David H. Ucko

Militias, tribes and insurgents: The challenge of political reintegration in Iraq

Following its overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the United States was confronted with one of the most complex state-building enterprises of recent history. A central component of state building, emphasised in the literature yet given scant attention at the time of the invasion, is the process of political reintegration: the transformation of armed groups into political actors willing to participate peacefully in the political future of the country. In Iraq, political reintegration was a particularly important challenge, relating both to the armed forces of the disposed regime and to the Kurdish and Shia militias eager to play a role in the new political system. This article examines the different approaches employed by the United States toward the political reintegration of irregular armed groups, from the policy vacuum of 2003 to the informal reintegration seen during the course of the so-called “surge” in 2007 and 2008. The case study has significant implications for the importance of getting political reintegration right—and the long-term costs of getting it badly wrong.

Introduction to the DDR Forum: Rethinking the Reintegration of Former Combatants

Over the past two decades, international efforts to support the socio-economic adjustment of ex-combatants to the uncertain and often messy realities of postwar situations, have presented donor countries, NGOs and international organizations with complex, often formidable, institutional and logistical challenges. Many of these have been exhaustively and often expertly covered in the still burgeoning literature on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR). While they continue to merit scholarly and policy attention, the underlying focus of this special issue of International Peacekeeping is less on what we in the past have referred to as the mechanics of DDR – that is, how best to plan, organize, coordinate and fund DDR activities – than on the context and politics of reintegrating ex-combatants following protracted periods of armed conflict and civil war. In part this focus is justified by a simple desire to redress an imbalance in writings on DDR: a large of body of literature, prescriptive and policyoriented in character, already exists dealing with the mechanics of DDR activities; much less has been devoted to issues of political context and processes. More fundamentally, it stems from a concern with the tendency – naturally encouraged by too heavy a focus on the nuts and bolts of operations – to treat the challenges of DDR largely as problems of effective delivery, abstracted from any specific historical and political frame of reference. This is no trivial or purely academic concern. The fact remains that decision-makers and practitioners in donor countries and international organizations have not departed fundamentally from what is essentially a managerial or technocratic approach to DDR, that is, from an approach that, almost by definition, remains divorced from a deeper engagement with the political, historical and cultural setting and dynamics of individual conflicts. One consequence of this, as Sabiiti Mutengesa perceptively observes in his reassessment of DDR in Uganda in the 1990s, is that ‘the utility and efficacy of DDR’ are overstated while the ‘actual dynamics of protracted conflicts in less developed conflicts’ are downplayed. As the contributions to this special issue show, the reintegration of ex-combatants following bloody and disruptive civil war has taken a variety of different forms. The extent to which any of these has proved effective and sustainable has depended much less on adherence to a fixed formula drawing on ‘best practices’ than on innovative, often pragmatic, solutions rooted in an understanding of conflict dynamics and wider political circumstances.

Beyond Clear-Hold-Build: Rethinking Local-Level Counterinsurgency after Afghanistan

Despite a highly uneven track record, clear-hold-build has remained a dominant, even universal, approach to counterinsurgency. Its prevalence is rooted in its incontestable sequencing of operations and the attendant promise of a linear path towards peace. Yet the appeal of this approach also makes it deceptive and possibly dangerous. Clear-hold-build is not a strategy and must not be mistaken for one, as it has been in Afghanistan, where it inspired false hope for swift progress. Instead, it is necessary to reach a more problematized view of this approach and of what it aims to achieve. This article provides such an evaluation, proposing five principles that should guide its future application. These principles point to the need for a far deeper understanding of how security, development, and governance interact at the local level. Counterinsurgents must understand the relationships between aid and security, between government and governance, and between state and periphery. Where the central government is predatory or lacks support, clear-hold-build also raises difficult questions of authority, legitimacy, and control – questions that counterinsurgents must be capable of answering. Thus problematized, clear-hold-build emerges as a framework with heuristic utility; a schema that can be helpful in planning but which must at the time of application be populated by knowledge, substance, and skill. The implications of these requirements are troubling, particularly for those governments still in the business of armed intervention.

The Malayan Emergency: The Legacy and Relevance of a Counter‐Insurgency Success Story

Taylor and Francis FDEF_A_447972.sgm 10.1080/1 702430903377944 Defence Studies 470-2436 (pr nt)/1743-9698 (online) Original Article 2 1 & F ancis -2 0 0 00March-June 2010 DavidU ko d vid.ucko@k l.ac.uk Counter-insurgency operations are notoriously complex and state militaries have often struggled to adapt to their particular logic. The overarching dilemma is that while counterinsurgencies are not primarily military in nature, most of the resources necessary to run such operations lie within the armed forces. Not only can the military get to the scene faster, but it is also the only institution with the manpower, equipment and capacity for forcible deployment necessary to manage a protracted and large-scale operation in a non-permissive environment. At the same time, the military is asked to conduct a type of operation that usually falls far beyond its traditional remit and where its main instrument – the use of force – is often peripheral to the overall solution. This basic contradiction helps explain why military forces have typically struggled to prevail in counterinsurgency campaigns and why only a select few operations can be depicted as having been ‘successful’. Foremost in this list stands the British counter-insurgency campaign against the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA) of 1948–60, also known as the Malayan Emergency. The British counter-insurgency effort in Malaya resulted in the military defeat and marginalisation of the MRLA, the declaration of Malayan independence on 31 August 1957 and the political reconciliation of the previously divided ethnic-Chinese and ethnicMalay communities. It is based on these achievements that the Emergency has been lauded a counter-insurgency success story.

Countering Insurgents through Distributed Operations: Insights from Malaya 1948–1960

Abstract This article examines the emerging US Marine Corps concept of ‘Distributed Operations’ (DO) and its applicability to counter-insurgency. DO involves dispersing the force and empowering decentralised units so as to create a network of mobile, agile and adaptable cells, each operating with a significant degree of autonomy yet in line with the commanders overall intent. This concepts applicability to irregular campaigns is assessed with reference to the Malayan Emergency, in which the British and Commonwealth forces employed dispersed and decentralised small-unit formations to great effect. The article teases out the conditions that allowed DO to succeed in Malaya, and comments on the requirements and implications for the use of DO today in the prosecution of the ‘Long War’.

‘The People are Revolting’: An Anatomy of Authoritarian Counterinsurgency

ABSTRACT Rather than win hearts and minds, authoritarian counterinsurgency is said to rely heavily on coercion. It has a reputation for effectiveness, if also for its amorality. Still, the research into authoritarian counterinsurgency is surprisingly lacking. By distilling common features from key cases, this article concludes that this approach goes beyond the indiscriminate violence that typically captures the imagination. Like their democratic counterparts but differently, authoritarian regimes also engage in mobilisation, create narratives, and turn military advantage into political gain. The analysis explains how these tasks are undertaken and, by contradistinction, sheds light on more liberal approaches as well.

Lessons from Basra: The Future of British Counter-insurgency

Public and media attention over the ongoing Iraq Inquiry commissioned by the UK government in summer 2009 has focused primarily on Prime Minister Tony Blairs determination to involve the UK in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But for Britains role in international peace and security, the conduct of operations in Iraq and the circumstances of the British withdrawal in 2009 are likely to have effects as far-reaching as the initial invasion of the country in 2003. The lessons the armed forces draw from this campaign, how they interpret it, will inform both the British militarys future relation to counter-insurgency and the future of British civil–military relations.

Can Limited Intervention Work? Lessons from Britain’s Success Story in Sierra Leone

ABSTRACT Following frustrating campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, Western interventions are becoming more limited, with troops being deployed for short bursts and residual peace-building tasks being left to others. Although this approach limits exposure for the intervening government, it struggles to achieve meaningful political change. Examining the comparatively successful British intervention in Sierra Leone (2000–02), this article identifies the conditions for effectiveness in these campaigns. It challenges the historiography of the case by framing armed confrontations and raids as enablers of politics rather than ends in themselves; indeed, in both the conduct and study of intervention, politics must reign supreme.

The United Nations and the Use of Force: Between Promise and Peril

When, in An Agenda for Peace of June 1992, Boutros Boutros-Ghali set out his vision for a revitalised UN after the Cold War, he offered a definition of UN ‘peacekeeping’ in which the insertion of one innocentsounding word appeared to herald a new era. ‘Peace-keeping’, the UN secretary general probingly stated, ‘is the deployment of a UN presence in the field, hitherto with the consent of all the parties concerned’. Catching the attention of UN officials, academics and governments at the time, the reference to ‘hitherto’ was deemed highly significant. It seemed to imply that the tried and tested principles of UN peacekeeping – its reliance on the principles of consent, impartiality and minimum use of force except in self-defence – might now, in the post-Cold War era, give way to a more expansive role for UN military forces, one that would likely involve taking the initiative in the use of force. The idea that UN peacekeeping might evolve in new and more ambitious ways reflected the optimism of the times – an optimism reflecting in part the very real achievements that UN peacekeeping had stacked up over the previous four years, most notably in Namibia but also in Central America. More generally, An Agenda for Peace captured a widespread sense that with the end of the Cold War an ‘opportunity [had] been regained to achieve the great objectives of the Charter’. UN peacekeeping, it was widely felt, offered the most promising of areas in which Member States could build on established practices and, in doing so, help carve out a more central role for the UN in the field of peace and security.

NATO at 60

As NATO turns 60 in April 2009, celebrations will be tempered by the continuing difficulties it faces in Afghanistan. The Alliances first operation outside the Euro-Atlantic area has revealed a major gap between grand ambitions and actual capability. Central to this problem is the political disunity among NATOs member-states. The Strasbourg–Kehl summit may provide an opportunity to rethink what can most realistically be expected from NATO in terms of its contribution to international peace and security. Here, much can be learnt from the manner in which it has thus far responded to changing strategic circumstances since the Cold War, and the constraints, internal and external, that have impinged on its activities and are likely to continue to do so. The evidence points to a need for NATO to bring its exalted political purposes into closer alignment with its actual military missions and capabilities. The Alliance still has a potentially important role to play, but greater realism is needed both as to its strengths and its weaknesses.