Examination of Witnesses (Questions 98
- 99)
THURSDAY 27 APRIL 2006
PROFESSOR PAUL
COLLIER
Q98 Chairman:
Good afternoon, Professor Collier. Thank you very much for coming
to give evidence. As you will know, this is part of an inquiry
into conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. The
Committee has read with interest your papers[1]
and interesting theories and would like to explore with you how
they can be applied in ways that might effectively reduce, eliminate
and end conflict. You make a number of fairly definitive statements.
I pick out things like "doubling the level of income halves
the risk of conflicts", which is a straight economic correlation.
You also argue that greed and the availability of what might be
described as "lootable" or easily obtainable resources
is a major cause of conflict. Perhaps I may start with that. To
what extent do you think that the availability of easily accessible
resources either stimulates or sustains conflicts? I imagine that
establishing that determines what one does about it thereafter.
Professor Collier: I think that
the effect of big resource revenues is broader than greed. Greed
is one crude factor, which is clearly present sometimes. To interpret
what happened in Sierra Leone, it is helpful to realise that some
of the rebels wanted to get their hands on diamond money, but
the effect is much broader than that. The broader effect is probably
the sheer feasibility of conflict. These rebellions typically
go on for a long time, so basically one has to sustain a full-time
army of several thousand people for several years. The economics
of rebellion look totally different from the economics of protest.
For protest one just needs a lot of people on the streets for
a couple of days. To run a rebellion one needs thousands of people
to be paid, fed and armed, so one must have money. It does not
mean that one is doing it for the money but one needs a lot of
it. In most situations there is just not that much money around.
Big resources are one way of making rebellions more feasible.
I have come to believe that the actual agenda of the rebellion
can be anything on earth. Once it is feasible probably some organisation
will occupy that niche of feasibility and the motivation that
it proclaims or has could be anything. They could be nutters;
a lot of rebel leaders and groups are. The motivations evolve
over time. Organisations like the FARC[2]
in Colombia started in the thirties basically as a poor peasants'
uprising and protest against inequality and it evolved over time
into a big drug barony. One can see why. There was a lot of money
to be made in drugs, so the people who were attracted to it were
those who liked violence and money and gradually they took over
the organisation. One mechanism is greed and another is the finance
that makes these things feasible. Some of the routes to finance
are pretty grim. For example, it is believed that ELF, the beloved
French company which makes everybody else look very honest, pump-primed
the rebellion in the Congo to the tune of about $150 million to
oust the guy who had been elected democratically to fight his
way back to the presidency undemocratically. The quid pro quo
was a lot of cheap oil for La France, from which the Congo
is now suffering.
Q99 Chairman:
Are you saying that the prime cause of that conflict was external
intervention rather than internal stimulation?
Professor Collier: One had an
organised rebellion around the former president who wanted to
fight his way back against a democratic government. That organisation
was certainly helped by big finance which made it feasible for
it to win the civil war. We know from where that big finance came
and what the quid pro quo was for that finance. The feasibility
of UNITA[3]
was not pump-priming finance like that but the fact that during
the course of the conflict it was getting big revenues from diamonds.
Obviously, that was how it kept an army of over 100,000 for many
years. A third set of problems is that the governments of resource-rich
countries do not need to tax and so do not need to listen to their
populations and thus become detached from them. The governments
in these environments, therefore, are probably distinctly bad.
It does not make the rebels any better but it makes the level
of disaffection higher.
1 Ian Bannon & Paul Collier, Chapter 1, Natural
Resources and Violent Conflict: Options and Actions, World Bank,
2003. Back
2
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) (Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army). Back
3
Unia¯o Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola
(UNITA) (National Union for Total Independence of Angola). Back
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