International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance: Hybrid Forms of Peace (Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies)

Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies Series Editor: Oliver P. Richmond, Professor, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews, UK Editorial Board: Roland Bleiker, University of Queensland, Australia; Henry F. Carey, Georgia State University, USA; Costas Constantinou, University of Keele, UK; A.J.R. Groom, University of Kent, UK; Vivienne Jabri, King’s College London, UK; Edward Newman, University of Birmingham, UK; Sorpong Peou, Sophia University, Japan; Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, University of Sheffield, UK; Professor Michael Pugh, University of Bradford, UK; Chandra Sriram, University of East London, UK; Ian Taylor, University of St. Andrews, UK; Alison Watson, University of St. Andrews, UK; R.B.J. Walker, University of Victoria, Canada; Andrew Williams, University of St. Andrews, UK. Titles include: Roland Bleiker AESTHETICS AND WORLD POLITICS Morgan Brigg THE NEW POLITICS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION Responding to Difference Susanne Buckley-Zistel CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN UGANDA Remembering after Violence Karina Zofia Butler A CRITICAL HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION APPROACH Jason Franks RETHINKING THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM Vivienne Jabri WAR AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF GLOBAL POLITICS James Ker-Lindsay EU ACCESSION AND UN PEACEMAKING IN CYPRUS Roger Mac Ginty INTERNATIONAL PEACEBUILDING AND LOCAL RESISTANCE Hybrid Forms of Peace Roger Mac Ginty NO WAR, NO PEACE The Rejuvenation of Stalled Peace Processes and Peace Accords Carol McQueen HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION AND SAFETY ZONES Iraq, Bosnia and Rwanda Audra L. Mitchell LOST IN TRANSFORMATION Violent Peace and Peaceful Conflict in Northern Ireland

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Sorpong Peou INTERNATIONAL DEMOCRACY ASSISTANCE FOR PEACEBUILDING Cambodia and Beyond Sergei Prozorov UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE EU The Limits of Integration Oliver P. Richmond THE TRANSFORMATION OF PEACE Bahar Rumelili CONSTRUCTING REGIONAL COMMUNITY AND ORDER IN EUROPE AND SOUTHEAST ASIA Chandra Lekha Sriram PEACE AS GOVERNANCE Power-Sharing, Armed Groups and Contemporary Peace Negotiations Stephan Stetter WORLD SOCIETY AND THE MIDDLE EAST Reconstructions in Regional Politics

Rethinking Peace and Conflict Studies Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–4039–9575–9 (hardback) & 978–1–4039–9576–6 (paperback) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one of the ISBNs quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

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International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance Hybrid Forms of Peace

Roger Mac Ginty Reader, School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, UK

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© Roger Mac Ginty 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–27376–4 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mac Ginty, Roger, 1970– International peacebuilding and local resistance : hybrid forms of peace / Roger Mac Ginty. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978–0–230–27376–4 (alk. paper) 1. Peace-building. 2. Nation-building. 3. Government, Resistance to. I. Title. JZ5538.M33 2011 327.1⬘72—dc22

2011007801

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

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For Mrs Mac Ginty and Patrick

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Contents List of Illustrations

viii

List of Abbreviations

ix

Acknowledgements

x

Introduction

1

1 The Liberal Peace

19

2 Indigenous Peacebuilding

47

3 Hybridity

68

4 Hybrid Security: Afghanistan

91

5 Hybrid Economy: Iraq

115

6 Hybrid Statebuilding: Bosnia

134

7

158

Hybrid Governance: Lebanon

8 Hybrid Civil Society: Northern Ireland

183

Conclusion

207

References

213

Index

237

vii

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Illustrations Tables 1 2 3 4

Origin and gender of presenters at the 2008 and 2010 International Studies Association Conventions Origin and gender of contributors to leading peace and conflict journals, 1999–2009 Percentage electoral turnout in selected parliamentary elections after peace accords Indigenous versus international peacebuilding

5 5 8 54

Figures 1 The hybrid peace 2 An overly stylised liberal peace ‘silo’ or transmission chain 3 Overlaps and non-overlaps between the local and the international

9 33 88

viii

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Abbreviations ADR BiH CIA CPA DDR GDP IBL IFOR ILO IMF INGO IRA ISAF LCY LTA NARP NATO NGO OECD OHR OMSAR OSCE SFOR SFRY SSR UNDP

alternative dispute resolution Bosnia-Herzegovina Central Intelligence Agency (US) Coalition Provisional Authority (in Iraq) demobilisation, disarmament, and reintegration gross domestic product institutionalisation before liberalisation Implementation Force (NATO) International Labour Organisation International Monetary Fund international non-governmental organisation Irish Republican Army International Security Assistance Force League of Communists of Yugoslavia Lebanese Transparency Association National Administrative Rehabilitation Programme (Lebanon) North Atlantic Treaty Organisation non-governmental organisation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Office of the High Representative (UN) Office of Minister of State for Administrative Reform (Lebanon) Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Stabilization Force (NATO) Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia security sector reform United Nations Development Programme

ix

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Acknowledgements I am immensely grateful to all those who have eased the passage of this work. My first debt of gratitude is owed to those who put up with my presence and tiresome questions during the fieldwork. The whole practice of fieldwork is often yet another imposition on people who just want to get on with their lives. Other debts are due to my colleagues and students at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, who have helped shape my thoughts on how we approach contemporary peacemaking. Thanks are due to Alison Watson, Andrew Williams, Emily Pia, Gurch Sanghera, Ian Taylor, Jaremey McMullin, and Stefanie Kapler. Past and present PhD students, and students on the MLitt in Peace and Conflict Studies course, deserve special mention for stretching my knowledge and exposing the holes in my assumptions. Thanks are also due to my School of International Relations colleagues Fiona Oviatt, Gillian Fleming, John Anderson, Mary Kettle, Wendy Boyter, and Yee-Kuang Heng, who have made life easier (most of the time). ˝ zerdem, David Chandler, Elida Jacobsen, Outwith St Andrews, Alp O John Heathershaw, Kristofer Liden, Mike Pugh, Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, and Tim Jacoby have all contributed to my thinking on this topic. Abdul Hai Sofizada, Audra Mitchell, Cathy Gormley-Heenan, Christine Hamieh, Kris Brown, Gráinne Kelly, Malaiz Daud, Neil Best, and Sean Byrne were very kind in reading draft chapters. Obviously all omissions and errors are mine. Oliver Richmond deserves special mention for his encouragement, and as many of the ideas in this work are shamelessly ‘borrowed’ from him. As always, John Darby’s sage wisdom, generous humour, and friendship are appreciated. I am very grateful to St Andrews Peace and Conflict MLitt student Surabhi Agrawal for drawing the diagrams. St Andrews undergraduate students Caroline Hargreaves, Cassandra Howe, Catie Serex, Chris Martin, Christine Grant, Claire Mc Haffie, Erika Freyr, Julia Watson, Laura Sharkey, Laura Thompson, Sheila Gregson, and Stephanie Twigg undertook the gargantuan task of wading through ISA convention directories and a decade’s worth of journals to provide the data for Tables 1 and 2. Thanks are due to Hilda McNae, a wonderful librarian at St Andrews, and to Liz Blackmore and Christina Brian at Palgrave, and Vidhya Jayaprakash at Newgen. European Union Seventh Framework Programme grant 266931, ‘Cultures of governance x

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Acknowledgements xi

and conflict resolution in Europe and India’, allowed me to grapple with many of the issues covered in this book. In the real world (and there is one out there), very many people have provided much-needed distraction. I am especially indebted to the people of Tweedyland, who have been all too generous in providing distraction. Prominent in this regard has been Dave Taylor, with his invaluable advice on onion growing.

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Introduction

We are all hybrids. Our polities, societies, and economies are the result of long processes of hybridisation. Our cultures are intertwined. The story of human development contains much mixing of norms and practices. Individuals, societies, and institutions engage in everyday conflict management or the quiet recognition of the legitimacy and rights of others, and in the process recognise the hybridity of society. The evidence of our mixing is in our DNA. Yet, despite this evidence, many accounts of human social and political behaviour emphasise particularism, or the uniqueness of groups. Whether through national stereotypes, essentialist descriptions of particular groups, or the use of lazy catch-all categories, there is a widespread tendency in the academic, media, and policy worlds to over-homogenise groups. Conflicts are often presented as though they are between homogeneous dyads: the international community versus the Taliban, the government of Yemen versus Islamists, Basque separatists versus the Spanish government. Consider the first of these examples. The term ‘international community’ is used with promiscuity, yet few stop to ask questions about the membership of this ‘community’. Whom does it actually represent? Similarly, many Afghans are confused by the western use of the term ‘Taliban’, which conflates a heterogeneous range of groups into a single category. This book is purposively normative and aims to contribute to the radical critique of dominant forms of peacemaking and peacebuilding intervention. There is little point in being timid in speaking about peace. Peace, and the ways in which we study it, demands urgent review. To a certain extent, this review of peace as a practice and a concept is already under way in the form of vigorous debates between critics of internationally sponsored peace interventions and those who defend peace. But, as we will see, these debates are prone to caricature, 1

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International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance

and often the blasts and counter-blasts from each side fail to connect with each other. This book hopes to contribute, in a modest way, to the critique on approaches to peace but hopes to do so in a way that is constructive. Much of this book is driven by a concern that we have an incomplete understanding of peace and conflict environments. In turn, partial understandings have implications for how we understand conflict actors and assess their claims. This work seeks to counter three recurring deficiencies in our understandings of violent conflict. Firstly, there is a tendency in much academic and policy literature to produce overly neat analyses of conflicts. These conflict summaries often conform to a linear timeline, are organised around a small list of conflict issues such as ‘drugs’ or ‘ethnicity’, and have a neat ‘cast list’ of actors. Secondly, accounts of conflict are often too static, focused on the apparently unchanging nature of attitudes and the almost timeless antipathy that conflict actors have towards each other. Thirdly, dominant accounts of conflict are often top-down or overly restricted to principal actors such as governments and armed groups. As a result, the agency and diversity of local-level actors are often overlooked. This book recommends the concepts of hybridity and hybridisation as a way of overcoming hegemonic narratives of conflict and internationally supported peace interventions. The lenses offered by hybridity and hybridisation promise more nuanced understandings of conflict and peace interventions. In particular, they encourage us to critically question the contents and fixity of categories, and to be aware of the fluidity of conflicts and their actors. The deployment of hybridity and hybridisation seeks to counter two other trends that have been discernible in the academic literature on peace and conflict in recent years. The first trend has been the tendency of critiques of the liberal peace (or the dominant form of internationally sponsored peace-support intervention) to award this form of peacemaking excessive coherence and power. Certainly the liberal peace is capable of projecting its power over wide areas, and it is able to interfere in many aspects of life in societies emerging from violent conflict. Yet, as the case studies in this book illustrate, the liberal peace also has ‘feet of clay’. It is prone to distraction, suffers from shortages of material and social capital, and has been confronted by resistance from local actors. The lenses offered by hybridity and hybridisation help us to reappraise the liberal peace and move some critiques of it beyond the level of caricature. The second trend in the literature has been the romanticisation of local, indigenous, customary, and traditional approaches to

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Introduction 3

peacebuilding and development. Confronted by the failings of the liberal peace, and the high costs of international peace-support and development interventions, many observers have identified ‘the local’ as the saviour of international efforts. Local ‘ownership’ and ‘participation’ were regarded as ways of enhancing the success and sustainability of peace and development initiatives. In turn, they could reduce dependency on external support. In some cases, the rush to embrace all things local and indigenous has meant that these approaches to peacebuilding and development have been spared critical scrutiny. The concepts of hybridity and hybridisation allow us to interrogate categories such as ‘local’, ‘indigenous’, and ‘international’. Like all academic works, this one is based on a series of assumptions, some explicit, others implicit. Apart from the obvious assumption that anyone will be interested enough to read on, a key assumption relates to the importance of the ideas that lie beneath political, economic, social, and cultural activity. As a result, it is important that we have an understanding of the origins and varieties of liberalism before unpacking the liberal peace. A related assumption is the importance of adopting a longterm historical lens. Much contemporary academia and commentary is ahistorical in the sense of being incurious about the past, and can adopt an overly linear view of history. This work does not pretend to have the historical depth that archival research could bring to bear on the subject, but it does recognise the importance of context. Many accounts of liberal peace interventions tend to begin with the intervention itself or with the immediate crisis that precipitated intervention. There is also a risk that observers focus too heavily on ‘exceptional moments’ or the headline events that eclipse the long-term trends. Such a risk attends all study of civil war. As a result, this work does not assume that societies that have undergone liberal peace interventions can be defined only by civil war, sectarianism, violence, or societal fracture. Upsurges in tension and violence are often episodic, and may not represent a longerterm history replete with tolerance and nuance. Just as there are decisive ‘breaks’ such as partition or regime change, many societies experience historical continuities, or long-term trends that persist despite violent conflict and other ruptures. As an (admittedly tokenistic) recognition of these continuities, the case study chapters open with epigrammatic historical quotations designed to illustrate the continuing relevance of the lessons of history. A further assumption that guides this work is the recognition of the limitations of the analytical and discursive tools at our disposal. Although many disciplines and methodologies are open to us, all

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International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance

research faces constraints and factors that encourage conformity to certain codes of practice and expression. Many of these constraints are there to encourage responsibility among the research community, and to facilitate communication between disciplines. But styles of research and discussion are deeply ethnocentric. Research and publication on peace and conflict is dominated by the global north. This domination is material (the location of well-resourced publishers and universities) and conceptual (the origins of the paradigms and methodologies regarded as ‘legitimate’ for our research). Less than 4 per cent of all presenters at the International Studies Association Conventions in 2008 and 2010 (the world’s largest international relations academic conference) were affiliated to institutions in the global south (see Table 1). Around a third of all presenters were female. It seems difficult to make the case that a form of academic study so comprehensively dominated by white men from the global north should be taken seriously. Similarly, leading journals in the study of peace and conflict are dominated by scholars based in the global north, and indeed by men (see Table 2). The need to be affiliated with ‘respected’ academic institutions speaks volumes about the limiting of debates and the erection of barriers of inclusion and exclusion. Despite the global north’s research dominance it is worth questioning the extent to which scholars from the global north (including myself) have the antennae with which to analyse on-the-ground phenomena in societies emerging from civil war. This is more than a matter of translators and gatekeepers; it relates to the ways in which knowledge is collected, expressed, and legitimated. The discipline of international relations, for example, tends to steer researchers towards analyses that concentrate on formal political institutions and actors. Our research antennae are attuned (pre-programmed by disciplinary conventions) to pick up certain signals. At the same time, they are attuned to miss certain signals. This means that immense quantities of social, political, cultural, and economic phenomena – many of them doubtless highly significant – pass unnoticed. For example, researchers from the global north may be acculturated to analysing political actors according to very conventional, ethnocentric criteria. Yet many political actors, especially at the local level, do not conform to such conventions because they do not organise into formal political parties or develop platforms based on a manifesto that draws on recognisable political claims. To some extent, some varieties of anthropology and sociology are well placed to capture these dynamics, but the scholarly community in the global north has to realise it is often only scratching the surface of the phenomena that it wishes to study. The lens offered by

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Introduction 5

Table 1 Origin and gender of presenters at the 2008 and 2010 International Studies Association Conventions Percentage of presenters based at institutions in the global south

Percentage of female presenters

3.4 3.9

34.5 36.6

2008 2010

Table 2 Origin and gender of contributors to leading peace and conflict journals, 1999–2009 Percentage of contributors based at Percentage of female institutions in the global south contributors Cooperation and Conflict International Peacekeeping Journal of Peace Research Security Dialogue

1.6

26.8

4.0

27.8

3.4

23.4

5.4

19.1

hybridity encourages us to pay attention to local actors, and reminds us that the actions employed by local actors need not conform to conventions of acceptable and unacceptable political behaviour as prescribed by actors from the global north.

The liberal peace in crisis? The liberal peace, or liberal internationalism, is used as the principal frame of reference for this work. This is the case because of the continuing use of liberal rhetoric by leading states, international organisations, international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), and international financial institutions to justify peace-support interventions. Interventions have been justified in the name of freedom, human rights, and democracy. Liberal internationalism is the dominant form of internationally mandated intervention, and has left its mark on dozens of societies that have emerged from violence or authoritarianism in the post-Cold War era. As a result, a substantial evidence trail is in existence.

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International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance

A key aim of this book is to reassess our understanding of the liberal peace and to move away from caricatures that inflate its coherence and strength. Part of this reassessment is a recognition of the varieties of liberal peace on offer. As the case study chapters in this volume show, different types of liberal peace have been promoted to different degrees in different locations and circumstances. The emphasis on processes of hybridisation allows us to illustrate the fluidity and dynamism of the liberal peace. The varieties of liberal peace, and its ability to adapt over time and according to circumstance, present us with a potential categorisation problem: is the ‘liberal peace’ category too broad to be analytically useful? Clearly the coercive liberal peacemaking in Afghanistan is very different from the more persuasive forms of liberal peacebuilding found in Northern Ireland. As the case study chapters illustrate, commonalities abound, not least in the familiar cast list of states and institutions that promote liberal peacebuilding, the familiar script of liberal rhetoric, and the familiar policy prescriptions. In other words, the category retains validity as an analytical device. Despite the dominance of the liberal peace, it faces at least four threats. The first of these relates to the practical shortcomings of this form of peacemaking and peacebuilding when ‘in the field’. While it has to be recognised that international peace-support interventions have helped save and improve many lives, and have helped prevent the re-occurrence of violent conflict in some locations, this form of peacemaking has also had unexpected and counterproductive outcomes. These are most visible in the violent conquests and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but are to be found in virtually all sites of liberal intervention. These shortcomings range from the failure of electoral democracy to take root to the inequities arising from models of economic development that prioritise international markets over local ones and reinforce the immiseration of entire populations. A second (and related) threat facing the liberal peace is its own crisis of confidence. Even the most ardent liberal interventionists are aware of its ‘reverse-Midas touch’ tendencies, and the high (often unanticipated) costs of intervention. As a result, there are signs of a tempering of the enthusiasm of some liberal interventionists. This crisis of confidence does not amount to an existential crisis, but it is manifest in a greater timidity on the part of liberal internationalists in mounting large-scale interventions. A third threat facing the liberal peace, and a major focus of this book, comes in the form of non-compliant local reactions to the liberal peace. This non-compliance can take many forms, ranging from outright conscious resistance to non-engagement based on ignorance. As the case

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Introduction 7

study chapters reveal, many local communities are adept at finding ways to subvert, exhaust, renegotiate, and resist the liberal peace. In some cases, and on some issues, the liberal peace has withdrawn or fought back. In other cases there has been peacemaking and reconciliation. The hybridity and distortion that emerges from these processes of interaction is a recurring theme in this book. A fourth threat to the dominance of the liberal peace comes in the form of ‘non-liberal’ forms of peacemaking and peacebuilding by actors powerful enough to impose their own variety of peace without much reference to the liberal peace. For example, geo-strategic reasons enable powers such as China, Russia, and Israel to impose their own ‘solutions’ to problems within or adjacent to their borders. All three are guilty of the most egregious forms of human rights abuse and denial, but remain unchallenged. It is important to stress that criticisms of the liberal peace made in this work are not criticism for criticism’s sake. The good intentions of tens of thousands of humanitarian and peace-support practitioners are not in doubt. Nor can we detract from the lives saved and improved through the efforts of international actors. Yet, because this form of peacemaking operates at a systemic level, and because it seeks to universalise values and practices, it demands critical scrutiny. Some scholars argue that liberal internationalism is inherently flawed, while others argue that it can be ‘rescued’. This work does not seek to rescue or condemn liberalism per se. Instead, it seeks a new understanding of how liberal internationalism operates, especially in its dealings with the local. We should be under no illusions, however, about the scale of the problems facing the liberal peace, or about its institutional myopia, which means that it is trapped in a cycle of offering liberal institutionalist prescriptions for whatever the problem is. By way of illustration, take the example of electoral turnout in elections in societies that have experienced liberal peacebuilding. Electoral democracy has been a staple in liberal peace interventions, and elections have become accepted elements of political and governance practice in a number of societies. As Table 3 demonstrates, however, it is clear that electoral democracy has failed to persuade electors in some post-peace accord societies that it is a useful vehicle for political representation. The post-accord electoral surge gives way to apathy as electors fail to see a link between their own economic or political condition and their trip to a polling booth. The dramatic fall-off in electoral turnout in Mozambique speaks of the failure of this system of politics. Invariably, however, the liberal prescription is more elections.

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International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance

Table 3 Percentage electoral turnout in selected parliamentary elections after peace accords

Bosnia-Herzegovina El Salvador Kosovo Mozambique

Turnout

Turnout

70.74 (1998) 89.18 (1997) 49.52 (2004) 87.89 (1994)

36.75 (2006) 53.58 (2009) 44.90 (2007) 36.34 (2004)

Hybridity, distortion, and resistance The concepts of hybridity, distortion, and resistance run through this book. They are used as a means of capturing the complexity and nuances of conflict, and as a reaction to what the author believes are overly simplistic accounts of conflict and liberal peace intervention. The concepts are useful for furthering the critique of the liberal peace. Hybridity is taken as the composite forms of social thinking and practice that emerge as the result of the interaction of different groups, practices, and worldviews. It is not the grafting together of two separate entities to create a third entity. Instead, it is assumed that norms and practices are the result of prior hybridisation. This helps move us away from notions of discrete categories that are somehow pristine and insulated from social negotiation and interaction over the millennia. An understanding of the extent of hybridity among actors, modes of operation, and worldviews helps us transcend caricatures of the liberal peace as an entirely alien form of peacemaking that intrudes into entirely indigenous contexts. The on-the-ground picture is much more complex, and involves heterogeneity within categories. This book proposes a four-part model as a way of conceptualising the process of hybridisation in societies experiencing international peace-support interventions. The model helps us visualise the interplay among the factors that make up hybrid forms of peace. These four factors are best conceived as constantly interacting in variable geometry, sometimes conflicting and sometimes cooperating: ●

●

the compliance powers of liberal peace agents, networks, and structures; the incentivising powers of liberal peace agents, networks, and structures;

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Introduction 9 ●

●

the ability of local actors to resist, ignore, or adapt liberal peace interventions; and the ability of local actors, networks, and structures to present and maintain alternative forms of peacemaking.

The interstices between these four factors can be called ‘the hybrid peace’, or a place in which social processes come together to form fusions and composites (see Figure 1). The hybrid peace is not static; instead, the processes of hybridisation mean that it is a constantly changing condition. An implication of the notion and process of hybridisation is that few actors are able to chart and maintain a unilateral course. Instead, actors in peace and war situations must take account of the circumstances created by other actors. As a result, this book uses the concept of ‘distortion’ to illustrate how the strategies and worldviews of actors are refracted by their contact with others. All social environments entail hybridisation and distortion. The peculiar circumstances of war, peace interventions, and post-war reconstruction, however, can accelerate and further distort this hybridisation. The

Ability of liberal peace agents to enforce acceptance of liberal peace

Ability of local actors to ignore, resist, and subvert, the liberal peace

Hybrid Peace

Ability of liberal peace agents to incentivise local engagement with the liberal peace

Ability of local actors to present alternatives to the liberal peace

Figure 1 The hybrid peace

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International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance

case study chapters illustrate how international peace-support interventions along five issue areas (security, economic reform, constitutionmaking, governance, and civil society) became distorted as they interacted with local actors on the ground. This was not a case of discrete international policies that were prefabricated in a hermetically sealed liberal peace laboratory being applied to contexts rendered completely ravaged by war or in which traditional or indigenous actors existed blissfully unaware of exogenous influences. Instead, liberal peace policies and their advocates are themselves the product of prior hybridisation and attempt to influence already hybridised environments that have experienced civil war or authoritarianism. Further hybridisation ensues as (the already hybrid) local and international interact, conflict, and cooperate. The picture that emerges is complex but, it is argued, much more accurate than attempts to explain conflict that are based on discrete sets of actors and linear historical narratives. This book attempts to offer a form of ‘refraction’ or a way of seeing conflict and peacemaking that helps us see the distortions and fractures that are often missing from overly simplified meta-narratives. The lens offered by hybridity allows us to more easily recognise the agency and diversity of local actors in peace and conflict situations. There is a tendency in much academic and policy literature to concentrate on (and take seriously) formal and elite political actors. Many accounts and analyses of peace-support interventions may focus on international interveners (for example, UN peacekeepers or EU High Representatives) and local elites (for example, the president and government in the aftermath of the civil war). Such analyses exclude vast swathes of societies that are emerging from war. They are overly reductive, elitist, and ethnocentric and have a bias towards formal forms of political and economic environment. A focus on hybridisation encourages us to look beyond national capitals to the forces that confront, resist, ignore, disobey, subvert, exploit, and string-along the liberal peace. Thus this work does not see liberal peace interventions as neat silos or top-down transmission chains that flow from international elites in the World Bank or United Nations Headquarters to national governments in societies undergoing liberal peace interventions and thence downwards to municipalities, communities, and individuals. Instead, the picture is much more ragged, with multiple actors interacting – with varying degrees of cooperation or hostility – on multiple levels and on multiple issues. Moreover, the traffic is not one way. Through their own agency (something that many outside observers are singularly unsuited to observe) local actors are able to resist, ignore, engage with, disengage

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Introduction 11

from, and exploit the liberal peace. The concept of hybridisation allows us to see the blowback suffered by the liberal peace. It is not always the case of the liberal peace setting the agenda and local actors reacting to that agenda. Instead, local actors are able to exploit the liberal peace and the resources attached to it. The strength and extent of the blowback in some circumstances is not only capable of changing the nature of the peace that is being implemented; it also has the capacity to change the identity of liberal peace actors. So, rather than a ‘liberal peace’ or a ‘local peace’, this book argues that hybrid forms of peace are in existence. These hybrids are awkward, constantly changing, and difficult to describe, but then that is the human condition and we should not assume that peace should be easy to capture. Importantly, there are hybrid peaces. The very act of recognising the plurality of peace can be taken as a criticism of the monopolising instincts of the liberal peace, and other forms of peace that are convinced of their own superiority.

Plan of the book The main aim of the book is to recommend the lenses offered by hybridity as a way of understanding contemporary contexts defined by civil war and peace interventions. The book is an extended exercise in conceptual scoping, whereby a concept is constructed and then applied to empirical cases. The first three chapters are conceptual and unpack three core sets of ideas that combine to give us an understanding of hybridity and processes of hybridisation. Chapter 1 presents an overview of the baseline form of international peace-support intervention: the liberal peace. The liberal peace is chosen as the baseline because of its dominance as the preferred method of peace-support intervention by leading states, leading international organisations, and the international financial institutions. It is recognised that there are varieties of the liberal peace (liberal peaces) ranging from a coercive liberal peacemax to a soft-touch liberal peace-lite. Yet, significantly, these forms of intervention are justified using the language of liberalism – hence the use of the term ‘liberal peace’. The chapter is also aware that alternatives to the liberal peace exist, for example forms of ‘peace’ promoted by Russia in Chechnya or by China in Tibet. Despite the persistence (or even growth) of these non-liberal forms of peacemaking, the liberal peace remains the baseline form of international peace intervention because of its capture of leading international organisations such as the UN, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), and the EU.

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Chapter 2 departs from the top-down focus of the liberal peace by examining indigenous approaches to peacebuilding and dispute resolution. The chapter unpacks notions of indigeneity, questions the ‘rediscovery’ of all things local and traditional, and examines specific types of dispute resolution used in reconciliation following civil war. The use of indigenous and traditional approaches to peacebuilding in contemporary violent conflicts raises a number of issues, including the extent to which indigenous approaches that are sponsored by international actors can really be considered indigenous. The value of authenticity is worth questioning, however, especially if measured against the benchmark of utility. After this examination of top-down (liberal internationalist) and bottom-up (indigenous) approaches to peacebuilding, the way is then set to discuss how these different approaches to peace interact and what forms of peace they produce. Thus Chapter 3 discusses the hybrid peace. This chapter involves an unpacking of the concept and uses of hybridity. It also involves the construction of a four-part model that helps visualise the dynamics that combine to create a hybrid peace. The model argues that the hybrid peace is formed at the interstices of four constantly changing variables: liberal peace assertiveness; liberal peace incentives; the ability of local actors to resist, subvert, negotiate with, and ignore the liberal peace; and the ability of local actors to create alternatives to the liberal peace. Like all models, this represents an abstraction and simplification, yet the model has the potential to allow us to view conflicts more holistically. Firstly, it encourages us to recognise the fluidity of peace and conflict settings and actors. Secondly, and linked to this fluidity, the model encourages us to see peace and conflict through a longer-term lens rather than as a series of episodes. Thirdly, it reminds us of the need to see beyond elite-level conflict actors. Many critiques of the liberal peace, and analyses drawing from international relations scholarship, tend to focus disproportionately on international and formal political actors. The three conceptual chapters are followed by five case study chapters, each of which adopts the lens of hybridity to examine a particular aspect of the liberal peace in a different society undergoing a liberal peace transition. The five aspects or pillars of the liberal peace are security, economics, statebuilding, governance, and civil society. These are respectively applied to Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland. The pillars have formed both the means and the ends of the liberal peace. Thus, for example, the liberal peace has sought to embed itself by building the civil society capacity in

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Introduction 13

societies emerging from violent conflict and regards a vibrant civil society as an indicator of a liberal and peaceful polity. Liberal peace interveners have attempted to perfect the ‘mix’ of the five pillars, placing different emphases on different ingredients according to circumstances. As a collective, the case study countries provide good coverage of the different types of liberal peace intervention witnessed over the past two decades, as well as the different circumstances faced by liberal peace interveners. While Iraq and Afghanistan represent coercive peacebuilding, Northern Ireland provides an example of liberal peace-lite. There is variance in the type of liberal peace actor that took the lead in the interventions: the US military (Afghanistan and Iraq), the United Nations (Lebanon), the European Union (Bosnia), and the British government (Northern Ireland). The regional circumstances covered by the case study countries differ enormously too: Northern Ireland is within the European Union, and indeed is part of the United Kingdom – one of the leading promoters of the liberal peace; Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan occupy fault-line positions in geo-strategically sensitive parts of the world; Iraq and Afghanistan are resource rich, while BosniaHerzegovina, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland have few valuable natural resources; potential regional hegemons prowl around Lebanon (Egypt, Israel, and Syria), Iraq (Saudi Arabia and Iran), and Afghanistan (India, China, and Iran). The five case study countries also represent very different types of conflict, with Northern Ireland’s low-level ethno-sectarian conflict being of a very different scale from the high-intensity military operations waged by the US and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The obvious omission in terms of case study countries is an example from Latin America or Africa. In part, this comes down to the comfort zone of the author, who has conducted fieldwork in Bosnia, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland. A certain familiarity with the Afghan and Iraqi cases has come from their prominence in the news and in academic discussion. Rather than present inauthentic African or Latin American case studies, a decision was made to confine the case studies to areas on which the author has a certain level of confidence. In any case, the primary purpose of the country case studies is to reveal the hybridisation of a particular aspect of the liberal peace, whether security, economics, statebuilding, governance, or civil society. It is hoped that the different perspectives adopted by each of the case study chapters will combine to give a holistic picture of the liberal peace and the different ways in which it has been implemented and advocated in different areas. Chapter 4 focuses on the promotion of the

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monopoly of violence as part of liberal peace efforts. Demobilisation, disarmament, and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR) have been staples of liberal peace statebuilding efforts. This is in keeping with hegemonic notions of liberalism in which individuals vest their rights in a unified but representative state. The state becomes the ‘keeper of rights’, ready to arbitrate between citizens and protect the citizen from threats. Liberal peace interventions have thus sought to empower the state as the centralised authority that offers uniform rights to all citizens. These interventions have also sought to restrain the state – an especially important function of peace-support interventions in societies emerging from civil war or authoritarianism. Chapter 4 examines how the rhetorically absolutist liberal peace aim of a monopoly of violence vested in the state was diluted by the peculiar circumstances of post-Taliban Afghanistan. The continuing power of warlords, contradictions in Afghan and international statebuilding strategies, and the resurgence of the Taliban all combined to leave a very fragmented security environment. Security was hybridised as warlords were co-opted by the Afghan state and by the United States to counter the Taliban. The Afghan state did not attain a monopoly of violence; in part this was because the international statebuilders prevented this from happening because of their own security needs. Chapter 5 concentrates on a key pillar of liberal peace interventions – restructuring the economy. The evidence of many liberal peace interventions suggests a bias towards neo-liberal economic prescriptions. Critical literature on liberal peacebuilding has highlighted how neo-liberalism has become mainstreamed into statebuilding and restructuring. Under international tutelage, shock doctrine economic restructuring has meant the privatisation of state assets, the lifting of state regulation on markets, the opening of the country to international trade, and the downgrading of notions and practices of the state as a provider of welfare. Chapter 5 uses the example of Iraq to illustrate how the United States planned for its regime change intervention to include a wholesale overhaul of the economic regime as well as the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Yet the case study of the post-Saddam economy reveals a deeply hybridised economy. US-controlled attempts at macroeconomic engineering (privatisation of state assets and the expectation that Iraqi oil would pay for the reconstruction) failed to produce the expected results. Moreover, the US, in contravention of its own neoliberal rhetoric, ended up sponsoring Keynesian policies based on public expenditure by the US and Iraqi treasuries. The chapter depicts a tale of two economies: the formal economy that the US expected would be

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Introduction 15

the engine of Iraqi reconstruction and the informal economy that the vast majority of Iraqis have depended upon for survival. No economic actor was able to steer a unilateral course. Instead, all actors (local and international) had to take account of the position of others, with the result that the economy was hybridised (public and private, formal and informal, old and new technology) and resembled a scene of the distortion of liberal peace ambitions. Chapter 6 concentrates on the constitutional aspects of statebuilding. Many liberal peace interventions have sought to ‘resolve’ contested sovereignty through constitutional engineering. This has involved new constitutions or peace agreements that protect minority rights (El Salvador), powersharing within the executive functions of government (Lebanon), electoral systems designed to guarantee plural rather than majoritarian outcomes (Ivory Coast), commitments to a constitutional referendum in the future (Northern Ireland, New Caledonia), and the redrawing of boundaries to reflect political preferences and demographic ‘logic’ (Kosovo). The thinking behind such initiatives connects with the liberal belief in the perfectibility of institutions. A technocratic logic means that political problems become design problems: with enough effort a constitutional, electoral, or cartographic mechanism can be found that will manage problems without the resort to violence. Such constitutional engineering has resulted in significant success in a number of locations. Chapter 6 takes the example of post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina to argue that internationally sponsored attempts to manage competing nationalist and identity claims were merely the latest in a long line of such attempts (whether under socialism or the Austro-Hungarian Empire). The liberal peace, despite the enormous resources it brought to bear on the former Yugoslavia, was unable to start afresh. Instead, its attempts at constitutional engineering were built on previous attempts, and resulted in a hybridised constitutional environment. While liberal peace rhetoric may discount previous dispensations as ‘non-liberal’ and therefore illegitimate, circumstances on the ground meant that there was no blank canvas. The politics of postDayton Bosnia-Herzegovina had significant continuities with those of previous regimes. This leads us to reappraise notions of the liberal peace as all-powerful, and invites criticisms of its motif that design perfection can erase ‘non-liberal’ identities and practice. Liberal peace statebuilding and peace-support interventions have been described as ‘peace by governance’. This alludes to the centrality of the role accorded to governance reforms. In a sense, governance provides the essential ‘software’ or operating system that patterns the

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practices of governments, and informs the relationships between government, citizens, businesses, and civil society. Chapter 7 examines how liberal peace agents have attempted to use governance programming as part of wider statebuilding and peace-support agendas. The argument is made that under the rhetoric of ‘transparency’ and ‘efficiency’, peculiarly western forms of governance are introduced. Moreover, although often heralded in neutral or progressive language, many of the systems of governance introduced through liberal peacebuilding have the potential to radically alter the nature and orientation of the state. In keeping with the other case studies in this book, the case of governance programming in Lebanon suggests the need for a reappraisal of our understanding of the liberal peace and critiques of it. While much governance programming was externally driven, many Lebanese were interested in governance reform. Indeed, one of the most strident opponents of corruption was Hezbollah, the Shiite politico-religious group designated ‘terrorist’ by the United States and its allies. As the chapter shows, the governance agenda is hybridised: no actor is able to steer a unilateral course, and the governance environment and agenda are constructed by internal and external actors. The final empirical chapter (Chapter 8) focuses on civil society, another stalwart of the liberal peace. Virtually every liberal peace intervention has involved civil society capacity-building programmes that have attempted to bolster non-state actors that can act as a bulwark against an over-concentration of power in the hands of the state. According to the liberal catechism, an empowered and alert civil society can assist in the promotion of tolerance and diversity, and can offer an avenue for social entrepreneurs to develop progressive agendas. In societies emerging from violent conflict, civil society capacity-building has involved the international sponsorship of human rights non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the encouragement of diversity in the media, and the opening up of democratic and political space beyond the limited opportunities offered by electoral and party politics. Faced with non-compliant governments in societies emerging from war, liberal peace interveners have found civil society actors to be useful proxies for social provision and the promotion of equality and democratisation agendas. A common criticism of this civil society engineering by governments from the global north is that these actors promote a version of civil society that chimes with their preferred notion of civil society. At the same time, indigenous expressions of civil society may be overlooked, or acknowledged but ignored, as being ‘non-liberal’. Chapter 8 uses the Northern Ireland peace process as its case study. Specifically, it examines the case

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Introduction 17

of the Orange Order, a sectarian organisation that – in many respects – is far removed from the liberal ideals of pluralism and tolerance. Yet the exigencies of the Northern Ireland peace process meant that the British government, a custodian of that peace process and an international sponsor of the liberal peace, was prepared to accept this organisation as a legitimate member of civil society. Indeed, the British government (in partnership with the Irish government, the European Union, and allies within Northern Ireland) created a civil society political economy, in which certain behaviours and organisations were deemed legitimate or illegitimate. A picture emerges of a hybrid civil society that contained both partisan and non-partisan elements. Again the notion of the liberal peace being doctrinally absolutist requires revision as the aspirations of liberal peace actors were distorted by on-the-ground exigencies. Taken together, the empirical chapters show a cross-section of liberal peace interventions on a broad range of issues. They reinforce the utility of the comparative lens, and the importance of examining societies in detail. Two cardinal points are contained in all the case studies. Firstly, the liberal peace is less powerful, omniscient, and coherent than many observers might be tempted to think. In many cases it has ‘feet of clay’, with limitations apparent in relation to its reach, attention span, acceptance, sustainability, and success. This realisation demands a reappraisal of our critique of the liberal peace. This does not mean a rollback from the task of critiquing the liberal peace. Instead, it means that more sophisticated critiques are required. These critiques should not take as their starting point an image of an all-powerful Leviathan-like liberal peace. Instead, the variance and contradictions within the liberal peace need to be recognised. This leads to the second cardinal point to emerge from the case studies: the agency of local-level actors in the face of liberal peace interventions. This agency comes in many forms: renegotiation, subversion, non-engagement, cherry-picking, and outright resistance. In all the cases under review, local actions have forced distortions in the liberal peace, causing it to hybridise and interact with local forms of governance, civil society, economic organisation, and security. Crucially, the case study chapters illustrate that the global north does not have a monopoly on tolerance and pluralism. One of the core problems with dominant versions of liberalism and liberal internationalism has been their hastiness in dismissing other forms of political and social practice as ‘non-liberal’. Yet ‘local liberalism’ or forms of tolerance and pluralism can be found in many societies emerging from civil war and authoritarianism. Because this does not conform to types of liberalism endorsed or sponsored by the global north it is often overlooked or

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rejected. Quite simply, many observers situated in the global north do not have the antennae that enable them to see such local forms of pluralism and diversity. Hegemonic liberal discourse, as well as the ways in which much policy and academic research is conducted and reported, actually precludes a lot of meaningful engagement with local societies and so reinforces this ‘blind spot’ towards local civility. This is not to say that societies emerging from civil war or authoritarianism are oases of liberal calm and goodwill. Clearly many such societies are fractured and present citizens with urgent security and welfare problems. Yet, notwithstanding outbreaks of violence and periods of raised tensions, many deeply divided societies and localities find some sort of equilibrium. This often works at the micro-level of streets, villages, and neighbourhoods. It does not rest on a grand political philosophy that can trace its roots back to Mill, Locke, or Rawls. Nor is it inspired or created by the efforts of liberal internationalism. Instead, it is often based on prosaic common sense: that people have to rub along to get along; that mutual self-interest can be sated through tolerance; that the costs of war outweigh the potential gains of extremism; that territory and society must continue to be shared. Of course, such ‘peace’ is often uneasy, and is merely an interregnum until the next flare-up. It could also be argued that such local-level peace is unambitious in that it does not strive – in a conscious way – towards more holistic forms of conflict transformation. Yet, unconsciously and implicitly, such forms of tolerance and pluralism have much in common with notions and practices of conflict transformation, especially through their focus on relationships.

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1 The Liberal Peace

I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators. US Vice President Dick Cheney before the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Cited in Fukuyama 2006: 115–16) We just obliterated those towns. They’re not there at all. These are just parking lots right now. Colonel Jeffrey Martindale, US Army, on Afghan towns targeted by the United States ‘surge’ in October 2010 (Cited in Partlow and Brulliard 2010)

Introduction War outspends peace. In February 2010, the United States was spending $6.7bn per month in pursuit of its war in Afghanistan, and a further $5.5bn in Iraq (Wolf 2010; Stiglitz and Bilmes 2008). This total was almost equivalent to the entire United Nations budget for a year. Although outgunned by spending on war and militarism, expenditure on peace is still substantial, and is augmented by significant outlays in blood and moral energy. Some headline figures give a picture of the scale of pro-peace activity: in 2009, the UN had over 100,000 personnel in the field in seventeen peace missions, while in 2010, World Vision, a US-based Christian relief, development, and advocacy organisation, had a US income in excess of $1bn and a presence in over 100 countries (UNDPKO 2009; World Vision 2010). The European Union will have spent approximately €1.8bn in its Peace and Reconciliation Programmes in Northern Ireland and the 19

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border counties of the Republic of Ireland in the 1995–2014 period (DFP 2005). In other areas, there has been an explosion of pro-peace activism by non-governmental organisations: over 400 new peacebuilding and pro-democracy NGOs were established in Kenya in 2008 following electoral violence (Daily Nation 2009). At the institutional level, many international organisations and the foreign policy bureaucracies of states have re-oriented themselves in order to engage in a range of peacekeeping, peacebuilding, peacemaking, peace-enforcement, and conflict-prevention activities. The chief point is to underscore the scale of national and international peace-support activities. The scale of peace-support activities makes it possible to discern patterns, particularly in terms of the actors responsible for pro-peace interventions, the types of activity they engage in, and the interests they represent. The most prominent pattern in contemporary internationally supported peacemaking is the extent to which certain actors (usually aligned with the interests of the global north) combine to produce a particular type of peace intervention: the liberal peace. Sometimes called ‘liberal interventionism’ or ‘liberal internationalism’, the liberal peace is the dominant form of internationally supported peacemaking. It reflects the ideological and practical interests of leading states in the global north, leading international organisations, and the international financial institutions. It is often justified using the language of liberalism (hence the sobriquet ‘liberal peace’). The types of activity found in the majority of interventions tend to coalesce around security and statebuilding agendas. The interests served by many peace interventions tend to reflect those of powerholders, either within the state emerging from violent conflict or internationally. While this chapter explores the contours of the liberal peace, the next chapter will consider indigenous, traditional, and customary forms of peacemaking. Chapter 3 will then discuss how these two forms of peacemaking (liberal and local) come together to form composite or hybrid types of peace. Subsequent chapters are case studies that illustrate the processes whereby hybridity comes about. The current chapter begins with a note on the term ‘liberal peace’ and then discusses how critical analyses of the liberal peace fit into the peace studies tradition. The chapter then considers how liberalism’s intellectual heritage has contributed to a peculiarly western liberal form of peacemaking. The following sections then discuss the liberal peace in action: its actors and structures, and its manifestations. The chapter ends with a critique of the liberal peace, and particularly of how its liberal intentions often result in illiberal outcomes.

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The Liberal Peace 21

A note on terminology Three objections to the use of the term ‘liberal peace’ are worth reviewing. The first concerns the obvious riposte that the term ‘liberal peace’ describes a form of peacemaking that is not particularly liberal. In other words, since the liberal peace is often deeply illiberal in its manifestations why persist in calling it a liberal peace? The term ‘liberal peace’ is used in this work because the actors who promote it often describe themselves as being liberal, and use the liberal rhetoric of emancipation and pluralism to justify their actions. US President George W. Bush pointed to the long tradition whereby Americans ‘sacrifice for the liberty of strangers’ (USGOVINFO 2003). For Tony Blair (2006), British involvement in post-Saddam Iraq was justified to ‘empower the Iraqi leadership that wants to take responsibility’, and was ‘committed to non-sectarian government and democracy’; all core values in the liberal canon. Notwithstanding the Wilsonian tradition in the United States, a second terminological issue concerns the use of the word ‘liberal’ among some US audiences. For some, particularly those on the political right, the term ‘liberal’ is a pejorative description applied to political opponents and their ideas. Various shock-jocks and right-wing commentators use the term ‘liberal’ to note moral laxness, a lack of patriotism, or left-wing sympathies. Book titles such as Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America or Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America illustrate the point (Coulter 2009; Donohue 2009). One of the unfortunate side-effects of this capture of the word ‘liberal’ in partisan political debates is that some political scientists and international relations scholars in the United States have shied away from the use of the word ‘liberal’ and the term ‘liberal peace’. This is a relatively recent and US-specific phenomenon, and it should not deter us from connecting with discussions on the relationship between liberalism and war which have a much longer historical pedigree (Williams 2005). A third concern relates to the narrow use of the term ‘liberal peace’ in some studies that seek to establish a correlation between the trading and political stances of states and their propensity to go to war. Essentially the debates revolve around whether states that trade with each other go to war with one another, and whether democracy can be an indicator of foreign policy aggressiveness or passivity. These debates usually use the term ‘democratic peace’, though sometimes ‘liberal peace’ (Doyle 1983; Goldsmith 2007; Hegre 2005; Spiro 1994). As used in this work, the term ‘liberal peace’ refers to a much broader phenomenon. Certainly,

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attitudes to trading and the nature of a state’s political organisation are important. But, as used in this book, the term ‘liberal peace’ also encompasses the socio-cultural norms associated with peacemaking, the ideas that underpin a particular form of peace, and the international and national structures used to promote this version of peace. The term ‘liberal peace’, as used in this book, seeks to capture the totality of internationally mandated peace-support interventions, and so is very different from the use of the term in many econometric studies, which tend to have a narrow and uncritical focus on the interrogation of datasets of international trade statistics. Moreover, many studies of trading relations between states and their implications for conflict seem to miss a fundamental point: most contemporary violent conflict occurs at the intra-state level, or if internationalised does not constitute a formal war between states. As a result, studies that are restricted to inter-state relations (such as trade) have limited explanatory power for contemporary violent conflict. The term ‘liberal peace’ is used in this work to refer to the dominant form of peacemaking as promoted by leading states, international organisations, and international financial institutions through their peace-support interventions. It is a potentially broad umbrella, as it is interested in the ideology of peacemaking, the structural factors that enable and constrain it, its principal actors and clients, and the manifestations of this form of peacemaking. The term ‘liberal peace’ has become commonly used in recent critical peace studies literature (Chandler 2004b; Fanthorpe 2006; Franks and Richmond 2008; Mac Ginty and Richmond 2009; Petersen 2009), though the term harks back to earlier historical accounts of peacemaking (Howard 1978). It also connects with long-standing ideological debates on the relationship between liberalism and war (Ceadal 1987; Williams 2005).

The critical tradition within peace studies It is tempting to automatically place peace studies within the critical tradition. Many elements of the discipline, and many of its seminal contributors, have been critical and questioning of orthodoxy (Forcey 1983; Stephenson 1999). Much of peace studies is antithetical to realism (Wallensteen 2009), and it is concerned with issues that are often overlooked by dominant paradigms. For example, peace studies has embraced enquiry into underlying structures that lead to and maintain conflict, and is interested in issues of underdevelopment and social exclusion. These issues, and the level of analysis that they

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The Liberal Peace 23

favour (individuals, communities), are often overlooked by orthodox approaches to political science and international relations. Peace studies has been self-consciously inter-disciplinary, and has profited from linkages with what are often regarded as ‘radical’ strands of research, such as feminism and environmentalism. Much of peace studies has been acutely political and deliberately normative. Some critics of peace studies charge that the discipline has gone ‘far beyond the boundaries of careful and value-free academic discourse’ and that ‘idealist models tend to be presented uncritically’ (Steinberg 2007: 788). This is indeed the case, but in many ways it is the purpose of peace studies to be provocative. While there is a noble tradition of ‘peace science’, or scientific (biological, psychological, and economic) studies into war and violence, much of peace studies has been unashamedly normative. The starting point for many peace studies scholars is that orthodox paradigms that dominate the study of international relations are not neutral. Instead, they argue, such paradigms are often embedded within power structures and betray bias. Yet the radicalism long associated with peace studies has been ebbing. Much of what masquerades as peace studies actually fits comfortably within non-critical and orthodox paradigms. The de-radicalisation of peace studies is not a recent phenomenon. Hermann Schmid (1968) pointed to the dangers of being seduced by orthodoxy when he launched a withering critique of the cosy conservatism exemplified by some who regarded themselves as ‘peace studies scholars’. His criticisms even extended to Johan Galtung, a self-proclaimed ‘founder’ of peace studies. Schmid was concerned about the willingness of some peace studies scholars to unquestioningly accept as given the essentially conservative parameters of states, the international political system, and the international political economy. He identified the dangers whereby ‘peace research becomes a factor supporting the status quo of the international power structure, providing the decision-makers of the system with knowledge for control, manipulation and integration of the system’ (1968: 229). For Schmid many of the analyses and interventions advocated by peace studies scholars amounted to a ‘problem-solving’ approach, content to deal with the manifestations of conflict but uninterested in the structural and underlying causes of conflict. He observed that unless the systemic precipitants of conflict were identified, then conflict and exclusion would continue. Schmid’s warnings proved prescient. Many of those professing an interest in peace studies in the post-Cold War era have little in common with the radical and critical traditions of the founders of peace

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studies in the 1950s and 1960s. Most current studies into the causes of violent conflict and the determinants of conflict de-escalation – both traditional concerns of peace studies – are deeply uncritical, and uncurious about wider systemic issues. A cursory glance at the contents pages of the Journal of Peace Research over the past decade will bear this out: the vast majority of articles are not interested in the fundamental and inherently normative questions of legitimacy associated with peace and war. The problem-solving approach that characterises many studies of contemporary peacemaking is chiefly interested in issues of efficiency: how to better implement peace agreements; how to reform states and institutions; how to increase the effectiveness of INGOs charged with reconstruction tasks; how to more accurately count war-related fatalities or refugees. Wider questions about the legitimacy of peace agreements, states, and the international structures that underpin them are left unasked. The de-radicalisation of peace studies has been enhanced by the drive within many universities to secure research funding. Since states and international organisations are the most common sources of such funding, it is unsurprising that the research agendas this funding shapes are conservative. While there are countless research projects on ‘peacebuilding’ or the problems of violent conflict, such as child soldiers, displacement, or security sector reform, the nature of many of these projects means that they are concerned with narrowly compartmentalised issues rather than broader systemic questions. Such research agendas rarely encourage the big questions about power and equity that have traditionally lain at the heart of peace studies. Instead, they are often concerned with functional and technocratic matters. These matters are often important and can have a real bearing on the quality of life or peace in conflict-affected areas. But without addressing fundamental and underlying issues, problem-solving scholarship risks having the long-term benefits of a sticking plaster. Radicalism and blue skies thinking have not prospered in an era of consultancy research. Interestingly, the notion of imagination, or imagining peace, has played a significant role in peace studies (Boulding 1983; Lederach 2005; Mac Ginty 2006a: 97–8). A research culture conditioned by evaluation reports and the need to keep donors sweet in order to gain repeat consultancy contracts leaves little room for imagination. The numbing of the critical tradition within peace studies has been enhanced by conceptual drift. Peace studies, from the 1950s to the 1980s, was a small and often distinctive academic discipline. The 1990s and beyond, however, have witnessed many more scholars and research institutions take up the mantle of ‘peace’ research, to the extent that

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The Liberal Peace 25

peace studies has become diluted. This is exemplified by the careless elision of ‘peace’ and ‘conflict’ to create the generic ‘peace and conflict studies’ common to many Master’s programmes. ‘Peace and conflict’ has become a catch-all category, containing many components far removed from the perspectives of peace studies pioneers such as Kenneth and Elise Boulding or Adam Curle. The critical tradition of peace studies has been maintained, in part, by a mainly European and developing world group of scholars who have identified the liberal peace as an analytical framework within which to critique orthodox forms of peacemaking (Richmond 2005, 2008; Chandler 2006; Cooper 2007; Jahn 2007; Duffield 2007). These scholars do not constitute a homogeneous group. Yet they continue the radical tradition in peace studies by rejecting the problem-solving approach and by maintaining an interest in fundamental rather than proximate conflict causation and maintenance factors. This critical scholarship does not accept that peace is normatively good in all instances; it is interested in the quality of peace that follows international peace-support interventions. Many of the critical scholars are also sceptical of the liberal foundations of peace and the ability of liberal institutionalism (or constant reform around the statebuilding model in an attempt to coax post-conflict states into resembling a compliant, market-oriented polity) to bring about sustained, high-quality peace. The liberal peace, as well as being a prescriptive form of peacemaking, provides an analytical vehicle, or a way of seeing the world. Importantly, the liberal peace concept allows observers to make linkages between apparently unconnected processes of peace intervention. Peacebuilding in Liberia may seem far removed from that in Lebanon, but with the assistance of the liberal peace lens it is possible to identify the structural and ideological factors that tie apparently unconnected peace endeavours together.

Liberalism, war, and peace The task of discussing the contribution of liberalism to the conceptualisation and promotion of peace and war is complicated by the extremely variegated nature of liberalism. There are, in fact, multiple liberalisms. The ideology does not possess a neat genealogy that follows a simple trajectory from the Enlightenment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and beyond. Instead, the evolution of liberalism is packed with contradictions and the thwarting of noble ideals as they meet the cold realities of social strictures, government budget cycles, and legislative

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timetables. Doyle (1997: 206) is correct in noting that ‘there is no canonical description of liberalism’. It is possible, though, to identify at least six elements that recur in discussions of liberalism with such frequency that we can call them ‘liberalism’s core’. Firstly, liberalism recognises the individual (rather than the state, kin group, or professional association, etc.) as a primary unit in society. In some cases individual sovereignty can be overridden by the state or the economy, but the identification of the individual as a largely sovereign political actor sets liberalism apart from other ideologies that rest on strict hierarchies or rigid collectives. Secondly, it supports notions of tolerance, diversity, and equality of opportunity. Thirdly, it is interested in the promotion of freedom, particularly individual freedoms, and believes these to be universal. Fourthly, it is an optimistic ideology, believing in the reformability of individuals and institutions. To this end liberalism can be said to be a key driver in ‘modernisation’ projects, often believing that technology and institutional reform help individuals, societies, and organisations tackle their problems. Fifthly, liberalism is convinced of the rationality of individuals and collectives, trusting them to make adept choices that will maximise benefits and reduce harm. So, for example, many liberals would hold that, if given the choice, citizens would vote to avoid war. A final key element of liberalism has been its defence of property and the law, or the promotion of free markets and state-based societal organisation. Different thinkers and eras have awarded different emphasis to the various elements of the liberal canon. Eric Herring (2008: 48) gives a good summary of liberalism as operationalised in the contemporary world: ‘A formal and informal commitment to principles and practices of individual rights and responsibility in the context of equality of opportunity, the rule of law, freedom of expression and association, a mainly market economy and governments chosen in multi-party free elections.’ A series of possible contradictions run through the heart of liberalism. For example, some liberals may advocate interventionist stances, believing that mandated actors should intervene in the affairs of individuals, communities, and states in order to induce reforms or protect rights. Other liberals may adopt a much more laissez-faire or strictly libertarian approach which is antithetical to regulation or interference by others. All these potential contradictions rely on essentially political judgements to identify which set of liberties are to be protected (Gray 2000: 82). These judgements are often embedded in layers of cultural bias, and those making decisions may be unaware that in championing one set of freedoms, another set of freedoms is denied.

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Perhaps one of the starkest examples of competing sets of freedoms is between western forms of political organisation on the one hand and non-western indigenous forms on the other, particularly in societies undergoing internationally sponsored statebuilding programmes. In post-Taliban Afghanistan, for example, many western liberals saw it as automatic that voting rights should be extended to women. Yet in extending the franchise, traditional norms (albeit deeply patriarchal and offensive to western liberals) are overridden. Liberalism’s difficulty is that the ‘right’ balance of freedoms differs according to the individual, society, organisation, or state in question. Further fuelling this difficulty is the fact that internationally sponsored peace interventions, by their very nature, are prescriptive, prescribing particular means and ends that shape the types of freedoms to be advanced and denied. There has been much debate on the links between liberalism, peace, and war. A prominent strain of thought has sought to make links between the type of economic and political organisation within a state and liberal outcomes. This strain of thinking attests that a free economy and a democratic state allow individuals to express their freedoms within the state. This state-bounded liberalism is then, apparently, mirrored externally in the state’s international relations, with liberal states eschewing international aggression. This forms the basis of the ‘democratic peace thesis’, which argues that liberal states (that is, states with free markets and democratic politics) do not go to war. It is, of course, complete rubbish (Mac Ginty 2006a: 42–5). Liberal states do indeed enjoy ‘a separate peace’ in that they do not go to war against one another (Doyle 1995: 86). But they are regularly involved in confrontations with states they deem non-liberal, often under label of ‘rogue’, ‘failed’, or ‘evil’. Despite liberal states’ track record of involvement in violent conflict, the comforting notion that liberalism is intrinsically peace-promoting has been persistently attractive to many governments and international organisations. As Richmond (2008: 292) observes, the notion of the democratic peace is based on the not very firm footing of hope and assumption: ‘Much hope is placed upon the assumed “natural” desire of civil society for peace, as a collective will.’ The apparent ‘victory’ of liberalism with the end of the Cold War reinforced the notion that it was an invincible and infallible political ideology and could serve as the foundations for domestic and international policy (Cochran 1999: 145). An emboldened liberalism has provided the intellectual underpinning for a series of international peace-support programmes in the

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post-Cold War world (Cooper 2002). Crucially, liberalism has provided a recipe for international intervention. Firstly, its concern with the condition of citizens within states has encouraged an ambiguity about the sovereignty of certain ‘non-liberal’ states. Thus human rights within the territory of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq became a legitimate concern for apparent liberals in other states. For geo-strategic reasons, the human rights of citizens in Saudi Arabia, Burma, and Turkmenistan were less of a concern. Secondly, the liberal belief in the reformability of individuals and institutions means that liberals are predisposed to intervene, whether through advice or through more coercive or incentivised actions. Thirdly, liberals are convinced of the superiority of their own form of social, political, and economic organisation. Their rubric for making such an assessment is based on the ‘successes’ delivered by free markets, individual liberty, and democratic forms of political organisation. As Williams (2006: 5) observed, liberals believe ‘quite sincerely in the creation of a better world and that they are the exemplars of what that world should look like’. By believing that their forms of political, economic, and social organisations are superior to those of others, many liberals regard themselves as insulated from criticism. The danger is that liberal interventionism can become a steamroller, pushing aside indigenous norms, prescribing particular forms of political and economic organisation, and limiting certain freedoms in the name of other freedoms. Liberalism, as operationalised by leading states, international organisations, and international financial organisations, can be so caught up in its own hubris that it fails to see how it comes to resemble realism. Mayall (2006: 96) notes how both liberals and realists share ‘the assumption of the self-evident and non-problematic state’. Williams (2006: 2) has identified the development of a ‘new liberal militancy’ in the wake of 9/11. Certainly a number of states and international actors displayed an exuberant confidence in the abilities of their anointed version of liberalism to save the world. Liberal remedies offered salvation from war, poverty, disease, and so-called terrorism. Liberalism had become a kind of magic dust that if spread within states and economies would produce harmony and prosperity at the international level. A key problem, however, was that the states and international actors who were in the vanguard of liberal internationalism were prescribing a particular form of liberalism. Three dimensions of this version of liberalism are worth highlighting: its tendency towards militarised or coercive interventions, its neo-liberal interpretation of economics, and its ethnocentrism.

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The first of these dimensions, liberalism’s predilection for militarised or coercive interventions, is summed up by Christopher Layne (2006: 121–2) with reference to the United States: Far from being a theory of peace, democratic peace theory causes the United States to act like a ‘crusader state’. America’s crusader mentality springs directly from liberalism’s intolerance of competing ideologies and the concomitant belief that – merely by existing – nondemocratic states threaten America’s security and the safety of liberalism at home. According to Wilsonian precepts, the best way to deal with such states is to use America’s power to bring about regime change. It would be wrong to characterise liberal states as trigger-happy: only a few use direct violence. More generally, liberal states resort to a range of coercive mechanisms, most of which mediate coercion through international institutions and use indirect violence through sanctions or financial pressures. Many of these coercive techniques are so deeply embedded in international architecture that they are often regarded as mere ‘rules of the game’. In this way, their disciplining effect is often overlooked. The chief point is that despite its mantra of toleration, the dominant version of liberalism can be intolerant of deviation from its norms, and has constructed an elaborate system of control, together with a sophisticated intellectual rationale for that control. The bias in favour of security-led approaches towards peace has intensified post9/11, and, as David Keen (2008: 172) reminds us, security-led approaches are ‘inherently violent’, at least in the sense that they are prepared to justify violence in the name of a greater goal. A second dimension of the currently dominant version of liberalism worth highlighting is its neo-liberal interpretation of economics. Liberalism has a long tradition of seeing the emancipatory potential of economic freedom. Free markets, according to this thinking, offered potential for individuals and groups to lift themselves out of poverty, and for states to raise taxes in order to offer social provision. In possible contradiction with this has been the equally long liberal tradition that has regarded the state as the best institution for protecting civil liberties and furthering social justice (Bronner 2004: 152). The balance between economic freedoms and the power of states to regulate the market has always been difficult to strike. Since the early 1980s, however, the libertarian side of the argument has held sway among many leading states and international organisations (Mac Ginty and

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Williams 2009: 11–13). The state was thought to retard the market (Dorn 1998: 13; Bauer 1998: 36). The prescriptions were predictable and have remained largely unchanged in the decades that followed: pare back the state and attempts to regulate the market, privatise state assets, lift exchange controls, and monetise transactions. Bronner (2004: 156) observes how ‘the last decades have witnessed a devastating rollback of redistributive policies and an equally devastating assault on the ideology of the welfare state’. In the libertarian view, free markets were to be privileged and the state, potentially a buffer against an unfettered market, was rendered into a stooge for further capitalist accumulation (Harvey 2003: 190). The triumph of neo-liberal interpretations of economics has had a very real impact on the reorganisation of economies emerging from war. The ‘shock doctrine’ (Klein 2007), or rapid programmes of privatisation and marketisation, has become the staple tool deployed by the international financial institutions. Although such interventions, or ‘madcap schemes’ as Gray puts it (2003: 115), have had disastrous human consequences, their neo-liberal underpinnings have become orthodoxy. According to Harvey (2005: 3), ‘Neo-liberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse. It has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world.’ The widespread acceptance of the free market was evidenced in the midst of the global economic crisis from 2008 onwards when leading states and international financial institutions advocated economic recovery via debt-fuelled spending – precisely the strategy that had resulted in the crisis in the first place. This underlined the extent to which neo-liberal economic interpretations had achieved ‘value imperialism’, or mass acceptance (Miller 2008: 1124). A third dimension of the currently dominant form of liberalism is its ethnocentrism, or its tendency to regard western social, political, and economic mores as fit for purpose in non-western contexts. Gray’s observation (2003: 1) that ‘Western societies are governed by the belief that modernity is a single condition, everywhere the same and always benign’ is indicative of the single-transferable mentality that underpins much contemporary liberalism. Usually liberals hold such universalist views with the very best of intentions; some rights are so important and intrinsic to human freedoms and wellbeing that they should not be constrained by borders. Moreover, the liberal faith in the ability of humans to use reason means that people are to be trusted to cooperate and retain a sense of proportion in using and protecting their rights (Sterling-Folker 2006: 55). Despite the good intentions, however,

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liberalism is essentially an interventionist and expansionary project through its attempts to reform individuals and institutions. This project is particularly problematic when it clashes with local customary norms and practices. Often, however, the conflict is very uneven and takes the form of one set of norms overwriting another set of norms. The cultural and material power that liberal states, international organisations, and commercial interests are able to mobilise is often hugely superior to indigenous forms of organisation. Liberalism has played an immense role in the extension of empires, and in the appropriation of land, resources, and culture. Yet liberals may not see such linkages. They may genuinely regard liberalism as having an unblemished historical record. In modern times, they may see their endeavours as liberating and emancipating rather than as some sort of ‘neo-colonial civilizing mission’ (Selby 2008: 13). It is difficult, however, to think about liberalism without also thinking about power relations, and about how liberal rhetoric and intentions may mask a series of projects linked with extension of power. It is important that we are not too curmudgeonly in the face of the fruits potentially on offer from liberalism. Many of the criticisms levelled at liberalism are not so much concerned with its essential principles as with the manner, pace, and extent to which they are pursued. Thus, for example, many of those who criticise liberal interpretations of economics can see the potential benefits of the market for incentivising individuals, encouraging efficiency, and raising tax revenues for states. Their problem, however, is with the particularly rapacious implications of neo-liberal economics, in which the market is king and the social costs of unregulated trade are overlooked. Thus, some critics of the liberal peace wish to ‘rescue’ liberalism from itself. They see their task as salvaging those parts of the liberal project that are worthwhile (such as the mainstreaming of ideas of pluralism and toleration) while ridding liberalism of its more libertarian tendencies. For them, the fundamental contours of liberal intervention should remain unchanged, but, within these contours, interventions should be made ‘sharper, faster and lighter’ (Copeland 2009: 205). Other critics, however, see liberalism as being fatally damaged and unable to overcome its addictions to uninvited intervention, neo-liberal economics, rigid institutionalised prescriptions, and western state-based models of political organisation. Rather than reform liberalism, they advocate a more radical departure. Richmond (2009a), for example, sees the need for a ‘post-liberal peace’, or a means of making and sustaining peace that can transcend the hierarchies and power relations hardwired into the liberal peace.

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Liberal peace actors and structures The task now is to translate how liberalism as an ideology and as a way of organising polities, economies, and societies promotes its version of peace in societies experiencing conflict. The principal agents of the liberal peace are leading states from the global north, leading international organisations, and the international financial institutions. These actors rarely operate alone; instead, the liberal peace produces a complex chain of delegation and co-option so that the principal actors are assisted by numerous accomplices. This chain largely operates downwards from the leading states and international organisations through to national elites and further downwards to municipal and local elites. Yet the focus of this book on local agency and the power of local agents to hybridise politics and peace means that we should not conceive of overly neat silos through which resources are channelled and ideas transmitted in a prescribed way. The picture is messier. The silos are rarely neat sequences of discrete actors and, as will be discussed in subsequent chapters, the transmission chains sometimes allow for feedback, resistance, and the bottom-up conduction of ideas and practice. Figure 2 is an overly neat version of the liberal peace transmission chain. While international actors often wield significant power, a messier diagram (and therefore one unlikely to be accepted by the publisher!) would be required to accommodate the two-way direction of interaction. It is worth demonstrating the dominance of western or westernoriented actors in the liberal peace. This is most obviously revealed in cases where leading western states (usually the United States and the United Kingdom) have deployed military power and logistics in the name of apparently liberal goals. In the post-Cold War world, United States military preponderance reached truly staggering proportions. US strategic doctrine means that it must be capable of fighting two-and-ahalf wars simultaneously. Its unrivalled ability to project hard power was demonstrated during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. United Nations and European attempts to encourage or coerce the parties to reach an agreed settlement came to nothing until American airpower was brought to bear in Operation Deliberate Force. During the 1999 NATO air assault on Serbia, 99 per cent of all targets were chosen by the United States, the US flew the majority of missions, and virtually all of the precision guided munitions used were manufactured in the US (Kagan 2003: 46). The invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, while nominally conducted by a ‘coalition of the willing’, was a United States

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Leading states, international organisations, and international financial institutions

National governments

Ministries

Municipalities INGOs NGOs

Communities and Individuals

Figure 2 An overly stylised liberal peace ‘silo’ or transmission chain

show. The US did not require the assistance of coalition members such as Afghanistan, Albania, Eritrea, and Bulgaria to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime (Schifferes 2003). It was American military surges that ‘saved’ Iraq and Afghanistan from militants. In 2008, the United States spent $607bn on its military, or 41 per cent of total world military spending. This figure amounted to seven times Chinese military spending and over ten times Russian spending (SIPRI 2009). To put American military might into perspective, the US Marine Corps alone has more attack aircraft than the Royal Air Force, and more personnel than the entire British Army (Bacevich 2005: 16). Behind the United States, there are a range of second-order states that have been willing to deploy military forces in the name of liberal goals. The majority of these states are western; they include Australia, Britain,

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Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, and South Africa. Such deployments are usually part of wider, western-led coalition operations and take place under the banner of international organisations. While the imprimatur of international organisations, particularly the UN, may give the impression of universal legitimacy for a particular peace-support intervention, it is worth noting that leading western states often have controlling interests in international organisations. Three members of the Permanent Five in the UN Security Council are western states. It is often western states that are most active in international organisations. As a result, these international organisations come to represent western interests. For example, the President of the World Bank has always been an American, and the Director of the International Monetary Fund has always been a European. Another example concerns governance projects undertaken by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Ostensibly the UNDP operates on behalf of all UN members, and all UN members have a right to shape the UNDP’s agenda. Yet much of the organisation’s agenda reflects western goals. Western states and the European Union have been the most assiduous promoters of governance reforms in developing world states and have used the UNDP to promote this agenda. Interestingly, many states that would have much to fear from governance reforms, such as Saudi Arabia or Syria, have not attempted to resist the western takeover of the UNDP and the conversion of the organisation into a tribune of the liberal peace. The key point is that many international organisations and their programmes have been ‘captured’ or co-opted by western interests. While developing world states contribute most personnel to UN missions, these missions often reflect the interests of major states. In August 2010, the United States was contributing a mere eighty-seven troops and police officers to UN peacekeeping operations (or about 0.006 per cent of its armed forces). Uruguay was contributing almost thirty times more personnel, but there is no suggestion that the UN or other international organisations were dancing to a Uruguayan tune (UNDPKO 2010a). The direction, policies, priorities, funding, and ideological stance of a range of international organisations, international financial institutions, and INGOs reflect western interests that fall under the liberal peace rubric. It is not the contention here that the liberal peace amounts to a dastardly plot centrally directed from the United States and a small cohort of collaborating states. Certainly these states do exert control over the liberal peace, but it is useful to see the liberal peace as a much broader and complex system of states and interests operating on multiple levels

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(internationally down to the level of individuals) and on multiple issues (from security to culture). It operates on a coalition basis, with coalitions of interested parties coalescing and dissipating around particular issues. Some actors (leading states, leading international organisations, the international financial institutions, and corporate interests) form the core of the coalition more regularly than others. Common interests in relation to societies emerging from conflict might include stability in a post-conflict zone, access to markets, and the promotion of forms of governance that will aid pacification. It is not quite the case that these are ‘coalitions of the willing’, to use the disingenuous phrase deployed at the time of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Instead, the coalitions are underpinned by a certain amount of coercion. Often this coercion is subtle and structural, taking the form of the economic ties that can be broken only with serious consequences. Through its incentive and compliance mechanisms, the liberal peace is able to construct extraordinarily broad coalitions in post-conflict societies. These coalitions can range from the national government in the capital city to regional party leaders, municipal workers, and local communities. Each actor or institution might be drawn into the liberal peace web by different motives. In many cases these motives are instrumental and relate to access to resources or the ability to retain a position of power or influence rather than an affinity with the liberal goals expressed in international policy pronouncements. So, for example, a national elite may acquiesce to an international peace-support intervention in its own country in order to stay in power, gain international legitimacy, and access resources in the form of post-war reconstruction funding. In return for these resources and recognition, the national elite will be compelled to meet conditions such as implementing governance reforms in the central and municipal bureaucracy and complying with payback regimes to international banks. The liberal peace transmission chain means that an agreement sanctioned in the national capital may have far-reaching consequences in the rest of the country. For example, international and national actors may cooperate to regulate the trade of medicines in an attempt to stymie the informal economy. Such actions can bring the liberal peace to the household and individual level, limiting the locations where medicines can be purchased, regulating the quality of medicines, formalising the transaction, and – in all probability – increasing the cost (Nordstrom 2004: 101–2). The liberal peace umbrella can include some unlikely actors. INGOs that see themselves as radical campaigning organisations may have to cooperate with core liberal peace actors, such as leading states or

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military organisations, in order to secure resources or access to at-risk populations. Simultaneous with facilitating humanitarian or development activity by the INGOs, the military organisations may be prosecuting a war. For many INGOs a calculation is required: to what extent is ‘contamination’ through contact with military forces engaged in offensive campaigns acceptable if it facilitates more positive humanitarian or development ends? The scale and complexity of many peacesupport interventions mean that a very broad range of actors may be drawn into the ambit of the liberal peace. Although Hamas is listed as a ‘terrorist’ group by the United States and the European Union, it is the effective authority in the Gaza Strip. Those international organisations, INGOs, and NGOs permitted by Israel to work in the Gaza Strip must cooperate with Hamas simply to get business done. Yet US and EU rules forbid such contacts for their own citizens and organisations funded by them. A good deal of ‘turning a blind eye’ goes on. For Hamas, external actors are vital conduits of resources and legitimacy, and so they actively engage with a wide range of international organisations, INGOs, and NGOs. The liberal peace chain, and the use of proxy actors such as INGOs and NGOs, means that there are relatively few degrees of separation between Hamas and the United States despite the antipathy between the two. The liberal peace can be conceptualised as a system of complicity and mutual interest. Its structures are both formal and informal. Its formal structures operate through international and regional organisations, while its informal structures reflect networks of power and influence. In a sense, it is the coming together of hardware (states and institutions) and software (the operating system). It is the software that shapes how the computer is used, or programmes the institutions to pursue liberal goals. To continue the computing metaphor, software can be updated to suit changing environments. The liberal peace has been able to evolve through these ‘software updates’. Thus, at various times and in various locations, it has taken on board (rhetorically or in practice) notions of human security, democratisation, free-market economics, or the responsibility to protect. Perhaps the largest threat to the liberal peace comes from powerful non-liberal or quasi-liberal political and economic actors, especially China, Russia, and India. These states control massive populations and have used brutal methods of suppression. Such states are not alone in their ambiguous positions on human rights; many second- and thirdtier states, such as Burma, Iran, and Egypt, are authoritarian or routinely abuse human rights. The significance of China, Russia, and India relates

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to their foreign policy ambitions and their ability to project a sphere of influence under which client states can promote non-liberal forms of peace. This poses a real barrier to the universal ambitions of the liberal peace. Given the economic and geo-political growth of China and India, and the resurgence of Russia, it is worth pondering whether the zenith of the liberal peace has passed. A number of other states enjoy anomalous positions that exempt them from many of the more intrusive forms of liberal development or liberal peace. Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, for example, routinely flout human rights legislation. Yet all the states mentioned in this paragraph, whether regional hegemons like China or closed authoritarian states like Saudi Arabia, have much in common with the champions of the liberal peace. This is especially so in terms of their interest in stability and rule-bounded international systems. To undermine the international political economy that underpins the liberal peace risks destabilising their own economies and systems of governance. The Chinese regime, Saudi princes, and Burmese generals all have an interest in the stability of the dollar and the geo-political order that the dollar guarantees. When states like Israel engage in aggressive actions, such as its 2006 war against Hezbollah or its 2010 murder of Turkish peace protestors, they do so either with the connivance of the United States or on the basis of a calculation that the repercussions of aggression can be contained.

Liberal peace manifestations Although the term ‘liberal peace’ is useful shorthand for the dominant form of international peace-support interventions, it is important to note that there is much variety within the liberal peace. While it has monopolising tendencies, it is not monolithic. Richmond (2005: 217) conceptualises the liberal peace as sited along an axis with a hyperconservative version at one end and an emancipatory version at the other. In between, there are conservative and orthodox versions. The key point is that there is no such thing as a typical liberal peace intervention. The liberal peace agenda is promoted with varying degrees of enthusiasm in different conflict-affected areas. So Iraq and Afghanistan receive the full regime-change treatment, while Burma and North Korea do not. Bosnia-Herzegovina is subject to a comprehensive statebuilding programme, while Somalia is largely allowed to fester in statelessness. The reasons for variance in the vigour with which the liberal peace is promoted by western states and institutions lie not only in geo-strategic interests. Hard-to-define factors such as the political and economic cycle

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at home, and the public and political willingness to accept military casualties, also play a part. Although almost never discussed, race must also play a part: western states are very shy of major military interventions in Africa. Variance in the promotion of the liberal peace is not only due to factors constraining or enabling liberal peace agents to project their power. It also relies on the ability and willingness of actors in conflict-affected areas to resist the liberal peace. Thus Afghan militants can thwart many of the ambitions of the liberal peace. Moreover, liberal peace actors may face competition from rival peace-support actors. For example, Chinese diplomats may offer economic assistance with fewer strings attached than that on offer from Brussels or Washington. The liberal peace becomes manifest in two dimensions. The first is through the liberal peace as an international system; the second is through specific international peace-support interventions. In the former, the liberal peace often manifests itself through international structures, norms, and regimes and soft power. These forms of the liberal peace are often so deeply embedded in international political culture that they are not particularly visible; instead, they are the widely accepted ‘way of doing things’. In this way, the liberal peace is latent and customary, and it rests on a series of often unchallenged assumptions. Such assumptions may include, for example, the acceptance of a range of international organisations and their mandates as being legitimate, the acceptance that a post-war economy should be organised around the free market, or the acceptance that a constitutional democracy is the most appropriate form of post-war polity. Within this systemic context, the liberal peace manifests itself in a second way, through specific peace-support interventions. The precise manifestations will vary from intervention to intervention, though often there can be a combination of soft and hard power elements. The liberal peace should not be conceptualised as the direct projection of western values and practices onto states from the global south. To be sure, there is a significant amount of projection, but this projection is subject to considerable distortion and variance. Rather than ‘mini-me’ Xerox copies, it is perhaps best to conceive of ersatz copies that differ from the original. Moreover, rather than the simple extension of practices and values from the global north to the global south, many aspects of the liberal peace have been deemed too toxic for the global north itself. This is especially the case in relation to many neo-liberal aspects of economic strategy. It was Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, not the ‘imperial core’ of North America and Western Europe, that experienced the ‘shock doctrine’ of neo-liberalism. Forms

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of economic management that were road-tested in the global south were then imposed on other areas of the global south as part of liberal peace projects. While there is no ‘typical’ liberal peace intervention, it is possible to identify commonalities among interventions. This should not be surprising given the regularity with which the same actors (states, international organisations, international financial institutions, INGOs, and NGOs) deploy the same strategies (usually associated with statebuilding and reinforcing civil society), using the same timelines (often a series of two- to three-year programmes), and according to the same liberal principles. The result may be a ‘conveyor belt’ of the same types of intervention with the same sequencing of elements within them. The interventions might be modulated to suit local circumstances, but generally they have formulaic and template-style qualities. Thus a post-civil war peace accord may be followed by a ‘typical’ set of programmes on disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration, security sector reform, statebuilding, civil society enhancement, economic recovery, truth recovery, and reconciliation. In caricature-like terms, it resembles peacebuilding from IKEA, whereby the vision of peace is made off-site, shipped to a foreign location, and reconstructed according to a pre-arranged plan. To continue the IKEA metaphor, the ‘perfect’ post-conflict society is depicted, as though in a catalogue, as a stable, market-oriented democracy. Pritchett and Woolcock (2004: 191–212) pithily identified the liberal peace enterprise as ‘getting to Denmark’, a byword for a generic ‘any state’ with a functioning bureaucracy, developed economy, and compliant foreign policy. Two major manifestations of liberal peace interventions are worth highlighting. The first is the internationalising aspect of the liberal peace, and the second is its attachment to the modern state as the principal unit of political organisation. By its very nature liberal peacebuilding involves the introduction of resources, personnel, and modes of practice from outside the country. This book is particularly interested in the processes whereby international personnel, resources, and norms interact with their indigenous counterparts. Although the exogenous factors may nominally be courtesy of the ‘international community’, in many cases the largest contributors of resources and mores will be western states and western-dominated international organisations. This internationalising aspect of the liberal peace may have far-reaching political, economic, social, and cultural implications. It has the potential to shape a series of relationships and perceptions within the post-war society. Relationships between citizens, between

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citizens and the state, and between the state, citizen, and the market may be affected by external factors. International actors may see their interventions as small-scale, innocuous, and ‘neutral’. Yet the internationalising logic of liberal peace interventions can have a tremendous cultural impact. Take the example of the introduction of a paper application form through which citizens in a local municipality in a post-war society can apply for a particular service (Hamieh and Mac Ginty 2009: 116). The introduction of such application forms may be part of the ‘good governance reforms’ introduced as part of a wider statebuilding programme led by an international agency such the United Nations Development Programme. The UNDP governance programme officer (very probably an international member of staff) may regard such an innovation as a technical issue. It is merely ensuring that an administrative system is in place so that the service provider can attempt to demonstrate transparency, accountability, and efficiency. To a (western) mindset acculturated to administrative due process performed by a functioning bureaucracy, the introduction of a paper trail may be sensible and even ‘neutral’. Yet, the locally felt political and cultural implications of such a seemingly innocuous innovation may be far-reaching. Previously, the interface between the local municipality and the citizen may have been personal, with the citizen speaking directly to the relevant functionary or political figure. This relationship, albeit direct, may have relied on clientelism and patronage, and may have been prone to a range of political and identity-based biases. With the introduction of newly standardised technologies of governance (the paper form and related systems of administrative due process), the traditional interface between the citizen and the state is rendered obsolete and non-standard. The key point is that the change, whether for good or bad, occurred at the behest of international actors and has profound political and cultural implications for how the business of politics is conducted and how citizens interact with and perceive the state. The second major manifestation of liberal peace interventions worth highlighting is the extent to which they revolve around statebuilding. Significant international energies are invested in statebuilding in postwar societies, to the extent that, in some cases, statebuilding seems to be the only tool in the international toolkit. Call and Wyeth (2008), although recognising the many complications in statebuilding, refer to this reductionism as ‘building states to build peace’. The logic is simple, and has had much success in the past: effective states are vehicles through which citizens can be secured, rights can be protected,

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peacebuilding and reconstruction assistance can be distributed, and property rights can be respected. ‘Weak’ or ‘failed’ states, on the other hand, are seen as ‘Petri dishes for transnational criminal activity such as money laundering, arms smuggling, drug trafficking, people trafficking, and terrorism’ (Wainwright 2003: 486). Pirates off the Horn of Africa, protracted complex social emergencies, and 9/11 have been associated with statelessness. As a result, leading states and international organisations regard statebuilding as a core remedy. For some commentators, such as Roland Paris, the construction of an effective state is such an important step on the road towards a sustained peace that statebuilding should have precedence over the extension of political and economic freedoms (Paris 2004: 187–8). The voluminous literature on statebuilding attests to its centrality in liberal peace interventions (Chandler 2009a; Paris and Sisk 2008; Zaum 2007; Boyce and O’Donnell 2007). By reforming post-civil war states into something approximating western states, champions of the liberal peace are creating recognisable interfaces with which they can safely interact. ‘Properly’ formulated states are equipped with sets of institutions (for example, diplomatic corps, ministries, municipalities) that are amenable to standardised interactions; they can connect with their counterparts in London, Washington, or Paris. As will be explored throughout this book, the newly created states are prone to problems of legitimacy. While providing a recognisable interface to external actors, their legitimacy at home may be open to question; the post-civil war government may be popular in the capital city, or with a particular ethnic or identity group, but it may owe its power to international might and resources.

Criticisms of the liberal peace Many of the criticisms of the liberal peace have already been touched upon in this chapter, will become apparent in the case study chapters of this book, and have been covered elsewhere by the author and others (Mac Ginty 2006a: 33–57; Darby and Mac Ginty 2008: 4–6; Taylor 2009). For the sake of brevity the chief pitfalls of the dominant international approach to peace-support interventions can be listed with only brief explanation: ●

Ethnocentric: it is directed from the global north and attempts to reproduce forms of peace and governance that mirror expectations from the global north;

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42 ●

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

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Elitist: power is held by political and economic elites at the international and national level; Security-centric: it privileges order and security over emancipation and diversity and so can award power to those prepared to use coercion; Superficial: it primarily responds to the manifestations of conflict rather than the underlying structural causes. As a result peace is not sustained; Technocratic: it reduces peacebuilding to a series of technocratic tasks; Rigid: it is prone to ‘peace by template’ or overly programmed peace interventions; Short-termist: individual peace-support interventions are often governed by short-term budget and political cycles. Again, peace is not sustained; Neo-liberal: it privileges neo-liberal economic interventions and often overlooks the social cost; Illusory: liberal peace interventions may involve much activity, but the essential power relations within society (between sexes, classes, and identity groups) may remain largely unchanged; Fails to fulfil and connect with local expectations: it is insufficiently agile to take account of local cultural preferences.

The summary of these criticisms is that the liberal peace often produces a poor-quality peace in societies emerging from civil war. Direct violence may have ended, a peace accord may be in place, and international peace assistance may be streaming in, but other forms of exclusion and indirect violence persist. On the ground, the ‘peace’ may be characterised by insecurity, poverty, discrimination, and political stasis. Many international actors, however, may be poorly placed to interpret the peace as deficient. The cessation of direct violence, and the quantity of liberal peace ministrations, may give the impression of ‘peace’, especially if international staff live in a compound in the capital city, socialise with others from the international community, and receive most of their information from government ministries or via English-speaking local staff. A single context may offer multiple experiences of peace, and the experience of many international staff is likely to be partial or limited by relatively short-term contracts and rotations. Criticisms of the liberal peace must be leavened by hard-headed questions on the availability and viability of alternatives. There are

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cases in which it is only states from the global north that have the logistical capability to prevent or ameliorate humanitarian catastrophe. More acutely, military forces from the global north may be the only actors able and willing to provide the security for humanitarian access. This may derive from the liberal belief in the reformability of people and institutions, and a sense of responsibility for other humans based on a belief in universal rights. The nature of the liberal peace means that all actors who become involved with it consciously or unconsciously become compromised. Just as liberalism is emancipatory and actively pushes tolerance, it also has a dark side, especially when projected as part of a liberal peace intervention. The nature of this form of peacemaking means that it can be simultaneously emancipatory and humanitarian, and authoritarian. This can be evidenced by the NATO-led international mission in Afghanistan. NATO troops can provide security for NGOs in northern Afghanistan while, at the same time, their colleagues may be bombing villages in the south of the country. INGOs and NGOs that cooperate with liberal peace agents for understandable and entirely humanitarian reasons, such as access to resources, may award legitimacy to military projects (Howell and Lind 2009: 718–36). The vast majority of actors involved in the liberal peace genuinely believe in the righteousness of their cause; indeed, that is part of the liberal condition. Much of the ‘harm’ inflicted by the liberal peace is unintended. Individual actors (for example, NGO workers, civil servants on bilateral programmes, UNDP staff) can see the benefits of their interventions: more children receiving education, better sanitation, or land mines cleared. Indeed, it is difficult to be churlish in the face of the obvious good news stories that emerge from some post-war societies. Take this example from Cambodia in which a road-building project was part of the wider peace-support mission by international actors: Before the commune council built an all-weather road linking Chambak village to the outside world, farmers only got rock-bottom prices for their crops. It was hard for them to get to market ... ‘I was nearly always in debt and I had trouble finding enough food to feed my family,’ recalls Kong Chhork. Since the new road was built, farmers’ incomes have significantly improved. Now they sell fresh cassava instead of the dried variety and net three times the price. ‘I’m no longer in debt,’ says Chhork proudly, ‘and I can even afford to send my children to school.’ He’s also been able to buy a two-wheeled tractor and more land. (Pye-Smith 2009: 32)

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Alongside the incidences of social improvement are examples of the brutality of liberal peacemaking. Here villagers recall the aftermath of a NATO airstrike on two hijacked oil tankers in an Afghan village: ‘We didn’t recognise any of the dead when we arrived,’ said Omar Khan, the turbaned village chief of Eissa Khail. ‘It was like a chemical bomb had gone off, everything was burned. The bodies were like this,’ he brought his two hands together, his fingers curling like claws. ‘There were like burned tree logs, like charcoal. The villagers were fighting over the corpses. People were saying this is my brother, this is my cousin, and no one could identify anyone.’ So the elders stepped in. They collected all the bodies they could and asked the people to tell them how many relatives each family had lost. A queue formed. One by one the bereaved gave the names of missing brothers, cousins, sons and nephews, and each in turn received their quota of corpses. It didn’t matter who was who, everyone was mangled beyond recognition anyway. All that mattered was that they had a body to bury and perform prayers. (Abdul-Ahad 2009) The liberal peace presents analysts with an extremely complex peacemaking environment in which the extension of freedom and violence are used by the same powers in the name of the same project: ‘peace’. As a result, peacemaking must be open to critical scrutiny, and we must be able to differentiate between individual cases of peace-support intervention, as well as between the different levels within each case. It is also important to see the liberal peace in totality, or at the meta-level. While the liberal peace may be emancipatory at the local level in some cases, and it may be possible to see real improvements in living conditions, it is also important to keep the meta-level under scrutiny. At this level, for example, the liberal peace might be regarded as a system that facilitates the continuation of an essentially conservative international political system in which the same political and economic interests perpetuate their own domination.

Concluding discussion The term ‘liberal peace’ has been used in three ways in this chapter. Firstly, it is an interpretive vehicle, or a way of seeing the world. In particular, it is a means of conceptualising the multiple peace-support interventions by leading states (mainly from the global north), international organisations, and international financial institutions. These

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multiple interventions may seem disparate in terms of their scope, scale, duration, geographical span, and complexity, but the liberal peace lens provides us with a way of identifying commonalities in these interventions. This comparative methodology allows us to make generalisations on the ideology, actors, and consequences of liberal peace interventions. Secondly, the term ‘liberal peace’ has been used here to identify a system of intervention, discipline, and power. It is not simply a series of peacesupport interventions. Instead, the term ‘liberal peace’ relates to the complex international structure of states, international organisations, international financial institutions, commercial interests, INGOs, and NGOs that operate according to liberal mores to create the liberal peace. The liberal peace operates in patterned ways, and many of its parts are integrated, meaning that it can be conceptualised as a system. Thirdly, the term ‘liberal peace’ also applies to individual international peacesupport interventions, whether led by the United Nations, NATO, the African Union, or a coalition of states. The champions of the liberal peace are able to marshal immense material and cultural power. It is worth noting, however, that there are limits to this power. In some cases, local and alternative actors are able to oppose, defer, deflect, and change liberal peace interventions. Moreover, liberal peace agents may be distracted by political and economic problems at home. Their ability to project the liberal peace may be limited by the sphere of influence of non-liberal powers such as China or Israel. Moreover, there are areas of the world deemed too marginal by leading states to be worth significant liberal investment. A key point of this book, therefore, is to move beyond caricatures of the liberal peace as an all-powerful Leviathan that can globally project its power in an unchallenged manner. There are limits to this power, and, as the empirical chapters of this book show, many of these limits derive from the internal contradictions of liberalism and from the active challenges mounted by local actors in target states. Many orthodox and problem-solving approaches to revising the shortcomings of peace intervention seek to redistribute power. For example, they may seek to enhance local responsibility and encourage ‘local ownership’ and participation. But such power redistribution is often marginal and does not involve a fundamental rethinking of the meaning and location of power. It often is a superficial exercise that encourages local actors to conform to norms and practices established in the global north. A key aim of this book is to encourage us to think about how different groups interpret power – hence the focus on hybridity. While I do not wish to perpetuate another binary, it does

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seem that many international peace-support actors are more comfortable thinking about and exercising material forms of power (for example, the ability to project military force or humanitarian supplies), while local communities in some settings tend to think about power in terms of legitimacy and moral standing. This raises important implications for how local and international actors (and the many categories in between) engage with one another. In the light of the practical shortcomings of liberal interventions, and of mounting academic criticism of the liberal peace (Líden et al. 2009), three interesting developments can be seen in the academic literature. Firstly, a spirited defence of the liberal peace is being mounted by those who believe that liberalism is essentially reforming and that despite the shortcomings it can be ‘rescued’. Roland Paris (2009, 2010) is perhaps the most prominent exponent of attempts to ‘save the liberal peace’, and argues that despite the failings of the liberal peace, it remains the best system on offer. Secondly, those from a realist perspective regard liberal internationalism as an expensive folly that states from the global north can ill afford, especially in the light of geo-political competition from China and Russia. In this view, the liberal peace is a recipe for exhausting entanglements with few positive outcomes. Walton (2009: 717, 718) argues that liberal interventionism has been ‘astrategic’, as even when ‘operations are tolerably successful, as in Kosovo, their diplomatic and financial costs may well be disproportionate to the strategic rewards that they offer’. For right-wing commentator Charles Krauthammer (2009) ‘Clintonian center-left liberal internationalism’ gave way to an even more weak-willed form of liberalism under President Obama in which the US was apologetic for its unipolar position. A third strand in the literature argues that the critique of the liberal peace does not go far enough. David Chandler (2009b) argues that by using liberalism as the principal frame of reference, critics of the liberal peace are ultimately unable to escape from a liberal institutionalist perspective and are condemned to offer prescriptions that invariably involve reforming liberal institutions. After this discussion of the theoretical origins of the liberal peace, and its practical manifestations in the form of peace-support operations, the next chapter examines indigenous approaches to peace and reconciliation. Chapter 3 then discusses how these top-down and bottom-up forms of peacebuilding interact to form composite types of peace.

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2 Indigenous Peacebuilding

There appeared to be among the natives in general great goodwill towards us, and they seemed to be much rejoiced at our arrival. Captain William Bligh, on reaching Tahiti in 1788 (1792: 62)

Introduction Recent years have seen a resurgence of international interest in indigenous approaches to peacemaking, peacebuilding, and reconciliation. Such approaches have become trendy among many international organisations, bilateral donors, INGOs, and academics as they connect with wider normative goals of ‘local ownership’ and ‘sustainability’. Yet there are dangers of romanticising all things local and traditional without subjecting them to scrutiny. Just like international approaches to peace support, indigenous approaches can be flawed, counterproductive, and ineffective. This chapter unpacks notions of indigeneity in relation to peacebuilding and reconciliation. It follows on from Chapter 1, which examined the liberal peace, or top-down internationally endorsed forms of peacemaking that are justified rhetorically using universal notions of liberalism. This chapter adopts a different level of analysis, and focuses on local, traditional, indigenous, and customary forms of dispute resolution and reconciliation that are often bottom-up in their approach. This paves the way for Chapter 3, which discusses processes of hybridisation, or the mechanisms whereby local and international forms of peacebuilding interact to form a composite peace. The remaining chapters in the book then apply notions of hybridisation to particular cases. 47

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48 International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance

Although much of the chapter is spent examining traditional and indigenous approaches to peacebuilding, it is important to stress that these approaches do not necessarily involve specific techniques of dispute resolution or reconciliation. Certainly these approaches often involve rituals and context-specific symbolic and functional practices. But the approaches involve much more than specific observable techniques. They must be located in their wider cultural habitus, or the way that individuals and communities see and interpret the world, communicate with each other, and act. Culture is so pervasive that it often defies neat description. Yet to reduce it to a series of discrete actions, such as a reconciliation ceremony or a way of dress, seems to risk presenting an episodic and disjointed view of culture. Geertz’s (1993: 17, 20) description of culture as ‘the informal logic of actual life’ is useful, as is his observation that ‘cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses’. In other words, the study of culture is an inexact science. Moreover, by our use of language and cultural biases, we inscribe meaning into other groups and risk misrepresenting them at every turn. By way of introduction to the ethical and practical issues associated with indigenous peacebuilding, it is useful to remind ourselves of the Gacaca courts or tribunals in post-genocide Rwanda. Gacaca (the word translates as ‘on the grass’) are community-based tribunals in which community members come together – often on a piece of grass in the centre of a village – and publicly air their grievances. Gacaca cases are adjudicated by community elders. They are local and participatory, draw on customary laws, and conform to cultural understandings of justice (Daly 2002; Sarkin 2001). In the wake of the genocide, the formal justice system was overwhelmed: over 130,000 suspects were incarcerated and the trial backlog was estimated at one century (Tiemessen 1994: 57). The Rwandan government decided to employ Gacaca courts to try lesser cases, while a UN-sponsored process in Tanzania dealt with high-level suspects. Many international observers were gushing in their praise of the Gacaca system, and donor support followed. The Gacaca courts were lauded as a practical example of local solutions to local problems. But international support for the Gacaca system meant that the system had to change to meet donor conditions. As a result, the courts lost some of the ‘authenticity’ for which they had been praised. Moreover, international support for local courts clashed with a fundamental principle of liberalism: the universal extension of rights. The sentences handed down by the Gacaca courts varied significantly from

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area to area, which undercut attempts to establish a unified criminal justice system. Many of the issues associated with the Gacaca courts resonate through this chapter: the extent to which apparently traditional and local practices are truly indigenous, the efficacy of traditional approaches given the massive dislocation caused by violent conflict, and the clash between the particularism of local approaches and the universal ambitions of liberalism. The chapter begins by conceptualising the terms ‘indigenous’ and ‘traditional’, and discussing interpretations of the terms. Often these terms are used promiscuously in policy and academic literature, so it is worth unpacking them in some depth. The chapter then sketches some of the main attributes associated with indigenous and traditional approaches to peacemaking, reconciliation, and dispute resolution. It then notes the renaissance of interest in indigenous approaches to peacebuilding, before examining the relationship between the liberal peace and indigenous peacebuilding. The concluding discussion examines some of the ethical and practical issues associated with indigenous peacemaking, particularly in a wider context dominated by the liberal peace.

Conceptualising indigenous and traditional peacemaking Although terms such as ‘indigenous’ and ‘traditional’ are used interchangeably in relation to dispute resolution or reconciliation, they do not hold precisely the same meanings. ‘Traditional’ refers to norms and practices that draw on long-standing modes of operation. While traditions can be invented and are capable of change, the expectation is that traditional techniques and understandings have a lengthy historical pedigree. As a result of their long-standing antecedence, it is to be expected that traditional norms and practices will have a cultural resonance among sections of the population and will be able to connect with folk memory and cultural expectations. Indigenous norms and practices draw on local resources. The term ‘indigenous’ usually applies in its common usage to peoples that inhabited a region before it was colonised by actors and technologies from the global north. In sub-Saharan Africa it often refers to cultural minorities who have historically been repressed by majority populations of Africans who control the state apparatus (Hodgson 2002: 1086). Importantly, indigenous practices need not be traditional. Indigenous peoples are capable of adopting new techniques; for example, indigenous rebels in Chiapas made good use of the internet to promote

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their cause (Froehling 1997). Often indigenous communities have been forced to adapt to changing circumstances and engage in processes of reconciliation and social negotiation to survive or prosper. The Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Affairs (1987: 6) identified four common elements in definitions of indigenous peoples: pre-existence (that is, prior to colonisation or the current political dispensation), non-dominance of their political environment, cultural difference from other groups, and self-identification as indigenous. The United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (established in 1982) emphasised four principles to be considered in any definition of indigenous peoples: priority in time, with respect to the occupation and use of a specific territory; voluntary perpetuation of cultural distinctiveness; self-identification, as well as recognition by other groups and state authorities, as a distinct collectivity; and an experience of subjugation, marginalisation, dispossession, exclusion, or discrimination (Kenrick and Lewis 2004: 8). As these definitional guidelines suggest, the concept of indigeneity is relational rather than essentialist. Both definitional guidelines are also political in the sense that they place the concept of indigeneity in the wider hinterlands of marginalisation and political circumstances. As Alfred and Corntassel (2005: 597) note, ‘Indigenousness is an identity constructed, shaped and lived in the politicized context of contemporary colonialism.’ In addition to these guidelines, many descriptions of indigenous groups and practices emphasise a link with ecology or resources. The Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Affairs (1987: 10) refers to this as ‘a custodial concept of land and natural resources: Mother Earth’. In part, this reflects the romanticisation of indigenous groups. Nigel Barley’s Innocent Anthropologist (1983) gives a hilarious insight into how one indigenous community in Cameroon used explosives, poisons, and any means available to catch fish in the nearby river. As discussed below, the equation of indigenous groups with custodianship of natural resources is by no means automatic. In part, however, the association of indigenous groups with resource issues stems from real-life circumstances in which indigenous communities are under threat from commercial resource extraction or other forms of ‘development’ that diminish their livelihood and way of life. Indigenous peoples and their modes of operation are not static, suspended in time only to be confronted by the intrusion of modernity (Bebbington 1993: 277). Indeed, it is useful to move away from the notion of the indigenous and modern spheres as discrete entities that develop in complete isolation from one another until a cataclysmic

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clash that inevitably ends in the triumph of the modern over the indigenous or traditional. There is no inevitability or determinism attached to western cultural domination (Lucas 1996: 102). Cultural exchange is a dynamic process that occurs on multiple levels and should not be conceived of in terms of one-way traffic, or the assimilation of the colonised by the coloniser. Moreover, hybridity and hybridisation are understood in this book not as the grafting together of two distinct entities to produce a third entity. Instead, hybridisation is regarded as a dynamic and complex process in which prior-hybridised entities coalesce, conflict, and re-coalesce with other prior-hybridised entities to produce a context of constant mixing and interchange. Individuals, communities, businesses, and states are not faced with a straight choice between the modern and the traditional or indigenous (Castillo and Furio 2006: 118). Also important in conceptualising indigenous groups and indigeneity is an understanding that indigenous groups are not axiomatically homogeneous. Diversity can occur within indigenous communities. Often such diversity is masked, as it is in societies that are routinely labelled ‘western’ or ‘developed’. It is possible to make distinctions between rural and urban, or between professional and manual, indigenous people or communities (Colloredo-Mansfeld 2002: 638). It is also possible to identify how some within indigenous communities are more powerful than others. Indeed, as will be discussed later in this chapter, some indigenous individuals and groups have been able to exploit their indigenousness by securing international support for their cause (Colloredo-Mansfeld 2002: 641).

The romanticisation of the local There is a danger in romanticising all things local, traditional, or indigenous. It is possible to develop a simplistic binary narrative in which ‘indigenous’ and ‘traditional’ aspects of society are equated with being organic, natural, unpolluted, sustainable, authentic, and normatively good. In contradiction to this, ‘modern’ or ‘international’ aspects of society may be characterised as being artificial, inorganic, inauthentic, unsustainable, and normatively bad. Such a simplistic binary easily overlooks the fact that there are traditional and indigenous ways of warfare, torture, exclusion, and degradation. The simplistic binary is represented in some literature, policy, and activism, and draws from caricatures of saintly locals and devilish internationals. As ever, simplistic dyads are a poor fit for complex human societies. The rush to deify

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all things ‘indigenous’ and ‘traditional’ by some commentators from the global north is not unlike the faddishness associated with organic food (Mac Ginty 2010a: 347–9). Although the arguments in favour of organic food may seem intuitively convincing, the scientific arguments in their favour are not clear cut. Just as organic foods have become popular, especially among richer consumers in the global north, ‘indigenous’ and ‘traditional’ approaches to peacemaking, development, and reconciliation have also become trendy. This trendiness, which is discussed in more detail later in the chapter, should not distract us from rigorous scrutiny of the efficacy and appropriateness of individual approaches to conflict amelioration. Many indigenous and traditional approaches to peacemaking, dispute resolution, and reconciliation are conservative and reinforce the position of powerholders. Women, minorities, and the young are often excluded, and an emphasis is placed on conformity and a numbing of activism, criticism, and radical change. In many cases the indigenous and traditional approaches are merely containment strategies that, while local and sustainable, do not have the potential to transform conflicts by critically examining their basis. Indigenous groups are not above labelling clearly violent processes (such as lynching criminal suspects in some Latin American states) ‘traditional’ (Colloredo-Mansfeld 2002: 642). Moreover, indigenous, traditional, and customary approaches to resolving conflict rely on a socio-cultural environment in which all the parties to the process respect, understand, and connect with indigenous methods. Social and ecological change such as the monetisation of economies or the destruction of the resources on which communities depend means that the environment that supports indigenous approaches to peacemaking simply no longer exists. Urbanisation, one of the most significant yet underappreciated trends in contemporary human existence, holds a tremendous capacity to transform social relations: ‘By the end of 2025, 60 per cent of the world will live in cities; by 2050, more than 70 per cent; and by century’s end the entire world, even the poor nations of sub-Saharan Africa, will be at least three quarters urban’ (Saunders 2010: 11). Most fundamentally from the point of view of this book, the dislocation caused by violent conflict often means that the support environment required by indigenous approaches to peacemaking is distorted. In many civil war locations it is revealing that indigenous approaches were unable to retard the spiral into civil war, communal violence, or authoritarianism. Other ‘systems’, such as militarism or gang violence, prevailed and were able to ignore or disrupt indigenous restraints. In

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a large number of cases, states have deliberately sought to disrupt the social fabric of communities by destroying villages. The British, Israeli, Sri Lankan, Romanian, Burmese, Turkish, Sudanese, and Guatemalan states, among many others in the post-Second World War period, have all sought to obliterate entire communities in the hope of weakening the resolve of their opponents. A large number of post-conflict societies play host to significant numbers of urban youth who are disconnected from the extended family networks, and the village elders, that may have provided restraints on conflict. In some locations, the availability of automatic weaponry has meant that intra-indigenous conflicts have become more deadly. Cattleraiding among pastoralist communities in parts of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, for example, had been linked to rites of passage transitions for young men, and those involved used traditional weapons. Automatic weapons, and the monetisation of the cattle trade to satisfy the demand of meat-based diets, have transformed an indigenous and traditional practice. The AK-47 has become ‘a change agent’ (Mirzeler and Young 2000: 407). Elders or women who might traditionally have been able to act as a restraint on any escalation of the conflict are no longer able to play such roles as the violence has transformed into gang-based crime (Fleischer 1998). Any analysis of the utility of indigenous, customary, and traditional approaches to conflict resolution needs to contextualise these approaches in their conflict and post-conflict settings. Many societies have undergone extended and traumatic dislocation as a result of war and authoritarianism. As the empirical chapters in this volume show, internationally supported peace interventions also have the capacity to significantly alter the context in which indigenous communities survive. As the book also shows, however, indigenous communities and techniques are capable of engaging with exogenous influences and resisting and subverting them. The book is particularly interested in this ‘space between’, or the sites and processes of interaction between different modes of understanding and operation.

Indigenous and traditional approaches to peacebuilding Much of this chapter has been taken up with caveats against generalisations or simplistic understandings of culture or indigenous society as discrete or unchanging. With these caveats in mind, and any others the reader wishes to throw into the mix, this section sketches some of the principles and traits commonly found in indigenous and traditional

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54 International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance

approaches to peacemaking. Again, it is worth stressing that while it is useful to examine specific conflict amelioration techniques used by indigenous communities, we need to go beyond this to understand the wider sociology of the groups and interrogate why they adopt particular techniques. Local peacemaking techniques range from Bedouin consensus dispute resolution in the Negev to Inuit attempts to deal with low-level delinquency in peri-urban modern settings, to attempts to reconcile traditional dispute resolution methods with the demands of modern ‘good governance’ in Fiji (Al-Krenawi and Graham 1999; Briggs 2000; Futa Hela 1997). Our particular interest lies in the interface between the traditional and the modern (with neither the traditional nor the modern being particularly discrete). Traditional and indigenous peacebuilding practices are necessarily rooted in specific communities and often have highly localised elements. Yet it is possible to identify a number of common traits. These are summarised in Table 4 and contrasted with features commonly associated with the liberal peace. Many indigenous and traditional practices rest on the moral authority of respected community figures such as village elders or other sources of counsel (Barley 1983: 146–7). Often these figures demand deference and there is a strong social expectation that their judgements

Table 4 Indigenous versus international peacebuilding Local, customary, and traditional peacebuilding

International peacebuilding

Respected local figures

Top-down: engages with national elites but ignores locals

Public dimension

Exclusive: deals are made behind closed doors; few direct routes of communication for the citizen

Storytelling and airing of grievances

Technocratic and ahistorical bias: emphasis on ‘striking a deal’, ‘moving on’, and ‘putting the past behind us’

Emphasis on relationships

Modelled on corporate culture: reaching a deal and meeting deadlines are prioritised over relations

Reliance on local resources

Relies on external personnel, ideas, and material resources

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or advice will be adhered to. Secondly, many of the practices have a public element that adds to the transparency of decision-making processes. They are deliberately accessible (perhaps held at a central point in a village or at a location between two disputing villages), with this public dimension providing a visible affirmation of legitimacy. Multiple public witnesses may make it more difficult for disputants to renege on any agreement that is reached as a result of arbitration. Or a public reconciliation between leaders of combatant groups might encourage similar conciliatory behaviour between their subordinates. Sometimes this public element may take the form of ritual or a public display that symbolises reconciliation or a new understanding. Thirdly, many of the practices have a storytelling aspect. This public articulation of grievances and perspectives is highly accessible and may conform to the dominance of oral traditions. Fourthly, there is often a strong emphasis on relationships rather than a definitive agreement. This stems from a recognition that disputants, their families, and communities are likely to continue to share the same resources (for example, water or routes to a market) over an extended period. There is thus a sophisticated understanding of the nature of peace and conflict as processes rather than as events. This may also tie in with a long-term view of the importance of the local ecology and the need to manage exploitation so as to ensure sustainability. Finally, peacebuilding practices often rely on locally derived resources. These may be items with a high material or symbolic value (for example, green stones in the case of Maoris or cattle in the case of some African pastoralists) or simply items that are close to hand (for example, leaves from vegetation) (Vayda 1976). According to most observers, the principal advantage stemming from traditional and indigenous approaches to peacebuilding lies in their culturally intuitive nature. In theory, such approaches are able to connect with ‘cultural memory banks’ and conform to popularly held and accepted norms and expectations. They have low start-up costs in that they do not require extensive explanation and the importation of expensive outside expertise or material resources. Instead, their efficacy and legitimacy lie in near-automatic public understanding and acceptance. The core traits of many traditional and indigenous approaches to peacemaking sketched here contrast with many of the features often associated with the liberal peace. The technocratic bias of western approaches to peacebuilding means that the storytelling and grievance-airing dimensions of peacebuilding often found in indigenous and traditional approaches may be sidelined. Very often, international actors focus on

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‘striking a deal’ and ‘moving on’. The peace deal is often highly technical and legalistic and so makes few concessions to the oral traditions through which local communities might discuss and remember. The desire to ‘move on’ and ‘put the past behind us’ is especially attractive to many international sponsors of peacebuilding. Technocratic operating procedures that divide peacebuilding into a series of time-limited and target-led programmes and projects mean that many agents of the liberal peace hold an essentially ahistorical worldview (Jacoby 2007). In such a culture of external peace imposition, it is easy to dismiss the airing of grievances as ‘harking back to the bad old days’ and ‘failing to move with the times’. Admittedly, many internationally sponsored peacebuilding operations have constructed forums which allow citizens to narrate their grievances, but externally created ‘truth recovery’ processes do not always conform to local cultural norms of storytelling. Instead, such forums may be heavily influenced by the western legal tradition and comprise transcribed hearings, witnesses supported by lawyers, and a final report: all alien to the culture in which the conflict occurred and the society that is expected to rebuild itself. Indigenous and local approaches to reconciliation and dispute resolution might rely heavily on the affective dimension, or an individual or collective ‘feeling’ that a just resolution has been reached. The notion of ‘feelings’ is clearly problematic to technocratic cultures more used to deploying metrics to measure the implementation of peace. This perhaps crystallises a fundamental gap between many externally sponsored peace programmes and locally led initiatives that draw on traditional or indigenous sources. International actors often use metrics to quantitatively record the ‘success’ of peace ‘implementation’ (Etzioni 2010). In this view peace is something that can be implemented, or injected into a society via a correctly weighted ‘package’. The US-formulated metrics for gauging the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of peace-support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have been aimed primarily at the domestic political audience in the United States rather than the recipients of the actual implementation strategy. The already-mentioned emphasis in many western-sponsored peace processes on securing a peace deal can be antithetical to the need for peace processes to stay focused on relationships. Western political culture, seemingly aping corporate culture, emphasises the need for timely, definitive, written deals (Mac Ginty 2008). Thus, in some cases, a peace deal must be reached by a certain deadline. While deadlines can concentrate the minds of parties during negotiations, they also betray a bias towards linear notions of time (Jonas 2000). A technocratic approach to

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negotiations may mean that the aspirations of a community are shoehorned into a legalistic contract or peace accord. The danger is that peace becomes an event rather than a process. The one-off deal is far removed from conceptualisations of peace in which there is a continuing dialogue or understanding between antagonists based on a recognition that they share the same temporal space and will in all probability need to rely on each other to manage future conflicts. The focus of many indigenous peacebuilding and dispute resolution processes lies more in attempting to recalibrate social relations than in apportioning blame and specifying retribution (Lang 2002: 63). Finally, while indigenous and traditional approaches to peacebuilding might rely on local resources, the very nature of externally sponsored peacebuilding means that it introduces external personnel, ideas, and material resources into the post-conflict context. In many cases these external resources may be very worthwhile – for example, a mediator with the energy and skill to help local antagonists to see their situation from a fresh perspective, or the security to allow a minority to return to a particular locality. Yet the external provenance of such resources raises questions of sustainability.

The ‘rediscovery’ of indigenous approaches to peacemaking There has been a renaissance of interest in indigenous and customary approaches to development, peacemaking, and reconciliation in recent years. This is evidenced through international organisations, states, and international and national civil society paying more attention to indigenous issues. As will be discussed below, the ‘rediscovery’ of the local, traditional, and indigenous has a number of implications, not least for the type of peace and reconciliation that is being promoted in many post-peace accord societies. In part, the renaissance has been the product of the issue gaining greater prominence in international institutions, often as a result of civil society activism. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) showed early and sustained interest in the issue, establishing a Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 1982 (Bijoy 1993). The greater prominence attached to the issue was not without controversy as some states, such as India, pursued assimilationist agendas and sought to deny the existence of indigenous minorities (Bijoy 1993: 1360). Others states maintained that since the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights afforded rights to all peoples, there was no need to award particular rights to selected groups. This tension

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between universalist and particularistic understandings of rights has been a constant presence in all policymaking on indigenous peoples. A high point in the mainstreaming of indigenous issues and peoples was the UN declaration of an International Year of Indigenous Peoples in 1992, followed by the designation of 1995–2004 as the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. In 2007, following two decades of debate and controversy, the UN adopted a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. Bell (2006: 381) observed the ‘increasing recognition in international law that indigenous peoples are “peoples” entitled to forms of self-determination short of independent statehood’. India, Bangladesh, Mexico, Guatemala, and France (in the case of New Caledonia) all reached peace agreements with self-declared indigenous populations, while many other states attempted to reach some form of accommodation in situations in which indigenous groups had suffered structural violence and marginalisation (Bell 2006: 381; Colchester 2002: 2). In many cases, with Canada providing a prominent example, indigenous peoples sought rights in relation to natural resources, in the face of encroachment from companies intent on resource extraction (Mauro and Hardison 2000: 1264–5). As will be discussed later in the chapter, the inclusionist strategies of a number of apparently progressive states have attracted considerable scepticism, particularly from those who see state legislation on these issues as a form of assimilation. International financial institutions, international organisations, and bilateral donors have all paid increasing attention to the possibilities of indigenous and traditional approaches to peacebuilding. Indeed, many of the principal actors of the liberal peace who have been caricatured as the guardians of a top-down western form of peace have been prominent in promoting indigenous approaches to peace. Thus, for example, the Inter-American Development Bank has established an Indigenous Peoples and Community Development Unit, and the World Bank has funded peace and development projects for indigenous people in Colombia that are ‘compatible with the community’s own decision-making structure’ (World Bank 2009). The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development sought to ‘promote initiatives in selected countries, including indigenous capacity building, to help avert conflict, reduce violence and build sustainable security and peace’ (DFID 2004). USAID has funded ‘building the viable indigenous conflict resolution capacities of the Southern Sudan Peace Commission and local partners’ (PACT 2009). A picture emerges of considerable rhetorical and material support for indigenous approaches to

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peacebuilding, often as part of wider liberal peace interventions. Before we critique the nature of much of this support, it is worth considering what lies behind the ‘discovery’ of indigenous issues and capacities by international actors. In part, the greater awareness of indigenous issues among international actors has been the result of the activism of indigenous communities themselves, who have worked hard to force their way onto the international issue agenda. The 1994 Chiapas uprising in Mexico was perhaps the most prominent of attempts by indigenous communities to seek legitimacy and redress of their grievances (Harvey 2001). National and transnational indigenous activism has seen the creation of a number of umbrella organisations that agitate as a collective, and often act in concert with established INGOs in the global north. Indigenous issues, and a recognition that indigenous approaches might have the potential to tackle conflict and underdevelopment, have also been in tune with long-term trends within thinking on development, aid, and conflict amelioration. It is possible to track first-, second-, third-, and even fourth-generation thinking on development, aid, and conflict resolution (Richmond 2009b: 102–3). There is no ‘singular theoretical genealogy’ (Kothari 2005: 1). Rather than a smooth, linear progression of ideas, thinking on conflict and development has evolved episodically, and often in response to the repeated failure of development and peacesupport interventions. One product of this evolution of thinking and policy has been a greater emphasis on sustainability. Connected to this has been an emphasis on ‘local ownership’ and ‘local participation’. The logics here contend that ‘locally owned’ initiatives have a greater chance of success, do not rely on costly external resources, and can connect with the cultural expectations and norms of local communities (Mac Ginty 2008: 142). They also offer the advantage of an exit strategy for international interveners. As importantly, ‘local ownership’ means that responsibility is passed to local actors, and external actors can present themselves as benign guardians. Most blatantly in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also elsewhere, the US and others have lectured post-transition governments on the need for them to take responsibility for their own reconstruction (Bush 2004b). The irony that the US was responsible for much of the destruction seems lost. It is within this paradigm that international actors have sought to support indigenous efforts for peace and development. Such thinking, and the ensuing policies, have attracted significant criticism, not least because the devolution of power to ‘the local’ is often virtual and superficial (Cooke and Kothari 2002). As Boege et al.

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(2009: 611) observe, ‘There is much talk of ownership, but often this is not much more than lip service; in effect, locals are meant to “own” what outsiders tell them to.’ Yet the attractions of the logic of localism are strong and the trend of international support for ‘indigenous’ and ‘local’ initiatives is continuing.

Indigenous peacemaking and the liberal peace As discussed above, principal agents of the liberal peace from the global north have sought to incorporate indigenous peace and reconciliation norms and techniques into the liberal peace. In some cases, the liberal peace has also sought to address the marginalisation of indigenous peoples. Yet the contradictions between indigenous and liberal approaches to peacemaking (and it is recognised that these do not constitute discrete categories) are profound and call into question the sincerity of many liberal peace initiatives to ‘include’ indigenous groups and norms. The most fundamental of these contradictions stems from liberalism’s self-image of righteousness and superiority in the face of alternatives. An almost constant explicit and implicit narrative running through internationally supported development, peace, and reconstruction interventions has been that technocratic practices and scientifically proven ‘solutions’ from the global north will ‘solve’ the problems of underdevelopment and conflict. This narrative can be beguiling. Bebbington (1993: 278) notes how ‘It might be the case that Indian farmers want to plant “like a white farmer”, perceiving technological modernization as a symbol of success in claiming rights of equal access to technological resources from which they were previously excluded’. Axtell’s (1985: 4) history of the European colonisation of North America records how ‘traders provided the trappings of European material culture, whose technological superiority and beauty were expected to seduce the Neolithic natives irrevocably’. The glass beads and copper pots of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been replaced by the modern technologies of ‘good governance’ or the incentives of reconstruction grants, yet the self-assuredness of many actors from the global north remains undimmed. One of the major successes of liberal internationalism has been the framing of its approaches as ‘success’ and to be imitated. Given liberalism’s certainty of its own superiority, other approaches to peacemaking are regarded as deviant and inferior to the ‘true peace’ on offer from liberalism. As a result, it is possible to regard some liberal peace support for indigenous peacemaking as a temporary expedient that can be deployed until people are ‘developed enough’

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to accept a liberal peace. It is notable that much liberal peace support for indigenous approaches to dispute resolution occurs on the margins, or in locations such as the Horn of Africa, where the liberal peace has limited reach. A further fundamental contradiction between the liberal peace and indigenous approaches to peacemaking is that the dominant paradigm of contemporary peacemaking is largely defined by the liberal peace. Where indigenous peacemaking is permitted by the liberal peace, it occurs in a meta-environment shaped by liberal peace norms and institutions. The main actors in peacemaking and post-war statebuilding (global and regional security organisations, international financial institutions, and a self-appointed clique of states) operate according to liberal peace principles. The chief norms upon which they operate, such as the sanctity of state sovereignty or the primacy of neo-liberal ‘solutions’, are largely dictated by champions of the liberal peace. As a result, it is possible to see many cases of indigenous peace and reconciliation initiatives as occurring within a paradigm established elsewhere. This amounts to an anti-indigenous bias hardwired into dominant forms of peacebuilding (Bebbington 1993: 278). The problem of the authorship of the peacemaking paradigm is well summarised by Taiaiake Alfred (1999: xiii), a Mohawk scholar whose Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto considers the treatment of indigenous peoples in North America: Real control remains in the hands of white society because it is that society’s rules that define our lives – not through obviously racist laws, but through endless references to the ‘market’, ‘fiscal reality’, ‘Aboriginal rights’, and ‘public will’. In this supposedly post- colonial world, what does it matter if the Reserve is run by Indians, so long as they behave like bureaucrats and carry out the same old policies? Although this case is different from contemporary civil wars that have been subject to international peace-support interventions, the essential questions remain constant: who defines what peace is and how is it to be made? Short (2003: 506) identified similar problems with Australian government attempts to redress injustice against Aboriginal peoples that ‘soon became little more than an assimilationist nation-building exercise’. Even the very identity of groups can be defined by those with power: ‘in the Canadian context, “aboriginalism” is a legal, political, and cultural discourse designed to serve an agenda of silent surrender

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to an inherently unjust relation at the root of the colonial state itself’ (Alfred and Corntassel 2005: 598). The power of liberal peace actors to set the paradigm within which peace is to be understood should not be underestimated. Postcolonial writings on India are useful in this regard in that they illustrate how the imperial power was able to define what it was to be Indian (Cohn 2005: 50). Cohn (2005: 51) notes how imperial technologies of power and knowledge meant that in the nineteenth century ‘educated Indians increasingly were to learn about their own culture through the mediation of European ideas and scholarship’. Moreover, ‘In the 1860s an archaeological survey was established, with Europeans deciding what were the great monuments in India, which monuments were fit for preservation or for description as part of the Indian “heritage”.’ In a similar way, the idiom of acceptable and unacceptable forms of, and ways to, peace has been constructed in many cases according to precepts set down by the champions of the liberal peace. On closer examination, many indigenous ‘initiatives’ are sponsored or resurrected under the tutelage of liberal peace agents. This raises questions about the authenticity of such initiatives and the extent to which they have been amended to suit norms established by organisations and states in the global north (Mac Ginty 2010a). The Gacaca tribunals mentioned at the beginning of this chapter provide a good example of an indigenous practice that is ‘approved’ and funded by external donors. Another example was the emergency loya jirga, or traditional council, convened by NATO to adjudicate on Afghanistan’s interim constitution in the aftermath of the ousting of the Taliban in 2001 (Mac Ginty 2008: 154). During Afghanistan’s civil wars loya jirgas remained a common way to attempt to resolve local-level disputes using consensual methods and the prevailing respect for elders and kinship. The grand loya jirga staged by NATO, however, deviated substantially from tradition. The last nationwide loya jirga to consider a national question had been held thirty years previously, with the result that few participants had any experience of this methodology. NATO managed the guest list for the 2001 event. In keeping with western liberal values, women were included in the 2001 loya jirga (Dalherup and Nordlund 2004). Participants were also required to confirm that they were not guilty of human rights abuses. This was a meaningless proviso in a country that had lacked an adequate police force and police records for decades and whose political elites were often warlords or their proxies. Given the circumstances and the lack of capacity to stage an election, the UN and many INGOs regarded the loya jirga as a useful mechanism

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through which to confer legitimacy on the post-Taliban government (Chesterman 2002). Yet this was not merely the co-option of an indigenous practice as part of a wider liberal peace project; it amounted to the bastardisation of an indigenous practice to the extent that it is difficult to apply the label ‘indigenous’ to it. Some liberal peace and development settings have created political and civil society space and fora through which indigenous demands have been expressed and addressed. It is important that these empowering aspects of the liberal peace are recognised. Yet it is also possible to observe the rise of new indigenous elites or ‘indigenous professionals’ (Perreault 2003: 343; Colloredo-Mansfeld 2002: 641; Hodgson 2002: 1086). Perreault (2003: 335) questions the extent to which some umbrella organisations actually represent the communities they claim to speak for, noting how some representative organisations often betray urban, male, and linguistic biases. As demonstrated in Chapter 8 of this volume, liberal peace actors often have the capacity to mobilise and direct resources to the extent that they can help mould civil society. This can apply to indigenous NGOs and umbrella organisations. Hodgson (2002: 1088) observed that many Tanzanian indigenous NGOs demonstrated an extraordinary ability to attract substantial funds from governmental and nongovernmental sources. Their evident success in mobilising donor funding – visible in the new offices, vehicles, jobs, and national and international travel – encouraged Maasai and other leaders to form even more INGOs. As a result, the growth in INGOs has been tremendous. Hodgson (2002: 1093) went on to note that ‘Local people themselves were increasingly troubled by the arrogance, lack of responsiveness and accountability, and corruption they perceived in some INGO leaders’. The material resources at the disposal of international liberal peace agents means that they can create a civil society political economy that incentivises certain activities and discourages others. Indigenous organisations with radical political and social justice agendas may find that international funding is available for ‘service delivery’ or activities that fall within the development programmes of international organisations or bilateral donors (Hodgson 2002: 1088). Similar funding may not be available for promoting radical political agendas. The result is a disciplining of social activism and an extension of conformity. Indigenous agendas and discourse may also be set by minorities within indigenous movements, or by their external patrons. Richards

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(2005: 199) notes how indigenous women in Chile felt marginalised by women’s and indigenous movements: ‘nonindigenous feminists often attempt to subsume indigenous women’s interests within their political views or accuse them of defending sexist practices’. Transnational indigenous peoples’ movements have had undoubted success in encouraging states and international organisations to take indigenous issues more seriously. Yet ‘newly hegemonic discourses’ may distort the original aims and methods of indigenous groups (Tilley 2002: 528). Take, for example, the Manila Declaration on Conflict Resolution, Peacebuilding, Sustainable Development and Indigenous Peoples (Colchester 2002: 3). The declaration by indigenous leaders from locations as diverse as Greenland and Australia asserts indigenous rights to self-determination, resources, and dignity. Interestingly, however, the document employs a discourse from the global north. It notes that ‘in revalidating the traditions and institutions of our ancestors it is also necessary that we honestly deal with those ancient practices, which may have led to the oppression of indigenous women and children’. Indigenous expressions of pluralism, equality, and rights are nothing new. What seems to be new in this statement, however, is the adoption of an apparently universalised language to express these sentiments, leading to questions of authenticity and ownership (Richards 2005: 202). When we review the poor fit between the liberal peace and indigenous approaches to dispute resolution and reconciliation, it is worth noting that external actors have a long history of co-opting local violent practices for their own ends. Empires were established by harnessing the enmity between indigenous groups. As the story of Gurkha regiments within the British military attests, imperial powers have been keen to emphasise the martial traditions of some groups in order to police and discipline other imperial subjects (Pemble 2009). In the contemporary era, US-led counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have depended heavily on the co-option of indigenous groups and the utilisation of rather ‘traditional’, if brutal, methods of resolving disputes: feuds. The US occupation of Iraq was largely secured by buying off militias and tasking Sunni tribes to ‘police’ specified areas. There was little pretence that this aspect of liberal peace imposition met with the rhetorical human rights ambitions of Britain or the United States. A 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq recommended ‘deputizing, resourcing, and working more directly with neighborhood watch groups and establishing grievance committees – to help mend frayed relationships between tribal and religious groups, which have been mobilized into communal warfare over the past three years’ (cited in

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Simon 2008: 60). On the ground, this meant funding and arming local militias against al-Qaeda-linked jihadists and exploiting their ‘traditional’ scepticism of outsiders and those with different religious views. In Afghanistan, the Central Intelligence Agency’s 2009 Community Defense Initiative rested on arming villagers and depending on their traditional sense of territoriality and kinship bonds (Milne 2009).

Concluding discussion Indigenous approaches to peacebuilding and dispute resolution should not necessarily be regarded as marginal or as only able to exist if they are resuscitated by international actors. It is worth re-stressing that ‘indigenous approaches’ include much more than specific techniques and rituals. Instead, they encompass ways of interpreting the social environment and engaging with in- and out-group members. They often amount to a way of life or a cosmology, and are embedded in how the polity acts and interprets information (Jenkins 2006: 300; Axtell 1985: 12). Populations in societies emerging from violent conflict are rarely faced with either/or choices in which they must choose between purely traditional or indigenous social systems and wholly modern and homogenised versions (Castillo and Furio 2006: 118). They are likely to inhabit a hybrid environment in which the varieties of exogenous and indigenous ways of interpreting the world and methods of managing social, economic, and political problems co-exist, conflict, and jostle for acceptance. In some cases, indigenous approaches to peacebuilding and dispute resolution have been compartmentalised by states or other powerholding authorities. This separation of indigenous methods or society from the rest of the polity is exemplified by the reservations inhabited by many native Americans. Reservations are ‘islands’ or exceptions to the prevailing norm. Their status is granted to them. Ultimate authority lies elsewhere, and that authority remains unthreatened by the reservation (Ross 1998: 27). The reservation is a contained area of self-management, or even self-colonisation, that allows the ultimate authority (the United States or Canada) to abdicate responsibility for day-to-day tasks but retain meta-sovereignty. In some cases, the notion of indigeneity may help states as it allows them to compartmentalise grievances. The Mexican government used the ‘indigenous’ label to ‘park’ the Chiapas issue, reducing its status from a major conflict to a local phenomenon that is geographically isolated and politically marginal (Manaut et al. 2006: 146).

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Given the hegemonic ambitions of many states (for example, to achieve a monopoly of violence), and given the intolerance of the liberal peace for many alternative forms of peace, many indigenous approaches to peacebuilding can be regarded as an alternative. The conflict resolution category of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is probably too restrictive for many indigenous approaches as it tends to be used in relation to modern methods of dispute resolution that carefully establish their position in relation to formal legal frameworks. Indigenous approaches to dispute resolution and reconciliation can be alternatives in that they can occur beyond the purview of formal state mechanisms. But they may also be alternatives in that they are bottom-up and participative and have an affective dimension lacking in formal mechanisms. As alternatives, indigenous approaches to peacebuilding and dispute resolution often involve tremendous bravery. ‘Peace communities’ in Central and South America have paid a high price for declaring themselves ‘neutral’ in conflicts between states and insurgents. In Colombia, for example, seventeen villages came together to establish the San José de Apartadó peace community in 1997. Within eight years over 100 community members had been murdered (Alther 2006: 283). Violent conflict, and in some cases liberal peace interventions, often promote exclusive ‘us’ and ‘them’ worldviews. Indigenous approaches to peacebuilding often require a more catholic understanding of the variety of approaches to peace and the need to tolerate alternatives. One of the advantages of a close study of indigenous approaches to dispute resolution and peacebuilding is that it encourages bottom-up, people-centric views of society. Lang’s (2002: 53) studies of the Sulha mediation tradition among Arab communities, for example, acts as a ‘corrective to the pathologization of Arab political and social life that results from the consistent overemphasis on the role of violence and revenge in ethnographic and other academic accounts’. This is particularly important in relation to Palestinian, Arab, and other communities who have been framed in some quarters as ‘violent’ or ‘uncivilised’. Indeed, closer examination of societies and eras that are often labelled ‘savage’ usually reveals the presence of sophisticated systems of mediation and arbitration (McCree 1994: 834; Smith 1981). These ‘systems’ often had an everyday quality and were embedded into social processes. Attempts to rehabilitate indigenous approaches to dispute resolution and reconciliation often focus on specific indigenous techniques or practices. This betrays the technocratic and programmatic bias of many liberal peace interventions, in which peacebuilding must be broken

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down into a series of specific projects that make up the whole. Such an approach allows the deployment of metrics or indicators of the ‘success’ of a peacebuilding programme. This technocratic approach risks overlooking the affective dimension of many approaches to peacebuilding and reconciliation that draw on indigenous or customary practices and beliefs. Sometimes these have a spiritual dimension, or a way of understanding the world that does not depend on apparently ‘rational’ or observable phenomenon (Alfred 1999: xiv). All approaches to peacebuilding have a particular ethic or an underpinning leitmotif that sets the parameters of what is or is not peace and of acceptable means of achieving peace. Central aspects of the liberal peace are associated with material power, or the ability of liberal peace agents to project resources towards particular actors and issues in societies emerging from violent conflict. This is not necessarily the case with indigenous approaches to peace, many of which focus on relationships rather than outcomes. Too much weight can be attached to the authenticity of apparently indigenous practices. Certainly the resuscitation of indigenous reconciliation and dispute resolution techniques as part of international peace-support interventions can lead to accusations of ersatz indigenousness, or the appropriation of indigenous techniques by outsiders. Even those opposed to external intrusion into national or local life can distort indigenousness in their attempts to preserve the indigenousness of practices or communities. Sen (2005: 139) observes that ‘Those who prefer to pursue a “more indigenous” approach often opt for a characterization of Indian culture and society that is rather self-consciously distant from western traditions.’ Efficacy for recipients, rather than authenticity, is a more important guide to the usefulness of a peacebuilding or reconciliation strategy. After this discussion of indigenous and traditional approaches to peace, Chapter 3 examines the processes of hybridisation, or how different worldviews and practices come together to produce a composite or hybrid form of peace.

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3 Hybridity

Neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring. John Heywood

Introduction The concept of hybridity is central to this book. Our interest lies in the hybrid political, economic, and social orders that have emerged in the wake of liberal peace interventions in the post-Cold War period. The concept of hybridity, and an unpacking of the processes of hybridisation, allows us to do at least three things. Firstly, it enables us to develop a sophisticated critique of the liberal peace. Such a critique moves beyond two-dimensional notions of an all-powerful international community and weakened local actors who are bereft of the powers to resist, subvert, or negotiate the imposition of the liberal peace. The critique, assisted by the concept of hybridity, illustrates that the liberal peace – as a set of actors, norms, and intervention programmes – is not an all-powerful Leviathan that can unroll its liberal Commonwealth without hindrance from local power structures and norms, and from its own contradictions. Secondly, the concept of hybridity allows us to reappraise studies of local agency and indigenous norms that have erred towards a romanticisation of the local. There has been a tendency in some policy, journalist, and academic literature to romanticise all things local, traditional, and indigenous. An understanding of the hybrid nature of ideas, peoples, and structures allows us to question entire categories upon which much discussion of liberal internationalism and local resistance rests. Terms such as ‘local’, ‘indigenous’, and ‘international’ must all be scrutinised given the contention put forward here that we are all hybrids and all political projects are subject to prior 68

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hybridisation. Thirdly, the concept of hybridity allows us to interrogate the nature of contemporary peace and the political, economic, social, and cultural orders that it fashions. In particular, it allows us to question the quality of the peace that is offered in the name of ‘liberalism’, and to investigate ways in which the quality of peace may be improved. This chapter proceeds by conceptualising the notions of hybridity and the hybrid. While a number of academic disciplines, most notably postcolonial literature studies, anthropology, and organisational studies, have made good use of the concept of hybridity, peace and conflict studies has been late to ‘discover’ the term. As a result, the chapter hopes to make a contribution to the literature by illustrating the usefulness of the concept to our understanding of how internationally led peace-support interventions interact with local actors, structures, and norms to produce a hybrid peace. As will be discussed, the term ‘hybrid’ is not without its problems, but it does allow us to view the fusion of different factors that combine to produce the problematic nature of contemporary international peacesupport environments. The chapter then proposes a four-part model to assist our understanding of hybridisation. It is argued that the hybrid peace is the result of the interplay of the following factors: the ability of liberal peace agents, networks, and structures to enforce compliance with their will; the incentivising powers of liberal peace agents, networks, and structures; the ability of local actors to resist, ignore, or adapt liberal peace interventions; and the ability of local actors, networks, and structures to present and maintain alternative forms of peacemaking. The result of the interplay is a variable geometry comprising local and international forces that produce the hybrid peace. This chapter represents a logical follow-on from Chapters 1 and 2. While Chapter 1 explored the liberal peace and Chapter 2 examined indigenous approaches to peacemaking, this chapter is interested in the processes whereby these two forms of peacemaking coalesce, conflict, and re-coalesce to produce a hybridised form of peace. After this outline of how top-down and bottom-up peace come together to form a hybrid peace, subsequent chapters will examine this hybridisation in action. These chapters adopt a case study approach, with each case study concentrating on a particular pillar of the liberal peace (security, statebuilding, free-market economics, governance, and the promotion of civil society) in a particular liberal peace locality (Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, Lebanon, and Northern Ireland). The intention is to illustrate how in all cases the will of external intervening powers was subject to severe distortion as a result of the power of local actors to subvert, resist, and renegotiate peace interventions, and the inability or unwillingness of

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intervening powers to stay the course or recognise the contradictions of liberalism once applied to peacebuilding in fraught post-war contexts. What becomes clear from the empirical chapters is that no actor is able to unilaterally impose its will. The concept of hybridity allows us to view the complexity of contemporary peace environments and better understand the interaction between a variety of internal and external actors that produces the fusion peace.

Conceptualising hybridity A review of the literature on hybridity needs to begin with a health warning: much of the literature on the subject is dense and inaccessible. It specialises in circular arguments, self-indulgent prose, and a singleminded determination to avoid relevance to the ‘real world’. It also suffers from ‘caveatitis’, or an inability to make any statement without smothering it in so many caveats that it becomes meaningless. Much work spends so much time conceptualising and ‘problematising’ (as though we don’t have enough problems) the term ‘hybrid’ that it does not actually move on to do anything useful with the term. It is hoped that the current work does not fall into too many of the above traps. The terms ‘hybrid’ and ‘hybridity’ have nineteenth-century botanical origins (Young 1995: 6). Hybrid plants were deliberately engineered for their hardiness with respect to disease or their ability to produce crops in difficult environmental conditions. The early application of the term ‘hybrid’ to social phenomena, however, tended to focus on the negative outcomes of the melding together of two distinct strains of human life. Hybrids were regarded with suspicion, and processes of hybridisation feared for their potential to contaminate pure entities and produce a new ‘impure’ hybrid. Such fears were particularly apparent in thinking about the interactions between the coloniser and the colonised. European colonialism, after all, was predicated on a worldview replete with a series of binaries that justified the methods of colonial imposition and resource extraction. In much of its public political discourse, colonialism was regarded as a civilising mission through which the civilised would encounter the savage, the Christian would encounter the infidel, and the modern would encounter the archaic. Morton (2000: 13) characterises ‘the horror of colonialist fantasies’ thus: The apprehension it produced in Europeans centred on the danger that a ‘superior’ people might degenerate to a lower level of evolution by mixing with an inferior one and that its position on the racial

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ladder would therefore sink. In this logic, the final consequences of hybridization might be erasure and blurring of boundaries between races and dissolution of codes of difference. Entire social, economic, and political projects rest on the erection and maintenance of boundaries: the class and caste systems, monarchies and dynasties, military discipline, and religion, to name a few. The notion of the hybrid, or some interstitial space between two entities, suggested that boundaries were porous and therefore questioned the basis of the separation and the superior–inferior relationship that formed many of the foundation stones of social and political order. There is a danger, however, in caricaturing nineteenth-century European society and its colonial elites as being rigidly essentialist in their thinking (Kompridis 2005: 320; Young 1995: 27). States and societies were already globalised to a significant extent and could see ample evidence of the mixing of cultures and identities both in their colonial extremities and at the imperial centre. So the discovery of hybridity is not particularly new. What is new is the ‘highly fashionable’ status that the concept has acquired in a number of academic disciplines (Kompridis 2005: 318). Competitor terms such as ‘creole’, ‘syncretic’, ‘pidgin’, or ‘bricolage’ have fallen by the wayside, often because they have been deemed pejorative (Morton 2000: 13; Kapchan and Strong 1999: 241). Sociology, anthropology, literature studies, media studies, and organisational studies have all used the term ‘hybrid’, introducing readers to ‘hybrid feminisms’, ‘hybrid programming’, ‘hybrid economies’, and ‘hybrid organizational forms’ (Hycrat 2006; McMillin 2001; Kovács 1999: 313; Oliver and Montgomery 2000). Postcolonial studies has added most to the corpus on hybridity, though it has to be said that the impenetrable nature of some of these contributions has not added much to our understanding of the concept and its application. The term, in its modern incarnation, is most prominently associated with Homi Bhabha (1984, 1990). He reminds us of the subversive potential of the concept of hybridity and how it undercuts the confidence and coherence of colonial discourses that depended on authority, hierarchy, and separation. Hybridity may suggest a breakdown of the barriers constructed by the colonial power: indigenous groups may adopt and adapt some of the ways of the colonial power. Similarly, agents of colonialism may be forced to adopt indigenous practices. In doing so, all actors change. Yet mimicry can easily elide into mockery, and those who have invested heavily in the erection and maintenance of barriers may have most to lose (Morton 2000: 319). As the empirical chapters in this book seek to demonstrate, hybridity – in

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some circumstances – can be taken as an indicator of resistance to liberal peace interventions. Bhabha (2009: 2) is interested in the ‘in-between’ or the ‘emergence of interstices – the overlap and displacement of domains of difference’. Transpositions from one medium to another generate new types of space in which new meanings can be attached to identities and processes (Howard-Malverde 1997: 3). While Bhabha’s main concern is with postcolonial contexts, it is clear that the same processes of interaction between cultures attend contexts undergoing international peacesupport operations. Hybrid spaces and forms develop as external and internal agents, ideas, and processes interact, and new meanings are attached to existing entities (Howard-Malverde 1997: 3). Three factors are worth highlighting in order to further our conceptual understanding of hybridity. A first point is the prior hybridisation of peoples, cultures, and ideas. It is important that we move away from notions of hybridisation that conceive of two pure entities being melded together to produce a third, hybrid entity. In most contexts, even those that we may believe to be geographically or culturally isolated, long-standing processes of cultural mixing mean that hybridisation is well entrenched. This means that actors and practices that we may be tempted to label ‘indigenous’ actually draw on multiple sources of construction and maintenance. The same prior hybridisation applies to internationally sponsored and resourced peace interventions that we may want to label ‘external’, ‘exogenous’, ‘international’, or ‘western’. It is not the case that ‘indigenous’ communities have been contained in an isolation chamber until they are confronted by a completely alien international peace-support operation. Instead, both entities are likely to be the product of significant prior mixing of peoples, ideas, and norms concerning the exercise of power, the distribution of resources, and the organisation of society. For Canclini (2005: xxv) ‘the so-called discrete structures were a result of prior hybridization and therefore cannot be considered pure points of origin’. It would seem that humankind is already tainted by the ‘original sin’ of hybridisation. As a result, hybridisation is best not seen as the simple melding of one pure entity into another. It is a much more complex process of variable geometry with multiple and constantly moving parts. A second, and related, factor is that hybridisation is not necessarily an exotic process involving the introduction of apparently alien entities to each other. Instead, it is often a gradualist, everyday process whereby entities (actors, structures, norms) negotiate and renegotiate their own place in the social, political, and economic spheres, and negotiate and renegotiate this place with each other (Bhabha 2009: 3). Such negotiation may

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be conscious or unconscious, long drawn out or abrupt, direct or mediated, voluntary or involuntary. In short, hybridisation is how individuals, groups, structures, and ideas evolve and adapt. Often this involves little that is revolutionary or contentious. Often it is regarded as ‘development’, ‘progress’, or ‘the new way’. It can be as dull as the introduction of a new traffic system in a town centre, though it can involve the collision of two or more apparently oppositional actors, ideas, or norms. A third conceptual point is the need to get beyond the paralysing relativism that can attend discussions of hybridity and hybridisation. There is a danger that we despair when realising that everything and everyone is a hybrid. We may be tempted to give up, or to interrogate concepts so rigorously that we find that our language is rendered useless. If we accept that everything and everyone is a hybrid, then concepts such as endogenous and exogenous, indigenous and international risk losing their currency. The stance adopted in this book is to recognise the shortcomings of concepts and language but to move on. It is possible to recognise that some actors, societies, and processes are more hybridised than others. Similarly, some actors and processes are more resilient in resisting external pressures and incentives than others. In other words, it is possible to identify degrees of hybridisation (Anthias 2001: 619–41). This does not mean that there is a Social Darwinist hierarchy of cultures whereby some cultures are, in some essentialist way, imbued with greater resistance powers than others. Instead, given the social construction of culture and how actors must negotiate their way through their social environment, some cultures, structures, and norms are better placed to project their will onto others or resist the projections of others. Crucial here are the power relations inherent in thinking about the interplay between cultures and actors. Edward Said (1994: 230) referred to colonial encounters as ‘an unequal relationship between unequal interlocutors’. Subsequent chapters in this book will examine the relationship between liberal peace agents and local actors and illustrate how they often conceived of power in very different ways. The process of hybridisation encourages a reappraisal of notions of history and societal development that are temporal and linear. Hybridisation is a constant and multi-sphere series of processes. It is useful to draw on the sociological concept of social interactionism in attempting to conceive of the processes whereby hybridisation occurs. In this view, society is the product of a complex series of actions and reactions, some of which are so institutionalised and ritualised that they become part of the unnoticed fabric of society (Denzin 1969: 923). Other interactions may be more jarring and novel, especially if they

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occur along the fault-lines of cultures. Often the interactions have a performative and symbolic dimension. According to the interactionist perspective, ‘Neither the individual nor society ... can be accorded unqualified primacy – each one is an aspect in the ongoing process of social interaction, and both are mutually constitutive’ (Shalin 1986: 14). Advanced thinking on social interactionism also encourages a multi-level approach to social change that takes account of the micro, meso, and macro levels (Hall 1987: 1; Fine 1993: 77). Individual academic disciplines tend to have biases that favour one level of analysis over another (for example, international relations is notoriously wedded to state-based explanations). Our interest in hybridity emerging from liberal peace interventions in post-war contexts compels us to examine all levels of society: the micro-processes of individuals reconciling with each other and a new post-war system; the meso-level interaction between civil society groups, and between these groups and the state; and the macro-level interaction between the post-war state and international organisations.

Hybridity and liberal peace interventions The concepts of hybridity and hybridisation are useful in enabling an interrogation of the processes and outcomes stemming from contemporary internationally sponsored peace-support interventions. In particular, this work is interested in illustrating the hybridity, distortion, and refraction that attend liberal peace interventions. Actors in peacesupport contexts are rarely able to act unilaterally. Their actions take the positions and actions of others into account. In so doing, the actors, as well as the nature of the peace, are subject to change. Liberal peace contexts are often the scene of peculiar pressures that result in peculiar forms of hybridity. Clearly, hybridity and processes of hybridisation are not unique to post-war contexts. Hybridity occurs in all social environments, and the millennia-old processes of colonisation and globalisation have meant that human societies have much experience of hybridising. Yet international peace-support interventions are capable of mobilising enormous resources and compressing their inputs into relatively short periods. A number of locations have experienced peacemaking and statebuilding ‘surges’ in the post-Cold War period as the international community, or elements within it, mobilise to ‘fix’ a particular war-affected country. In such circumstances, processes of hybridisation may be accelerated or suffer from unique forms of distortion. Liberal peace projects are often highly interventionist, pertaining

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to a wide array of governance, security, and economic issues. As a result, the impact of the intervention, and ensuing hybridity, may be farreaching and profound. It is worth reiterating that actors and contexts in post-war environments will already have been subject to hybridity prior to the onset of the liberal peace project. The principal liberal peace agents (the leading states, international organisations, and international financial institutions that drive intervention) can be termed a ‘hybrid’ in that they are likely to cooperate in order to form a piece of complex multilateralism. International organisations and their peacebuilding missions represent an amalgam of personnel, material, techniques, and justificatory ideas. Similarly, antagonists and communities in conflict areas will also have been subject to hybridising pressures. The Balkans, for example, experienced centuries of ethnic mixing (as well as tension and violence) prior to the outbreak of war in the 1990s. Our main interest, however, lies in the hybridity that arises from liberal peacebuilding missions themselves. This is likely to occur at all levels of society, though it is often most evident in cases where aggressive or extensive forms of the liberal peace are pursued. No actor is likely to experience a liberal peace intervention and remain unchanged. This applies to the liberal peace progenitors from the global north, the coopted liberal peace agents in the target society, opponents of the liberal peace, and the citizens and refugees in whose name the peace is implemented. All will probably suffer blowback from their own actions, and all are likely to be compelled to take the actions and positions of other actors on board. The most obviously hybridised actors, structures, and norms will be those located at the centre of the new political system in the post-war society. So, for example, a post-peace accord government might be funded, physically protected, and tutored by external actors. The style of governance and model of economic organisation may reflect the mores of the external liberal peace champions. The new government – its personnel and systems – may be co-opted by external actors to the extent that it becomes a local liberal peace agent. In turn, its directives to municipalities, civil society groups, and individuals will contain the DNA of the liberal peace. But the new government will not be an exact replica of the perfect Weberian state. Instead, it is likely to be an imperfect facsimile, with inflections of local governance techniques such as respect for a tribal system or important families. So the liberal peace becomes hybridised, projecting the international but also having to take on board some local values and mores. This is a two-way process that has an impact on all actors involved. As Morton

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(2000: 319) noted in relation to colonial enterprises, ‘it is not just the ignorant native who makes hybrids out of scraps of imperfectly assimilated western civilization melded with her indigenous culture. The western world equally has a long history of appropriating motifs and knowledge from strange and distant civilizations.’ By changing how they act, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, actors are subject to change themselves and become further hybridised. Our interest in hybrids and processes of hybridisation conflicts with liberalism’s wish to emancipate people from an overbearing interest in particularistic identity loyalties. In the liberal mind, the universal must be prioritised over the particular. Yet our interest in hybrids demands that we scrutinise the minutiae of identity affiliations and aspirations. While liberalism encourages us to look forward towards progressive goals, hybridity demands that we look backwards and ask questions about origins and antecedence. In short, there is an insidious element to some liberal projects in that they seek to snuff out identity claims for the greater good of all. This may be laudable if liberalism is attempting to deflect the continuing appeal of a particularly virulent form of nationalism that has a history of oppression. But what about minority groups that have faced exclusion? Many postcolonial states, and more recently sites of post-war reconstruction, have pursued policies of liberal national unity where particularistic identity claims have been subordinated to the greater goal of universal rights. Hale (1999: 304), writing on the case of Guatemala, notes how states can construct an apparently progressive discourse, or ‘chain of assertions’, in favour of the universal at the expense of the particular: ‘The chain of assertions goes like this: distinctions based on race or even radical cultural difference are fading; treatment of the Indians and Ladinos is becoming more equal; once clearly demarcated sociocultural identity categories are blurring together in the cauldron of mestizaje.’ There are profound dangers, however, that such apparently progressive rhetoric, and the policies that follow, can perpetuate dominance. In historical terms, this was certainly the case in postcolonial Mexico, where liberals argued that ‘indigenous’ was ‘nothing more than a juridical construct of colonialism standing in the way of the establishment of political equality, equal opportunity, and economic advance’ (Caplan 2009: 225). Certainly the constitution offered protection for all, but this did not translate into concrete actions that could offer special protection to already vulnerable groups, let alone attempt ameliorative measures to right the wrongs they had suffered. The same trend is discernible almost two centuries later in contemporary postcolonial

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and post-war reconstruction strategies. Hale (1999: 308) notes how ‘the evidence of recent Guatemalan and Latin American history is that the price of achieving an “antiracist” society is assimilation’. Kompridis (2005) levels a more damaging charge against the use of the concept of hybridity by some states and sources of authority. He observes that a powerful narrative can develop that asserts that ‘we’re all hybrids now’. For him, hybridity can be deployed as part of a ‘process of normativization ... Hybridity turns into a difference-erasing concept, negating the foreignness of the foreigner, the otherness of the other’ (2005: 321). It is not difficult to imagine a post-conflict statebuilding exercise conducted under the mantle of the liberal peace in which a narrative is developed by the international community and their local liberal peace agents: we have all suffered, it is time to move on, we must put the past behind us, we have more to unite us than divide us, and we must all contribute to a new beginning. Given the material and moral power mobilised by principal liberal peace agents, such a narrative could become hegemonic. It would be aided by an extensive and externally funded NGO community and new civil society. Such narratives have been developed in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. There is a danger, however, that vulnerable groups or those seeking redress are steamrollered by liberal universalism.

Hybridisation as a process Hybridisation is best conceived of as a constantly moving piece of variable geometry. It operates on multiple levels, through multiple mediums, and impacts multiple (if not all) aspects of life. A social process of such complexity and longevity is extremely difficult to capture. To assist conceptualisation a four-part model is proposed in the remainder of this chapter. Like all models it is an abstraction and so is unable to capture the full extent and dynamism of a complex social process. Yet it does allow us to visualise the main axes along which hybridisation may be projected or resisted in contexts experiencing liberal peace interventions. It also encourages observers to examine the full range of actors involved in liberal peace transitions, and thus move beyond the state-centric lens favoured by political science and international relations. The four-part model contends that hybridisation is the product of the interaction between: ●

The compliance power of the liberal peace, or the ability of liberal peace agents, networks, and structures to compel others to follow its instructions;

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The incentivising power of the liberal peace, or the ability of liberal peace agents, networks, and structures to incentivise others to follow its wishes; The resistance of local actors, or the ability of local actors, networks, and structures to resist, ignore, subvert, and adapt liberal peace interventions; and The alternatives provided by local actors, or the ability of local agents, networks, and structures to provide alternatives and modifications to the liberal peace.

The model represents a simplification of reality; the four variables depend on many sub-variables. Moreover, it can also be argued that the model has little to say on the wider geo-political structures and systems that provide the context in which liberal peace interventions occur. Evidence of all four parts of the model (liberal peace compliance and incentives, local resistance and alternatives) can be found in the five case study chapters that follow this one. In Lebanon, for example, international actors project compliance through a heavy United Nations security presence, a naval blockade, an international investigatory tribunal, and conditionality imposed by international financial institutions. Liberal peace incentives come in the form of reconstruction assistance. But local resistance, modifications, and alternatives are in evidence through non-state social actors who have constructed a parallel state that does not necessarily share the worldview preferred by champions of the liberal peace. Compliance powers of the liberal peace In their extreme form, the compliance powers of the liberal peace may have the bluntness of military operations that attempt to bomb or shoot opponents into submission. Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, and Lebanon have all seen international force deployed for apparently liberal ends in recent decades. The justificatory narrative surrounding such violent interventions varies from case to case, but has made repeated reference to human rights and emancipation of the population. Yet direct violence is only one part of a much larger suite of compliance techniques that stretches from the indirect violence of sanctions and the threat of force to conditionalities imposed by external donors. Principal liberal peace agents are able to harness the free market to assist in their interventions in societies emerging from conflict. On the one hand, the free market offers the potential for growth-led social progress. On the other, global capitalism is replete with a series

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of constraints that limit the sovereignty of states and can also be injurious to citizen welfare. Pugh (2010a: 83) outlines some of the pitfalls attending the internationally driven marketisation programmes instituted as part of liberal peace interventions: ‘The macroeconomic ideology insisted upon by the main funders and agencies takes advantage of dislocations of conflict that impact on gender, ethnicity and class sectors. The governed are expected to welcome, tolerate or passively accept radical experiments with their economic environment, and welfare is contingent on limited state revenue and conditional external subsidy.’ Under this critique, economic compliance takes the form of a series of binding relationships predicated on economic and governance norms that emanate from the global north. For many citizens in the state experiencing the liberal peace intervention, however, the most visible agent of market-led reforms will be their national or local government. This reflects the transmission chain inherent in contemporary liberal peace interventions whereby local actors are co-opted, willingly or unwillingly, into the service of the larger liberal peace project. In some cases these local agents will be convinced of the merits of the liberal peace ‘reforms’ recommended by external mentors. In other cases they will face invidious choices and have little choice but to conform. True power relations in the liberal peace may be masked by the rhetoric of ‘participation’, ‘local ownership’, and ‘partnership’. The conception, design, funding, timetable, execution, and evaluation of programmes and projects may be conducted according to western agendas (Cooke and Kothari 2002). Yet, as will become apparent from the case study chapters in this work, few actors are able to unilaterally impose their will, and opportunities for subversion and resistance emerge. Perhaps the most insidious compliance tool operating in favour of the liberal peace is the notion that the liberal peace is the only option available. This is in keeping with the genius of many commercial organisations that succeed in persuading their customers that choice is limited and that they should refrain from shopping around. The material and moral power mobilised by the chief proponents of the liberal peace means that they are able to market their preferred version of intervention as the only viable option. In recent years, a ‘moral authority’ in favour of the liberal peace has been mobilised through choreography in international organisations, forming ad hoc coalitions of ‘the willing’, and employing the rhetoric of ‘emancipation’. Yet the impression that the liberal peace is the only game in town is erroneous. As discussed in the introduction to this volume, competitor versions of peace are available from the regional hegemons of India, China, and Russia. Local-level

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options are also available, as is the most common approach of simply doing nothing. Such alternatives to the liberal peace are often overshadowed, especially if leading liberal peace powers are able to mobilise significant diplomatic and media campaigns to convince others of the legitimacy of the timing and nature of a particular intervention. It is not automatic that the full compliance powers of the liberal peace will be brought to bear in a particular target country. One of the main findings of the case study chapters in this book is the variance in the enforcement of the liberal peace. While some locations have experienced heavily militarised security and stabilisation programmes (Iraq and Afghanistan), others have experienced ‘liberal peace-lite’, or a light-touch form of interventionism. The variation in the enforcement of the liberal peace relates, on the supply side, to the strategic interests, domestic political cycle, leadership, and budgetary constraints of the principal proponents of the liberal peace. Some parts of the planet are simply deemed too strategically unimportant to warrant extensive or heavy-handed liberal peace intervention. The evidence of the past two decades is that a high degree of discretion, often from key individuals in centres of power, is a major factor in determining whether there will be an international intervention and the extent and longevity of that intervention. The strategic aims of principal liberal peace powers change. Afghanistan slipped down the US and UK issue agendas once the Taliban were put to flight in 2001. It ascended the issue agenda once again when the Taliban became resurgent, but when the scale and complexity of the Afghanistan–Pakistan imbroglio became clear the stated aims of the US and the UK became ‘just enough security’ and ‘just enough governance’. This ‘wiggle room’ or discretion with regard to the intensity with which the liberal peace is enforced is important as it allows space for other actors to emerge or retain their influence and for sites of hybridity to develop. The incentivising powers of the liberal peace The ‘big-tent’ nature of the liberal peace means that gentler, persuasive instruments sit alongside coercive mechanisms. The Janus-faced nature of the liberal peace is wonderfully encapsulated in the fact that Canadian troops fired over 4.7 million bullets in Afghanistan in a twenty-month period in the mid-2000s (PakTribune 2008), while, at the same time, Afghanistan was Canada’s largest recipient of international assistance, with commitments to ‘democracy-building and governance, economic and rural development, infra-structure, education, health, landmine clearance, counter-narcotics activities, military and

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police training, security, and disarmament, demobilization and reintegration’ (Library of Parliament (Canada) 2007). The incentives on offer from the liberal peace can be considerable and emanate from liberalism itself. Individuals, communities, states, and the global community are offered strong encouragement to cooperate in order to emancipate individuals and collectives for shared social progress. In the liberal canon, responsible self-interest can lead to a shared common interest. Thus, for example, if an individual invests in their own education and gains better employment as a result, they will be able to take care of themselves and their families, but also contribute to wider societal goals through taxation. Liberal peace incentives fall into two categories: moral and material. Perhaps the most fundamental incentive of all is peace, especially if international actors can offer guarantees such as minimum levels of security for minorities. This internationally guaranteed peace is likely to be a very specific form of peace (namely a liberal peace), but for those mired in violent conflict any cessation of violence may be very attractive. States and communities in conflict can be subject to immense moral pressure to engage in a ceasefire or conciliatory gestures. This moral pressure often operates through the United Nations or a consortium of leading states. At different times over the past two decades Iran, Iraq, Syria, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Afghanistan, Serbia, and others have been lectured on how they must take particular steps to ‘rejoin the community of nations’ (Bush 2004a). Proponents of the liberal peace have been able to appropriate the notion of an ‘international community’ to the extent that it represents the interests of leading states and international financial institutions rather a more universal and representative set of interests that accommodates discordant voices. A nearhegemonic narrative can be mobilised to label certain states or actors as ‘rogue’ or in some way deviant. What is unclear, however, is the extent to which the promise of re-admittance to the community of nations represents a real incentive. Minority and opposition groups within a country can benefit from international support (for example, international support for the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe). Yet some political leaders and communities have made political capital from their castigation by ‘the international community’. A more certain liberal peace incentive lies in the form of material rewards. The extent of resources that can be mobilised in the name of the liberal peace is not to be underestimated. The United States spent between $801bn and $3tr on Iraq in the 2003–2011 period (BBC 2010a). Iraq-related expenditure by the UK in the same period was $14.3bn

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(Macphearson 2010). In both cases the vast majority of this expenditure went on the military, but it did contain substantial statebuilding and peacebuilding funding. While Iraq and Afghanistan have been the most expensive international peace-support missions, largely because of the cost of sustaining western techno-war, liberal internationalism has meant the introduction of substantial external funds into societies emerging from conflict. For example, the UN mission in Cambodia cost approximately $3bn, while the UN set aside $7.2bn for its 2010– 2011 peacekeeping budget (Paris 2002: 653; UNDPKO 2010b). Given the impecunious nature of many actors emerging from civil war, external peace-support actors may be well placed to maximise advantage through financial injections. The extensive and multilayered nature of liberal peace interventions means that financial incentives to engage in an internationally sponsored peace implementation programme may be on offer to a diverse range of internal actors. The state and its agencies may be offered reconstruction and statebuilding grants, loans, and in-kind assistance. Individuals may also benefit from material rewards for cooperation with internationally sponsored peacemaking, whether through grant assistance for former combatants engaged in a demobilisation, disarmament, and reintegration programme or micro-credit assistance for entrepreneurs. The chief point is that given the often deleterious economic situation of societies emerging from violent conflict, liberal peace actors may be among the few sources of new resource injections. This can award liberal peace actors significant power, and can spark a competitive dynamic in post-war societies as actors compete to secure resources from international actors. In deeply divided societies such as Lebanon, Northern Ireland, or Bosnia-Herzegovina, conflict to secure an ‘appropriate’ share of resources for one’s own community can act as a proxy for the wider conflict. Depending on one’s perspective, peace-support funds from international actors can be regarded as a ‘bribe’ to reward behaviour deemed compliant with the aims of the liberal peace, and to discipline behaviour regarded as non-compliant. Alternatively, it is possible to construct a narrative that depicts such assistance as neutral and humanitarian. By their very nature, however, peace-support investments are political: the monies are in service of the wider goal of securing a particular type of peace. Moreover, while many individuals, companies, and states have voluntarily availed of peace-support funding in many different locations, it cannot be said that the power relations underpinning such transactions are equal.

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To illustrate some of the complexities involved, consider the case of an Iraqi man employed as a translator for UK or US forces during the postSaddam insurgencies. In one sense this can be interpreted as a straight economic exchange of labour in return for payment. Yet the politics of the exchange reflect much wider power dynamics. The services of Iraqi interpreters were required because coalition troops failed to make adequate connections with the local population, and insufficient numbers of troops were trained to speak Arabic, despite the longevity of the Iraq deployment. As described in Chapter 5, the occupying coalition and the international financial institutions insisted on a paring-back of the state, thus fuelling unemployment. Translator positions were highly sought after, despite the risks: some 300 translators were killed in the 2003–2008 period (Hawksley 2008). There is little doubt that interpreters were invaluable to Coalition forces and facilitated the extension of the liberal peace. But this is not the same thing as voluntary and fulsome support for the liberal peace. The relationship depended on cash from liberal peace agents. This ambivalent political economy is evident in all liberal peace contexts in which actors (states and their agencies, political parties, NGOs, and individuals) engage in activities that support or do not oppose the liberal peace in return for financial assistance. Chapter 8 of this book shows how large segments of civil society in Northern Ireland have been engineered in response to cash incentives from the British government and the European Union. In turn, this raises questions about the legitimacy of a peace regime that depends on financial assistance from external sources. Given the often straitened economic context of societies emerging from conflict, it is very difficult for actors to turn down offers of financial assistance in an attempt to maintain their independence and integrity, or their distance from a peacebuilding or statebuilding project of which they do not approve. As the case of Lebanon in Chapter 7 illustrates, some non-state actors do choose to maintain a distance from the liberal peace, but they often have alternative sources of funding. Apart from direct cash subsidies and injections, the other main material incentive for compliance in the liberal peace comes in the form of the potential of the free market. The liberal peace logic asserts that economically liberated citizens will be rewarded by their own entrepreneurship and that their economic success will contribute to the general wellbeing of society. Conclusive evidence in support of ‘trickle-down’ economics is difficult to find. As in any transition, there are winners and losers. The experience of the economics shocks of former

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communist states in the 1990s was that the already vulnerable suffered disproportionately. It does seem optimistic in the extreme to expect the market to undertake tasks that require a social conscience. Michael Pugh (2006: 285), for example, maintains a healthy scepticism about the ‘certainties of disciplinary liberalism’ to deliver social distribution: ‘The poor do not benefit from policies of self-reliance and the privatisation of basic needs.’ Yet the market and its incentive schemes are a fixture in the liberal peace. Money, perhaps more than any other factor, accounts for the engagement of the liberal peace with so many actors in societies emerging from violent conflict. By enabling governments to provide social services, by financing an election, by funding skillstraining for former combatants, or by establishing a pro-peace media, externally funded liberal peace agents have the capacity to expose their ideas or norms to large numbers of people. The ability of local actors to resist, ignore, or adapt liberal peace interventions Although liberal peace agents are able to mobilise significant power and to co-opt local actors, it is important not to underestimate the agency of local actors. In this case, ‘local actors’ refers to all levels within the state subject to a liberal peace intervention: national government, municipalities, political parties, militant groups, NGOs and civil society, businesses, communities, and individuals. All these actors have the ability to hybridise the liberal peace by enforcing some change on it. Some will voluntarily cooperate with the liberal peace, convinced of the merits of the internationally sponsored peacebuilding programme. Others will oppose it, most obviously in the form of the Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies that have mobilised against perceived occupation and the denial of religious or national freedoms. But many other stances lie between acceptance and rejection. Resistance and subversion can take many forms, not all of them obviously subversive. Actors can cooperate with some aspects of the liberal peace (perhaps participating in a DDR programme), remain agnostic on other parts (perhaps the holding of an election), and oppose other parts (perhaps the privatisation of a national utility). The picture that emerges from consideration of the extent of options available to local actors means that we need to reappraise notions of actors in war-torn regions as powerless, passive beneficiaries who must await western assistance in order to be empowered. Constantinou (2007: 250) notes how the worldview of many western observers is neatly categorised into ‘proper categories for political action and emancipation’

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that conform to a modernity-influenced way of seeing the external world. In this view, the ‘proper’ expressions from actors in the global south may be gratitude and passivity towards liberal peace interveners. A western political ethnocentrism can mean that local actors are regarded as powerless until western-style elections are held. The evidence of declining electoral participation in many post-conflict societies suggests that local populations do not see a link between the franchise and their empowerment. The antennae of many western observers, including policymakers, may not be sophisticated enough to tune into the subtleties of local reactions to the liberal peace. The most obvious reactions, perhaps participation in an election, can be mistakenly interpreted as a complete acceptance of the liberal peace. Two variables are crucial in determining the extent to which local actors can subvert or renegotiate the liberal peace. The first of these relates to the social, political, and economic capital possessed by local actors. The dislocations of war may have severely eroded or distorted the power of local actors. Crucial here will be the extent to which traditional or indigenous structures and norms (themselves hybrids) are intact (Mac Ginty 2008). Respect for village elders in a rural African context, for example, may have been reduced by the dislocation of conflict, rural–urban migration, and the dissipation of moral authority caused by long-term social change. But in other cases, norms and practices based on kinship or an understanding of the local ecology may survive and hold local legitimacy. The conflict and peace implementation plan may empower new forms of social and political capital and enable new sites of local resistance and renegotiation. The second variable that determines the extent to which local actors may be able to hybridise the liberal peace is related to the willingness and ability of liberal peace actors to push through their version of statebuilding or peace implementation without reference to local actors. Different versions of the liberal peace are on offer, with ‘liberal peace-max’ equating to a non-negotiable imposition and ‘liberal peace-lite’ equating to a more cooperative and emancipatory version (Richmond 2005: 10–11). The 2004 US Marine assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah, for instance, involved the cordoning of the city, aerial and artillery barrages, and the ejection of media and humanitarian actors. Over 200,000 people were displaced, and the toxic legacy of the US munitions has resulted in extraordinarily high cancer rates (Fisk 2005; Cockburn 2010b). This was non-negotiable liberal peace in which a security lens predominated, the principal liberal peace enforcer was an incredibly well-resourced US military, and the local population was

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viewed as hostile. Under such circumstances, dissent was regarded as resistance. In other cases, however, liberal peace agents have shown a greater willingness to engage in cooperative ventures with local actors. An inclusive and participative liberal peace was on offer in many aspects of the Northern Ireland peace process, as discussed in Chapter 8. In this case, the version of the liberal peace that developed was calibrated to a political environment that was within the European Union and under full media scrutiny. The subversion, resistance, and negotiation that hybridise the liberal peace, and all of the actors involved in liberal peace environments, often occur over long periods. All the case studies reviewed in this book demonstrate that peace-support interventions operate via ‘surges’ or intense periods of internationally sponsored statebuilding or peace implementation. For a variety of reasons, international attention is not sustained for long periods. One reason is that one of the primary aims of many statebuilding and peace-support interventions is to develop institutions and governance systems that can be locally sustained (although conforming to internationally acceptable standards). In theory, once the systems are in place, international actors can withdraw and local actors can manage their own affairs. Yet such a theory assumes that the role of local actors is to accept international tutelage and systems, and to replicate these systems without local interpretation and inflection. In many cases this is not feasible, and local systems of governance, patronage, and clientelism will mix with internationally sponsored systems to produce a hybrid. This may especially be the case over the longer term as international oversight lessens. The ability of local actors to present and maintain alternative forms of peace The final factor in the four-part model of hybridisation concerns the ability of local actors, networks, and structures to promote alternatives to the liberal peace in terms of the concept and practicalities of peace. The hegemonic ambitions of the liberal peace, and its view that it is the sole legitimate form of peace, mean that the space left for alternative forms of peace is often limited. This is especially the case because of the coercive and incentivising material resources that the liberal peace can bring to bear on target societies. The scale of many liberal peace interventions, especially those involving extensive statebuilding operations, may mean that liberal peace agents take the lead in terms of the conception, direction, funding, and implementation of many aspects of peacebuilding. Yet, on closer examination, many liberal peace

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interventions do not occupy all political, economic, social, and cultural space in a target country. In many cases, most attention from the liberal peace may be devoted to what can be described as macro-level security, politics, and economics. The effects of such liberal peace engineering can filter down to the micro-level of society. Other aspects of society, however, may remain outside the purview of the liberal peace. Liberal peace agents may regard such spaces or peoples as marginal or unimportant to the larger-scale liberal peace aims of securing the state and re-orienting the economy and polity. People may be able to fashion alternatives to the liberal peace in these marginal spaces. In some cases, this might be a purposeful attempt to circumvent the liberal peace. In other cases, however, people may be so distanced from the centre of power that they have little choice but to provide for their own security and governance. Although it varies from context to context, the liberal peace has global reach and ambitions. Intellectually, it is based on ideas that its proponents believe are universal. In practical terms, it operates through nearuniversal international organisations and financial institutions, and professes to expand forms of political and economic organisation that it believes should be universal. Given the immense material power and ambition of the liberal peace, local alternatives can only be partial and marginal. They may be conceived of as ‘modifications’ in many instances. Thus, for example, as Chapter 7 describes, Hezbollah in Lebanon have developed a series of security and governance alternatives to the liberal peace provided by the western-backed Lebanese state. Despite Hezbollah’s ambitions, this alternative occurs in a context in large part created by liberal peace actors: Lebanon’s economy is integrated into the global open economy, while the regional security constellation has been created by other actors. The chief point is that given the material and moral power of the liberal peace, alternatives should not be seen as fully fledged systems capable of replacing the liberal peace. Instead, they are likely to be context-specific and restricted to issues, geographical areas, and peoples over which the liberal peace cannot or will not exercise control. (In terms of macro-alternatives to the liberal peace, the most obvious candidates are China, India, and Russia.) Alternatives to the liberal peace need not necessarily take the form of conscious alternatives that make a statement of dissent from the orthodoxy of the liberal peace. Instead, they are more likely to take the form of organic, everyday citizen action associated with survival and social progress (Richmond 2009c). Such action may not be recognisably political. It can take the form of individuals and communities not engaging

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with the liberal peace and its local proxies. Simply ‘getting on with life’ and shunning the entreaties and incentives of the liberal peace means creating alternative practical and discursive spaces in which the liberal peace is excluded or irrelevant. It is possible to conceive of a liberal peace statebuilding enterprise in a society emerging from violent conflict in terms of a series of spheres of practice and influence. Represented in a simple Venn diagram (Figure 3), some of these spheres overlap at certain times and on certain issues, allowing the local, national, and international to mix and create a fusion peace. Clearly the diagrammatic representation entails a gross simplification as the ‘local’ and ‘international’ are not discrete categories, nor are they static. As important as the overlap or convergence of the actors and norms is the lack of convergence. These zones of mutual non-engagement and irrelevance are the areas of local life that the liberal peace is uninterested in and the areas of the liberal peace in which local communities have no interest. They also represent aspects of the liberal peace that are not to be shared with target states undergoing liberal peace interventions.

Liberal peace

Local actors

International actors and their local proxies

Zones of non-engagement and irrelevance Figure 3 Overlaps and non-overlaps between the local and the international

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Concluding discussion By way of conclusion, it is worth re-stressing two important caveats that underpin this work. Firstly, it is crucial that hybridity is not understood as the grafting together of two separate entities to make a new, third entity. Instead, hybridisation is understood as a complex process involving multiple actors and issues. Actors and ideas are already hybridised, although the liberal peace distorts the processes of hybridisation in peculiar ways in societies emerging from violent conflict. Secondly, hybridity should not be regarded as a metaphor for the grafting of values and practices from the global north onto the global south. Instead, it is two-way traffic, or a dynamic set of processes involving blowback and distortion. Actors and values from the global north are susceptible to change as a result of the complex web of interaction in liberal peace contexts. This is evidenced by the rollback in the aims of NATO members once it became apparent that securing post-Taliban Afghanistan would prove extremely difficult. The absolutist language of the immediate post-Taliban years gave way to more ambiguous mission goals by NATO members. By 2010, the British Defence Minister defined ‘success’ as ‘a stable enough Afghanistan’ (Fox 2010). British troops were fighting there, not for ‘the education policy in a broken 13th century country’, but to secure Britain itself (cited in Dummett 2010). In rolling back from the more strident liberal goals to more easily achieved goals, the NATO members themselves changed. They were no longer guardians of a universal liberalism. Instead, their mission was to push a partial and compromised form of liberal internationalism. When we discuss caveats, it is also useful to reiterate that the four-part model of hybridisation is a simplification. In reality, multiple moving parts combine to produce a variable geometry of negotiation, conflict, renegotiation, and exchange between parties, values, and practices. The model also needs to be placed within a wider structural ambit of geopolitics. Caveats aside, the four-part formulation is designed as an aid to understanding or a way of capturing dynamics within a society subject to a liberal peace intervention. The model helps counter notions of the powerlessness of local communities and the omnipotence of the main liberal peace powers and institutions. All actors – whether indigenous or exogenous – have ‘feet of clay’ and must act in an environment that is in some way shaped by other actors. This means that we need to revise one-dimensional portrayals of the liberal peace in which it is allpowerful and may unilaterally promote its will.

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A corollary of the model of hybridisation is the need to interrogate the categories that we use to describe and examine liberal internationalism and societies emerging from violent conflict. Much of our understanding rests on apparently discrete terms, such as ‘local’ or ‘international’ or ‘internal’ or ‘external’. The pervasive nature of hybridisation means that there are few (if any) pristine, hermetically sealed entities and values. Instead, all entities, practices, and values are the product of social negotiation. The four-part model of hybridisation helps visualise the dynamics in societies undergoing liberal interventionism as a series of balances (for example, a balance between mainly internal and mainly external thinking on how to organise the economy). Such a visualisation discourages thinking about absolutist categories. Yet we have to realise that many of our understandings of ‘local’ and ‘international’ are constructed in opposition to something. So, for example, in a work on peace and conflict such as this one, it is difficult to conceptualise local communities and environments without placing them in a context populated by political and economic forms of power, civil society (whether organic or artificially constructed), and peacebuilding programmes. In reality, ‘the local’ and ‘the international’ must be viewed within a complex web of interlocking ties. Yet it is possible to think of some actors and norms as being more locally constituted than others (a ‘local local’ as opposed to an ‘international local’ that is patterned by global forces). This chapter, and Chapters 1 and 2, constitute the conceptual foundations of the book. They have sketched an understanding of the component parts and dynamics of the dominant form of internationally supported peacemaking and peacebuilding. It should be clear that caricatures of the liberal peace as all-powerful amount to a disservice to the capacity of local actors to subvert, ignore, resist, and renegotiate the liberal peace. So, rather than a liberal peace, a hybrid peace tends to prevail in societies that have been subject to liberal interventions. This is the composite of four factors that are simultaneously at work: the ability of the liberal peace to coerce other actors to follow its will; the ability of the liberal peace to incentivise other actors to follow its will; the ability of local actors to resist, subvert, or ignore the liberal peace; and the ability of local actors to establish alternatives to the liberal peace. With this model having been set out, the subsequent chapters in this book take a case study approach. Each chapter focuses on a particular pillar of the liberal peace (security, economic reform, constitutional reform, good governance, and civil society) and tracks its fate in a particular context that has experienced post-war recovery.

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4 Hybrid Security: Afghanistan

We are here to try to tame the people by destroying their crops and villages until they give in. Lt. Henry Cadogan, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, North West Frontier, India, 1891 (Tillotson 2009) Each man in these parts is his own policeman and looks to his own exertions to safeguard his own property. No matter how poor he may be, he possesses arms of some sort, and has some knowledge of using them. G. P. Tate (1909: 102) Afghanistan is not Sweden with bad roads. B. R. Rubin (2004: 165)

Introduction This chapter concentrates on a core pillar of liberal peacebuilding: the extension of a monopoly of violence as part of a statebuilding project. This chapter seeks to draw out the contradictions between the logic of liberal statebuilding and the pragmatism demanded by an environment cursed by chronic war and insecurity. It depicts the establishment of a hybrid form of government and governance wherein various indigenous and exogenous actors, structures, and practices interacted to create new social, cultural, political, and economic activity and spaces. These hybridised activities and spaces represented a significant retreat from the liberal rhetoric used by western states to justify their statebuilding interventions in Afghanistan. The specific focus of the chapter is on the incorporation of warlords and militia commanders into the western-backed post-Taliban government. The warlords controlled 91

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private armies, raised their own ‘taxes’, and had limited loyalty to Kabul. While there are limitations to neo-medievalist arguments that seek to draw parallels between post-Cold War civil wars and the medieval era, Anatol Lieven’s characterisation of Afghanistan’s warlords as figures from the ‘Dark Ages’ has much merit (2009: 339; Winn 2004). This chapter considers the implications of the cooperation and cohabitation between a modernist statebuilding worldview and one based on feudal armies. It finds that Afghanistan does not allow for clear-cut distinctions between the traditional and the modern, or the western and the non-western. Instead, it depicts a picture of multiple compromises as local and international actors grappled with the limitations to their power and legitimacy. The four elements of the model of hybridisation (the coercive power of the liberal peace, the incentivising power of the liberal peace, the ability of local actors to resist the liberal peace, and the ability of local actors to provide alternatives to the liberal peace) are all on display in the Afghan case. The case study is not primarily interested in the personalities of the warlords, or the particular human rights abuses associated with them. Instead, the focus is on the nature of the system that facilitated cooperation between very different political actors. The incorporation of warlords into government helps illustrate wider lessons from the processes of social negotiation between indigenous and exogenous actors that resulted in a composite political environment. It also reflects the limitations and contradictions of the liberal peace: in order to achieve hard security goals, western states were compelled to cooperate with militia leaders, thus jeopardising other, more ‘progressive’ goals, such as human security, development, and the extension of rights. The Afghan example is useful in underscoring that hybridisation is not a simple case of discrete western and non-western actors and practices coming together to create a fusion polity. The process is much more complex, as actors are neither consistent nor homogeneous. Moreover, as will be discussed in more detail below, many of the categories and labels that we may look to as points of reference (such as ‘western’ and ‘non-western’) have the certainty of shifting sands. The Afghan case also reminds us of the importance of a historical perspective. A linear roll call of significant dates (for example, the Soviet invasion in 1979, the fall of President Najibullah in 1992, the ousting of the Taliban in 2001, etc.) seems an inadequate way of conveying a complex history in which a succession of prominent events overlaid much deeper socio-political trends. The lens provided by hybridisation, which emphasises processes, steers us away from versions of ‘instant history’ that are overly packaged

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and linear. It makes sense to see Afghanistan in decades, if not centuries. Many of the dynamics that shape contemporary Afghanistan have a very long gestation. Whether the messianic behaviour of the United States in seeking revenge for 9/11 or the Pashtun grievance complex, all these processes have very long antecedence that is poorly served by ahistorical approaches that begin in 1979 or 2001. The chapter begins with a brief note on the problems of categorisation that attend any discussion of ‘western’ or ‘non-western’, or ‘internal’ or ‘external’, in relation to a highly hybridised and internationalised context such as Afghanistan. The next section underscores the centrality to liberal peace interventions of statebuilding and the concept of the monopoly of violence. This allows the chapter to bring into relief the contrast between the principles of liberal peace (among them a centralised Weberian state) and the on-the-ground reality (accommodating warlords). The chapter then moves on to consider the phenomenon of Afghan warlordism in more detail. After conceptualising warlords, it explains the rise of warlords in the post-Soviet period and their incorporation into the post-Taliban government. The chapter then discusses the limitations of the post-Taliban statebuilding project, paying particular attention to the contradictions inherent in a system that simultaneously attempts to retain warlords for their counterinsurgency efficacy and restrain them as they offend the meritocratic mores of the liberal peace.

A note on categories Is Afghan President Hamid Karzai a western or non-western figure? The question illustrates the difficulty of the categories that we rely on when attempting to understand processes of hybridisation in societies undergoing international peace-support operations. Karzai is Afghan born, has spent virtually all his life in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and has an impeccable Pashtun lineage. As President he was the personification of the new Afghan state. Yet, in many ways, Karzai and the post-2001 state are the creation of international actors (chiefly the United States and its allies, and to a lesser extent the United Nations). Since his installation as leader of the Afghan Interim Administration at the Bonn conference in December 2001, Karzai has become totemic of the international community’s interests in post-Taliban statebuilding, reconstruction, and securitisation. Indeed, given that the US provided Karzai’s bodyguards (both special forces soldiers and DynaCorps private security contractors) until early 2006, it can be argued that he owes his life to international actors (PakTribune 2006).

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Karzai is not alone in constituting a poor fit for categories such as ‘western’, ‘non-western’, ‘indigenous’, or ‘exogenous’. Afghanistan seems to defy neat categorisation. As a state it is a relatively modern confection. As an effective administrative entity, it has been dysfunctional or absent from the lives of most of its inhabitants. Most ‘Afghans’ do not regard their state as their principal identity marker, instead preferring to identify themselves according to clan, religion, or geography. Lieven (2009: 337) notes that ‘there is very little to suggest that such a thing as “the Afghan people” actually exists’. As a result, labels which attempt to situate people or structures within or without the boundaries of Afghanistan (for example, ‘internal’ or ‘external’) are of limited value. Moreover, the highly internationalised nature of Afghanistan (historically as well as in the contemporary era) means that categories that seek to differentiate between internal and external actors may not always be appropriate. Colonialism, successive civil wars, the active pursuit of patrons by Afghan clients, and the transnational flow of people, ideas, and resources all mean that Afghanistan is a globalised environment and has been for some time. Similar observations can be made about how western actors in contemporary Afghanistan do not constitute a discrete group despite the unified mission statements of multilateral organisations. Western actors differ enormously in their involvement, capability, and objectives in Afghanistan. Questioning the validity of categories is prudent, though rejecting them all as unsatisfactory would render works such as this one impossible. Moreover, to stop and question every category would make the work as unreadable as most postmodernist tracts. Instead, this book will use terms such as ‘western’ and ‘non-western’ or ‘indigenous’ and ‘exogenous’ with health warnings attached. It recognises that complex socio-political environments cannot be shoehorned into neat binary opposites. Yet it does seem possible to identify actors, practices, and structures that are more associated than others with liberal internationalism originating from the leading states in the global north and the international organisations and international financial institutions they control. In the Afghan context it is also possible to identify actors who have cooperated more than others with liberal internationalism. Complicating matters is the fact that actors can simultaneously engage with the liberal peace in negative and positive ways. For example, a farmer might be politically supportive of the Kabul government but subsidise the Taliban through his economic activity. While outsiders may interpret this behaviour in terms of supporting or undermining the government or Taliban, the farmer very probably does not use such

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lenses. For him, the issue might be survival or the maximisation of the quality of life of his family. While some might be tempted to see the seemingly contradictory behaviour of actors as a methodological problem, it can, instead, be regarded as evidence of hybridisation, or the agency of local actors in navigating a complex environment.

Statebuilding and the monopoly of violence The state, in alliance with the market and selected international organisations and INGOs, forms the centre-piece of many contemporary liberal peace interventions. In a sense, governance and peacebuilding become reduced to statebuilding. The new, reformed, or reinforced state becomes the central vehicle through which a series of peacebuilding, reconstruction, and economic reform tasks are to be delivered. In many cases, the state becomes the clearing-house of conflict through the institutionalisation of powersharing mechanisms, the chief conduit of reconstruction programmes, and the facilitator for external economic and political interventions. According to critics of the liberal peace, many post-conflict states become compliant transmission agents which pass the liberal peace to the provincial and local level. In order to achieve this, the post-conflict state is often subject to enormous ‘reforms’ to create institutional arrangements and to build capacity (Call 2008a: 8–9). Post-Cold War internationally supported peacebuilding has witnessed massive resources being poured into statebuilding, whether through the reorganisation of government structures, the introduction of new governance mechanisms, the reform of governing instruments (such as the judiciary), or technical assistance in budget management or policing. Central to statebuilding projects has been the extension of the postconflict state’s monopoly of violence and a consequent elimination of non-state militant actors. The context provided by civil wars or campaigns of violent opposition to authoritarian regimes often makes urgent the need for a centralised coercive authority: a bloated and empowered state security apparatus, paramilitary forces, multiple non-state militant groups, the proliferation of weapons, porous national borders, the arbitrary application of law and order, and a disinclination of citizens to obey state laws, including the payment of taxes. By establishing or re-establishing a monopoly of violence, the post-conflict state can offer protection to its citizens (in return for loyalty and legitimacy), as well as guarantees to overseas states and businesses (Tilly 1985: 172). A professional and regulated defence that acts in service of the citizenry is

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straight from the liberal canon and connects with the liberal interest in technocracy, the rule of law, the defence of property, and the guarantee of rights. The post-conflict statebuilding repertoire is well versed in interventions designed to assist the state’s monopolisation of violence. Under the legends of demobilisation, disarmament, and reintegration and security sector reform, post-conflict state and rebel forces have been amalgamated (South Africa), state forces have been downsized and re-oriented towards civilianised policing (Northern Ireland), non-state militants groups have been disarmed, former combatants have been offered retraining and education (Sierra Leone), and bureaucracies have been remodelled to cater for post-civil war contingencies (Lebanon) ˝ zerdem 2008). The ultimate aim in all cases has been to assist the (O state to assert its authority. In a number of cases, the state has received significant international assistance in asserting its authority. Iraq and Afghanistan prove how contested this can be, and raise questions about the object of the security: what is being secured? Is it the population, including minorities, or is it the state in terms of its elite and the role it can play as a client for wider international aims such as trade or stability? The evidence from Iraq and Afghanistan, admittedly among the ‘worst-case scenario’ examples, is that citizen security is often undermined as part of the process of securing the state. In Iraq, for example, the US way of dealing with what it labelled ‘al-Qaeda’ was to sponsor sectarian militias. The result was an orgy of ethnic cleansing, murder, and kidnapping (Herring 2010). The statebuilding imperative was given an additional fillip by the War on Terror. ‘Failing’ states and statelessness were regarded as potentially dangerous anomalies and featured prominently in George W. Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ speech (Bush 2002). A key part of the War on Terror therefore was to reinforce those states deemed to be ‘at risk’ (Piazza 2007). Often this involved military support to secure states against non-state armed actors. Attempts by the US and other states to ‘secure’ Yemen provide a good example. Tasks such as improving the welfare of citizens or encouraging more inclusive forms of governance have been subjugated to the blunt securitisation of the state. US military assistance was doubled in a year, military operatives that even the US calls ‘clandestine’ were deployed, and the Yemeni air force was encouraged and assisted by the US and Saudi Arabia to carry out more air strikes against suspected targets (Cohn 2010). While USAID development assistance also increased, there was no serious attempt to reform a corrupt government that was proving useful in the War on Terror.

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The rise of Afghanistan’s warlords Conceptualising warlords The term ‘warlord’, like ‘pirate’, ‘drug baron’, or ‘buccaneer’, has the air of Hollywood about it – prone to caricature and dramatisation. The simplest definition of a warlord is an autonomous military commander, and the circumstances of many post-Cold War civil wars have suited the emergence of such non-state militants (Kaldor 1999: 8; Keen 2008: 34). Indeed, the term ‘warlord’ has only recently entered parlance in Afghanistan, with the term ‘commander’ being most commonly used (Schetter et al. 2007: 137). Typically, warlords exploit the state’s failure to achieve a monopoly of violence, use violence and coercion, hold territory, will engage in predation, and will participate in neopatrimonial activities, or strong-man politics (Giustozzi 2005: 5). Doubtless charisma and personality play a large role in warlordism, yet it is perhaps more fruitful to look beyond the traits of individual military commanders and instead examine the systems that enable warlords to maintain their positions. The creation and maintenance of such systems often involves deft political and military manoeuvring and so points away from caricatures of warlords as foolhardy militants. In the Afghan case, warlords have been able to exploit both the collapse of the state and statebuilding efforts. This requires us to reappraise definitions of ‘warlord’ that associate the term with the undermining of the state. Marten (2006/7: 46), for example, argues that warlords who become state leaders can no longer be classed as warlords. Instead, she suggests, the label must be reserved for actors who fundamentally undermine the state. The Afghan case is not so clear cut. While warlords did not become head of state in the post-Taliban period, some did assume senior positions within the cabinet. The attitude of warlords towards the state is an invalid frame of reference for Afghanistan. Most warlords did not consciously set out to undermine or consolidate the state; such considerations were secondary. The primary aim was to create and maintain circumstances through which political and economic resources could be extracted. The state, whether backed by the Soviet Union or western powers, or largely absent, was in many ways circumstantial to warlord activity. Warlords develop complex political economies that reinforce their power. While it might suit the caricature to depict warlords as wholly parasitic or motivated only by economic exploitation, such behaviour would not be sustainable. ‘Too ruthless a profiteering on the part of the warlord is likely to have a very destabilising effect on the militiamen.

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Redistribution is required to keep an army going’ (Giustozzi 2005: 6). In many cases, warlords have sought to develop loyalty among constituents. Lieven (2009: 344) notes that ‘Of course, simple greed is present but so too are the demands of patronage for relatives, clients and followers, without which it is impossible for a political or military figure to maintain himself in Afghanistan.’ To consolidate their power, warlords have cultivated clientelist networks, often based on a prior common bond, such as regional or ethnic affiliation or clan membership (Coker 2007: 58). McCormick and Fritz (2006: 85) note that warlords were the law of the land in many parts of Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1989 and the contraction of the state during the 1990s in the context of a developing civil war. Their governance regimes may have been primitive, but they were the only capable political actors left in what was effectively a failed state (Fielden and Goodhand 2001). Warlords instituted systems of rule over their fiefdoms, for example collecting taxes or arbitrating disputes. Such ‘systems of rule’ were far removed from the Weberian model and may have looked like local authoritarianism to liberal outsiders; nonetheless they constituted a form of order and governance. Most warlords also provided a minimum public good in the form of the extension of security (from the state, external forces, or rival warlords) to inhabitants in the areas they controlled. This provision of security (regardless of how rudimentary or arbitrary) meant that many warlords or militia commanders could act either as competitors or as allies to the state’s ambitions of extending its monopoly of violence. The rise of the warlords Afghanistan has a long history of warlordism, or clan chiefs with private armies and limited loyalty to centralised authority. Many of these traditional leaders were superseded by mujahideen commanders during the 1979–1989 Soviet occupation (Marten 2006/7: 45). US, Saudi, and Pakistani military and financial assistance gave this new breed of warlords a much greater military capacity than their predecessors. The US alone funnelled over $3bn to the mujahideen (Hirschkind and Mahmood 2002: 342). This enabled them to withstand pressure from Kabul to compromise or conform to reconciliation processes (Halliday and Tanin 1998: 1376). The emergence of the modern drugs economy allowed the warlords of the late 1980s and early 1990s to become powerful political leaders and sustain their positions after external largess ceased following the Soviet withdrawal. By this time, Afghanistan was well on the way to becoming a ‘poster narcostate’ (Felbab-Brown

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2006: 129, 131–2). Substantial profits could be made from the growing and processing of opium, and through the control of supply routes and the imposition of levies on trade. These latter forms of revenue generation were particularly lucrative and sought after, and enabled some of the more successful warlords to carve out de facto mini-states. Profits were used to oil the wheels of patronage networks, reinforcing the position of warlords who initially rose to prominence through military might. In 1992 the post-Soviet government collapsed after one militia leader, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, defected to the mujahideen (Cockburn 2001). Thereafter the Afghan civil war began in earnest, with warlord pitted against warlord. The dominance of the warlords led to a situation of massive insecurity and impoverishment for many inhabitants (Slim 2007: 93). The rise of the Taliban was in part a reaction to this insecurity. Emerging in 1994, they offered basic levels of security to a war-weary population, especially among the Pashtun majority (Rashid 1999: 24; Marsden 1998: 45). The emergence of the Taliban ‘coincided with a fortunate historical juxtaposition, where the disintegration of the communist power structure was complete, the Mujaheddin leaders were discredited and the traditional tribal leaders had been eliminated. It was relatively easy for the Taliban to sweep away what little of the old Pashtun leadership was left’ (Rashid 2002: 97). The Taliban’s promise to restore the former King to the throne also garnered them popularity among many Pashtuns. While a few warlords oriented themselves towards the Taliban, and its prioritisation of Islamist mores, most warlords remained focused on self-preservation and profit-maximisation. With little popular support and much in-fighting, many warlords withered. The Taliban seemed to offer some form of security and certainty in a country in which one-third of the population had been displaced as a result of civil war. At their height, the Taliban controlled about 90 per cent of the territory of Afghanistan, with the warlords at the margins and loosely affiliated under the collective group the Northern Alliance (established in 1996). By the turn of the millennium the country had largely fallen off the international radar. The western news media carried stories of Taliban religious rigidity and of an obscure figure called Osama bin Laden, but there was no serious international appetite for regime change (Rashid 1999: 23). Indeed, the United States gave the Taliban regime $43m for drugs eradication programmes three months prior to 9/11 (Poulton 2003: 414). Afghanistan was largely left to fester. The Taliban showed little interest in governing; the creation of a

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Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice seemed to be the height of their administrative ambitions (Marsden 1998: 45). The war between the Taliban and the mainly non-Pashtun warlords ebbed and flowed, with the Taliban maintaining the upper hand. Everything changed with 9/11. The US desire for speedy revenge meant that a mere twenty-six days elapsed between 9/11 and the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. The US did not mount a major land offensive to topple the Taliban. Instead, the US strategy involved a mix of air power and special forces operations (O’Hanlon 2002; Biddle 2003). For the purposes of this chapter, the most significant element of the offensive was the co-opting of Northern Alliance warlords into the anti-Taliban offensive. The US zeal for revenge meant that no serious thought was given to the implications of a coalition that reinvigorated drug-financed warlords with appalling human rights records. Among the Northern Alliance commanders was the future President, Hamid Karzai. He had been ‘talent-spotted’ by the US State Department as his Pashtun support base overlapped with that of many Taliban commanders. Karzai was a late replacement for Abdul Haq, a Pashtun warlord from eastern Afghanistan who had been captured and killed by the Taliban, and who many believed was favoured by the Americans as the post-Taliban potentate. Karzai, who had testified to Congress on the evils of the Taliban, was ‘well-known to American officials’, and was active during Operation Enduring Freedom in encouraging cohesiveness among anti-Taliban forces and defections from the Taliban (Perlez 2001). It is worth asking: could Karzai be considered a ‘warlord’ during this period? Certainly, he had been elected by no one and he was associated with irregular military forces that operated outside of the Geneva Conventions. Rather than attending the Bonn conference, he was fighting Taliban forces near Kandahar (Erlanger 2001a). Yet Karzai was not a ‘typical’ warlord in that he was educated to Master’s level, his links to the US oil industry meant that he could present an acceptable face to the United States, and he was reported to be more comfortable with politics than with military affairs (Fisk 2006: 32; Perlez 2001). Karzai did not actually control substantial military forces himself. His presence on the battlefield was supported by US special forces, and his main role was to recruit others to the anti-Taliban push. Made in Bonn: the new Afghanistan While the campaign to oust the Taliban was under way, no serious thought was given to the nature of the post-Taliban polity (Krepps 2008: 559). That was left to a UN-sponsored conference in Bonn in December

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2001. Although the ousting of the Taliban had been a United States-run affair (with the assistance of their warlord allies), most states, international organisations, and international non-governmental organisations swung behind the fait accompli, regarding the reconstruction of Afghanistan as a shared international responsibility. As a result, many actors in the international community were complicit in turning ‘Shock and Awe’ into what Lopez deliciously calls ‘Shock and Flaw’ (2007: 246). The reasons for this international complicity, namely the uncritical and unreflective posture of many actors in the international community, ranged from the aftershock of 9/11 that insulated the United States from much criticism to the hegemony of narratives of the beastliness of the Taliban (particularly their beastliness towards Afghan women, who had been suddenly ‘rediscovered’ by many in the west), and an awareness among many INGOs of an impending humanitarian disaster following two years of drought in Afghanistan. The remaking of Afghanistan was shaped by two sets of ideas intrinsic to the liberal peace in the early years of the new millennium: an unshakeable belief in the righteousness of liberal ideals, and a post-9/11 security imperative. The result was a peculiarly militant form of liberalism. European and INGO variants of this liberalism tended to be more nuanced than the unthinking neoconservatism emanating from those associated with George W. Bush’s White House, but there was general agreement that liberal ideals were superior to alternatives and ripe for export. Added to this was the sense that security, and particularly the security of the United States and its interests and allies, trumped the ‘softer’ aspects of liberalism such as tolerance and pluralism. It was against this backdrop that western powers invited selected Afghan leaders, many of them warlords or associated with warlords, to create the new Afghanistan in Bonn in late 2001. Many of those who came directly from Afghanistan owed their presence to their military strength (although a motley collection of exiles and associates of the former King were also present). The Bonn process witnessed the co-option of warlords into the ‘new Afghanistan’. Suhrke (2007: 1298) was in no doubt about the ambition of the Bonn Agreement. It was a ‘script for transition to liberal, constitutional democracy. The script contained all the main elements of modernity as commonly understood – from the Weberian-type state to more recent additions of social justice and women’s rights.’ The Bonn Agreement and subsequent documents amounted to a roadmap for ‘a near total overhaul of the country’s polity, economy and society’ (Suhrke 2007: 1299). Yet these statebuilders had to deal with the realities on the ground. Four of these ‘realities’ are worth

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noting. Firstly, the task facing local and international statebuilders was gigantic. The Afghan state, such as it was, had effectively withered over the previous decade. Secondly, the United States was primarily interested in security rather than governance and so did not follow through its war mobilisation with a statebuilding mobilisation of similar vigour. This was particularly the case as US attention shifted towards Iraq. Thirdly, the Bonn Agreement was not a peace accord in the sense of warring factions coming together to agree a shared future (Rubin 2004: 167). Instead, the Taliban (one of the countries largest factions) were excluded and the process was driven by international forces. Fourthly, and most importantly for the purposes of this chapter, the statebuilders had to deal with the de facto power of the warlords. As the warlords possessed territory and ethno-political capital, they had to be taken seriously. The Bonn Agreement did not include provisions for a comprehensive disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration programme. Incredibly, and making it almost exceptional among all states on the planet, the new Afghan state did not demand that it held a monopoly of violence. At the last moment, the Northern Alliance leader, Burhanuddin Rabbani, and his deputy rejected a draft of the Bonn Agreement that included a commitment by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to ‘assist the voluntary disarmament of former combatants’ (Erlanger 2001b). With the text of the Agreement changed, warlords were able to hold onto their weapons and men. The newly created state of Afghanistan was to be grafted onto the unpromising base of an ethnically fissured territory divided into fiefdoms run by warlords. The reluctance of militia commanders to give up their weapons was understandable: not only was the new Afghan state unproven, but this model of state formation was alien to most Afghans. There were no guarantees that militia commanders would not have to fall back on their own resources if the Afghan state failed to take root, and if – as had happened many times before – external powers lost interest. Given the circumstances, it was rational for militia commanders, and for many individuals, to hold onto their weapons. Any plan to institute a monopoly thus faced unpropitious circumstances. The ‘market’ for security was extremely fragmented, with multiple actors holding weapons and believing that it was either rational or legitimate for them to hold onto their weapons. Three phases of post-Taliban warlordism In very rough terms, it is possible to identify three phases of warlordism in post-Taliban Afghanistan (Mac Ginty 2010b). In the initial

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post-Bonn period, notwithstanding the liberal rhetoric from sections of the international community, warlords were co-opted into Karzai’s government. This reflected their battlefield dominance after the defeat of the Taliban. For example, Rubin (2004: 166) notes that General Fahim was made Minister of Defence because he was the Northern Alliance commander who occupied Kabul when the Taliban fled. In the second phase, international actors and modernisers around Karzai attempted to sideline the warlords and encourage them to disarm. In the third phase, from late 2005 onwards, when it became clear that the resurgent Taliban represented a serious threat to the Afghan state, warlords were again seen by the US and its allies as viable Taliban-fighting forces. These phases deserve elaboration as they illustrate the tensions between customary Afghan politics, on the one hand, and statebuilding according to liberal mores, on the other. In particular, they raise the question of whether establishing a statist monopoly of violence was ever a serious goal of the United States or of the post-Taliban Afghan state itself. If establishing a monopoly of violence was never a serious ambition, then this raises further questions about the nature of the liberal statebuilding project attempted in Afghanistan. As a precursor to a discussion of the first phase of post-Taliban warlordism, it is worth stressing the weakness of many warlords prior to 9/11. The Taliban was in a militarily dominant position, al-Qaeda murdered the leader of Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Masood, two days before 9/11, and a joint Taliban–al-Qaeda offensive was in the planning. It is not an exaggeration to say that American arms and money saved many warlords from extinction. In the first phase of post-Taliban warlordism (2001–2003), with US backing, Pashtun leader Hamid Karzai assumed leadership of the Afghan Interim Administration. Seventeen out of thirty cabinet seats were assigned to Northern Alliance members. This included giving the Ministry of Defence to General Mohammad Fahim, the Ministry of Interior Affairs to Mohammad Younus Qanooni, the National Security Directorate (Afghan intelligence agency) to Mohammad Arif, and the Foreign Affairs portfolio to Abdullah Abdullah (Erlanger 2001b). The new political class did include a number of figures educated in the west, as well as technocrats from previous regimes, so the new polity was a mixed affair (Bezhan 2006: 233). In June 2002, an emergency loya jirga endorsed Karzai as President of the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan. The loya jirga, a customary grand council of tribal elders that reached decisions through consensual mechanisms, was a study in hybridity as it drew on both traditionalism and westerninspired ideas of gender equality and social inclusion (Mac Ginty 2008).

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In this initial period, warlords were awarded senior positions in government because of their battlefield prowess and status as ethnic leaders. Suhrke (2007: 1302) observes that Karzai ‘had to co-opt to survive’. To exclude powerful independent militia leaders would have jeopardised the fledgling state, and warlords were not above broadcasting this message to their international patrons. Warlordism was too ingrained in Afghan politics to eradicate it with a swish of a liberal wand (Cockburn 2001). Moreover, many in the international community were relaxed about the past indiscretions of Afghan leaders as long as they were antiTaliban. ‘The unwillingness of either the USA or Europeans to exert much military pressure against the warlords and faction leaders, however, meant that their agreement to the building of depoliticised armed forces had to be obtained largely through incentives, mainly through the offer of political incorporation. Hence, co-optation rather than marginalisation had to be the main strategy toward the former warlords’ (Rubin 2006: 180). As a result, characters with unsavoury pasts were included in the new Afghan state. Perhaps most notable among these was Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord with a private army of up to 40,000, who was appointed Chief of Staff of the new National Army. Robert Fisk (2006: 1064) cites Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s account of his arrival at Dostum’s headquarters: The first time I arrived at the fort to meet Dostum there were bloodstains and pieces of flesh in the muddy courtyard ... the guards ... told me that an hour earlier Dostum had punished a soldier for stealing. The man had been tied to the tracks of a Russian-made tank, which then drove around the courtyard crushing his body into mincemeat, as the garrison and Dostum watched. After the fall of the Taliban, Dostum was implicated in the suffocation of up to 3,000 Taliban prisoners (Fisk 2006: 1125). The system of patronage that operated at the national level was replicated in the provinces, with warlord underlings being appointed as local police chiefs or special advisers to ministers (Suhrke 2007: 1299). For international actors with pluralist and emancipatory notions of liberal statebuilding, Karzai’s warlord-inclusive administration left much to be desired. Karzai came under significant international pressure to reduce the influence of the warlords and encourage meritocracy. This heralded the second phase of post-Taliban warlordism (2003– 2005), which witnessed concerted attempts to sideline the warlords.

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Although Karzai was more assertive during this period, it was not a straightforward matter of promoting modernists and sidelining traditionalists. Karzai was well aware that his writ barely extended beyond Kabul, especially among non-Pashtuns. Moreover, local military commanders held real power in the provinces and had established parallel systems of governance. In contrast to the statebuilding efforts emanating from Kabul, these local systems of governance were often locally accepted and functional (Suhrke 2007: 1302). The fragility of Karzai’s position was illustrated by the prospect of a coup when he demoted General Fahim from the Ministry of Defence in 2003 and prevented him from running as his vice-presidential candidate in the 2004 Presidential election (Suhrke 2007: 1301). Yet, Karzai did prevail, and his modernist ambitions received a fillip when the Presidential election endorsed his rule and was held amid much less violence than many had feared. Karzai was emboldened to remove a number of other strongmen, including Ismail Khan, the Governor of Herat. Interestingly, a key method of weakening warlords was to bring them closer to central government. Disarmament became a condition of parliamentary candidature and the acceptance of ministerial positions (Bezhan 2006: 237). The scale of international statebuilding resources pouring into Afghanistan (or more precisely, Kabul) meant that a ministerial position was an attractive prospect for many warlords, especially for those with limited revenue-generation opportunities (Giustozzi 2005: 13). For others, especially those with independent sources of income, the centralised state offered few advantages. Three warlords from eastern provinces, Gul Aga Sherzai, Ismail Khan, and General Dostum, were reported to be withholding revenues from Kabul (Suhrke 2007: 1301). Karzai’s assertiveness in the face of the warlords encouraged the Bush administration to believe that a corner had been turned. The former Deputy Assistant to the Secretary of State for Stability Operations claimed that ‘The scourge of warlordism and the rule of the gun is being broken’ (Collins 2004: 72), and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad reinforced this upbeat assessment: ‘The job is not done, but the days of those who have conducted themselves as warlords are numbered. The warlords know it. The sun is setting on their way of life’ (cited in Collins 2004: 72). Yet such claims were premature, and the United States was instrumental in buttressing the position of a number of warlords. This third phase of warlordism (from 2005 onwards) stemmed from the military resurgence of the Taliban and the US need to find allies to counter Taliban offensives. US attention had been focused on its Iraq debacle for much of the mid-decade period, with the result that its troop resources

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in Afghanistan were relatively modest. Kabul and its international allies came to rely on the warlords for security, especially in remote provinces (Bezhan 2006: 237). Giustozzi (2008: 188) reported that in 2005 the US was unable to find enough reliable partners from within the state security apparatus in southern and southeastern Afghanistan and so cooperated with non-state militias. This trend continued as the seriousness of the Taliban threat became more apparent. Late 2009 saw the announcement of a troop surge by the Obama administration, but also the commitment of $1.3bn (roughly twice the annual revenue of the Afghan government) for community defence initiatives. This involved bolstering (through arms and cash) anti-Taliban militias and warlords who cooperated with US special forces (Boone 2009). Interestingly, apparently moderate and reformist Afghan ministers switched from taking a hard line towards the warlords to seeing them as a bulwark against Taliban resurgence (author interviews with Afghan journalist).

The hybridised statebuilding project The post-Taliban statebuilding project was a composite of multiple internal and external factors. The resulting hybrid was testament to the limits of the power held by external actors (liberal peace agents such as leading powers and international organisations) and internal actors (the new Afghan state and the warlords). No actor was able (or willing) to unilaterally impose its vision of statebuilding. Instead, a deeply compromised Afghan state emerged that conformed neither to the emancipatory model of external liberal advocates nor to a feudal, authoritarian model presumably favoured by the warlords. The version that did emerge was a product of compromise and negotiation between indigenous and exogenous ideas and practices. It is worth stressing again that categories such as ‘western’ and ‘non-western’, or ‘indigenous’ or ‘exogenous’, must be treated with caution. It is also worth restating that Afghanistan provided an extremely internationalised environment given the long history of interference by external actors. At the same time, when we examine the story of post-Taliban statebuilding, it is possible to identify actors, practices, and structures that were more influenced than others by external or internal sources. The focus of this chapter is on how hybridised statebuilding facilitated the inclusion of warlords in government. A chief pillar of liberal peace statebuilding – the extension of a monopoly of violence by a centralised state – became distorted by a mixture of internal resistance, subversion, and obduracy and external vacillation and lack of policy clarity and

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direction. Among others, three factors came together to produce this compromised version of the post-Taliban state: the reality of continued military and political strength among warlords, the weakness of the government in Kabul, and contradictory messages from the external patrons of the reconstruction and statebuilding programme. Continuing strength of the warlords The Afghan government (or more precisely, the presidency) and its international mentors did embark on a number of strategies to marginalise or tame the warlords. These included disarmament programmes for militias as a condition of the militia commander accepting a ministership and the promotion of technocratic ‘modernisers’ to significant positions in government. The hope was that an effective professional bureaucracy would make warlords redundant. Perhaps the most startling strategy to weaken individual warlords was to ‘reward’ them with a ministerial portfolio. This is revealing of the true sources of power. For many warlords, real power lay in the provinces as it was there that their militias were stationed and revenues were collected. Moreover, they could remain close to their ethnic base as Afghanistan remained fundamentally an ethnicised polity. Some communities were able to identify more easily with local commanders and their patronage networks than with the government in Kabul, which seemed remote. The ethnic divisions in the country meant that each group felt that it was under-represented at the heart of government and in resource allocation. For many warlords, a high-ranking position in Kabul amounted to a demotion. Karzai’s appointment of Dostum as Chief of Staff was a clear case of ‘promotion in order to sideline’. The post was largely ceremonial and was designed to attempt to separate the General from his northern powerbase. Importantly, in the post-Taliban system, warlords could continue to make a profit from trading contraband and from their own ‘taxation’ regimes. Lieven (2009: 347) notes the centrality of the drugs trade to the ‘new’ Afghanistan: ‘It is entirely true that the Taliban derives much of its income from the heroin trade. Unfortunately, this is also true of the Karzai administration.’ Profitable businesses do not just close down, and so warlordism was likely to continue in the new political dispensation. Just as efforts to tame the warlords were gaining momentum, a number of warlords were reinvigorated as the government in Kabul and western states recognised the potency of the threat posed by a resurgent Taliban. This was merely one of many contradictions in the statebuilding effort which limited the ability of the state to achieve a monopoly of violence.

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The concept of ‘spoilers’ helps explain the presence and persistence of warlords in post-Taliban Afghanistan. Elsewhere, the author has advocated the use of the verb ‘spoiling’ rather than the noun ‘spoiler’, as it is more useful to judge militant groups on their actual capacity than on interpretations of their political programme and attitude to a particular peace deal (Mac Ginty 2006b: 153–72). In the Afghan case, few militia commanders had anything recognisable as a political programme. They supported the post-Taliban regime in as far as the Taliban had been bad for business and the new regime’s foreign backers had the military capacity to make life difficult for actors who threatened the government in Kabul. The primary interests of the warlords lay in the preservation and maximisation of their power through the exploitation of whatever resources were available. The warlords were not spoiling in the sense that they deliberately sought to bring down the Karzai government. Instead, and in keeping with many Afghan political actors, their loyalty to Kabul was strictly limited. Spoiling amounted to a by-product of their main goal of self-preservation and the maximisation of any political or economic gains they could make in the changing environment. Their withholding of revenues from Kabul, failure to contribute men to the new Afghan National Army, maintenance of provincial power centres, and support for the drugs trade all diminished the ability of the state to exert its will. Traditional spoils, in the form of the drugs business and raising levies on trade, continued to be available. These traditional sources of income were augmented by substantial statebuilding and reconstruction resources courtesy of international patrons. Given the political economy created by US counterinsurgency funding, many Afghan warlords can be regarded as freelance contractors who provided their services for the duration of the contract. Many warlords and their proxies realised that profits, careers, and legitimacy could be gained through an association with the state. This was very different from an enthusiastic and voluntary desire to build a new state. The weakness of the government in Kabul It is worth stressing the inauspicious circumstances facing the Kabulbased statebuilders once the Taliban fled. The state, in the sense of a functioning and popularly legitimised bureaucracy, simply did not exist. Moreover, the scale of the reconstruction task facing statebuilders was enormous: ethnic division, a massive territory, the legacy from serial wars, an unstable region, and the Taliban’s abeyance rather than defeat. Criticisms of the failings of the statebuilding project need to be placed in this context. Yet serious mistakes were made in the post-Taliban

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statebuilding programme that allowed warlordism to persist and prosper. Prominent among these was the poorly executed DDR programme and the ensuing insecurity. As already noted, the Bonn process had subordinated DDR in order to keep the warlords on board. Once under way, DDR initiatives were often ineffective. Giustozzi (2008: 179) reflected that ‘Possibly the most puzzling aspect of reintegration was that often it was not preventing ex-combatants from being reabsorbed by new or old systems of patronage run by warlords and militia commanders which the DDR programme supposedly aimed to break down.’ Pay levels for the new Afghan National Army were poor, making it irrational for militia members to transfer their loyalty to the state. Also important in explaining the weakness of the state has been the resilience of ethnic-based politics. While Afghanistan’s 2004 constitution recognised the country’s ethnic heterogeneity, the document also made clear that the nation comprised ‘citizens’ and ‘individuals’ who held rights regardless of tribal affiliation (Constitution of Afghanistan 2004). Yet a post-ethnic polity failed to develop. For many Afghans, despite the liberal entreaties by some international staff and some Afghan statebuilders, tribal-based patronage networks remained the most effective means of securing information, security, and resources. By and large, post-Taliban elections have been ethnic headcounts in which people voted according to ‘regional, religious, ethnic, tribal and linguistic affiliations’ (Bezhan 2006: 232). One observer in the early 1970s noted the ‘parochialism of legislators’ and the ‘improbability of disciplined parties’ in Afghanistan (Weinbaum 1972: 74). Three decades and two foreign-backed statebuilding programmes later, things did not seem to have changed much. Contradictory messages from external actors Contradictions lace the strategies of the external supporters of the ‘new’ Afghanistan. These contradictions reflect the multilateral nature of the loose coalition of external actors involved in Afghan statebuilding and reconstruction. They also reflect the significant leeway that liberalism awards its advocates: tolerance and pluralism can be mixed with an emphasis on security and an unbridled free market. Perhaps the most prominent of the contradictions emanating from the liberal peace intervention was the combination of statebuilding and state-undermining practices. Statebuilding came in the form of regime change, the installation of a new government, and massive financial, physical, and moral support for the new government. The extent of external tutelage for the Karzai administration is not to be

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underestimated: US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was reported to have dined at Kabul’s presidential palace six nights a week during his eighteen-month tenure (Chandrasekaran 2009). Multiple members of the Karzai administration were reported to be in the pay of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (Miller and Partlow 2010). Countervailing this statebuilding was a state-undermining process. This was evident through the creation and maintenance of a parallel ‘international government’ that operated alongside the new Afghan administration. External governments and INGOs recognised that the Afghan state did not have the capacity, competence, or interest to conduct many reconstruction, development, and security tasks. The parallel governing structures maintained by international actors were a logical response to government corruption and lack of capacity, but they also undermined the efforts of the Afghan state to assume responsibility for the provision of public goods. According to the Afghan Ministry of Finance, only $1.4bn of a total of $4.9bn in public expenditure was routed through the government in 2004–2005 (Rubin 2006: 179). The western perception that the Afghan government was inherently corrupt meant that governments and INGOs preferred to manage reconstruction programmes themselves. Yet, illustrating the abundance of contradictions, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funds fuelled this corruption, and helped give the impression that the presidential palace was not the ultimate seat of power. The fledgling Afghan state was further undermined through the security actions of western states. Although the preferred aim of intervening powers was ‘Afghanisation’, or the beefing up of Afghan forces to provide security and counter the resurgence of the Taliban, that task was to prove lengthy, costly, and difficult. As a result, ISAF, the CIA, and a massive private security industry assumed many frontline state security tasks. This sent out important messages of state dependence and ineptitude. In these circumstances, warlords and militia commanders, as well as civil servants and citizens, were calculating in the loyalty that they extended to the state. Given the history of foreign-backed statebuilding enterprises in Afghanistan, this was an entirely rational stance. Many external interveners seemed to believe that Afghanistan would undergo a discrete transition phase during which Afghan institutions and officials could be trained and would then take responsibility for security and social provision. This mindset proved to be erroneous. As the conceptualisation of hybridisation in Chapter 3 argued, all states and societies are in permanent transition. There is no transition ‘phase’, despite the deadlines that external actors may wish to impose (often for

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domestic reasons). Viewing Afghanistan as a permanently ‘transitioning’ state encourages us to see the hybrid Afghan polity as fluid and dynamic, and shaped by multiple forces. The confluence of the three factors reviewed in this section (the continued military and political strength of the warlords, the weakness of the new Afghan state, and contradictory messages from external actors) produced a hybrid government under which warlordism could co-exist with the lofty Enlightenment-influenced rhetoric of the government. The preamble of the Afghan Constitution foresaw ‘a civil society void of oppression, atrocity, discrimination as well as violence, based on the rule of law, social justice, protecting integrity and human rights, and attaining peoples’ freedom and fundamental rights’. This vision clashed with ethnic loyalties, customary governance practices, a full-scale war against the Taliban, and an unstable region to produce a composite that was dysfunctional in the Weberian sense but was a viable modus operandi for millions of Afghans. Lieven (2009: 345) vividly depicts the intersection between western institutionalism and Afghan politics as ‘an attempt at mating between a hippopotamus and a turtle’. As can be imagined, the offspring was ungainly indeed.

Concluding discussion All four parts of the hybridisation model are in evidence in the Afghan case study of attempts to extend the monopoly of violence by a centralised state. The coercive powers of the liberal peace are in evidence through NATO’s war-fighting and the arm-twisting of Afghan leaders by western politicians. The incentivising powers of the liberal peace are evidenced by the reconstruction funds, CIA ‘retainers’, and legitimacy on offer from the liberal peace patron states. Local agency is represented through outright resistance to and subversion of the liberal peacebuilding project, and the construction of alternative forms of governance, whether through customary village-level systems or through militia commanders. While this chapter has focused on hybridisation in relation to warlords and the failure of the state to extend a monopoly of violence, hybridisation is also visible throughout many other spheres of the attempted statebuilding project. Whether attempts to include women in the parliament or to eradicate ‘corruption’ in government, there are multiple examples of engagement between the customary and the modern to produce a constantly evolving hybrid. Importantly, the interface is not between modern, western, technocratic, rational inputs

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and static traditionalism. All parts of the model are subject to change as they negotiate with their social circumstances. The Afghan case is useful in reminding us of the heterogeneity of actors and of the limitations of labelling devices that conform to overly constrained categories. The post-Taliban Afghan state is composed of an extraordinarily diverse range of actors. The same can be said of the international ‘coalition’, in which different states had different interests and were prepared to invest different energies into the statebuilding and reconstruction programme. Other non-coalition external actors such as India, China, Russia, Tajikistan, and Iran also continue to play an enormous role. At a minimum, the Afghan case illustrates the concept of ‘prior hybridisation’ that was discussed in Chapter 3. It is worth asking to what extent external and internal actors were serious in their approach to statebuilding. At one level, enormous sums of political capital and material resources were devoted to the statebuilding project. But on closer examination, the stances of various apparently pro-statebuilding actors suggest ambiguity. In the wake of 9/11, the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, promised Afghans that Britain ‘would not walk away’ from Afghanistan and would concentrate on statebuilding (BBC 2001). After almost a decade of ‘statebuilding’, only 3 out of over 140 diplomats in the British Embassy in Kabul spoke an Afghan language (BBC 2010b). British ambitions had been rolled back from a comprehensive statebuilding exercise to a securitisation programme that would facilitate a military withdrawal and British (not Afghan) security. Similarly, US attention wandered soon after the ousting of the Taliban and only returned with the Taliban resurgence. Contradictions in the US approach abounded. Despite maintaining a very public anti-corruption narrative, the Central Intelligence Agency retained many Afghan figures (including the President’s brother) on their payroll. This undercut attempts to construct a Weberian, transparent, and meritocratic state. Just as it is worth questioning the seriousness of international statebuilders, the same question can be levelled at the Afghan political class. Certainly, many politicians and officials were interested in the politics of the state and access to the material and symbolic resources that came with statehood, but this is a different activity from the construction of a state as an efficient set of institutions that can service the needs of the citizens and act as an interface internationally. Press reports of Afghan ministers and officials flying out of Afghanistan with suitcases stuffed with cash in order to buy property in Dubai and London illustrate a wider malaise or lack of attachment to the notion and practice of statehood (Isikoff 2009). This in turn raises

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questions about the nature of the liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding exercise in Afghanistan. As discussed in Chapter 1, different versions of the liberal peace have been promoted in different societies. The partial nature of Afghan statebuilding, and the series of contradictions that seem to undermine it, suggest that the version of liberal peace on offer in Afghanistan has not been seriously emancipatory in its ambitions. It could be that the security situation has prevented western states and institutions from unrolling the full social package, yet the evidence from 2001 and 2002 militates against extending the benefit of the doubt. This chapter has shown how warlords were co-opted by the US and NATO, and were accepted in the government. Yet, in keeping with hybridity, this process of co-option works both ways. An argument can be made that organs of the US government, and of other states and international organisations, were co-opted by Afghan political and military leaders for their own purposes. Warlords and politicians were able to exploit the statebuilding and counterinsurgency programmes for their own purposes. To a certain extent, it is feasible to ask who was the patron and who was the client? Clearly the United States, other external states, international organisations, and INGOs held cards that gave them leverage in relation to the nascent Afghan state and new polity. Yet all these external actors had needs as well. These ranged from the US presidential (both Bush and Obama) need to be seen to have a reliable partner in the form of the Afghan presidency to the need of INGOs to be seen to be fulfilling their mandate effectively. The external actors depended on internal actors to fulfil these needs. In an interesting example of jujitsu, the apparently ‘weaker’ parties (Afghans) were able – in certain circumstances – to exploit the apparent ‘strength’ of external actors. Afghan actors were able to exploit the hard and soft security aspects of the invasion, occupation, and reconstruction. In further evidence of the hybrid nature of peace interventions, western states’ Afghan entanglements have had serious repercussions in the domestic polities and economies of the intervening states. This blowback came in many forms, whether the collapse of the Dutch government or complaints about the financial drain of war (Kulish 2010). Perhaps one of the most insidious aspects of this blowback and distortion of the liberal peace powers was a noticeable coarsening of the public and political discursive framing of the conflict. Media discussion of Afghanistan often became securitised to the extent that development or reconstruction was barely mentioned in some media packages in the US and UK. Many Afghans were ‘othered’ to the extent that they

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were either Taliban members/sympathisers or corrupt. The headline of a British Armed Forces website story is revealing: ‘I was out of ammo so I killed Taliban with my bayonet’ (Larkin 2009). The story, which was reported in glowing terms of bravery across much of the British media, tells how a British officer was awarded a gallantry medal for killing two ‘Taliban’, one with the bayonet attached to his gun. On the bayoneting: ‘He was alive when it went in – he wasn’t alive when it came out. It was that simple’ (cited in Larkin 2009). The graphic, semi-celebratory nature of the news coverage of this incident seemed to be a response to Britain taking casualties from its Afghan imbroglio (British casualties went from 1 in 2005 to 108 in 2009). Unlike the bayonet, the complex nature of the Afghan liberal peace intervention did not allow for a ‘straight in and straight out’. Instead, the intervention in Afghanistan had a significant impact ‘at home’, as well as in the target country. This suggests a need to reappraise our understandings of liberal peace interventions as ‘one-way traffic’ or the transfer of norms and practices from the global north to the global south. The Afghan case seems to point to a much more complex series of interactions and to validate the hybridity lens. After this examination of one pillar of liberal peace interventions, security, Chapter 5 examines the economics of liberal peacebuilding. Through the example of post-Saddam Iraq, it reveals how the top-down internationally sponsored privatisation programme was disastrous, yet the on-the-ground everyday economy of survival has boomed. Again this forces us to reappraise notions of the liberal peace as an allpowerful phenomenon and encourages us to scrutinise local agency more closely.

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5 Hybrid Economy: Iraq

Every man in the place is on the make. W. Ewing (1918: 213) It is amazing what you can buy here amid the surroundings of the utmost squalor and a perfect Babel of chaffering bargainmakers. If you are not careful, you may walk off triumphantly with souvenirs of Mesopotamia which were manufactured in Manchester or Birmingham, imported by enterprising merchants, the only thing Mesopotamian about them being the price you have paid for them. W. Ewing (1918: 232) Iraq’s post-war reconstruction projects have been inspired by a desire to raise the standard of living of the population, and so satisfy the widely felt urge to ensure a fair share of the fruits of progress to all. Iraqi Government (Committee of Officials 1946: 109)

Introduction This chapter, in line with the other empirical chapters in this book, illustrates how top-down and bottom-up dynamics became distorted in the context of a liberal peace intervention. Also in line with the other empirical chapters, it concentrates on one aspect of the liberal peace – in this case, the economy. The chapter shows the emergence of a hybrid economy in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion and occupation. All national economies are hybrids, combining private and public sectors, large and small enterprises, and different forms of economic management and survival. The invasion and occupation, however, introduced 115

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a unique set of distortions to the already hybridised Iraqi economy. Importantly for the purposes of this book, the invasion and the consequent statebuilding exercise were conducted under a rhetoric of the liberal peace. This chapter examines both top-down and bottom-up aspects of the economy and illustrates the interactions between them, and how the policy choices of top-down and bottom-up actors were severely constrained by the actions of the other. No actor, not even the new masters of Iraq who had swept aside Saddam Hussein’s regime in forty-one days, had full autonomy. Instead, all economic actors were forced to deal with obstacles and opportunities presented by others. The focus of the top-down aspect of the chapter will be on Coalitionled attempts to rehabilitate the oil industry. The bottom-up focus will be on the informal economy, or everyday attempts to survive in an insecure environment. The chapter illustrates the inter-linkages between what theoretically are two very different economies: on the one hand, a capital-intensive, highly globalised resource extraction industry, and, on the other, an economy of everyday survival through low-level trade, ‘corruption’, and smuggling. It is worth stressing that Iraq, like Afghanistan, cannot be classed as a ‘post-war’ or ‘post-conflict’ society in the 2003–2011 period under review. The 2003 US–British invasion to remove Saddam Hussein sparked an anti-occupation uprising, a Sunni–Shia civil war, and regional instability. This deeply insecure environment had a profound impact on academic and policy research on Iraq. High levels of violence meant that it was simply too dangerous for all but a handful of researchers to undertake in-country fieldwork. Among the many casualties of the conflict was reliable research, especially of the ethnographic kind that can allow local voices to be heard. Most post-2003 publications on Iraq (and there have been many) have relied on research that has been undertaken remotely or is reliant on second-hand accounts. As a result, there is a danger that much of this ‘research’ recycles information of suspect provenance. Some research has been sponsored by the occupying powers, often with military protection, and so this must be swaddled with caveats. One of the bright spots in this disaster area for research has been journalism, much of it by Iraqi journalists and bloggers, and much of it very courageous. The chapter begins with a section on the centrality of neo-liberal economic models to the liberal peace. It then offers an account of Coalition-led attempts to rehabilitate the oil industry. This must be placed in the context of Coalition attempts to recreate Iraq as a freemarket idyll replete with open borders, low taxes, and a small state.

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The next section concentrates on the political economy of ‘getting by’, or the measures that millions of Iraqis had to take simply to survive. Carolyn Nordstrom (2004) refers to this economy as the ‘shadows of war’, or the informal markets that people, goods, and services occupy as a result of political upheaval. This economy of survival must be placed in the context of the decade-long degradation of Iraqi living standards caused by Saddam Hussein’s disastrous economic and strategic choices, and a callous international sanctions regime. The headlines caused by the 2003 invasion and subsequent insurgency and civil war have tended to overshadow the national trauma caused by international sanctions whereby the entire population, with the exception of a tiny elite, were brutalised and pauperised. By the time of the 2003 invasion, Iraqis were already adept at ‘getting by’ through the informal economy, or getting out through emigration. The invasion and occupation, though, introduced new dynamics, causing individuals and communities to be more inventive in economic survival. These new dynamics and the hybrids they produce are the focus of this chapter.

A neo-liberal peace As discussed in Chapter 1, the liberal canon contains a complex confection of ideas that have been interpreted differently in different eras. Of particular interest to us is the hegemony that ideas of neo-liberal economics have assumed in development and peace-support interventions over the past two decades. Notions of the empowered individual, equality of opportunity, and the defence of property and the rule of law have combined to produce a sometimes toxic mix of shock doctrine economics, the supremacy of the market, the sidelining of notions of welfare, and aggressive individualistic materialism. Often this has been dressed in an emancipatory rhetoric of freeing markets from the ‘dead hand’ of the state, and liberating individuals by awarding them freedom of opportunity. Pro-market liberals can construct an attractive narrative in favour of pro-market ‘reforms’ as part of a post-war reconstruction programme. In this logic, the market becomes the engine of economic development but also of peacebuilding. The entrepreneur citizen and entrepreneur business are interested in stability and the growth of markets and so will avoid nationalism or political activity that may be destabilising. So the free market becomes equated with ‘peace’, or at least an apolitical stability. The mainstreaming of neo-liberal ideas in peacebuilding and postwar reconstruction was not necessarily the export of tried-and-tested

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neo-liberal norms from the global north to the global south. Instead, ideas and practices that many governments in the global north would not dare test out on their own populations were recommended and imposed on the global south. Although many states in the global north have experienced aspects of economic shock (as this chapter is being written, the British government has announced an 80 per cent cut in its funding to university teaching budgets), no government in the global north has introduced the rapid and violent economic shock doctrine experienced by many states emerging from war or transitioning from authoritarianism.

Oil The neo-liberal experiment Many of the advocates of the invasion of Iraq envisaged a postSaddam clean slate. Just as the political regime could be erased, they looked forward to sweeping away the ‘discredited’ practices of state interference in the economy and replacing them with an open market economy that could be a poster child for the merits of free-market economics. The US diplomat in charge of the post-invasion Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), Paul Bremer (2003), made clear his intention to force a transition from the public to private sector: ‘our strategic goal in the months ahead is to set in motion policies which will have the effect of reallocating people and resources from state enterprises to the more-productive private firms. A fundamental component of this process will be to force state enterprises to face hard budget constraints by reducing subsidies and special deals.’ US and British economists seconded to the CPA made it clear that Iraqis were best advised to follow international tutelage in the rebuilding of their economy: ‘Reconstruction spending will create jobs and raise incomes, but sustained economic growth will depend on whether Iraq’s future leaders pursue the pro-market approaches that the Coalition has advocated’ (cited in Foote et al. 2004: 48). The CPA strategy was to drive through as many pro-market reforms as possible and hope that the postSaddam Iraqi leadership would maintain these changes. They were certain that reforms would unleash ‘an economic miracle’ of overseas investment and growth (Islam 2006: 156). The strategy drew on the marketisation programmes experienced by post-Soviet states in the 1990s and contained the usual set of prescriptions from the neoliberal guidebook: privatisation of nationalised industries, the downsizing of the state, low taxation, a lessening of regulation on business,

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currency reform, and the general opening up of the economy to international markets. In June 2003, the CPA announced that Iraq was ‘open for business’, and thereafter pro-market edicts came from the CPA in quick succession (cited in Foote et al. 2004: 63). It is important to note that it was the United States, rather than the United Nations or any other international organisation, that was the key actor in reconstruction and economic strategy. A number of changes, for example to the banking laws, were introduced in the days before the formal transfer of sovereignty in June 2004 (Herring and Rangwala 2006: 227). CPA Order 1 banned announcements that might incite civil disorder, rioting, or damage to property. This catch-all edict encompassed the organising of strikes, and so the CPA, and later the post-Saddam Iraqi government, endorsed Saddam’s anti-trades union legislation (Medani 2004: 30; Kent 2006: 13). A new currency was introduced, although, in line with many other weak open economies, the US dollar was widely accepted. New banking laws were announced that allowed foreign banks to establish subsidiaries in Iraq and buy up to 50 per cent of existing Iraqi banks. Company law was revised to remove state powers. To encourage international trade, virtually all tariffs were abolished until the end of 2003. All taxes for 2003 were suspended (Iraq had few domestic taxes anyway) and a new flat-rate business tax of 15 per cent was introduced (Foote et al. 2004: 61–8). CPA Order 37 exempted from taxation the CPA, Coalition forces, and their contractors and subcontractors (Herring and Rangwala 2006: 226). Order 39 in September 2003 allowed for unrestricted foreign direct investment and the remittance of all profit (Lacher 2007: 245). Plans were made to privatise 150 state-owned enterprises (Herring and Rangwala 2006: 223). USAID, which took the lead in beginning the tendering process before privatisation could take place, ‘simply assumed that it could sell Iraq’s “crown jewels” without any opposition whatsoever’ (Del Castillo 2008: 208). Formal privatisation of the oil industry proved impossible, not least because the insurgency scared off potential investors. The speed with which the US authorities acted, and the lack of consultation (let alone approval) among Iraqis on their economic destiny, were startling. Consultations and interim bodies often took the form of ‘putting an Iraqi face on things’ (Herring 2010). Ostensibly, the CPA reforms amounted to a free-market charter and constituted a radical reorientation of the economy away from a statist model towards a market economy. Islam (2006: 156) summarised Coalition efforts as attempting to ‘attain a neoliberal economist’s dream: open borders, a largely privatised economy, minimal taxes and

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a government wedded to the principles of fiscal and monetary conservatism’. Bello (2008: 889) notes how ‘war becomes the instrument to erase the old interventionist state and create from scratch the ideal neoliberal government whose key function is to delegate its own functions to private contractors’. Critics of the marketisation of the Iraqi economy were keen to place the economic reforms in the context of much broader changes and linkages. In this view, the CPA-instigated reforms were not merely the introduction of neo-classical economic ideas to discrete parts of the Iraqi economy. Instead, according to Robison (2005: 248), they amounted to a recalibrating of relationships within society and the marketisation of politics and society through governance interventions. For Herring and Rangwala (2006: 212) the reforms were intent on ‘establishing a pattern of relations in which the Iraqi state is to function effectively as an extension of US-led global governance’. The free-market instincts of the CPA and Bremer (‘a true believer’) are not in doubt (Islam 2006: 166). The CPA reforms, in line with World Bank-inspired marketisation programmes in other post-conflict or post-authoritarian societies, smacked of ‘the certainties of disciplinary liberalism’ (Pugh 2006: 285). Yet the process of ‘freeing’ the Iraqi economy entailed very significant intervention and regulation. Rather than the simple lifting of regulations, CPA activities involved significant levels of intervention and economic engineering. Medani (2004: 31) commented that ‘in direct contrast to neoliberal nostrums about the virtues of market competition, Iraqi reconstruction has been a decidedly political and non-competitive affair’. Two-thirds of US reconstruction contracts in 2003 were allocated without competition (Le Billon 2005: 696). In December 2003, the Pentagon decreed that only countries that had been part of the invasion coalition were eligible for reconstruction contracts (Lacher 2007: 244; Herring and Rangwala 2006: 237). As Medani (2004: 28) put it, US firms ‘won a clean sweep’ of reconstruction contracts. The CPA’s neo-liberal rhetoric and legislation co-existed with Keynesian and statist policies that involved throwing money at problems. Faced with mounting insurgency, the US military took to ‘doling out cash’ in attempts to buy off militants (Medani 2004: 30). The CPA spent huge amounts on reconstruction programmes. These early reconstruction efforts were often thwarted by the growing insurgency, and were largely funded by Iraqi funds sequestered by the CPA. By the handover of power in June 2004, the CPA had embarked on a spending splurge that accounted for 88 per cent of the $23.4bn available for the new interim Iraqi government (Le Billon 2005: 696).

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More evidence of this Janus-faced approach to fiscal conservatism came in the CPA attitude to Iraq’s debts, many of which had been run up through purchasing arms from western states. When Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979, Iraq had cash reserves of $36bn and no long-term debt. The Iran–Iraq war proved to be financially disastrous, with Iraqi military spending between 1981 and 1985 amounting to an incredible 256 per cent of oil revenue (Alnasrawi 2001: 206). In 1990, Iraq’s indebtedness had risen to $42bn, costing $3bn annually to service (Alexander and Rowat 2003: 33). By 2003, combined multilateral and bilateral debt, excluding unpaid interest, was estimated to be $136bn (Herring and Rangwala 2006: 252). The neo-liberal canon of fiscal responsibility meant that many states emerging from conflict had to honour the debts of past regimes. Yet the United States, which had ‘argued strongly and consistently against generous debt relief for poor countries’, took a different tack with Iraq (Buckley 2006: 143). Iraq, it argued, was an exceptional case and deserved a total cancellation of debt. As Buckley (2006: 142) points out, the Paris Club of creditor nations usually offered debt cancellations of between 50 and 67 per cent, and only to desperately poor states such as Ethiopia or Burundi: ‘By global standards Iraq is not even poor’. In November 2004 the Paris Club agreed to cancel 80 per cent of Iraqi debt and to reschedule the remainder over twenty-three years after a grace period of six years. The US cancelled all of its Iraqi debts (which were a relatively modest $3bn). By neo-liberal standards, Iraq benefited from an incredibly generous deal, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the key driver of this special treatment had more to do with politics and short-term pragmatism than with economic nostrums. The Bush administration was determined to declare its Iraq mission a success, and so was prepared to overlook neo-liberal orthodoxy in this case. CPA economic strategy lacked consistency and so lent itself to the hybridisation of the Iraqi economy. On the one hand, the CPA unleashed a number of edicts to unburden the economy from regulation and state interference. Many of these came from the shock doctrine handbook. Indeed, Bremer forecast that ‘It’s going to be a very wrenching, painful process, as it was in Eastern Europe’, but regarded as his top priority economic reform, upon which political reform depended. ‘If we don’t get their economy right, no matter how fancy our political transformation, it won’t work’ (cited in Chandrasekaran 2007: 68). The possessive pronouns (‘our’ and ‘their’) reveal much. Yet, despite this zeal, the CPA also engaged in a good deal of Keynesianism, such

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as an $18.3bn Congressional handout for Iraqi reconstruction and persuading the World Bank that it should assist Iraq in the form of grants rather than loans (Hashim 2006: 296). It was anticipated that assistance through grants rather than loans would give donors greater control over the recipient. So rather than setting the economy free, the Coalition instituted a system of control and regulation (Cooper 2006: 330). Also contradicting the neo-liberal canon was the rigging of markets, the handing of contracts to friends of the new occupying regime, and a lack of transparency in economic management. Indeed, one major reconstruction contract was handed to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root before the invasion began. Halliburton’s former chief executive officer was Dick Cheney, then US Vice President (Herring and Rangwala 2006: 225). Rehabilitating the oil industry A key part of the CPA’s economic reform strategy centred on the rehabilitation of Iraq’s oil industry. Oil dominated the economy and was virtually the only source of foreign revenue. In the early 1990s, funds raised through domestic taxation typically amounted to a mere 3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) (Foote et al. 2004: 52). Iraq possessed massive oil reserves, amounting to four times those of the United States, including Alaska (Le Billon 2005: 686). Arguments about oil as a motivation for the US-led invasion, and the conversion of the US military into a ‘global oil protection service’, are likely never to be definitively resolved (Klare 2004: 7; Fisk 2006: 1143). As Mearsheimer and Walt (2003: 59) noted at the time of the invasion, ‘a compelling strategic rationale is absent’. Certainly the US was anxious to increase its own oil security through a lessening of dependence on Saudi Arabia and Iran, and gaining a pacified oil-rich client state in the form of a post-Saddam Iraq was an important step in that direction (Alkadiri and Mohamedi 2003: 21; Rogers 2006: 18). US dependence on imported oil has been growing (from 33 per cent in 1973 to 57 per cent in 2010), and the issue of energy security has achieved permanence in the US list of strategic goals (Bromley 2006: 420; Goel 2004; CNN 2010). The US was confident that Iraq’s oil riches could pay for the rehabilitation of the economy. In the words of Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Bush White House and a strong advocate of the invasion, Iraq ‘could finance its own reconstruction’ (cited in Lacher 2007: 244; Phillips 2005: 123). The occupying authorities sought and received a UN resolution that authorised their control over Iraqi oil revenues (Alkadiri and Mohamedi 2003: 21). According to the plan,

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a revitalised oil industry would drive the recovery, and would have knock-on effects on an oil-hungry global economy. Yet things did not turn out as planned. It is worth noting, of course, that Coalition planning for ‘the day after’ was sketchy (Mac Ginty 2003: 601–17). The US media had projected that oil production targets of between 4.5 and 6 million barrels per day would be realisable within a relatively short space of time after the invasion (Alkadiri and Mohamedi 2003: 27; Herring and Rangwala 2006: 213). In fact, production fell to almost nothing in the months after the invasion, and averaged 2 million barrels per day in the 2004–2006 period (Herring and Rangwala 2006: 213). By 2010, Iraqi oil production still averaged only 2.5 million barrels per day – more or less the same as pre-invasion levels (Cockburn 2010a). At least three factors were at work in retarding the rapid and smooth rehabilitation of the oil economy, and consequently the Iraqi economy in general. Firstly, the oil industry, after years of international sanctions, was in a more decrepit state than the invaders had anticipated. Much of this was due to the absence of foreign investment. Developing oil fields required a minimum of 7–10 years of investments before companies could expect to see a return. The deteriorating security situation meant that many oil companies were loath to invest in Iraq (Alkadiri and Mohamedi 2003: 27). Secondly, the oil industry was prone to looting on a massive scale (Mohamedi 2004: 36). ‘Iraqi officials put illegal exports of Iraqi refined oil products at up to 25 percent of output in 2004’ (Herring and Rangwala 2006: 214). In 2007, the United States estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels of oil went missing each month (Baer 2007). Le Billon (2005: 695) noted that ‘if some Iraqis exercised any “sovereignty” over the oil sector during the CPA era, it was through illegal practices such as theft and sabotage’. Thirdly, the growing anti-US insurgency involved the deliberate targeting of oil pipelines and refineries. These were targeted precisely because they were central to the new regime’s economic strategy. Iraq had over 4,000 miles of oil pipeline, and these suffered thirty-five major attacks in June–December 2003 (Hashim 2006: 198). Thereafter attacks escalated, and had a knock-on effect on electricity, sewerage, and transportation systems, which in turn dented the authority of the occupying force (Rogers 2006: 106). The costs of security rocketed and were estimated at 25 per cent of the costs of infrastructure projects (Hashim 2006: 297). The CPA privatisation scheme was a failure. In the end, it was the Iraqi government that made the most significant changes to the oil industry by forcing through the sale of oil fields to overseas firms in 2009. China

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was the largest investor, with major US and international corporations also buying a stake in the Iraqi oil business (Hafidh 2010). Seven years after the invasion, oil had failed to become the motor of Iraqi economic growth, though corporations were gambling that improved security would allow for profitable oil extraction in the longer term (Carey and Kami 2010). In keeping with the general argument of this chapter, no economic actor was able to chart an autonomous course. All were constrained by circumstances and forced to accommodate distortions and hybridities. This will be apparent in the next part of this chapter, which examines the everyday economic experiences of Iraqis in the post-Saddam era.

Getting by Pauperisation through sanctions In order to contextualise the everyday economic experiences of Iraqis in the post-Saddam period, it is necessary to illustrate how the decade before the 2003 invasion shaped the economic patterns of survival. This history was deliberately obfuscated by CPA officials, who laid the blame for the ruination of the Iraqi economy on Saddam and his cronies. There is no doubting the scale of Saddam’s economic mismanagement, especially through the militarisation of the economy and the failure to overcome the dependence on oil. Yet the narrative preferred by Bremer and others, that ‘Saddam Hussein’s regime devastated Iraq’s economy from the inside out’ (cited in Foote et al. 2004: 48), was partial to say the least. External factors, and particularly the sanctions regime imposed after the invasion of Kuwait, had a profound effect in terms of degrading the quality of life of most Iraqis. Post-Saddam Iraq did not present a ‘clean slate’, instead it was an environment deeply patterned by a decade of international pressure and state attempts to deal with them. Iraq was subjected to a tough United Nations regime of sanctions following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. After growing concern at the social costs of the sanctions, the Security Council amended the sanctions regime by introducing the Oil-for-Food Programme in 1995. This allowed Iraq to sell approved amounts of oil to the international market, with the income from these sales going to the UN, which would organise the purchase of food, medicines, and humanitarian goods (Heaton 2005: 193). The United States proved to be incredibly interventionist in blocking all manner of items (from sewing thread to thermos flasks) that could conceivably be used for military purposes (Gordon 2010).

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The sanctions and Oil-for-Food combined to produce severe distortions in the Iraqi economy and society. Prominent among these distortions was a strengthening of some aspects of state power. ‘By channelling all transactions through the government, the programme increased government control over the population’ (Alnasrawi 2001: 213). State elites moved to protect their own interests, often at the expense of groups and areas deemed marginal and disloyal (Visser 2005: 165). In effect, the Oil-for-Food Programme provided the regime with another weapon in its armoury of control. Bunton (2008: 642–3) reveals the multiple dynamics at work: The impact of the sanctions was complex, intensifying basic familial ties and highlighting the identification of communal solidarities while at the same time increasing the dependence on the state for scarce resources and hardening the sense of national honour in the face of shared suffering. The sanctions of the 1990s brought about profound changes in Iraqi society, giving rise to new classes and their co-option in the political system. By instituting a rationing system the government was provided both with a means to maintain some services at a basic, though drastically reduced, level as well as some leverages to maintain supervision, control and repression. Singling out favoured groups for privilege in ways that recalled the patterns of colonial and monarchic administration exposed and exacerbated sectarian and ethnic divisions which were already being reinforced by the tendency of individuals and families to actively seek support from within ethnic or religious communities. In tandem with the empowerment of some state functionaries, other sources of power and survival attained greater prominence during the sanctions era. People turned to informal sources of social capital, mainly clientelist networks maintained through tribal chiefs, as a way to stave off the worst effects of the sanctions (Le Billon 2005: 692). Many public officials turned to fraud as a way to survive during the sanctions era. This pattern of recourse to informal networks and ‘corruption’ accelerated following the 2003 invasion as government ceased to exist. Employment via the state, however brutal that state was, offered a lifeline for many families – a lifeline that was jeopardised when the state was extinguished by the invasion. The main victims of the sanctions were the bulk of the citizenry. In 1980, per capita GDP was $6,151. By 1999, the figure had plummeted to $883 (both figures in 1990 dollars) (Alnasrawi 2001: 215). Inflation

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compounded people’s survival problems. In 1991, the average public sector monthly salary was between 100 and 200 Iraqi dinars, and a kilo of chicken cost 3 dinars. By 1995, public sector salaries averaged 5,000 dinars, but a kilo of chicken cost 2,500 dinars (Bunton 2008: 641). Dodge (2005: 709) likened the impact of the sanctions to a ‘profound macro-economic shock’. The immiseration impacted all aspects of the social fabric: The social and economic consequences of the sanctions can also be seen in the loss of more than two-thirds of the country’s GDP, the persistence of exorbitant prices, collapse of private incomes, soaring unemployment, large-scale depletion of personal assets, massive school drop-out rates as children were forced to beg or work to add to family income, and the phenomenal rise in the number of skilled workers and professionals leaving the country as economic refugees in search of better economic conditions. (Alnasrawi 2001: 214) In short, Iraq underwent an internationally sponsored process of de-development. The cumulative effects of sustained deprivation undercut the psycho-social cohesion of communities, and became manifest in rising levels of juvenile delinquency, begging, prostitution, and petty crime, and a decline in the general health of the population (de Santisteban 2005: 64; Visser 2005: 165; Bunton 2008: 641). Pauperisation following the invasion For most Iraqis, the situation deteriorated in the years following the invasion. The International Monetary Fund estimated that GDP fell by about 22 per cent in 2003 (Foote et al. 2004: 55). Saddam’s economic mismanagement was followed by a clueless US administration. The latter had assumed that it would inherit functioning state institutions (Dodge 2005: 712). Instead, the state ceased to exist as civil servants fled and refused to return to work amid the deteriorating security situation. As the insurgency gathered pace, many Iraqis feared that they would be seen as collaborators (Herring 2010). The ‘de-Ba’athification’ process, or the sacking of all public officials with links to Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist Party, may have satisfied US instincts for a politically cathartic new beginning, but it also meant that the state’s institutional memory was expunged. ‘With almost no expertise on the country or indeed the wider Middle East, the Coalition became worryingly dependent on the same small group of Iraqi exiles that had advised it before the invasion’ (Dodge 2005: 712). These ‘opportunistic

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carpetbaggers’ (Dodge 2005: 713) were abetted by a CPA staff who, for the most part, were peculiarly unskilled for the task of economic reconstruction. Journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran (2007: 8), who lived in Baghdad’s Green Zone with the CPA personnel, noted how many staffers had worked as interns for Republican Congressmen in the United States: they ‘were given these jobs because a key selection criterion was political loyalty, not experience in the Middle East or postconflict environments’. The CPA macro-economic strategy was one of sweeping away the economic structures and regulation of the ancien régime and replacing them with a new set of regulations that was intended to guarantee economic freedom. Many of the economic ‘reforms’ had limited effect, and they certainly failed to kick-start a trickle-down economic recovery (Cooper 2006: 330). Instead, the vast majority of the Iraqi population continued to ‘get by’ using their wits. This was often in spite of, rather than because of, the economic changes introduced by the CPA. In many cases, the new Iraqi state had remarkably little connection with citizens: it did not tax them directly, nor did it offer much by way of social provision. The CPA reported that unemployment was 28.1 per cent in October 2003 (Foote et al. 2004: 58). In reality, the CPA were in no position to collect accurate statistics, and the real figure is likely to have been much higher and masked by under-employment. One estimate put the 2005 unemployment figure at 50 per cent, though in some areas, such as Sadr City, unemployment was reckoned to be closer to 70 per cent (Finer and Fekeiki 2005; Hashim 2006: 252). The Coalition did create significant numbers of jobs (380,000 as of March 2004) but the vast majority of these were in the security sector and were an emergency measure to curb the growing insurgency and compensate for the sacking of the army (Foote et al. 2004: 68). They were not the sustainable, private sector positions envisaged by the advocates of invasion. Revealingly, it was reported in 2009 that the Ministry of the Interior was the country’s largest employer (Garcia-Navarro 2009). As in the sanctions era, people turned to whatever means were at hand to get by. In 2008, it was estimated that 80 per cent of the workforce were engaged in the informal economy (Looney 2008: 436). Corruption was reported to be endemic (though the term ‘corruption’ requires serious interrogation in a context like this one). It was reported as commonplace to have to pay bribes to gain employment in the police force (Garcia-Navarro 2009). A policeman in Kut was reported as saying, ‘I was a policeman before the war. When I went back to rejoin my station, they said I had to pay $150. Every single department is asking for

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bribes’ (cited in Hashim 2006: 255–6). By 2010 it was reported that a job as a policeman cost $5,000 in bribes (The Economist 2010: 28). The economic and security crises had profound and far-reaching effects. The 2004 Iraq Living Conditions Survey, jointly conducted by UNDP and the Iraqi Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation, ‘showed that the Iraqi people were suffering from a widespread collapse in their living standards and conditions, exemplified by war-related injuries, chronic malnutrition, low life expectancy, declining health, declining literacy, and significant set-backs in women’s rights’ (Hashim 2006: 297). A 2008 RAND Corporation survey in Anbar Province found that the economic situation was recovering and boldly stated that ‘No men over age 23 – and no females of any age – are unemployed. Most employment occurs in small private enterprises’ (Crane et al. 2009). This Department of Defensesponsored survey was contradicted by virtually every other source. The Economist (2010: 28) pointed to ‘mass idleness’ and reported that ‘American soldiers stationed in rural areas with few government jobs say the unemployment rate there approaches 80%. The national rate is 45–47% including the underemployed – and, because of the high birth rate, the workforce is growing by 240,000 a year.’ Most Iraqis survived by simply getting by, holding down subsistence jobs in family and local businesses. ‘Salaried (mainly government) jobs are uncommon.’ The RAND survey went on to note that ‘Nearly half of households say that a household member has been killed as a result of the conflict.’ Moreover, ‘crowded living conditions, limited access to water, and sporadic supplies of electricity remain problems’ (Crane et al. 2009: xi–xiii). The structure of reconstruction contracts, particularly in the initial post-invasion years, meant that employment of Iraqis was minimised: ‘There is a hierarchy of reconstruction employees with those from the global North (especially the US) at the top, then those from the global South, then Iraqis in terms of positions held within the project and pay levels’ (Herring and Rangwala 2006: 238). Medani (2004: 29) observed that the outsourcing of reconstruction to US firms did little for Iraqi employment: ‘One Iraqi construction manager, who regularly lines up for contracts in Baghdad, complained that “US contractors are importing labor and expatriating the benefits – where is the benefit for Iraq?” ’ As the insurgency escalated, many US firms reneged on their contracts or ceased bidding, allowing Iraqi companies to benefit (Phillips 2005: 216). Also common, though, was the drafting in of overseas labour, from desperately poor contexts such as Bangladesh or India.

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A vicious circle developed in which the absence of employment fuelled the insurgency, and the insurgency prevented the economy from growing and employing more people (Phillips 2005: 203). While the US hoped to win people over through reconstruction projects that would boost both employment and living conditions, the insurgency meant that funds earmarked for reconstruction were diverted to security, and reconstruction projects were placed on hold in 2004–2005 (Lacher 2007: 245). Medani illustrated how economic insecurity segued into physical insecurity (2004: 35): ‘a growing informal economy associated with increased inequalities, unemployment and rural-urban migration continues to set the pattern for “privatized forms of violence” – organized crime and the substitution of “protection” for taxation, vigilantes, private security guards protecting oil facilities and the interests of international companies, and a variety of paramilitary groups associated with particular factions’. The CPA ordered schools to close in October 2003 amid a worsening security situation and fired teachers with Ba’athist links (de Santisteban 2005: 68). Even when schooling did resume, economic circumstances meant that many children were unable to avail of education: ‘The new school year began recently, but not for Karrar Raad, 12, and his 10-yearold brother, Allawi. They work for car mechanics in adjacent garages that are smaller than a rich lady’s closet. Their father is ill and has no job, and the boys have to support eight children and two adults. They earn $2.70 a day, plus tips’ (Los Angeles Times–Washington Post 2008). This vignette seems to sum up the post-2003 Iraqi case. Great promises were made by the invaders. For example, Thomas Foley, director of private sector development at the CPA, pledged to create ‘a fully thriving capitalist economy’ (cited in Herring and Rangwala 2006: 226). In many ways, the thriving capitalist economy did arrive, but no thanks to the ministrations of the invaders and successor Iraqi governments. Instead, millions of Iraqis were forced to get by using the informal economy and whatever means were at their disposal. There is much evidence of Iraqi citizens acting in opportunistic ways to maximise the opportunities that came their way. For example, many Iraqis make a living by picking through the debris of the massive dumps outside US bases for goods to sell (Robinson and al-Ansary 2010). Yet scavenging is a far cry from the liberal rhetoric of emancipated individuals exploiting the free market. Seven years after the invasion, The Economist (2010: 28) made clear the depth of the economic disaster: ‘Only one thing is preventing a humanitarian crisis: public sector employment. The state accounts for three out of five jobs, and 70% of this year’s budget will be spent on salaries

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and pensions.’ According to this analysis, the only thing between Iraq and catastrophe was the state and its ability to employ its citizens. Yet neo-liberal orthodoxy saw the state as the problem. The model of economic development pursued by the CPA and its Iraqi successors was simply incapable of delivering the social justice required to calm a society traumatised by dictatorship, war, sanctions, and ethno-national tensions. Mike Pugh (2006: 285) critiques this well: The poor do not benefit from policies of self-reliance and the privatisation of basic needs. Nor does persistent neglect of the public sphere improve social coherence or secure loyalty to institutions and authorities. Instead it can produce gross inequalities and gated enclaves of economic activity that are divorced from the social life of communities ... policies fixated with improving the environment for business do not improve social distribution.

Concluding discussion What becomes clear from this brief survey of the Iraqi economy since the 2003 invasion is the extent to which few economic actors were able to steer autonomous courses of action. Instead, and reflecting the reality of hybridity, the economic context was defined by a series of interlinkages through which top-down and bottom-up factors impacted one another. This is the case in all economies, whether in the global north or global south, and regardless of the model of economic development preferred. In the case of post-Saddam Iraq, however, the inter-linkages were very visible and brought to the surface acute contradictions in the liberal peace project. This is especially the case if the liberal peace reconstruction project is measured against its own neo-liberal terms of reference. Champions of the invasion anticipated sweeping away the statist aspects of the Iraqi economy and replacing it with a neo-liberal open economy that could use its oil wealth to fund reconstruction. As became clear, few champions of the invasion gave serious thought to post-invasion reconstruction plans. A hybrid economy has emerged amid the insurgency and civil war, attempts to unravel state-run behemoths, botched reconstruction efforts, and the industry of millions of Iraqis in simply getting by through what Pugh (2006: 270) calls ‘the tricks of life’. The informal economy has provided most Iraqis with a safety net. What is of most interest given the focus of this book is how the various parts of the post-invasion political, economic, and social story fit

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together to produce the hybridised economy. A matrix of inter-linked factors developed to shape the hinterland in which Iraqis had to eke out a subsistence living. The ambition of those who wanted to shape this hinterland should not be underestimated; ‘regime change’ did not apply only to the removal of Saddam Hussein. Instead, a complete remaking of the state was anticipated, including a re-ordering of the economy. This extended to a change in the model of economic development, and a remoulding of the relationships between citizens and the economy, the corporate sector and the state, and the domestic economy and the international economy. This grand plan, however, did not come to fruition. Instead, a complex matrix of factors coalesced to produce a hybridised mess. It is possible to identify some causal chains (such as the invasion leading to a rise in unemployment as state employees were sacked, which in turn fuelled the insurgency, which in turn deterred overseas investment, which in turn reinforced unemployment and grievances, which in turn further fed the insurgency). Yet such neat linear relationships need to be fleshed out to take account of both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. Certainly there was interaction between the top-down and bottom-up sectors. The nature of this interaction is revealing as it was largely effected through executive fiat. Thus, for example, the CPA compelled Iraqis to use the new currency and introduced a raft of new legislation. Similarly, the insurgency forced the CPA to rethink its privatisation agenda. What is also revealing is that many aspects of the top-down and bottom-up economies continued along their paths with very little mutual interaction or cognisance. The CPA simply issued orders for economic ‘reforms’ without any meaningful consultation with Iraqis (bar a few hand-picked former exiles). Most Iraqis simply got on with the task of surviving, ignoring or exploiting CPA edicts as best they could. There was no conscious attempt to develop a new social contract, or to hold negotiations between employers federations, trades unions, and economic planners. Instead, the various parties (the top-down and bottom-up sectors were not discrete entities) forged ahead in contexts that were shaped by each other. The Iraqi economy simultaneously became more formal and more informal: formal through CPA legislation and linkages with international financial institutions, and informal through further connections with illicit flows of arms, drugs, oil, and other contraband. A 2006 estimate put the informal economy at 65 per cent of GDP (Looney 2006: 999). In some respects, the strength and persistence of the informal economy can be interpreted in terms of the limitations of,

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and resistance to, the liberal peace. Much of this resistance was unconscious – people were too busy getting by. Yet the size of the informal economy illustrates the lack of reach of the formal economy. In very simple terms, the formal economy can be classed as a ‘failure’ if judged against its own benchmarks: it is too expensive, inefficient, and inconvenient when measured against the ‘competition’ offered by the informal economy. The capital-intensive nature of the oil industry meant that it directly employed relatively few people. Employment by the state (by far the largest employer) was severely distorted by corruption and sectarian discrimination. The absence of an income tax system also limited the extent to which the CPA or subsequent Iraqi administrations could economically discipline citizens. All four elements of the hybridisation model were in evidence in relation to the attempt by the liberal peace powers to ‘reboot’ the Iraqi economy. Liberal peace coercion was evidenced by the series of economic restructuring impositions and edicts by the CPA. Liberal peace incentives were in place through reconstruction funding in the form of grants and loans. Local resistance, subversion, and alternatives to the liberal peace came in the form of the informal economy. Everyday economic survival by Iraqis was rarely a conscious act of resistance. The necessity of getting by restricted the ability of many Iraqis to engage in explicit resistance or alternative-making, and the security situation added another impediment. Iraq’s post-invasion hybrid economy contributes to the overall argument of this book by revealing the limits of liberal peace projection and the agency of local actors in subverting and distorting the liberal peace. In keeping with another recurring theme in the book, the case of Iraq’s post-Saddam economy also raises questions about the utility of labels such as ‘international’ and ‘local’. The interests of global capital could not be truly ‘international’ in the sense that they could engage with Iraq in a way that was unfettered by a series of prosaic and urgent issues connected with security. The international was grounded by the local in the form of the pilfering of oil, the threat of kidnap to corporate executives, and attacks on oil installations. Similarly, the local could not operate in splendid isolation from the international: the currency was changed at the behest of international actors, the security industry (Iraq’s real boom industry) ultimately relied on international funds, and smuggling made economic sense only because of internationally imposed restrictions. The next chapter moves on to examine another pillar of the liberal peace, and another context. It focuses on statebuilding in BosniaHerzegovina, and argues that the liberal statebuilders after the Dayton

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Peace Accords were unable to impose their will. Instead, they operated in a hybridised context in which local and international actors had to take account of each other’s presence and ambitions. Moreover, there was no ‘clean break’ after the Dayton Accords; the hangover of Yugoslavia’s complex constitutional history meant that the liberal peace had to co-exist with other elements that were less than liberal.

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6 Hybrid Statebuilding: Bosnia

The Bosnian peasant’s chief desire is peace, to plant his fields and reap their produce; this secure, I believe he cares little whether Bosnia be Austrian or Turkish. M. M. Holbach (1906: 20) This is not Europe, no matter what the map says. R. Trevor (1916: 31) As one gazes upon the different races that she [Austria] is endeavouring to blend together in the name of Bosnians: one wonders if it is possible for human hands to accomplish such a task. R. Trevor (1916: 70)

Introduction The state is the centre-piece around which other elements of liberal peacebuilding are arranged. This chapter examines liberal statebuilding using the example of Bosnia-Herzegovina. It seeks to illustrate the centrality of statebuilding to liberal peacebuilding projects. The chapter argues that liberal statebuilders are unable to benefit from a ‘clean break’; new states are not built afresh. Instead, statebuilders are forced to take on board the legacy of previous political constructions, and to recognise the often unpalatable exigencies of post-war societies, such as the persistence of nationalism in the post-peace accord era. Thus the international peacebuilders empowered by the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords (or General Framework Agreement) did not build the new postwar state of Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) on fresh foundations. They were merely the latest in a long line of political leaders who sought to ‘create’ 134

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a ‘new’ state that would accommodate the region’s competing nationalisms. The result, like the political constructions before it, was a hybrid that reflected past experience, existing boundaries, demography, battlefield gains, international strategic calculations, international legal and economic norms, and emotional decisions on how some actors should be rewarded and others punished. The ‘new’ state of Bosnia-Herzegovina was a distortion of liberal ideas melded with nationalism, realism, and a socialist legacy. It was hybridised in its conception, design, and implementation. Hybridisation also became evident in the operation of the new state, as nationalists, the old socialist nomenklatura, and others grappled with internationally imposed governance norms. There is a significant critical literature on peacebuilding and statebuilding in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina (Chandler 2000; Pugh 2005; McMahon and Western 2009). Rather than cover well-trod ground, this chapter will take a somewhat different tack and pay particular attention to the socialist era and its attempts to ‘manage’ the national question before the disintegration of Yugoslavia. This historical perspective means that we can see post-Dayton statebuilding as one stage in a much longer historical process of state formation and reformation. The backward focus is an attempt to counterbalance the vast majority of analyses and commentary on statebuilding in BosniaHerzegovina and elsewhere, which are historically incurious. Indeed, much commentary, particularly that from a policy perspective, regards history as an encumbrance; ‘the past’ is equated with all things regressive, non-liberal, and backward. Hindess (2007: 326) notes a ‘tendency to treat belonging to the past as a bad thing, that is, as a kind of cultural and moral failure’. There is also a tendency among some to instrumentalise history in the service of modern-day peacebuilding projects. Thus an image of a prelapsarian multi-ethnic idyll can be created if it suits the needs of the day (Grodach 2002: 61–82). Yugoslavia and Bosnia have histories full of blood and oppression (as well as significant periods of peace and tolerance) that cannot be wished away. Imperial, socialist, and liberal statebuilders have all had to operate within the confines created by this history, while at the same time shaping new pages of that history. The primary focus of the chapter will be on the political and constitutional aspects of the statebuilding project in BiH, particularly in terms of how it attempted to deal with the persistence of nationalism. As Chapter 7 (on Lebanon) will examine the governance aspects of statebuilding and reconstruction, this chapter will not pay specific attention to the governance dimension of the post-Dayton statebuilding exercise.

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The chapter begins by underlining the centrality of states and statebuilding to liberal peacebuilding. It then gives a contextual overview of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia and international attempts at peacemaking, reconstruction, statebuilding, and peacebuilding. This includes a summary of the critiques levelled at the post-Dayton statebuilding exercise. The chapter then turns its attention to the continuities that persisted through the pre- and post-Dayton periods. The 1992–1995 war and Dayton Peace Accords did not prove to be an absolute hiatus that seismically ruptured the history of Yugoslavia and Bosnia. Rather than an abrupt ‘before’ and ‘after’, it is prudent to be aware of the deep social, political, and economic trends and group perceptions that had been ongoing since the 1980s and before: the unravelling of the ideological coalition that held together the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), unresolved constitutional debates and unsatisfied nationalisms, inflation and declining incomes, increased regional inequality, the rise of a complex civil society, and increased assertiveness by regional oligarchs (Baskin 2007: 259). The chapter therefore illustrates the continuities that have persisted into the postDayton period despite the ambitions of champions of the liberal peace to create a new post-nationalist state. Four pre- and post-Dayton statebuilding-related continuities are discussed: the construction of a civic master narrative that excludes nationalism, the top-down nature of control, the repeated nature of state interventions in the constitutional configuration of the state, and personnel. Weaving through these four continuities is another persistent theme: nationalism. Both the socialist and liberal internationalist regimes have struggled to deal with Croat and Serb nationalism, as well as Bosnian Muslim identity aspirations. It is worth noting that although values, beliefs, and practices persisted across generations, they did not persist in a completely unchanged manner. The nationalism of the 1980s was not identical to that of the 1940s or 1990s. Instead, all actors, networks, institutions, and values were compelled to recognise a fluid political and economic landscape. The chapter illustrates the extent to which Bosnia-Herzegovina has been an environment of hybridity and distortion. The 1992–1995 war and the subsequent international peace-support intervention further distorted an already hybridised environment.

Statebuilding and the liberal peace Statebuilding has been one of the core functions of liberal peace interventions, with the state acting as the basic institutional unit for the

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transmission of liberal norms and practices. Indeed, in many cases, the vast majority of activities in liberal peace interventions have revolved around the reform of the state, to the extent that other activities seem secondary. The evidence from a number of peace-support environments suggests that peacebuilding has morphed into statebuilding. Despite the rhetoric about ‘communities’ and ‘participation’, the vast bulk of peace-support efforts around the globe are about shoring up or reforming the state. Very different state-related tasks have taken place under the name of the liberal peace and development: the construction of new governing institutions (Timor-Leste), the reform of existing states away from authoritarian models (South Africa), the paring down of the state bureaucracy (Uganda), the protection of heads of state who come to personify the ‘new beginning’ and ‘new state’ (Afghanistan), the international recognition of new states (Kosovo), or the recalibration of power in the state through a new constitution or electoral system (Sierra Leone, Iraq). In the worldview of liberal interveners, the state is the centre-piece that – if properly recalibrated – has the capacity to deliver three elements required for peace: internal and external harmony, public goods, and economic growth. Firstly, liberal internationalists believe that a functional Weberian state is a tool for conflict management. In their view, states can be neutral entities, able to attract the loyalty of citizens on the basis of their ability to deliver services and rise above particularisms associated with grievance or identity. In this view, the state can be a clearing-house for conflict, able to mediate between different demands and rely on institutional logic rather than nepotism, sectarianism, or identity politics. The state can become a unifying force that allows citizens with heterogeneous backgrounds to share a common bond. The state can also offer protection from predation and oppression through its possession of a monopoly of violence. Just as the ideal liberal state has internal legitimacy (earned through offering protection and the equitable and transparent provision of good and services), it also has external legitimacy. As such, it is recognised by its fellow liberal states as an acceptable form of political organisation. Secondly, the state is regarded as an appropriate vehicle for the delivery of public goods and services. In the liberal mind, the state will have responsibilities to all its citizens and will act on a meritocratic basis. The need for some basic goods and services might be particularly urgent in societies emerging from violent conflict. It is possible that only the state (or a supranational body in the case of state collapse or weakness)

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will have the logistical network able to service all the population. This may especially be the case in geographically extensive states, or societies in which there are major divisions between peoples within the same territory. Thirdly, the state – according to the liberal worldview – will be able to regulate the economy to encourage growth, the husbandry of resources, trade, and the collection and redistribution of taxes. The extent to which the state should regulate, or ‘interfere’ with, the economy has been the subject of much debate, with neo-liberal ideas gaining ascendancy from the late 1980s onwards. A neoliberal hegemony in many policy circles has allowed ‘market solutions’ such as paring down the state, lifting government controls of markets, and opening up national markets to international competition to become the default option in many of the policy prescriptions recommended by liberal interveners. Right-wing commentators such as James Dorn (1998: 13) observe that ‘the real plight of underdeveloped countries is not market failure but government failure – that is, the failure of government to protect property rights, enforce contracts, and leave the market alone’. Yet many liberal peace interventions have had a contradictory approach to economic management. On the one hand, the neo-liberal instincts of the international financial institutions and others influenced by the Chicago School demand that the state withdraw from the economy as much as possible. Against this, however, the history of liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding has been highly interventionist. In their efforts to ‘free’ markets from the dead hand of the state, liberal statebuilders have often made very extensive use of the state to regulate the economy. It is the ‘intervene to achieve non-intervention’ school of economics. Moreover, as the case of Iraq in Chapter 5 in this volume shows, statebuilding, reconstruction, and peacebuilding are very expensive exercises and require old-fashioned Keynesian disbursements of cash. Not only is statebuilding regarded as being of central importance in post-war peace-support interventions; it has been awarded precedence in the sequencing of liberal peace interventions. Most commonly associated with strident defender of the liberal peace Roland Paris (2004, 2009), the ‘institutionalisation before liberalisation’ (IBL) formula urges that the state be secured before liberties are extended to the populace. It is a ‘tough love’ prescription that prioritises the construction, reformation, or securing of institutions before the extension of ‘softer’ elements of liberalism such as individual rights or the democratic franchise. It is in tune with security-led interventions into so-called hostile environments and has been criticised for its ethnocentrism and illiberalism.

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The IBL formulation immediately allows some actors (often from the global north) to ‘play God’ and make decisions regardless of opinion in the host society. In line with those holding most other political perspectives, liberals have an intolerance of statelessness and alternatives to statehood. It would seem that statehood is a universal model and that all political communities must be organised into states. Anomalous cases, such as Kosovo or Palestine, have been regarded as proto-states or territories that must eventually be converted into states but are required to meet certain conditions beforehand. In the post-9/11 period, the fear of statelessness has accelerated, with Afghanistan, Somalia, and parts of Yemen and Pakistan being targeted as part of the War on Terror and regarded as incubators of ‘terrorism’ and criminality as they are deemed to lie outside the norm of acceptable statehood. This, of course, ignores the significant levels of political violence and crime that occur within many ‘properly’ constituted states. It also ignores the fact that many of the 9/11 perpetrators met and trained in Germany and Saudi Arabia – both fully fledged states (National Commission on the Terrorist Attack on the United States 2004). The liberal insistence on statehood as the primary institutional unit has not been significantly altered by globalisation. While non-state bodies, particularly commercial actors, have exploited globalisation, states and supranational organisations made up of states have been deft in reaffirming their sovereignty and the primacy of statehood. This has been particularly the case with states in the global north, which have maintained a tight grip on international organisations and international financial institutions. To demonstrate this, the President of the World Bank is always nominated by the United States, while the Chairman of the International Monetary Fund is always a European. This inherently racist practice is not ordained in any organisational constitution, but the global north has engineered it into a norm. To summarise, by capturing the state and refashioning it through reconstruction or reform, liberal internationalists would have a basic unit onto which other elements of the liberal peace could be anchored. The state is both an end and a means. It is an endpoint in the sense of a stable and sustainable political entity commensurate with liberal order. Liberal interventionists, as idealists, tend to hold ethnocentric views of the ‘proper’ nature of statehood in terms of its institutional design and political, economic, and social character. According to Pritchett and Woolcock (2004: 191–212), liberal statebuilding could be likened to a process of ‘getting to Denmark’, with Denmark being a generic ‘any

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state’ with a functioning bureaucracy, developed economy, and compliant foreign policy. This ethnocentric tendency has resulted in persistent critiques of liberal peacebuilding interventions as attempting to build a particular type of state that reflects western interests and mores, and fails to take sufficient account of local approaches to institutionalism. The state is also the means to the end in the sense that it is the vehicle for the transmission of liberal ideas, practices, and institutions. The state, once remade in the ‘proper’ manner, becomes the primary liberal peace agent in the society subject to intervention. In theory, there is a silo-like effect, with international actors directing resources and practices through the host state, which, in turn, directs or compels ministries, municipalities, businesses, communities, and individuals to act in particular ways. The direction of transmission is top-down. In practice, the image of a silo is too neat. There is rarely a linear and uninterrupted transmission chain that accepts ideas, practices, and resources from the global north and obediently passes them – unchanged – along the chain. Instead, as all the case studies in this book demonstrate, the transmission process is subject to distortion and blowback as local actors deploy agency. The international becomes subject to a process of vernacularisation. In cases where the liberal state is non-compliant (perhaps too slow, corrupt, or wedded to nationalism) international organisations, INGOs, and NGOs have been used to bypass the state. In the case of BosniaHerzegovina, the international community’s High Representative overrode the state where it was perceived to be obstructing the liberal internationalist agenda. Yet the state remains the primary mode for the extension of the liberal peace. Kjellman and Harpviken (2010: 35) note that statebuilding ‘efforts have been aimed largely at securing optimal institutional conditions for promoting liberal economic reforms and transitioning to democracy as quickly as possible. The emphasis has thus been on the promotion of institutional reforms, good governance, multiparty elections, constitutionalism, the rule of law, human and minority rights, gender equality, economic liberalization, and security sector reform.’ As Call (2008b: 366) notes, however, ‘although states are central to peace, building such states does not lead directly and unproblematically to peace. On the contrary, the very process of statebuilding exhibits serious tensions with the goals of consolidating peace.’ Interestingly, the type of state that was created in Bosnia-Herzegovina went beyond traditional conceptions of the state as a system of interlocking institutions with popular and international legitimacy. Instead, the liberal interventionist statebuilders sought to create a post-modern state in Bosnia that was constructed along governance, or service

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provision, lines. Many functions traditionally associated with the state were farmed out to INGOs, NGOs, and private contractors, and different models of representation (such as public consultation or through civil society) were deployed. So far, this chapter has discussed liberal statebuilding in general terms. It will now briefly sketch the disintegration of Yugoslavia and international efforts at statebuilding. Thereafter the chapter will argue that the post-1995 efforts to engineer a stable state can be viewed within a longer historical narrative of repeated attempts to balance competing nationalisms.

The disintegration of Yugoslavia Yugoslavia was a ‘step-child’ of the Treaty of Versailles (Liotta 2001). The Kingdom of the Serbs, the Croats and the Bosnians was created in 1918 out of the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was initially a liberal parliamentary monarchy, but this gave way to a dictatorship (and acquired the name Yugoslavia) under King Alexander in 1929. His policies of ethnic repression and denial of rights to national groups were largely counterproductive (Pesic 1996: 7). Unsatisfied Croat and Serb national aspirations manifested themselves in the bloody civil war during the Second World War. By the end of the war, partisans were powerful enough to establish the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without assistance from the Soviet Union. But the new state had a bloody beginning, with approximately 250,000 people executed by the communists at the end of the war (Sahovic 2007: 124). BosniaHerzegovina was established as one of the Federation’s six Socialist Republics, though interestingly it was the only republic that was not nominally associated with a single nationality. A national or Yugoslav lens is inadequate to explain the descent into war during the 1990s. A myriad external factors in the 1980s and early 1990s combined to help trigger internal nationalisms and discontent. Certainly the mobilisation of Croat and Serb nationalists was often an intimate affair, operating at the village and neighbourhood levels. But the narrative used by their political leaders, a fear of Muslim fundamentalism in Bosnia, was able to connect with international discourse on the rise of militant Islam (Ajami 1999: 36). Moreover, macroeconomic ‘reforms’ imposed on Belgrade by international creditors from 1980 onwards undercut the welfare state and the industrial sector (Chossudovsky 1996: 521). The resulting insecurities were exploited by ethnic entrepreneurs. The end of the Cold War swept away Yugoslavia’s

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unique geo-political status, which had afforded it trade preferences and credits from the west (Woodward 1995: 16). At their Paris meeting in November 1990, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe members declared that ‘never again’ would they tolerate another war in Europe (Eyal 1993: 22). In reality, European states proved incapable of preventing Balkan tensions spilling over into outright war. Indeed, European (and United Nations) recognition of Bosnian independence, after the people of Bosnia had voted for independence in a 1992 referendum, is often cited as one of the precipitants for the outbreak of war (Sahovic 2007: 129). All six Yugoslav republics experienced war in the 1991–2001 period. The 1992–1995 period witnessed a series of inter-linked conflicts centred on Bosnia-Herzegovina: Bosnian Serbs, abetted by Serbia, ethnically cleansing non-Serbs from ‘their’ parts of Bosnia; conflict between Croats and Muslims; a Croat offensive against Bosnian Serbs to reverse territorial gains; and the NATO bombing of Bosnian Serb positions. There were approximately 100,000 fatalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina (though the precise figures are hotly debated), with about two-thirds of that number being Muslims (BBC 2007). About half of the population, or 2 million people, were displaced. The war came to an end partly through the battlefield exhaustion of the combatants, but also through the seizure of ‘defensible enclaves’ by combatants, NATO bombing of Serb positions, and the western arming of Bosnian Croats and Muslims to change the battlefield dynamic against Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs. One of the most interesting aspects of international attempts to prevent the outbreak of war, and then facilitate an end to hostilities, was the extent to which international actors assumed their roles as mediators and interveners. An International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia had been established in 1991 by the United Nations and the European Union as a permanent forum to deal with the conflict. The collapse of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars coincided with significant flux in the international security architecture as international organisations such as NATO, the EU (formerly the European Community), and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) attempted to recast themselves for post-Cold War challenges. This period also saw a massive rise in the number of conflict-interested INGOs. Throughout the conflicts in the Balkans, the EU attempted to take the role of primary international mediator, with the UN and US largely content with this regional devolution. Ultimately, however, the EU lacked the willingness to deploy coercive power, a factor which

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meant that Balkan politicians, and particularly the Serbian leader, Slobodan Miloševic´, were able to ignore it. The game-changing intervention came when the United States under Bill Clinton took a sustained interest in the conflict. At no stage were fundamental questions asked about the nature of ‘the international community’, its legitimacy, and the extent to which it reflected the interests of a select group of states.

Dayton and after The Dayton General Framework Agreement was reached following talks between the leaders of Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats, and the Serbs at the Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio in November 1995. The Dayton Accords created a ‘new’ state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which comprised two entities: a Muslim-Croat Federation of BosniaHerzegovina and the Republic of Serbia (Republika Srpska). The Federation comprised ten cantons, while the Republic of Serbia was unitary. Although the Peace Accord and associated new constitution used liberal, plural language of multi-ethnicity and respect for diversity, the Accords were based on estimations of ethnic demography and the battlefield situation. Thus the Accords were variously described as the ‘constitutionalization of ethnic geography’ (Grant 1998: 11), ‘the militarized enshrinement of contemporary ethnicity’ (Baskin 2007: 266), and ‘probably the most extreme example of ethno-federalism in the contemporary world’ (Vogel 2006: 2). The new state was relatively powerless and was almost completely dependent on financial transfers from its constituency entities, the Federation and the Republic (Donais and Pickel 2003: 9; Grant 1998: 9). Ultimate power, however, lay with the Office of the High Representative (OHR), which was mandated by the international community to ensure that the requirements of the Dayton Agreement were fulfilled. The criticisms of the Dayton Accords are in keeping with criticisms made of virtually every liberal peace intervention in the post-Cold War era: top-down, technocratic, neo-liberal, and unsustainable. One former international contractor, charged with reforming aspects of the Bosnian economy, offers a revealing insight that could have come from Baghdad’s Green Zone, a government compound in post-Taliban Afghanistan, or any other liberal peace intervention: Everything that the [international] team sought to introduce in Bosnia made perfect sense and was consistent with international

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financial management practices – programme budgets, rational charts of accounts, automated tracking systems, transparent financial reporting, and so forth. Our recommendations mirrored those of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and reflected ‘best practices’ throughout Europe and North America. And in general, our Bosnian counterparts recognized the value of our suggestions. They listened carefully to what we had to say, nodded appropriately, and took copious notes. Then, more often than not, they went back to their jobs and continued business as usual. (Huddleston 1999: 149) While the Dayton Peace Accords and their implementation were subject to enormous scrutiny and criticisms, it has to be stated that they, along with the exhaustion of the combatant parties, did result in the end of the war, facilitated the return of over 1 million displaced persons, and allowed millions of people to return to a way of life that afforded dignity and opportunities for social progression. This was no small achievement on behalf of the international community and millions of others in the Balkans. Clearly the peace was messy and left many dissatisfied. Pajic´ (1998: 136) points to a series of contradictions at the heart of the Dayton peace deal: ‘declaring a unified state while recognizing two antagonistic entities as constituent parts of the state; proclaiming democracy while entrenching apartheid structures and ethnic-based parties; and reaffirming individual rights while legitimizing ethnic majoritarianism’. The implementation of the Accords was also often conducted in ways that displayed arrogance and a disregard for the so-called beneficiaries of Dayton. Despite the shortcomings, it is important to recognise the achievements of Dayton, particularly in its provision of security guarantees and in the facilitation of the return of displaced persons. The implementation of Dayton also represented an enormous financial investment by the international community. By 2003, $5.1bn had been ploughed into the stabilisation (Donais and Pickel 2003: 2). The other major ‘achievement’ that has to be recognised is the everyday efforts of millions of people in the region who have strived to get on with their lives. This everyday tolerance does not necessarily stem from international interventions in terms of peace and reconciliation programmes and projects. Instead, it stems from ‘local liberalism’, or a recognition among citizens that society – often at the micro level of streets and hamlets – depends on reaching accommodation with neighbours, including those with different national or ethnic affiliations. Indeed, communities within

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Yugoslavia (and the territory that existed before Yugoslavia) have long histories of co-existence and tolerance, as evidenced by high rates of inter-group marriage. Clearly this was interrupted episodically by violence and tension, but communities often settled down again. In many cases, local-level tolerance was interrupted by elite-level competition over the state and power. So while states have the capacity to forge accommodation and manage service provision, it is worth remembering that they have also been an engine of division and have sought to label, categorise, and define their citizens in ways that do not always aid conciliation.

Pre- and post-Dayton continuities The peoples, culture, and polities of the Balkans can justly claim to be among the most hybridised on the planet. Islam and Christianity, socialism and capitalism, democracy and authoritarianism, and various nationalisms have all collided and co-existed to various degrees over the centuries (McGoldrick 1999: 7). The name of the first modern Yugoslav state, ‘The Kingdom of the Serbs, the Croats and the Bosnians’, reflected the inbuilt hybridity of the territory. All ideologies and styles of governance deployed in the region over the centuries have had to take account of the highly hybridised context. This section identifies continuities between the pre-Dayton political constructions in Yugoslavia and the post-Dayton liberal statebuilding exercise. These continuities dispel the notion that the post-Dayton statebuilding represented a ‘fresh start’ or ‘new beginning’. Vanessa Pupavac (2010) reflects on how international statebuilders seemed to have a selective memory of the former Yugoslavia, conveniently overlooking swathes of history and ‘remembering’ a bucolic multi-ethnic past: ‘the international imagination seems to have forgotten the dirty old steel towns’. Dayton was another conflict management intervention in long-running attempts to solve the constitutional conundrum of satisfying Croatian separatism, Serbian centrism, and Bosnian Muslim identity aspirations in a multi-ethnic territory (Pesic 1996: v). The Dayton creation of BosniaHerzegovina adopted the legal personality of the previously created socialist republic of the same name (Caplan 2007: 237). This section discusses four continuities between the pre- and post-Dayton eras: the construction of a civic master narrative that excludes nationalism, the top-down nature of control, the repeated nature of interventions by the governing authority to perfect constitutional arrangements, and a continuity of personnel.

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Meta-narrative of statehood The first continuity relates to the construction of a meta-narrative of statehood that emphasises a civic bond between citizens and deemphasises ethnic, religious, or nationalist identifications. Although Yugoslavia’s socialist rulers in the era after the Second World War were unable to ignore nationalism completely, they did construct a narrative that prioritised a single unifying identification (socialism) and sought to delegitimise other, ‘lesser’ identifications such as religion or nationalism. Indeed, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was officially atheist and thus religious identifications could be disregarded by the state (a factor particularly relevant to the Muslim population in Bosnia). The SFRY depended on a supranational ideological narrative that recommended that a class analysis be applied to all problems (Pesic 1996: vi). In such a context, nationalism was regarded, notionally at any rate, as counter-revolutionary and deviant. The hegemonic narrative of ‘brotherhood and unity’ was able to present Yugoslavia’s past difficulties, especially the blood-letting during the Second World War, as nationalist folly perpetrated by narrow (capitalist) interests (Baskin 2007: 266). In this view, socialism as embodied in the Federal Republic offered a route to emancipation. The collectivist consciousness meant that nations and nationalities were overshadowed by ‘working people and citizens’ (ICG 2002: 2). Of course the narratives constructed by socialist politicians and post-Dayton international administrators contained a degree of disingenuousness: nationalism could not be wished away. Both the SFRY and the post-Dayton administrators recognised this and made significant efforts to accommodate nationalism. The narrative script, however, remained largely the same: nationalism is an inferior political creed, and both the socialists and the liberal internationalists made draconian efforts to hamper nationalist political mobilisation. The meta-narrative underpinning the Dayton Agreement was that nationalism was destructive and self-defeating; people must abjure nationalism or ethnic and religious particularism and instead accept plural, civic identifications. The international community regarded ethnic nationalism as ‘an evil to be suppressed, or better yet, eradicated’ (Donais and Pickel 2003: 5). International commentators routinely associated nationalism with organised crime (Kang 2006: 2). In those rare cases where nationalism could be valorised in the former Yugoslav context, it was the ‘good nationalism’ of the Titoist struggle against Nazism. The ‘bad nationalism’ of inter-ethnic civil war was to be condemned (Pavlakovic 2008). The Dayton-inspired civic identification was as

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artificial as the new ‘national’ flag, currency, anthem, and other symbols of statehood invented by international bureaucrats. According to Hayden (1998: 49), the Office of the High Representative intentionally chose a flag design that had no emotional connection with anyone in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The new state was not an obvious source of identification for many of its citizens: ‘A large share – perhaps a majority – of Bosnian citizens remain to some extent unreconciled with the very fact that they are citizens of Bosnia rather than Croatia or Serbia, or perhaps an independent Republic of Serbia, or indeed Yugoslavia’ (Vogel 2006: 27). For many of its citizens the new state was inorganic and unable to meet their identity aspirations. It was ‘a state without a nation’ (Donais and Pickel 2003: 19). As a result, the international overlords of BosniaHerzegovina had to work hard to construct an appealing narrative. One argument championed by the international community was that citizens should not focus on their ‘Bosnian-ness’; instead, they should seek to emphasise their European-ness. Donais and Pickel (2003: 12) note that by the new millennium, the Office of the High Representative was underplaying the development of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a state in its own right. Instead, ‘the establishment of a civic Bosnian state is portrayed as a vehicle through which Bosnian citizens may one day reap the benefits of broader European citizenship, rather than as a worthwhile construct in and of itself’. This strategy differed from that recommended by the international community in other contexts, where a plural post-transition sense of nationhood has been encouraged as a sign of ‘moving on’. Top-down control A second continuity between the socialist and post-Dayton eras is the top-down nature of political control. Although both deployed the language of participation and empowerment, and although both used various devices, such as elections and workers’ councils, to facilitate participatory politics, both were essentially centralised and directive systems. The similarities in the top-down control utilised by both systems were noted by Hayden (1998: 47): ‘Ironically, the course chosen by the High Representative seems most similar to that of the communist regimes of the former Yugoslavia.’ In both cases, this centralisation and direction were justified by the ‘higher goals’ of socialism or civic pluralism. Even though Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Unioncontrolled Communist International Bureau (Comintern) in 1948, it retained a Soviet-style centralised political control. For all the talk of a ‘third way’ between capitalism and communism, Yugoslavia was a

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single-party police state that exercised considerable repression of political dissidents (Bebler 2006: 7). The police force was centralised and militarised (Perdan 2006: 186). Notwithstanding the devolution of power to the regions and other liberalising reforms undertaken in the 1960s and 1970s, Bebler (2006: 7) characterises Bosnia-Herzegovina in the socialist era as ‘a miniature of Yugoslavia’. It ‘operated as a unitarian political system combining an authoritarian single party monopoly of power, a non-competitive majoritarian electoral system, a unicameral parliament, weak and fragmented civil society and a strong underbrush of authoritarianism in popular culture’. Despite the rhetoric of brotherhood and unity, the SFRY bureaucracy was dominated by Serbs, and they held key positions in the ruling party, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) (Pesic 1996: 12). Surveying both the SFRY and the post-Dayton entity, Caplan (2007: 238) noted that ‘There is no real tradition of participatory politics in BiH, which is critical to a functioning democracy. Rather, there is a tendency among citizens to view politics as the preserve of elites over whom ordinary citizens can have no influence.’ It is not difficult to find evidence of the top-down nature of the postDayton dispensation. The new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina was never subject to ratification by its population (Hayden 1998: 48). The powers assumed by the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) as part of the Dayton General Framework Agreement were a harbinger of the political and economic powers deployed by the Office of the High Representative as the new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina was created and steered through its formative years. NATO personnel were awarded immunity from prosecution and were exempt from taxation (Chossudovsky 1996: 524). Annex 1A of the General Framework Agreement stipulated that ‘IFOR shall have the unimpeded right to observe, monitor and inspect any forces, facility or activity in Bosnia-Herzegovina that IFOR believes may have military capability’ (Office of the High Representative 1995). It further awarded IFOR unlimited rights to ‘bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilize any areas or facilities’. The High Representative held extraordinary powers. Indeed, these powers were strengthened in 1997 as the persistence of nationalism and the extent of the statebuilding task became clear (Szewczyk 2010: 28–30). On key legislative and economic issues, sovereignty rested with the High Representative and other unelected international personnel. Such was the power of the EU in forging the course of the new state that it was dubbed the ‘European Raj’ (Knaus and Martin 2003). The new state was unable to implement independent monetary, fiscal, pricing, and foreign exchange policies (Donais

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and Pickel 2003: 6). Article VII of the Dayton Agreement stipulated that the first governor of the Central Bank was to be appointed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and ‘shall not be a citizen of BosniaHerzegovina or a neighbouring state’ (Office of the High Representative 1995). The Office of the High Representative used extraordinary powers 811 times between December 1997 and October 2006, and removed 168 elected and unelected officials during the same period (Baskin 2007: 277–8). According to critics, the international trusteeship of the new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina seemed to be straight from the ‘institutionalisation before liberalisation’ script. Chossudovsky (1996: 524) observed that ‘Behind the democratic façade, actual political power rests in the hands of a “parallel government” headed by the high representative and staffed by expatriate advisers.’ Indeed, for many citizens, it was the international community who were the parallel or ghost government, and they found their own forms of political representation and governance more ‘real’. Repeated interventions The third area of continuity between the post-Dayton dispensation and previous constructions of Yugoslavia and Bosnia was the repeated nature of interventions to manage the national question. Bosnia has been in a state of ‘permanent transition’ since at least the 1960s (Baskin 2007: 258). In the socialist era, the interventions usually took the form of constitutional revisions that attempted to make the state more inclusive of national groupings, while still ‘within the revolution’ (Howard 2001: 317). In the post-Dayton era they usually took the form of political interventions by the OHR to thwart the strategies of nationalist political parties. The repeated interventions illustrated two common threads in socialism and liberalism: a belief in the reformability of individuals and institutions, and the assumption that the power of individuals and groups could be usurped by the state or a higher authority for a greater good. Pajic´ (1998: 135–6) pointed out how the concept of individual rights was subjugated to a concern for group rights in both the socialist and post-Dayton dispensations: ‘Preoccupation with the rights of ethnic groups reflects the transition from communist to nationalist collectivism, where the despotism of the one and only ruling party is replaced by the despotism of the presupposed group (ethnic) interests.’ The interventionist nature of the SFRY was captured by Baskin (2007: 261), who likened the state to a series of economic and political ‘experiments’. The economic experiments attempted to place the state between Soviet socialism and western capitalism and involved market socialism.

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Politically, the socialist state enacted a series of reforms and liberalisations aimed at widening representation and recognising nationalist sentiment. This was significant in that the apparently nation-blind state took on board identity aspirations of its citizens and recognised the potentially destabilising effects of inter-group enmity. It is important to note that individuals and groups of individuals experienced Yugoslav socialism in different ways. The socialist state did not impose its will uniformly, thus allowing individuals and groups to feel marginalised or discriminated against (Dimitrova-Grojzl and Simon 2010: 5). This nonuniform experience of socialism had a significant impact on the extent to which national groups pressed for constitutional change or felt satisfied with the prevailing order. Bosnian Muslims in particular perceived themselves ‘forgotten’ by Belgrade. There were three major constitutional revisions, in 1946, 1963, and 1974. ‘Each had an impact on “national identity” either by fostering it, recognising it, or both’ (McGoldrick 1999: 7–8). It should be stressed, however, that these changes occurred within the parameters of ‘the revolution’ and that they did not recognise the political autonomy of national groups. It was, in Howard’s (2001: 317) phrase, ‘organized pluralism’. In 1961 the state allowed Muslims to identify themselves as Muslim, although this categorisation was not introduced into the census on a par with Croats and Serbs until 1971 (Bebler 2006: 6; Campbell 1999: 405). In the late 1960s, a system of tri-national parity was introduced in Bosnia-Herzegovina such that the three communities were equally represented in key positions in the federal structure (Glenny 1996: 141; Bebler 2006: 6–7; Zaum 2003: 111). This was a primitive powersharing exercise, although it rested on the fiction that each group was of demographic equivalence. In the early 1970s, Muslim functionaries in the LCY pressed Belgrade to elevate Muslims’ status from national minority to constituent nation in the SFRY (Glenny 1996: 141). This goal was realised in the 1974 constitutional amendment. The 1974 amendment was probably the most significant of all the constitutional revisions in that it effectively institutionalised the autonomy of the six Yugoslav Republics, ‘thus implicitly allowing the acceleration of national, economic and ethno centrisms’ (Liotta 2001: no pagination). Ultimately, the state’s attempts to assuage and contain nationalist and identity claims failed. As Pesic (1996: vi) observed, ‘Despite the regime’s attempts to control national aspirations by institutionalizing them within the political and territorial boundaries of the titular republics, the more abstract aspects of nationhood could not be so confined.’

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Post-Dayton interventionism was fuelled by international frustration at the persistence of nationalism and the audacity of nationalist political leaders. Just as Yugoslavia was threatened by nationalists who wanted to undermine it, the new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina was threatened by the secessionist claims of its Serbian population (Eckert 2002: 30). Interventionism was also prompted by what outsiders saw as the slow pace of change, particularly given the massive investment of time, personnel, and finances by elements of the international community. Kang’s (2006: 2) prescription is typical of these sentiments, and is seemingly unaware of the irony of ‘strengthening’ statehood by taking sovereignty away from locally elected leaders: ‘the international community should more deeply assert a realignment of fundamental powers in Bosnia to strengthen the statehood of Bosnia and its individuals and to weaken nationalists and organized crime’. In a similar vein, the self-appointed International Crisis Group interpreted a 2002 Constitutional Court ruling on equality in BiH as an ‘unrepeatable chance to push the Dayton Peace Accords to their limits’ (ICG 2002: 1). The post-Dayton interventions did not come in the form of revisions of the Peace Accords. Instead, they took the form of institutionalised intrusion into the affairs of Bosnia-Herzegovina by the OHR. Personnel The fourth continuity relates to personnel. A feature of many liberal peace interventions has been the identification, prosecution, or dismissal of those associated with the ancien régime (La Haye 2008). In part this has been a symbolic statement of the need for a clean break. It has also been a function of the supposed unsuitability of political actors and administrators from the old system to engage in the governance of the new system. In Afghanistan, the Taliban were put to flight. In Iraq, a price was placed on the heads of the Ba’athist leadership, while Party functionaries and the military were sacked en masse. A number of international and national judicial and quasi-judicial systems have been employed to indict former leaders, or at least compel them to acknowledge past wrongdoing. The years after Dayton saw the indictment and prosecution of various leaders for war crimes, and a number of high-profile figures from the 1992–1995 period went into hiding. Yet, to a certain degree, there was a continuity of personnel from the socialist era through the period of nationalist wars and into the post-Dayton period. Slobodan Miloševic´, for example, was ‘a product of the communist bureaucracy whose authoritarian traditions fitted snugly with his own behavioural patterns’ (Glenny

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1996: 36). Prior to the break-up of Yugoslavia, Miloševic´ was an economics adviser to the mayor of Belgrade, the director of a bank, and president of the Belgrade League of Communists City Committee. In short, he was a socialist insider who made the transition to postsocialist nationalist leader with relative ease. Indeed Pesic (1996: 3) postulates (though ultimately does not agree with) the proposition that the socialist nomenklatura sought to preserve their threatened positions by fomenting and exploiting nationalism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Miloševic´’s position differed from those of Franjo Tudjman (the first leader of independent Croatia) and Alija Izetbegovic´ (the first president of Bosnia-Herzegovina). Both had been political dissidents during the socialist era and had long associations with their respective nationalist projects. Yet peppered among the ‘new’ political classes in BiH, Croatia, and Serbia were a good number of party apparatchiks from the previous socialist political order. Baskin (2007: 265–6) summarises the political continuity in BiH in the post-Dayton period: The three dominant nationalist political parties – Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), and the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) – came to be identified closely with administrative and political power within ethnically dominated entities or quasi-entity. These new parties have assumed a position akin to that of the LCY during the period of socialism; many of the new leaders were themselves former members of one of the more hard-line sections of the LCY. These informal networks shaped the three Bosnian leaderships that emerged from the fighting and were charged with (1) implementing the peace; (2) working directly with the wide array of international military and civilian agencies mandated to implement the agreement; and (3) facilitating a transition to stable civilian rule. It should have been no surprise that individuals in these vital and informal networks of authority would resist international efforts to compel them to find consensus on cosmopolitan political principles that appealed far more to lawyers in Geneva than to their true constituents – the ordinary people in Doboj, Livno, or the Srebrenica displaced persons community. It should also have been no surprise that these leaders, powerful in good measure because of their ties to these informal networks, displayed little acceptance of the universal value of modern liberalism that is rooted in market economies, cultural heterogeneity, and Western-style political pluralism marked by

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the routine transfer of power among relatively similar and mutually loyal parties. The continuity of personnel extended to the permanent bureaucracy. One international administrator stationed in BiH reflected that ‘The corridors of government in most former East bloc states harbor substantial numbers of officials implacably opposed to reform, for personal as well as philosophical reasons’ (Huddleston 1999: 156). Yet despite their opposition to many reforms, some members of the old guard were well placed to benefit from privatisation: ‘Virtually the only locals with resources to buy state-owned enterprises were members of a rather unholy alliance among the ruling parties, the increasingly powerful mafia, and elements of the old socialist nomenklatura’ (Donais 2002: 5).

Concluding discussion The most significant continuity of all was the persistence of nationalist and identity aspirations, and the inability of various constitutional configurations to contain them. Nationalism and ethnicity remained the principal political referents for the majority of the BiH population in the post-Dayton era, and attempts to establish a civic, plural Bosnian ‘nation-ness’ foundered (Nikiforou 1997: 84; Donais and Pickel 2003: 19). Post-Dayton nationalisms were not exact replicas of pre-war nationalisms. One of nationalism’s special talents is its transformative ability that allows it to adapt to changing circumstances. The war and Dayton presented Croat and Serb nationalism with tremendous challenges and opportunities. Bosnian Muslim identity also faced immense contextual change: the group was transformed from being a tolerated minority in a socialist state to a majority in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the space of a few years. The longer-term historical perspective is to be recommended as it allows us to see the hybridities and fusions that characterise politics and society in this region. Thus Bosnia-Herzegovina should be seen as a post-socialist society as well as a post-conflict society. Baskin’s (2007: 261) perspective is the correct one: ‘The nasty war in BosniaHerzegovina that took place from 1991 to 1995 was one act in the failed drama of the Yugoslav transition from one-party socialism to a liberal, democratic order.’ This is not to deny the significance of the war and the Dayton Peace Accords. It is, instead, to recognise the utility of a much longer historical timeframe that allows us to see how

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values and identities persist and morph to produce hybrid political orders. Just as it is important to emphasise the continuity of nationalist and identity-based aspirations, it is important to recognise the persistence of ideas of co-existence and tolerance in BiH and the wider region. In keeping with observations on everyday conflict management in Northern Ireland made in Chapter 8 of this volume, Bringa (1995: 21) emphasises the everyday tolerance required for stability in a multiethnic society: To most Bosnians (particularly those of the post-World War II generations) difference in ethnoreligious affiliation was one of the many differences between people, like the differences between men and women, villager and city dweller. It was acknowledged and often joked about but it never precluded friendship. Indeed, for these Bosnians being Bosnian meant growing up in a multicultural and multireligious environment, an environment where cultural pluralism was intrinsic to the social order. Dealing with cultural difference was part of people’s most immediate experience of social life outside of the confines of their home, and it was an essential part of their identity. In the village mutual acknowledgement of cultural diversity and coexistence was an intrinsic quality of life and people’s everyday experience, and therefore was an important element in the process of individual identity formation. Oberschall (2000: 987) recounts how many Yugoslavs were stunned by the onset of war given the relatively tranquil inter-ethnic relations that they had experienced among their personal and professional acquaintanceships. Clearly the war, ethnic mobilisation and cleansing, inflammatory speeches and actions by political leaders, and Dayton all posed severe challenges for individuals and communities who favoured ethnic tolerance over division. Yet everyday reconciliation and tolerance did take place, and doubtless it was partially inspired by a cultural memory of inter-group interaction before the war. Minority return (or the return of displaced persons to areas in which they constitute an ethnic or religious minority) was also able to take place in significant numbers (Buyse 2009). The chief point is that alongside the narrative of war and division, we must also be aware of the persistence of voices for tolerance and pluralism. All four parts of the hybridisation model are represented in the case study of Bosnia-Herzegovina before and after the 1992–1995 war.

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The coercive power of the liberal peace agents was evident through the NATO bombing of Serbia to the conference table, the arming of Bosnian Muslims, and the interventionism of the OHR. This coercion was not always applied consistently (see, for example, the failure of the European Union to restrain Serbia in the 1990s). The incentivising power of the liberal peace was evident in the creation of a pro-peace political economy by the EU, USAID, the United Nations, and hundreds of INGOs. Financial, material, and esteem-related resources poured into the country. A political ‘market’ was created in terms of seats in the parliament, grants for political party training, civil society capacitybuilding, and the supposed ‘carrot’ of membership of the European Union. Some political and civic actors sought to avoid entanglements with international actors and their local agents. But such entanglements were difficult to avoid given the scale of the statebuilding exercise and the inter-group competitive dynamic that develops in deeply divided societies. Local political actors were drawn into a post-Dayton political architecture and issue agenda that was, in significant ways, the creation of international actors. Once enmeshed in that political architecture, it was difficult for local parties to extricate themselves; this applied even to nationalist parties who were fundamentally opposed to aspects of the Dayton process. The third part of the hybridising model was evidenced through local resistance to international peace-support efforts. While the Stabilisation Force (SFOR), IFOR, and the EU-backed police forces had to deal with riot situations, they did not face outright armed opposition. This was partly because of the overwhelming force deployed by NATO prior to the Dayton Accords, but also because the political leaders of the Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, and Croats realised that little was to be gained by further warfare. Instead of outright insurgency, as was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq, resistance took other forms. One form of resistance was the exploitation of the statebuilding agenda in order to maximise the autonomy of nationalist groups. For example, nationalist groups demanded and were ceded the right to control the privatisation of state assets in the areas under their control (Donais and Pickel 2003: 11). Another form of resistance was non-engagement with some of the Dayton-mandated institutions and directives. Delay was another favoured form of resistance, as legislators in BiH dragged their heels over the implementation of legislation championed by the OHR. Judging by the frustration of the OHR, and by the remedial interventions it felt compelled to take to put Dayton ‘back on track’, much of this resistance was successful.

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The final aspect of the hybridisation model, the ability of local actors to deploy alternatives to the liberal peace, can also be seen in the BiH case study. The alternatives were often to be found on a small scale and at the local level. They did not take the form of fully fledged alternatives to the massive internationally supported statebuilding and peacebuilding project. At times these alternatives had a mocking quality and were intended to highlight the coercive nature of the Dayton-imposed system. For example, the Croatian nationalist party, the Croatian Democratic Union, held its own unofficial referendum on Croat rights in 2000 to coincide with OSCE-organised elections (OSCE 2000). Bosnian Serbs and Croats, and their political parties, looked towards Serbia and Croatia for material and moral support in the post-Dayton period. To a certain extent, this provided them with an alternative locus of political and cultural power and identification. Perhaps the most significant alternative was the persistence of notions of nationalism that ran counter to the stated aims of the Dayton settlement, which emphasised – rhetorically at least – civic pluralism. The fortunes of nationalist parties ebbed and flowed in the post-Dayton period, and the OHR worked hard to frustrate many of the gains made by nationalists. Yet nationalism remained a significant trope in political life in BiH, as evidenced by the significant ‘memory wars’ whereby various sides attempted to assert their version of history and commemoration (Jelacic 2005). Such activities provided an alternative political project to the multi-ethnic project envisioned by the international architects of Dayton. The case of BiH illustrates the dynamic nature of the four-part hybridisation model. Circumstances compelled international and local actors to change their course of action in reaction to each other. Despite the enormous coercive and incentivising capabilities deployed by the international community, they were unable to achieve the smooth, uniform, or efficient rolling out of the liberal peace. The liberal statebuilding project in Bosnia-Herzegovina was full of distorting factors: the socialist legacy, the persistence of nationalism, the whims of particular High Representatives, and the attention span of international donors all combined to produce a hybridised peacebuilding environment. The distorted nature of the BiH liberal peacebuilding project is in sympathy with the picture that emerges from the other case study chapters in this volume. In Afghanistan, the post-Taliban state has failed to achieve a monopoly of violence, partly through its co-option of warlords and militia commanders. In Northern Ireland, the notion and practice of civil society is bastardised through the British government’s sponsorship of non-plural organisations and its acceptance of these groups into

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civil society. In Iraq, the privatisation agenda – one of the centre-pieces of the reconstruction strategy put together by the western ousters of Saddam Hussein – has been a miserable failure. Yet the everyday economy, or the political economy of necessity, is thriving. In Lebanon, the western-sponsored governance agenda has to take cognisance of the strength of Hezbollah. The picture that emerges is that the liberal peace is neither invincible nor uniform. Instead, it is forced to take account of other actors and forces.

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7 Hybrid Governance: Lebanon

And at a certain moment a Druze on the battlefield laid hold of one of the Christians and they clinched and threw each other and got up again and did not cease their mutual assaults, keeping close together until they reached the seashore where they tumbled into the water and yet they continued their fight. And while this was going on, a huge wave came and carried them out of their depth and drowned them both. I. Abka-riu-s, on sectarian strife in 1860 (1920: 71–2)

Introduction Governance interventions are often subtle, taking the form of incremental, behind-the-scenes changes in how governments operate and how they deliver services. Those who promote governance interventions tend to use language that is difficult to argue against: change is necessary to enhance fairness, efficiency, and participation. Although more velvet glove than iron fist, governance interventions can be truly transformative. They can recalibrate a series of relationships that make up society: between citizens, between citizens and the state, between citizens and the market, and between the state and the market. In the case of societies emerging from violent conflict, governance reforms are often driven by external actors, and so it is possible to develop a narrative of governance reform as a top-down, technocratic process through which western administrative values and practices are injected into a society as part of an international peace-support intervention. While governance interventions are indeed largely top-down and externally driven, the picture is not always so clear cut. Hybrid forms of governance abound in which endogenous and exogenous 158

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forms of governance conflict, co-exist, and cooperate. This chapter attempts to capture this hybridisation, using a case study of governance reforms in post-civil war Lebanon. The case study reveals the extent to which the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UNDP, the European Union, and others embarked on intrusive and highly political projects under the guise of ‘efficiency’ and ‘participation’. Central to these governance interventions has been the elimination of corruption. Yet this chapter demonstrates that opposition to corruption is not the preserve of external actors. Many Lebanese actors oppose corruption, including Hezbollah, the Shiite politico-military organisation that is classed by the United States and others as ‘terrorist’. So Hezbollah and liberal peace champions such as the World Bank share the goal of eliminating corruption and have instituted and supported anticorruption governance ‘reforms’. This chapter illustrates the hybridities attendant on liberal peace governance interventions. It shows the blurring of boundaries between categories that are labelled ‘internal’ and ‘external’, ‘local’ and ‘international’, or ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’. The chapter also shows how resistance and alternatives to the liberal peace emerged from Lebanese sources. While the focus is on Lebanon as a case study, it is hoped that many of the insights in this chapter will be relevant to other societies undergoing internationally supported peacebuilding or development interventions. Indeed, governance interventions are not unique to societies emerging from civil war or authoritarianism. They will be familiar to the billions of inhabitants of developing world states, as international actors have sought to help ‘engineer’ these states towards a ‘better’ way of managing their affairs. Externally driven governance interventions will also be familiar to citizens in the developed world, especially in the wake of the global financial crisis as international financial institutions dictate budgetary conditions and regulatory mechanisms (RTE 2010; Hannon 2010). In the context of liberal peace interventions, governance is often seen as part of wider statebuilding processes. While the constitutional and political aspects of statebuilding were dealt with in Chapter 6, governance plays such a crucial role in liberal peacebuilding that it deserves its own chapter. This chapter begins by introducing the concept of governance and explaining how governance ‘reform’ and ‘good governance’ have become centre-pieces of liberal peace interventions. The chapter then outlines some of the criticisms that are commonly levelled against governance interventions in developing world and post-war contexts. Following this conceptual discussion, the chapter moves on

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to the Lebanese case study. The peculiar context of Lebanon is outlined, before the chapter describes the extent, significance, and origin of governance interventions by international institutions. Importantly, international actors were not alone in their frustration at the perceived and actual inefficiencies of the Lebanese state. National actors, including Hezbollah – an organisation that ostensibly stands opposed to many articles of faith in the liberal peace canon – shared this frustration and instituted their own steps to ameliorate it. In a sense, Hezbollah (and others from Lebanon’s civil society) introduced their own governance reforms. The chapter seeks to illustrate the complexity of the governance and reform landscape, and counters arguments that ‘good governance’ is the exclusive preserve of international actors. Fieldwork conducted by the author in 2006 and 2008 informs many of the insights in this chapter.

Governance and its critiques Discussion of governance is hampered by at least two factors. Firstly, definitions of governance tend to be so all-encompassing that they are unwieldy catch-all categories. Secondly, much of the literature on governance (especially policy documents from international organisations) is cursed with a dullness that would make even the most earnest scholar wilt. Governance refers to the guiding principles, decisionmaking processes, and operating procedures of organisations and collectives. It is defined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (2002) as ‘the process whereby public institutions conduct public affairs, manage public resources and guarantee the realization of human rights’. As adopted by one its principal champions, the United Nations Development Programme, it applies to states, the private sector, and civil society and strives towards a mutually supportive relationship between all three sectors (UNDP 1997). Most emphasis in terms of governance intervention, however, has been on the state, and particularly on ‘reforming’ state bureaucracies in the developing world so that they operate in a manner deemed to be transparent and equitable. Governance reforms are particularly interested in the coherence of policy formulation and effective public administration (Alence 2004: 164). Internationally sponsored good governance interventions may take the form of introducing a new code of conduct for a public utility provider, distributing leaflets to make citizens aware of their rights, or training civil defence personnel so that they can respond more effectively in the event of a natural disaster.

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The themes of accountability and transparency run through virtually all governance interventions. Such interventions invoke the Weberian spirit, and attempt to perfect the state bureaucracy so that it operates efficiently using formal and advertised mechanisms, and is unhindered by the sectarianism and clientelism that might restrict public goods and services to some citizens. The need to tackle corruption has become a core part of the governance intervention agenda. The issue has universal resonance in that donor states and their publics demand value for money, and publics in target countries are aware of waste and the diversion of funds (Kolstad et al. 2008). Given that corruption may potentially take place at any level of government, and can vary enormously in terms of scale and type, external governance agents may be tempted to scrutinise all levels of government. In 1996 the World Bank announced six Worldwide Governance Indicators that illustrate the ambitious and potentially all-embracing character of governance interventions: voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption (Apaza 2009: 139). In one reading, governance reforms can be interpreted as neutral, non-ideological attempts to improve the technical efficiency of government policymaking systems in order to improve the lot of citizens. The language employed by many advocates of governance reforms is enticingly straightforward. Thus, according to the World Bank (2003: 1, 23): Public governance relationships ... manifest themselves in almost every situation in which individuals and groups interact with the government. The challenge for governments and people ... is to expand the interactions that are smooth and productive and to minimise the ones that are frustrating and wasteful – in a move towards ‘good’ governance. If public governance is the exercise of authority in the name of the people, good governance is exercising that authority in ways that respect the integrity, rights, and needs of everyone within the state. ... There is no mystery to developing governance. It requires just two things: open commitment followed by action by all. If the people and governments – the primary actors in governance – join together in the process, everyone in the region can have access to the fruits of faster growth, to better public services, and to a future replete with the attributes of human development. Such ‘motherhood and apple-pie’ descriptions of the benefits of governance reform abound in reports and policy briefs from international

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organisations. In this view, governance is non-political and progressive. Moreover, it can connect with universal projects of human betterment such as attaining the Millennium Development Goals (Alberti and Bertucci 2007: 3). Proponents of governance interventions point to the prominent role played by bad governance in conflict and poverty. According to this logic, the causes of conflict and underdevelopment can be addressed by tackling bad governance. McAuslan (1996: 169) summarises these sentiments in relation to Africa: The blunt fact is ... that African governments have been characterised by their incompetence, their dishonesty and their authoritarianism. Good officials and politicians have been driven out by bad ... and much of Africa’s considerable resources (and aid) have been squandered or stolen by those bad persons. The argument that ... ‘Western’ imposed boundaries and systems of government do not mesh with traditional African boundaries and systems of government is unconvincing. It is also devaluing the efforts of all the fine public servants and scholars in Africa who have worked for and argued for accountability, transparency and probity in government and public affairs, often in extremely difficult and dangerous circumstances, long before the World Bank discovered the virtues of those concepts, at least for others if not for itself. The remedy therefore would be to ‘institute regular “good governance” audits in governments’ (McAuslan 1996: 174). By minimising the opportunities for sectarian or ethnically motivated abuse of the distribution of public goods and resources, the opportunities for individuals and groups to become disaffected would also be minimised. As a result, governance reform has the potential to become a conflict-prevention tool. Thus good governance became a key part of United Nations interventions in Timor-Leste, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and elsewhere (Cogen and de Brabandere 2007; Inoguchi and Bacon 2003: 169). Before we move on to more critical readings of governance interventions, it must also be acknowledged that, in many cases, governance reforms have improved citizens’ access to goods and services, introduced meritocracy into government, and improved participation, transparency, and accountability. In the critical view, governance interventions are a Trojan horse used by international actors to mould developing world states into ‘mini-me’ versions of western states in order that they operate in ways that are amenable to the political and economic desires of leading states and

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international financial institutions. This critical view regards ‘good governance’ interventions as inherently normative and as political projects that seek to overwrite local and traditional forms of governance with apparently superior and modern forms of governance. According to the critics, governance interventions follow a script written by leading states and international financial organisations, and amount to a form of expropriation in which international actors meddle in the affairs of sovereign states. It is a process of one-way knowledge transfer in which western ‘best practice’ must be adopted by states that are often desperately poor or lacking in capacity following the dislocation of war. Critics also point to the extreme hypocrisy of proponents. Thus, for example, the IMF may demand changes in how national ministries are organised to make them more accountable, while the IMF’s own governance structures remain largely unaccountable (Woods and Lomardi 2006). While proponents of good governance interventions may point to local partners who embrace change for the benefit that it promises their society, critics say that target countries often have little choice and are compelled to adopt governance reforms through donor conditionality regimes. According to the critics, governance interventions reek of neo-colonialism. Rather than holding territory and maintaining garrisons, the new colonialists use edicts from the international financial institutions that compel states to act in particular ways or face penalties. Gunboat diplomacy has been replaced by regular monitoring visits by IMF inspectors. Governments are compelled to gather and publish information that allows their international ‘mentors’ to maintain ongoing surveillance of their performance. By adopting governance ‘reforms’, states become enmeshed in a system of compliance and reporting through which state sovereignty is compromised. The critics charge that under the guise of ‘reform’ and improving efficiency, a consortium of international actors can change the entire nature of a state and how it relates to its citizens, civil society, business, and international actors. Certainly the impact of governance reforms can be far-reaching. Although they can be depicted as innocuous and sensible, they can also have a profound impact on the political life of the citizen. Consider, for example, the case of a rural-dwelling family in Indonesia or Nigeria who have become accustomed to a clientelist polity. This system is based on exchange and may be flavoured by sectarianism, kinship, or other prevailing cultural mores. Although very different from that experienced by readers more used to western democratic polities, this system of governance may be the ‘natural’ or intuitive political order to our Indonesian or Nigerian family in that it

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conforms to cultural practices and values (for example, patrimonialism). In order to secure public goods, the family would mediate their concerns through the head of a local prominent family who was also the mayor of the local municipality. So, for example, the family would speak with the mayor in order to secure an electricity supply, or a public sector job for their son. In return, the mayor would expect the family’s votes in elections, and the family would show respect to the mayor by inviting him to family occasions such as weddings. The political economy of this exchange would be implicit, and, for the most part, it works for both parties. For western observers, however, this is a clientelist relationship that relies on the arbitrary use of power. Under good governance ‘reforms’, the United Nations Development Programme may work with the Ministry of the Interior to develop a plan to re-organise local government so that it functions in a more meritocratic, formal, and transparent manner. This might involve the dispatch of a governance programme officer (perhaps a graduate from the capital city) to the local municipality. Once there, the governance officer would institute reforms to formalise the business of the municipal offices. Rather than having an informal chat with the mayor and seeking his approval for a request for an electricity supply, constituents – including our Indonesian or Nigerian family – may have to fill out a form and await the allocation of resources according to a publicly announced rubric. As a result of such governance reforms, the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the polity is changed. A change that to western eyes is entirely innocuous and merely introduces meritocracy into the distribution of public goods and services has the capacity to rupture finely calibrated and culturally embedded systems of exchange and political behaviour. The political dynamic of the local area may be changed, clearing the way for other political actors and types of political interaction between citizens and their representatives. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of many governance interventions is their subtly, or their ability to encourage small-scale changes in citizen behaviour that, when observed incrementally and at the societal level, amount to fundamental change. Daly (2003: 117) observes how governance interventions can modulate ‘conduct through inculcating a command structure in the constitution of the individual and thereby “normalising” society and recreating social solidarity’. Taken incrementally, multiple pin-prick governance interventions have the capacity to effect significant change. Such change may be difficult to notice in everyday social and political interactions. Once the individual and

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society are acculturated to such change, the new system of governance becomes the standard. Governance interventions have often taken the form of awareness campaigns that alert social actors to the existence of their obligations as citizens and to the responsibilities of the state. A mix of incentives, coercion, and administrative fiat may then compel citizens to moderate their behaviour (Zürn 2003: 348). Also potentially insidious is the manner in which many proponents of governance reform frame the justifications for their preferred form of change. Under the mantle of ‘reform’, governance interventions are depicted as being necessary and as part of an automatically progressive agenda. Implicit in the qualifier ‘good’ (as in ‘good governance’) is the notion that internationally recommended governance practices are – at all times – superior to prevailing governance practices that doubtless draw on values deemed to be normatively bad, such as tradition or custom. Target countries and their citizens are encouraged to ‘normalise’ to ‘international standards’ that were set by a self-selected group of good-governance-promoting states. Critics point out that governance interventions are an ethnocentric exercise whereby values and practices deemed acceptable by prominent liberal peace agents overwrite traditional and customary practices. This means that far from being value-free, good governance interventions have a strong ideological dimension evidenced by a bias towards democratic and neo-liberal types of governance. Over the past two decades, many governance interventions have extended far beyond improving administrative efficiency, to the extent that the term ‘democratic governance’ has become commonplace, as though governance interventions must automatically include reforms deemed ‘democratic’. The democratic aspect of many good governance interventions strays far beyond electoral process to encompass a much wider range of issues connected with public participation in the polity and the extension of human rights. Thus civil society enhancement, gender equality, awareness of minority groups, constitutional reform, and financial transparency all come under the governance remit (Khatib 2009: 4). While all governance issues are political to some extent, many of these issues are acutely political and touch on subjects that are fundamental to the organisation of society. A neoliberal bias is also evident in many governance reform interventions through the unquestioning association of ‘efficiency’ with the private sector. In this view, many governance interventions are part of a wider ideological project that sees the rolling back of the state and the shifting of power to the market as means to ‘liberate’ citizens

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(Daly 2003: 114). According to the critics, it is no coincidence that ideologically neo-classical organisations such as the IMF and World Bank are among the strongest advocates of governance reforms, and micro-manage governance programmes once in place. A final criticism of governance interventions in the developing world, and in societies emerging from violent conflict, is that the emphasis on technocratic change means that although it is possible to make a government more efficient in its dealings with citizens, this does not necessarily mean that the citizen experience is improved. It is possible to have what Youngs (2009: 911) terms ‘upgraded authoritarianism’ through which a state adopts the discourse of reform, meets internationally set targets, and implements modest governance initiatives but does not engage in a genuinely liberating reform process (Bayart 2000: 226). Egypt provides a good example of this. The government has engaged in a series of governance reforms driven by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the UNDP, the EU, and others. According to the OECD, the Egyptian government has an ‘ambitious’ public governance reform agenda that includes the modernisation of governance structures, improving public service delivery, increasing integrity and transparency, and improving capacity for reform (OECD undated: 1–2). In the 1975–2005 period, total US assistance to Egypt totalled $28bn, with substantial amounts being directed towards governance projects (USAID undated). The USAID strategy was ‘tailored to respond to the mode, pace and scope of political liberalization in Egypt’ (USAID 2004: 20). Yet, for all the US investment, evidence of Egyptian political liberalisation – up until the 2011 protests – is difficult to find. Emergency legislation has been in place since 1981, and has been regularly renewed and extended (Amnesty International 2010). By 2010 President Mubarak had been in power for three decades, maintained brutal repression of political opponents, and was reported to be attempting to engineer a political succession to his son. Around 9,500 people were imprisoned for political offences (Fisk 2010). Egypt was able to ‘talk the governance talk’, and was paid handsomely to do so, yet the regime was unwilling to engage in meaningful political reform. In the decade between 1999 and 2009, and despite sustained governance interventions, Egypt actually fell three places (from 120th to 123rd) in the UNDP development index (UNDP 1999: 136; UNDP 2009). In summary, governance plays a core role in liberal peace interventions, and seems to have been elided with statebuilding and peacebuilding to comprise a large, but not very well-defined, mass of policy interventions.

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Governance programmers believe that governance reforms will allow them to tackle the poverty, exclusion, and underdevelopment that they deem responsible for conflict onset and re-occurrence. Critics charge that ‘peace as governance’ is intrusive and ethnocentric, and takes power away from citizens and developing world states despite the rhetoric of empowerment and participation (Sriram 2008). In some cases there has been something of a rollback in terms of internationally sponsored governance agendas. The ambitious ‘shopping lists’ of some donor states have been pared back to take account of contexts that prove resistant to reform. ‘Good enough governance’ has replaced the ever-expanding governance agenda (Grindle 2004). In other cases, the security imperative brought on by the War on Terror has meant that states from the global north prioritise securitising the state over governance issues. Yet, despite the rollback, governance interventions remain at the heart of liberal peace interventions, and the north–south dynamic remains intact. Having sketched some of the debates surrounding governance as part of internationally sponsored peacebuilding and peacemaking programmes, the chapter now considers the case of Lebanon. Following a brief overview of the Lebanese context, the chapter turns to international (that is, western) governance interventions in the period after the 1975–1990 civil war. These interventions were extensive, intrusive, and largely driven by western states. Yet it would be incorrect to say that the governance goals (especially the elimination of corruption) were the exclusive property of international actors who championed the liberal peace. Many Lebanese actors shared a distaste for corruption. Yet liberal peace actors in the form of the EU, the UNDP, the IMF, and others had the material power and leverage that allowed them to set the formal anti-corruption agenda and re-orient the state in service of externally set goals.

Lebanon in the aftermath of wars Rather than present a narrative history of modern Lebanon, it is perhaps more efficient to highlight three factors that have shaped the Lebanese polity and are particularly relevant to our interest in governance reforms: the persistence and deeply ingrained nature of confessional politics, the penetration of the state and society by external actors, and a vibrant civil society in the context of a constrained state. The first of these factors is the extent to which Lebanon’s political, social, economic, and cultural life is dominated by politico-religious

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divisions. Virtually all aspects of life are in some way shaped by a primary loyalty to Shiite, Sunni, Maronite, or Druze identity. This has profound implications for the nature of the Lebanese state and the extent to which its citizens are willing to identify with the state as a ‘neutral’ entity that is worthy of loyalty. The 1989 Ta’if Accord is based on the demographic fiction of rough Muslim–Christian parity (there has been no census since 1932, so accurate population figures do not exist). In fact Muslims are in the majority, but the depth of Sunni–Shiite divisions means that this is a divided bloc. Divisions are accentuated by the multiple political parties, political dynasties, and shifting (sometimes improbable) political alliances. The 1989 Accord provided for a consociational parliamentary republic with a rough powersharing rubric in which the Prime Minister is always a Sunni, the Speaker of Parliament a Shiite, and the President a Christian. The powersharing modus vivendi was guaranteed by Syrian oversight, but the uneasy post-civil war peace has stuttered in the 2000s following the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the so-called Cedar Revolution of the same year, which led to the departure of Syrian troops, a rise in sectarianism, and more apparent interference by external powers. Lebanon represents a near-perfect security dilemma in which parties of roughly equal size warily observe each other and must calculate whether the others’ moves are pacific or threatening. In very broad-brush terms, Lebanon’s main political actors (some of whom retain militias) are aligned around two groupings. The 14 March group is a loose alliance of Sunni, Druze, and Maronite parties who are generally oriented towards western political interests and have received strong political and material backing from the United States, the European Union, and Saudi Arabia. The 8 March group comprises the two largest Shiite political groupings, Hezbollah and Amal, and is aligned with Syria and Iran (Knio 2008: 451). While it would be incorrect to depict Lebanon’s political actors as mere ciphers of external actors, the extent to which external political actors have penetrated the state, polity, and economy is remarkable. This porosity has multiple sources: a location in a very sensitive region in which both neighbours (Syria and Israel) are chronically insecure, a history of colonialism, an open economy that relies heavily on financial services and tourism, a very large diaspora population, and the presence of large number of refugees (mainly Palestinian and Iraqi). Two further sources of porosity are crucial, though. Firstly, the Lebanese state has been unwilling and unable to fully assert its sovereignty over Lebanese territory and governance. This has allowed external actors to play an

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enlarged role. One frustrated interviewee in the civil service spoke of INGOs arriving in Beirut airport and immediately driving south to engage in reconstruction following the 2006 Hezbollah–Israeli war without registering with the Lebanese authorities. In many ways the government has abdicated its responsibilities or non-state actors have felt emboldened to adopt roles normally associated with the state. It is perhaps telling that Lebanon’s armed forces played virtually no role in the 2006 Hezbollah–Israeli war, despite the scale of the Israeli incursion and Israel’s attacks on infrastructure and the civilian population. In part this was because of a realpolitik self-preservation assessment that its armed forces stood no chance against Israel’s hi-tech US-backed military. But it also reflected a sense of selective responsibility: Hezbollah got itself into this mess and it could get itself out of it. The second additional factor explaining the extraordinary permeability of Lebanon is that virtually all political actors in Lebanon have actively sought external patrons. For client states, Lebanon has been part of a regional power play. A series of Middle Eastern and international conflicts have spilled into Lebanon: Palestinians versus Israel, Sunni versus Shiite, an orientation towards the west versus an orientation towards Syria and Iran, an antipathy towards Israel versus support or willingness to make peace with it, and rivalry between Qatar and Saudi Arabia to see who could become the preeminent dealmaker in the region. Reconstruction efforts after the 2006 Israeli–Hezbollah war became, to a certain extent, a proxy conflict between various external parties who sought to extend their influence in Lebanon (Mac Ginty 2007). Iran and Saudi Arabia each ploughed approximately $1bn into the reconstruction efforts in an attempt to demonstrate their loyalty to particular factions within Lebanon (Hamieh and Mac Ginty 2009). The porosity of Lebanon and the inability and unwillingness of the state to assert its sovereignty are important given our interest in governance interventions. Many within the state apparatus welcomed the external governance interventions, but even if the state had opposed them it was in a poor position to put this opposition into practice. The final contextual factor worth highlighting is Lebanon’s vibrant associational culture. In addition to the presence of many INGOs and bilateral donors who have reacted to Lebanon’s reconstruction, reconciliation, and development needs, Lebanon hosts many indigenous civil society organisations. Predominantly, these organisations are confessional and serve the needs of individual communities or localities in which particular confessional groups dominate. The tendency

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of civil society to reflect divisions in a deeply divided society is further discussed in Chapter 8. As with other deeply divided societies, it is prudent to adopt a generous interpretation of civil society in relation to Lebanon, even if this interpretation departs from the image of a liberal and plural civil society championed by many in western states. Yet it would be injudicious to view Lebanon’s third sector merely as an extension of the confessional fissures that dominate the state. For example, the main client base for the highly professional Imam Al Sadr Foundation is Shiite, in keeping with the demographics of southern Lebanon, where it primarily operates. But many non-Shiites have also benefited from the Foundation’s educational and health-care services (author observations 2006). The preference of many Lebanese to contribute to, or benefit from, ingroup associations should not be taken as a blunt indicator of bigotry. Instead, it is often more convenient, secure, and culturally appropriate to inhabit a single community civic space. Importantly, though, many inhabitants (both citizens and the very large number of Palestinian and latterly Iraqi refugees) have been forced to rely on civil associations because of the inability or unwillingness of the state to provide social services. State capacities have been severely limited by the civil war, Israeli occupation, and Israeli incursions and attacks. For example, Israel has a long history of destroying Lebanon’s electricity infrastructure, thus forcing the Lebanese state to devote resources that could otherwise be directed to social provision to emergency infrastructural renewal programmes. Kingston (2002: 1) notes how the absence of an effective state compelled many Lebanese to establish alternatives sources of social provision: ‘Hence a wider and more interactive notion of governance is inherent in the Lebanese context.’ The confessional nature of the polity has meant bias in the provision of public goods and services. Clientelism, which operates along confessional and kinship lines, is embedded in the political culture, with the result that public goods are often offered or withheld according to religious identity (Hamieh 2007; Peleikis 2001). A final factor that has limited state provision has been a widely shared post-civil war consensus in favour of a small state. Lebanon has little tradition of full public services provision, with the result that many citizens have become acculturated to either relying on their own resources or looking to non-state sources for their basic needs. Interestingly, and despite its own programmes of social provision, Hezbollah is ideologically committed to a small state, a trait that it shares with many other political actors in Lebanon.

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Governance interventions in Lebanon Incremental growth of western governance interventions The Ta’if Accord in 1989 and the end of the civil war in 1990 did not herald a rush of governance interventions by western states as part of wider statebuilding interventions. The liberal peace came only gradually to Lebanon, and not in the form of the ‘liberal peace-max’ coercive statebuilding interventions experienced by Afghanistan, Bosnia, or Iraq. Syria, rather than the United Nations or the United States and its allies, was the main post-civil war external actor in Lebanon. Syrian troops and intelligence agents maintained a visible presence in Lebanon and acted as a stabilising force in the initial post-civil war years (Byman 1997: 6; Zahar 2002, 2005). ‘Pax Syriana’ limited the access of other states and institutions to the levers of power in Lebanon. Yet in the years following the end of the civil war a number of factors increased the desire of, and opportunity for, western governance agents to further their involvement in Lebanon. Firstly, ‘good governance’ ascended the issue agenda of leading states and international financial institutions during the 1990s and early 2000s. The champions of the liberal peace became convinced of the potential of governance interventions to address the poverty–underdevelopment–corruption– conflict nexus and so made it an essential part of the intervention toolkit. Secondly, international organisations – and particularly the European Union – developed greater interests and capacities in promoting governance reforms in other states. For example, the EU, as part of its increased attempts to establish foreign policy coherence, developed a Neighbourhood Policy to help promote stability on its borders. Thirdly, the February 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri ignited renewed western interest in Lebanon. It was as though western states suddenly realised that Lebanon was in danger of being ‘lost’ to the Syrian or Iranian fold lest remedial action was taken. Much of this remedial action revolved around bolstering the Sunni-dominated state and ramping up governance interventions. Related to this was western concern at Hezbollah’s continuing appeal among Shiites, its refusal to disarm, and its connections with Iran and Syria in a context dominated by the War on Terror. Fourthly, and not unconnected with Hariri’s assassination, public protests (heavily supported by the US) led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops in late 2005. This was a substantial change in Lebanon’s political landscape and allowed further opportunities for western involvement in Lebanese governance. The so-called Cedar Revolution inflamed

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sectarian tensions and prompted a prolonged constitutional crisis in which the government’s ability to legislate was severely limited. By this stage, an extensive externally driven ‘good governance’ infrastructure was in place throughout Lebanon’s ministries and municipalities. To a certain extent, these governance agents were able to act as a default administration. The final factor that opened the way for the gathering pace of externally promoted governance interventions was the devastation caused by the 2006 Israeli–Hezbollah war. In a piece of stunning crassness, western liberal peace agents exploited Lebanon’s urgent need for humanitarian and reconstruction assistance by tightening the screw of governance ‘reforms’. The picture that emerges is that in the post-civil war decades, western actors increased their interest in governance interventions in Lebanon and developed further institutional capacities to promote such interventions. Governance agents became further embedded into the Lebanese administrative system. In most cases these were Lebanese citizens employed by the UNDP but implementing a script that had been written elsewhere. The continued need for governance reforms The post-civil war context certainly demanded administrative reforms. Sectarianism and clientelism persisted despite the Ta’if Accord’s ‘respect for public liberties, especially freedom of expression and belief, social justice, and quality of rights and duties of all citizens, without discrimination or preference’ (Section 1C). The Accord did not fundamentally change the nature of Lebanese politics, which continued to be organised according to confessionalism and the concentration of power in the hands of political dynasties. Makdisi (1996: 26) observed that ‘The Lebanese state has been resurrected, but as in the pre-war period it is again paralyzed by elite feuds and the neglect of ordinary citizens.’ The post-civil war state was characterised by Choucair (2006: 6) as a ‘confessional oligarchy’, and the particularism inherent in confessionalism acted as a brake on universalist policies, such as the rights agenda (Hamzeh 2001: 176). In order to piece together the national consensus required to end the civil war, various confessional groups had to be ‘bought off’ by the promise of access to power. In blunt terms, it was ‘jobs for the boys’. Militias became political parties and were absorbed into the powersharing government. As Adwan observed (2004: 16), ‘Institutions were undermined, appropriated, and turned into rentseeking fiefdoms.’ The deal-making required to keep the macro-political

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consensus alive limited transparency and accountability and fuelled corruption. Given the confessional fissures in society, the perception of corruption (that out-groups were unfairly benefiting from public resources) led to public disaffection with the political system. The fragile powersharing balance encouraged legislative timidity. Politicians feared that new legislation would upset the delicate powersharing balance, with the result that many did not press for new legislation. Where legislation was introduced, there was no guarantee that it would be implemented or respected (Kingston 2002: 12). Legislation and regulations were also skewed to fit the confessional nature of the polity. For example, the granting of licences to television companies was decided on political grounds, thus paving the way for Maronite, Sunni, Shiite, and Druze stations (Kraidy 2007: 148). Policy was formulated in the absence of accurate baseline data on the requirements of society. Political delicacies meant that Lebanon had last held a census in 1932, with the result that government planning was often based on guesstimates (Faour 2007: 909). As the post-civil war order became embedded, so too did corruption and public disquiet at the extent of ‘nepotism, favoritism, patronage, embezzlement, kick-backs, and vote-buying’ (LTA 2010). The drivers of governance interventions The need for governance reform was not in dispute. The interesting part of the story, from our point of view, is the source of governance reform and the nature of the reforms introduced. In the wake of the civil war there was widespread domestic acceptance of the need for administrative reconstruction. A National Administrative Rehabilitation Programme (NARP) was set out in 1994 to restore capacity to ministries and public agencies, and in 1995 the Office of Minister of State for Administrative Reform (OMSAR) was formed to oversee the short-term rehabilitation and long-term institutional development of the public sector (Geha 2008: 102). Over time, however, the main drivers for governance reform became external actors, especially the international financial institutions, the EU, the OECD, the UNDP, and bilateral donors. The IMF and the World Bank were particularly strident in their interventionism. This can be evidenced by the language used by Lebanon’s own Ministry of Finance to describe IMF and World Bank interventions (emphasis added): ‘The World Bank and IMF warned the Government of Lebanon of the need to take necessary measures toward reform at all levels ... The structural reforms adopted by the Government of Lebanon were taken on the demand of Lebanon’s international partners ...’ (Antoun 2007: 122–3).

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Although the World Bank and the IMF often pulled the levers of governance reform in Lebanon, and although the European Commission was the largest donor to governance programmes, the United Nations Development Programme was the main implementation agent. The UNDP also outsourced many of its governance tasks to INGOs and consultants. While many UNDP activities have been geared towards the particular needs of Lebanon as a post-civil war society (for example, to ‘organise national dialogue on national reconciliation issues’), its activities can also be seen in a regional perspective (UNDP 2010). The Programme on Governance in the Arab Region (POGAR) was inaugurated in 2000 and was ‘dedicated to the promotion and development of good governance practices in the Arab States’ (UNDP 2008b). It was complemented by the Sub-Regional Resource Facility for Arab States (SURF-AS), which aimed to support UNDP Country Offices and maximise knowledge-sharing across the region. Author interviews in Lebanon attested that the UNDP in Lebanon was not an autonomous actor, nor did its actions faithfully reflect the values and wishes of all 192 UN members. Instead, individual states and certain regional organisations and donors were at the forefront of driving the UNDP’s governance agenda. Author interviews stressed that selected EU members (the UK, France, and Italy in particular) were prominent in promoting the governance agenda. Needless to say, UN members such as Burma, Saudi Arabia, and Turkmenistan were not promoting the UNDP’s governance agenda, particularly in relation to democratic governance. In effect, a universal body was appropriated by a few. The European Commission and the UNDP have had a strategic partnership on democratic governance since 2004. Mirroring the UNDP’s regional approach, the European Union has engaged with Lebanon on a regional basis, first through its European–Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) and, from 2004, through its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), which offers ‘neighbours a privileged relationship, building upon a mutual commitment to common values (democracy and human rights, rule of law, good governance, market economy principles and sustainable development)’ (EC 2010; Gänzle 2008). Although many of these governance interventions are termed ‘bilateral projects’, there can be little doubt that the essential dynamic is one way – the transfer of western practices into the target state. The 2003 EU Communication ‘Reinvigorating EU Actions on Human Rights and Democratisation with Mediterranean Partners’ led to a series of bilateral projects: training and technical assistance for the judicial system, the strengthening of civil society, human rights micro-projects, and

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activities to protect the rights of migrant workers (EC 2004). EU policy is set out in the EU-Lebanon Action Plan. Although it dates from January 2007, the Plan does not mention the July 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war or the resultant reconstruction needs. This is remarkable given the scale of destruction and dislocation caused by the war: over 1,000 dead and over $6bn in damage (Mac Ginty 2007). The Plan focused on the EU’s strategic ambitions and amounted to an incredible level of intrusion into the affairs of a sovereign state. It also made clear that governance interventions were about ‘normalising’ the Lebanese state to standards deemed appropriate by the EU. The Plan aimed towards ‘the approximation of Lebanon’s legislation, norms and standards to those of the European Union ... [to] build solid foundations for further economic integration’ (EU 2007: 2). The Plan also noted that ‘Special emphasis must be put on control, accountability and transparency to achieve “good governance”. This requires an update of legislation; especially with regard to redefining the missions and responsibilities of the Ministries and public agencies and consequently restructuring these organisations and mobilising competent and motivated human resources’ (EU 2007: 2). Lebanon’s indebtedness gave external creditors leverage with which to promote the governance agenda. In 2006 the state’s debt-to-GDP ratio was 180 per cent, dropping to 148 per cent in 2009 (Moussaoui 2010). Two international conferences (known as Paris I in 2001 and Paris II in 2002) allowed Lebanon to seek reconstruction assistance and to restructure its public debt. But such assistance came at the price of an ongoing governance reform programme. Citing Lebanon’s failure to adhere to previous IMF reform plans, the US and UK refused to participate in Paris II, leaving France and the Gulf States to take the lead role (Owen 2003). Supported by the World Bank and the European Investment Bank, the reform process was in keeping with neo-liberal interventions in other developing and post-conflict societies and included modernisation of the taxation system, removing barriers to trade and investment, introducing financial instruments to minimise inflation, and restructuring the public sector. By 2004, however, it was becoming clear that Lebanon was having difficulty in meeting its Paris II targets (Daily Star 2004). The impetus to move the reform agenda to another level came from the July 2006 war, which presented international actors with renewed opportunities to press ahead with their governance agenda. While the August 2006 Stockholm Conference on Lebanon’s Early Recovery raised almost $900m in reconstruction pledges, much of it in the form of grants, the January 2007 Paris III conference exploited Lebanon’s predicament (Ministry of Finance 2006). The Paris III conference raised

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significant sums ($7.6bn), but these were tied tightly to the reform process (Ministry of Finance 2007). Author interviews with Lebanese civil servants reported that much of the emphasis in Paris III was on ensuring accountability and transparency in relation to reconstruction donations. A number of oversight committees were established to track financial flows and progress on the reform agenda. Remarks by World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz underscored the extent to which Lebanon’s misfortune was an opportunity for proponents of the liberal peace. He lectured Paris III attendees that ‘Lebanon’s needs go beyond reconstruction’ and that the World Bank was prepared ‘to continue and intensify our efforts in assisting the Government to implement its programs, to build institutional capacity, to improve procurement and financial management to undertake sector reforms’ (Wolfowitz 2007). The Lebanese government presented delegates with a detailed plan in which it emphasised its commitment to the reform process. The reform agenda was sold as the fuel that would help ‘stimulate growth, create employment, reduce poverty, and maintain social and political stability’ (Government of Lebanon 2007). In May 2007, the IMF approved approximately $76m in Emergency Post-Conflict Assistance to Lebanon. Yet, on closer examination, these funds had very little to do with Lebanon’s emergency needs (the emergency phase of Lebanon’s July 2006 war had long passed anyway). The IMF funds were ‘to protect financial stability, contain the budget deficit, and to initiate structural reforms that are crucial to the success of the authorities’ medium-term reform program for 2007–2011’ (IMF 2007). This was governance programming dressed up as emergency aid. In interviews with the author, senior civil servants made clear that overseas governments and the international financial institutions used the fallout from the July 2006 war to press home the urgency of the reform agenda. Moreover, Lebanon’s 2006–2008 constitutional standoff boosted the ability of external governance agents to further their cause. UNDP staff were embedded across government ministries, and so they were able to continue with their agenda amid the political paralysis. Capacity in ministries and municipalities was often low, allowing a small number of UNDP personnel to make a significant difference. This was particularly the case in those southern municipalities that had been occupied by Israel until 2000. Three points are worth making by way of conclusion to this summary of post-civil war governance interventions in Lebanon. Firstly, the governance interventions were extremely political in nature. They went far beyond technocratic reforms concerned with administrative efficiency.

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While all governance issues are political to some extent, issues such as electoral reform, improving the quality of criminal investigations, and inter-communal dialogue – which featured prominently in governance interventions by international organisations – were all extremely political issues. The political nature of these issues was exacerbated by the deeply divided nature of Lebanese society. A strong argument can be made that governance programming amounted to a form of political engineering that opened up Lebanese political space to external scrutiny and attempted to mould this space into a format deemed acceptable by leading states in the global north. Secondly, it is clear that the governance agenda was set by external actors. The EU, the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD, and the UNDP were the donors of governance advice and resources, while Lebanon was the recipient. Governance-related documents from international organisations do not even pay lip-service to the notion that local actors in Lebanon would have anything to contribute to governance programming by way of knowledge, values, or practices. Old-school pedagogy runs through these documents; they have a hectoring tone that makes it clear that Lebanon is deficient and only rapid conformity to international standards will suffice. In much of the development and humanitarian sector, literature from international organisations, international financial institutions, and bilateral donors stresses the utility of local knowledge and practices. Yet such lip-service to the value of indigenous and customary practices is notable by its absence from the policy documents of international organisations on governance reform in Lebanon. Thirdly, although governance reforms were conducted in the name of the Lebanese people, these interventions were conducted largely without consultation. These were top-down interventions. A good example comes from the World Bank’s urging that Lebanon’s nationalised water utility be privatised, that consumers be made to pay for water, and that the national water service be broken up into several companies (Catafago 2005: 80–1). There was no public appetite for this change, nor did the initiative for it come from the Government of Lebanon.

Resistance and alternatives in Lebanon While external actors were able to amass considerable material and moral power in service of the good governance reform agenda, it would be incorrect to depict the governance reform agenda as being the exclusive preserve of external actors. A wide range of Lebanese political and

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civil society actors were interested in governance reform. Evidence of government corruption, inefficiency, discrimination, and incapacity was not difficult to find. Some Lebanese actors were co-opted by external actors and willingly enjoined the externally driven governance reform agenda. Many were compelled to cooperate with the governance reforms: given the economic leverage held by international actors, the Lebanese government had little choice but to take on board governance advice. In some cases, a mix of internal and external forces combined to improve governance. The Lebanese Transparency Association (LTA), for example, is the local chapter of the INGO Transparency International. While it has a local membership and is well represented in Lebanese civil society, the LTA also cooperates with external organisations such as Mercy Corps, the UNDP, and the Center for International Private Enterprise. The organisation’s mission is in tune with those of many international good governance organisations and programmes, thus raising questions about the extent to which the LTA’s agenda can be judged to be Lebanese. In answering such questions it is prudent to identify the locus of power in the governance agenda: who funds governance activities; to what extent do NGOs depend on external funding; do they have complete autonomy in setting their own agenda or do they follow international trends? Hezbollah, the Shiite politico-military organisation, has a long-standing interest in one aspect of the governance agenda: attacking corruption. Yet Hezbollah’s opposition to government corruption was largely independent of the internationally driven good governance agenda. Liberal peace agents and Hezbollah chose very different methods to tackle corruption. For the former, corruption could be tackled via good governance programmes that sought to modify state mechanisms and tutor state functionaries in ‘modern’ and transparent means of governance. Liberal peace governance interventions have largely been about reinforcing the Lebanese state and moulding it in the likeness of a preferred western model of the Weberian state. Hezbollah also judges the Lebanese state to be deficient, equating it with many of aspects of Lebanese society that it would wish to change: corruption, weakness in the face of Israel, and an over-eager orientation towards the west. Its approach to the state has been somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the organisation has developed a ‘state within a state’ in the form of its own militant wing, its own communication systems, and an extensive and sophisticated network of social service provision, mainly directed towards its Shiite constituency. The organisation reasons that since state social provision is partial (in both senses of the word) it is

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compelled to provide basic services. The extensive nature of Hezbollah’s parallel state means that, in some areas, citizens have little reason to have contact with the official state. On the other hand, Hezbollah has not attempted to overthrow the state: it accepts the multicultural nature of Lebanon and realises that Lebanon would provide infertile ground for an Islamic revolution (Shanahan 2005: 5). Indeed, the organisation has been contesting parliamentary elections since 1992, has controlled municipalities, and has participated in powersharing governments – even holding ministries. Its wide Shiite constituency contains many aspirational middle class Shiites who have a strong interest in political and economic stability (Norton 2009a: 35). Knio (2008: 451) postulates that Hezbollah has been forced to engage more closely within the Lebanese political system to protect its interests following the Syrian withdrawal and increased international intrusion in southern Lebanon under the 2006 UN Resolution 1701. Hezbollah thus treads a fine line between being a responsible political party with a role in government, on the one hand, and being a politico-military organisation on the other. The organisation has worked hard to exploit the corruption issue. Its very existence and continuing popularity are a symbol of the deficiencies of the state and rival political groups (Salamey and Pearson 2007). Its growth in popularity among the Shiite population was initially fuelled by frustration with the Amal movement, who were seen as venal, corporeal, and ineffective (Norton 2000b: 24). It has contrasted its own efficient social services with those of the state. This was particularly the case during reconstruction following the 2006 war, when state reconstruction efforts were seen to be slow, overly bureaucratic, and prone to corruption (Mac Ginty and Hamieh 2010a). In contrast, Hezbollah made a show of the speed and efficiency of its reconstruction programme, which included substantial and almost immediate cash handouts to households whose homes had been damaged or destroyed. In multiple interviews with the author, personnel from INGOs, NGOs, and the Lebanese bureaucracy attested that Hezbollah’s approach to reconstruction (based on local knowledge, prior planning, and experienced personnel) was superior to that shown by the state and many international organisations (Mac Ginty and Hamieh 2010a). Within the political system, Hezbollah has stressed the importance of addressing corruption. Shanahan (2005: 4) observed that Hezbollah members ‘are meticulous about maintaining a public reputation for financial probity and an active opposition within government’. Norton (2000b: 32) noted that ‘Hizballahi deputies have earned a reputation for

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acumen and flexibility. They have also sustained a singular reputation for integrity.’

Concluding discussion This chapter has outlined the centrality of ‘good governance’ programmes as part of wider liberal peace statebuilding interventions. It argues that governance programming has the potential to institute very substantial change within a society, changing the nature of political, social, and economic relationships to the extent that society itself changes. Although the changes are often subtle and incremental, and dressed in soft-soap language, governance interventions are no less potent than more explicitly coercive forms of liberal peace. Against this critical view of governance is its potential to further social progress by making governments more efficient in the services they deliver to citizens. The example of governance programming in post-civil war Lebanon is revealing in at least four respects. Firstly, governance interventions are conducted on an extensive scale (and have been ongoing for over two decades). UNDP officials are embedded in the Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, and most ministries and municipalities (UNDP 2010). And behind this tier lies a raft of international organisations and bilateral donor states that have been active in driving the governance agenda. Secondly, the remit of governance programming has moved far beyond the administrative rehabilitation and efficiency demanded in the wake of the civil war. Instead, ‘democratic governance’ has extended into political aspects of society. Much of the governance agenda takes a stand on issues that are contentious in Lebanon, and so it is possible to build a picture of much of the governance agenda contributing to a political agenda that will – in the long term – favour pro-western political actors at the expense of Hezbollah and its allies. Thirdly, the governance agenda is largely a creature of specific elements of the international community (namely the United States, selected European states, and the international financial institutions). Although many Lebanese have an interest in better governance (see, for example, the Lebanese Transparency Association), and although many Lebanese citizens have been co-opted as good governance agents through the UNDP and other employers, the impetus and nature of the governance reforms are primarily external. While Gulf and Arab states were the most significant donors to the post-2006 reconstruction, they paid little attention to governance issues (Mac Ginty and Hamieh

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2010b). Finally and crucially, despite the intensity, breadth, and longevity of governance interventions it has to be said that they have not succeeded in fundamentally altering the confessional basis of society and politics. Lebanon remains a sectarian society. Indeed, there is strong evidence that sectarianism increased in the post-2005 period. It is possible to apply the four-part model of liberal peace hybridisation to the case of post-civil war governance programming in Lebanon. Two parts of the model, liberal peace coercion and incentives, are visible in the ministrations of international good governance agents. International seed money was available for governance projects, but liberal peace actors were willing to deploy coercion in the form of conditionality, or the withholding of financial assistance until certain conditions were met by Lebanon. The power relations with regard to governance (one-way traffic from the global north to Lebanon) can be interpreted as a form of coercion. The pushing through of further governance reforms under the guise of ‘reconstruction’ in the aftermath of the 2006 war was a form of coercive exploitation. But it is also possible to observe the other two elements of the hybridisation model at work in Lebanon: the ability of indigenous actors to resist and subvert the liberal peace, and the ability of indigenous actors to present alternatives to the liberal peace. Hezbollah can be seen as both a resistor to the liberal peace and a provider of an alternative. Clearly this statement demands multiple caveats: Hezbollah’s alternative was limited and was very different from notions of civic pluralism that western liberals would subscribe to. Moreover, given Hezbollah’s links with Iran, it is possible to question the extent to which the organisation can be deemed ‘indigenous’. Nevertheless, Hezbollah’s sustained and demonstrable interest in governance integrity serves as a reminder that liberal peace agents do not have a monopoly on issues associated with the good governance agenda. A hybridisation of the Lebanese context is visible through the extent to which political actors with very different worldviews have been forced to accept each other’s existence. The author remembers visiting a Hezbollah-controlled municipal office in southern Lebanon where the antechamber outside the mayor’s office was crammed with petitioners who wanted the mayor’s attention. Among the local people, and patiently waiting his place in the queue, was an Australian military officer working with the UN. The mayor was the most important gatekeeper in the area, and the military officer was seeking his approval before proceeding with his mission. Liberal peace agents have been unable to wish Hezbollah away, and have been forced to accept their

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popularity with some sections of the Lebanese population. At the same time, Hezbollah’s linkages with the Lebanese state have developed. It held two seats in the Sunni-led powersharing cabinet that lasted from 2009 to 2011. Remarkably, these included the administrative reform portfolio. Hezbollah, an organisation regarded as ‘terrorist’ by many, including the United States, administered parts of the liberal peace agenda via internationally funded governance schemes whose overriding rationale was steering an ‘aberrant’ or ‘deficient’ state towards ‘normality’. So a complex picture of distortion and interaction emerges. Actors are unable to steer a unilateral course. Instead, their positions and policies are implicitly and explicitly established in relation to the positions and policies of other actors. The next chapter examines the last of the pillars of liberal peace interventions: civil society. It uses the case study of Northern Ireland to examine how the concept of civil society was stretched by internal and external actors. The peculiar circumstances of the peace process meant that various actors were able to tolerate (indeed, encourage) uncivil aspects of civil society. As the chapter covers a context within the territory of one of the principal promoters of the liberal peace (the United Kingdom) it is able to raise questions about the differences between the liberal peace ‘at home’ and abroad.

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8 Hybrid Civil Society: Northern Ireland

There is no finer man in the British Empire than the Ulster Protestant, but there is no more persistent tyrant than the Orange Lodge. C. J. O’Donnell (1932: 16) How can one tell, from one minute to another, what is going to happen in an area like that? If war did break out it would probably be a war of extinction. We have the Nationalists sandwiched between our forces, and they only have a few old guns to rely upon. They could not possibly have a chance. Our men are well-armed, and guns and ammunition are constantly being ‘run’ into Ulster. We have the province in the hollow of our hand, and our Volunteers would mobilise in a few hours, if called upon. The Earl of Clanwilliam, February 1914 (cited in Johnson 1918: 27–8)

Introduction Prominent among the pillars of liberal peace interventions is civil society. Proponents of the liberal peace believe that if properly constituted, civil society can assist in the creation of a sustainable peace environment. As a result, enormous international peace assistance resources have been invested into civil society capacity-building over the past two decades. Civil society, it is believed, can act as a bulwark against nationalist governments, deliver peacebuilding services more efficiently than international actors or the state, and help with conflict transformation and democratisation projects. Civil society is congruent with the liberal and neo-liberal agenda in that it offers routes for greater participation 183

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in the polity, and makes clear that the state must face competition from other actors. This chapter presents a critical examination of civil society capacity-building efforts. In keeping with the overall themes of the book – hybridity and the liberal peace – it is interested in the processes whereby civil society dynamics, actors, and institutions come to reflect the complexity of peace implementation contexts. These contexts are hybridised, with actors rarely able to implement their policy aims unilaterally. Instead, they are compelled to compromise and take account of other actors. The chapter begins with a conceptualisation of civil society, followed by a critical overview of the role of civil society in internationally supported peace interventions. The case study for this chapter is the Northern Ireland peace process that began in the mid-1990s. Specifically, the chapter examines the Orange Order, a politico-religious organisation that holds distinctly illiberal views on some issues, but an organisation that has also become an established part of Northern Ireland’s civil society landscape. It illustrates the extent to which the expediency required to keep alive a fragile peace process necessitated the distortion of the concept and practice of civil society. The Orange Order received material support and political protection from the British and Irish governments (the guarantors of the peace process), while holding views that were patently sectarian and non-liberal. Yet, in the context of a deeply divided society, these views were more acceptable than those held by more extreme actors. Moreover, the Orange Order did embark on a process of transformation during the peace process by attempting to re-brand some of its activities, and becoming more open through a series of engagements with actors it traditionally framed as its political opponents. This transformation (and the extent and genuineness of the transformation are open to debate) was largely a product of the liberal peacebuilding environment created by the British and Irish governments, the European Union, and others. The case study of civil society in Northern Ireland illustrates the process of hybridisation at work in liberal peacebuilding contexts. Liberal peace actors, in the form of the British and Irish governments, were able to deploy their incentivising and coercive powers to shape the environment in which civil society operated. At the same time, local civil society actors – including the Orange Order – were able to resist, subvert, and exploit elements of the liberal peace agenda. What emerges from the case study is that the peace process was an enterprise in transformative collective cognition. The circumstances of the peace process meant that actors retreated from previously held positions, engaged with other

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actors, and employed a new (sometimes shared) discourse. The emergence of shared perspectives, goals, and language amounted to a process of hybridisation and the distortion of previously held views and identities. The extent of this distortion becomes clear through the case study, in that a sectarian organisation (the Orange Order) was accepted by the British and Irish governments, and many others, as a legitimate member of civil society in a deeply divided society. This marks a significant retreat from notions of civil society as a bastion of pluralism and tolerance, and has implications for the type of liberal peace being pursued. Indeed, the case of Northern Ireland is made more interesting by its location in the global north, and specifically within the constitutional ambit of the United Kingdom. Given that the UK is a leading exporter of the liberal peace, its tolerance and facilitation of non-liberal actors in the peace process raise questions about its legitimacy in promoting different, ‘purer’, versions of the liberal peace abroad (Mac Ginty 2009: 690–708).

Civil society Despite the protestations of some academics seeking to construct straw men, there is significant consensus on the meaning of civil society – especially within the study of peace and conflict. Tar’s (2009: 5) definition is a good one: ‘the participatory space between the formal apparatus of the state and informal settings of families and atomised individuals, whereby groups emerge to forge associational ties, articulate interests and participate in public affairs’. Most definitional differences relate to the extent of civil society in terms of its actors and activities. Minimalist definitions of civil society relate to a narrow range of pluralist non-state actors (principally NGOs), often at work in discrete programmes such as democratisation or women’s empowerment. More expansive definitions cover a wider range of actors, including those that may not seem particularly inclusive, as well as activities well beyond internationally supported projects and programmes. For two reasons, this book adopts an expansive definition of civil society. Firstly, a narrow NGO-centric view of civil society tends to overlook indigenous and pre-existing civil societies found in all societies prior to violent conflict and international peace-support interventions. Such a civil society may be severely distorted by colonialism, war, globalisation, urbanisation, and international peacebuilding, but it is likely at least to have echoes that survive independently of modern donor-driven NGOs. To reduce civil society to the narrow category of NGOs is to risk overlooking social, political,

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economic, and cultural strata that are not formally organised into groups that look like western-style NGOs. A second reason for adopting a more expansive definition of civil society is to take account of the nature of deeply divided societies. It is reasonable to assume that civil society will reflect elements of the society from which it emerges, or is encouraged to emerge from. This reflection is not a precise mirror effect through which each sector of society is proportionately represented in civil society. Instead, social entrepreneurs will make efforts to ensure that their causes gain prominence. Thus, in deeply divided societies, civil society will not only reflect the wider divisions in society; it is likely to amplify those stances and issues that social entrepreneurs bring to the fore. The inclusion of particularistic elements and attitudes in our understanding of civil society necessitates a move away from the axiomatic equivalence of civil society with civic virtue (Tar 2009: 18). All associational space is, to some extent, political, and in deeply divided societies it is to be expected that activists will seek to exploit this space. Given our interest in liberal peace interventions, it is useful to note the extent to which much construction and reconstruction of civil society is depoliticising and attempts to recast civil society as an anaemic service provider rather than as a political actor that may be radical or critical. Participation in intra-group activities in a deeply divided society does not necessarily denote intolerance. As Varshney (2002: 43) observes, ‘Taking pride in one’s ethnic group and working for the group does not, ipso facto, make one “uncivil”.’ Reasons of convenience, shared culture, and physical security often mean that the in-group is the default space for cultural expression. As we will see in relation to the Orange Order, there is a danger of conceptualising all activities that are not expressly cross-communal in deeply divided societies as somehow backward and unhelpful. The past may be too readily portrayed in negative terms. ‘Tradition is considered intolerant and incorrigible beyond redemption. And modernity is assumed to promise and deliver such a great deal’ (Varshney 2002: 42). While the Orange Order does indeed promote and celebrate sectarianism, not all its activities or members deserve the label ‘sectarian’. Importantly, civil society should not just be seen as the sum of organisations (for example, faith-based groups, professional associations, and NGOs) and their activities (for example, campaigns to extend gender rights). It also needs to be conceived of as a space and environment in which individuals and groups feel free to operate. In deeply divided societies the extent of this space will depend on the security situation

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and expected reactions to certain types of behaviour. For example, individuals and groups will be able to predict with reasonable accuracy how other groups, the state, or international actors will react to particular civil society actions such as a march or a conference on a sensitive topic. All societies, including those unaffected by violent conflict, contain a series of explicit and implicit boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable forms of civil society and civil society expression. For the purposes of this chapter, it is interesting to assess the extent to which the expediency required by the Northern Ireland peace process necessitated the distortion of the boundaries of civil society and behaviour deemed to be acceptable or unacceptable. Also key to conceptualising civil society is the need to understand it at the micro-communal level. This invites us to look beyond the civil society comprising NGOs headquartered in capital cities, some of which may be proxies for INGOs that operate from a handful of cities in the global north. In many instances, it also invites us to look beyond formally constituted organisations. Everyday associations take the form of multiple prosaic actions and stances that form the life blood of communities. Thus they might be the reciprocal lending and borrowing of tools or labour at harvest times, attendance at funerals, or helping out at a school function. This sort of everyday civic engagement may or may not be cross-communal. The extent of this engagement is likely to vary at the micro-level depending on geography, seasons and the weather, demographics, the presence or absence of charismatic social entrepreneurs, or tradition. In contexts of ethnic division, cross- communal everyday civic engagement is incredibly important in retarding conflict. Crucially, many such engagements do not deliberately set out to build or make peace. Their primary purpose is a shared goal (for example, collecting money for a non-contentious charity or enjoying a shared cultural interest). In cases such as these, pacific relations are a by-product and are not artificially induced through deliberately peace-oriented programmes and projects. Many of these everyday civic engagements occur ‘under the radar’. Given that they are local, usually indigenous, often rural, and embedded within the socio-cultural milieu, they may be difficult for outsiders (INGOs or representatives of bilateral donors) to identify. The local-level variations in the extent of everyday civic engagement may also stand in contrast to the tendency among many outside observers to observe a conflict as being national in character (Varshney 2002: 39). For example, to refer to ‘division in Sri Lanka’ is to overlook the series of microsocio-cultural systems that make up the whole. Moreover, terms such

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as ‘civic’, ‘local’, or ‘communities’, while an attractive shorthand, can hide the significant stratification that exists within and between groups (Addison 2003: 265). Civil society and the liberal peace Internationally supported liberal peacebuilding interventions display a number of staples, or policy provisions that are found in every peace intervention. The precise weighting placed on each of these staples varies from context to context, but in general terms liberal peace interventions can be relied upon to promote security, stable states, ‘good governance’, free markets, and civil society. Civic associational ties are seen as both a means and an end. They are a means for delivering many of the aims of the liberal peace agenda: democratisation, media freedom, changing attitudes to the free market, or safeguards against autocratic or exclusive states. Civil society is also an end in terms of a sustainable democratic polity that facilitates the withdrawal of international actors. The emphasis and expectation placed on civil society by liberal peace promoters are startling. Civil society was, and is, regarded as an extremely versatile, multi-tasking, cure-all remedy. Fagan (2006: 100) notes, in relation to Bosnia, that there was an ‘assumption that a vibrant sector of local advocacy networks can entrench democratic values, heal the wounds of ethnic conflict, facilitate economic growth, bringing an end to the international administration of Bosnia. In other words, a developed civil society will be the hallmark of successful state-building.’ The list of tasks devolved to civil society, particularly local civil society, is daunting. Paffenholz (2009: 5) identifies seven peacebuilding functions for civil society: protecting civilians, monitoring human rights violations and peace accord implementation, advocacy, socialisation to values of peace and democracy, inter-group social cohesion, facilitation of dialogue, and service delivery to create entry points for peacebuilding. Prendergast and Plumb’s (2002: 334) list of peacebuilding tasks for civil society organisations includes addressing trauma, organising problemsolving workshops, training for conflict management, creating peace media, assembling peace committees, resurrecting indigenous mechanisms for conflict management, encouraging collaborative community activities, and supporting democratisation and human rights. Although the list of criticisms of civil society in peacebuilding contexts is equally extensive and will be discussed below, it is important to recognise the progressive, and often very brave, role that civil society has played in numerous contexts. Civil society actors have forced difficult issues onto

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government and international agendas, have disseminated information that governments and companies would prefer to be hidden, have limited abuses by states and their placemen, and have promoted and protected rights. Thus, in relation to Northern Ireland, it was often civil society organisations that sought – with varying degrees of success – to hold state and non-state militant groups to account, and urged government to avoid extra-legal routes. The broad lists of responsibilities for civil society denote a recognition of the advantages of civil society actors, such as their knowledge of the local environment or their lower costs compared with international actors. Yet in some cases the emphasis on civil society also reflects a certain desperation on the part of liberal peace promoters. In Bosnia and Afghanistan this desperation stemmed from frustration that formal political actors, such as political parties or local governments, were not as malleable as had been hoped. Civil society was regarded as a way of influencing the wider polity when the formal polity was regarded as uncooperative, too slow to introduce reforms, too corrupt, or too wedded to nationalist agendas. In the minds of many liberal internationalists, civil society could be a proxy government in situations where the government was deficient. In some situations, it could be used as a way of by-passing hostile or unconvinced public opinion. Rather than go to the expense and effort of persuading the entire population, in some cases selected civil society members have been targeted as cheerleaders for the reforms advocated by international actors. Civil society attained such an elevated position in the minds of many liberal internationalists because of its role in eastern and central Europe at the end of the Cold War, and in Latin and Central America during transitions away from authoritarianism (Belloni 2009: 184). This growing prominence was reinforced by the increased importance awarded to individual rights in peacebuilding discourse as the 1990s progressed (Prins 2002: 241). The rise of NGOs and other expressions of civil society were also in tune with neo-liberal desires to take power away from ‘old statist institutions’ (Chandler 2004a: 4). There was almost a sense in the 1990s that liberal internationalists had ‘discovered’ or ‘invented’ civil society, and there was a fevered celebration of the merits of the third sector, followed by a rush to engineer the ‘right type’ of civil society. Herein lay a problem. Many liberal internationalists assumed that the societies in which they were intervening lacked civil society (Goodhand and Sedra 2010: 79; Moore 2009: 124–5; Tar 2009: 1). This starting point – that the host society was deficient in something – is revealing

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of the assumptions that underpinned many liberal peace interventions. Civil society had to be built or have its capacity enhanced. Perera (2001: 383) noted in relation to Sri Lanka that ‘Concepts and practices of equity, social integration, political participation, and cultural development are not new to Sri Lanka ... What is new is that major economic development institutions are now thinking along the same lines.’ But in the rush to create and perfect civil society, pre-existing civil society was often overlooked. Fagan (2006: 102) observed a pattern whereby the new internationally sponsored civil society smothered existing civic associations in the former Yugoslavia: There is an implicit assumption that any existing civil society legacy, from the communist and pre-war periods, could only have a limited and perhaps restrictive impact on the necessary reform of political, social and economic relations. Rather than attempt to resurrect social networks of the past, the international civil society programmes have attempted to begin anew with strata of professional, policy-orientated advocacy NGOs. Sending (2009: 7) observed the tendency for new peacebuilding NGOs to ‘flatten diversity’. He noted that ‘The drive for standardization is, after all, a ubiquitous feature of modern organisations.’ Despite decades of civil society capacity-building in numerous development and post-war contexts, there is significant scepticism about the ability of this sector to effect meaningful peace. Chapman (2009: 157) asks, ‘what evidence do we have that vibrant civic life makes societies more peaceful?’ Given that ‘the linkage between civic membership and attitudes is complex and far from direct’, he is sceptical of attempts to engineer the perfect civil society and thus the perfect polity and society. McGregor (2008: 107) notes that ‘there is little evidence in Southeast Asia that active civil societies lead to more equitable distributions of wealth and resources ... In the Philippines, for example, a wellestablished civil society has not prevented the country becoming one of the most economically unequal in the region.’ In a chicken-and-eggstyle conundrum, civil society requires a certain level of civility and security in order to take root. In many cases this security can be fragile. Bosnia had a significant peace movement, but this was powerless when Serbs began to shoot peace demonstrators (Kaldor 1999: 122; Glenny 1996: 46–9). Similarly, the presence of hundreds of NGOs in Rwanda, many of them enjoying international support, failed to prevent the 1994 genocide (Belloni 2009: 206).

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Before proceeding to the Northern Ireland case study, it is worth summarising the criticisms frequently levelled at internationally supported civil society in societies undergoing peacebuilding interventions. A primary criticism is that civil society is made in a western liberal image and too readily overlooks pre-existing local associations and practices (Tar 2009: 18). As a result, the newly engineered civil society may not adequately reflect the society it claims to represent. The new sector may be overwhelmingly urban and professional in a society that is largely rural and engaged in agriculture. Indeed, it may siphon off the metropolitan intellectual elite, denying the permanent bureaucracy an important source of personnel (Fagan 2006: 103). The newly created civil society may be very resource hungry, becoming unsustainable and dependent on international handouts (Hudock 1999: 37; Verkoren 2005: 301). Such a civil society may take the form of a narrow veneer of NGOs that do not adequately reflect the breadth and depth of associational behaviour in the society (Hudock 1999: 111). According to some estimates, the societal dislocation caused by war and authoritarianism may mean that it takes two or three generations for civil society to become embedded (Korbonski 2001: 258). A civil society tasked by international actors to provide services in lieu of a dysfunctional or incapable state may actually reinforce the problem. Politicians and the state may quickly become path dependent if civil society does their job for them (Fagan 2006: 103). Finally, it is worth noting criticisms that are sceptical of the discourses of ‘local ownership’, ‘partnership’, and ‘participation’ that often attend discussion of internationally sponsored civil society in societies emerging from violent conflict. Rather than empowering local actors, some critics see the creation of a tier of NGOs as doing the reverse: these NGOs are in servitude to international strategy. They are funded and directed externally and must dance to their master’s tune. Sending (2009: 19) notes that ‘Current practice tends to interpret ownership in a nominal, technocratic way, aimed at transferring responsibility of externally defined reforms to local authorities, yet leaving little room for genuine dialogue, experimentation and innovation to establish custom-size approaches.’ Given the dearth of mechanisms to hold external actors to account, governance by remote control, via NGOs, becomes open to abuse (Goodhand and Sedra 2010: 97).

Northern Ireland The contextual differences between Northern Ireland and the other case studies in this book are worth emphasising. Northern Ireland has

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not experienced United Nations interventions, or regime change by self-appointed US-led coalitions followed by insurgency and chaos. The British government was anxious to treat Northern Ireland as a domestic issue and resisted, until relatively recently, the internationalisation of the conflict (Guelke 1988: 2). Crucially, the state did not collapse. The British government was able to maintain quite generous levels of social and economic provision, usually administered from London as Northern Ireland-based politicians were unable or unwilling to establish a powersharing administration. The absence of state collapse meant that Northern Ireland was spared the traumas that are common in other conflict zones: public health emergencies, widespread and long-term displacement, disruption to education, and neglect of infrastructure. Fatalities were contained at 3,600 during the 1969–2010 period. To put this into perspective, Israeli-backed militias murdered 2,000 people in thirty-six hours in 1982 in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatila refugee camps (Flint 2001). While Northern Ireland was economically deprived by UK standards, and much of this deprivation was flavoured by sectarian discrimination, the region was firmly in the global north and was economically advantaged compared with conflict areas in the global south. None of the above is to detract from the very real and human costs of the Northern Ireland conflict – merely to place them in perspective against other conflicts. While Northern Ireland did experience military intervention by the British Army, it did not experience the large-scale combat operations witnessed by Lebanon, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan in recent decades. Human rights were broken and ignored by the British state over an extended period, but there was an element of restraint in British state actions. The state was unwilling to take unilateral game-changing action, such as re-partition or ethnic cleansing, that may have delivered strategic victory. The full coercive weight of the liberal peace was not unleashed in Northern Ireland. This context of liberal peace-lite is important in explaining the political and security environment in which peace process actors interacted with one another, especially as the peace process took root (Mac Ginty 2009: 690–708). Certain levels of civility prevailed in Northern Ireland that did not prevail in other conflict zones. For example, Northern Ireland never experienced aerial bombing by the British air force, presumably because of the risk of civilian casualties and its proximity to the British ‘mainland’. Yet, in the name of ‘peace’, Britain has used very extensive aerial bombing in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, causing civilian casualties in all cases. A political calculation was made by the British government that civilian

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casualties were acceptable in some environments and not in others. The key point is that Northern Ireland has experienced liberal peace-lite, or a more emancipatory version of the liberal peace than that on offer to other recipients of peace-support interventions. In turn, this environment has shaped the nature of party interaction in Northern Ireland and the nature of hybridisation. Most studies of the liberal peace see it as a case of north–south transfer in which liberal states and institutions from the global north attempt to implement their style of peacemaking and development in the global south. The Northern Ireland case is revealing because of its location within the United Kingdom. It raises questions about how the liberal peace was calibrated for a home audience. For the purposes of this chapter, our focus is on one organisation within Northern Ireland’s civil society, the Orange Order. Before concentrating on the Orange Order, the chapter will set out the more general context of civil society in Northern Ireland. Civil society in Northern Ireland Northern Ireland is often portrayed in simplistic terms as a deeply divided society. These divisions are real and have had profound consequences in terms of residential segregation, apartheid in the schools system, and a party political system based on ethnic headcounts. But there is also a story of everyday cross-communal associations between individuals and families in the Catholic–nationalist–republican population and their Protestant–unionist–loyalist counterparts. Consider my mother, Margaret Mac Ginty, who was born and died in the same town in rural Northern Ireland. As for the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, her life was patterned by a society marked by confessional division. She was educated in single-religion schools, lived in a small town in which Catholics and Protestants tended to live and shop apart, read a newspaper that catered for one side of the community, and listened to a radio station that only members of her own community tuned into. She reared her six children, including myself, in a community that was residentially segregated, was subject to enormous militarisation, and had its town centre repeatedly destroyed in bomb attacks. The communities consistently voted in a partisan way for mono-ethnic political parties. It was, in many ways, a context of division, an apartheid facilitated by collective cognition and government policy. Yet, despite this context of division, Mrs Mac Ginty led a life that was full of everyday cross-communal associations. The associations did not take the form of civil society or NGO activity that was deliberately

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designed to deal with the conflict. Instead, they took the form of her friendships and business dealings with members of the other community, or her interest in local history. She devoted enormous energy to two charities that drew volunteers from both the Catholic and Protestant communities, the Save the Children Fund and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. Certainly these associations involved awkwardness; the Patron of the Save the Children Fund was Princess Anne from the British Royal Family – an association that may have caused discomfort for Catholic– nationalist members of the local group. The topics and speakers chosen by the local history society may also have had the potential to generate discomfort. Yet these civil society organisations were removed from the constitutional, security, and identity issues at the heart of the Troubles. Where awkwardness arose, Mrs Mac Ginty, like hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Ireland, dealt with these problems with tact. The essential point is that despite Northern Ireland’s tendency to be caricatured as a ‘deeply divided society’, and despite the very real nature of these divisions, society was not completely bifurcated. Instead, significant low-level cross-communal associations persisted in many areas, even during the worst days of the Troubles. Moreover, the example of Mrs Mac Ginty and her peers illustrates the futility of international attempts to engineer or recreate societal civility. It is not some sort of elixir that can be produced in a laboratory, bottled, and exported. The everyday cross-community associations came under severe stress, particularly in the wake of violent outrages by militant groups or the British state. Yet their persistence helped maintain a basic level of civility into a context dominated – superficially at least – by conflict and division. The everyday associations were also highly localised and did not obtain across Northern Ireland with any consistency. Northern Ireland has a long history of civil society activism. Indeed, the modern phase of the Troubles arose from civil rights demonstrations in the late 1960s. Inspired by similar demonstrations in the United States, France, and elsewhere, students and progressive elements came together to agitate for better rights for Catholics. The London-backed Protestant government resisted calls for it to tackle anti-Catholic discrimination. What began as civil rights protests morphed into a squalid low-level war from the late 1960s onwards. The rights agenda became subsumed by sectarianism and nationalism. Two sets of nationalism were locked in conflict: an Ulster British nationalism that sought to defend the constitutional association with the UK and a pro-united Ireland nationalism that sought to force the British out of Ireland. The British government, while maintaining a narrative of keeping the

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‘natives’ apart, was partisan in its defence of the Union. This meant committing troops, arming the local police force and militia, suppressing a series of human rights, and sponsoring death squads. Despite the ongoing conflict and the deepening of sectarianism, some everyday cross-communal associations did survive, though many such linkages came under severe stress. For reasons of safety and convenience, intra-group associations thrived as communities looked to their own resources to lower the costs of the conflict. Thus, for example, many found solace in religious worship (church attendance remained high throughout the Troubles), while others may have joined groups in support of prisoners from particular militant organisations (Brewer 2002: 27). Indicating high levels of social capital, contact among family members is more regular and common in Northern Ireland than in other regions of the UK (Daly 2004: 56). As cross-communal associational space became further constrained by the deepening conflict, politicians were quick to identify groups and issues as being partisan. Thus, for example, calls made by the local NGO Committee for the Administration of Justice for investigations into human rights abuses by the state were often dismissed by unionist politicians as nationalist propaganda. Some groups, such as the Society of Friends (Quakers), attempted to bypass such partisan political discourse by striving for virtual anonymity (Le Mare and McCartney 2009). They were able to engage in very patient social and educational programmes to assist individuals and families under stress, some of which were cross-communal in content, but sought no publicity. Before the evolution of the peace process in the 1990s, the British state did attempt to engineer civil society in a way that would encourage citizen involvement but which would also support British government objectives of the maintenance of the Union and the marginalisation of non-state militants, particularly the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The Making Belfast Work initiative, for example, sought to promote urban regeneration in selected parts of Belfast from 1988 onwards by engaging with community actors and businesses (DSDNI 2010). In its early years, significant energy was spent on vetting community actors so that ‘approved’ partners could be identified (Birrell 1994; Doherty 1995). This was an overtly political exercise. In Catholic communities it was interpreted as a government attempt to blunt the social activism favoured by Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA. It was regarded as a British government attempt to supplant genuine community organisation with a safe variant of government-sponsored social organisation. The British government established an ‘independent’ Community Relations

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Council to foster inter-community contact, and act as a filter through which ‘approved’ community initiatives and groups could be funded. A Central Community Relations Unit funded academic research at its own discretion. This research, invariably, was in favour of the peace process. The number of pro-peace and reconciliation groups grew rapidly as the peace process developed. Although the peace process was largely an elite-level endeavour, there was space for civil society interventions such as the ‘Yes’ campaign in a referendum on the 1998 Belfast Agreement or in the form of the Women’s Coalition, a political party that deliberately adopted no stance on the constitutional issue at heart of the Northern Ireland conflict (Fearon 1999). A large number of groups were funded through generous European Union packages in support of the peace process and more general peacebuilding aimed at Northern Ireland and the border counties of the Republic of Ireland. PEACE I and PEACE II ran between 1995 and 2004, with a combined cost of €1.49bn. An extension to PEACE II ran from 2004 to 2006 and cost €160m. PEACE III, 2007– 2013, was funded to the tune of €333m and aimed to have ‘a continued and renewed emphasis on reconciliation’ (Special EU Programmes Body undated: 4). This enormous level of funding created a political economy of peacebuilding groups and peace work (Byrne et al. 2010). Many groups and participants were genuine in their engagement with the programmes. Others were not. Many groups and schemes established under PEACE I devoted significant energies to securing funding under PEACE II and III. Such donor-driven peacebuilding limited local initiative and distorted many group activities into technocratic box-ticking exercises. Central and local government also raided the EU monies to fund activities, amenities, and infrastructure that had no possible link with peacebuilding or reconciliation. Thus, for example, it is possible to see toilet blocks in road lay-bys across Northern Ireland funded by the EU’s Special Peace and Reconciliation Programme: useful for travellers but of dubious worth for promoting peace and reconciliation. Indeed, the EU PEACE funding was introduced at the very moment that Northern Ireland ceased to qualify for the EU’s Structural Funds. The British government had little compunction in raiding ‘peacebuilding’ funds as a continuation fund for infrastructural development. Two points are worth making in summary. The first is that despite (and in some ways because of) the violent conflict, Northern Ireland had a vibrant associational life. As Cochrane (2001: 99) commented, ‘In a population of 1.5 million, with over 5,000 NGOs, people are seemingly falling over one another to “do something” for their community.’

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Secondly, this civil society was shaped by a series of constraining and facilitating pressures: insecurity, the need for in-group identification, civil society engineering by the British government, and EU and other funding. This chapter will now turn to the case study of Northern Ireland’s ‘largest organisation in civil society’, the Orange Order (Tonge 2005: 204). Other organisations, such as the Catholic Church, the Royal British Legion, or the Gaelic Athletic Association could have been chosen, but the Orange Order presents an interesting example of how a liberal peace actor (the British state) engaged with a partisan actor in a deeply divided society that was undergoing peace support. The Order, in keeping with Northern Ireland’s deeply divided character, is sectarian. Yet, despite the controversies that have been associated with the organisation, the British and Irish governments have regarded the Orange Order as part of the wider ‘civilising’ process that contributes to the peace process. They regard the Orange Order as undergoing a process of moderation, and have encouraged it to continue to do so, in the hope that this will send out signals to less moderate groups, particularly within the Protestant–unionist–loyalist community. This raises questions about the nature of civil society in deeply divided societies, and the type of peace that the British and Irish governments are prepared to accept in Northern Ireland. It also ties in with the focus of the book on hybridity. The context of the Troubles and the peace process compelled the Orange Order to change and adopt some of the stances and language of more conventional civil society organisations. Similarly, British and Irish government positions on the Orange Order shifted. In effect, no actor was able to plot a unilateral course through the peace process. Instead, all actors occupied contested space in which their stances, discourses, and identities had to take cognisance of other actors. The Orange Order The Orange Order is a Protestant politico-religious organisation founded in 1795 to commemorate the 1690 victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James II in the Battle of the Boyne. Membership is restricted to males (although there is a small separate Ladies’ Orange Association). Catholics, and anyone married to a Catholic, are forbidden from joining, and members are barred from attending Catholic services (Breen 1990: 14). The organisation is best seen as a fraternity embedded in the Ulster Protestant politico-cultural hinterland (Patterson and Kaufman 2007: 83). Its principal aims are the preservation of religious (Protestant) liberty, defence of the Crown, and providing an integrating thread to political unionism. It joins political

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and social capital with a network of local lodges across rural and urban Northern Ireland, and a few in the Republic of Ireland and further afield. The organisation is highly localised and decentralised, and can be regarded as an example of grassroots social activism. It currently has about 35,000 members, with membership in a slow decline (Geoghegan undated). For its supporters, the Orange Order is a staple part of Protestant community organisation. To see the Orange Order through purely sectarian or politico-religious lenses would be to risk reproducing a caricature of what is a complex social association. Many members join lodges because of family, social, workplace, or residential connections. Certainly the political stance of the Order is important, but this is one part of a wider series of social identifications that drive membership of the Order, and the acceptance of the Order among hundreds of thousands of Protestant non-members. The most public faces of the Order are its ‘highly symbolic street culture’ and the annual twelfth of July parades that commemorate the Battle of the Boyne (Cairns 2000: 443). About 3,000 parades occur across Northern Ireland each summer (Tonge 2005: 190). Although many Catholics find these parades offensive, particularly when their routes are close to, or through, Catholic areas, for many Protestants they are an ‘uncontentious, carnival-like event’ (Jarman 1997: 96). The leader of the Grand Lodge of Ireland called the parades a ‘family occasion’ and ‘the largest folk festival in Europe’ (cited in Breen 1990: 14). Neil Jarman’s (1997: 98, 100) anthropological portraits of preparations for the twelfth marches, and of an eleventh night bonfire, give a good account of some of the collective endeavours involved in Orangeism: Orangemen, bandsmen, bonfire builders, and also the women, whose invisible work is no less necessary to a successful Twelfth, prepare for their part in the celebrations independently of each other. There is no central organisation overseeing this larger process, although individual activities and groups are of course organised. Preparation happens informally, to a great extent dependent on the number of people able and willing to get involved. ... On the eleventh of July the final touches are put to the bonfires. From eleven o’clock people gather around the fire sites, young men and women with carrier bags full of beer, families with young children and babies in prams, older people who have seen it all many times before, a few tourists. Chip shops and fast food vans do a roaring trade; two small groups of evangelical Christians hold services

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on the pavement, trying to convince passers-by of the errors of their ways, but generate little interest. As a prologue to the main event a small fire made of left-over wood is lit by the younger children ... The main fire is lit on the dot of midnight to welcome in the Twelfth. The fire starts slowly; but as it spreads around and up the stack the crowd is forced to retreat across the road. As the flames eat their way up the pile of sleepers and pallets, attention is focused on the Irish tricolour at the top: a great cheer goes up as this is engulfed in flames. Once the flag has been burnt and the peak of the fire has passed, the crowd rapidly fades away: some get some sleep before the big parade, but many of the younger ones move elsewhere to party the night away. As the quotations show, politics and protests in favour of religious freedom constitute only one part of these activities. Many of the activities involved in Orangeism are festival-like, rely on community participation, and are – for participants – fun and celebratory. Orange halls are used for discos, dances, barbeques, and community meetings, albeit restricted to the Protestant community (Cairns 2000: 447–9). This non-contentious view of the Orange Order and its events contrasts with views held by the organisation’s opponents. For them, the Orange Order is a ‘furiously bigoted organisation’ interested in upholding Protestant supremacy and Catholic repression (Gageby 1984: 9). In the 1930s, the Guardian newspaper likened the Orange stranglehold over Northern Ireland’s unionist governments to the Nazi creation of a one-party state (cited in Farrell 1976: 141). For its critics, the organisation is nakedly sectarian, has opposed Catholic emancipation and the extension of civil rights, and has a long association with violence. These critics point out that while the Orange Order may formally disavow violence, ‘blood and thunder’ rhetoric from speakers using its platforms has often incited Orangemen or their fellow-travellers to engage in sectarian pogroms, rioting, intimidation, and murder (Lawlor 2009: 91). In virtually every decade since its foundation, the Orange Order has been associated with serious sectarian violence, usually around ‘the marching season’ of the summer months (Parkinson 2004: 24–7). The issue of Orange (and other) parades gained particular prominence during the peace process in the 1990s as nationalist communities protested against the routing of parades through areas populated mainly by Catholics. These disputed parades were small in number, yet they were able to generate Northern Ireland-wide tension. Heavily policed stand-offs, mass rioting, destruction of property, and associated sectarian street violence were regular features in the summers of the late 1990s

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and early 2000s. A Parades Commission was tasked to adjudicate on a zero-sum issue; generally speaking, Catholic–nationalists believed that Protestant parades should stay in Protestant areas, while Protestant– unionists saw the parades as an expression of religious and civil liberty and so considered that they had the right to select any route. The parading issue became an echo chamber of wider peace process-related fears. Morrow (1997: 66) notes how Orangeism ‘thrives on existential fears’, and for many unionists the treatment of the Orange Order by the British government was an indicator of how Protestant–unionists were valued by the state. Catholics, on the other hand, regarded the ability of the state to contain what they saw as sectarian marches and provocation as an indicator of how their rights would be respected in a post-peace process Northern Ireland. Jon Tonge (2005: 205–6) sums up the very liberal dilemma that lies at the heart of the matter: Undiluted celebration of religious and political pluralism necessarily leads to support for the right of Catholics to educate their children in denominational schools (segregated education) and the right of the Orange Order (anti-Catholic Church) to hold parades ... Either of the above decisions could be seen as sectarian, yet both are defendable, based on a cultural-pluralist, celebration of diversity approach. Despite the regularity with which the Orange Order was embroiled in controversy and associated with violent disorder, it has been part of an interesting dynamic that has involved shifting its positions and discourse, and making engagements with a wider range of political actors than it has in the past. To label this dynamic ‘moderation’ or part of a ‘civilising process’ is too simplistic: the Orange Order still adheres to fundamentally sectarian beliefs. Indeed, in 2010 it called on ‘all the citizens of the United Kingdom, and especially members of the Loyal Orange Institution, to demonstrate their opposition to the Pope’s visit to England and Scotland and to oppose any future visitation to Northern Ireland’ (Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland 2010). Yet various peace process actors – the Orange Order, the British and Irish governments, the media and other civil society organisations, and some nationalist politicians – have adopted different stances and language as part of the peace process. This has involved movement by all actors, and a collective cognition of the new opportunities provided by the peace process. Some of this movement has been moderating; other parts of it have not. Taken together, however, this peace process choreography denotes a hybridisation and distortion whereby actors, including a powerful liberal peace

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progenitor like the United Kingdom government, are forced to take account of the stances and positions of others. In so doing, all the actors involved in the peace process underwent a process of change. Three examples illustrate the shifting position of the Orange Order during the long peace process. Firstly, as the peace process developed and became entrenched, the Order held meetings with a widening variety of political actors, many of whom it had castigated or ignored in the past. The Orange Order, in keeping with many unionist political parties and affiliated groups, had spent much of the 1980s and 1990s making a point of not speaking with their political opponents. In part, this was due to the political environment of an ongoing violent conflict in which the conditions were unpropitious for meaningful inter-party talks. In part, it was a statement of their disapproval of their political opponents’ positions or existence. The result was an isolation that was partially self-imposed. During the peace process, meetings were held with the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Catholic Church, the Irish President, and even Sinn Féin – all of which had been the target of withering criticism from the Orange Order in the past (Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland 2006; Belfast Telegraph 2010; Bowcott 2006). The Irish presidency has been assiduous in courting the Orange Order. President Mary McAleese initiated annual garden parties at her official residence to mark the twelfth of July and visited an Orange Hall in the Irish Republic (Keenan 2009). The Irish government funded a two-year development officer position for the Orange Order to help ‘build the capacity of the Orange Family in the Republic of Ireland’ (Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland 2008). This is quite remarkable given the historical Orange Order stance on the Irish state: that it is aggressive, papist, and anti-unionist. Of significance for our interest in hybridity is that both the Orange Order and the Irish government changed their stance and developed a relationship. A second example of the shifting positions of the Orange Order and other actors in the peace process came in the form of attempts to re-brand the twelfth of July parades as ‘Orangefest’, or a tourist-oriented carnival. Again, all those involved in the attempted re-branding engaged, to a certain extent, in collective cognitive dissembling. All were aware that the Orange parades were, by their very nature, sectarian and controversial. They were all aware of the dreadful record of violence associated with the parades and counter-protests. The attempt to re-brand the parades as ‘a family-friendly pageant’ did not detract from their essential sectarianism – the celebration of a victory by a Protestant monarch over a Catholic one (Independent 2007). Yet, according to one

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of the organisers, ‘You can enjoy the theatre of it all without buying into the politics’ (Gibson cited in Geoghegan undated). In 2009, the Culture Minister in Northern Ireland’s Assembly (who was also a member of the Orange Order) noted that ‘Northern Ireland is at last being recognised for its ability to host international events, for its hospitality and for its friendly and welcoming people. Orangefest is an example of complementing traditional Twelfth parades with festival events which are welcoming for all, portray Belfast in a positive light and encourage visitors to Northern Ireland’ (Northern Ireland Executive 2009). Orangefest’s development officer outlined the limits of inclusivity: ‘We want to be inclusive but people have to understand that you can’t be a member of the Orange Order unless you are a member of the Protestant Reformed Church’ (Mawhinny cited in Geoghegan undated). According to one Grand Master of the Orange Lodge, ‘Roman Catholics can’t take part in our parades, just as they cannot join the Orange Order, because we’re a Protestant organisation ... I can’t join Opus Dei ... The best we can do is say to Roman Catholics: “Look, we want you to come, bring your families and see that there is nothing there to threaten you” ’ (Nelson cited in Independent 2007). In 2006 the British government awarded the Orange Order £104,000, with an additional £6,000 from the publicly funded Arts Council, in order to assist the transformation to Orangefest (Peterkin 2006; Northern Ireland Executive 2009). A third example of the shifting position of the Orange Order, and of other actors towards the Order, came in the form of the growing number of engagements that the Order had with statutory bodies. These involved the Orange Order, or those associated with it, respecting local government statutes in return for relatively small sums of money. One example was the introduction of grants of up to £3,000 for loyalist communities to avoid burning serious pollutants such as car tyres in their eleventh night bonfires. According to Robert Saulters, Grand Master of the Orange Order, ‘The Order is working with many different agencies to ensure that bonfires are enjoyed by many in a safe environment. It is very important that the people who build bonfires pay attention to all the advice on what they should contain – and many items such as tyres, which are harmful to the environment, should not be used’ (cited in McDonald 2008). Entanglements like this can be seen as part of a wider process of respecting the civil authority and a loss of autonomy for the Order. Schemes such as that for ‘eco-bonfires’ drew the Order into a web of governance that it had previously avoided. The form-filling and reporting that this required signified a loss of autonomy, and the Order’s interaction with an environment established by liberal peace agents.

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The three examples must be placed in the context of declining Orange Order membership, and a recognition among some in the Orange Order that it had been attracting little but bad publicity. So part of the Orange Order strategy of ‘coming in from the cold’ was based on pragmatism and reputational salvage, or a recognition that the general dynamics of Northern Ireland were changing in the context of a peace process and peace accord and that it would be prudent to show some flexibility. Thus rather than deliberate attempts to resist, subvert, or exploit the context provided by the peace process, many of the actions by the Orange Order can be seen as adaptation to changing conditions.

Concluding discussion It is worth emphasising that the example of the Orange Order could be substituted with examples from the Catholic–nationalist community such as the Gaelic Athletic Association, the West Belfast Festival, or support groups established for former republican prisoners. All these groups broadened their engagements with other actors during the peace process, and all were recipients of state funding. Such funding was awarded in the expectation of certain conditions being met. The peace process can be conceived of as a system of interaction in which actors acted and reacted to the initiatives and reactions of others. Actors sought to maximise gains and preserve as much autonomy as possible. Some actors, however, had greater power than others in establishing the landscape of interaction. The most powerful actor in the peace process was the British government, which, for much of the peace process, acted in concert with the Irish government. These actors were able to mobilise tremendous legislative, moral, and financial power. The British government was also able to mobilise coercive power in the form of its military presence, its militarised police force, and its intelligence services. In many ways, the British and Irish governments were able to set the parameters of the peace process, identify the limits of constitutional change, and arbitrate over acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Part of this agenda and scene-setting involved the creation of an NGO sector that was pro-peace process. Importantly, the externally sponsored civil society was required to be in favour of the version of the peace process sanctioned by the British and Irish governments. This exercise in NGO engineering was in part propelled by cash inducements (courtesy of the British and Irish treasuries, and the EU). European Union funding was channelled through the British and Irish governments, thus empowering these liberal peace agents to become arbiters of acceptable

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and unacceptable civil society. The creation of a new civil society was also propelled by a widening public acceptance of the banal narrative championed by the British and Irish governments: that violence should be a thing of the past, that Northern Ireland should move forward, that the two communities must share power with each other, that straitened public purses compelled politicians to work together, etc. Hudock (1999: 110) contends that a sign of maturity among NGOs in the global south is their ability to say ‘no’ to donor support from the global north. In the case of Northern Ireland, many elements of civil society were unable say ‘no’. This applied both to NGOs that were a creation of the peace process and to organisations that pre-dated the peace process or even the modern round of the Troubles. The material power of the British and Irish governments, assisted by the EU and the US, saw the creation of a peace process political economy. Interestingly, this was not a case of rich donors from the global north tempting poverty-stricken individuals and groups in the global south with cash. It was a north–north transfer from rich governments to relatively wealthy societies. Yet the competitive political economy of a deeply divided society meant that once a group from one side of the sectarian divide sought and received funds from the British Exchequer, then the other side felt compelled to do so. Howls of protest soon followed if the governments were perceived to be discriminatory in their grant-giving. The funding streams allowed the co-option of some civil society actors by the British and Irish governments and the re-shaping of civil society in general. A peace and reconciliation NGO sector was virtually created courtesy of donor funds from the mid-1990s onwards. This sector was important in creating the impression that there was such a thing as ‘the peace process’, but the sector was largely frozen out of the negotiations between the main political parties and the two governments. It is difficult to make definitive judgments on the extent to which – if at all – the swathe of newly created NGOs actually assisted reconciliation and peacebuilding. A consultative Civic Forum was established as part of the Belfast Agreement but it was parked in the long grass and never seen again. Positive results from the monetary investment into civil society engineering are not obvious and questions must be asked about the efficacy of the EU’s decision to plough almost €2bn into untested peacebuilding schemes. Despite the enormous material and moral power held by the British and Irish governments, it is important not to paint a picture of Northern Ireland’s civil society actors as craven cash-hungry supplicants. Some were; others were not. Many non-state actors were able to ignore, exploit,

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and subvert the intentions of the liberal peace agents. Some were also able to bend the governments’ view of what constituted peace. Most significant for this chapter was the ability of partisan local actors, such as the Orange Order or associations of former militant prisoners, to convince the British and Irish governments that they were part of civil society. This exercise in group-think did not happen overnight and was not without its problems. Yet, over a period of time, a mutually beneficial relationship developed in which a disparate collection of actors shared a worldview of what constituted acceptable civil society and civil society behaviour. For the governments, drawing partisan groups into ‘approved’ civil society was part of the ‘civilising’ process. It sent signals to ‘less-civil’ non-state actors that a path of ‘moderation’ was open to them. It was reminiscent of the ‘surrender and re-grant’ policies deployed in Elizabethan times: if local groups were prepared to show fealty to the ‘legitimate authority’ then they could retain some measure of their power (Butler 1913). The British government’s inclusion of organisations such as the Orange Order into a big-tent peace process was a sign of the limitations of Track I (or formal) negotiations. It was also a way of allowing non-standard actors into the process by alternative routes. Yet, for the governments, this required a retreat from meanings of civil society that interpreted tolerance and pluralism in ways that excluded offence or threat. Despite being admitted into the big tent of peace process civil society, the Orange Order was still a manifestly sectarian organisation, just as republican groups retained their commitment to the removal of the British state from Ireland. A 2004 survey of Orange Order members found that less than a fifth supported integrated Catholic–Protestant schools and that 87 per cent believed that the Catholic Church played an important role in the Irish Republic (McAuley and Tonge’s 2007: 47). Essentialist fears were fuelled by the peace process. The Order held ‘a negative perception of the attempted political restructuring of Northern Ireland based more upon a “last stand” defence of the interests of a community in retreat than the articulation of an agenda for the future development of Protestant-UnionistBritishness or a common, cross-community formulation of Northern Irishness’ (McAuley and Tonge 2007: 48). Partisan organisations bought into the idea and practice of the ‘new civil society’ for at least three reasons. Firstly, there were monetary incentives. Secondly, receiving the imprimatur from the governments was useful in intra-group legitimacy contests. Approval by the British and Irish governments afforded some measure of respectability that in turn had implications for access to the news media and civil society

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forums. Thirdly, many partisan organisations felt compelled to receive the governmental imprimatur as part of their inter-group conflict. Civil society engineering by the liberal peace powers, and the actions of local actors, show a process of hybridisation in operation. There was a hybridisation of ideas (of what constituted civil society) and of the civil society sector. The worldviews and identities of all of those involved were subject to change. Given the longevity of Northern Ireland’s peace process, the notion that partisan actors can be included in civil society has become a piece of embedded normality. Fundamental questions, such as whether a bigoted organisation should receive government funding under the banner of civil society capacity-building, were not asked.

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Conclusion

This work has sought to reappraise two overly simplistic notions that have taken hold in the literature of peace and conflict studies. The first notion is that the liberal peace, or dominant form of internationally supported peacemaking, is an all-powerful Leviathan and that its dominance is assured. The second notion rests on a romanticisation of local and indigenous responses to conflict and social change. In some parts of the literature, it is almost as though there is a hunt for ‘the last native’, or the unspoiled local individuals and communities who are a repository of common sense and sustainable peacemaking. Both advocates and opponents of the liberal peace engage in this hunt for ‘the last native’. The purpose of this book has been to revise arguments that caricature both the local and the international into simplistic categories. At the same time, the book has sought to continue (not retreat from) the critique of the liberal peace. Given that it is the dominant form of internationally supported peacemaking, and given that leading states and international organisations use liberal rhetoric to justify their interventions, it is legitimate to subject this form of peace intervention to critical scrutiny. The book, with its concentration on hybridity, has also sought to emphasise the agency of local communities and institutions and to show how this can represent resistance to international peacebuilding. Five themes recur throughout this book, and they are worth emphasising by way of conclusion. The first recurring theme has been to urge caution in relation to the categories that we use to understand conflict. Many orthodox analyses of conflict rely on oppositional binaries such as external versus internal or traditional versus modern. However, a critical examination of the operation of the liberal peace, together with an understanding of the processes of hybridisation, suggests that 207

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categories are much less discrete than many authors suggest. This presents us with conceptual and analytical problems as we still need to discuss conflicts in ways that are comprehensible. Terms such as ‘local’ and ‘international’ are defined in people’s minds and often have clear meanings in academic and policy literature. Therefore an obstacle facing a work like this one is to encourage the reader to look beyond the standard meanings we give to such terms. This is difficult, as the work needs to remain intelligible. But there comes a time when every work has to move beyond caveats and get to the point. A second, and related, recurring theme has been the fluidity within and between categories. Many accounts of peace and conflict, including some critiques of the liberal peace, have given the impression of a fixity within and between categories. This study has highlighted the pragmatism of the liberal peace. For example, the chapters on Afghanistan and Northern Ireland demonstrate how the guardians of the liberal peace are prepared to deviate from their stated goals, despite the liberal rhetoric that might be used to justify these goals. The liberal peace is less doctrinaire and coherent than many observers may believe. Even a cursory glance at most interventions suggests that much policy was made on the hoof. Just as liberal peace promoters are capable of great pragmatism, so are the states, governments, institutions, communities, and individuals that are targeted by liberal peace interventions in societies emerging from violent conflict. The extent of their agency ranges from voluntary cooperation with aspects of the liberal peace to violent resistance to it. Again, the actions of local actors need not necessarily be consistent or coherent. For example, local actors may cooperate with some aspects of the liberal peace, reject others, and remain agnostic about still others. The model of hybridisation advocated in this work seeks to capture the dynamism associated with peace, conflict, and the interaction between local and international actors in seeking to bring conflict to an end. A crucial aspect of the constant processes of social negotiation, coalescence, cooperation, and conflict that are associated with the creation of hybrid forms of peace and processes of peacemaking is that the identity of the actors involved changes as part of the hybridisation process. Hybridisation does not merely mean that actors change their stances and rhetoric. It also means that they change themselves through their interaction with other actors, and as they steer a course through the issue agenda created by multiple actors. The third recurring theme has been the prevalence of diversity, pluralism, and tolerance at the local level, even in societies often dubbed ‘deeply divided’. There is a temptation to refer to this as ‘local liberalism’,

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yet to do so risks colonising local norms and practices with western conceptions of liberalism. In many local communities such on-the-ground practices of tolerance and pluralism are embedded within daily life and do not necessarily have a name. They are pragmatic and prosaic social coping mechanisms to ease the passage of life. This is not to suggest that many of the societies that we have reviewed in this work are some sort of plural idyll. There can be little doubting the capacity of such societies to turn on themselves or of ethnic and political leaders to mobilise supporters; and there is little doubt about the entrenched nature of systems of division. Nor can there be any doubting how international systems of commerce and political patronage can harness and magnify divisions. Yet, often at the micro-local level of streets and villages, people engage in everyday tolerance and cooperation to help them achieve other goals such as earning a living, securing public goods for their families, ensuring security, or pursuing entertainment. Social science and many policy and journalistic observers from the global north have largely missed these systems of local security and cooperation and instead have opted to concentrate on the headline events of division and violent conflict. The fourth recurring theme follows on from this and questions the quality of the antennae of many external researchers who study other societies, particularly those undergoing conflict. Academic disciplines, the policy world, and journalism all have their own strictures, many of which can be defended for very good reasons. Yet it is not always clear that the conventions, methodologies, and language recommended by various academic disciplines equip researchers with antennae that allow them to pick up the most salient signals of societies under study. It is as though external researchers have antennae tuned to intercept analogue signals but many of the social, political, and economic phenomena in a society can be read only as digital signals. In blunt terms, many social sciences equip us with the wrong antennae with which to ‘watch and listen to’ societies. One of the travesties of contemporary academia is that it has developed ways of discussing peace and conflict that exclude the very societies that are under review. Swathes of academic literature (and the author’s output is in no way exempt from this) amount to over-theorised conceit that bears little relation to the on-theground lives of people in the midst of conflict or peace-support operations. Moreover, the liberal peace (through its militaries, humanitarian and development aid organisations, INGOs, etc.) has produced a system in which communities in societies undergoing liberal peace transitions are ‘recreated’ as subjects (Richmond 2010a). They are variously ‘othered’ as beneficiaries, obstacles to change, lumpen victims, and so on.

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The result is the creation of an often artificial discourse on local communities that gives a less than complete understanding of how these societies operate. The notions of hybridity and hybridisation have been deliberately deployed as a way of ‘bringing the local back into’ our studies. In a sense, it is an appeal for a pause, a reality check, and a little humility on the part of scholars and others. It encourages us to look beyond the overly neat silos or transmission chains wherein liberal peacemaking is something that is ‘done to’ local communities. Instead, the picture is much more complex. As well as co-option and cooperation, it involves ‘blowback’, or local actors pushing back against international peace interventions, which in turn has consequences for liberal peace progenitors. It also involves local actors creating and maintaining their own space for political, economic, and cultural interaction that is largely removed from the agendas and resource streams created by liberal peace actors. It should be noted that this book does not advocate hybridity per se. As many of the case study chapters show, hybridity is often problematic and not necessarily pacific. We have seen hybrid forms of war and injustice, as well as hybrid forms of sharing and tolerance. So it is worth differentiating between ‘hybrid peace’, or forms of hybridity that encourage inclusion, tolerance, and sustainable approaches, and wider forms of hybrid politics, economics, and security. A fifth recurring theme, and one presaged by the themes already mentioned, has been resistance. The term ‘resistance’ immediately suggests a power relationship, or resistance against something. The liberal peace is certainly capable of mobilising immense material and moral power in service of its peace-support interventions. It also wields structural power in that it operates through international political and economic institutions and processes that it has been able to deem legitimate. Yet the resistance offered by local actors is not always marginal. The resistance can come in many forms, and, in keeping with the last recurring theme, we may not always have the correct antennae with which to pick up the extent of resistance. There is a tendency to focus on obvious forms of resistance such as violent insurgency, but more subtle and everyday forms abound in terms of non-compliance or ‘waiting it out’. Moreover, the case studies in this volume attest that resistance is not a simple binary of ‘local’ versus ‘international’. There are sites of resistance and counter-resistance within actors (think of the differing attitudes of NATO members towards the slow train wreck of the invasion-cum-occupation-cum-withdrawal in Afghanistan). As a result,

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it is useful to conceive multiple sites of resistance and counter-resistance in the context of societies emerging from conflict. The summation of these is a hybrid form of peace. Given that many forms of peacebuilding have become ‘deep interference into internal politics and even social life’ (Pugh 2010b), we should not be surprised that resistance operates across many sites and in many spheres of life. As Richmond (2010b: 668) notes, ‘a possibility of a post-liberal peace emerges, in which everyday local agencies, rights, needs, custom and kinship are recognised as discursive “webs of meaning”. This might herald a more realistic recognition of the possibilities of, and dynamics of, contextual and local peacebuilding agencies within international peacebuilding.’ After our review of a number of contemporary cases of international peace-support intervention, a great mystery remains: how have patently absurd figures (such as George W. Bush) or strategies (such as opening impoverished societies to rape by the free market) been able to persist? The answer lies in the nature of the liberal peace as a system. It operates at a systemic level and is the summation of an incredibly complex set of interlocking actors, institutions, and norms. A broad range of actors are complicit in keeping the system in operation and in maintaining its dominant position as the key instrument of international peace support. All of these actors are rational and are usually goal-seeking. As a result, al-Qaeda’s treasurers and US Presidents have the shared goal of economic stability so that their assets can be protected. Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the liberal peace is the extent to which its interests and assumptions have become embedded in dominant thinking about peace and conflict to the extent that they have become orthodoxy. A series of hegemonic normative assumptions underpin the liberal peace. For example, much of the discourse on peacekeeping has elided into a discourse on peace enforcement, with the result that peacekeepers have been relegated to the role of security agents (Pugh 2010b). This securitisation has become normalised in some quarters. Many of the norms and institutions of peace, development, and reconstruction have been captured and are mouthpieces for particular worldviews. As a result, notions of impartiality are dispelled. Yet the liberal peace ‘system’ rarely acts in complete harmony, and does not have complete coverage. It has blind spots that allow resistance and alternatives to take root, and perpetrates outright injustices that invite more robust forms of resistance. A worldview patterned by the liberal peace might be tempted to negatively frame local action in the face of liberal peace interventions – unless, of course, those actions conform to ‘approved’ types of action. Resistance might be viewed as an inherently negative activity. Such a

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view is predicated on the righteousness of hegemonic approaches to peacemaking. Yet much ‘resistance’ is simply people getting on with their lives, opting out of the formal structures and norms offered by the liberal peace, and creating their own solutions to local issues. It is often a process of individuals and societies finding an equilibrium between various pressures. As such, it is a form of conflict management. Much of it is to be celebrated as it contains the types of ‘ownership’ and ‘sustainability’ that international actors often try to create. Of course, we must not romanticise resistance as ‘plucky locals standing up to the nasty international’. Resistance can be sectarian and motivated by selfish interests. But, in some cases, resistance leads to a better form of peace: a peace that is more comfortable and sustainable for the communities that must live that peace. A great difficulty is that many international actors and perspectives are unable to accept such hybrid forms of peace as ‘peace’. It is hoped that this book goes some way to redressing that imbalance.

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Index 9/11 28, 29, 41, 93, 99, 100, 101, 103, 112, 139 Afghanistan 6, 13, 14, 19, 27, 33, 37, 38, 43, 44, 56, 64, 78, 81, 139, 189, 192, 210 Bonn Agreement 101–2, 103, 108 Northern Alliance 99, 100, 102, 103 occupation and counterinsurgency 96, 100, 108 post-Taliban government 93, 103–4, 107–11, 112 reconstruction 59, 108–11, 113 stabilisation 80 Taliban 14, 62–3, 80, 89, 94, 99–100, 103, 104, 105–6, 108, 112, 15 warlords 62, 91–3, 97–100, 102–7, 110, 156 African Union 45 Australia 61, 64 Austro-Hungarian Empire 15 Bangladesh 58, 128 bin Laden, O. 99 Blair, T. 21 Bosnia-Herzegovina 13, 15, 37, 77, 82, 188, 189, 190, 192 civil war 136, 142, 154 constitutional change 141, 143, 148, 150 Dayton Peace Accords 15, 132–3, 134, 143–4, 145, 146–9, 151 nationalism 136, 141, 145, 146, 148, 151, 153–4, 155, 156 Office of the High Representative 140, 143, 147, 148, 149, 151, 155 see also Yugoslavia British government 13, 17, 83, 112, 156, 184, 192, 195–6, 202, 203–5 Burma 28, 36, 37, 174 Bush, G.W. 21, 96, 101, 113, 121, 211

Cambodia 43, 82 Canada 58, 61–2, 65, 80 Chiapas 49–50, 59, 65 China 7, 11, 13, 33, 36, 37, 38, 45, 46, 79, 112, 123–4 Chile 64 civil society 12–13, 16, 16–17, 27, 39, 57, 63, 74, 83, 111, 155, 156–7, 165, 169, 174, 182, 196 definition and concept 183–91 Clinton, B. 142 Colombia 58, 66 corruption 63, 96, 110, 111, 112, 116, 125, 127–8, 132, 159, 161, 167, 171, 173, 174, 178–80 crime 52, 53, 139, 146, 151 debt 121, 175 demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (DDR) 14, 39, 81, 82, 96, 102, 105, 109 democracy 28, 36, 140, 188 democratic peace thesis 27, 29 Denmark 139–40 DFID 58 distortion 9, 17, 38, 69, 74, 89, 116, 125, 136, 140, 156, 182, 185, 200 Dostum, A. 99, 104, 105, 107 economic reform 14, 119–20, 127 Egypt 36, 37, 166 elections 7, 27, 85, 109, 140 El Salvador 15 ethnocentrism 30, 41, 85, 138 European Union 11, 17, 19, 32, 34, 36, 83, 86, 142, 148, 155, 159, 171, 173, 174–5, 177, 184, 196, 203 everyday 66, 72, 87, 114, 116, 132, 144–5, 154, 157, 187, 193–4, 209, 210 France 58, 174, 175 free markets 28, 29, 36, 38, 78, 83, 109, 116, 117, 129, 138, 188, 211

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238 Index Galtung, J. 23 Germany 139 governance 15–16, 34, 35, 41, 75, 79, 80, 95, 98, 120, 174–82, 202 definition and conceptualisation 158–67 good governance 40, 54, 60, 140, 160, 161, 165, 171, 172, 174–5, 178, 180, 188 local governance 105, 111, 160, 163 Greenland 64 Guatemala 58, 76, 77 Hamas 36 history 135, 153–4, 156 human rights 28, 30, 37, 43, 57, 62, 64, 78, 100, 111, 165, 174, 188, 195 Hussein, S. 14, 28, 33, 116, 117, 119, 121, 124, 126, 131 hybridity 15, 45, 51, 65, 103, 106, 130, 153, 184, 207, 209, 211–12 analytical tool 4, 10, 11, 12 concept 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 68–9, 70–4, 77, 89 process (hybridisation) 2, 6, 8–9, 10, 12, 47, 69, 72–3, 77–90, 92, 95, 110–12, 121, 132, 135, 155–7, 159, 181–2, 185, 200–1, 206, 207–9 India 13, 36, 57, 58, 60, 62, 67, 79, 112, 128 indigenous as a concept 49–51, 65, 93–4 peacemaking 2–3, 12, 31, 53–67, 188, 207 politics and practice 39, 71, 103, 106, 177 rediscovery of 57–60 Inter-American Development Bank 58 International Monetary Fund 34, 126, 139, 144, 149, 159, 163, 166, 173, 175, 176, 177 international relations 4, 12, 21, 23, 74, 77 International Studies Association 4 Iran 13, 36, 81, 112, 121, 122, 168, 171, 181

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Iraq 6, 13, 14, 19, 21, 28, 37, 56, 78, 81, 105, 137, 151, 168, 170, 192 economy 83, 118–32 invasion of 33, 35, 116, 124, 125 occupation and insurgency 64, 80, 85, 96, 120, 123, 126–9 oil 116, 119, 122–4, 130, 131, 132 post-Saddam government 123–4, 129 reconstruction 59, 120, 122–4, 127–9, 157 sanctions 117, 123, 124–6 Irish government 17, 184, 196, 201, 203–5 Israel 7, 13, 37, 45, 168, 169, 176, 178, 192 Italy 174 Ivory Coast 15 Karzai, H. 93, 94, 100, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109–10 Kenya 20, 53 Keynesianism 138 Kosovo 15, 46, 137, 139 Lebanon 13, 15, 16, 78, 82, 83 administrative and governance reform 96, 172, 173–7, 180 civil war 168, 171, 172 economy 87 Hezbollah 16, 37, 87, 157, 159, 169, 170, 174, 178–82 Israeli attacks and occupations 169, 170, 172, 174, 176, 192 sectarianism 167–8, 172, 177, 181 state 168–9, 170, 176 Ta’if Accord 168, 171, 172 legitimacy 41, 46, 59, 80, 83, 85, 95, 108, 140, 143, 185 liberalism 3, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25–31, 43, 45, 47, 49, 60, 69, 70, 76, 81, 84, 89, 96, 101, 109, 117, 120, 151, 200, 208–9 non-liberal 16, 17, 27, 37, 135, 138, 184 and the state 29, 96, 130, 134–41, 149 liberal peace 2, 5–7, 8, 10–11, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21–22, 34, 35, 54, 55–6,

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Index 60–5, 74–7, 78–89, 113, 116, 130, 132, 143, 180, 183, 188–91, 192, 196, 202, 207, 208, 209–10 alternatives to 86–8, 131–2, 159, 181, 211–12 components of 12–13, 16, 69, 114 critiquing and understanding the 16, 17, 25, 41–4, 46, 68, 193, 207 as a system 32–7, 44–6, 75, 211 Liberia 77 local agency (also local participation and local ownership) 2, 6–7, 10–11, 17, 32, 45, 47, 48, 55, 59–60, 68, 79, 84–6, 95, 111, 114, 132, 137, 140, 147, 156, 167, 183, 191, 207 Mexico 58, 59, 65, 76 Milosevic, S. 151–2 Mozambique 7 NATO 11, 32, 43, 44, 45, 62, 89, 111, 113, 142, 148, 155, 210 natural resources 58, 64, 70, 122 neo-liberalism 14, 29–30, 31, 38, 41, 61, 117–22, 130, 138, 165–6, 175, 183, 189 New Caledonia 15, 58 Northern Ireland 6, 13, 17, 19, 77, 82, 83, 86, 154, 156–7, 182, 191–3 civil society 184, 193–6, 203–6 Orange Order 17, 184, 186, 193, 197–205 peace process 184–5, 187, 195, 199–204, 205 sectarianism 192, 193, 194–5, 198, 199, 200–2 Sinn Féin 195, 201 North Korea 81 Obama, B. 46, 106, 113 OSCE 142, 156 Pakistan 139 Palestine 139, 168, 169, 170 participation see local agency peace study and critiques of, 1–2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 22–5, 31, 69, 116, 209

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239

peacebuilding 24, 40, 47, 70, 75, 83, 95, 117, 137, 166, 185, 188, 196, 204 Philippines 190 post-colonialism 62, 69, 71–2, 76 powersharing 15, 150, 168, 172–3, 179, 192 privatisation 14, 30, 84, 114, 118, 119, 131, 155, 157, 177 Qatar 169 reconciliation 39, 47, 48, 52, 55, 56, 144, 154, 196, 204 reconstruction 35, 40, 59, 76, 82 resistance 6–7, 10, 17, 32, 68, 72, 78, 79, 84–6, 106, 132, 155, 207, 210–12 Richmond, O. 31, 37 Russia 7, 11, 33, 36, 46, 79, 112 Rwanda 48–9, 190 sanctions 29 Saudi Arabia 13, 28, 34, 37, 96, 98, 122, 168, 169, 174 security sector reform 13, 39, 96, 140 Serbia 32, 142, 143, 155 Sierra Leone 77, 78, 96, 137 Somalia 37, 139 South Africa 96 Soviet Union 92, 97, 98, 147 Spoilers 108 Sri Lanka 190 state (as a concept) 14, 16, 26, 28, 29–30, 95, 112, 134, 136–41, 145 statebuilding 14, 15, 16, 20, 25, 39, 40–1, 61, 74, 77, 82, 83, 86, 95–6, 97, 101, 103, 104, 106, 109–10, 112, 134–41, 155, 159, 166, 180, 188 Sudan 58 Syria 13, 34, 81, 168, 169, 171, 179 Taliban see Afghanistan Tanzania 53, 63 Timor Leste 137 Tito, J. 146 Turkmenistan 28, 174

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240 Index Uganda 53, 137 United Kingdom 13, 32, 81, 174, 175, 185, 193, 201 United Nations 10, 11, 13, 19, 32, 34, 45, 58, 62, 78, 81, 93, 100, 119, 124, 142, 155, 179, 181 peacekeeping 82, 211 United Nations Development Programme 34, 40, 43, 159, 160, 164, 166, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178, 180 United States 13, 14–15, 16, 19, 21, 29, 32, 34, 36, 37, 46, 56, 59, 65, 81, 93, 96, 112, 113, 119, 122, 124, 127, 139, 168, 175, 180, 182 development and humanitarian assistance 99, 121, 122, 166 military power 33, 64, 85, 98, 100, 105, 142–3 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 25, 57

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Uruguay 34 USAID 58, 96, 119, 155, 166 warlords 14 War on Terror 96, 139, 167, 171 welfare 96, 117, 130, 141 women (and gender) 27, 52, 53, 62, 64, 79, 101, 103, 111, 128, 165 World Bank 10, 34, 58, 120, 122, 139, 144, 159, 161, 162, 166, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177 World Vision 19 Yemen 96, 139 Yugoslavia 15, 32, 78, 145, 190 socialist era 136, 141, 146, 147–8, 149–50 socialist legacy 135, 151–2 Zimbabwe 81

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