Since the last time I replied, I've been busy following up some comments from my supervisor and trying to get hold of a number of other experts. So I haven't been following this discussion.

I very much appreciate your thoughts, and most of them will go into the thesis.
The point on the consistency of contractors echos something else I've been told by a U.S. army officer with Liberia experience, and later points Dayuhan about Westerners getting manipulated seem to be the same in Africa: Gerard Prunier: 'in thirty-seven years of studying Africa I have seen more Westerners manipulated by Africans than the other way around.' In Security Sector Reform terms a la the OECD, we need to prioritise local ownership. The problem is that Western style army reconstruction simply does not.

So, interim conclusions:

Drawing on set of cases including Zimbabwe (1980-), NAmibia, Mozambique, South Africa, Bosnia-Herzegovina, East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia, DR Congo, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, and Nepal.
I can go through the list of key principles/framework in which I will add the ideas here and others I'm seeking from France and Africa.
But, after that:
*if Namibia does not have an effective army (data insufficient)
*then there are no cases in which a Western style / Western standard army has been sustained over the long term without large scale continuing Western financial and human assistance
*Underscores the reasonably obvious truth: very difficult to build Western standard armies in non Western countries
*Key difference, thanks to Mark Malan and Herbert Howe's book (Ambiguous Order: Military Forces in African States): There has to be a sense of urgency.
The only capable army in SSA apart from the South Africans is the Rwanda Patriotic Army, and they were faced with annihilation if they lost. Corroborated by Israeli and possibly apartheid-era South African experience
*Potential cases that disprove this argument are Namibia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Kenneth Pollack's book proves that Iraq has a history of very poor tactical performance. I have insufficent evidence to say whether the Iraqi Army now has improved it's strategic, operational, and tactical performance.
*Returning to the main reason for my dissertation: creating security for development to take place? Possible in two circumstances:
*For foreseeable future, only with incredibly disproportionate Western levels of effort. We should achieve much more, but because these are non-Western political systems, we cannot achieve half as much.
*Beyond? Only when there is a change in the nature of who the state serves, the wider masses rather than the politico-military elite. And/or when a functioning bureaucratic structure is put in place.

*What can we do about it now? This is not about armies, it's about the political evolution of the state - statebuilding. One has to improve the nature of the state before we can improve the army.

My focus is mostly on Africa, and many of these ideas reflect what I understand about African reality. Whether they reflect Iraq or Afghanistan is another matter.

Thoughts welcome.