Alice Hills

The Inherent Limits of Military Forces in Policing Peace Operations

The military are not used for policing in peacekeeping as often as is commonly assumed, and many of the problems associated with their use derive from the fact that the term policing is used in a broad descriptive sense without defining what is meant. In practice military forces, especially those of the British Army, are used for a range of tasks that is far more limited than is often assumed. As a consequence, the problems posed by the use of the military in policing are less fundamental than many observers believe at present. It is probable that their resolution is dependent on the development of effective functional relationships between military and CIVPOL forces, rather than on shifts in remit or resources.

Revisiting Institutional Resilience as a Tool in Crisis Management

Although institutional resilience is generally considered a desirable attribute in crisis management, many of our assumptions about its value are culturally based. The subject should be revisited because the most adaptive institutions tend to be those associated with statist coercive systems, especially in the developing world. The characteristics of resilient institutions and the factors promoting resilience are addressed here by reference to police systems in sub-Saharan Africa. The conclusion drawn from the resultant discussion is that there is no simple hierarchy of values or goals in crisis management, that institutional manageability is only partly related to the skills and goals of the participants, and that the most significant factor facilitating resilience is an institutions fulfilment of a function or role considered useful by a government or regime.

Security Sector or Security Arena? The Evidence from Somalia

Transforming security governance in areas of limited statehood such as Somalia is notoriously challenging yet international actors continue to try. The uneven record of interventions is partly explained by the resultant projects focusing on the perceived value of what is transmitted, rather than on the way in which it is received, and partly on a misunderstanding of the nature of the security sector to be reformed. The experience of Somalias three regional police forces emphasizes that security actors operate in a dynamic arena, rather than an institutionalized sector.

Civil Affairs and Military Government

The occupation marked the start of the first phase of military operations by British forces in 1945, which effectively ran until the Eighth Army responsibilities were handed over to British Troops in Austria (BTA) in August. The second phase centred on the restoration of a degree of civil government, while the third was signalled by the transfer of the military’s responsibilities to the Allied Commission in the autumn. The means by which immediate objectives were to be achieved was through military government and civil affairs – which are now considered in detail. The headquarters of BTA was not relieved of this responsibility until 15 October, when the military government staff was dissolved and the British Element of the Allied Commission took over. It had been intended that there should be no overlapping between these phases, but manpower problems meant that Allied Commission personnel were, in fact, in command from August onwards. It was not until October, though, that BTA was able to concentrate on its main military tasks of frontier control, guarding duties, internal security and the restoration of communications.

Revisiting Civil War

What constitutes a civil war? What factors best explain their occurrence, dynamics and termination? To what extent can their worst excesses be regulated, controlled or otherwise mitigated by external intervention? What role should we assign to ethnicity, nationalism, religion or globalisation in explaining the longevity or outright savagery of some internecine conflicts and the demise of others? These are the questions that this journal has addressed since its establishment eight years ago, questions that have informed both theoretical articles as well as more empirically driven pieces. Further, these questions remain as relevant to our understanding of civil war today as they were in 1998, and will continue to provide the intellectual continuity of the journal as it passes into the hands of its new editors. Under the successful stewardship of its founder, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, the journal was instrumental in exploring key themes that are now taken as a given in most conceptual understandings of civil war. For example, articles by Philip G. Cerny on neomedievalism and Mark Duffield on ‘Post-modern Conflict: Warlords, Post-adjustment states and Private Protection’ took as their key theme the impact of globalisation on what Cerny referred to as a ‘governance gap’. Having been released from the grip of superpower competition, old state elites, particularly in the Third World, struggled to cope with a plethora of challenges to their dominance over land, resources and people. Indeed, as Duffield demonstrated in what has proved to be a seminal article, the breakdown of state-based governance saw the emergence of alternative forms of exchange and control, most notably in Liberia and in Sierra Leone. In these failed, or as some prefer to call them, alternative states, warlords became dominant actors, as much concerned with their links to the global market place where they could sell their monopolies over scarce resources, as they were over exercising hegemony over a given sovereign space. External intervention in civil wars also became a function of the marketplace: the exponential rise in what are variously called private security firms or private military companies has now given rise to a situation where, in Iraq today such actors are second only in numbers – some 20,000 are thought to be involved – to United States military personnel. Accordingly, the term ‘new’ has been applied as a catch-all adjective to frame our understanding of contemporary civil war. Other scholars, however, have challenged this notion of civil war being new. Stathis Kalyvas, for example, argued that even the apparently indiscriminate amputation of limbs by the Revolutionary United Front during Sierra Leone’s civil war had a political purpose: unable to fend for themselves, the victims would be

Dissolving Boundaries? The Development Marketplace and Military Security

The extent to which the broadening security agenda should be operationalised by Western military forces is unclear. Prompted by events in Afghanistan during October 2001 and the trend towards regime change and reconstruction, this article uses the notion of civil society as a means to explore the implications of using developmental objectives to shape operations. It argues that civil societys limited utility is most evident when it is applied to urban conflict. Nevertheless, civil society is a significant indicator of trends that may yet shape strategic guidance. This raises questions about the nature and role of military force in the contemporary world, and, indeed, of the new security agenda itself.

The intractable nature of urban operations

There is a need to reconcile the increasingly restrictive legal and moral framework of contemporary British operations with what we know of the nature of urban operations. The analytical and ethical challenges of urban operations are many but three specific issues are identified here. First, urban operations lack a theoretical framework. Second, they present their greatest challenge at the strategic and policy levels. Third, the central question confronting leaders is less about prediction than about reconciling an increasingly restrictive legal and moral framework with what we know of the nature of such operations. This last challenge, the focus of attention here, is discussed by reference to recent operations and to the use of weaponry such as novel explosives. The article concludes that humanitarianism and urban operations are probably irreconcilable.

The British Element of the ACA

Winterton and Nicholls’ visit emphasises the fact that planning at AFHQ and the British Element proceeded in parallel. Both were dependent on political guidance from the EAC, and close liaison between the two staffs was essential before and after the Element moved to Italy in May 1945. There were, however, clear divisions of responsibility between the two, and the British Element, both before and after entry into Austria, was kept as a separate entity. Its organisation did not follow the normal principles of military organisation, nor did it dovetail into existing headquarters.

Planning and the Military

There was a constant overlap between issues raised in political organisations, such as the EAC, and those concerning military headquarters, because planning for the occupation was dependent on political directives and strategic developments. The occupation was a military responsibility which might involve warfighting – as, indeed, it did for the Red Army – but post-conflict operations belonged within the wider political framework. This was emphasised by the fact that guidance on the military role in it was given through directives from the EAC or, failing that, by London. But planning for the establishment of a military government was primarily a military responsibility.

British Policy before 1943

The most important influence on the manner in which Britain planned for, and carried out, the occupation of Austria, was the declaration made on 30 October 1943, in Moscow, by the Foreign Ministers of the Allied governments. The declaration stated that: