Mats Berdal

Greed and grievance : economic agendas in civil wars

The presence of economic motives and commercial agendas in wars is not so much a new phenomenon as a familiar theme in the history of warfare. In recent times, as the contributors to this volume show, the licensing of economically motivated violence in such places as Sierra Leone and Liberia has resembled, in terms of its functional utility, both medieval and early modern patterns of warfare. However, in the recent literature on conflict and, even more so, in the practice of international and nongovernmental organizations, comparatively little systematic attention has been given to the precise role of economically motivated actions and processes in generating and sustaining contemporary civil conflicts. This volume is intended to improve our understanding in this area.

Beyond Greed and Grievance – and not too soon

‘a useful conceptual distinction in understanding the motivation for civil war is that between greed and grievance’. thus wrote paul collier in 1999. drawing on statistical data of civil wars since the mid-sixties, his conclusion at the time was stark and unequivocal: ‘grievance-based explanations of civil war’ were ‘seriously wrong’. in seemingly uncompromising terms, he argued instead that the key to understanding why such wars erupt lay in greed and the quest for loot by rebel actors. it most certainly was not to be found in self-serving ‘narratives of grievance’ or in any claim on the part of insurgents to be fighting for justice. the likelihood of greed-driven wars breaking out was particularly high, collier suggested further, in countries that relied heavily on primary commodity exports, had a surfeit of young, unemployed and poorly educated men, and were experiencing a period of rapid economic decline. this, in short, was the ‘greed thesis’ of contemporary civil wars.

The Peace in Between: Post-War Violence and Peacebuilding

1. The Peace in Between Astri Suhrke Echoes from History 2. Violence and the Post-Conflict State in Historical Perspective: Spain 1936-1948 Michael Richards 3. Reconstruction and Violence Post-Bellum American South 1865-77 Michael Beaton Europe and the Middle East 4. Post-War Violence in Bosnia Mats Berdal, Gemma Collantes-Celador and Merima Zupcevic Buzadzic 5. Revenge and Reprisal in Kosovo Michael J. Boyle 6. Political Violence in Post-Civil War Lebanon Are Knudsen and Nasser Yassin 7. From Regime Change to Civil War: Violence in post-invasion Iraq Toby Dodge Asia 8. Armed Politics in Afghanistan Antonio Giustozzi 9. Warlordism: Three Biographies from Southeastern Afghanistan Kristian Berg Harpviken 10. Violence in Post-War Cambodia Sorpong Peu 11. Conflict and Violence in Post-Independence in East Timor Dionisio Babo-Soares Africa 12. Sexual Violence: The Case of Eastern Congo Ingrid Samset 13. The Political Economies of Violence in Post-war Liberia Torunn Wimpelmann Chaudhary 14. Violence, Denial and Fear in Post-Genocide Rwanda Trine Eide Latin America 15. The Multiple Forms of Violence in Post-War Guatemala John-Andrew McNeish and Oscar Lopez Rivera Conclusions 16. Reflections on Post-War Violence and Peacebuilding Mats Berdal

Lessons not learned: the use of force in peace operations in the 1990s

The paper examines the assumptions, implicit and explicit, that have guided the use of force in support of humanitarian objectives in the 1990s. Drawing, in particular, on the cases of former Yugoslavia and Somalia, it questions some of the lessons that writers on «peace support operations» have drawn about the possibilities inherent in the «impartial» use of force.

Investing for Peace: The Private Sector and the Challenges of Peacebuilding

The new environment for peacebuilding is defined by new approaches to aid, a redefinition of the private sector to include hybrid forms of state and market activity, a new balance of emphasis between corporate social responsibility activities on the part of private-sector actors and the foundational importance of robust legal and regulatory frameworks, a structural boom in demand for natural resources, and the opportunity to have essential small and medium-sized private-sector activity catalysed by macro-finance investment in natural-resources sectors. It presents new risks as well as new opportunities and requires, above all, a new compact between the international donor community and governments in countries experiencing or emerging from conflict that seek to trade their way to sustainable development.

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.

Ten Years of International Peacekeeping

While ‘classical’ peacekeeping may have not been an appropriate answer to challenges in the early 1990s’ the demand for international deployments has not diminished, and nor has the demand for UN involvement. Three issues of the past decade are highlighted in this article: the question of continuity and change in peacekeeping practice; the critical role of politics in the advent and subsequent history of operations; and the respective importance of the UN and other institutions as vehicles for collective action.

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.

The Use of Force in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Problems and Prospects

Although the demand for UN peacekeepers shows little sign of abating, a sense of uncertainty and malaise continues to colour discussions about the future of UN peacekeeping. Of the many issues facing the UN High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations that was set up in 2014, the use of force by UN peacekeepers is likely to attract particular attention. It is also likely to prove divisive, both among member states and within the Secretariat. While steps can be taken to strengthen the capacity of the UN to mount and conduct field operations, Mats Berdal and David H Ucko argue that the way forward does not lie simply in entrusting UN forces with ever-more ‘robust’ war-fighting mandates. Instead, more systematic attention needs to be given to strategically linking UN peacekeeping activities to political processes aimed at bringing violent conflict to an end. This will require far greater honesty from member states regarding their own responsibility in enabling the UN to do what they ask of it.