Primum non nocere

Up until about a year ago, I used to like to go to panel discussions and other such talks about Afghanistan. They were downers, but there was still a lot of hope. Not so much any more. They are usually so bloody depressing that I have a hard time sitting through them. How many panels do you need to attend to figure out that we haven't been doing things right and have no plans of doing so in the future? I had to tap out.

Until this week, but not because it was about Afghanistan in particular. On Thursday, USIP hosted a panel on the nexus of DDR (Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration) and SSR (Security Sector Reform) in Afghanistan. SSR is a pet topic of mine recently and USIP's current program on the topic is just tops. The confluence of DDR and SSR is an interesting topic in the defense world - one that is underdeveloped yet growing (the best primer out there was by Sean McFate at NDU). It was a good panel and well moderated to keep on time and topic (if you're ever on a panel moderated by Bob Perito, stick to your alloted time or he'll make you stick to it).

The major takeaways from the panel is that we (the U.S., NATO and Afghanistan) have not done DDR or SSR well and it doesn't appear that we intend to change that any time soon. Specifically, DDR was not even mentioned in the Bonn Agreement and when it was begun, it focused exclusively on parties to the Bonn Agreement, not now-labeled Illegal Armed Groups in the south. The program's only useful output was the reduction of some heavy weapons from the country, although it seems that most of these were unserviceable anyway. Metrics were focused on outputs, such as weapons removed, instead of looking deeply at the program's objectives, which were essentially unmet. Another interesting tidbit from this talk was that the senior leaders of the militias landed in the government and many soldiers landed in some sort of government or government-sanctioned group, but lots of soldiers ended up with nothing to do and most of the middle leadership were essentially excluded from everything. Not a very effective DDR program.

There were more details of past and current DDR initiatives, which were fairly separated from SSR, and the video is up so you can catch it all if that's your thing. There is also a paper coming out in the next couple of months by one of the panelists, Caroline Hartzell, which I'm looking forward to reading. This event did raise a bigger question in my mind, which has been plaguing me on other topics. We've bollixed this up for years and we continue to bollix it up. Here is my question: if we're not doing it right and we plan to continue doing what doesn't work, should we be doing it all?

The title of this post is from the Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm. In this regard, war is always harmful to some people, but should nations undertake programs and actions that harm their own mission? Is it possible that doing nothing would be better? I'm not speaking of the Afghan War writ large, but the programs therein. Our DDR policies aren't helping our mission at all and is hindering it in many cases, so should we doing it still? Same, same with police training. Or opium eradication. They all seems like things we should do, but what we are doing is counterproductive to our goals. It strikes me that maybe a better course of action would be to do nothing. Obviously, analysis would have to be done (some might ask why we'd start doing that now...) on the likely effects of doing nothing, but in some cases it seems like the apt course of action.

Afghanistan is becoming a tragic and elongated episode of Yes, Minister, where the leadership is some sort of coterie of Sir Humphrey Applebys. "[W]e don't measure our success by results, but by activity. And the activity is considerable." This is not to say that program and mission leaders aren't doing their best to meet their objectives, but we're putting a greater premium on doing things - anything, really - because it makes it look like we're trying. That's just not good enough. This war is costing everyone too much in everything to keep going down this path. There doesn't appear to be anything that will change the fact that we're going to be there for some time to come. But we need to start looking at what we're doing, what we're spending time and money on, and stop undertaking activities that hinder our ability to attain some modicum of success (however ill-defined that is). We need to start ensuring that we're first doing no harm.

Contrasts--Kinshasa, Monrovia, and Abidjan

One of the things that I thought was most interesting about my short visits to all of these places was the different attitudes that locals had towards their countries' police and military forces. Since we hadn't been to any of these cities before, we always had someone drive us around town for a couple hours after checking into the hotel, just to get a feel for things.

Kinshasa is big, messy, bustling and crazy. The main artery, the Boulevard du 30 Juin (the day of independence from Belgium), has been completely torn up so it can be widened. In the process, the Chinese companies who are doing the work have removed all the decades old trees that I'm told used to line up the avenue (I had people almost crying when they told me about the trees, it's really awful, now there's just this sewage ditch on each side of the street, lovely).

Anyway, cops stand on platforms at intersections directing traffic and stopping white people in expensive looking cars. We asked the driver to take us down by the river, where some government buildings and embassies are. "No, we can't go there, there are too many military guys there," was the response. Ok, not that good, you have a problem if people are scared to come too close to government buildings. Over the next few days, we quickly found that taxi drivers would rather add 5-10 minutes to the trip in order to avoid getting too close to the Presidential palace...This is what happens when cops carry AKs--just like soldiers--and no one gets paid, or at least not paid enough. This is also what happens when soldiers are doing the jobs of police officers and when presidential guard units have complete impunity.

So, next stop Monrovia, where basically every permanent structure suffers from bullet holes. There's a lot of property disputes going on because seemingly sound structures (besides the bullet holes) lack roofs and windows and are not being used, despite the fact that there's a clear lack of housing/shop space/office space, you name it. Like in Kinshasa, there's construction everywhere.

On our little tour around the city, the driver pulls right into the driveway of the Ministry of the Interior. We're thinking "this guy is completely nuts." So we ask, "is it safe?" and get a puzzled frown in response, "Of course it's safe it's the ministry of the interior." And then you realize, there are no soldiers patrolling the streets, only unarmed police. They're directing traffic too but it seems they're harassing drivers a lot less. Not only that but it seems many of them actually do get paid. Now this creates another set of problems, which is that unarmed police have a hard time trying to respond to armed gangs...In short, people would like the cops to do more to address crime. Meanwhile, the military it seems is esconded into a big base for training. Signs on the gate and on the wall say "Barclay Training Center: Security Sector Reform for the Liberian People, from the American People."

Next stop Abidjan, which is different again because the buildings are largely intact (almost no bullet holes). The roads are paved, the traffic lights work and unless there's no one around, people actually abide by them. There are also bus lanes and nice highways along the laguna.

Here there are all sorts of police and military milling about, some almost unrecognizable because they're neighborhood cops and they just wear pants and a special kind of polo shirt that says "police municipale" in washed out capital letters in the back. The policing model is of course French. Here the gendarmes and military guys are armed again but not the municipal cops--these people are mostly seen talking to locals on the street, walking around the market. Here, ministries are surrounded by big fences and high walls and guarded by some kind of private guard company (yellow polo shirts, black pants, unarmed). These yellow shirt guys also stand guard at banks, supermarkets, and the nicer restaurants. Here, it seems military, police and gendarmerie patrol and sometimes set up "checkpoints" to steal money from hapless taxi drivers (small red corollas--they have meters!). So here again, we have the problem of unclear distinctions between police and military tasks.

All this to say, the reform needs for these countries are different and the way in which forces in country behave gives these cities a completely different feel.

Liberia: security sector reform and the international drug trade

Today's Liberia post started when Gulliver emailed me about this: "The National Guard will add Liberia to its State Partnership Program this year (2009), bringing the number of African nations taking part in the program to eight."

What's so interesting about this you ask? Well, first of all the US funded the recruiting, training, and vetting of the Armed Forces of Liberia. The UN Secretary General, in his report dated 10 August 2009, provides the following update on how that's going:

Development of the new 2,000-strong Armed Forces of Liberia continued to make progress. The first battalion started the United States Army Training and Evaluation Programme, which it will complete in September, while the second battalion will complete the programme in December. At that time, the United States contractors currently training and equipping the force will hand over to the Ministry of Defence, which will assume responsibility for training and standing up the new army. The United States has indicated that it plans to assign as many as 60 United States serving military personnel to continue mentoring the Armed Forces of Liberia, beginning in January 2010.

So it looks like we'll continue to work with the AFL as it builds capacity, an officer corps, etc. To get back to the role of of National Guard units, the article (from the snazzy AFRICOM website) explains:

Dankyan [the Liberia Desk Officer at AFRICOM] evaluated their military exercises to ensure a standard level of proficiency. After finding them ready, he started the process of matching them with a state that meets their needs.

These needs can be very specific. Some countries are recovering from war and request states with high engineering quotients to help rebuild essential structures. Some need help in planning for natural and manmade disasters, and still others want experience in farming...

For Liberia, a coastal state, the ideal partner would have expertise in ports and agriculture, he said. Dankyan said he has yet to choose a state partner because so many have volunteered to work with Liberia.

Let's hope that happens because as far as I know, we haven't done much to build Liberia's capacity to manage its borders. In particular, I don't think we've provided much support to build Liberia's Coast Guard (we're talking four 32 ft and four 28 ft crafts and 350 personnel). This is important because, as the BBC reports, Liberia (or rather the region as a whole) has become a trading platform for drugs moving from South America to western Europe. It's also important because the Liberian conflict was largely funded by trading diamonds, timber, rubber...and other commodities. Finally, it's important because beyond deterring and reducing illegal activity, effective border and customs management serves as the basis for reliable government revenue.

A wider question though: in countries like Liberia, with porous borders, resources, and limited capacity to manage borders, how do you fix that problem over the long run?

War in Congo: Rape, the Secretary of State and Security Sector Reform (Update 2)

Secretary Clinton is on an 11 day, 7 nation trip through Africa this week and next. She started in Kenya and Angola. Today she was in Kinshasa and then Goma and highlighted the continuing use of rape as a weapon in the long-running Congolese conflict. There are a several things to flag and read if you haven't already.

First, the Washington Post has this horrifying piece about the rising rate in rape as a result of the ongoing FARDC offensive against the FDLR (in part the former Rwandan genocidaires). What I found was different about the piece: interviews with rape victims and interviews with soldiers who try to justify/rationalize their behavior. It also describes how nothing happens, even when commanders are notified of these crimes.

The story includes an interview with a soldier explaining that lack of pay, lack of food rations, and being away from home, justify rape (the can of sardines was supposed to be a food ration for several soldiers for more than a week):

"The truth is like this," said one officer, sitting under a shed and sipping a powerful local brew. "What is making soldiers to do these bad things is their treatment by the army. Imagine, one can of sardines?! And you send a soldier away for 10 years?! So, I'm hungry, I'm in need of a wife and I have no money to pay for a prostitute, he said. "If I see a woman walking on the road, and I love her, I will take her. I will help myself."

So, in Goma, Secretary Clinton, reportedly visibly shaken by her conversations with victims, announced $17 million in assistance.

She also reportedly spoke to President Kabila about improving pay, living conditions,and training for the Congolese armed forces. That sounds nice, but let's hope she provided more advice than that. Since Ambassador Rice keeps saying the US is actually going to contributing more than its substantial assessed contributions to UN operations, maybe we can figure out a way to help build capacity for military justice for example, perhaps by training others to do it given our obligations in Afghanistan.

Since we've learned a lot recently about actually paying soldiers, lowering absenteeism rates and increasing professionalism, maybe that's something we could share with the EU and the UN as they work to professionalize the FARDC. One thing is for sure, things aren't going to change in Congo until we figure out ways to make sure the FARDC aren't away from home for too long, and of course are held accountable for raping, looting, and generally behaving like a bunch thugs.

UPDATE 1: More on Clinton's plan to fight rape in DRC:

She announced that the American government would train doctors, supply rape victims with video cameras to document violence, send American military engineers to help build facilities and train Congolese police officers, especially female police officers, to crack down on rapists.

That and the Secretary also mentioned the need to better regulate the conflict-funding mineral trade in the region.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Vanessa for pointing this out but Texas in Africa (and some people in the comments) makes the following observation about the program:

$17 million is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to treat the tens of thousands of victims who need immediate help...That money is nowhere near enough to whip the police force into shape (and they need training on more issues than just gender-based violence), but it will certainly help.

And then a commenter:

Also on the camcorders - don't they contain coltan, and wouldn't distributing large numbers of them simply increase the demand for the mineral "they" say should be curtailed to stop the violence? Or don't they believe that?

Well, obviously, I don't know how many camcorders we're talking about but that strikes me as the deepest of ironies. The minerals are funding the conflict. The soldiers/combatants who are exploiting resources rape women. And then later the women get the camcorders, the very camcorders for which the resources are exploited and...And as Texas in Africa points out, that's money we're not spending on training/properly paying security forces.

"Today, there are no soldiers in Congo. Today, they are jokers."

This is how a Congolese WWII veteran describes his country's forces today. The quote is from a Washington Post story from yesterday about a camp for Congolese WWII veterans in Eastern Congo.

The story describes how they were "recruited" and served in the war. They weren't really recruited at all of course, more kidnapped and made to fight for Belgium (does that sound familiar?).

The story raises the question of how you support veterans in countries like Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and of course Afghanistan. Figuring out what an adequate pension looks like has been a challenge and a source of tension in these countries. In many cases, ex-combatants found to lack the qualifications to integrate new forces have refused to demobilize until they were assured sufficient pensions to support themselves and their families.

Still, I was surprised that these veterans were apparently paid pensions until the fall of Mobutu:

The men returned to eastern Congo after the war. Tami [one of the veterans] became a nurse; Ngumbi became a farmer. During the rule of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who wrecked the economy but also instilled a sense of national and African pride, the men said they received a decent pension.

When Mobutu was overthrown in a coup, though, the pensions stopped. These days, the veterans get by on food and help from relatives.

War has swept a few times through Walikale, with a succession of rebel groups and recently the Congolese army -- now known as one of the worst-trained armies on the planet -- looting the veterans' camp. The soldiers stole the men's boots, their uniforms, their Congolese flag, and most of their medals.

And the story ends with the title quote.

Security Sector Reform--Good Practices and Lessons Learned

The Stimson Center just released a repository of good practices in security sector reform. It includes 7 governments, 11 international organizations, and several dozens NGOs and think tanks. Built for the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations' Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (DPKO OROLSI), it is meant to serve as the basis for developing more formal UN guidance and policy on SSR.

The repository (and excel doc) is a matrix with about 900 SSR activities which are cross-referenced over 190 documents for six functional areas of SSR. The functional areas are:

• defense sector reform
• doing SSR in stabilization environments
  
• threat assessments and reviews
• national security strategies and policies
• governance and oversight of the security sector, and
  
• management of the security sector.

It also includes a section on cross-cutting issues in SSR (for example local ownership). The matrix is divided into two sheets, one for official government and international organization sources, the other for scholars and researchers. When possible, the matrix provides links to the publicly available documents. The matrix is also paginated--meaning if a particular activity in SSR is of interest, you can quickly see which documents discuss that issue.