Font Size: a A A

Illiberal Peace Building: The Case Of UN Interventions In The Post Conflict Reconstruction Of Sierra Leone

Posted on:2013-01-07Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:B E B r i m a P a t r i c k Full Text:PDF
GTID:1116330371479340Subject:International politics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Since2002when the conflict in Sierra Leone officially ended, it is been recordedthat globally, there are about91intra-state conflict out of the116armed conflict since1981. Often and again, almost all of these violent conflicts have been categorized underinternal conflicts which predominantly occur in poor and under-developed countries likeSierra Leone. These conflicts according to various studies especially in Sub-SaharanAfrica have been as a result of the break down in economic development, governance andnational institutions, thus resulting into a chaotic state. People take to armed rebellionwhen they realize their voices of suppression, exclusion and intimidation can no longerbe heard by state authorities. Peace builders in their attempt to build nationalreconciliation have often ignored significant dynamics especially those relating to localfactors. It is usually a case of bringing in international peace builders and expertise whomight know very little or no details of the conflict background and actors to broker peacewithout adequately addressing the root causes of the conflict. Such interventionunquestionably leads to the establishment of a 'hybrid 'peace waiting for the slightestprovocation to collapse. In a post-conflict country like Sierra Leone, the re-occurrence ofpolitical/electoral violence and presence of widespread insecurity, bad governance,illiteracy, poor health, and the absence of basic infrastructure in transportation andcommunications makes stability and national cohesion extraordinarily difficult. To helpunderstand the policy prescriptions of Peacebuilding especially those relating to currentUN efforts in Sierra Leone, the following questions are worth providing answers to: Isthe concept of building peace after a violent conflict using the UN model worth investinginto as far as Sub-Saharan African conflicts are concerned? If the answer is in theaffirmative, what explanations can practitioners give for the concurrent collapse ofnational stability and peace almost immediately after UN Peacebuilding interventions?Assuming that these generalizations of Peacebuilding critics are anything to go by, can adomestically led state/non-state actor intervention enhance post conflict stability betterthat her external counterpart? Again, if we take 'no' for an answer, could it be possiblefor the international Peacebuilding actors to transfer their foreign expertise to local actors so as to ensure a sincere Peacebuilding activity? How can the international communityrealizing the new and strategic significance of local agents and actors in Peacebuildinggenuinely assist in building post-conflict reconstruction? What are the functionalrelationships between external Peace builders and local agents/actors? What should betheir (international actors) exact role amidst these local dynamics to ensure that states donot relapse into conflict after their intervention? Answering these questions will help usunderstand the policy problems of Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone and why most statesrelapse into conflict after UN or external interventions.Our Research Arguments and Hypothesis suggests that the concept of Peacebuilding is no longer a novelty since Boutrous-Boutrous Ghali propounded it and definedas a process of rebuilding war torn communities, or "action to identify and supportstructures which will tend to strengthen and solidify peace to avoid a relapse to conflict.Concisely put, peace building therefore includes the process of rebuilding the political,social, security, and economic dimensions of a society emerging from conflict andaddresses the root causes of the conflict and enabling warring parties to continue to findsolutions through negotiation and when necessary through mediation. As Keating andKnight (2004) observed, Peacebuilding is been adopted by national governments,nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and regional and international intergovernmentalinstitutions (IGOs) as a means by which the outside world can contribute to the resolutionof intrastate conflict and to the reconstruction, or construction, of a culture of peace inpost conflict situations. The headache of how to prevent these hostilities from happening,remain a major challenge on how to rebuild a stable post conflict state, therefore stateactors and the UN through her Peacebuilding Commission should ensure that strongerstate institutions, broader political participation, land reform, a deepening of civil society,and respect for ethnic identities are all seen as ways to improve the prospects for peacefulgovernance. From a broad spectrum, this thesis seeks to critic and analyzes theassumptions of the liberal peace and democratic peace theories as strong cases thatenhances a successful and stable post conflict scenario.In this thesis therefore and stemming from the Rational choice theory (John Scott2007) assumptions (which argues that war will re-occur if the expected utility of war isgreater than the expected utility of peace; and that all actions are fundamentally rational as long as people calculate the benefits and costs of such action), we hereby argue thatthe stake in domestic ownership of Peacebuilding should remain high, with greaterattention and that efforts by foreign powers should in no way shrink domestic dynamics.Local actors in Sierra Leone's Peacebuilding should through rational choice see theexpected utility of maximizing their local expertise in building the peace, than theexpected utility of a foreign or supply led utility of peace. Their stakes should be viewedas greater than those of their external counterparts. Although a generally acceptableinternational approach to Peacebuilding is been practiced by the UN, efforts should bemade to design specific responses to particular situations, realizing that the UN broadparameters have flaws. Such international approach must address the local sources of thehostilities, local capacities to achieve durable peace, added to the specific degree ofinternational commitment. To build peace therefore in Sierra Leone, we seek to argue inthis work that the probability of a successful and durable international Peacebuilding is akey function of the host or conflicting nation's local capacities. Such probabilities ofPeacebuilding success are even higher if UN approaches are reconciled with domesticcapacities. To build a sound argument, this thesis questions the Wilsonian hypothesiswhich argues that "attempting to transform a war-shattered state into a liberal marketdemocracy fosters a stable and lasting peace with the more general belief thatliberalization offers a remedy for civil conflict". Relating these Wilsonian assumptions ofpromoting political and economic liberalization to current Peacebuilding activities byUNIPSIL in Sierra Leone only further makes a caricature of Ghali's ideology. Rather,this thesis argues that a shift from the obnoxious liberal tenets to more tangible normativetrends can better achieve Peacebuilding from bottom-top approach. It is our view that theWilsonian hypothesis could not see a little beyond the liberalization lens by looking at therelevance of the normative theory where the cultural values, norms and socio-politicalhistory of Sierra Leone vis-à-vis political violence and actors involved in such conflictsare equally important. This thesis is of the opinion that the role of existing and emergingstate structures like political parties, Civil society Organizations, ex-combatants, theMedia, NGOs, Judiciary, Inter-faith communities etc in Sierra Leone, remain sensitivewith a greater potential of relapsing the country into war than the other arguments. From the above therefore, the core argument of our research hypothesis posit thatthe very pursuit of a liberal peace or (liberal order) in a post conflict state like SierraLeone, could be more destabilizing, because as Roland Paris (2004) argues 'war shatteredstates possesses neither the institutional capacity to deal with intense political andeconomic competition nor a tradition of peaceful conflict resolution, and that where suchinstitutions do exist, they are little more than instruments in the hands of one faction. Thiswork in its hypothetical argument agitates for Institutionalism to precede Liberalism.Rather than seeking elections as the most immediate post conflict activity in Sierra Leone,UNIPSIL Peace builders should get more involved in understanding the dynamics of thedomestic affairs (normative trend of Sierra Leonean politics and history), capacitate anddevelop local Peacebuilding expertise of the domestics actors, whiles also making everyconscious effort to limit political and economic awareness in the short term, and creatingbetter foundation for peace and democracy as a long term strategy.Theoretically, a range of theories have been used to help us conceptualize the corehypothesis of our thesis topic. In the first place, we have meticulously analyzed theliberal peace theory (Richmond2005) which posits that democracies are more peacefulboth domestically and internationally and that democratization (rule of law, human rights,good governance, free and globalised markets, and neo-liberal development) will shiftintra-state conflicts away from the battle field into a peaceful arena of electoral politics;and, that Marketization would promote sustainable economic growth, which would alsohelp to reduce tensions. This thesis has been able to outline lots of limitations of thedemocratic peace (Bruce Russet1992) argument and posits that the very quest for aliberal political order in Sierra Leone is proving to be more destabilizing andincompatible especially with democracy and economic reform, post-conflict justice withthe stabilization of society, crime and corruption and the establishment of the rule of law.The liberal peace project not only ignores the socio-economic problems confrontingSierra Leone, it aggravates the vulnerability of sectors of populations to poverty and doeslittle either to alleviate people's engagement in shadow economies or to give them a sayin economic reconstruction if they expect outside help. It is our opinion that the request toinstitute democratization through elections is the biggest cause to instability and violencein Sierra Leone. Elections alone remain the single most activity that has resulted in national instability, deaths and physical damage to people and property. This is becauseof the repeated foul games in favor of one party against the other.The other theory we have used to analyze our research findings is that of thearguments by many scholars like (John Scott2007) in his Rational Choice Theory whichargues that war will re-occur if the expected utility of war is greater than the expectedutility of peace; and that all actions are fundamentally rational as long as people calculatethe benefits and costs of such action. We carefully used this cost and benefit analysis toargue that the stake in domestic ownership of Peacebuilding should remain high, withgreater attention and that efforts by foreign powers which should in no way shrinkdomestic dynamics. Local actors in Sierra Leone's Peacebuilding should through rationalchoice see the expected utility of maximizing their local intervention, and expertise inbuilding the peace, than the expected utility of a foreign or supply led utility of peace.Their stakes should be viewed as greater than those of their external counterparts, onlythrough this can they contribute meaningfully to enhancing a stable and cohesive postconflict Sierra Leone.In chapters2&3, we carefully analyzed the actors in our research. There are twosets of actors in our analysis of current UNIPSIL Peacebuilding agenda for Sierra Leonenamely: domestic and external actors. Domestic actors cover the contributions of stateand non state actors like civil society organizations, community based organizations,local NGOs, political parties, youth and women organizations, inter-faith communities,the media and human rights institutions, the judiciary, the TRC/Special Court etc.External actors include the UN Peacebuilding Secretariat (UNIPSIL), INGOs, WorldBank, ECOWAS/AU, etc. Among the two actors, this work has been able to discoverthat whiles UN's external experts have all the professional expertise in Peacebuilding,they have however not been able to reconcile their supply driven capacity buildingtechnology and expertise with their domestic counterparts. This work is of the view thatlasting and durable peace in Sierra Leone can only be built if such UN experts giveprominence to domestic actors especially the Youths, Civil Society Organizations andInter-faith communities who were themselves not only part of the conflict but led in theconflict resolution processes. While showing the many gaps in these local actors fullyembracing UNIPSIL led initiatives, this work questions the top (external) bottom (local) method or supply driven Peacebuilding approach which seriously imbalances and resultsin low quality or poorly managed post conflict cohesion and stability. Despite thebrokering of accords by external actors and the initiation of standardized institutionalreforms, contemporary peace process often suffer from deficit in the areas of localempowerment, ownership and legitimacy; therefore to create a sound and equitable basisfor challenging global governance limitations, it becomes inevitable that genuinelyempowering grassroot state actors coupled with local international partnership are highlyneeded in ensuring post conflict stability and peace in former war torn state like SierraLeone. We argue that in a world of diverse, non-interchangeable cultural and religiousnorms, there can be no unitary or formulaic approach to sustainable Peacebuilding.Contemporary Peacebuilding practices by international actors are far removed fromeveryday practicalities of the local actors, therefore since Peacebuilding itself is done bythe people, the dynamics of their organization are crucial for it success. We argue thatsuch conventional and/or diplomatic orthodoxy for building war shattered societiesshould no longer take prominence, but should rather give way to local initiative ascredible alternatives to Peacebuilding. We conclude by maintain that using these localactors in Peacebuilding activities with local expertise and resources, in a manner thatactivates latent cultural energies, creates sincere sense of local ownership andempowerment.Chapters4&5present the analysis of our findings and our concludingrecommendations. In the first place, our analysis of the liberal peace theory lead us intodiscovering that generally as Darby&Ginty (2008) notes, and with regards itsapplication to Sierra Leone, most peace which follows broad-based liberal intervention isgrossly compromised due to its failure to address the underlying causes of the conflictand that such technocrat solutions provided by international peace builders to solvedeeply rooted and complex local problems produce little more than a negative peace.While we agree with Duffield (2001), this thesis suggests that durable peace can only bebuilt in post conflict Sierra Leone if domestic norms of the country regarding earliermethods of conflict resolution and transformations are given prominence instead of I.Kant's (1795) thesis which prefers shared international norms and practices as the solemeans of solidifying democratic consciousness and unity through economic interdependence and shared interest in security. From the available evidences in SierraLeone, our work discovers instead that Roland Paris'(2004) criticism about the liberalpeace or Peacebuilding as exacerbating rather than addressing the problems furtherrenders UNIPISIL initiative as illiberal quest for peace. Among the two categories ofactors, evidences deduced from our interviews and study of available literature revealsthat some positive efforts are been done by UNIPSIL in providing capacity buildingtrainings for local actors like political party youths/women, the media, human rights andcivil society organizations, police and judicial reform etc but largely, such hugeinvestment in these domestic actors, have not shown much significance. Since2007, thespate of political and electoral violence has accelerated with high possibility of returningto the pre and war years. It is our view that the neglect of other important local actors likethe inter-faith communities together with the general leadership of political parties,accounts for why post conflict stability in Sierra Leone has been difficult to achieve. Wetherefore see the liberal peace proposition as illiberal because it is creating instabilitythan the cohesion and development it is intended to enhance. This thesis therefore positsthat if any theoretical base is to be established about Sierra Leone's UNIPSILPeacebuilding initiative, then the Normative theory and Rational Choice Theory canbetter offer credible alternative and explanations in its Peacebuilding quest. Our analysisis that if domestic state actors like the Inter-Religious Council, the Civil SocietyOrganizations and Youths are given adequate capacity building and resources at theirdisposal, then would they be compel because of the cost and benefit analysis of therational choice theory, to make sincere commitment to the post conflict recovery anddevelopment of Sierra Leone.We conclude that notwithstanding the huge financial and technical expertise that theUN Peacebuilding Mission has invested in upholding an improved, stable and developedpost-conflict country, the possibility of a relapse into conflict are high because of thefrequency of electoral violence and bad governance.We therefore conclude that judging from the interventions and the huge expertise ofSierra Leonean local actors like the coalition of civil society organizations, the inter-religious communities, Women/youth groups and local community based organizations,demonstrated during the war and peace process, this work is of the opinion that notwithstanding the highly rated external expertise and resource provision inPeacebuilding, local actors can better manage their communities by relying primarily onwhat they know and can do for themselves (through local capacity governance). Externalcapacity building packages, and resources and especially those from the UN and WorldBank should be directed at improving on the already existing local expertise of thedomestic actors in the conflict or conflict resolution processes so as to ensure totalcooperation and commitment, hence post conflict stability and national development.The UN or UNIPSIL should realize that electioneering which is a major demand ofthe liberal democratization theory is fast facing lots of practical limitations in ensuringpost conflict stability and development. The conduct of elections alone remains thesingle most activity that has undermined Sierra Leone's post conflict stability, peace anddevelopment. The pending2012general elections is the make or break in Sierra Leone'shard won peace, therefore it is suggested that the UN revisits their quest and rush toinstitute democratization in post conflict countries without understanding local dynamicsof the conflict society.Ignoring these shared norms, identities, values and traditional virtues of her localinstitutions in favour of a supply driven external expertise in enhancing post conflictstability in Sierra Leone, will remain an unfulfilled dream and will render the liberalpeace proposition illiberal.
Keywords/Search Tags:Peace Building, Illiberal Peace, Rational Choice, Post Conflict Stability, Democratization and External Actors
PDF Full Text Request
Related items