New Barbarians at the Gate: Losing the liberal peace in Africa

Conflict in Africa has proved steadfastly resilient to the international community's attempts to secure a liberal peace. Drawn from Kantian principles, the liberal peace is premised upon the idea that economic interdependence, democracy and the rule of law constitute the sustainable foundations for world peace. Africa presents a particularly complex challenge to the liberal peace, for not only is it the epicentre of conflict and failing states, it is plagued by underdevelopment and poverty which, following the events of 9/11, have been construed as the ‘new threats to global stability’. This representation is clearly expressed in the G8's Africa Action Plan (AAP) which argues that:

1) The assertion that development makes everyone more secure flies in the face of mounting evidence in Africa which suggests that the neo-liberal policies of the mainstream development community, including free trade, liberalisation and privatisation, have increased inequalities and the sense of social injustice which in turn has had the effect of intensifying levels of human insecurity that feeds violence (UNCTAD, 2004; Willett, 2004; Stiglitz, 2002; Duffield, 2001; Castells, 1998; Cox & Sinclair, 1996);

2) The presentation of underdevelopment and poverty as ‘threats’ have allowed for a deepening of the securitisation of development. Conflicts in Africa have already provided opportunities for the donor community to establish new forms of agency, legitimacy and intervention which prioritise the security related policies of the liberal peace agenda over those of development (Duffield, 2001). By opening up the development space to pursue security objectives, the liberal peace has found its foundations eroded by the encroachment of the ‘new barbarian’ agenda of US isolationism, manifest in the expanding remit of the ‘War on Terror’. The latter has co-opted elements of humanitarian discourse to legitimise interventions that advance great power politics and corporate interests (Luckham, 2005);

3) Established analyses of the causes of conflict in Africa are shaping incongruous, unrealistic and over optimistic policy responses (Shaw 2003; Dillon and Reid, 2000). The emerging political economy of violence perspective suggests that African conflicts are a function of the power hierarchies of the global system and more to do with resource control and economic survival than with struggles over the control of the state, ethnicity, religion or ideology (Duffield, 2001; Smillie et al. 2000; Reno, 1998; Cox & Sinclair, 1996). War in Africa, in all its complex manifestations, functions as an important means of social reordering and transformation – an axis around which new social, economic and political relations are formed at the local and global level (Duffield, 2001).

Methodologically the paper is concerned with an examination of the dominant discourse on security and conflict in Africa. It attempts to locate the discussion in the context of the key documents and policy descriptions of the leading institutions of global governance. While the paper is not meant to be policy prescriptive, the intention is to expose the structural trends that are shaping Africa's contemporary security and development crisis. In pursuing these aims the first part of the paper examines the security community's approaches to Africa, highlighting the historical failures and limitations of the liberal peace project. This is followed by insights into African conflicts provided by political economy perspectives, which provides a meta narrative on the structural causes of violence in an increasingly globalised world. In so doing provides possible explanations for the limitations of the international communities liberal peace project. The next section analyses the way in which the institutions of global governance have looked to development as a possible conflict resolution mechanism. This departure has not only led to a convergence in security and development discourse resulting in the growing securitisation of development, it has also encouraged a rapid expansion of the liberal peace complex. Here specific reference is made to the donors’ security first programmes including security sector reform (SSR) and disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) strategies and the ways in which these security programmes increasingly impinge upon development budgets. However, the cooption of development as an instrument of security, provides no guarantee of improved security while development policies remain firmly focused on the very same neo-liberal policies that have been responsible for en-structuring the poverty and inequality that underwrite social tensions and conflict in African societies. This final part of the paper analyses the rise of the ‘new barbarian’ agenda in the US which is beginning to eclipse the liberal peace project in Africa. In particular, it examines the way in which the securitisation of development has opened up a space for the ‘new barabarians’ to co-opt development resources to extend their ‘war on terror’ in Africa.

Security & development discourse

The recent convergence in security and development policies has consolidated a broad consensus about the goals of the liberal peace project. The concept of ‘liberal peace’ conflates the neo-liberal economic and political projects of the Washington based institutions, with ‘peace’ – manifest in a predilection towards conflict resolution and social transformation. The concept of the liberal peace draws its inspiration from Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace A Philosophical Proposal (1795), which suggested that international peace could be established upon a foundation of three elements: republican constitution, cosmopolitan law (embodied in free trade and economic interdependence), and international law and organisations.

The ending of the Cold War and the subsequent expanded reach of global institutions brought to the fore the possibility of achieving a Kantian peace. This encouraged a growing consent among donor nations, multilateral institutions, military establishments and NGOs, that conflict resolution in the South could be achieved through a number of interconnected processes involving the economic, political and social transformation of chaotic or collapsed states. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Africa, which has become a laboratory for the liberal peace project.

Despite a general consensus about the overarching aims of the liberal peace project, two contrasting sets of policy narratives are discernable: a) that of the mainstream security community which is preoccupied with securitsing development, and b) that of the development community that is concerned with developmentalising security.

From the security of the state to development as security

During the Cold War the state was afforded a privileged position in security discourse. Peacekeeping and conflict resolution strategies were circumscribed by state sovereignty, territorial integrity and the norms of non-intervention. The only movements challenging state sovereignty during this era were national liberation struggles. With the end of the bi-polar era, Western liberal democracies led by the US and including a growing host of NGOs and multilateral agencies, began to challenge the inviability of state sovereignty as democratic values and human rights were accorded greater worth in the pursuit of liberal peace. A new model of peacekeeping and conflict resolution was introduced which legitimised interventions in the name of humanitarian values. Peace enforcement operations designed to keep warring factions apart, in order to provide the space and time for negotiated settlements tied to third party mediation, were implemented. (See Appendix for details of conflicts in Africa)

Third party mediation assumed the mantel of neutrality when in fact it imposed the values of Western liberal democracy which analysts such as Clapham (1998) have argued brought about disastrous consequences, most notably in Rwanda. According to Clapham, the negotiated peace settlement and subsequent elections in Rwanda, allowed the extremist Hutu party to bide its time, assume power and organise the genocide which occurred in April 1994. The international community's approach did not recognise the need to tackle the deep-seated grievances between the Hutus and Tutsis including land pressures, the unequal distribution of economic and political power, the effects of an economic crisis and the insensitivities of neo-liberal policies.

The Western assumptions about the viability of negotiated settlements rested upon the naïve supposition that the opposing parties bought into the values of the liberal peace. But as Clapham has pointed out, the values of liberal peace were not even shared in Europe until relatively recently. In fact, until the middle of the last century, differences were settled through war where the victor took all. Wars have largely shaped the political geography of the European landscape, not negotiated settlements and conflict resolution.

In attempting to impose power sharing solutions onto conflict riven states in Africa, UN peace missions have failed to recognise the changes in the balance of power brought about by years of conflict. By freezing conflicts at a certain point and failing to deal with the causes of conflict, particularly those pertaining to horizontal inequalities, peace processes in Africa have inevitably proved unsustainable and became a format for renewed violence.

John Dory (2002), author of a US Institute of Peace report entitled ‘Effects of Violence on Peace Processes’, has noted that of the 38 formal peace accords signed between January 1988 and December 1998, 31 failed to survive more than three years. Elisabeth Wood (2000) suggests that peace processes that address economic redistribution have a better chance of long-term success. Yet in the current discussions on post-conflict settlements, while issues of power redistribution via developed and federated systems receive a high priority, issues of social and economic injustice and inequality are still being ignored. In Sri Lanka for example, where an internationally brokered peace process has been linked to neo-liberal reforms, the subsequent increased cost of living and the further pauperisation of large sections of the population have alienated the electorate and created a number of negative perceptions about the peace process that threaten to derail the peace (Rajasingman-Sennanayake, 2003).

Following the end of the Cold War, the neo-liberal triumphalism of the bilateral and multilateral institutions blithely assumed that free markets would resolve the issues of social and economic injustice that often fuel conflicts in Africa. Yet there is no tangible evidence to date that free markets alone do anything other than exacerbate social inequalities and feed social tensions, in the worlds poorest developing countries (Willett, 2004; Stiglitz, 2002; Sachs, 2001; Nafziger and Arvinen, 2002; Stewart and Fitzgerald, 2000).

Following repeated failures of UN peacekeeping missions, the initial optimism about the role of the UN to extend the liberal peace agenda to Africa has been replaced by widespread scepticism and derision about its capabilities and effectiveness. In effect, the UNs exclusive role in peacekeeping has been superseded by an extension of networks involving state and non-state actors including militarycivilian and public-private organisations which has had the effect of enmeshing international non-government organisation, donors, military establishments, IFIs, private security companies, business partners, NGOs and the UN into what Duffield has termed a strategic complex (Duffield, 2001). The ongoing consensus built around the liberal peace agenda binds these new strategic actors and networks into a consolidated approach to tackling the security/insecurity nexus confronting the African continent. What it has not done is to review the concepts upon which peace is ostensibly to be founded. Rather, an ever expanding strategic complex is to be observed that appears to have gained an unremitting momentum in the name of peace, while the latter remains as illusive as ever.

Following the disastrous failures of Rwanda and Somalia, the leading Western democracies have displayed a marked reluctance to engage in further UN peacekeeping missions in Africa.¹ The humanitarian principles used to justify interventions in Kosovo and elsewhere are now applied with discretion. For instance, widespread humanitarian crisis are being experienced in Darfur where over 200,000 people have been killed and over 2 million displaced, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo where over 3 million people have died, but the UN Security Council has so far failed to respond to calls for adequate peacekeeping operations. Rather, attempts are being made to devolve peacekeeping functions and conflict resolution mechanisms to regional strategic complexes, thought to be better able to develop and implement ‘African solutions to African problems’ (G8, 2005a).

Regional initiatives include the promotion of the African Union's Peace and Security Council, together with the conflict-prevention and peacekeeping mechanisms of the African Union, and the strengthening of the security and peace keeping functions of the Economic Commission for West Africa, Southern African Development Community, and other regional and sub-regional bodies. Moreover, ODA from OECD donor countries is being allocated to support these initiatives (OECD, 2005). The regionalisation of solutions reflects a preoccupation with the expanded reach of liberal governance rather than with tangible and practicable peace processes. Regionalisation of the liberal peace/security complex has not facilitated a real transfer of power to Africa and its people. In effect, it is a system of ‘liberal peace by proxy’, whereby resources from African countries are mobilised to undertake security mandates determined by the powerful vested interests of Western liberal democracies that are themselves increasingly reluctant to militarily engage in African conflicts. For the international community, the added advantage of regionalising peace initiatives is that when things go wrong, the blame can be deflected from the institutions of global governance and projected onto regional bodies and functionaries in Africa.

Political economy of violence in Africa

In liberal discourse violent conflict is viewed as an exogenous shock to development caused by the deviant and criminal behaviour of warlords that perpetuate social breakdown and collapse (Collier and Hoeffler, 2000). Motivated by greed and rent-seeking behaviour, conflict entrepreneurs have deepened poverty, eroded social cohesion, reversed the gains of development, perpetuated illicit trade and undermined human security (Collier et al. 2003).

Many of these assumptions about war and conflict have been challenged by political economists (Harris-White, 2004; Willett, 2004; Duffield, 2001; Reno, 1998; Keen, 1998) who argue that the normative systems and structures that are utilised in liberal discourse to analyse African conflicts are wholly inadequate to the task, as they have no foundation in the African context. For example, in traditional security discourse, the state is viewed as the organising principle around which security is both conceived and delivered. In Africa, by contrast, the state and state borders which were artificially constructed by European colonial powers, have become increasingly meaningless or irrelevant to either the organisation and provision of security, to flows of informal trade and to local identity and loyalties. From Sierra Leone to Somalia and from Darfur to the DRC, the state has been replaced by multiple centres of authority, dominated by local elites or ‘warlords’ who do not have a particular interest in capturing the artificial state, except perhaps as a means to extend their commercial activities (Duffield, 1998). Thus, to describe African conflicts as intrastate or civil wars, as is so commonly done, is misleading, as the very phrase pre-supposes there is a ‘state’ over which, and inside which, combatants are fighting.

Keen (1998), in challenging the common assumption that war is a contest between two sides trying to triumph over one another, argues that war in Africa has become an alternative system of profit, power and protection in which adversaries often cooperate in their common pursuit of profit. Moreover, Kaldor (1999) has noted that the current forms of violence have blurred the distinctions between war (usually defined as violence between states or organised political groups for political motives), organised crime (violence undertaken by privately organised groups for private gain), and large-scale violations of human rights (violence undertaken by states or politically organised groups against individuals).

To political economists war is not an aberration as liberal discourse would have us believe, but an ‘ever present axis around which opposing societies and complexes continually measure themselves and re-order social economic, scientific and political life’ (Duffield, 2001:13). In fact, just as in Europe's past, Africa's new wars function as an important means of social reordering and transformation in which new local, regional and global power relations are being formed. At a structural level, Africa's ‘new wars’ are a reaction and adaptation to the reordering of the global order that has been occurring since the end of the Cold War.

The reduction in super-power patronage that fuelled many of Africa's conflicts during the Cold War, encouraged military leaders to identify new ways to fund combat and maintain their power bases (Berdal and Malone, 2000; Keen, 1998). The exploitation of natural resource endowments allowed for the emergence of dynamic war economies that have become highly integrated into the global economy via complex networks of trade and finance. In the DRC, war has been sustained by diamonds and coltan, in Liberia Charles Taylor has exploited rare timbers, in Sierra Leone multiple actors have fought over the control of diamond mines and in Angola, UNITA sustained itself through the diamond trade while the MPLA prosecuted its war through the exploitation of its oil reserves. Realising the value of these commodities required the establishment of trade routes, systems of brokerage, money laundering etc all of which required the collusion of the formal economic institutions of the global economy. As Duffield argues, these processes hardly constitute breakdown and disorder; rather, they represent highly structured and sophisticated processes and networks, revealing complex organisational abilities and functions that fully utilise the ICT facilities of the modern information based global economy.

The links between ‘conflict trade’ and globalisation have given rise to the notion of ‘networked wars’ which conceptually highlights the interconnectedness of African conflicts with the global economic system. In their struggle for control over strategic assets, warlords have often secured support from multinational companies that have a vested interest in maintaining access to profitable natural resources. Multinational companies are also known to hire the services of mercenary groups who secure payment in lucrative mining concessions. In this manner, international capital rewards reinforces the indigenous structures of violence enhancing militarised solutions to resource disputes that often inadvertently undermine international resolution to conflict.

There is thus a rational calculus to conflict trade and Africa's ‘new wars’ which is uncomfortable for the adherents of the liberal peace, as it challenges not only the normative basis of Western notions of rationality and progress, but also the fundamental perceptions of how the world is understood and ordered. The actors in Africa's conflict are creating the social and political conditions in which new forms of wealth, redistribution and legitimacy are being realised, in much the same way as piracy created the initial conditions for the accumulation of capital in the UK that went on to underpin investments in the industrial revolution. Duffield goes so far as to argue that what is being witnessed in Africa is a new form of development, that has replaced the failing neo-liberal paradigm promoted by the Washington institutions (Duffield, 1998:11). Into this vacuum new forms of protection, authority, rights and accumulation are emerging which are legitimised by those local and regional communities that gain and flourish from such structures. In Somalia, for example, where there is no central government, most regions have reverted to local forms of governance and justice, either secular clan-based arbitration, or Islamic (Shari’a) law. Somalia's economy is also highly devolved, but nevertheless agricultural exports and telecommunication systems flourish.

Engaging in African conflicts, strategic actors pursuing the liberal peace find themselves ill-equipped to respond to the so-called crises (Reno, 2001; Dillon and Reid, 2000). Simplistic explanations that reduce wars to breakdown, fail to capture or respond to the complex emerging structures which represent an alternative and antagonistic system to that proposed by the liberal peace. There is a logic to the violence in which practices of accumulation at or beyond the confines of the law reveals a new form of political economy to be emerging. It is a form of accumulation that has been facilitated and indeed encouraged by the globalisation of trade, the deregulation of markets and the growth of demand from the rich countries of the North. Collectively these observations help to explain the durability of violence and conflict in Africa and the general resistance African conflicts have to conflict resolution and international peace brokering strategies which are predicated on outdated assumptions about the nature of conflict and the state in Africa.

The securitisation of development

The litany of failure on the African continent has not dampened the momentum for securing liberal peace in the region. New solutions and strategies are forever being invented – the latest being the systematic convergence between the security and development policies of major donors and multilateral institutions.

During the Cold War era the development community had been wary of engaging in security issues in Africa. Conflict was viewed as an external shock, an unfortunate interruption to development, more often than not brought on by the ideological pursuits of superpowers. As such, the development community was powerless to influence such processes. However, with the end of the Cold War and the persistence of conflict in Africa, a consensus began to emerge within the donor community that the causes of war in Africa were attributable to the nature of underdevelopment and its related pathologies of crime and terrorism (CfA, 2005; DFID, 2005; OECD, 1998; Annan, 1998). Subsequently, developmental practice moved from simply funding humanitarian programmes that sought to provide protection and relief to the civilian victims of war, to influencing aid recipient countries’ military expenditure allocations through peace conditionality, to directly transforming security institutions under the rubric of good governance, so as to ensure a secure environment for market-based development. From this it has been a fairly short and logical step to the idea that the development community could and should reconstruct the state in post-conflict situations (Luckham, 2005). The hubris involved in trying to reconstruct entire states and national societies after war and state collapse is not lost on Luckham (2005). Yet in recent years this is precisely what is being attempted by the donor community in Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia and Rwanda.

The events of 9/11 were highly instrumental in defining poverty and underdevelopment as the ‘new threats’ to security. James Wolfensohn, the then President of the World Bank observed that:

The idea that development will make Africa more secure flies in the face of mounting evidence which suggests that Africa's development crisis has largely arisen as a result of the imposition of inappropriate economic policies foisted upon African governments by multilateral and bilateral donors over the last two decades. A number of leading analysts, including some notable authors that have worked in senior positions within the international financial institutions (IFIs), have provided strong evidence to the effect that neo-liberal policies have intensified horizontal inequalities (political, social, cultural and economic), weakened indigenous institutional capacities, increased indebtedness, and rendered countries more prone to the external shocks of currency and commodity price fluctuations (Stiglitz, 2002; Sachs, 2001; UNCTAD, 2001; Wade, 2000; Stewart and Fitzgerald, 2000).

The IMF's short term stabilisation policies designed to reduce inflation, restore currency convertibility, and renew debt servicing, have all involved deep public expenditure cuts as well as the tightening of fiscal, credit and monetary policies.

These measures have had the effect of eroding public institutions, weakening the states’ capacity to provide social safety nets, health, education, law and order. The costs of these adjustment's have been disproportionately distributed to the poor, while the benefits have accrued to the rich. The widening of income inequalities and the social injustice associated with structural adjustment has been a major cause of tension and conflict in African countries (Adekanye, 1995). When a state fails to provide its citizens with public goods, their societies are likely to experience a series of escalating problems that spill over into neighbouring states and the rest of the world. Failed states have become seedbeds for violence terrorism, crime mass migration, refugees and disease (Sachs, 2001:187).

The acceptability of the high social costs of adjustment might be legitimate if economic growth and development took off as a result of IMF structural adjustment policies, but as UNCTAD has noted:

An examination of the development statistics of selected SSA countries engaged in conflict or recently emerged from conflict (and therefore vulnerable to conflict reigniting) reveals a startling pattern of low per capita income, low life expectancy, low levels of FDI, and ODI and high levels of indebtedness.

It is tempting to argue that the table above reveals the effects of conflict on development, but for the majority of these countries, economic crises and state collapse preceded the outbreak of violence (Nafzinger and Arviren, 2002). The official recognition that conflict can wipe out years of constructive development has not been accompanied by an acknowledgement of the converse process: that the macro-economic policies pursued by the IFIs and major donors have been responsible for the pauperisation and social polarisation of many African societies.

The recent acceptance of the relationship between poverty and conflict by the global economic institutions has done little to alter the basic framework of the dominant development paradigm. In fact, the Bretton Woods institutions continue to apply their neo-liberal policies to an ever-widening group of countries, including those that have just emerged from conflict. In fact post-war reconstruction has become a major growth sector of the liberal security complex. Roland Paris (1997), having studied peace-building processes in eight different countries, concluded that the neo-liberal policies of the Bretton Woods institutions have often been instrumental in destabilising peace building operations. According to Rajasingam in Sri Lanka, the Bretton Woods post-conflict reconstruction efforts have built information asymmetries, global-local hierarchies of knowledge and power and the making of myths and models of development (Rajasingam-Sennanayake, 2003).

The ‘new threats’ of underdevelopment and poverty have come to be viewed as a development opportunity by both multilateral and bilateral agencies – a way to relegitimise the neo-liberal development paradigm after the lost decades of the 1980s and 1990s. The World Bank, in particular, has re-orientated itself towards post-war social transformation impinging on roles and functions traditionally executed by the United Nations. While the UN has a relatively open approach to human security and is more inclusive towards local participation and knowledge, the World Bank is a less neutral actor whose policies are driven by the financial and corporate sector interests of the developed world. It disburses funds towards projects that are capital friendly rather than those that focus on social justice. The persistence of the World Bank and IMF in promoting structural adjustment and privatisation programmes in the highly unstable aftermath of a war can have disastrous socio-economic effects on the already weak and vulnerable sectors of society. In effect, a neo-liberal peace orchestrated by the World Bank is even less likely to secure peace and stability than have the past efforts of the UN.

The co-option of neo-liberal development as an instrument of conflict prevention and security, has arisen partly in responses to the desire by major governments to reduce the costs of conflict management and post-conflict reconstruction, which have become exceedingly onerous for major donors in the last ten years (Chalmers and Willett, 2003). In 2001 the OECD argued the need to move beyond the ‘short-term concentration on post-conflict recovery and reconstruction

Development for security?

The G8 announcements in 2005 on increased debt relief, ODA and poverty alleviation appeared to offer some prospect of relieving the structural causes of conflict in Africa. Nevertheless, on closer inspection it would appear that the partiality with which such policies are implemented, the self-serving strategies which motivate the system of rewards and punishment in aid allocations, and the overriding preoccupation with the ‘war on terror’ by the US and UK, offer little prospect for enhanced conflict prevention in Africa.

Debt relief

In June 2005 the finance ministers from the G7 nations promised to cancel the debts the poorest countries owe to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The debt relief package contains onerous conditions such as enforced liberalisation and privatisation. Political and economic conditionalities allow the powerful nations to lever economic opportunities for private foreign investors.

Rarely do private foreign investments benefit the poor. Monbiot (2005a) points out that in the late 1980s, the IMF and World Bank forced Uganda to impose ‘user fees’ for basic healthcare and primary education, thereby creating new markets for international private capital. School attendance collapsed, as did health services, particularly for the rural poor. In the face of widespread social discontent, Museveni reinstated free primary education in 1997 and free basic healthcare in 2001. Enrolment in primary school leapt from 2.5 million to 6 million, and the number of outpatients almost doubled. The World Bank and the IMF were infuriated describing this move as a ‘bad investment’. But bad for who? Certainly not Uganda's poor. The G8 governments claim they want to help poor countries to develop and compete successfully. But they have a powerful commercial incentive to ensure that the policies of the multilateral organisations benefit their ‘national interests’ so that conditionalities tend to reinforce the structural inequalities of the global system (Stiglitz, 2002; Wade, 2000).

To qualify for debt relief, developing countries must endeavour to ‘tackle corruption, boost private sector development’ and eliminate ‘impediments to private investment, both domestic and foreign’ (G8 Finance Ministers, 10-11 June 2005). Corruption has undoubtedly crippled poor nations, especially in Africa. Resources that should have been used to enhance standards of living, have been siphoned off into the private Swiss bank accounts of corrupt leaders and officials. Donors have the right to ensure that ODA goes to target groups and projects, but as Monbiot (2005b) points out, in reality corruption has rarely been a barrier to foreign aid and loans. In the past, the World Bank and IMF, disbursed loans to the Mobutu and Moi regimes without political conditionalities. More recent recipients include Rwanda's Paul Kagame and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, both of whom are repeatedly cited by the G8 countries as practitioners of ‘good governance’ yet their armies, as the UN has documented, are largely responsible for the conflict and carnage in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed over three million lives (Monbiot, 2005b).

The perception of corruption depends on whether or not an African government or leader serves the ‘interests’ of the powerful nations. Since 9/11, world leaders have turned a blind eye to the gross human rights violations and corruption of certain regimes when they have supported the objectives of the ‘war on terror’. Compliant governments are rewarded with military aid, debt relief and impunity from the political conditionalities and sanctions normally imposed upon corrupt and authoritarian regimes. The only conditionality is that they open their territorial space to counter-insurgency operations.

Overseas development assistance & poverty alleviation

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent the main focus of the international community's attempt to eradicate global poverty. An interim assessments by UNCTAD of the ability of African countries to meet their MDG targets, predicts that the majority will fall far short without a massive increase in ODA from the world's wealthy nations (UNCTAD, 2004b). On current trends, there is likely to be a funding shortfall in ODA in support of achieving the MDGs in Africa's poorest countries.

One of the major reasons for the shortfall in aid is that US aid levels remain far below the UN target of 0.7% of GDP. The US Congress remains highly sceptical about the effectiveness of aid, arguing that it ends up in the hands of corrupt governments. Nevertheless, after steady cutbacks in the 1990s, the US has begun to increase development aid, but this is only partly in response to the MDGs. The Millennium Challenge Account, set up by the Bush administration has imposed strict conditionality on the disbursement of funds, insisting that only governments with sound neo-liberal policies, strong leadership and the capacity to absorb resources can qualify. This stringent conditionality means that many countries with populations most in need of poverty alleviation will be excluded from access to US aid.

The nature of current aid allocations suggest that poverty reduction may not be the major aim of certain donors aid policies. The primary instrument of US development policy towards Africa, the African Growth and Opportunity Act on Africa (AGOA), is currently administered by the Africa Corporate Council (ACC). The ACC is the lobby group representing the big US corporations with interests in Africa: Halliburton, Exxon Mobil, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Starbucks, Raytheon, Microsoft, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup and others. Under the terms of this act, African countries must bring about ‘a market-based economy that protects private property rights’, ‘the elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment’ and a conducive environment for US ‘foreign policy interests’. In return they will be allowed ‘preferential treatment’ for some of their products in US markets.

The UK is adopting a similar approach with its Investment Climate Facility, a $550m fund of public monies which will be driven and controlled by the private sector.

Companies involved in the launch included Anglo American, Barclays, Shell, British American Tobacco, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and the Corporate Council on Africa. The fund is designed to create a ‘healthy investment climate’ which will offer companies ‘attractive financial returns compared to competing destinations.’ Africa urgently needs inward investment, but investments by multinationals have done little to enrich African people; on the contrary, all the evidence suggests that it has impoverished them. The history of corporate involvement in Africa is a history of forced labour, evictions, murder, wars, the under-costing of resources, tax evasion and collusion with dictators (Monbiot, 2005a).

Neither the UK's Investment Climate Facility or the US Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) impose mandatory constraints on corporations. While their power and profits in Africa will be enhanced with the help of foreign aid budgets, they will be bound only by voluntary commitments: of the kinds that have been in place since 1976 and have proved less than effective in encouraging ethical business practice. Considering what Shell has done in Nigeria, what Barclays and Anglo American and De Beers have done in South Africa, and what British American Tobacco has done around the world, reconfiguring these corporations as champions of development will fool few in the developing world. In effect, these corporations have been given the right to pillage and plunder Africa's resources with impunity.

A further cause for scepticism about the motivation of US aid is that a significant proportion of the recent increases are being allocated to tasks in support of the ‘War on Terror’. For instance, most of the United States’ increase in 2001 was due to a $600 million disbursement to Pakistan for economic support as a frontline state in the war on terror. US ODA was again increased in 2002 by 11.6 per cent in real terms mainly due to additional and emergency funds in response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Of the increases in US aid in 2004, $875 million went to Afghanistan and $2.9 billion was allocated to Iraq (OECD, 2005). As one US commentator has observed:

Tinkering at the margins: Security first strategies

The capture of overseas development assistance (ODA) for security functions is most pronounced in the arena of ‘security first’ policies adopted by DFID and other major donors as a crisis management response that seeks to improve the security of the operational environment for the implementation of development programmes in conflict prone states (DFID, 2000; EU, 1999; OECD, 1998). Security first programmes emerged in response to the donors’ need to quickly establish security in the aftermath of conflict and have evolved to become a major priority of post-conflict reconstruction and conflict resolution (DFID, 2005). ‘Security first’ programmes first emerged in 1994 when a UN Advisory Mission to Mali concluded that the lack of capacity of the police, gendarmerie, national guard and border guards to control smuggling and banditry was blocking both the implementation of the peace accord and economic and social development. The Mission proposed a ‘Security First’ approach under which aid for development and the re-integration of ex-combatants was integrated with assistance to improve policing and border controls. The initial success of the Mali experiment has stimulated the adoption of other initiatives modelled on the ‘security first’ philosophy.

The thinking and practice of the UK's Department for International Development on security sector reform (SSR) and disarmament demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) strategies, have been highly influential in shaping an international consensus on ‘security first’ strategies. The decision by DFID to prioritise SSR strategies in the immediate aftermath of a conflict is based on the belief that ‘appropriate, accountable and affordable security bodies in countries at risk of violent conflict are a potentially important adjunct to the prevention or management of such conflict’ (Ball, 2004:6). The broad objectives of SSR strategies are to:

William Reno (1998) argues that systematically weakened African states have lost control of their traditional spheres of influence, that is, the military, resources, territories, public services etc; the effective authority of governance moved elsewhere. Into the vacuum of collapsed and delegitimised states the international donor community is attempting to inculcate a normative security agenda that is derived from Western discourse and practice. This misfit creates a profound dilemma for the efficacious implementation of ‘security first’ programmes. In Sierra Leone, Ero (2001) has observed of the security sector reform programme that:

Within the donor community, DDR strategies are presented as the holy grail of current conflict prevention strategies and peace consolidation strategies (DFID, 2005), yet all too often they are poorly conceived and implemented. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, donors rushed in with undue haste to implement a DDR programme once the Sun City Accord was signed in 2002, regardless of the continuing violence in the Eastern part of the country, the precarious nature of the peace process, the fragility of the transitional government and the absence of economic recovery or development that could provide economic opportunities for reintegration. These conditions provide little prospect for success of the DDR programme.

Existing evaluations of such policies tend to highlight successes in quantitative terms. For example, how many guns have been collected and destroyed, the number of soldiers demobilised and the number of combatants returned to civilian life. In qualitative terms the measure of success is taken as the prevention of a return to widespread violence. Evaluative approaches based on such measures ignore the more nuanced challenge of appraising success in terms of securing a sustainable peace and security (understood here in its broadest sense) and tend to be structured within short-term timeframes, more often than not circumscribed by the conclusion of democratic elections.

DDR programmes need to be linked to sustainable economic opportunities that transcend the horizontal economic inequalities that underpin grievance, otherwise violence can rapidly resurface. In Liberia, in the first half of 2005 there were outbreaks of rioting by former combatants, as the United Nations found itself without sufficient resources to continue the education, training and other reintegration benefits for more than 100,000 ex-combatants who were disarmed at the end of the country's 14-year civil war.

Without long-term guarantees of secure employment opportunities and an adequate income on which to live, the temptation to return to arms remains strong. Many disarmament programmes have failed to secure all the small arms in circulation, because weapons are concealed by ex-combatants as an insurance against future risks, and also as a means of potential economic survival. Where the formal economy fails to provide economic security, small arms provide ex-combatants with the option of securing a livelihood through appropriation, crime and predation, which is often why crime rates soar in the aftermath of conflict. In Mozambique, for example, despite the fact that DDR was hailed as a great success by the official UN evaluation, the international community's reintegration programmes were underresourced and short-term in nature, which has produced two long-term security challenges: a) the involvement of ex-combatants in organised crime: and b) political instability due to the ongoing politicisation of reintegration issues (McMullin, 2004). This outcome has had a destabilising effect not only on domestic security but also on regional security, particularly, where organised crime has become trans-border in nature.

Failure to stem the reoccurrence of violence in Africa has not altered the enthusiasm for the pursuit of liberal peace by the institutions of global governance. Rather, new myths and modalities are invented, adding new layers of legitimation and new forms of intervention. For instance, Collier's work at the World Bank has introduced a new and influential narrative, focusing attention on the relationship between poverty, primary commodity dependence and economic crisis, which creates an enabling environment for the rent seeking behaviour of predatory warlords, criminal elements and terrorists. The incentives for these groups to perpetuate violence and lawlessness are high, mitigating against the success of international attempts to broker peace. Collier's empirical work has attempted to prove that it is greed rather than grievance that has driven wars in Africa (Collier et al. 2003).

Collier's analysis has been widely embraced by the donor community because it fits nicely into their tendency towards a ‘one model fits all’. By conflating conflict with corruption and greed it reinforces the neo-liberal ‘good governance’ agenda, thus reinforcing the role of mainstream development agencies in conflict prevention. Yet more institutions and mechanisms have been developed to tackle conflict trade and target the activities of violence entrepreneurs. Yet few of these initiatives produce the outcomes they aspire to. Nevertheless, by identifying the primary role of greed in the perpetuation of violence, attention has been deflected from the role of grievance in conflict, particularly grievances caused directly or indirectly by the neo-liberal policies of the mainstream development community.

Mainstream development and security discourse presents itself as a force for good, a means by which to pursue global security and peace. In reality, it represents a form of intervention geared towards the radical social transformation of the South. As such, it represents an extension of Northern power over the South, another layer on which to segregate and manage ‘the other’ (Ibrahim, 2004). By projecting underdevelopment and poverty in Africa as ‘threat and danger’, space has been opened up in which prejudice and discrimination flourish. The fear that such an agenda builds in the North creates the political space in which greater extremes of external interference into the affairs of African countries are legitimised and unquestioningly condoned. The weakness and ineffectiveness of the liberal peace project to secure a more stable peace has given succour to the ‘new barbarian’ agenda that underpins the US /UK ‘War on Terror’. It is to this sinister development that we now turn our attention.

The ascendancy of the new barbarians

Following the rout of US troops in Somalia in 1993, the idea of a UN rule-based collective security system imposing universal constraints in the common interest was eclipsed by the resurgence of unilateralism and exceptionalism of the world's major military power, reluctant to accept the external constraints and disciplines of the UN system (Willett, 2002). The ascendancy of the ideology of ‘new barbarism’ has powerfully influenced contemporary US security discourse and practice.

The ‘new barbarism’ emphasises the notion and role of primordial, innate and irrational cultural and ethnic identity in conflicts in Africa (Peters, 1994). According to this narrative, in times of turmoil when political and economic systems are weak or collapse, the anarchic and destructive power of traditional antagonisms and resentments are unleashed. From Rwanda to the DRC, conflicts presented as anarchic killing fields fuelled by ancient ethnic hatred, have supported popular demands in America for US disengagement from such conflicts (Kaplan, 2001).

Unable to identify a Clauswitsian logic to the violence, Africa's civil wars are codified as a breakdown in civilisation, a Hobbesian descent into chaos which is identified as a threat to global stability. In seeking causal explanations, Kaplan's work focuses on the consequences of Malthusian resource pressures, in which economic collapse, environmental crises, rising birth rates and widespread crime fuse together in an explosive mix of violence, destruction and dislocation (Kaplan, 2001).

Huntington's Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (1997) has also been highly influential in this discourse. Cultural or ethnic identities are broadly equated with civilisational identities which Huntington argues are shaping emerging patterns of cohesion and conflict in the post-Cold War era. The clash of civilisations is tribal conflict on a global scale. It is a powerful narrative that both describes, informs and empowers the current ‘war on terror’ – the clash of the Christian and Islamic civilisations. For a US administration versed in Christian fundamentalism, this discourse has had a powerful mobilising impact. Since the events of 9/11, this narrative has gained widespread legitimacy and momentum in the US and frames the discourse of the ‘War on Terror’.

Extracts from speeches by influential leaders in the US and UK illustrate the extent to which new barbarism informs policy choices towards Africa. J. Brian Atwood, former head of the US foreign aid agency, USAID has commented that:

In June 2005 the US expanded the PSI with its launch of the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCI). It was initiated with its Exercise Flintlock 2005 in which US special operation forces trained their counterparts in military tactics which they deem critical in enhancing regional security and stability. The new programme will receive about $100 million a year for five years, and is to add Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal and Nigeria to the original four countries in the PSI. Notable is the inclusion of Nigeria, the continent's biggest petroleum producer and source of one-fifth of all US oil imports.

The ICG has pointed out that the misconceived and heavy-handed approach adopted by the US in the Islamic states in Africa could tip the scale the wrong way encouraging a fundamentalist backlash in the region. The ICG argues that to be effective in preventing the growth in terrorism in the Sahel region an international security policy needs to address security in the broadest terms, with more development aid rather than military programmes and assistance.

Somalia has also become the focus for renewed US counter-terrorist activities. But as the ICG has observed, ‘US counter-terrorism efforts in Somalia threaten to destabilise the country further and provides a popular platform for the spread of jihadism.’ The ICG goes on to say that ‘Containing and eliminating jihadism in Somalia demands patient sustained support for the twin processes of reconciliation and peace building until a legitimate, functional government is restored’ (ICG, 2005b). At a time when Somalia's fragile peace process is falling apart, the international community needs to apply sensitive diplomacy and positive incentives for peace and not an increase in the militarisation of the situation.

US strategic interests are also focused on West Africa, the most conflict prone region in Africa. Pierre Abramovici (2004) argues that the United States is turning its diplomatic and military attention to the region, not just for its oil and natural gas supplies, although these represent an important future contribution to US energy supplies, but to its metal and industrial diamond resources. It is quietly establishing military training and equipment links with a number of countries to secure future supply lines. While the US and international donor organisations are quick to condemn the ‘conflict trade’ within the region, the US itself has assumed a legitimate right to use its own monopoly of force and coercion to access the same resources.

The strategic responses of those major powers that have coalesced under the umbrella of the ‘war on terrorism’ is less to do with the transformational agenda of the liberal peace than it is to do with a new and overt imperialism informed by the narrative of new barbarism. The convergence of security and development within the discourse on liberal peace has created a space for the new barbarian discourse to co-opt development resources for the prosecution of the ‘war on terror’. The incremental shift in ODA for security and counter-terrorism activities is a tangible measure of this process. In April 2003, an OECD discussion paper entitled ‘A Development Co-operation Lens on Terrorism Prevention’, suggested using ODA in response to a narrow counter-terror agenda in the post-September 11 era.

Elements within the liberal peace strategic complex are highly critical of these trends arguing that:

Conclusion

The liberal peace discourse contains a fundamental contradiction, while ostensibly concerned with peace it has constructed poverty and underdevelopment as threats, which underpin a new dynamic in North/South security relations. This narrative has played into the hands of the ‘new barbarian’ discourse which underpins the current ‘war on terror’. Development is being divisively used to substantiate the discourse of fear. In so doing, it reinforces the unequal power relations between the North and South, between the haves and have nots, and is being used to justify increasingly interventionist policies by both development institutions and the military.

Conflict portrayed as an aberration and interruption to development fails to perceive situations whereby conflict and violence have become an effective means through which previously marginalised groups are able to accumulate wealth, power and even legitimacy. Through ‘networked wars’, these groups are able to access to the benefits of globalisation that would otherwise be closed off to them. These forms of conflict are rarely settled by externally mediated ‘peace’ agreements that seek to impose liberal concepts of peace and security into a context shaped by the structural disorder of the current system of global economic and political governance. International or regional attempts at building sustainable peace will only be viable if constructed upon a subtler analysis of war economies and failing states and when the inequities of the global economic and political system are redressed.

In the meantime, the emerging ‘danger discourse’ embraced by donors, NGOs academics the media and private companies who have been subtly co-opted into accepting this agenda, have produced new relations of international complicity and accommodation in the subjugation of the South, and most particularly Africa. The liberal discourse that emphasises ‘freedom, democracy and security’, obscures a reality in which the prosecution of free markets, compliant governments and enhanced state security are the means by which powerful commercial interests can gain greater and more secure access to Africa's scarce resources and ensure control of Africa's embryonic markets. Speeches peppered with references to humanitarian principles and the importance of poverty alleviation give the appearance that the G8 have embraced more altruistic policies towards Africa, when in reality the forces of rampant and unchallenged globalisation have been strengthened in their bid for expanded markets and access to natural resources regardless of the socio-economic costs to the poor.

That these policies generate greater global instability does not present an obstacle to the new barbarian agenda as it presents further legitimacy for interventions and produces market opportunities for the military industrial complexes of the leading powers. The hypocrisy of world leaders that have co-opted a language of humanitarian principles, yet violate the same principles in prosecuting their ‘war on terror’ have produced a ‘backlash’ of anti-Westernism which provides a powerful incentive for marginalised and aggrieved groups to use terror as an instrument of asymmetric warfare. This is the new global disorder in which barbarism is writ large.

Editor's note

See ROAPE 102, December 2004, ‘Political Destalisation & Blowback in the Sahel by Jeremy Keenan; ROAPE 103, ‘US Military Involvement in Africa’ by Daniel Volman. Also in ROAPE 103, ‘Global Flows: Oil & Strategic Philanthropy’ by Sandra Barnes.