Multi-Layered Security Sector Reform in Areas of Limited Statehood
Wordcount: 19.643: 11-07-2014
Submitted Electronically to Dr. Adam W. Chalmers
I hereby certify that this work has been written by me, and that it is not the product of plagiarism or any other forms of academic misconduct
Chapter 1 Introduction: Security Sector Reform in post-conflict societies ... 6
Addressing state fragility, war recurrence and civil war termination ... 8
Definitions ... 12
Security Sector Reform... 12
Post-Conflict States, Fragile States and Hybrid States ... 14
Thesis overview ... 15
Chapter 2 Review of the Literature: Civil War Recurrence and Durable Settlement of Civil Wars. 16 Theories on civil war recurrence... 16
Current theories of civil war resolution ... 18
The success or failure of peace agreements ... 20
Chapter 3 Hybrid Security Sector Governance in Post-Conflict States ... 23
The Dilemmas of Liberal State-Building in Areas of Limited Statehood ... 24
My Argument: The Danger of State-Centric SSR in Hybrid Political Orders... 29
Chapter 4 Methodology... 32
Chapter 5 Afghanistan: Ensuring whose security?... 34
Afghanistan’s conflict background ... 34
Security Sector Reform: Afghan Police Reform... 38
US security approach to Afghan police reform ... 40
Militarization of the ANP ... 41
Public perception of the ANP in relation to security ... 43
Conclusion & Implications ... 46
Chapter 6 Timor-Leste: Security Sector Reform, 1999-2004 ... 47
Timor-Leste conflict background ... 47
Security Sector Reform in Timor-Leste... 49
Reform of the East Timorese Police Service - PNTL ... 50
Reform of the New Timorese Defense Force – F-FDTL... 51
Conclusion: The failings of the state-centric SSR-model and the violent breakdown in 2006 ... 53
Chapter 7 Conclusion ... 54
Figure 1.1 Global Trends in Violent Conflict, 1946-2009 - (Hewitt in Hewitt et al 2012: 18)... 9
Figure 1.2 Trends in New and Recurring Conflicts, 1946-2003 (Hewitt in Hewitt et al 2012: 18) ... 10
Figure 1.3 Percentage of Civil Wars Ended, by Termination Type, 1940-2000 (Toft 2010b)... 11
Figure 1.4 Mapping the Security Sector (Law in Sedra 2010a: 4) ... 13
Figure 5.1 Location map of Afghanistan... 35
Table 5.1: Afghan Military Compared to Afghan Police Casualties, (Murray 2007: 118) ... 43
Figure 5.2: Prevalence of ANP Misconduct (UNDP 2011: 20) ... 44
AIA Afghan Interim Authority
ANSA Armed non-state actor
ANSF Afghan National Security Forces
AUP Afghan Uniformed Police
CSTC-A Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan DDR Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration DFID Department for International Development
FRETLIN Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor F-FDLT Falintil-Forcas de Defesa de Timor-Leste
GAO Government Accountability Office IHL International Human Rights Legislation INTERFET International Force for East Timor ISAF International Security Assistance Force NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NTM-A NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan
OECD DAC Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Development Assistance Committee
PNTL Policia Nacional de Timor-Leste
PMC Private Military Company
RPG Rocket Propelled Grenade
SALW Small Arms and Light Weaponry
SSR Security Sector Reform
SSRP Security Sector Reform Provision
UNAMA United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNTAET United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor UNSC United Nations Security Council
Chapter 1
Introduction: Security Sector Reform in
post-conflict societies
Over the last two decades, external support to security sector reform (SSR) has emerged as a crucial instrument in international peacebuilding and state-building operations and is widely considered a sine qua non of contemporary post-conflict reconstruction efforts in post-conflict or fragile states (e.g. DFID 2003: 30; OECD DAC 2001: II-35). Aiming to stabilize societies just emerging from a period of intrastate conflict, SSR operations seek to foster a reform process that aims to transform the security and justice architecture of the state in a manner consistent with the principles of democratic governance (Sedra 2010a). This means assuring that poorly governed and ineffective security sector (i.e. military, police, and correctional institutions) are transformed into professional and accountable state institutions that are operationally effective and efficient, while also being subject to civilian democratic oversight. Herbert Wulf points out that the appeal of the term ‘SSR’ lies in its ability to integrate various
peacebuilding objectives under one intellectual umbrella: “the reduction of military
expenditures and their redirection to development purposes; security-relevant development; donor activities in conflict prevention and post-conflict situations, and; improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of governance over institutions charged with the provision of security (2004:30).
From Bosnia to Haiti to Liberia and Afghanistan, more than 20 major multilateral peacebuilding missions were deployed to post-conflict societies between 1989 and 2007 (Paris and Sisk 2009b: 1). Reflecting on the past two decades of peacebuilding, addressing post-conflict issues of organized crime, proliferation of small arms and light weaponry (SALW), renewed violent conflict between armed groups, preventing fragile regions becoming breeding grounds and safe havens for transnational terrorism are essential policy targets for mediating a fragile post-conflict environment along the road to sustainable peace and social and economic development. In other words, without an effective and accountable security sector, there can neither be peace, nor development, nor justice.
Although SSR is widely endorsed among the international donor community as a core instrument of state-building and as a precondition for achieving peace and development in regions recovering from conflict or making transitions from authoritarianism, civil war, state fragility or collapse, its record of achievement has been quite limited. With nearly half of the post-conflict states sliding back into the original civil war, it has become increasingly clear
that the leading states, leading institutions and international financial institutions’
state-building strategy remains underdeveloped vis-à-vis the complex challenges of transforming a fragile cease-fire situation into an enduring and constructive peace (Bryden et al 2005: 1). Faced with the multi-layered and multi-dimensional challenges of post-conflict state-building,
the fragmented peacebuilding community had to “get its act together”, as reported by the Utstein Group in 2004 (Smith 2004), and seek to “work together in an ‘integrated’, ‘comprehensive’, ‘holistic’ or ‘joined up’ manner” (Andersen 2011: 7). As a result, coherence
is guiding as a key requirement for external supported peacebuilding operations. This
‘coherence agenda’ is determined by academics such as Fukuyama (2004) and Rotberg (2004)
who focus on creating western-type rational-legal structures in post-conflict or fragile states
which extends the state’s capacity for control, regulation, implementation in the fields of
security, basic social services and the rule of law and promise legitimacy by improved state performance. However, a growing number of scholars such as Lawrence (2012), Boege et al (2009) and Andersen (2011) argue that contemporary state-building operations often falls short because it is based on ideal-typical models of stable and democratic states in the OECD world which does not reflect the societal realities of most post-conflict states in which the state is absent and has been replaced by non-state or ‘hybrid’ governance structures and practices. Even though both streams agree that SSR is a crucial element of state building in post-conflict societies, they disagree on the extent to which the public delivery of security is distributed among state and non-state security and justice providers.
This thesis seeks to explain how the exclusive focus of the state-centered SSR-model undermines post-conflict transition and fails to enable an environment for sustainable peace and socio-, economic-, and political development. I argue that a state-centric approach to SSR is likely to be less effective in hybrid states and can even destabilize state recovery by protecting state institutions (such as the security sector) that are not embedded in society. I will show that the weakness of the dominant SSR-model lies in its liberal narrative that alienates non-state security providers and render them passive, thereby weakening both the ability of non-state actors to provide services at the end-user level and diminish the sense of local ownership of fixing solutions to local problems. Furthermore, I will show that that the
‘top-down’ imposition of the western statehood model may increase violence in post-conflict
hybrid societies as non-state actors decide to what extent they accept or resist reforms strengthening of state security institutions. This may explain that the rising living of civil war recurrence lies in the externally supported SSR model that is supposed to ensure sustainable
peace rather than undermine it. This thesis considers the positive potential of an inclusive SSR-model that engages non-state and local security actors in post-conflict reform in contrast with the dominant state-centric approach that is applied today.
In order to illustrate the impact of implementing a state-centric SSR-model in hybrid political orders, the police reform of Afghanistan and Timor-Leste are analyzed. Whereas the Afghanistan case demonstrates that the US dominated SSR policy undermined both the effectivity of the Afghan police and the legitimacy of the state, the Timor-Leste case demonstrates that an exclusive SSR agenda can fuel violence illustrated by the violent clashes
between the ‘local’ police and the ‘state’ army in 2006.
Studying the topic of effective post-conflict security governance is important for a number of reasons. First, it is important to recall that the concept of SSR is relatively young, having first emerged in the late 1990s. This thus leads us to be less confident in the general applicability of any lessons learned from them. With more than a decade of experience under our belt, it is important to evaluate current SSR practices and perhaps recast the SSR concept to narrow down the gap between SSR policy and practices applied to current and future civil war resolution.
Second, civil wars are highly destructive. They are the most common form of large-scale organized violence, resulting in an estimated 37.194 battle-related deaths in 2012, causing an ever-growing groups of displaced persons, and it is accompanied with the crippling destruction of infrastructure and in extent the economy which reinforces the negative spiral between violence and underdevelopment (Themnér and Wallensteen 2013: 509). Additionally, civil wars have exhibited the capacity to cause disruption at the local level (such as in the Great Lakes region in Africa) but also at the international level (such as Afghanistan).
Addressing state fragility, war recurrence and civil war termination
Among scholars of peace and conflict research, state-building theory and security studies, a great deal of ink has been spent on describing the relationship between large-scale violence, state performance and global security. In the modern world order, the state fulfills a dual role with regard to political order: first, the state has an internal role and is responsible for providing and guaranteeing security and justice for their citizens; second, all states have an external role as they constitute the building blocks on which the international system is build,
and consequently lies a the root of the global order. The issue of ineffective, failing, fragile or conflict-affected states does not only affect the citizens in the affected state, but tends to undermine both state functions and causes problems at the international level. Accordingly, transforming war-torn societies into stable
and developed states lies at the core of the international security paradigm and is
ranked as “one of the most important
foreign policy challenges of the
contemporary era” (Krasner and Pascual
2005: 13). This understanding is clearly reflected by the terrorist acts of September
11, 2001 and the ‘War on Terror’ that
followed: if the international community turns a blind eye to local problems in post-conflict or fragile states, they have the
potential to cause global problems. Therefore, “learning to do state-building better is thus central to the future of the world order” (Fukuyama 2004:120).
Perhaps the most common observation since the end of the Second world War, and in particular since the end of the Cold War, seems to be that, while interstate conflicts have decreased in frequency, civil wars have increased and are currently the dominant form of large-scale violence in the world, especially in the developing world. According to the
UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Dataset v.4-2014, there have been 278 major armed conflicts
that started between 1946 and 2013, of which 180 were civil wars. In 2012, there were 32 armed conflicts active in 26 locations worldwide. The vast majority of these conflicts (31 out of 32) were fought within the border of a singly state between two or more belligerent parties, by definition involving at least one armed non-state actor. The armed conflict between South Sudan versus Sudan was the only active interstate conflict recorded in 2012, as hostile tensions around multiple issues of the common border remained after South Sudan gained independence on 9 July, 2011.
Examining trends in global conflict since 1946, shown in Figure 1.1, we find that the number of active armed conflicts has neither displayed an upward nor downward trend during the past fifteen years. At the time when the Cold War ended, the number of active armed
Figure 1.1 Global Trends in Violent Conflict, 1946-2009 - (Hewitt in Hewitt et al 2012: 18)
conflicts stood at 38, an unprecedented high. In the decade that followed, commonly
described as the ‘golden age of interventionism’, the number of active conflicts dropped to a
low of 20 in 2004. In 2005 the number increased to 27 and since then it has remained relatively stable.
Two factors explain the decrease in the number of active armed conflicts between 1989 and 2004. First, the end of the bipolar world order eliminated the incentives for the United States and the Soviet Union to keep providing security assistance to combatants in proxy conflict-states. Active conflicts were more likely to end because it became more expensive for combatants to acquire arms and other means to continue their wars. Moreover, as the US-USSR externally motivated hostility disappeared, combatants were less motivated to continue fighting. Second, the United States and its western allies came under increasing pressure to military intervene to end civil wars and protect citizens other than their own from physical violence. Wielding unrivaled military, economic and diplomatic power, the leading states of the Alliance were pressured, mostly coming from the rising humanitarian front, to direct their resources at ending civil wars.
As the international donor community became more engaged in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states, gaining
experience with external supported peacebuilding operations, it is worrying to find that the number of active armed conflicts remained stable since 2005. According to Joseph Hewitt, the reason why global conflict trends have stabilized is because of the growing number of conflict
recurrence (2012: 18). It seems that the international peacebuilding experiment has been unable to achieve the desired outcome of sustaining the peace in conflict-affected states. The good news is, see Figure 1.2, that the onset of new conflicts has been very low since the late 1990s. However, the number of recurring conflicts has steadily increased in frequency since the mid-1990s. The findings of Hewitt (2012) suggest that the international community has
Figure 1.2 Trends in New and Recurring Conflicts, 1946-2003 (Hewitt in Hewitt et al 2012: 18)
become more effective in mediating local tensions and preventing them to escalate into large-scale violence, but is unsuccessful in post-conflict recovery efforts.
Ending civil wars is a laudable goal but making sure they stay terminated is equally important. This raises the question why do some civil wars end, while others reignite? Some scholars argue that the current problem of civil war recurrence is related to the approach how active conflicts are in fact terminated. Monica Toft (2010a), a preeminent scholar in the field of civil war termination,
argues that civil wars that are ended through negotiated settlements are less likely to produce sustainable peace than civil wars ending by means of military victory by one side. According
to her research, “military victory reduces the likelihood of war recurrence by 24 percent,
while negotiated settlements increase the chances of recurrence by 27 percent” (2010a: 55). Figure 1.3 illustrates that since the end of the Cold War policymakers have exhibited a marked preference for terminating civil wars by means of peace agreements rather than allowing armed conflicts to take their natural course. Although no data is accessible on the number of civil wars ended by peace agreements since 2000, Toft (2010b: 14) observed that peace agreements ended 41 percent of all civil wars during the 1990s and argues that it is very likely that this percentage has increased ever since.
There is also a sense of urgency related to this matter. Political scientists have been observing an ever-growing pool of post-conflict states within the global world order in which the danger of recurrence highlighted by Hewitt (2012) is most likely. Looking at various state performance rankings and indices, Ulrich Schneckener points out that there are currently 100
sates performing on or even blow the index level of “fragile states” (2007, found in Boege et
al 2009: 17). Acknowledging the large number of states that are vulnerable to violence and the growing frequency of civil war recurrence, this finding illustrates a warning prospect that
Figure 1.3 Percentage of Civil Wars Ended, by Termination Type, 1940-2000 (Toft 2010b)
the number of major armed conflicts in the world may increase, which will have global consequences. This warning is reflected in a published report by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD DAC),
“the challenge of ensuring [the] security of states and their populations is both most urgent and most difficult in the context of societies seeking to ‘rebuild’ following war where there is a risk of recreating the conditions that gave rise to the violence in the first place” (2005: 57).
Definitions
Before continuing, this section introduces the key term of the thesis, including both
what is meant and what is not meant by my use of the concepts of “security sector reform” and “hybrid states”.
Security Sector Reform
The concept of security sector reform was first introduced in a 1998 speech by the
UK’ Secretary of State for International Development Clare Short1. According to the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP), the term ‘security sector’ also referred to as the ‘security system’ describes the “structures, institutions and personnel responsible for the management provisions and oversight of the use of force to protect the state and its citizens”
(2003: 5). Wulf adds that using the term SSR implies per definition that it is integrated within an overall strategy of development and democratization of the recipient states (2004: 3).
When the reform of the security sector is discussed, it refers to all the bodies that are encapsulated within the security and justice branches of government. Mark Sedra, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), defines SSR as those actors and organizations that are concerned with the provision of security and justice services. These include (1) all bodies authorized to use force (such as the police and the military), (2) intelligence and security services, (3) civil management and oversight bodies, (4) judicial and public security structures (such as the judiciary and correctional structures), (5) non-statutory security forces (such as liberation and guerrilla armies, private military companies (PMC’s), terrorist organizations, organized military groups and other militia groupings), and (6) civil
society (most notably NGO’s and the media) (Sedra 2010a: 3). For a more detailed overview
of the Security Sector see Figure 1.4.
1Clare Short, “Security, Development and Conflict Prevention”, Speech at the Royal College
In the context of this thesis, the evaluation of SSR is placed in the context of the security environment in post-conflict or fragile states. According to Sedra (2010a: 5), mandates for SR operations pursue three overarching objectives. The first task is to restore order and strengthen the capacity of security providers (state and non-state) to provide services that are effective, fair, accessible, accountable and respect human rights. The second task is to rebuild governance networks and strengthen the capacity of the state to develop policy, manage institutions and provide civilian oversight so that the security sector can take responsibility for the protection of the state and its citizens. The third task is to establish a security sector that is both financially sustainable as well as properly sized to meet existing and future security needs. In the long-term it should be fitted to contribute to the regional and international security solution and mitigate transnational security threats (such as terrorism and drug trafficking).
In this thesis I use a narrow definition of SSR, especially focusing on security sector organizations that have the capacity to provide order and safety through the use of or threat to
use force. This means that I focus primarily on the justice and law enforcement institutions and (non-) statutory security forces within a political defined territory (see Figure 1.4).
Post-Conflict States, Fragile States and Hybrid States
Scholars and practitioners have long noted that modern statehood fails to characterize the multitude of states within the international system. Consequently, we conceptualize states along a continuum of state performance, causing terms of “fragile”, “failing”, “weak”,
“collapsing” states to emerge. Policymakers and scholars use this terminology to describe the
difference between adequate and inadequate levels of state performance in target states. Most governments or research institutes premise on a functionalist analysis of fragile states, as
clarified by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), which defines fragile states as a state “where the government is not able or willing to deliver core
functions to the majority of its population, i.e. controlling the territory and providing security (DFID 2005: 7).
However, the problem is that these terms are very vague and distinctions become easily blurred. Generally speaking, state fragility refers to declining capacity or lack of
willingness to perform core state functions as the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of
violence and its ability to enforce political decisions (Lawrence 2012: 3). Volker Boege et al (2009) point out that the problem is that state performance, as framed in the context of a
state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, is being compared against the OECD-type
western state, which is regarded as the ideal stable state model. To say that something is
‘fragile’ or ‘unhealthy’ or ‘weak’ is incredibly normative and has little relevance in the debate
explaining the strength of the security sector and in extension the stability of the target state.
Volker Boege et al (2009: 16) argue that “the conventional perception of so-called
fragile states as an obstacle to the maintenance of peace and development can be far too short-sighted, as is its corollary, the promotion of conventional state-building along the lines of the western OECD state model as the best means of sustainable development and peace within all
societies”. We need to remind ourselves that the Euro-American state model has only recently
emerged, and by promoting it as an ideal-type model that can be attained in a short period of time one ignores the historical context in which they evolved. Volker Boege et al (2009) note
that instead of using the terminology of ‘failed states’ it is rather more fruitful to think in terms of “hybrid political orders” or “hybrid states” (2009: 16). Based on the work of Boege
et al (2009), I define hybrid states as “regions in which diverse and competing claims to
power and logics of order co-exist, overlap and intertwine, namely the logic of the ‘formal
state, of traditional ‘informal’ societal order, and of globalization and associated social fragmentation” (Boege et al 2009: 24). It generally refers to models of statehood in which
informal or non-state structures perform state functions in the fields of security, representation, welfare and other public goods instead provided by central government institutions. The term hybrid states or hybridity can change development discourse of major donor countries and encourage appreciation of such political models by getting rid of the negative connotations associated with the ‘fragility’ terminology.
Thesis overview
Chapter 2 provides a review of the literature of civil war recurrence theory and current civil war resolution theories, outlining the importance of security provisions in the aftermath of a civil war. In chapter 3 I will outline the dilemmas of liberal peacebuilding and in extension highlighting the inherent tensions of implementing a state-centric SSR-model in hybrid states just emerging out of armed conflict. It will explain the logic of diminishing
effectiveness and stability behind the ‘hybridization’ process of the security sector in
post-conflict states and explain how state-centered SSR causes violence as local/non-state actors may resist externally imposed models of statehood.
Chapters 4-6 explore state-centric SSR programmes in Afghanistan and Timor-Leste and traces key actors, conflict sources, post-conflict implementation of security sector reform
provisions (SSRP’s) and post-conflict outcomes. Chapter 4 provides the methodology by
which the case studies were carried out. Chapter 5 examines the police reform in Afghanistan during the post-2003. In chapter 6 I examine SSR in Timor-Leste and pay specific attention to the violent clashes in 2006. Taken together, the case studies seek to the reasons why the state-centric model has not been successful in both cases.
Finally, chapter 7 presents policy recommendations for current SSR practitioners and policymakers. Chapter 8 presents the conclusions of this thesis.
Chapter 2
Review of the Literature: Civil War Recurrence and
Durable Settlement of Civil Wars
The literature review will address three areas of research related to the rising trend of civil war recurrence in post-conflict states during the past fifteen years. In the first section, research studies related to current explanations on civil war recurrence will be addressed. The second section will address the literature on current theories of civil war resolution and the correlation with positive war outcomes. Finally, the third section will address the emerging literature discussing the success and failure of negotiated settlements and highlight the importance of post-conflict security governance in transitional societies.
Theories on civil war recurrence
The question this thesis focuses on is why do some transitions from civil war to sustainable peace succeed and others fail? Civil wars can trap a country in a pattern of
repetitive violence and poverty, described by some as the “conflict trap” (Collier 2007:
17-37). Based on the findings of Hewitt (see Figure 1.2), societies that have just emerged from civil war appear to be more likely to experience a second or a third war than are societies with no prior experience of armed violence. A survey of the literature reveals that although much has been written about civil wars (how and why they start, the associated costs of large-scale violence, how combatants sustain themselves during the war, and how wars end), limited attention has been paid to the relationship between civil war termination types and long-term sustainable peace. Scholars and policymakers alike are still struggling to find a reliable formula to guide conflict states through the multidimensional obstacle course of post-conflict transition: the social transition from fighting to peace; the political transition from wartime government (or absent government) to postwar government; the institutional transition of the security sector from intrastate conflict towards restoring order and increasing effectiveness for domestic public security and external defense, and; the economic transition from war-driven accumulation and distribution to a justifiable and responsible system that in turn reinforces peace and security.
Most civil war scholars tend to rely on three main arguments explaining why wars repeat themselves: (1) theories that focus on why the war began, (2) theories that focus on how the original war was fought, and (3) theories that focus on how the original war was terminated. The first set of theories explains recurring wars by looking at the motivational
factors that explain why wars began, and by extension, why they end. In most cases, the stimuli that lie at the root of the conflict are resource inequality and fear. According to the
‘resource argument’, wars recur mostly because citizens have (a) a lack of resources, or (b)
are greedy to gain more resources. These two perspectives are generally grouped in what are
called the ‘grievance’ and the ‘greed’ school in civil war literature. Under the resource
grievance rubric, the argument is that wars recur because of inequality in income, the lack of political representation, land, security, ethnic and religious divisions and other resources (Cramer 2003; Davies 1962; Gurr 1970: Collier and Hoeffler 2004). The latest addition to the writings within the grievance school is the notion of “political exclusion” by Charles Call
(2012). Call’s central argument in Why Peace Fails is that the “perceived or actual
deprivation of an expected opportunity for former warring parties, or the social groups associated with them, to participate in state administration, through either appointed posts or
elected office” serves as a ‘trigger’ for war recurrence (2012: 4). Alternatively, the more recent ‘resource greed hypothesis’ finds that wars in essence the product of greed and
suggests that wars begin and recur because of economic variables (Collier and Hoeffler 2004; Collier 1999). In effect, wars recur because contending parties repeatedly fight over control of the spoils of the state such as oil, drugs and rare minerals. Paul Collier argues in The Bottom
Billion that there is a significant relationship between the presence of natural resources and
conflict, which Phillip Le Billon describes as the “resource curse” (2006: 11-27). The greed
hypothesis gained significance in the study of civil wars when the problem of diamonds,
commonly known as ‘conflict diamonds’ or ‘blood diamonds’, gained worldwide attention. For example, it became widely recognized that the civil wars in Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra
Leone and the DRC have been mainly driven by continuous clashes over the control over diamond mines.
The resource motivated civil war literature has done a great service to the further advancement of our understanding of the causes of civil war and why they end. The major flaw of this theory is its inability to explain cases where motivations other than resources were in play. Specifically with regard to the wars fought in former Yugoslavia and Chechnya during the 1990s were not motivated by resources but rather by the basic notion of fear. The
‘fear school’ explains armed conflict based on the logic of the ‘security dilemma’ introduced
Robert Jervis (1978) on interstate wars studies, and applied to intrastate wars by Barry Posen (1993) and David Lake & Donald Rotchild (1996). The security dilemma describes an anarchic conflict situation (similar to the security environment in conflict or fragile states) in
which each combatant party is set on increasing their own security situation that inadvertently threatens the security of its rivals. Consequently, rival factions will be motivated restoring their security by increasing their weapon stockpiles or mobilizing troops, which if continued long enough may lead to an outbreak of another war, or lead to higher costs in blood and treasure of an existing war. On the whole, both schools have increased our understanding of the motivations behind civil wars and help us to design better ways to end war and end them for good. Monica Toft adds that wars are usually not solely motivated by either resources or fear, but “most civil wars are fought by belligerents who possess mixed motivations, with
individual fighters and groups of fighters likely driven by a combination of greed and fear”
(2010a: 26).
The second set of civil war recurrence arguments primarily focuses on the costs and duration of the original war to determine whether combatants will renege on their commitments that instigated the peace and decide to resume the armed conflict. This hypothesis is premised on expected utility choice theory which assumes that combatants are rational actors and their choice to continue or renege on their commitment to peace accords depends on the relative costs and benefits of resuming back to armed violence (Wittman 1979; Mason and Fett: 1996). Barbara Walter argues in Committing to Peace that the costs of war (i.e. the duration and number battle-related casualties) only has a significant effect for bringing contending parties to the negotiation table but have no significant effect on whether rival factions will be more likely to sign a bargain and end the war, nor commit to peace during the implementation of the peace agreement. According to Walter (2002: 161), the most significant factor in explaining the absence of repeated war are post-conflict security guarantees given to all major armed parties by third-parties.
The next paragraph will discuss the third set of arguments, which focuses on the premise that the way that civil wars are ended is the deciding factor for the duration of the peace.
Current theories of civil war resolution
The assumption that the way civil wars are terminated determines the duration of the peace that follows is not new. The current literature on civil war resolution can be roughly
The first civil war resolution theory camp, the ‘military victory’ camp or otherwise
referred to as the ‘let it burn’ camp, argues that the best approach to attain sustainable peace is that wars should be allowed to ‘burn themselves out’, implying that external actors adhere to
the principle of non-intervention and let rival factions fight it out between themselves to determine which side wins. The argument is that allowing wars to take their natural course, leading to the destruction of the organizational structure of command and identity of the factions fighting the war except for the victor, is a surer basis for peace in the longer-term. This argument build upon the writings of Robert Wagner (1994) and Edward Luttwak (1999), who found that civil wars that are terminated through military victory are more likely to produce longer-lasting peace than wars ending through peace agreements.
In Give War a Chance, Luttwak argues that “the transformative effects of both decisive victory and exhaustion are blocked by outside intervention” (1999: 44). In The
Causes of Peace Wagner argues that the reason why military victories are more likely to
produce a long-lasting absence of civil war recurrence in contrast with negotiated settlements is because of the destruction of the organization basis of the its losing rival and minimalizing
its rivals ability to reignite the war. Lacking statistical evidence for Wagner’s argument, Roy Licklider (1995) subjected the “Wagner hypothesis” to a statistical test in The Consequences
of Negotiated Settlement in Civil Wars and found some support for it. In addition to Licklider,
Monica Toft (2010a) advocated the ‘let it burn’ hypothesis revealing that “military victory
reduces the likelihood of war recurrence by 24 percent, while negotiated settlement increase
the chances by 27 percent” (2010a: 55). Moreover, Toft (2010a) finds a stronger empirical
relationship between rebel military victory and durable peace instead of military victory by state forces.
The second set of theories, in general described as the ‘negotiation school’, emerged after the end of the Second World War and gained prominence particularly since the early 1990s, currently dominating the academic and policy discourse on how to end civil wars and make sure they do not repeat themselves. The rise of this school is associated with the paradigm shift in security assistance following the end of the Cold War and the rising prominence of humanitarianism and the growing number of international humanitarian legislation (IHL) in global politics. According to a survey conducted by Toft (2010a), ninety-five percent of the articles published in seven leading international relations and comparative
politics journals2between 1990 through 2000 belonged to the ‘negotiation camp’. Theories of the ‘negotiation school’ advocate the position that in an active intrastate conflict, both
contending parties as well as external parties should do everything in their power to end the war as soon as possible and minimalize the cost and destruction associated with war.
While both sets of theories have different views on how to best end civil wars to produce sustainable peace, either military victory or negotiated settlement they share two fundamental rationalist-based assumptions to the study of war. First, both theories agree that wars will only end when contending parties reach a bargain they prefer rather than continuing armed hostilities. Peace will only last as long as all signatories remain committed to the signed bargain. Second, the duration of peace, either by military victory or peace agreement, must reduce uncertainty among the rival factions and stabilize expectations. This means that all combatants perceive in the scenario of hypothetically resuming the war, all parties must have the same expectations on who would win.
The success or failure of peace agreements
This thesis does not aim to put forward the ‘let it burn’ thesis, as has been done by
Roy Licklider in The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars (1995) and Monica Toft in Securing the Peace (2010). Instead it focuses on contributing to the existing literature explaining why the process of implementing negotiated settlements break down and fail to produce sustainable peace, since negotiated settlements are preferred over military victories in the international policy discourse (again see Figure 1.3). There are two core theories that explain the success or failure of negotiated settlements relevant to explaining the rising trend of civil war recurrence of conflicts ended through negotiated settlement. First, peace negotiations break down because adversaries cannot promise and give credible guarantees to abide by the terms of the bargain after the treaty is signed and the implantation starts. Introduced by Barbara Walter in Committing to Peace, the logic behind her “credible
commitment theory” states that the greatest problem contending parties face in constructively
ending a civil war resides in the availability of an enforcing third party willing to oversee, verify and monitor the DDR process and prevent that either party to the agreement takes
2The survey of Toft included: American Journal of Political Science, American Political
Science Review, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Organization, International Security, Security Studies, and World Politics.
advantage of its rivals. Dividing the “Peace Process” into a three-stage process3, Walter (2002) argues that the security environment that exists during the peace implementation phase, exercised by military presence of third parties, is the deciding factor that defines the post-war outcome.
The second core argument is that the main weakness of negotiated settlements is that
they tend to lack sufficient means to impose credible “harm” to potential defectors to the
peace treaty. Where military victories excel in terms of guaranteeing harm to its losing rivals if they should renege on their commitments, the key strengths of negotiated settlements lies solely on their credible promise to provide mutual benefits of the peace such as the cessation of violence, containing mutually agreed upon provisions on the development and reconstruction of the target state, redistribution of offices in the postwar government and the opportunity to participate in the electoral process. Combing both the strengths of negotiated settlements in terms of affording postwar benefits and military victories in terms of guaranteeing credible harm to defectors, Monica Toft (2010a) urges policymakers to integrate
SSRP’s in peace agreements and that the international donor community adopts a hybrid strategy of “mutual benefit and mutual harm” (2010a) or “carrot and stick” settlement strategy
(2010b). Toft (2010a) claims that SSR has shown to reduce the likelihood of the recurrence of major armed conflict following a negotiated settlement by 24 percent, but also observes that third-party security guarantees, in contrast to the argument of Walter (2002), increases the likelihood of civil war recurrence by 13 percent (Toft 2010a: 55). According to Toft (2010a), the lack of credible commitment to punish defectors is attributable to the observation that SSR
is only given secondary consideration in the vast majority of signed settlements, or if SSRP’s
are written into the peace agreement, then their implementation is allocated only anemic resources. The implication of lack of attention and resources to SSR hinders the mutual harm mechanisms, which according to Toft (2010), will make it more likely that negotiated settlements will fail in ending civil wars and constructing sustainable peace.
The fundamental assumption overlapping both the “credible commitment theory” and the theory of “mutual benefit and mutual harm” is that peace in the early period of the
post-conflict environment is very fragile and the peace signatories are in search of credible guarantees that discourage opposing parties to renege on their signed commitments and take
3According to Walter (2002), the “Peace Process” consists of the following three phases:
tactical advantage of the peace environment by launching a surprise attack. Credible post-conflict security guarantees can be provided by willing and committed third parties (such as the U.N. or NATO) or improving domestic security governance by giving more attention and allocating more resources to security sector reform.
Chapter 3
Hybrid Security Sector Governance in Post-Conflict
States
The literature on civil war recurrence and the theories on the durable settlement of civil wars are premised on the assumption that the quality of peace following the original war will determine the duration of the peace that follows. It is clear that the problematic post-conflict environment of insecurity and violence poses a critical barrier to further economic, political and social development of a country.
Since the early 2000s, the SSR approach has become an integral policy field of state-building policy and practice, and is increasingly recognized as a precondition for the advancement of peace and stability and the creation of an enabling environment for economic development in post-conflict states and is claimed to offer the most effective and expedient strategy for reducing civil war recurrence. We distinguish two central principles that shape international attempt to (re)construct post-conflict security sectors by means of SSR. First, the legitimate use of physical violence is exercised by the state and is managed through a system of control based on democratic principles. Second, state institutions responsible for providing security and justice services are made accountable and transparent by a system of democratic oversight. Despite the popularity of SSR as an instrument of state-building in post-conflict states, only few academics have studied the SSR concept (Jackson 2011: 1804). In this chapter I put forward the argument that contemporary SSR operations in post-conflict states are not meeting expectations because of the biased liberal narrative that underlies contemporary SSR policy. It is argued that SSR is based on the development principles of
“people-centered, locally owned” but contradicts its principles in practice by securing state
institutions rather than providing citizens a security environment in which they feel safe and protected. A state security-centric SSR policy that focuses on securing state institutions rather than people is not only ineffective as they lack socio-political legitimacy and require significant human and financial capital but is also counterproductive as local/non-state actors resist and reject externally imposed reconstruction efforts by means of violence.
The first part of this chapter will outline the narrative of liberal peacebuilding and explains the contradictions between the underlying concepts of human versus state security in the context of SSR in war-torn societies. The second part presents the conditions that exist in hybrid political orders and explain why state security-centered SSRs are less effective in such societies. The final part presents my argument of violent hybridization of post-conflict
security governance as a consequence of the exclusive western orientated ideal-type SSR model.
The Dilemmas of Liberal State-Building in Areas of Limited Statehood
As a starting point for analyzing the dominant SSR-model it is necessary to explore what the dominant understanding of what a state is and when it is legitimate as a means to grasping what international state-building missions aim to achieve. The most prominent approach to state-building in post-conflict states is based on Max Weber’s idea of legal
rational domination: “A compulsory political organization with continuous operation will be called a “state” insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the
monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of order” (Weber 1968:
54; emphasis in the original). In order to be given the responsibility to wield the monopoly on the use and the threat of use of coercive force, the state has to provide security for its citizens. Thus, legitimacy is seen as a condition for exercising authority.
The current state-building discourse is very much orientated on the liberal narrative
and focuses on the (re)construction of the ‘Weberian’ institutions in post-conflict states (Mac
Ginty 2010: 396). Louise Andersen (2011) points out that the liberal state-building agenda reflects two distinctive ideas. Firstly, liberal development policies presume that security and development are intrinsically linked, known as the ‘security-development nexus’. Intrastate conflict hinders economic growth and inflicts significant human, economic and political costs on the affected state and its citizens. On the other hand, it implies that the likelihood that sustainable peace and stability will be attained rests upon the extent of economic and political
development. The second idea is the ‘liberal peace thesis’ which claims that liberal
democracies are more peaceful than non-democracies, because they “tend not to wage war against other liberal democracies and because they have developed peaceful mechanisms for
solving domestic political conflicts and thus remain unlikely to experience civil war”
(Andersen 2011: 6). The paradoxes and dilemmas of liberal interventionism have been extensively researched during the last decade (see Bain 2001; Paris 2004; Caplan 2005; Paris and Sisk 2009a). According to the literature, the overarching dilemmas and paradoxes of the liberal template emerge when leading states, leading international organizations and international financial institutions seek to pursue international order, state sovereignty and human security, simultaneously.
Taken together, the ‘security-development nexus’ and the ‘liberal peace thesis’
represent the basic core of the liberal template and remain constitutive for Western-backed peace support operations in post-conflict states today (Paris and Sisk 2009a: 2). The application of the template shifted over time, as the peacebuilding discipline underwent an important macro-level shift in strategy during the late 1990s and early 2000s. While focus in the early 1990s was on political and economic freedom, current peacebuilding strategies emphasize that the development and stabilization of post-conflict or fragile states is dependent on the construction and strengthening of legitimate, functioning and autonomous governmental institutions, or what Roland Paris and Timothy Sisk refer to as “state-building”
(2009: 1). The underlying principle is that states “have to become more effective in order to make aid more effective, and vice versa” (Fritz and Menocal 2006: 27).
Premised on the Weberian model of statehood, Ghani et al. (2005) lists ten features of statehood that have to be established in order to reduce the risk of war recurrence and prolong
peace and development. These are:”(1) a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence, (2)
administrative control, (3) sound management of public finances, (4) investment in human capital, (5) the creation of citizenship rights and duties, (6) provision of infrastructure, (7) market formation, (8) management of assets of the state, (9) effective public borrowing, [and]
(10) maintenance of the rule of law” (Ghani et al. 2005: 2). SSR is a crucial sub-policy field
of state-building that currently provides the main narrative for understanding and responding to the issue of post-conflict transition and preventing the recurrence of war. According to the liberal state-building template, conflict-torn states are deemed to require institution building, professionalization, equipment modernization and management reform of its security sector. The liberal underpinnings of the SSR agenda are evident in the emphasis placed upon both
restoring the state’s monopoly on the use of coercive force, the basic building block of the
Weberian state, and controlling the powers of the state through the promotion of democratic oversight, good governance and rule of law. The dominance of the Weberian model in international development policies is reflected in the Capstone doctrine, which outlines the guiding principles of UN peace operations:
“The deployment of troops and police must be accompanied by efforts to restore the State’s monopoly over the legitimate use of force; re-establish the rule of law and
institutions of governance; and promote socio-economic recovery (DPKO 2008: 87-88)
With the dual emphasis on operational efficiency and democratic oversight, the state security-orientated SSR-model is based on the premise that the security sector within post-conflict states cannot perform their duties effectively and lacks both accountability and legitimacy, which consequently negatively affects post-conflict development and increases the chances that the original war will reignite.
Despite its growing popularity, the SSR model seems to be in crisis. Although there is no shortage of case studies where SSR programs have been tested or tried out, Mark Sedra (2010: 102) makes the point that what is lacking are success stories that have actualized the core principles and objectives of SSR policy in practice. The question, then, is what accounts for this acknowledged gap between policy and practice?
To understand the dilemma between SSR theory and operational reality it seems particular useful to pay attention to the inherent tensions that are linked with external supported liberal peacebuilding. According to Paris and Sisk (2009b: 305), the main reason for the gap between peacebuilding policy and peacebuilding practice derives from the
inherent incongruities that arise when “universal values are promoted as a remedy for local problems” (Paris and Sisk 2009c: 305). As the literature review made clear, scholars agree
that each post-conflict environment constitutes a different context, but in practice “donors tend to employ the same tools, strategies and ideas, often implemented by the same officials
or contractors that nomadically move from one context and program to the next” (Sedra 2010:
103).
The main problem is that the SSR-model, which according to the OECD DAC SSR
Handbook (2007) should be premised on the principles of “people-centered” and “local
ownership”, is in fact state-centric biased. The state-centric SSR ideology maintains that the
state is the sole actor responsible for security and justice provision and therefore must maintain its monopoly on the use of coercive force. The problem lies not so much in the liberal underpinnings of this holistic SSR-model but in the discrepancy between ideal-typical notion of democratic security governance found in stable and democratic societies in the OECD world upon which the current SSR-model is based and the fragile nature of post-conflict societies to which it is applied.
The fact is that many countries, especially societies just emerging from a large-scale episode of violence, do not resemble the ideal-typical model of the Western state and will remain an unlikely prospect in the foreseeable future (Boege et al 2009; Lawrence 2012; Baker 2010). The persistence of the state-centric paradigm concerning the necessity of the
state’s monopoly on the use of coercive force causes two main problems when applied to
post-conflict states. First of all, promoting the liberal state model as an ideal-typical model of statehood is to ignore the rather competitive and violent historical context of the establishment of the monopoly over the legitimate use of physical force in Western states, and with it the rather recent emergence of the modern state (Boege et al. 2009: 18). The nature of the post-conflict state does not lends itself the conditions required for a speedy transformation of its security sector that resembles the Weberian state. Bruce Baker argues that the implementation of international standards of democratic security governance in areas of limited statehood are
“expensive, highly complex and requires a cultural transformation that cannot be engineered overnight” (2010: 211). In addition, Lawrence argues that “international state-building often
falls short because it aspires to an externally fabricated model that does not accommodate local interests and desires while attempting to radically re-engineer a society in a short time
frame”(2012: 2). To illustrate this point, Schroeder et al observed that past attempts to instill
international standards of democratic security governance in post-conflict recipient states
consequently resulted in “bloated post-conflict security sectors, weak informal institutions,
and the inability to respond to multiple internal and external challenges to the sovereignty of
the state” (2014: 215).
Second, what the state-centric SSR-model fails to acknowledge is that there are other actors besides state security forces that provide security, frameworks for conflict resolution and other basic social services. This can be explained by looking at the consequences of the
normative ‘fragility’ terminology within the state-building discourse, which defines post-conflict or fragile state institutions as lacking “the willingness or capacity to perform core state functions in the fields of security, representation and welfare” (Boege et al 2009: 16).
Post-conflict or fragile states are not deemed as ‘states’ according to the Weberian perspective as the state lacks the monopoly on the use of coercive force. Within the liberal state-building narrative, the state-centric SSR-model presumes that the absence of strong state institutions within post-conflict states provides a ‘blank slate’ for international security sector reform
initiatives to ‘be downloaded into’, but overlooks the variety of non-state actors, local norms
and Scheye 2014). Boege et al point out (2009:20) that the void of ‘statelessness’ in areas of limited statehood does not always imply the complete absence of institutions or resemble an
environment of Hobbesian anarchy and chaos. Many of today’s post-conflict or fragile state
emerged from a historical colonial context of indirect rule in which the institutions that became the state never consolidated a monopoly of violence (Lawrence 2012: 3), while customary non-state institutions of governance that existed prior to the era of colonial rule
“determine the everyday social reality of large parts of the population in developing countries even today, particularly in rural and remote peripheral areas” (Boege et al 2009: 20). In the
fragile context of post-conflict transition, where modern statehood is largely absent, it is not just the institutions that are different:
“People do not perceive themselves as citizens or nationals (at least in the first place).
They define themselves instead as members of particular sub- or trans-national social entities (kin, group, tribe, village)…it is the community that provides the nexus of order, security and basic social services. People have confidence in their community
and its leaders, but they have no trust in the government and state performance…As
members of traditional communities, people are tied into a network of social relations and a web of mutual obligations, and these obligations are much more powerful than
obligations as a “citizen”. People do not obey the rules of the state but the rules of
their group. Legitimacy rests with the leaders of that group, not with the state
authorities” (Boege et al. 2009: 23).
Auditing the diverse non-state security networks in Africa, Baker (2011: 210) found
that “non-state actors are the primary providers of protection, deterrence, investigation, resolution and punishment for most Africans in most circumstances”. Similar to Baker, the OECD finds that “in sub-Saharan Africa at least 80 percent of justice services are delivered by
non-state providers” (OECD DAC 2007: 17). In cases where there is an absence of modern statehood and there is a presence of informal governance alternatives, Baker and Eric Scheye
argue that “the state-centric SSR practice falsely assumes that the state is the major provider of security and justice, […] overestimates its penetration of society and overlooks the various
non-state actors providing the majority of security and justice services at the user-level of conflict-affected states” (2007: 507, 512-514).
The problem is that external led state-building and SSR operations focus on rebuilding and strengthening the security sector of the state, while failing to understand that in some
regions, especially in post-conflict states in Africa, the state is not the main actor in providing security and justice but has often been the source of injustice and insecurity and therefore enjoys less legitimacy and authority compared to local or non-state security providers that substitute for the state in these areas.
My Argument: The Danger of State-Centric SSR in Hybrid Political Orders
Starting off with the observation that external attempts to (re)construct security governance in post-conflict or fragile states by means of SSR have in general not led to the comprehensive transfer of liberal democratic security governance in recipient states. Acknowledging this
trend, the OECD DAC stated in its SSR flagship report that “SSR programmes must consider
the need for a multi-layered or multi-stakeholder approach. This helps target donor assistance to state and non-state justice and security providers simultaneously at the multiple points at which actual day-to-day service delivery occurs” (2007: 17).
As has been made clear, many countries emerging from conflict do not resemble the Weberian state model. Rather than policymakers make a choice between a human security-orientated versus state security-centered SSR approach, there is consensus among scholars that the latter approach is currently dominating the state-building and SSR discourse. Conducting a state-centric SSR model seems to be a welcome policy choice for involved donor countries as it is theoretically sound to manage expectations like controlling violence and preventing terrorism and insurgency movements to destabilize the state and reignite the original war. This theory suggest that the model of hybrid security governance emerges in response to the ill-advised state security-orientated SSR model.
Two obstacles impede the effectiveness of a state-centric approach to meet the short to medium term requirements of post-conflict security in conflict-torn states. First, a state-centric approach aspires to construct a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence that enjoys widespread legitimacy and accountability. Based on the findings of Baker (2011), the OECD DAC report (2007) and Baker and Scheye (2007), it is more often the case than not that in post-conflict environments security and justice provision is carried out by non-state actors
instead of state security forces. As Boege et al (2008) earlier pointed out is that “it might be theoretically and practically more fruitful to think in terms of hybrid political orders” (2008:
16). Recalling the importance of effective SSR in early post-conflict transition as was highlighted by Toft (2010), reform of the security sector must have some teeth to counteract
spoiler behavior, ranging from political obstruction to outright violence, but these teeth must be fully endorsed by local stakeholders (Sedra 2011: 108). In line with the non-state or hybrid nature of most post-conflict states, this theory of hybrid security governance suggests that the probability of war recurrence will diminish when reform of the security sector includes non-statutory security actors.
The second obstacle of the state-centric SSR-model is that it is very expensive and its implementation design is based on a short timetable. As one can imagine, post-conflict states have severe fiscal restraints. State revenue sources have been distributed and allocated based on a war-time economy design and are highly dependent on donor support and other uncertain
revenue streams (Baker 2011: 214). Similarly, Lawrence finds that “human resources
available to the fragile or post-conflict state are often grossly inadequate due to shortages of
police officers, lawyers, legislators and civil servants” (2012: 4). The state-centric SSR
approach is more expensive in terms of financial and human capital as it fixed on establishing
an entire ‘new’ security system, which consequently leads to the problem of ineffective
financed policing structures: “financed police will remain urban-based, under-trained, under-equipped, ineffective and unsupported” (Baker 2011: 214). Taking into account the scarcity of available resources in a post-conflict environment, the hybrid model of SSR focuses on making use of existing security networks to provide more effective, human and financial sustainable, legitimate post-conflict security and justice services. In addition, public expenses that would otherwise be invested in the state policy and judiciary may now be allocated to other critical development areas such as education and healthcare.
This thesis suggest that in the process of implementing a state security-orientated security governance model, non-state security providers will 'decide' for themselves to what extent they adopt or resist the external implemented security model. The crucial assumption that underlines this theory is that security governance are not just 'downloaded' into societies as if they were a empty computer. As has been made clear, informal governance networks exist where the state doesn't. The process of complementation and competition is what creates hybrid models of security governance, as domestic actors will decide for themselves to what extent their interests are included in this reform process. The greater non-state actors manifest competition against the external attempts to transform security governance in post-conflict or fragile states will determine the extent of 'hybridity' of the security sector. As the process of competition is played by actors who are armed and are challenging their counterparts claims on political authority, this will likely cause violence.
Based on the emergence of the hybrid security governance model in response to externally imposed SSR policies in post-conflict or fragile states, this thesis offers the following hypothesis that will guide the case study analysis of SSR and post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan and Timor-Leste:
Hypothesis 1: A state security-orientated SSR policy is likely to be less effective in hybrid political orders and directly fuels violence as local traditions of governance and politics compete with policies of securing and strengthening central state institutions.
Chapter 4
Methodology
In Chapters 5 and 6 this thesis presents two case study analyses that seek to explore the effects of implementing externally-driven state security-orientated SSR policies in post-conflict states that are lack modern statehood in the Weberian sense and host informal governance structures and providers. Since the political environment of hybrid political orders is a emerging concept, few analyses have analyzed this relationship making the possibility to perform quantitative analysis limited. To understand why state-centric SSR programs may negatively affect or even destabilize the post-conflict environment in hybrid societies, a more detailed historical analysis of individual cases is need to uncover the mechanisms how the exclusive reform perspective can cause instability, lacking political legitimacy of the post-conflict state and incite violence as non-state actors resists the externally imposed security model.
In Chapter 5 the institution-building and reform policy of the Afghan National Police will be analyzed. Afghanistan serves as a most likely case to encounter negative effects associated with the externally imposed model of security governance. In this case study, my findings are based on both primary and secondary resources. The majority of the information is retrieved from secondary sources while the public perception data, retrieved from the UNDP and the Asia Foundation, are based on primary sources. Afghanistan presents a very valuable case as it is one of the largest state-building in the world and has a strong SSR focus.
In Chapter 6 the construction 'from scratch' of the Timor-Leste security sector and its reform model is analyzed. Timor-Leste is was long regarded as a benign environment for externally supported state-building operations and has served as one of the most successful state-building achievements according to the UN. The case study of Timor-Leste is primarily based on secondary literature, however, the United Nations Security Council Resolutions that issued the mandates of the involved UN missions are primary resources.
The case studies aim to analyze the outcomes of the normative state-centric SSR models that are based on ideal-type stable states when they are implemented, or rather externally imposed, upon post-conflict societies. While in both cases a very exclusive framework has been guiding the ongoing SSR process, they differ in societal conditions. Afghanistan witnesses far more domestic violence and insurgency movements and it is even hard to describe the situation in Afghanistan as peaceful or rather post-conflict. Timor-Leste on the other hand was at peace after the Australian lead UN taskforce intervened in 1999 and
