Foreign Affairs CommitteeWritten evidence from Professor Alice Hills, School of Government and International Studies, Durham University

Summary

This submission addresses the UK’s ability to achieve its long-term policy goals of building inclusive democracies, strengthening the rule of law and tackling extremism in West Africa. Based on the UK’s record of providing assistance and support to police forces in Anglophone countries such as Nigeria, it finds that:

Current goals are neither realistic nor achievable.

The UK’s ability to influence fundamentally the African police forces expected to identify signs of extremism, manage political instability and address development-related challenges is minimal. The recipients of UK projects typically welcome technical assistance on operational issues such as cyber-crime, but accept development-oriented projects only because of the resources they represent. The impact of UK projects is at best local, superficial and temporary.

Tensions exist between technical assistance designed to improve operational capacity and political goals such as building inclusive democracies. Even so, the UK’s short-to medium-term interests are best served by projects promoted in terms of professional knowledge (as in “modern” policing) and material interests (eg management skills), rather than norms and values, important aspects of which clash with the region’s police cultures and political interests.

The UK’s miscellaneous and ad hoc approach to the international deployment of UK police officers has limited its influence on UN- and international projects in the region. The Stabilisation Unit and ACPO International should address international deployment strategically and systematically, and the appointment of police attaches should be considered.

The UK over-estimates the contribution of transnational organised crime—or, more accurately, illicit business—to regional instability. The result of such activities may be problematic for the UK and EU member states, but it is not a major issue in West Africa where trafficking is a business opportunity, rather than a source of instability.

A more realistic assessment of what the UK can or cannot change should be developed.

Author

Alice Hills is professor of conflict studies at Durham University where she specialises in the evolution of police forces and what explains their interaction with governments, militaries and societies in sub-Saharan Africa. She has published extensively on the Nigeria Police Force (including its management of metropolitan Kano) and on Somalia’s three regional police forces and their assessment of stabilisation and development. She was a founder member of the UNDPKO’s International Police Advisory Council (2006-) and the civilian police expert responsible for assessing the UNDP’s Rule of Law Programme in Somalia (2011).

Factual information

1. I cannot comment on the effectiveness of the UK’s diplomatic resources or co-operation with France and other Western allies, but I suggest that the UK’s assistance and education projects to the region’s Anglophone police forces offer insight into what can realistically be achieved vis-à-vis extremism and political instability. This submission therefore focuses on police-related issues.

2. The UK has for some years used police assistance and reform as a tool for achieving its long-term goals of building inclusive democracies based on the rule of law and, increasingly, tackling extremism in West Africa. Between 2002 and 2009 alone, some £37 million was channelled to reforming or improving the security and justice sector of Nigeria, a key anchor state for UK policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the Inquiry is not looking specifically at such programmes, their results are indicative of the challenges the UK will face if it seeks to become more deeply involved in the region.

3. Despite decades of international support for police capacity building and re-education, there is little evidence to support the assumption that the skills, technologies and procedures associated with Western policing can act as an effective channel for the transmission of democratic values. For example, the UK has provided assistance and support to Nigeria, the regional hegemon, over five decades. Yet despite being one of Nigeria’s major creditors, and despite the significant sums of Nigerian money held in London’s banks, the UK seems to have limited leverage to change Nigeria’s corrupt, repressive and ineffective policing practices.1

4. Skills transfer is a relatively straightforward process, and recipients always find offers of technical assistance and equipment more attractive than projects promoting values such as accountability and equality. In 2009, for example, Nigeria’s police accepted British support for projects promoting the notion of service, but it is probable that North Korea’s offer of training in unarmed combat, and the provision by the French national police of a training course on cyber-crime in the same year were more welcome.

5. It is noteworthy that the most successful police projects are practical, small scale and focused on what officers or local people want today, rather than in an ideal future. What police want can be seen from the value mid-ranking Nigerian officers operating in the Delta region attach to attendance at the European Gendarmerie Force’s headquarters in Vincenza, Italy. Similarly, the British Council’s Maigatari project in northern Nigeria’s Jigawa State provided security patrols at Africa’s largest livestock market with the observation towers and binoculars needed to protect traders carrying large sums of cash.2 The project also had the potential to increase security by providing information about movement in a strategically significant area towards the Niger border. Indeed, the Maigatari project is an excellent example of the improvements that can take place when the UK works with local communities, government representatives, civil society and the private sector to address practical problems. But even successful projects must be followed up or their impact is temporary.

6. This suggests that the UK needs to reassess its goals, assumptions and time frame. Addressing structural violence and injustice may be necessary for enhancing a society’s long-term capacity to reduce or prevent inequality or extremism, but most people want immediate results to today’s security problems. Hence the popularity in Nigeria of paramilitary-style police operations targeting armed robbers.3 Hence too the lynching by local people of a suicide bomber targeting the Emir of Kano’s mosque on 17 April 2013.

7. The UK focuses more on the perceived value of what is being transmitted than the way in which it is received. In contrast, recipients filter security-related training and resources through local interests and dispositions, and even when the process of change and/or reform is accepted, the political will required to ensure its effective implementation is not. The real reason why elites publicly welcome many reforms (eg community policing) is that it does not affect their lifestyle. This will matter if, as seems probable, certain politicians extract personal or political advantage from the crime and extremism that the UK wishes to address.

8. The UK’s wish to transform the way the region’s police do business is further limited by there being five Anglophone states in West Africa (Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and, arguably, Liberia) but nine Francophone countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Togo) in which UK-style security sector reform has little traction. Anglophone and Francophone countries follow different police philosophies and practices regarding, for example, police-military relations, bureaucratic structures, and terminology. The existence of Lusophone Cape Verde, Guinéa-Bissau and São Tomé & Príncipe adds an additional complication.

9. The UK’s influence is further limited by its neglect of UN- and international policing. It has distanced itself from UN policing and the work of the UNDPKO police division, its contribution to the UN’s West Coast Initiative is minimal, and its overall contribution to UN policing in the region is to all intents and purposes non-existent.

10. The Stabilisation Unit and ACPO International have yet to address the issue of UK international deployment strategically or systematically. Although the creation of a UK career structure incorporating (or encouraging) overseas deployment is unlikely, other measures should be considered. The appointment of police attaches deserves serious consideration.

11. It is usual to claim that gangsterism and crime contribute to regional instability, but this is debatable for four main reasons:

Although the UK is concerned by West Africa’s role as a transit point for illicit drugs intended for EU member states, its fears are not shared in the region where trafficking is seen as a business opportunity, rather than a source of instability.

Contrary to the Stabilisation Unit’s definition, stability has more to do with predictability than democratisation. Its meaning is better conveyed by Herman Kahn, an American Cold War analyst who defined stability as a situation when “stresses or shocks do not tend to produce large, irreversible changes. This does not mean the system does not react when subjected to stress or shock … Stability means that the reaction is one of a limited, and perhaps predictable nature and that the changes are not reversible or lead to a new balance not essentially different from the original”.4 Understood in this sense, “crime” supports, rather than undermines regional stability, and is a source of profit to the region’s power brokers.

There is a long-running debate as to whether Africa has been criminalised or has in fact developed an alternative approach to governance. The evidence suggests many in the region pursue rationalities and causalities that cannot be easily aligned with those of the UK.

Regional co-operation means little when the most serious security threats affecting West Africa’s political elites are internal (eg coups). Consequently, threat perception is locationand person specific, and coherence is to be found in personal relationships, rather than in international goals.

12. The lack of urgency and the inadequate resources devoted to building effective police forces by West Africa’s regimes suggests that crime (including extremism) is not regarded as a major threat. Indeed, the approach of most elites has more in common with risk management or entrepreneurialism. Some regimes are supported by crime and corruption while others benefit from it, but most would be threatened by effective or tenacious Western-style policing.

13. West Africa challenges the UK’s orthodoxy in other ways too. For example, police are of secondary status, and domestic and regional policing concerns working relationships and co-existence, rather than partnership or conflict prevention. In Nigeria it is rumoured that the January 2012 bombings in Kano were made possible by collusion between Boko Haram and senior police and military officers who had held power in Sani Abacha’s junta.5 Whatever the case, the effectiveness of the working relationships achieved is evident from an al Jazeera video showing the involvement of police and military officers in extra-judicial executions in 2010.6

14. There is a risk of adverse publicity and/or unintended consequences if the UK takes a more interventionist approach in the region. This may not be on the scale associated with Afghanistan or Syria, but the bombing of the French embassy in Libya on 23 April 2013 indicates one possible outcome, as does the kidnapping and killing in northern Nigeria of British nationals Chris McManus and Brendan Vaughan. Kidnapping is a strategy employed regularly by Islamist militants in northern Nigeria, and the risk of it being used against British nationals elsewhere in the region will be intensified if, as seems likely, Boko Haram’s various factions are developing an international agenda, are training in Mali, and are increasingly using kidnapping as retaliation for the West’s military involvement in countries such as Mali and Somalia. Ansaru’s activities in northern Nigeria since 2012 are evidence of this. Blowback is a risk, too, as is the presence in London of a significant number of Nigerians.

15. The UK’s interests/goals are best served by a pragmatic assessment of its secondary role and limited influence in the region, and by a more realistic assessment of what can be changed (eg professional skills and resources) and what is resistant to change (eg the use of state resources for personal benefit). Influencing developments in a region characterised by opaque decision-making, illicit business and inequality is best achieved via professional standards and practical projects, rather than overly ambitious goals and ambiguous norms, important aspects of which clash with local political interests and police culture (though norms and values may be embedded in technical skills).

Recommendations

The UK should assess realistically its ability to influence fundamentally West Africa’s police and political elites.

The UK’s goals are best—and most credibly—promoted in terms of technical knowledge and practical projects that address today’s concerns, rather than overly ambitious and future-oriented goals.

The Stabilisation Unit and ACPO International should address the issue of international deployment in a strategic, realistic and systematic manner.

The appointment of police attaches should be considered.

29 April 2013