Examination of Witnesses (Questions 209
- 219)
WEDNESDAY 10 MAY 2006
DR NEIL
COOPER, PROFESSOR
MIKE PUGH
AND DR
JONATHAN GOODHAND
Q209 Chairman:
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming in and
agreeing to give evidence to us. As you will be aware, the Committee
is conducting an inquiry to produce a report on peacebuilding
and post-conflict reconstruction. We have had a debate about conflict
prevention, but that is where we are focusing. Obviously, we have
publications where you have given your views, which are very helpful
to us. I think what we hope we can do at the end of this is make
some constructive suggestions from the different strands as to
how in a post-conflict situation we might prevent it from falling
back and build a successful peace, which is easy to say and not
so easy to bring about. Perhaps, just to start—and I am
addressing this to Bradford University, but please all feel free
to answer—one of the things that you stress, which seems
perfectly reasonable and I think even from the evidence we have
taken so far we are aware of, is the regional dimension to all
this. There is a tendency to say that there is a problem in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) or there is a problem in
Rwanda, or whatever it may be, when in reality the problem is
in the region and there is a lot of cross-border activity. You
are saying that really we need to have a regional approach, a
regional solution, but how could you actually do this in practice;
how can you take this forward, do you have some clear ideas? I
have read your analysis but I am not entirely sure of the prescription.
Professor Pugh: Each context is
different, clearly, but in some contexts it may be possible to
bring the various parties, including the neighbouring countries,
to the table, as has been attempted with the DRC in the Sun City
process, for example. This may be a very tall order in some circumstances
because the hostilities between various parties may not make it
possible. I think the main aim really is to get the external actors,
in this case the British Government departments, involved, to
think more regionally, actually to recognise that there are regional
dimensions to many of these conflicts, and that it is a bit short-sighted
to consider the conflicts as simply being contained within a particular
state because, as you say, there is a lot of cross-border activity
and we are seeing that in the DRC, we have seen it in the DRC.
Thinking in a regional way is something which needs to be pursued.
I would make a kind of not a model but a recommendation to look
at how the EU operates in its particular circumstances, and obviously
they are quite different, but in the circumstances of south-east
Europe I think the EU has made some really quite interesting initiatives,
but I can talk about that subsequently.
Dr Cooper: Basically I think to
reiterate the point that part of it is about having a mental map
of a conflict, or a post-conflict society, which includes that
regional dimension. Obviously, because we live in a very statist
system and states operate in relation to other states a lot of
the time, that mental map simply is not there. I think it is important
to be sensitive to the regional dimensions of both the conflict
and the post-conflict situations, so that you are in a position
to take advantage of opportunities to develop regional levels
of co-operation to address specific issues or a set of issues.
For instance, if you look at Sierra Leone and the diamond sector
in Sierra Leone, whilst there have been certain successes, post-conflict,
in addressing governance issues in Sierra Leone, it seems to me
that you cannot look at the diamond sector in Sierra Leone without
taking a regional perspective and looking at what is happening
at the moment in Liberia and Co®te d'Ivoire and relationships
with Guinea. To some extent, that is going on and I think certainly
DFID on the ground is acutely aware of that, but I think also
there are areas where you could argue that it would be pushed
even further.
Dr Goodhand: I want to talk about
an experience I had recently, which was leading a conflict assessment
in Sri Lanka, funded by the British, the Swedes, the Dutch and
the World Bank. One of the key things which came out of that,
and it was an analysis of the peace process over the last five
years, was the over-internationalisation of that process and that
internationalisation actually led to a kind of allergic reaction
in Sri Lankan society, a reaction against the perception that
sovereignty was being eroded, particularly from some of the spoilers,
some of the nationalist groups in the south. Based on that analysis,
we argued that there was a need to think more about regionalising
the peace process. In particular, the role of India comes out
very critically and it has been a point of continuity for many
years, it is not an introverted civil war, there is a strong regional
dimension. The role of India as a potential peace-maker, with
potentially quite a lot of leverage I think was something that
we argued strongly for, and it had a comparative advantage because
it did not lead to the same type of reaction within Sri Lankan
society. For instance, Marxist groups in India could have a dialogue
with the JVP[1],
the Marxist nationalists in Sri Lanka, who were very much opposed
to the peace process. There is a range of other things which could
be explored, for instance, looking at regional models of governance
and development, rather than pushing what was perceived, at least
in Sri Lanka, as a very neo-liberal kind of agenda. There are
a number of practical things, in that particular case, which one
could have done, if one looked at it in a more regional way.
Q210 Chairman:
You mentioned diamonds in the context of Sierra Leone but I was
interested to see that the export of diamonds from Rwanda and
Uganda rose as the conflict rose in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, in spite of the fact that neither of those countries
has any diamond production. Did not anybody ask any questions?
You commented on the Balkans. I happened to be involved in a conference
with Balkan parliamentarians a couple of week ago and a point
being made was that before the collapse of the previous regime,
effectively, there were two countries in the Balkans and now probably
we are about to have ten. You mentioned the EU, and there was
a sense of preparing for accession to the EU, but that created
a negative response, "We're only doing this to please the
EU," and many of us were trying to say, "Actually, I
hope you're doing it for your own well-being." In other words,
forget the EU is there. Kosovo can be independent tomorrow and
yet it will also still be totally dependent on its neighbours.
What concerns me is the extent to which external forces, whether
it is, in that context, the EU or the African Union (AU) or DFID,
which has an engagement in African countries, or Sri Lanka, can
actually impose that sort of regional dimension, as opposed to
it growing organically, and how we can help it to happen. The
two questions are: were we not complicit and just accepted what
was going on in DRC; secondly, how do we create a regional solution
without appearing to be imposing external forces?
Dr Cooper: On the first question,
did not anybody ask any questions, certainly I have been asking
exactly that question for quite some time and I think a number
of NGOs, like Global Witness, have been raising these issues.
It is not an issue which I think has just had traction with the
Government and with key external actors. It has meant that in
some ways now we have got quite an odd sanctions regime around
conflict diamonds, in that you have a situation at the moment
where Liberia is still under sanction, although it is still firmly
at peace, but, as you say, Uganda and Rwanda have never experienced
any sanctions whatsoever.
Q211 Chairman:
Is that because they are the aid community sweethearts, or at
least the Government?
Dr Cooper: That is the obvious
explanation, that they are the aid community sweethearts, and
I guess there is a difficult balancing act to be made here, to
be fair, that you have got to look at not just one particular
dimension of your relationships with a country, and DFID and the
Government are involved in balancing a whole set of criteria.
What it has meant, in this particular case at least, is that it
has led to certain anomalies, in terms of the kind of overall
sanctions regimes on conflict diamonds.
Professor Pugh: On south-east
Europe, I think that is an interesting point of view, because
it challenges the apparent orthodoxy, which is that everybody
politically, certainly in Bosnia, is in favour of signing up to
the EU as soon as possible.
Q212 Chairman:
Not everybody I spoke to.
Professor Pugh: This is interesting.
Certainly the former Office of the High Representative (OHR) thinks
that this is a vision which is dragging everybody along. I think
one of the points to make is that the illicit economy, the shadow
economy, in its various forms, is not statist and in fact is regional,
and that operates often without regard to ethnic cleavages and
state divisions and there is a lot of co-operation in the illicit
economy, so you do have regional activity going on. There are
politicians who think that, provided you do not recreate the old
Yugoslav free trade area, actually a free trade area is going
to come about eventually and all it needs is formalisation. Not
only do they have free trade agreements with each other but also
they are engaged with the Central European Free Trade Area. In
some respects, you could argue that a local evolution towards
a customs union, for example, is more achievable than the singularity
of bilateral accession to the EU, which, in a way, is divisive
anyway. One of the things which puzzle me is the extent to which
the attempt by the EU to get the local actors to develop economically
together is countering or an obstacle to bilateral accession,
because it is not clear to me whether one is expected to proceed
to the other, or indeed whether bilateral accession is supposed
to be conditional on regional integration. I think that is something
which the EU needs to work out in much greater detail.
Q213 Richard Burden:
Could we explore a little bit more perhaps what you mean when
you talk about regional conflict complexes; to some extent that
is what you have been talking about so far. I am still not entirely
clear whether you are constructing that as a model or you are
saying actually there is far too much preoccupation just to swap
over to a statist model, or, in the case of Sri Lanka, an over-internationalist
response, so whether it is a kind of warning shot, saying do not
make assumptions, every situation is different and there is probably
going to be a regional dimension to it. That is fine, if that
is what it is saying; whether you are saying that plus and there
are certain characteristics of regional dimensions which can be
fairly common across different situations. Which of those is it,
or is it a combination of the two?
Professor Pugh: I think part of
the answer is going to be a rather theoretical one, I am afraid,
that in international relations theory there is a well-established
methodology for looking at regional complexes. Certainly I think,
and I do not know whether the other two would agree with me here,
that you could apply that also to regional conflict complexes.
In fact, I have got a student who is currently mapping regional
conflict complexes to try to give it a stronger basis in theory
and also to develop a typology. I suppose my end answer is going
to be that it needs more research. There is a theoretical basis
for regional political activity and there seems to me no reason
why that could not also be applied to conflict complexes. Secondly,
in answer to the other part of your question, there are elements
which conflict complexes seem to have in common and these are
economic interactions, political interactions, social interactions
and military interactions. If I take just one of those, the military
interactions can range from arms smuggling and armaments which
circulate around a region from one hot spot to another, to mercenary
activity, for instance, where mercenaries who have been engaged
in one conflict, that conflict simmers down, for whatever reason,
and they move on to the next one and it kind of perpetuates conflict
within the region.
Dr Cooper: Just to illustrate
that point, West Africa and the Mano River Union sub-region is
a perfect example of that mercenary activity. What you have had
is that a group of mercenaries have moved around from conflict
to conflict and have been part of the problem. It seems to me
that simply launching nationally-based DDR[2]
programmes does not address that problem totally. At some level
you need a regional focus to think through the fact that you have
got this group of actors who are moving across borders, and who
are not the only reason which is bringing about conflicts but
they are part of a set of factors which are facilitating the next
conflict which is going to happen next-door. On this issue of
regional conflict formations more generally, I do not think we
are saying that the regional conflict formation perspective necessarily
offers a superior level of explanation than, say, taking a state
perspective, or indeed a global perspective. What I think we are
arguing is that you need to do all three and I think, traditionally,
that regional perspective has been underemphasised, at least,
in the past.
Q214 Richard Burden:
I understand what you are saying there, but when to refer to region,
this may be me just being a bit of a pedant about terminology,
is there a danger, in what you are saying, that there it could
actually lead to a fairly externally-imposed or oversimplified
view of what a region is, that people decide, "Well, actually,
we now need to have a regional perspective on this"? Whereas,
actually, half the time there will not be a consensus on what
the region actually is. Okay, Great Lakes, you could say there
is an issue about that. If you looked up the situation in, say,
Darfur, Sudan, and so on, certainly a purely statist view is not
appropriate, but if you said you needed a regional perspective,
what is the region? Is that fair?
Dr Goodhand: This is a sort of
classic problem in the area I am looking at now, which is the
case of Afghanistan. There is theoretical literature which disagrees
on this and what are the outer borders of this conflict system.
In fact, it merges with two conflict systems, the South Caucuses
and the Central Asia conflict systems actually touch on each other.
It is a problem. Also, it is dynamic, it is changing constantly.
Tajikistan, the conflict there has been addressed somewhat and
so it is less part of that system now, that Pakistan is becoming
much more of an issue, but I do not think because it is difficult
to map. The three comparative studies we have been looking at
show there are a number of common characteristics which are unique
to regional, transnational flows and resources, and if you do
not look at them in those terms you are going to miss something.
Q215 John Battle:
In your paper[3],
I was incredibly struck by two phrases; was it, the narcissism
of minor difference, that you have got almost like warring tribes
or different faith groups and then you have to try to do intense
work to get them to talk to each other. There was another phrase,
the narcissism of gratuitous violence, and I am not quite sure
whether it is the minor differences within a territory or it is
gratuitous violence which is stronger. I am getting a slight impression;
are there people, particularly in Africa, who inhabit the shadows
of the borderlands, in gangs, I think one of the phrases in the
paper was that there were dope fiends and pot heads, I think it
was, "pot heads, dope fiends, the mad and the bad."
Are we dealing with that; is that the majority of the problem,
or is it minor differences which become built into such regional
differences and nationalistic differences that we have much more
work to do on the ground attending to the detail of that, rather
than saying it is psychopaths really? Are the psychopaths a big
problem?
Dr Cooper: No, and in fact the
paper, when it was using those terms, was using them to illustrate
an argument which then we were trying to demolish, to a certain
extent. I think our position is that this representation of war
economies in conflict zones as zones of anarchy, populated by
barbaric actors who are endemically criminal, is problematic,
that now there is quite a lot of political economy literature
which demonstrates that actually a lot of actors in conflict zones
are acting fairly rationally. You have got different sets of actors
as well within the political economy. The kind of topology that
we come up with is one where, for instance, and it is not the
only one you could come up with, you can distinguish between a
sort of warlord economy, which directly fuels military activity,
and then you have got a kind of mafia economy, which is one which
is criminal and may well involve collaboration with the warlords
but is geared more towards profit-making. Then you may have a
coping economy where you have ordinary folk, who are simply trying
to get by, in the middle of a conflict, but nevertheless engaging
in some sort of shadow economic activity, which in and of itself,
in some way, may be supporting the war economy. I think it is
important to make those conceptual distinctions and to try to
think through—which is the harder task—how that might
have implications for policy-making during conflict and after
conflict.
Q216 Mr Hunt:
With the greatest respect to your scholarship, I wonder if I could
challenge you just a little bit, because it does seem to me that
Africa is full of people who are very good at analysing the problem,
but what I am really interested in is alternative suggestions
as to what could actually be done. It seems to me that you are
saying one of two things. You are saying there is a regional element
to conflicts, which at one level is so banal I do not think you
would find anyone who would disagree with that, and certainly
no-one in DFID, and certainly no-one in DFID for the last 20,
30 years would disagree with that, so I think we can all accept
that. This business of the difference between the statist model
and the regional conflict complex, the reason that we have a statist
model, if we call it that, is because states are all we have to
deal with; they are pretty fragile. There are no sub-regional
organisations with any power or influence that one could deal
with as an alternative to that. To take an example, for instance,
Rwanda 1994, the Congo has clearly suffered from the Interahamwe,
who went across the border, and that has caused huge instability
in the Congo. There is very little differently, it seems to me,
that DFID or the UK Government could have done except to deal
with Rwanda in the way we did; we did not have a state to deal
with in the Congo, we still hardly have a state to deal with in
the Congo. I understand you saying, although, I must admit, it
does not give me great enthusiasm, that we need to think differently
about the problems, but what do we need to do differently about
the problems?
Dr Cooper: You are absolutely
right, this is a statist system that we are living and working
in and so, at some level, inevitably one gets into a position
where policy has to be directed at state actors and through statist
institutions. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are opportunities
there for promoting regional-level initiatives, where it is possible,
and actually having that regional dimension informing both the
policy that you are pursuing at the state level and at the global
level.
Q217 Mr Hunt:
With respect, is not that exactly what Hilary Benn has just been
doing in Abuja? I think he spends his whole time trying to get
countries to talk to each other. I have absolutely no doubt that
he will be talking to Rwanda to tell them that they need to help
attract back the Interahamwe, so that becomes a Rwandan problem,
not a Congolese problem. I am just not really sure what he should
be doing differently, on the basis of your analysis?
Dr Cooper: If I concretise it,
in terms of Sierra Leone and Kimberley, which is the issue with
which I am more familiar. One of the things which I think it is
important to do at the moment, with respect to the Mano River
sub-region, is that you have a situation where Liberia is currently
under sanction on diamonds and what is holding up the lifting
of those sanctions is the preparation to get it compliant with
the Kimberley system. At the moment in Sierra Leone, at the same
time what you have is a lot of people lauding the success of the
Kimberley certification system and how it has been operating in
Sierra Leone, and you have got these statistics showing the rise
and rise and rise of official exports from Sierra Leone. It seems
to me that actually there are a number of factors which explain
that rise in official export statistics which are not down just
to the operation of Kimberley, and one of those factors is the
operation of the regional political economy. What you have is
a regional political economy at the moment which is actually conducive
to the import of diamonds into Sierra Leone. You have an embargo
on Liberia, so there is incentive for actors in Liberia to put
diamonds through to Sierra Leone. You have an embargo in Co®te
d'Ivoire, so most of the diamonds probably are not going into
Sierra Leone from Co®te d'Ivoire but some of them will leak
in there as well. This raises a question, therefore, about what
you do now with Liberia. You have an opportunity here to address
the political economy dynamics, which are going to change when
the Liberian embargo gets lifted, how that is going to change
the political economy, the incentives for people to move diamonds
through the official export system in Sierra Leone. It seems to
me that what the externals should be doing is using this opportunity
to push through a regional dimension on the regulation and taxation
of diamond exports, so that you do not get into a sort of beggar
thy neighbour situation, which is a potential risk at the moment.
To give you just one example, a short while ago in Sierra Leone
the Government threatened to raise export taxes on local exporters,
and they did not actually do it but even the mere threat of the
fact that they were going to do it led to a significant rise in
official exports from Guinea. That is the kind of regional perspective
which needs to be operated and those are the kinds of ways in
which, in practical terms, you need to think through how you can
make a difference.
Professor Pugh: Given that one
of the main problems about this kind of regional conflict phenomenon
is displacement, in fact you may stop illicit resource exploitation
in one area and it just gets displaced to somewhere else. It seems
to me that one of the things which needs to be looked at is how
one can create incentives to restructure the trafficking and either
eliminate it and regulate it or replace it with something legal.
To give you a concrete example, again it seems to me, and I agree
with Neil's response to your question about the thugs and drugs
idea being very problematic, that the opportunists who take advantage
of these situations often make use of differential tax and duty
rates, and so building some kind of attempt to harmonise tax rates
and duties, and that kind of thing, would be a positive step.
Dr Cooper: Just to pick up on
the displacement point as well, I think another thing which comes
from taking a regional analysis is that it can encourage you to
think through the consequences of a state-based policy. I think
sometimes there is a tendency on the part of externals to think
through, "Right, we've initiated one policy, and that's the
policy and that's it," and not think through how local actors
on the ground are going to react to that policy and adapt to that
policy. One needs to be thinking ahead of the game and thinking,
"Well, what is going to happen if we adopt policy X in state
Y?" and very often the answer will be that it may produce
some form of displacement within the broader region, and so you
need to be ahead of the game and thinking about that all the time.
Dr Goodhand: Just to back that
up, there is this thing about the opportunity costs of not thinking
and acting regionally and developing policy in those terms. One
can argue, for instance, the Bonn Agreement, there was not enough
consideration of regional factors. Just one example was refugee
return to Afghanistan and there were two million refugees returned
in the first year, which caused all sorts of issues around money
being diverted for humanitarian rather than for reconstruction
needs. Not thinking sufficiently about what was happening in one
country and how incentives lead to effects in another country.
There is a long history of this, in terms of drugs; eradication
of drugs in Pakistan in the 1980s was one of the driving factors
which led to the growth of the opium economy in Afghanistan. My
observation of development donors working in and on Afghanistan
is that they do not talk enough of what their country does in
Pakistan; they really are very country-centric in the way they
develop policies.
Q218 John Barrett:
To follow up that point, is one of the reasons why the actions
they are taking can be so country-centric, rather than regional-centric,
that the donors actually have long-term, post-colonial links to
individual countries and that what is needed in fact is better
co-ordination between donors, whether it is Liberia and Sierra
Leone or the Sudan and Chad? We have got to think from a donor's
perspective, and maybe through DFID, that rather than concentrating
on that country with which we have had the long-established link
let us look on a regional basis and get together with donors who
maybe have stronger links with other countries in that same region
and make sure that developments do not happen on a state basis,
that they can be then co-ordinated?
Professor Pugh: Yes, I could not
agree more. I think that is a really important point.
Q219 John Barrett:
Do you think there are actions that DFID or the Government here
should be taking with other donors, to make sure that we can learn
from mistakes in the past and move things on in the future?
Professor Pugh: I think that is
certainly the case and I am sure Jonathan has got good examples
from Afghanistan of how this competition between donors on this
is counterproductive. Also, if I can come back to the EU, which
is perhaps the most advanced regionalisation policy available
to us, the CARDS system which applies to south-east Europe, of
that money which is spent on post-conflict reconstruction, or
has been spent, only 10% goes towards fostering regional co-operation
and interregional economic activity. The rest, the other 90%,
goes to each specific country, individually. I think that the
emphasis could be adjusted so that there is more weight in the
donor community towards funding, for example, transport or infrastructure
projects, which would tie them closer together. There is also
an issue to do with borderlands, which we think are really important.
One of the things about borderlands is that often they are dismissed
as being beyond the scope of central government and therefore
out of control, they are the site of illegal activity, it is where
refugees are, it is marginalised, and so on. If one could try
to think of ways in which those borderlands could be more productive,
ways in which border-lands could actually open up opportunities
for more legal activity between countries then that would be thinking
in a much more positive way than we do at the moment about borderlands.
Dr Goodhand: One should not forget
that regional donors are actually quite significant, as well as
international donors, and the role of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey,
they are significant actors economically in Afghanistan. There
are two practical things one could think about, to bring in this
regional perspective. One is regional conflict assessments, to
try to do assessments which are regionally informed; secondly,
developing regional specialisms. My observation of aid donors
in Afghanistan is that they are around for six months to one year,
the individuals, and they are recycling all the time, so there
is not really any deep, regional expertise being developed. One
of the implications of taking regional perspective seriously,
unless you are doing something about it, is developing the expertise
in-house, so, if you are transferring people, transfer them within
the region so they develop a level of expertise and engagement
within the region.
1 Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) (People's Liberation
Front). Back
2
Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration. Back
3
"Peaceful warriors and warring peacemakers", The
Economics of Peace and Security Journal, Vol 1, No 1 (2006);
See also references to the narcissism of minor difference in:
Neil Cooper, Michael Pugh and Jonathan Goodhand, War Economies
in a Regional Context (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2005) and
Michael Ignatieff, "The Narcissism of Minor Difference",
Warrior's Honour: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience,
New York: Henry Holt, 1997, pp 34-71. Back
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