Blurring the Lines of Security and Economic Development
BY AGNIESZKA PACZYNSKA
As the victorious great powers surveyed the devastation brought on by World War II and faced the crumbling of old colonial empires two issues came to dominate the international agenda: the reconstruction of countries devastated by the war and the economic and political development of the newly independent states of Africa and Asia. What linked these two issues was the perception that future violence and wars could be prevented by ensuring economic development and international financial stability. New institutions were established, most notably, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the World Bank), the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations. The goal was to guarantee the flow of funds for reconstruction and development projects, offer short-term loans to prevent financial crises and provide a forum for peaceful resolution of international disputes and conflicts.
How the international community viewed the relationship between development and security was fundamentally transformed at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s. As the animosity between the United States and the Soviet Union declined and the number of civil wars increased, the United Nations Security Council became both more able and more willing to expand UN peace-keeping, peace-enforcing, and peace-building activities. The scope of the international community’s interventions in domestic conflicts implied a fundamental redefining of norms of state sovereignty and an expansion of the legitimate domain for external intervention.
At the same time, security and development came to be seen as interrelated and mutually reinforcing. Most civil conflicts were erupting in poor countries. In their wake, they left devastated political and economic institutions, destroyed infrastructure and communications networks, and resulted in countless civilians killed, displaced and terrorized. They also left military leaders and organizations that had the experience, equipment and often financial motives to continue the violence. Thus countries emerging out of protracted civil wars were even poorer and less politically stable than before, and therefore more likely to see the conflict flare up once more. In over 40 percent of cases, civil war erupted again within five years after fighting came to a halt. Establishing conditions for durable peace required enabling these societies to generate sustainable economic growth. Although economic development in and of itself would not ensure breaking the conflict cycle, without it forging security was unlikely.
The UN, international donor governments and organizations like the World Bank and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have since devoted significant financial resources to reconstruction and peace-building programs. Such projects are based on the assumption that democratization allows conflicts to shift from the battlefield the ballot box and that market economy promotes economic growth, reduces poverty and social inequalities and thus removes one of the major sources of conflict.
Similar assumptions began informing development programs in countries that were not recovering from conflict but rather were mired in poverty. The adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000 underscored the emerging international consensus about the tight nexus between security and development. The programs that formed the core of the Goals were based on the premise that a world filled with poverty, disease and inequality was a world that would continue to experience violence, state failure and be permeated by a deep sense of insecurity.
The September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon expanded the relationship between development and security even further. Conflict was no longer a problem of the poor, of the developing world, of the global “zones of war.” The attacks brought violence directly into what seemed like the safe and comfortable “zones of peace” of the advanced post-industrial democracies. As Turner and Pugh emphasize, the current dominant discourse “comes in the magic mantra of mutual vulnerability of the developed and underdeveloped world.” This newly discovered interrelationship implies that for the developed world to be secure, the poor must have peace and development. This suggests that the failed states of the Global South and the conflicts ravaging them pose a danger to the global community by spreading the virus of disorder. At the same time the definition of security began to widen to now include human, economic, food and environmental security.
The design of peace-building and development, however, despite the rhetoric of “local program ownership,” “local empowerment,” and “people participation” continues to be largely a developed-world project that comes with both political and economic conditionalities. The fear of disorder has further expanded the scope of acceptable interventions and the extent to which the international community can shape and mold the political, economic, legal and social structures within the zones of war. Uvin goes as far as to link this new post-conflict reconstruction agenda as neo-colonialism during which “in the name of a totalizing, missionary-style ideology (based on a deeply romanticized vision of the situation ‘at home’) foreigners are encouraged to make deeply interventionist life and death decisions for other societies, unbound by outside control, unconstrained by procedure, unaffected by outcomes.”
As the war on terror began gathering steam, this crucial connection between security and development came to dominate the policy agenda of both international donors and perhaps most importantly, the United States government. With the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq, the Bush administration and its allies concluded that ensuring economic and social development as well as providing humanitarian relief to populations affected by conflict was too crucial a task to leave in the hands of non-governmental organizations. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, the winning the hearts and minds of local populations became a central component of the war on terror. Increasingly US military personnel became involved in work that previously had been the purview of development and humanitarian organizations. Soon it became clear that these new tasks that the military took had profoundly troubling consequences.
The tensions that this blurring of the lines between security and development assistance emerged first in Afghanistan where, following the fall of the Taliban regime in November 2001, international donors and NGOs poured resources and personnel in a massive reconstruction effort. Because the security situation remained precarious, international military forces remained on the ground. Although initially the military was charged with helping the Kabul government bring regional warlords under central government control as well as fighting the growing opium trade, this role began to significantly evolve. Both because of the high level of insecurity in the countryside and because of Western coalition forces’ desire to build political support among Afghans for the international military intervention, the coalition set up Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) whose mandate expanded beyond provision of security to tasks associated with development work.
The PRTs concentrated on various reconstruction and village improvement projects, such as building schools and health clinics and constructing wells all with the goal of winning the hearts and minds of local populations. However, implementation problems soon emerged as did criticism from many non-governmental organizations. Often, the PRTs lacked adequate knowledge of local conditions and had little understanding of the complexities of development work. As a result, it was not unusual for schools and health clinics already constructed to remain empty because there were no teachers or doctors. Because the military did not consult with the communities in which they worked, often what was constructed had little added value and sometimes further deepened communal tensions. The PRTs did not sufficiently consult or coordinate with humanitarian and development organizations working in Afghanistan. Thus projects implemented by the different actors were often in tension or duplicated each other.
Although NGOs were highly critical of the PRTs’ lack of understanding of development work, many were even more bitterly opposed the PRTs because of their impact on security. Many NGOs argued that what Afghans needed most was an improved security situation. The fact that the military was dispersing its resources and attention by also engaging in development and reconstruction projects undermined its ability to fully focus on improving security in the countryside. Without security,
however, rebuilding the country was all the more difficult. Additionally, many NGOs argued that their effectiveness and their ability to work in conflict areas was dependent on their neutrality. However, military personnel in the PRTs often worked in civilian clothing and engaged in relief and reconstruction work thus making it difficult for Afghans to distinguish between civilian and military personnel. The blurring of the lines between civilian and military personnel, many NGOs contended, made their workers more vulnerable to violence. These concerns were grounded in the experience of relief and development organizations working throughout Afghanistan. Attacks on NGO personnel were not uncommon and became more frequent as the security situation deteriorated in the spring of 2005. In 2006, for example, approximately 30 NGO workers were killed. The situation in Iraq was even more dangerous for those working in humanitarian and development NGOs.
The problem of the weakening distinction between the provision of security and the provision of development and humanitarian assistance was of growing concern to many NGOs in places other than Afghanistan and Iraq. As Jan Egeland, the UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs pointed out, “there is a growing perception that humanitarianism has been politicized, with a dangerous blurring of the lines between independent, impartial humanitarian action and military or foreign-policy objectives. The result: Aid workers are seen as ‘legitimate’ targets by those who identify them – wrongly – with the policies of combatants or governments.”
The evidence that there is a close and mutually reinforcing relationship between development and security has been mounting over the last few decades. Societies where poverty is endemic tend to experience more violence and civil strife. The lack of security in turn makes economic development difficult to launch and sustain thus perpetuating conditions were exploitation and grievances fester and make social conflict endemic. Recognizing this mutual dependence of security and development is the key to successfully tackling both challenges. But although the line between development and security may be blurry, the mechanisms for providing for both should not be. The blurring of the lines between civilian and military organizations’ tasks as has been happening in Afghanistan and elsewhere undermines the ability of the international community to facilitate programs promoting both security and development.
Agnieszka Paczynska (apaczyns@gmu.edu) is assistant professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis & Resolution (http://icar.gmu.edu). This article was first published in print and citations have been removed due to space limitations, but are available from the author.
