The Threat: DDR and SSR: Subversion of the Theory

“Maybe if the US rulers would not privatize everything in sight and sell it off to cronies, things would work out.”²¹⁰

Adaptations and convergences in the evolution of DDR theory can be detected between the evolving doctrine of Counterinsurgency (COIN) occurring in the experience of US/NATO forces and “the partnership of the willing” in Iraq and Afghanistan; many offering positive potential to both COIN and DDR. However the following review focuses on an evolving mindset within the US neo-conservative heartland that conveniently lumps SSR and DDR together to be dealt with through an iron fist of US mass and agency.²¹¹ Such a mindset mirrors the US neo-conservative opposition to the application of cultural sensitivities, time and human resources to win the people in the COIN context. The shifting of its gaze onto future potential DDR and SSR processes; lucrative markets, fusing them together, while ignoring both their often independent characters and the principles of the UN approach to DDR,

210 Kurt Jacobsen, “Repetition Compulsion: Counterinsurgency Bravado in Iraq and Vietnam”, Kelly et al, Op cit, p 191, in considering contributing factors to the US COIN failure to stabilize Iraq.

211 In considering global civil/military industrial complex values of trade, it is estimated that in the region of 50% emanates from the US civil/military industrial complex; weapons trade, private security/ military services, etc., a particular focus on the US aspects of this trade’s impact on DDR/SSR is legitimate.

threatens to discredit the practice area and obliterate the overarching human security imperatives that have guided the evolution of DDR theory to date.²¹²

Laporte-Oshiro, drawing from the findings of a meeting of the USIP Working Group on SSR in September 2011 offers a disturbing demonstration of a conceptual convergence in the minds of US neo-conservative security professionals towards a hardline approach to COIN and the implementation of DDR.²¹³ It exposes the continuing arrogance and tendencies of the US right to apply mass, dominance and agency in its international interventions, including in the sector of DDR. The conclusions and recommendations of her paper are based on a very selective and indeed revisionist spin on recent US experience in SSR and DDR. They demonstrate limited concern for the outcomes of such processes for the host nation, lacking a people-centered approach, an extraordinary sense of US agency and seem to emanate from the perspective of the interests of the post-Afghanistan/Iraq US military industrial/services complex. These may be timely recommendations to address the interests of those recently enriched and euphemistically termed private military/security companies (PMSCs), predominantly US with a significant number British and South African, often viewed as corporate mercenaries not withstanding a dramatic increase in their use by the UN.²¹⁴ The recommendations are advising that the US in a post-Afghanistan period, must prepare to address SSR and DDR scenarios purely in the context of “consolidating legitimate force in the hands of the state” by “going in heavy, tackling DDR and SSR in tandem and consolidating US capacity to implement both tasks in a coordinated, scalable way.” Considering only a security perspective, they see SSR and DDR as critical interlocking processes in contributing to the return of the monopoly of force to the state. There is no evidence in this paper of consideration of the concept of human security. Without specifying details, the recommendations cite the US experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo as contributing to these lessons. Certainly there are many lessons to draw from the US engagement in both SSR and DDR processes in these examples. Conceding that the considerable experience is

212 UN Principles of DDR implementation; people centered, integrated, national ownership, accountability and transparency and sound planning.

213 Alison Laporte-Oshiro, “From Militant to Policemen: Three Lessons from U.S Experience with DDR and SSR”, PeaceBrief 115, USIP, 17 Nov 2011. Panel members in the 11 Sept 2011 meeting of the USIP SSR working group, include Ambassador James Dobbins, RAND Corps; Lt Gen David Barno (retd), Center for New American Security; Ambassador John Blaney, Delotte Consulting LLP, Melanne Civic, Center for Complex Operations; Robert Perito, Director of USIP’s Security Sector Governance Center. The piece also draws on inputs from noted conservative and defense industry friendly scholars such as Seth G. Jones of RAND Corp.

214 Lou Pingeot, Dangerous Partnership: Private Military & Security Companies and the UN, Global Policy Forum and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, New York, June 2012.

Further, Shibuya suggests, “in many ways, the PMSCs can be seen as a distorted reflection of the UN itself, and international community of like minded individuals working together.” He also points out that the founder and CEO of Blackwater, Eric Prince, has committed that “Blackwater will never work for a group whose interests are counter to US policy.” (Prince omitted to say that this is relevant as long as Blackwater is being paid by the US...) British PMSCs like Executive Outcomes and Sandline have never aligned their corporate philosophy with such national interests. Drawn from Shibuya’s comments on an early draft of this chapter.

‘checkered’ is something of an understatement as most experienced DDR practitioners would contend that the cited DDR engagements, particularly those DDR examples demonstrating a typical U.S. focus on weapons “buy-back” or the application of force, were, debatably and from a human security perspective, failures. The jury is still out regarding SSR and DDR in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is difficult to be optimistic. The focus on US interests in the UN implemented Liberia DDR of irregular forces in 2003, parallel to the US PMSC implemented SSR process, contributed to a massive overrun in beneficiaries, time and cost; 102,200 rather than the 39,000 initially estimated, 8 years rather than the 3 originally estimated, costing $100 million rather than the $40 million budgeted.²¹⁵ They were apparently focused more on cleaning up weapons supplied to the rebel faction LURD (the most significant anti-Taylor faction active predominantly in the north west of the country including in Loffa County) by the U.S. rather than on any commitment to DDR.²¹⁶ The weapons collected in the US Marine supported DDR porgramme in Haiti in 1994 are still turning up in gang related crime in Port au Prince.²¹⁷ In Kosovo, the conversion of the often criminalized and oppressive KLA into a coherent force, debatably with the prime objective of ensuring support for the preservation of US land-based aircraft carrier, the biggest US base in Europe, Camp Bondsteel, may certainly have addressed US interests but has not contributed significantly to improving the quality of democracy in Europe.²¹⁸ In Afghanistan, DDR implemented under the NATO/ISAF mandate, the ANBP, elements of which can be considered successful if weight of hardware collected is significant, while the programme did achieve its strategic objectives, it was the responsibility of Japan, not the US. As the disarmament of

215 Richard Millett, (2013, Op cit) mentions that US Ambassador Blaney personally carried home some ‘Redeye’ missiles from Liberia.

One presumes that this refers to Redeye FIM-43, man-portable surface-to-air missile system 1961-1985, shoulder-launched anti-aircraft heat seeking. This missile system was replaced by the Stinger FIM-92 by 1985... a system shared with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan with devastating impact on Soviet helicopter capability and popularly acclaimed as a game-changer during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Their presence in North Western Liberia in the hands of LURD in the early two thousands is highly significant. This considering that the UN in neighboring Sierra Leone was highly dependent on the use of helicopters for movement and resupply and on the formidable Mi 24 helicopter gunships to prevent infiltration by armed elements along the Sierra Leonean north eastern frontier with Liberia. Though, also presumably, the intended target of these particular Redeyes would have been Charles Taylor’s air capacity (small number of Mi-2 and Mi-8 Soviet era helicopters in a very dubious state of maintenance). Certainly, as Chief of UN DDR in Sierra Leone at this time (92-94), the author was not aware that LURD had Redeyes.

216 Wolf-Christian Paes, “Eye witness in Liberia”, International Peacekeeping, No 2 Summer 2005 and Desmond Molloy, “DDR and the Pitfalls in Liberia 2003-2006”, Unpublished, (Posted on academia.edu.com, 2011)

In Civic and Miclaucic, Op cit, pp 175-181, the UN SRSG in Liberia in 2003, retired US reserve brigadier general Jacques Paul Klein admits that the priority at the time was the rapid collection of weapons. Such a priority was hardly developed with any level of consultation with DDR expertise within the UN system.

217 Robert, Muggah. Securing Haiti’s Transition: Reviewing Human Insecurity and the prospects for DDR, Small Arms Survey Report, Geneva, May 2005.

218 The author experienced this criminality within KLA business interests first-hand as Head of Finance and Administration and president of a contracts board for a UN agency in Pristina in 2000.

the selected heavy weapons of the Northern Alliance was underway in Afghanistan in 2004-2005, the US was in fact busy rearming their favoured warlords.²¹⁹

The premise that “there is no good time to start SSR or DDR” is contrary to international experience and practitioner evidence based perception, but one presumes that the priority behind this statement is not host nation or human security requirements, but U.S. interests. The reference to a “golden hour” of opportunity that exists early in a post-conflict environment contradicts this premise. Admonishments against “light footprint approaches” are typical of the neo-conservative arguments in the polemic against the General Tommy Franks COIN “soft approaches” early in the Afghan campaign.²²⁰ Ignoring the potential of Nye’s “Soft Power,”²²¹ this draws on the Galula, Nagl and Jones colonialist perspective favoring the exclusive agency by the occupier.²²²

The first lesson citing the necessity for US “going in heavy” completely ignores the potential for ‘local solutions’ and denigrates the concept of ‘national ownership’.²²³ It ignores the fact that US capacity has not delivered positive results in any of the examples cited or indeed, in those not cited where mass, technological superiority and ‘firepower’, in every sense of the word, were applied, and failed. The rationalization that when you fail with a specific policy, keep doing it until you get it right is what Jacobsen has referred to as repetition compulsion in relation to the application of firepower and mass in the ‘shock and awe” policy in Iraq.²²⁴ This recommendation coming from the same neo-conservative mindsets that led to the US defeat in Viet Nam and the gross ambiguity and absence of long-term vision in both Iraq and Afghanistan seems to be directing the US down the same path of repetition compulsion as regards its engagements in SSR and DDR, but to do it bigger.²²⁵

The second lesson cited is that DDR and SSR must be tackled in tandem and reinforces the prioritization of an overarching philosophy of the security focus in addressing both SSR and DDR.

219 Kenji Isezaki, Disarmament: The World through the Eyes of a Conflict Buster, Published in Japanese by Kodansha Gendhi Shinho in Jan 2004, Translated into English in 2011 pp 122-123.

220 General Tommy Franks, first commander of US Forces in Afghanistan had entered Afghanistan envisaging a “light footprint approach” to COIN with no more that 10,000 foreign troops. Jones Seth (Jones, “Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan” Counterinsurgency Study, Vol 4, RAND, 2008) claims that in this intention, he was drawing the wrong lessons from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.

He says the lessons drawn should not have been about numbers, but about how they waged the war, conventional v. unconventional.

221 Joseph S Nye Jr., “Think Again: Soft Power”. Foreign Policy, 1 March 2006, YaleGlobalOnline.

http://www.//yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/think-again-soft-power (accessed June 28, 2012)

222 John D. Kelly, “Seeing Red, Mao Fetishism, Pax Americana, and the Moral Economy of War”, Kelly et al, Ed. Anthropology and Global Counterinsurgency, University of Chicago Press, 2010

223 The ignoring of potential local solutions by the US neo-conservative right is nothing new. Lucy Morgan Edwards, The Afghan Solution: The Inside Story of Abdul Haq, The CIA and How Western Hubris Lost Afghanistan. Bactria Press, London, 2011 in a claimed exposé of how the entire Afghan Campaign resulted from such a phenomenon.

224 Kurt Jacobsen, “Repetition Compulsion: Counterinsurgency Bravado in Iraq and Afghanistan”, Kelly et al, 2010, Op sit pp179-191

225 Larry E Cable, Conflict of Myths: The Development of American Counterinsurgency Doctrine and the Vietnam War. New York University Press, NY & London. 1986

DDR is not only a security concept. While the disarmament and demobilisation processes have major security considerations, DDR is primarily as civilianizing programme. It is certainly political, but it is debatably in the realm of human security. While DDR can be an aspect of SSR, it is not universally addressed in tandem or dependent on SSR. There are tensions and complementarities between the two and each must be designed in cognizance and consideration of the other where they occur together, but they are not interdependent and while related, should not be intrinsically linked. When SSR is about making security forces more effective and context specific it is a security driven concept while DDR is ultimately a human security driven concept about putting arms beyond use in the context of developing community security.²²⁶ Human security views state responsibilities as including but being beyond that of security by simply maintaining a monopoly on the use of force. The social, political and economic responsibilities considered in the context of a social contract are equally important.

The third lesson that US capacity must be consolidated to do DDR and SSR at scale ignores the primary lesson that should be drawn from the wealth of experience mentioned or omitted, is that the hubris of the U.S. neo-conservative right and the oversimplification of the security paradigm in the recent past, ‘a la Rumsfeld’, has usually led to disaster.