Negotiating Security Arrangements

Security

Nicole Carle: Hello and welcome to this module on security and peace negotiations. This session is intended to overview the key aspects of how security can be restored after a conflict using the resources of both domestic and international forces. My name is Nicole Carle and I'm a counsel at the Public International Law and Policy Group and I'm joined today by Dr. Paul Williams, President and Co-founder of the Public International Law and Policy Group. Welcome, Paul. 

Dr. Paul Williams: Thanks, Nicole. It's really good to be here today. 

Nicole Carle: Looking forward to it. 

Restoring Security

Nicole Carle: To begin our session, can you briefly describe what it means to restore security? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah, Nicole, in any peace negotiation, there are a number of dimensions of security that are discussed in the negotiations. One is the insecurity caused by the activities of the non-state armed actors. They're attacking the government forces. In many instances, the non-state armed actors, not always.

But in many instances, they'll be engaged in atrocity crimes, and that creates a very insecure environment, not only for the state, but for the civilians of that state. On the flip side, you have the government attacking the non-state armed actors, and also in many instances, committing atrocity crimes, which creates further insecurity for the civilian population.

You'll increasingly have a war economy, war profiteers, mercenaries, and those that are simply engaged in organized crime taking advantage of the insecure situation, creating more insecurity and threatening civilians and causing harm to civilians throughout the process. And oftentimes, you'll have neighboring states either contributing troops, material, mercenaries into the conflict and or eyeing up resources or territory.

You see this now in Sudan with a number of states contributing, well, weapons, contributing militia, uniformed militia, contributing mercenaries, and moving populations from their country into the fringes of Sudan in order to impact the demographic situation there. You can come up with a dozen different ways in which security is threatened, because oftentimes people will say, we just have to stop the shooting, we just got to get a ceasefire between the non-state armed actors and the state. Well, you have to get them to stop committing atrocity crimes. And we've talked about other situations, atrocity crime prosecution and transitional justice, but you also have to deal with the insecurity by organized crime, by mercenaries, and by the neighboring states. So, there's a lot to address in this question of security 

Importance of Addressing Monopoly of Force

Nicole Carle: And another part of restoring security is what we call a state rebuilding; it's a monopoly of force. And this issue is commonly discussed within peace negotiations and added to peace agreements. Can you now discuss the importance of addressing this issue in such agreements?

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah. And Nicole, this is a really difficult issue to address in a peace negotiation, because if you ask any state that is not in conflict, they look at you and they'll say, yeah, a state exercises the exclusive monopoly of a force, the government exercises the monopoly of force. You can't have militia, you can't have civilians, you can't have unregulated armed actors in your country exercising force for policing, or for security, or for etcetera. But, when you try to apply that to a conflict situation or a country emerging from conflict, what it means is the non-state armed actors have to give up, and the state wins. 

Most conflicts are a contest using force and our reaction to the state's abusive monopoly of force or perceived abuse of monopoly of force. And so, if you have a very academic or a very state centric approach by the mediation and say, great, we need to immediately restore the monopoly of force, and I've been in negotiations in the past where the international experts will come in and say, yeah, you gotta have a monopoly of force now, you go tell the armed actors that they have to give up their weapons on Friday because on Monday the state has the monopoly of force. So, it's exceedingly difficult to crack that nut.

Ensuring Durable Peace

Nicole Carle: You mentioned this a little bit, but can you say a little bit more about how negotiators can create a state held monopoly of force in the manner that ensures durable peace? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yes. Nicole, the goal should be to eventually create a state held monopoly of force. Now there are a number of ways of doing that.

The first is for the state to share its monopoly of force with international or regional states. Peacekeeping is much maligned recently, but it's pretty crucial to maintaining peace and security while the other dimensions of a peace agreement are brought into play while there's a national dialogue, a constitution drafting process, while there's a DDR, a demilitarization, demobilization, reintegration process, while they sort out sharing of natural resources, you need to blanket of security. It can be everything from the 50,000 heavily armed NATO troops that deployed to Bosnia to ensure security, or the lightly armed or unarmed monitors that we saw in El Salvador, Guatemala, and other places. You'll have to find out exactly the right configuration of those international forces, but first of all, the state shares its monopoly of force. 

Also, in the interim, sharing that monopoly of force to a degree with the non-state armed actors as they move towards integrating into a unified national army. Again, it's not on Friday where you're a non-state armed actor, you're a militia member, and on Monday, you're a private in the National Army. It takes a while to transition from being a non-state armed actor to either demobilizing or to integrating into the army. And so, you want to do that over a phased period of time with necessary and proper incentives. 

Negotiation With Non-State Actors 

Nicole Carle: You talked a couple of times about this transitionary process with non-state armed actors. Can you now discuss what the process might look like to create a state held monopoly of force if there's a recognized state government negotiating with the non-state armed actors? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah there's sort of a few different ways in which this can come about. The first is that there's a fairly rapid, still phased, but a fairly rapid bringing into the national army, individuals. That actually seldom happens. What usually happens is the National Army will bring in units because they want to maintain the command structure, or the non-state armed actors will want to maintain their command structure because they've been promoted to certain ranks within the militia. They'll oftentimes want to keep those ranks, but that doesn't necessarily meld with the ranks of the state military, the state security structures. And so, they'll keep those structures together and then they'll be adjacent to the national army or national security structures, and then there'll be an umbrella of command and control over those units. And then over time, that will adjust and they'll integrate. 

It's a little risky because it's easier for a unit to take its weapons and its personnel and leave and restart the conflict, but it's easier to get them to agree to basically restore a monopoly of force if they can come in wholesale and keep their structure, and keep their pay, and keep their privileges that they've acquired.

There are also some limited instances where the parties have agreed that the non-state armed actors can maintain their own army. Now, I mean, this is the case oftentimes where external self determination is on the table. So, in the comprehensive peace agreement between Sudan and South Sudan, they agreed that over a period of time, four to five years, they would try to make a go of unity, but if not, there'd be a referendum and the South could become independent.

The South maintained its own army and it was entitled to do that under the comprehensive peace agreement. And, there have been some other instances as well, where that entity is either maintained or transformed into some type of other entity. In Kosovo, the Kosovo Liberation Army was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps, but it was allowed to maintain because there was a vision that Kosovo would eventually become independent from what was left of the former Yugoslavia. So there's lots of different ways of transitioning those forces. 

Sharing Force with International or Regional Actors 

Nicole Carle: Thanks for covering that. And can you now talk about sharing force with perhaps international or regional actors and when that might be necessary for a state? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yes, Nicole, and in some instances, the state's monopoly of forces eroded, that there really isn't a state capable. If we think about Haiti and the situation that Kenya is faced at the moment with deploying police officers possibly or the Canadians and others thinking about deploying peacekeepers, there is no real state security force to, to support or to engage with, and so in some instances, you'll find that the regional actors assume nearly all of the monopoly of force. 

In East Timor, it was the Australians with the permission of the United Nations that essentially assumed the monopoly of force for East Timor until they could train up a new army; same thing with the NATO forces in Bosnia, the NATO forces in Kosovo.

You'll find an instance where the security structure is so eroded that the state's monopoly is, in a sense, held by regional states or international actors until the state can get back on its feet.

Nicole Carle: Now changing gears a little bit. Can you talk about peacekeepers and when they might be pulled into security efforts? 

Dr. Paul Williams: Yeah. Nicole, there are a handful of questions that arise when we talk about peacekeeping.

When do they get pulled in? Sometimes they're deployed during the act of conflict in order to create the circumstances conducive to having the parties go into peace negotiations. Sometimes, they're deployed when there's a ceasefire and oftentimes mostly as monitors, and frequently after a peace agreement is signed, either those that are existing will be transformed or additional peacekeepers or new peacekeepers will be brought to bear.

The question is, who authorizes these peacekeepers? Is it the African Union? Is it the United Nations? Is it ASEAN? Is there some regional entity that authorizes them? Does it need Security Council backing? Is it Chapter six? Is it Chapter seven, which is binding? Are peacekeepers lightly armed? Heavily armed? Can they use force? Can they only use force in self defense? Or can they use force to protect human rights? To protect civilians from being attacked? And who has to consent? Obviously the state has to consent because it has sovereign authority, but do the non-state armed actors have to consent to the deployment of peacekeepers? And if you have dozens of non-state armed actors, do all of them, some of them, most of them have to consent? And for those that don't consent, can force be used against them by the peacekeepers to induce them to consenting? And then the last question is, when do they leave? 

You know, lately we've seen a number of instances where the states have withdrawn the consent of peacekeeping forces and ask them to leave, and the peacekeeping forces have to wrap up and leave. So, it's a real multidimensional conundrum when deploying peacekeepers, and a lot of questions for the mediators to think through. Now, the good news is there's scores of examples of peacekeeping mandates, successful, unsuccessful peacekeeping operations. And there's a fairly established process and mechanism for crafting a mandate, consenting, creating rules of engagement, and funding and deploying peacekeepers. 

Operational Restoration of Security 

Nicole Carle: It's the critical aspect of the post conflict transitional process, so thanks for going over that, Paul. My last question to end our discussion is to bring us back to the domestic process, because we've been talking a lot about issues around how international forces can be involved in the restoration of security. But domestically, what does it look like operationally once all the necessary forces are in place?

Dr. Paul Williams: I'm so glad you asked me that question because oftentimes, mediators, parties will think, oh, we've agreed upon deploying peacekeepers, they have a mandate, they have rules of engagement, they're well funded. All right, we're good to go. And we've negotiated power sharing arrangements, we've negotiated wealth sharing, we're all going to be political elites that are well funded. In order to secure a durable piece, it's important that there be both DDR and SSR. 

There needs to be demobilization, demilitarization and reintegration. You got to get rid of the non-state armed actors. You do that by having them give up their weapons and going back to their homes, their businesses, their farms, their family. Or, they joined the national army. Oftentimes folks will say, oh, they should join the police. You don't really want a child soldier to now become a police officer. Policing is a different skill set than the army or security protecting the nation's borders.

So, you'll want to do something with the non state armed actors. It's expensive. It's complicated. There's inconsistent success of efforts around the globe, but you need to do something with the non-state armed actors. Otherwise, they wander off and become mercenaries.

And we've seen that quite a bit with former militia becoming mercenaries for hire or moving into organized crime. Now, on the flip side, you also need security sector reform. One reason why these countries are oftentimes in conflict is because the military has been used not to defend against external threats, but to oppress the internal threat population, and there's a lack of trust. 

Oftentimes, they're responsible for atrocity crimes and you can't just say, oh we're the state army, we have a monopoly of force, you guys can come join us as non-state armed actors if you want. But, we're gonna go back to business as usual.

You also have a situation where in many of these conflict affected countries, the army is deeply involved in business; Burma, Sudan, other places, and basically business should be turned over to the civilians, the army should do what an army does. If you're going to give it a monopoly of force, it should do it properly, it should go and it should protect the borders of the country, the sovereignty of the country. 

That can happen fairly quickly. Security sector form takes a little bit longer. So you have an asymmetry there of the obligations of the parties. But again, that's something that the international community is oftentimes quite good at providing assistance with. 

Nicole Carle: I think that brings us to the end of today's discussion. Thank you, Paul for joining us to discuss this important topic of security and peace agreements and for those listening and other videos, we will discuss additional aspects of the negotiation process. Thank you. 

Dr. Paul Williams: Thank you. Nicole.