residual weapons and the politics of in security
TRANSCRIPT
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Residual Weapons and the
Politics of InsecurityA Peacebuilding Analysis of Mine Action and WeaponsReduction in Cambodia
Martin John Child
A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in Development Studies, University of Auckland, 2010.
Supervisors: Assoc. Prof. Ken Jackson and Dr. Yvonne Underhill-Sem.
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Abstract:
The presence of residual weapons complicates the already fragile social, political and
economic climate of postconflict societies. Two broad categories of weapons are
particularly notorious for their widespread destabilising effects: landmines and Explosive
Remnants of War (ERW), and Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW). The physicaland psychological insecurities sustained and perpetuated by the presence of these two
weapons have elicited technical responses from national departments and theinternational community in the form of Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA), and Weapons
Reduction (WR). Although these responses are widely recognised as being vital
components of broader peacebuilding operations, their specific contribution to anoverarching agenda of peace is often assumed to be automatic and has received little
interrogation. As a result, the way in which weapons programmes really advance the goal
of fostering sustainable peace remains unclear, and deserves more attention. Drawing on
the postconflict experience of Cambodia as a case study, this thesis will consider HMAand WR from a peacebuilding perspective. A distinction will be made between the time-
bound, basic peacebuilding that most commonly finds its way into project cycles, and thecontiguous, comprehensive peacebuilding that is actually required for sustainableoutcomes. It will be argued that both HMA and WR can contribute to peacebuilding if
they are implemented in a contextually relevant way, and if opportunities for inter-agency
cooperation are seized upon to maximise the added value of complementarypeacebuilding outcomes. Finally, this paper will cautiously suggest lessons from
Cambodias experience that might be transferable to other postconflict contexts.
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Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank the Peace and Disarmament Education Trust (PADET), whose
generous funding made this project possible. I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr.
Yvonne Underhill-Sem and Prof. Ken Jackson, for all of their support and understanding
in the face of my flexible interpretation of deadlines. My sincerest thanks and admirationgo to all the people (past and present) at CMAC, CMAA, MAG, the Center for
Peacekeeping Forces, EU-ASAC, JSAC and WGWR; your work has inspired me in waysI cannot describe. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who gave up
their time to participate in interviews and contribute to this research. Special thanks go to
Mr. Touch Pheap, Mr. Khun Ratana, Mr. Jamie Franklin and Ms. Melinda Kosal forfacilitating my research at their respective organisations. Special thanks also go to the
MAG personnel in Battambang province who so graciously accommodated by site visit.
Finally, I would like to thank all my friends, family and colleagues in Cambodia and New
Zealand that helped in some way, however small, to make this research happen, andespecially Amy, without whom I could never have survived this process.
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Table of Contents:
Abstract.iii
Acknowledgements...iv
List of Figuresvi
List of Acronyms..vii
List of Participants.viii
Chapter 1: Residual Weapons and the Politics of Insecurity1.1: Peacebuilding and Postconflict Pathologies.1
1.2: Year Zero and the Years that Followed.41.3: Methodology.5
1.4: Structure of this Thesis.....6
Chapter 2: A Comprehensive Peace Perspective2.1: Peace, Conflict and Other Conceptual Nightmares16
2.2: Basic and Comprehensive Peace232.3: Comprehensive Peace Analysis..30
Chapter 3: Residual Weapons and the Logic of Response
3.1: Landmine and Explosive Remnants of War Impacts and the Logic of Removal...353.2: Small Arms and Light Weapons Impacts and the Logic of Reduction..43
3.3: Culture of Violence, Climate of Fear..49
Chapter 4: Clearing the Way for Peace4.1: Negative Peacebuilding Aspects of Humanitarian Mine Action63
4.2: Positive Peacebuilding Aspects of Humanitarian Mine Action......71
Chapter 5: Tackling the Tools of Violence5.1: Negative Peacebuilding Aspects of Weapons Reduction...80
5.2: Positive Peacebuilding Aspects of Weapons Reduction.88
Chapter 6: Programming Santran
6.1: The Peacebuilding Connection...996.2: Reflections on this Research.103
6.3: Toward a Comprehensive Peacebuilding.104
References...110
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List of Figures:
Figure 1: Basic and Comprehensive Peace24
Figure 2: Components of Comprehensive Peace...29
Figure 3: CPA Threat Mapping.32
Figure 4: Reported Landmine and ERW Casualty Trends in Cambodia Since 197937
Figure 5: Most Commonly Referenced Landmine and ERW Impacts..42
Figure 6: Proportion of SALW Inside/Outside Government Control in Cambodia since
199146
Figure 7: Most Commonly Referenced SALW Impacts....49
Figure 8: CPA Analysis of Landmine and ERW Impacts.61
Figure 9: CPA Analysis of SALW Impacts...62
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List of Acronyms:
APM
ATM
ATTCAL
CBU
CBMRRCBDCCM
CMAA
CMAC
CMVIS
CPA
CPPCRC
DDR
EODERW
EU-ASAC
GICHD
GISGTZ
HALOHMA
ICBCBICBL
IMAS
JSAC
MAG
MAPUMBT
MMRRT
MRENPA
PADET
RBA
RCAFRCG
SALW
SASSOP
SNAP
Anti-Personnel Mine
Anti-Tank Mine
Arms Trade TreatyCambodian Arms Law
Cluster Bomb Unit
Community-Based Mine Risk ReductionCommunity-Based DeminingConvention on Cluster Munitions
Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance
AuthorityCambodian Mine Action Centre
Cambodian Mine-Victim Information System
Comprehensive Peace Analysis
Cambodian Peoples PartyCambodian Red Cross
Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration
Explosive Ordnance DisposalExplosive Remnants of War
European Union Assistance on Curbing Small Arms and
Light Weapons in CambodiaGeneva International Centre for Humanitarian
Demining
Geographic Information SurveyDeutsche Gesellschaft fr Technische Zussamenarbeit
Hazardous Area Life Support Organisation (Trust)Humanitarian Mine Action
International Campaign to Ban Cluster BombsInternational Campaign to Ban Landmines
International Mine Action Standards
Japan Assistance Team for Small Arms Management inCambodia
Mines Advisory Group
Mine Action Planning UnitMine Ban Treaty
Mobile Mine Risk Reduction Team
Mine Risk EducationNorwegian Peoples Aid
Peace and Disarmament Education Trust
Rights-Based Approach
Royal Cambodian Armed ForcesRoyal Cambodian Government
Small Arms and Light Weapons
Small Arms SurveyStandard Operating Procedure
Security Needs Assessment Protocol
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List of Participants:
Bottomly, Ruth. MAG Southeast Asia Community Liaison Manager.
Diep, Soth. MAG Mine Action Quality Assurance Manager.
Franklin, Jamie. MAG Country Programme Manager.
Guest, Nick. MAG Technical Operations Manager.
Kanith, Roath. CMAC Director of Training, Research and Development.
Onn, Oum Sang. CMAC Director of Planning and Operations.
Pheap, Touch. Former JSAC Project Officer.
Rotha, Chan. CMAA Deputy Secretary-General.
Sambath, Chan. CMAC Project Management and Mine Risk Education Coordinator.
Savoeun, Ker. National Center for Peacekeeping Forces and Mine/UXO RemovalDirector of Peacekeeping and Public Relations.
Sinthay, Neb. Former WGWR Executive Director.
Sokhoeun, Khuy. Former JSAC Project Officer.
Sprangemeijer, Adrian. Former EU-ASAC Weapons Destruction Officer.
Tepvitchet, Prak. Former WGWR Executive Director.
SSR
UNDP
UNIDIRUNPoA
UNTAC
UXOWfD
WGWR
WR
Security Sector Reform
United Nations Development Programme
United Nations Institute for Disarmament ResearchUnited Nations Programme of Action on Small Arms
United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia
Unexploded OrdnanceWeapons for Development
Working Group for Weapons Reduction
Weapons Reduction
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Chapter 1: Residual Weapons and the Politics of Insecurity
1.1: Peacebuilding and Postconflict Pathologies
I was told by a high-ranking Cambodian official that when you cry for a very long period
of time you eventually run out of tears, and at that moment you must simply continue
living. On reflection this does not seem to be indicative of either a Buddhist resignation
with the impermanence of life, or the desensitisation to violence often posited by Western
psychologists. Rather it conveys a particular feeling of fatigue often associated with so-
called postconflict societies. Postconflict is a semantically misleading, always-
suspicious label invoked when a formal settlement between antagonistic factions has
been arrived at but violence remains entrenched, divisions sharp and conflict on the
ground ongoing, if sometimes in less conspicuous ways. Postconflict is a misnomer
because in reality conflicts do not abruptly end, and certainly not with the signing of a
treaty; conflicts persist through physical, psychological and social upheavals.1
Conflicts
do change however, and the objective of most postconflict interventions is to shift the
engagement in conflict from violent to non-violent means, hence the traditional
peacemaking focus on mediated negotiation.2
The spectacular ascent of intra-state conflict on the peacemakers agenda in the years
following the end of the Cold War, coupled with their equally spectacular record of
failure in this area, provoked some degree of re-strategising of the international response
to postconflict emergencies. There was a general realisation that peacemaking gains
among political elites were not being paralleled by correlative gains on the ground, that
restoring the status quo often included recreating conditions conducive to a renewal of
hostilities, and that formal ceasefires were easily undermined if the physical,
psychological and ideological legacies of armed conflict remained unaddressed.3
1 German Initiative to Ban Landmines, Mine Action Programmes from a development-oriented point ofview (The Bad Honnef Framework), revised and reaffirmed at the Second International Conference ofExperts (Bad Honnef II), 21st-23rd June, 1999, p.1.2 Martina Fischer, Recovering From Violent Conflict: Regeneration and (re-)Integration as Elements ofPeacebuilding, Paper from the Berghof Centre for Constructive Conflict Management, 2004, p. 4.3 See for example Michael Dodson, Postconflict Development and Peace Building: Recent Research,Peace & Change, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2006, pp. 244-252, Stein Tonnesson, Strategic Deficits in PeaceBuilding and Conflict Prevention, Conflict, Security and Development, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2004, pp. 465-472,
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Provoked by this state of affairs, peacebuildinga marriage of top-down peacemaking
and institutional reform with bottom-up humanitarian reconstruction and reconciliation
became a standard intervention in postconflict scenarios.4
One of the most potent manifestationsboth real and symbolicof the legacy of armed
conflict is the contaminating presence of residual weapons. Residual weapons further
complicate the already fragile social, political and economic climate of postconflict
societies. Their potential to frustrate efforts at establishing peace and development and to
undermine human capacities at all levels has been widely acknowledged.5
Two broad
categories of weapons are particularly notorious for their widespread and destabilising
effects: landmines and Explosive Remnants of War (ERW), and Small Arms and Light
Weapons (SALW). The physical and psychological insecurities sustained and perpetuated
by the presence of these weapons have elicited technical responses from national and
international agencies in the form of Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA), and Weapons
Reduction (WR). Although these responses are widely recognised as being vital
components of broader peacebuilding operations, their specific contribution to an
overarching agenda of peace is often assumed to be automatic and has received little
interrogation.6 As a result, the way in which these activities really advance the goal of
fostering sustainable peace (if they do at all) remains unclear, and deserves more
attention.
It is often stated in the relevant literature thatover the last decadeboth HMA and
WR have experienced a profound transformation from being relatively isolated, task-
and Ana Cutter, Peace-Building: A Literature Review,Development in Practice, Vol. 15, No. 6, 2005,pp. 778-784.4 See for example Johan Galtung, Three Approaches to Peace: Peacekeeping, Peace-making and Peace-building, in John Galtung (Ed.), Peace, War and DefenceEssays in Peace Research, Copenhagen:Christian Eljers, 1975, pp. 282-305, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali,An Agenda for Peace: PreventiveDiplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-keeping, report of the Secretary-General, 17 June 1992.5 See for example German Initiative to Ban Landmines, 1999, International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
The Landmine Monitor Report 2007, available at: http://www.icbl.org/lm/2007 (accessed 01/09/08), SAS,Caught in the Crossfire: The Humanitarian Impacts of Small Arms, in Small Arms Survey 2002:Counting the Human Cost, 2002, pp. 154-201, SAS, Obstructing Development: The Effects of SmallArms on Human Development, in Small Arms Survey 2003: Development Denied, 2003, pp. 125-167, andGeneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, opened for signatures in Geneva on 7 June2006.6 Kristian Harpviken and Bernt Skara, Humanitarian Mine Action and Peace Building: Exploring theRelationship, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 5, 2003, p. 809, and Christina Wille, Finding theEvidence: The Links between Weapon Collection Programmes, Gun Use and Homicide Rates inCambodia,African Security Review, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2007, p. 72.
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1.2: Year Zero and the Years that Followed
Cambodia has had a long and tumultuous history of violence and conflict marked by
territorial encroachments by its neighbours and domination by foreign powers.8 However,
it is Cambodias history since 1970 that is the common referent in qualifying for
postconflict status. The story of Cambodia since the coup of 1970 is one of almost
constant civil war between capitalist, communist and royalist factions, sometimes acting
as proxies for competing foreign security interests, and sometimes directly supported by
foreign military deployments or actions.9
During this time, the country has experienced
totalitarian regimes, foreign occupations, one of the worst genocides of the twentieth
century, UN-administered elections, incessant political in-fighting, and the almost total
uprooting of traditional structures for the maintenance of social capital. Cambodia was
also one of the first test cases for the new peacebuilding paradigm that emerged in the
wake of the Cold War, playing host to one of the largest UN operations ever launched.
By the time of the Paris Peace Accords in 1991, residual weapon contamination was
massive. Cambodia was recording the highest number of landmine and ERW casualties
in the world, with approximately 2,500 people having been killed or injured that year
alone.10 SALW were also a problem with post-settlement armed violence actually
increasing, and almost half of the conflict weapons-pool circulating outside of
government control; as much the result of leakage and diversion as of retention by
recalcitrant combatants.11 Basic peace was finally achieved in 1998 with the surrender of
the Khmer Rouge and the arrival of some semblance of stability in the Cambodian
government.
More than a decade later residual weapons remain as an obstacle to peace and security
in Cambodia, although now often subordinated to arguably more pressing development
priorities. Efforts to collect and control SALW have slowedif not ceased completely
8 An authoritative history of Cambodia can be found in David Chandler,A History of Cambodia, Boulder:Westview Press, 2008.9 Chandler, 2008, and Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan, Bombs Over Cambodia: New information revealsthat Cambodia was bombed far more heavily than previously believed, The Walrus, 2006.10 CRC, Cambodia Mine/UXO Victim Information System Annual Report 2007, Phnom Penh: CRC, 2007,p. 16.11 Christina Wille,How Many Weapons Are There in Cambodia?, Geneva: Small Arms Survey, 2006, p.91.
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in the wake of the departure (effectively declaring mission accomplished) of the EU-
ASAC and JSAC missions in 2006 and 2008 respectively. However, the HMA sector
appears to be stronger than ever, despite some reductions in capacity this year due to
budget shortfalls.12 Taken together, the collective efforts to address residual weapons in
Cambodia are among the largest, most enduring and most ambitious of their kind. Many
techniques now common in both sectors were proven or pioneered here, and many people
have acquired years or even decades of experience working in their respective fields.
There is also a general consensus that both HMA and WR have been executed fairly well
and have achieved relative success in Cambodia, which may seem to some to offer a
contrast in sectors that are marred by some pretty monumental failures.13
As a result,
conditions in Cambodia are ideal for research seeking in the first instance to draw
retrospective insights on the contribution of HMA and WR to peacebuilding; insights that
hopefully have potential to inform a peacebuilding approach to similar programmes and
initiatives elsewhere in the world.
1.3: Methodology
In addition to the review of articles, reports and policy documents, a period of seven
weeks was spent in the field collecting data for this research. The core information was
collected in fourteen unstructured interviews with English-speaking participants who had
significant experience with HMA programmes, WR programmes, or both. Participants
were mostly departmental directors, identified for their experience by the relevant heads
of organisations in the preliminary meetings regarding access and permissions. In total,
fourteen interviews were conducted. Nine HMA interviews were conducted with
participants from the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), the Cambodian Mine
Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA), the Mines Advisory Group (MAG)
and the Center for Peacekeeping Forces and Mine/UXO Removal. Five WR interviews
were conducted with participants relating their past experiences with the European Union
12 CMAC,Integrated Work Plan 2009, Phnom Penh: CMAC, 2009.13 See for example Bernt Skara, Risky Business or Constructive Assistance? Community Engagement inHumanitarian Mine Action, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 5, 2003, pp. 841-842, and Sami Faltas,Glenn McDonald and Camilla Waszink,Removing Small Arms from Society: A Review of WeaponsCollection and Destruction Programmes, Small Arms Survey occasional paper, 2001, p. 7.
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Assistance on Curbing Small Arms and Light Weapons in Cambodia (EU-ASAC), the
Japan Assistance Team for Small Arms Management in Cambodia (JSAC) and the
Working Group for Weapons Reduction (WGWR). In addition, there were ample
opportunities for participant observation at the offices of the various organisations and
during a site visit to a MAG minefield in Boh Knor village, Battambang. Finally, a
number of hard copy documents that were not available electronically (and therefore
largely inaccessible from New Zealand) were obtained from participating organisations,
and additional victim information was obtained from the offices of the Cambodian Red
Cross (CRC). The field component of the research was entirely funded by the Peace and
Disarmament Education Trust (PADET), and was carried out with the approval of the
University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee (UAHPEC).14
1.4: Structure of this Thesis
Chapter 2 establishes a basic analytic framework through which to examine the
contribution of HMA and WR to building sustainable peace in contaminated postconflict
societies. Peace is a concern of all social disciplines, if not of all human beings. Peace is
often considered to be more than the mere absence of violent conflict (although this is
usually a precondition); rather it is a positive and aspirational process. It is also widely
acknowledged that the antithesis of peace is not conflict, which is an inevitable and
potentially creative feature of human relationships, but instead relates to violence and
insecurity.15 Violence is most visibly antithetical to peace, and is significant whether
manifested as direct and episodic or indirect and structural. However, it is insecurity
defined as the experience or anticipation of episodic or structural violencethat is the
true nemesis of peace. Considering its diverse theoretical, cultural, religious and personal
interpretations, it is safe to say that there is not one kind of peace, but many. It is also safe
to say that the formulation of a theory to encapsulate all of them would be prohibitively
difficult, if not impossible, if not outright self-defeating in such a case where the diversity
of peace is actually a critical factor in making peace work.
14 UAHPEC reference 2009/158.15 Helen Ware (Ed.), The No-Nonsense Guide to Conflict and Peace, London: New InternationalistPublications, 2006.
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Confining this thesis to the realm of the possible, just two broad types of peace will be
identified: basic and comprehensive peace. The former condition is that following a
peace agreement when conflict is temporarily frozen (manifested in a ceasefire) or has
been formally ended by political elites but is not necessarily accompanied by
improvements in the security situation faced by civilians on the ground. By contrast, the
latter condition (and the focus of this thesis) directly concerns the wellbeing of local
populations in postconflict zones, and combines the short term security of basic needs
with the long term expansion of freedoms and opportunities. Comprehensive peace is
thus characterised by positive trends in the security, development and rights of
communities and the individuals therein. The concept of basic and comprehensive peace
is in many respects not dissimilar from the Khmer notion of the difference between
santepheap (meaning the absence of war) and santran (meaning a higher plane of peace
in which human needs are met and people live without fear).16
Traditionally, the separation of security, development and rights actors roughly
coincided with their associated disciplines; security was claimed by political science,
development by economics and rights by law. The traditional compartmentalisation of
these concepts has been gradually eroded by the advent of human development and
human security as additions to the older human discourses of human rights and human
needs.17 These concepts represent more than merely an attempt to humanise existing
state-centric discourses; they represent tentative steps toward transforming the rhetoric of
theory into programmatic practice.18 To inform the peacebuilding success criteria for
HMA and WR programmes in this thesis, I propose an analytic framework called
Comprehensive Peace Analysis (CPA), which incorporates a critical understanding of the
four human discourses. The basic premise is that the requirements of security,
development and rightswhich together constitute human needsmust be met in order
to progress from basic to comprehensive peace, and that peace must be comprehensive in
16 These concepts were first explained to me in an interview with CMAC Director of Training, Researchand Development Roath Kanith, and subsequently re-explained in personal communications from sameparticipant.17 Des Gasper,Human Rights, Human Needs, Human Development, Human Security: RelationshipsBetween Four International Human Discourses, Working Paper No. 445 from the Institute of SocialStudies, 2007.18 Des Gasper, Securing Humanity: Situating Human Security as Concept and Discourse,Journal ofHuman Development, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2005, p. 223.
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order to be sustainable. In assessing the contribution of HMA and WR to comprehensive
peace, I have found it useful to extend Johan Galtungs concept of negative and positive
peace to consider the negative peacebuilding (in which obstacles to peace are removed)
and positive peacebuilding (in which positive security, development and rights trends are
established) aspects of such programmes.19
While it is necessary in fitting with the objectives of this thesis to engage with
inherently vague and value-laden concepts such as (post)conflict, violence, (in)security,
development, rights andabove allpeace, I have nevertheless attempted to treat the
voluminous theoretical literature at arms length to avoid degenerating into a tired
rehearsal of unsolvable conceptual debates. Theory is important and useful insofar as it
can be practically applied, however its relevance tends to diminish somewhat when
practitioners go out into the field and find that local communities have their own ideas
about conflict, security and peace. It is hoped that the framework presented in Chapter 2
is broad enough to be transferable, but specific enough to be useful.
Chapter 3 is driven by the research question: What are the peacebuilding implications of
residual weapons? Firstly, this chapter examines current impact analysis of residual
weapons andby extensionthe logic governing programmes that seek to reduce or
eliminate them. It is important to understand limitations in current impact analysis and
how they may be an obstacle to more peacebuilding-relevant interventions. Secondly, this
chapter refocuses attention on the implications of residual weapons for peacebuilding by
considering how they affect relations between people. CPA threat mapping will be used
to demonstrate how a peacebuilding perspective might contribute to the expansion of
residual weapons impact-comprehension and analysis.
Landmines and ERW attracted a great deal of international attention during the 1990s
with growing awareness of their indiscriminate impact on civilians long after war has
officially ended.20 The result was a global popular movement that culminated in a ban on
the production and stockpiling of landmines and, more recently, a similar ban on cluster
munitions. SALW have attracted similar attention recently with the mobilisation of a
19 Johan Galtung, An Editorial,Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1964, pp. 1-4.20 See for example Cameron Maxwell, Robert Lawson and Brian Tomlin, To Walk Without Fear: TheGlobal Movement to Ban Landmines, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998.
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global movement in support of a comprehensive Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), highlighting
in particular the way in which the illicit trade in these weapons undermines peace and
fuels violent conflict, earning them the epitaph: the real weapons of mass destruction.21
The threat posed by landmines and ERW to people living in postconflict zones is
different from that posed by SALW in that where the former is often construed as a
passive threat, that latter actually requires an active agent. However, these weapons have
very similar medical, developmental and psychological impacts; they have similar
potential to kill, injure and disable; they have similar potential to obstruct development
and compromise human rights; they both help to sustain and entrench a culture of
violence; and they both contribute to a generalised sense of insecurity thatin a worst
case scenariocould potentially reignite violent conflict.
Research on the impacts of residual weapons has increasingly moved away from a rigid
preoccupation with the threat of immediate death or injury to consider their broader
implications.22
It is also widely acknowledged that the presence of these weapons is
detrimental to peace and a major obstacle to postconflict peacebuilding, thus HMA and
WR are taken-for-granted features of peacebuilding operations.23 However, the
conceptualisation of threats posed by these weapons is still quite limited. Even in
instances where it is acknowledged that the threat from residual weapons is complex
beyond the mere physical presence of landmines in the ground or small arms in
circulation, little effort is made to understandlet alone incorporate into programming
these more complex dimensions.24 There are four possible explanations for why this is
the case, all of which probably play a role: 1) A holistic understanding of the residual
weapons threat likely requires in-depth, qualitative research for which intervening
agencies do not have the resources; 2) Donors tend to only be interested in quantitatively
measurable outputs, and are reluctant to earmark additional funds for impact research;
21
IANSA, Small Arms The Real Weapons of Mass Destruction, available athttp://www.iansa.org/action/ia_pr.htm (accessed 03/03/09).22 See for example Kristian Harpviken, Ananda Millard, Kjell Kjellman and Bernt Skara, Measures forMines: Approaches to Impact Assessment in Humanitarian Mine Action, Third World Quarterly, Vol. 24,No. 5, 2003, pp. 889-908, Charles Mather, Maps, Measurements and Landmines: The Global LandminesCrisis and the Politics of Development,Environment and Planning, Vol. 34, 2002, pp. 239-250, and JoelWallman (Ed.), Small Arms and Light Weapons: A Call for Research, Harry Frank GuggenheimFoundation, 2005.23 Harpviken and Skara, 2003, pp. 809-822.24 Borrie and Randin, 2006, p. 11, 19,
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3) The prevalence of military thinking tends to favour the logic that removing the residual
weapon automatically overcomes the threat irrespective of its more complex dimensions;
4) In emergency postconflict situations where the emphasis is on urgent response,
spending time and resources on impact research may seem like an unjustifiable, even life-
threatening delay.25 However, both donors and practitioners must understand the broader
implications of their interventions, even in an emergency context. They must also
understand that the threat as it is perceived by the threatened is paramount, regardless of
how rational or irrational this perception seems to observers; perceived insecurity does
not necessarily correspond to a credible threat, yet there is little value in improving
security if people do not thenfeel secure.26
Further development of methodologies for
rapid information gathering in difficult environmentsand especially of methods that
privilege local understandings of peace and security (such as SNAP)is necessary to
maximise the impact of peacebuilding interventions.27
Furthermore, a broad analytic
framework such as CPA may be useful from the outset to consider and map residual
weapons threats and thereby highlight potential sites for risk-management contingencies
and cooperation with other peacebuilding actors.
Chapter 4 builds on the CPA threat-mapping of landmines and ERW in the previous
chapter to explore the primary research question: In what ways can HMA contribute to
postconflict peacebuilding? HMA impacts will be considered both from a negative peace
perspective and a positive peace perspective, with some attention also being paid to the
risk-management dimension of these perspectives.
Contributing to negative peace does not mean limiting the activities of HMA agencies to
a technocratic preoccupation with clearance. Removing landmines and ERW from the
ground can make a strong contribution to an overarching peace operation by freeing up
land for agricultural development, reducing local and urban-rural inequality, undermining
25 These points emerged explicitly or implicitly in several interviews undertaken in the field, the last pointis also echoed in Craig Williams and Christine E. Dun, GIS in Participatory Research: Assessing theImpact of Landmines on Communities in North-west Cambodia, Transactions in GIS, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2003,pp. 395-396.26 Gasper, 2005, p. 241.27 A detailed explanation of SNAP can be found in Derek Miller and Lisa Rudnick, The Security NeedsAssessment Protocol: Improving Operational Effectiveness through Community Security, UNIDIR,Geneva: UN Publications, 2008.
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a climate of fear and allowing for the repatriation and resettlement of refugees and
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). However, ensuring that such impacts contribute to
comprehensive peace requires that HMA agencies go beyond a rigid reliance on the logic
of automatic cause and effect (ifyou remove the obstacles to peace and development then
peace and development will happen) and consider the more complex array of variables
that often characterise postconflict societies. In reality, further action is often required
either by the demining agency itself or in concert with a relevant organisationin the
form of parallel social interventions and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) packages to
verify their impact and sustainability. Experience in Cambodia demonstrates significant
opportunities for HMA agencies to broaden their activities and organisational networks to
ensure that development happens, security is provided, and rights are respected.
The contribution of HMA to positive peacebuilding is always determined by the manner
in which HMA activities are undertaken and what additional steps are taken by
implementing agencies to have an added value for comprehensive peace. Organising
localised peacebuilding efforts around a concrete activity such as HMA can foster re-
engagement of former belligerents and help begin a process of trust-rebuilding.28 In
addition, the symbolic potency of dealing with remnants of war may be essential to
creating a peace dividend and building community confidence in the immediate aftermath
of conflict, especially when it is likely that other substantial visible benefits of peace
(such as development infrastructure) are likely to be much slower to materialise.
Experience in Cambodia demonstrates that there is significant potential for HMA
agencies to transcend their ostensibly apolitical status and engage actively in positive
peacebuilding by absorbing ex-combatants, facilitating cooperation between former
enemies and involving local communities directly. Mine Risk Education (MRE) is a
critical but underutilised area in the transition from a culture of violence to a culture of
peace; if the role of landmines and ERW as weapons is made clear (instead of being
problematised as illegitimate and therefore perceived more as naturalised hazards than
remnants of war), then MRE could be integrated into a broader educative message of
peacebuilding. This could also help reposition the audience of MRE from being passive
28 This conclusion consistently emerged in interviews with HMA practitioners, but was also establishedearlier in Harpviken and Skara, 2003, pp. 809-822.
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recipients of a dont touch message to being active agents of peacebuilding in their
communities.
One of the difficult questions for any postconflict development practitioner to ask is: Is
there a chance that my effortshowever well-intentionedcould actually be detrimental
to the cause of peace? It is important to ask the same of HMA, perhaps even more so
because of the perceived obviousness of the sectors contribution to peacebuilding.
Contrary to the mantra that any clearance is good clearance, there are in fact many risks
which must be managed in postconflict HMA; cleared land may be seized by elites, land
conflicts may be created or exacerbated, the way that agencies interact (or do not interact)
with communities can foster mistrust, the areas chosen for clearance can create feelings
of inequity, and even just the physical presence of clearance teams can put stress on poor
communities. It is therefore important to manage these risks in any HMA intervention,
and especially in a postconflict peacebuilding context. Once again this highlights the
importance of planning interventions based on good information about local
circumstances and solid impact data.
Chapter 5 builds on the CPA threat-mapping of SALW in Chapter 3 to answer the
primary research question: In what ways can WR contribute to postconflict
peacebuilding? As in the previous chapter, WR impacts will be considered from both
negative peace and positive peace perspectives with integrated risk-management.
Although there are obvious flaws in the logic that simply reducing the number of SALW
in circulation will automatically reduce violence and thereby contribute to negative
peace, empirical evidence from WR project areas in Cambodia suggests that such
programmes have indeed had an impact, especially in the reduction of armed violence as
a proportion of overall violence.29 However, as there is no way to disaggregate the
statistical impact of WR from other important variables (improved socio-economic
circumstances, temporal conflict distance, increased state capacities etc.), it is impossible
to determine with any precision how such programmes contribute to comprehensive
29 See for example Adrian Wilkinson and Anya Hart-Dyke, Evaluation of the EU Small Arms and LightWeapons Assistance to the Kingdom of Cambodia (EU-ASAC), Belgrade: SEESAC, 2006, David de Beer,Lessons Learned from the EU ASAC Project for Guidelines for Setting Up a SALW Security andManagement Project, Phnom Penh: EU-ASAC, 2004, and Wille, 2007, pp. 57-73.
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peace. In Cambodia much emphasis has been on promulgation of the Arms Law to both
local communities and enforcement agents, together with some limited human rights
education. Because the objective here is to prevent transgressions and not necessarily to
build a culture of peace, we can identify these impacts as contributions to negative peace.
In addition (and like with HMA), consolidating impacts requires going beyond a
technical focus on weapons collection to consider broader supply and demand
interventions, otherwise WR may just create vacuums to be filled by a resurgent arms
trade, or people will find other ways to fulfill their purpose (perhaps by making
homemade firearms as has become quite common in some areas of Cambodia). Once
again, good information-gathering and inter-agency cooperation is key to achieving
sustainable impacts and building comprehensive peace.
The positive peacebuilding impact of WR in Cambodia is much more elusive. The most
conspicuous efforts typically revolve around public destruction of SALW and
postconflict symbolism, especially in the Flames of Peace ceremonies. Although the
effects of such projects have generally been positive, they have nevertheless suffered
from a lack of transparency, a lack of local engagement, and the absence of any clear
linking of disarmament and peacebuilding messages. Community confusion and
controversy over destruction being limited to old and dysfunctional weapons also
undermines the positive peacebuilding potential of WR. There are nevertheless numerous
opportunities for SALW destruction to contribute to comprehensive peace if it is clearly
integrated into a broader educative message of peace, and if more confidence-building
measures (such as destroying weapons at the point of collection) are taken. Beyond
destruction, another major area for bolder intervention is in building the capacity of the
state to deal with the misuse of SALW, both internally and externally. It seems that a
great deal of time and resources has been spent on convincing communities to surrender
their weapons without actually addressing the reason for their insecurity: state
incompetence. There is an unwelcome perception that this may be too sensitive and too
interventionist, however if it is approached in a constructive, sincere and non-
confrontational way, it is likely that WR organisations and their donors will find a
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receptive audience.30 Just as there is little value in improving security if people do not
then feel secure, there is no point in convincing people to feel secure without actually
making sure that they are secure.
One of the major issues from a peacebuilding risk-management perspective is the matter
of who is responsible for actually collecting weapons; in other words, to what extent is
responsibility given to governments, or reserved by international organisations? This
question is further complicated by the possibility that neither governments nor
international organisations have much credibility in postconflict situations. If WR is not
conducted in a fair and transparent manner, then it may be little more than a thinly veiled
attempt to disarm or even punish opposition factions and sympathisers. WR can also
serve as a mechanism for elites to extort money from local communities, or to
appropriate land and assets while the postconflict climate of legal ambiguity persists.
Such risks must be managed by intervening organisations by building state capacities and
closely monitoring implementation, in conjunction with local NGOs and media where
possible.
Chapter 6 draws together the conclusions of the previous two chapters to identify
common features of a best process of HMA and WR in building comprehensive
peace.31 It will be argued that not only are HMA and WR good for peacebuilding,
peacebuilding is also good for HMA and WR. Considering operations and objectives
from a comprehensive peace perspective has the potential to reveal important areas where
additional interventions or cooperation with other agencies can have considerable added
value and make the core outcomereduced impact of residual weaponsmore
sustainable. More lives saved, more livelihoods improved. This thesis does not offer a list
of specific technical activities for agencies or donors to tick off as they move from
country to country. Rather, the success and shortcomings of the Cambodian case study
indicate that the following processes and attributes are generally desirable: 1) A
comprehensive threat assessment that considers the more complex dimensions of residual
weapons impacts; 2) A comprehensive threat assessment that privileges local understands
30 SAS, Caught in the Crossfire: The Humanitarian Impacts of Small Arms, in Small Arms Survey 2002:Counting the Human Cost, 2002, p. 158.31 Miller and Rudnick, 2008.
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and perceptions of insecurity, and is matched by projects that value and respond to these
perceptions; 3) A long term funding cycle that matches the long term programme
objectives necessary for comprehensive peacebuilding; 4) Matching of state capacity-
substitution with simultaneous state capacity-building, with local ownership being the
objective; 5) Close monitoring to ensure transparency of both implementers and project
partners (especially authoritative state agents such as police); 6) Close engagement with
local communities and participation whenever possible and appropriate; 7) Integration of
educative messagesoften simply tacked on to HMA and WR programmesinto a
broader message of non-violence and peacebuilding; 8) Close cooperation with all
relevant peacebuilding actors to ensure complementarity, sustainability and minimal
overlap. If HMA and WR can address the politics of insecurity created by residual
weapons as well as the residual weapons themselves, then they can make a solid
contribution to building sustainable peace.
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Chapter 2: A Comprehensive Peace Perspective
2.1: Peace, Conflict and other Conceptual Nightmares
Conflict and peace are universal concerns of human beings, and fluctuation between is a
natural and inevitable feature of human relationships.32
Yet these phenomena are
experienced and interpreted in vastly different ways across space and time, thus it is not
surprising that reducing them to simple definitions is problematic. Conflict analysis (and
therefore peace analysis) has traditionally been dominated by Western political science
and all of the cultural baggage it imports.33
However, in recent decades there has been a
broadening and deepening of conflict analysis and conceptualisation, partly reflecting
changes in post-Cold War security dynamics in which intra-state complex emergencies
have become salient, but also partly as a result of a general realisation that conflict is
most costly for civilians and not for the politico-military elites that hold the attention of
peacemakers.34
In addition, the need for systems of enquiry that can relate to local
experiences of conflict, insecurity and peace is increasingly felt among both analysts and
practitioners who have witnessed peacebuilding failures resulting from the imposition of
external points of view.35
Conflict has largely come to replace war as the favoured term given to a
confrontational relationship between antagonistic parties. Although the latter term has
reappeared in recent years mainly for rhetorical use, it nevertheless evokes images of
conflict between states and therefore has diminished utility in a global security
environment in which intra-state conflict is prevalent.36 The changed security landscape
is also acknowledged in the popular distinction between old and new conflicts, where
32 Ware, 2006.33 See for example Alexandra Kent, Reconfiguring Security: Buddhism and Moral Legitimacy inCambodia, Security Dialogue, Vol. 37, No. 3, 2006, p. 344, and Daniel Christie, What is PeacePsychology the Psychology of?,Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 62, No. 1, 2006, pp. 1-2.34 Ken Booth (Ed.), Critical Security Studies and World Politics, Colo: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005,Mary Kaldor,New and Old Wars, Cambridge: Polity, 2006.35 Miller and Rudnick, 2008, Kent, 2006, p. 345, 347.36 Kaldor, 2006, Michelle Gawerc, Peace-Building: Theoretical and Concrete Perspectives, Peace &Change, Vol. 31, No. 4, 2006, p. 436.
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the former indicates a formal condition entered into by nation-states and the latter
represents the failure and disintegration of the state apparatus.37 The intra-state character
of new conflicts precludes any retreat of combatants behind demarcated borders, and the
divisions of conflict often run through communities as well as between them. Inevitably
then, such conflicts do not end with a bang but usually with whimper after whimper
after whimper38
This also requires a broadening of the term postconflict to capture a
broad range of conditions that include continued low-level hostilities, entrenchment of
chronic violence, and physical, psychological and structural residue from settled
conflicts.
Definitions of the role and manifestation of conflict violence have also evolved as
concepts from peace psychology have been incorporated into conventional conflict
analysis. Most importantly, the inclusion of structural violence has broadened the
traditional focus on episodic violence, contributing to a more holistic perspective on both
the causes and solutions to violent conflict:
Examples of episodic violence can vary in scale from interpersonalaggression, such as bullying, to the organized form of interstate violencecalled war. In contrast, structural violence is an insidious form of violencethat is built into the fabric of political and economic systems, both withinand between nations, and results in slow death through the deprivation of
human need satisfaction. Thus, if people are starving and there is food inthe world to feed them, then structural violence is taking place.39
This helps (to some extent) to bring conflict analysis more in line with explanations of
peace and conflict in scholarship in the majority world, which tends to have a strong
causative emphasis on social (in)justice.40
It also highlights the reality that violent
conflict is complex and participants have varied motivations that are the result of a
confluence of destructive inputs rather than a single activating factor.41 Furthermore, this
reveals the autocatalytic nature of new conflicts and especially the role of the violence-
37 Kaldor, 2006, Jean Eishtain, New Wars, Old Violence,International Studies Review, Vol. 3, No. 1,2001, pp. 139-141.38 Martina Fischer, Recovering From Violent Conflict: Regeneration and (re-)Integration as Elements ofPeacebuilding, Paper from the Berghof Centre for Constructive Conflict Management, 2004, p. 3.39 Christie, 2006, p. 5.40 Ibid. p. 3.41 Christie, 2006, p. 6.
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poverty nexus; although poverty may not cause conflict, it is often critical in sustaining it
by impairing non-violent strategies for survival.42
Another consequence of considering the broader impacts and experiences of violence is
the revealed importance of psychological impacts, manifested in insecurity. The concept
of insecurity is best understood as the experience or anticipation of structural or episodic
violence. The inclusion of anticipated violenceor perceived insecurityhas a profound
impact on the scope and focus of conflict analysis, because it forces analysts and planners
to consider the security climate from the perspective of the insecure. This also means
paying attention to security threats that arefrom the observers point of viewnot
real.43
Perceived insecurity is of particular importance to this thesis because of the
salience of the psychological threat posed by residual weapons. In the case of landmines
and ERW, much recent emphasis has been on their fear-based impact in relation to land
access and development, and in the case of SALW, perceived insecurity underwrites the
retention (and sometimes the use) of weapons in the aftermath of conflict. This reveals
that security threats as they are perceived by the inhabitants of postconflict societies are
at least as important as and likely more so thanthe threats identified as being real
and credible by external observers and intervening actors. Insecurity is the true antithesis
of peace insofar as it precludes popular confidence in basic social structures, support
networks and state instruments, and confuses the distinction between war and peacetime,
thereby diminishing any dividend that peace might bring and encouraging spoilers to the
peace process.
While seemingly obvious when used as part of everyday vernacular, peace is a
conceptually vague and inherently imprecise term. This is never so apparent as when
used in the context of peacebuilding, in which discussion of the concept of peace
inevitably devolves into a discussion of measurement. As peacebuilding actors come
under increasing pressure to deliver demonstrable results, the concept of peace comes
42 See for example Aldo Benini,A Semi-Parametric Spatial Regression Approach to Post-War HumanSecurity: Cambodia 2002-2004, paper from the Centre for the Study of Civil War and the InternationalPeace Research Institute, Oslo, 2006.43 Gasper, 2005, p. 241.
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under greater scrutiny and the question of how to measure it comes to the fore.44 Such
pressure is incited by the prevailing influence of positivist traditions that seek to
objectively measure quantifiable outputs.45 War recurrence (or the absence of) tends to be
the favoured empirical measure of peacebuilding success or failure, however even such a
basic indicator is hopelessly flawed whenin a security environment dominated by new
conflictsthere is no standard definition or measurement of what exactly constitutes a
condition of war and therefore war recurrence.46
As Charles Call notes regarding a
series of peacebuilding studies:
How reliable can quantitative studies be if the same group of scholarsreport such variation in the rates of civil war recurrence? Part of thisdifference relates to the divergent methods used to calculate war
recurrence rates. In addition, datasets reflect very different criteria forinclusionRates of success and failure are less compelling whenspecialists disagree so seriously on what constitutes a civil war at all.47
The absence of consistent criteria for war recurrence has provoked an unfortunate
tendency to conflate peacebuilding success with traditional measures for macro-level
economic growth that do not necessarily reflect peacebuilding gains. On the contrary
such gains often coincide with the funneling of economic benefits to elites, exacerbating
structural inequalities which often underwrite new conflicts.48 Nevertheless, there are few
other quantitatively measurable indicators to provide evaluation criteria and policy
guidance for peacebuilding interventions. It is clear that using data-hungry, quantitative
models in a context of new conflicts that are inherently complex, in which little reliable
macro-level data is available, and in which perceived insecurities are numerous and do
not necessarily correlate to measurable threats, is not a viable approach to assessing
44 See for example Charles Call, Knowing Peace When You See It: Setting Standards for PeacebuildingSuccess, UNDP, 2007, and Reina Neufeldt, Frameworkers and Circlers: Exploring Assumptions inPeace and Conflict Impact Assessment, Paper from the Berghof Centre for Constructive ConflictManagement, 2007.45 Ibid. pp. 2-3.46 Call, 2007.47 Ibid. p. 28.48 See for example Oliver Richmond and Jason Franks, Liberal Hubris? Virtual Peace in Cambodia,Security Dialogue, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2007, pp. 27-48.
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peacebuilding success.49 Quantitative factors should not be ignored, but neither should
they dominate analysis to the detriment of more detailed enquiry.
Analytic approaches that go beyond crude aggregates to consider the qualitative impacts
of peacebuilding elicit accusations of being too complex to have practical application.50
However, the reality is that new conflicts are inescapably complex, and cramming them
into a simplifying model could prove to be a fatal error. A sound analysis of
peacebuilding gains must consider the complex dimensions of conflict, violence and
insecurity in order to first understand what is notsuccessful peacebuilding and then plan
and implement contingencies accordingly. At the same time, it may not be sufficient to
identify and address the original cause of conflict because conflicts evolve and change
themselves over time:
Ultimately, even if we have a sensible diagnosis that outlines the rootcauses of a particular conflict, addressing these root causes may no longerbe the most appropriate course of action in a post-conflict scenario, as thewhole context may have been transformed by the conflict itself and newcauses may have entered the picture.
51
Applying the rigid positivist template to peacebuilding in the current security
environment is beset by more problems than simply failing to capture the complexity of
new conflicts; it also tends to eclipse local understandings and interpretations of conflict
and peace.52 It is not difficult to imagine how this might seem unproblematic to those
who reify scientific methods and fancy their own analysis to be value-free. Upon
considering the practical simplicity of positivist frameworks in relation to the messiness
of real conflict, one is immediately struck by how compelling objectivity is in theory and
how utterly unrealistic it is practice. In reality:
[demands that] the scope of security should be limited by establishingcriteria independent of specific worldviews are impossible to satisfy. Alldiscourses and practices of security, including ones own, are perforce
49 Fischer, 2004, p. 21.50 See for example Ana Cutter, Peace-Building: A Literature Review,Development in Practice, Vol. 15,No. 6, 2005, pp. 778-784.51 Harpviken and Skara, 2003, pp. 810-811.52 Richmond and Franks, 2007, p. 35, 46.
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socially and culturally positioned, and they are therefore inescapablyplural.53
The imposition a specific and particularistic conceptualisation of peace not only
compromises potential peacebuilding gains by having limited relevance for local people,it also undermines the credibility of intervening agencies by acting as a form of cultural
imperialism.54
It must be remembered that peace is not a condition in a social vacuum; it
is cultivated within and among communities of human beings. Therefore it makes no
sense to exclude the communities in question when setting the criteria for peacebuilding
success. However, this does not mean that peace theory imported by intervening actors is
of no use and should be discarded, far from it; peace theory as it has been developed in
numerous academic traditions and contributed to by the collective experience of many
practitioners is critical to informed peacebuilding policy. Instead, analysts and
practitioners should seek commonality between various local and external understandings
of what it means to have peace and what it takes to achieve it:
Such methods are not about challenging scholars to choose between eitherunhesitatingly imposing their theories upon other peoples or utterlydeconstructing them. Rather, these methods engage scholars in a processofrelating their own realities to those of others.55
Participation and community liaison are valuable tools insofar as they can accomplish
this by helping to identify parallels and areas of complementarity. However, these tools
must be accompanied by a wholehearted commitment to the principles of participation
and with the objective of empowerment, and not simply delivered as tick-the-box
technocratic cargo in which the square peg is mutilated until it fits in the round hole. A
positive step in this direction is the development of the Security Needs Assessment
Protocol (SNAP), which involves a rapid assessment of local security needs as identified
by local informants.56 In principle, SNAP balances the need for urgency in a postconflict
53 Kent, 2006, p. 345.54 See for example Christie, 2006, p. 11, and Neufeldt, 2007, p. 14.55 Kent, 2006, p. 347.56 Miller and Rudnick, 2008.
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crisis against the need for a comprehensive study of security requirements; time and more
testing in the field will reveal the breadth of its utility.57
The (post)conflict and security analysis that has been conducted in/on Cambodia has
had somewhat of a dystopian social character to it. It is frequently posited that the climate
of fear and mistrust engendered by the tyranny of the Khmer Rouge was so deeply
ingrained, and the ensuing destruction of social capital and village support networks was
so total, that the nature of kinship ties was fundamentally transformed and the
individuals trust in her neighbour permanently impaired.58
While decades of war and
genocide of the like experienced by Cambodia inevitably has profound and lasting social
impacts, including on community spirit and trust, the extent of this impact thirty years
later seems to be prone to exaggeration and construes the present-day Cambodian
demeanor as being hopelessly mistrustful. This may be partly explained by some analysts
uncritically extending the conclusions of a few field studiesconducted in remote parts
of the hinterland that have yet to see the change experienced in other parts of the country
or where community divisions were particularly strong during the warin order to apply
them to the whole of Cambodia.59 Thus, although the breakdown of social capital is an
ongoing problem in the aftermath of Cambodias war, more recent and more detailed
research has redirected attention toward two other social legacies: 1) Both the duration
and intensity of the conflict in Cambodia have contributed to the normalisation of violent
means of resolving disputes (a culture of violence); 2) State incompetence, corruption,
weak capacity and apparent impunity, together with the fact that many Cambodians
perceive the government as the central conduit for the history of violence they have
experienced, have contributed to an acute mistrust of agents of the state, particularly
in remote rural areas far from the checks and balances of Phnom Penh.60
57 Miller and Rudnick, 2008.58 See for example Eve Zucker, Transcending Time and Terror: The Re-emergence ofBon Dalien afterPol Pot and Thirty Years of Civil War,Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 527-546.59 Such as the Eve Zucker study referenced above.60 Mneesha Gellman, No Justice, No Peace? National Reconciliation and Local Conflict Resolution inCambodia,Asian Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 2, 2008, p. 42. See also Robert Muggah and Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan (Eds.), Whose Security Counts? Participatory Research on Armed Violence and HumanInsecurity in Southeast Asia, report commissioned by Small Arms Survey and Nonviolence International,2003, p. 23.
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The autocatalytic nature of the former (autocatalytic because violenceif unchecked by
interventionbreeds more violence) and the persistent incidence of the latter have meant
that their significance has not been so diminished by the passing of years since the end of
the war. The fact that Cambodia experienced relatively little political violence during the
last election is an encouraging sign, however feelings of mistrust and resentment
persist.61
2.2: Basic and Comprehensive Peace
During the field research for this project, I asked all of the participants whether or not
they believed Cambodia had achieved peace, or if they believed peacebuilding to be an
ongoing process. Variation in responses often correlated to the proximity of participants
to government interests. Those more closely aligned with the government were adamant
that peace had been unequivocally achieved, and also expressed a belief that definitions
of peace should be clear, finite and limited to the absence of war. However, most
participants were more critical in their interpretations of peace and more ambivalent
about whether or not Cambodia had really achieved it. Many felt the need to create a
distinction between two different possible interpretations or measures of peace, which I
have called basic and comprehensive peace. Some participants referred to the difference
between negative and positive peace, others to external and internal peace, and some
referenced the Khmer concepts ofsantepheap and santran. These distinctions reveal a
common understanding about definitions of peace, if not a common language. The
fundamental difference is that where basic definitions are preoccupied with the absence
of violent conflict, comprehensive definitions emphasise thepresence of peace,
manifested not only in the provision of security but also in the realisation of rights and
development. The consensus among participants who offered this distinction was that
Cambodia had largely achieved basic peace following the cessation of large-scale
political violence in the late 1990s, however comprehensive peace remains elusive for a
variety of reasons including ongoing contamination with residual weapons.
61 Richmond and Franks, 2007, p. 45.
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Basic and comprehensive peace are necessarily imprecise categories, however a number
of generalised traits can be identified to help distinguish one from the other, as presented
in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Basic and Comprehensive Peace
Basic peacebuilding operations are epitomised by interventions of the early post-Cold
War era, including UNTAC, by their impact if not by their intent.62
Although such
peacebuilding initiatives ostensibly aim to transform war into politicsusually through
rapid democratisation and liberalisationthey rely heavily on a conflict managementapproach that maximises the role of peacekeeping forces to keep a lid on hostilities. 63
The locus of intervention tends to be at the macro-level of political and economic
62 Amitav Acharya, Conclusion: Asian Norms and Practices in UN Peace Operations,InternationalPeacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 1, 2005, p. 146.63 Call, 2007, p. 29.
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institutions, and efforts are concentrated around reform and temporary capacity-
substitution.64 Efforts at building residual government capacities are for the most part
limited to developing and consolidating the military capacity for repression.65 External
peacemakers predominate and are typically preoccupied with politico-military elites.
Objectives and priorities are frequently and to a significant degree dictated by annual or
biannual project funding cycles resulting in planning uncertainties andultimatelyin
fatal short termism.66
Likewise, the measure of success is confined to short term criteria
(such as relapsing into conflict within five years) and the threshold for failure is high
(such as having so many thousand conflict deaths).67
Interventions are also time-bound
and often have inflexible deadlines, meaning an activity stops on dayx irrespective of
whether or not its objectives have been achieved. Perhaps most significantly, many basic
peacebuilding operations tend to emphasise reconstruction which, in the context of new
conflicts, may involve recreating the status quo ante bellum, and therefore the conditions
of violent conflict:
Re-construction implies that one reconstructs society to resemble what itwas like before the conflict. (...) Most of todays conflicts are subnational,and caused by the inability or the unwillingness of governments to ensurethat there is a recognition of equity, exemplified through structural,political and economic issues that serve all communities equally. To talk
of reconstruction in a post-settlement stage implies going back to a pastwhich exemplifies the very factors that created the conflict.68
Basic peace is underwritten by an ideological commitment to the liberal peace project
that privileges order and stability over equality, justice and rights.69
Irrespective of their
touted intentions and objectives, basic peacebuilding interventions tend to result in a kind
of temporary, virtual peace in which grassroots emancipatory change is postponed
indefinitely.70 From the outset security and insecurity are exclusively defined from the
outside and imposed inward. The neorealist security paradigm from which most concepts
64 See for example Dodson, 2006, pp. 244-252.65 See for example Booth, 2005.66 See for example Cutter, 2005, p. 783,67 See for example Cutter, 2005, p. 780.68 Fischer, 2004, p. 3.69 Call, 2007, p. 29.70 Richmond and Franks, 2007, pp. 27-48.
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and definitions are drawn emphasises the potential threat posed by sub-state insurgencies
to fragile transitional governments, and does not seriously consider the threats posed by
such governments to their client populations.71 As a result, the needs and concerns of
individuals and communities are essentially desecuritised in the service of a national,
elitist security agenda. Similarly, postconflict development is usually captured by
neoliberal reform with its hallmarks of privatisation, liberalisation and structural
adjustment and its associated deficits in social spending.72
The devastating impact of such
reforms on fragile postconflict economies (which usually differ little from conflict
economies) does not need to be reiterated here; the point is that grassroots human
developmenta process that requires long term commitment and local partnershipis
sacrificed at the altar of rapid macro-level stabilisation.73
Human rights are generally not
considered at all because Rights-Based Approaches (RBA) are perceived as being too
complex, theoretical or ethnocentric to be realistically applied in postconflict contexts.
The large-scale violation of human rights is instead accepted as an inevitable symptom of
the postconflict condition.74
None of this is to say that basic peace cannot be an improvement from the horror and
chaos of violent conflict. However, basic peace rarely represents lasting change other
than for elites and other potential spoilers who are bought off, and without meaningful,
concrete and sustainable improvements on the ground where violence occurs, any
positive impacts of basic peace will surely be temporary. It is widely held that in the
aftermath of conflict, a significant proportion of energies that were invested in fighting
are simply redirected to other violent activities (such as armed crime).75 However,
considering the prominence of wartime shadow economies maintained by combatant
participation in criminal activities, such a redirection is little more than a semantic one;
observers might call the same activity conflict violence or violent crime depending on
whether or not the context is during conflict or postconflict, but how much difference
does that really make to the victim, or to the perpetrator? Interventions that simply
71 Booth, 2005.72 See for example Richmond and Franks, 2007, pp. 27-48.73 Heiko Nitzschke and Kaysie Studdard, The Legacies of War Economies: Challenges and Options forPeacemaking and Peacebuilding,International Peacekeeping, Vol. 12, No. 2, 2005, pp. 222-239.74 Richmond and Franks, 2007, p. 30.75See for example Nitzschke and Studdard, 2005, pp. 222-239.
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rename a situation (or systematically redefine the criteria of success until they meet it)
rather than actually seeking to change a situation cannot sensibly be called
peacebuilding.
By contrast, a comprehensive definition of peace pays attention to the security,
development and rights of communities and the individuals therein. Concepts of peace as
an aspirational goal or indefinite process do not serve as justifications for indefinite
intervention; rather they reflect an awareness of the fact that any plan for the long term
realisation of peace must be a long term one:
that while there is considerable knowledge about what makes forsuccessful peace-building, these lessons have not been entirely learned orinstitutionalised in terms of strategic planning for post-conflict operations
and how programmes are implemented. A lesson common to all theliterature is the need for sustained attention. Peace processes are not one-to two-year events. It takes ten years or more for the objectives of thepeace agreement to be ingrained in society.76
At the heart of comprehensive peace is the recognition that human security, human
development and human rights are manifestations of a fourth human discourse: needs,
and that all of these are interdependent and indivisible.77
An environment in which
security is provided, development facilitated and rights protected not only undermines the
structural logic of violent conflict, it makes possible the transformation of episodic
conflict in human relationships into creative compromise and other positive channels.
Conversely, an environment in which security is compromised, development obstructed
or rights violated is often conducive to the normalisation of violent systems of conflict
and dispute resolution.78
Peacebuilding interventions that do not take steps to reverse all
of these negative trends will likely fail to differentiate their phase of postconflict
operations from previous phases of conflict. This in turn is unlikely to dissuade
combatants from violent activities, especially when there is a widespread perception
characteristic of new conflictsthat membership in belligerent factions is one of few
76 Cutter, 2005, p. 783.77 Gasper, 2007.78 See for example Muggah and Moser-Puangsuwan, 2003, p. 23.
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available avenues offering relative security and economic opportunities.79 An atmosphere
of insecurity also creates opportunities for spoilers who have benefited from wartime
shadow economies (such as trafficking in SALW, narcotics, minerals and people) and
whose material interests are heavily invested in the continuation of violence.80 Of course,
the continuation of violent conflict further undermines human security, development and
rights, instigating an autocatalytic process of social disintegration that puts peace (by
anyones definition) firmly out of reach.
Because the security, development and rights of individuals and communities are
indivisible and interdependent and because serious deficiencies in any one of these may
be enough to catalyse a degenerative cycle of perpetual insecurity, their protection is
integral to comprehensive peace. Traditionally, the separation of security, development
and rights actors roughly coincided with their associated disciplines; security was
claimed by political science, development by economics and rights by law. Contributing
to the increasing convergence of these agendas in the 1990s was the advent of human
development and human security as additions to the older human discourses of human
rights and human needs. The interdependence of these concepts means there is an
inevitable overlap between their respective jurisdictions, thus locating a specific issue on
the security-development-rights continuum will usually depend on the type of language
invoked; for example, a human development narrative on caloric intake could just as
easily be constructed as a discussion of food security, or of the human right to nutritious
food. It should be emphasised that far from making these concepts redundant, multiple
overlaps actually reveal a need for considering an issue from multiple perspectives.
While narrow definitions might be useful in establishing clear mandates, they also carry
the risk of areas of overlap always being considered someone elses problem if they are
not clearly captured by any one definition or concept.81
An indication of the growing awareness of the convergence and interdependence of
security, development and rights is the identification of six types of security now
79 See for example Nordstrom, Carolyn. Backyard Front, in Carolyn Nordstrom and JoAnn Martin (Eds.),The Paths to Domination, Resistance and Terror, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.80 Nitzschke and Studdard, 2005, pp. 222-239.81 SAS, 2002. p. 158.
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frequently used by many organs of the UN family; personal, political, economic, food,
health and environmental security.82 Each of these concepts represents a point of overlap
between human security, development and rights. Drawing together these concepts and
their overlaps, we now have all the ingredients of a basic recipe for comprehensive peace,
as illustrated in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Components of Comprehensive Peace
With the concerns of security, development and rights of all persons in postconflict
societies at its core, a comprehensive peacebuilding intervention seeks to transform a
culture of violence into a culture of peace. Thus peacebuilding activities are as concerned
with challenging structural violence as they are with maintaining order and stability.
Consideration of security, development and rights elicits the sustained attention necessary
82 See for example Taylor Owen and Olav Slaymaker, Toward Modeling Regionally Specific HumanSecurity Using GIS: Case Study Cambodia,Ambio, Vol. 34, No. 6, 2005, pp. 445-449.
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to achieving long term peacebuilding goals. Likewise, a long term perspective elevates
sustainability as an agenda priority, resulting in more effort directed at localisation and
capacity-building rather than temporarily substituting for government capacities.
Utilisation of pre-existing local structures has logistical benefits for service delivery, but
even more significantly it has the potential to nurture local government and civil society
organisations in a bottom-up process of peacebuilding to complement top-down
peacemaking.83
The confluence of all these attributes makes comprehensive
peacebuilding an altogether more durable, sustainable and emancipatory approach than
one that seeks merely to reduce factional fighting and episodic violence.
2.3 Comprehensive Peace Analysis
The need for comprehensive peacebuilding that pays attention to security, development
and rights is well established both in the literature on the subject and in the mandates,
mission statements and policy documents of numerous peacebuilding missions as far
back as UNTAC.84 However, peacebuilding actors demonstrate a remarkable capacity to
adopt the rhetoric of a comprehensive and holistic peace while remaining resistant to its
actual application.85 For some reason the lessons learnt from failed (basic)
peacebuildingand the record of failure is extensivedo not seem to have been
internalised by either peacebuilding actors or the international community at large.86 This
is evidenced by the enduring compartmentalisation of organisations and agencies that
align themselves exclusively with the security agenda, the development agenda or the
rights agenda, and fail to either see or acknowledge the common ground these agendas
share:
The arbitrary compartments of humanitarian activities and development do
not transfer well to real-world societies, where the fragility of peace andthe persistence of violence make it difficult to draw distinctions betweenthe conflict and postconflict periods. Humanitarian operations focus onquick response and short term planning, while development agencies are
83 See for example Skara and Harpvikken, 2003, pp. 809-822.84 Security Council Resolution 745 (1992), adopted unanimously at the 3057th meeting, February 28 1992.85 See for example Cutter, 2005, p. 783.86 Ibid. p. 783.
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often slow and inflexible. Both tend to focus too much on mandates ratheron the needs of those affected by war and neither seems to rely on theknowledge and expertise of the other that may help improve operations.
87
The urge to focus on a particular activity with no regard for what other agencies are
doing is understandable, especially in the convoluted aftermath of new conflicts where
even otherwise simple tasks might seem impossibly complex. However, this myopic
approachoften accompanied by a mind your own business attitude toward inter-
agency cooperationinvites decision-making processes based on the structures and
capabilities of the intervening agency rather than on the espoused needs of those
receiving assistance.88
This obviously diminishes the value of the peacebuilding
intervention from the perspective of those living in the postconflict zone and may even
make a situation worse, as illustrated by the case of El Salvador where rivalry among
agencies delivering out-of-step programmes and competing for the attention of the
populace severely weakened the peacebuilding process.89
Using a CPA-type framework to consider threats from multiple angles allows an
understanding of how any given activity fits into an overarching agenda of peacebuilding,
highlights areas of overlap, complementarity and sites of potential cooperation between
intervening agencies, and might lay the foundation for a risk-management strategy.
Anticipating the potential effectsadverse or otherwiseof a peacebuilding intervention
on the security, development and rights of individuals and communities allows an
intervening agency to plan and coordinate in such as way as to give sustainable,
comprehensive peace the best possible chance. This means not only maximising the
direct impact of activities but also taking advantage of the added value of parallel,
complementary interventions. CPA will be used in this thesis to consider the threats to
peace posed by residual weapons and the peacebuilding impact of programmes that seek
to address them, using a simple table mapping security, development and rights
dimensions and overlap (such as the one below).
87 Fischer, 2004, p. 7.88 Cutter, 2005, p. 782, and Acharya, 2005, p. 149.89 Dodson, 2006, pp. 245-246.
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Figure 3: CPA Threat Mapping
The purpose of this kind of analysis is not to derive a detailed blueprint of intervention,
but to expand thinking on a particular activity beyond its traditional disciplinary
confinements and operational compartmentalisation. In light of the neoliberal flavour of
many post-Cold War peacebuilding operations, it would not be surprising for the reader
to conflate an intervention that sought to address all the multiple threats to peacebuilding
simultaneously with the complete and rapid overhaul of existing institutions, or a kind of
peacebuilding shock therapy. However, one can easily make a distinction between the
rhetoric of such interventions, which may reference or invoke the language of security,
development and rights, and their actual implementation which largely ignores them.
There is also a danger that comprehensive peace may be misinterpreted as demanding a
panacea, but considering even the simple fact that a CPA framework accepts the long
term necessity of peacebuilding, we can clearly see that this is not the case. It is
unrealistic to expect security, development and rights to be immediately realised, but is
not unrealistic to expect specialised agencies in each of these fieldsor in related or
overlapping areasto take measures to coordinate their efforts and thus maximise their
impact:
With many small interventions, even if they have continuity to them, theydo not necessarily connect to each other. Trying to plan something
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systemic is pretenti