Sanctuary or Ungoverned Spaces:identification, symptoms and responses

[Mike Innes]

Dear SWC Members - I'd like to draw your attention to a new post at the Complex Terrain Lab on state failure, by Stephen D.K. Ellis, the author of The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War (NYU Press, 1999; Hurst & Co Publishers, 2006). It's his first post to CTLab.

Stephen's CTLab bio is here

The post on state failure is here

Best

Mike

[marct]

Interesting post, Mike. I think it raises some really good points about he semantics of "failed/ing" vs "fragile" states.

[Jedburgh]

RAND, 9 May 08: Breaking the Failed State Cycle

In their research and field experience, the authors have observed a wide gulf separating the treatment of the security problems of failed states from the treatment of those states’ economic problems. This, in turn, may impair treatment of political problems. Such disunity of effort in assisting failed states may suboptimize resource allocation, hinder coordination, and cause important demands to be neglected. With their different backgrounds—security, economic development, political systems, health policy, and institution-building—the authors felt that, as a team, they might be able to forge an integrated, general approach to rescuing failed states, recognizing that each specific case demands a tailored approach. After holding a seminar with representatives of the World Bank, the United Nations, development agencies, and several security organizations, the RAND team set out in search of ideas that would bridge the gap and thus permit more effective strategies and actions toward failed states.

The approach on which they settled was to identify certain critical difficulties that contribute to the cycle of violence, economic collapse, and political failure that ensnares vulnerable states. While such difficulties demand special attention, they often suffer from inattention—precisely because they fall into the crevasses between security, economics, and politics. Simply stated, the international community is ill equipped to treat the causes of state failure....

[Fuchs]

Wow, counter-terrorism activities are so far away from the World Bank's responsibilities that this is ridiculous.

[Jedburgh]

Wow, counter-terrorism activities are so far away from the World Bank's responsibilities that this is ridiculous.

The book, and this thread in general, is looking at the issue of failed/fragile states as a strategic enabling factor in the growth and spread of organized violence. It was never intended to take a narrow CT view.

The World Bank, despite its being a massive international bureaucracy - with all the problems inherent in that descriptor - at least recognizes the need to bridge the security-development divide. With the establishment of its Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group last year, it adjusted its structure and made an operational commitment to an attempt to more effectively address what it understood conceptually.

Ridiculous? No. Difficult, complex and destined to make plenty of mistakes along the way? Yes.

[Jedburgh]

Foreign Policy, Jul-Aug 08: Failed States Index 2008

Whether it is an unexpected food crisis or a devastating hurricane, the world’s weakest states are the most exposed when crisis strikes. In the fourth annual Failed States Index, FOREIGN POLICY and The Fund for Peace rank the countries where state collapse may be just one disaster away.....

[Jedburgh]

Berghof Research Center, 9 Apr 09:

Building Peace in the Absence of States: Challenging the Discourse on State Failure

....This Berghof Handbook Dialogue will not present an additional compilation of definitions and/or theoretical approaches concerning failed, fragile or weak states, nor will it offer recipes or policy recommendations in a technical sense. Our intention is instead to present some food for thought on the general premises of these concepts and to point out dilemmas which mark the current discourse (and practice). The lead article asks poignantly whether it is the states (in the South) that are failing, or the analysis of research (undertaken mostly in the North) that is inadequate or incomplete. Given a situation where state-building efforts are more often than not designed by the North and introduced to the South, this question needs to be investigated. This implies critically and honestly identifying the potential, and limits, of external intervention....

Complete 98-page paper at the link.