also expand by exploiting the continued weakness of the Iraqi state.
Forging a U.S. Policy Toward Fragile States (PDF)
Pauline Baker
Of the many foreign policy challenges of the 21st century, one of the most complex and unpredictable is the problem of fragile and failing states, which often leads to civil war, mass atrocities, economic decline, and destabilization of other countries. The political era stemming from such challenges not only threatens civilians who are in harm’s way, but also endangers international peace. Since the 1990s, such crises have become more prominent on the agendas of the major powers, intergovernmental institutions, humanitarian organizations, and vulnerable states themselves. Indeed, while the number of violent conflicts, particularly interstate wars, declined after the end of the Cold War, the duration and lethality of internal conflicts are rising. Casualty figures are considerably higher when “war deaths” beyond the battlefield and deaths resulting from infrastructure destruction are included. While Iraq and Afghanistan have dominated the public discourse on fragile states, the problem is not confined to these countries or their neighbors. Indeed, it is likely that global trends in civil conflicts will present more, not fewer, challenges to international peace and security, particularly in states where there is a history of instability, demographic pressures, rich mineral resources, questionable political legitimacy, a youth bulge, economic inequality, factionalized elites, and deep-seated group grievances.
State Fragility as a Wicked Problem (PDF)
Kenneth Menkhaus
How we conceive of the condition of state fragility is critical to our ability to fashion effective strategies in response. To date, our efforts to define, categorize, measure, interpret, and predict state fragility have been at best partial successes. As with many important political concepts, state fragility is maddeningly difficult to pin down, all the more so because on the surface it appears to be so self-evident (and solvable) a syndrome. In reality, the notion of state fragility constitutes a complex cocktail of causes and effects, a syndrome that has proven largely impervious to quick, template-driven external solutions.
Lessons from Liberia's Success: Thoughts on Leadership, the Process of Peace, Security, and Justice (PDF)
John Blaney
The ending in 2003 of the 14-year civil war in Liberia and the subsequent progress made there is a 21st-century success story not only for Liberians, but also for Africa, the United Nations (UN), the United States, and many others. Over 50,000 people lost their lives during this struggle, with great suffering endured elsewhere in West Africa as well. economically and socially, the country of Liberia, historically long renowned as sub-Saharan Africa's shining
example, was decimated by this conflict and by rampant mismanagement and corruption. Today, Liberia still has serious problems, but under the leadership of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, impressive progress continues. There is stability, basic living standards are up, children go to school, development assistance projects blossom from many quarters, new Liberian security institutions are matriculating, and even private sector investment is responding with additional badly needed jobs. How was Liberia afforded the priceless opportunity of becoming one of the greatest turnaround stories of the
21st century?
Complex Operations in Weak and Failing States: The Sudan Rebel Perspective (PDF)
William Reno
The U.S. Government provides a comprehensive plan for civilian-military efforts in failing states aimed at showing citizens that their own governments can protect them. The object is to weaken any appeal that rebels might develop among these populations. In Sudan, which ranks third in a prominent index of failed states, this effort entails U.S. coordination of humanitarian aid, the provision of basic social services, and help to improve governmental function. This latest effort, part of the implementation of a 2005 peace agreement between a rebel army and Sudan’s government, is part of an intensive 20-year official engagement with this country and its conflicts.
Not in Our Image: The Challenges of Effective Peace-Building (PDF)
James Stephenson, Richard McCall, Alexandra Simonians
The international community was thoroughly unprepared to respond effectively to new post–Cold War challenges, which included the appearance of complex emergencies, many of which revealed ethnic, religious, cultural, or nationalistic faultlines. These lines have been manipulated in many cases by state and/or nonstate actors and have led to the unraveling of many states, a large number of which were former superpower clients. What remained were hollow entities—states with few attributes of nationhood, especially the institutional underpinnings of legitimate governance, the foundation upon which viable nation-states are based.
Building a Civilian Lessons Learned System (PDF)
Bernard Carreau, Melanne Civic
In addition to the problems of building and maintaining an effective civilian presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the matter of developing institutional knowledge in the civilian agencies—what works and what does not work in the field. The task is all the more daunting because civilian agencies do not have a core mission to maintain expertise in stabilizing war-torn countries, particularly those experiencing major counterinsurgency and counterterrorist operations. Yet the Department of State, U.S. Agency for International Development, Departments of Agriculture, Justice, Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Transportation, Energy, and other agencies have been sending personnel to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fragile states for several years now. The agencies have relied on a combination of direct hires, temporary hires, and contractors, but nearly all of them have been plagued by relatively short tours and rapid turnarounds, making it difficult to establish enduring relationships on the ground and institutional knowledge in the agencies. The constant coming and going of personnel has led to the refrain heard more and more frequently that the United States has not been fighting the war in Afghanistan for 8 years, but rather for just 1 year, eight times in a row.
The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (PDF)
Melanne Civic
“It has taken a desperately long time for the idea to take hold that mass atrocities are the world’s business: that they cannot be universally ignored and that sovereignty is not a license to kill” (p. 11). Gareth Evans opens his book with this condemnation of the international community’s decades of practical indifference to gross and systematic human rights abuses in its wide range of manifestations. Evans, a former Australian state minister, had more than 20 years in government service behind him and was just starting nearly a decade of public interest service as president and chief executive officer of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based nongovernmental organization, when he was appointed to co-chair the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The commission produced a report that outlines the responsibility to protect (R2P) concept.
Stuart Bowen, Jr.
A cursory glance at the foreign policy section in your local bookstore would reveal many volumes of output and analyses generated over the past few years by the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. Selections vary from wide-ranging strategic reviews to gripping accounts of the houseto-house fighting that occurred in places like Fallujah and Sadr City. However, until 2009, no one had produced a comprehensive analytical study of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA’s) occupation of Iraq, when it operated as the country’s de jure and de facto government from early May 2003 to the end of June 2004. Stuart w. Bowen, Jr., is the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. By James Dobbins et al. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2009 75 pp. $40.00
ISBN–13: 978–0–83304–715–1
Occupying Iraq: A History
of the Coalition Provisional
Authority
Book Reviews
REVIEwED By STUART w. BowEN, JR.
Ambassador James Dobbins, the leading authority on overseas contingencies, and his coauthors
have filled this reportorial gap with this landmark work, which will stand as an authoritative
history of the CPA for years to come.