The Ultimate Weapon is No Weapon

At that time, the main concern was to make sure that the peace dividend expected from the end of the Cold War would be devoted to development. The aim of the 1994 Human Development Report was to use the concept of security to emphasize the urgency of development. This broad definition of human security was adopted by the Japanese government and taken up by the United Nations’s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change in their report, In Larger Freedom, and in the Secretary-General’s response to that report.²

A narrower definition of the concept of human security, developed by the Canadian government, is closely associated with the concept of Responsibility to Protect—the idea that the international community has a responsibility to protect people threatened by genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other massive violations of human rights when their governments fail to act. This definition is reflected in the Human Security Report, published in 2005, and the subsequent Human Security Briefs, documents that provide valuable information about political violence—particularly violent conflicts.³

Our version of human security emphasizes what the UNDP calls personal security—the security of human beings in violent upheavals. Thus we agree with the idea of Responsibility to Protect. But we also think that it is impossible to protect people from violence without taking into account all of the other dimensions of insecurity—the conditions of violence. In the Report of the Commission on Human Security, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen focuses on what he calls the downside risks: “the insecurities that threaten human survival or the safety of daily life, or imperil the natural dignity of men and women, or expose human beings to the uncertainty of disease and pestilence, or subject vulnerable people to abrupt penury.”⁴

A human-security approach aims, above all, to prevent violence by tackling the conditions that lead to violence. But where people are in the midst of violent upheavals, as is the case now in Afghanistan, it also focuses on how to dampen down the violence rather than on how to “win.” And in the aftermath of violent upheavals, a human-security approach looks not just at reconstruction but also at preventing new outbreaks of violence, since the conditions that led to violence—weak rule of law, unemployment, criminality, surplus weapons, loss of livelihood, or extremist ideologies—are often worse after conflict than before.

So, are we arguing that armies should turn their swords into plowshares? No. There is an essential role for force in human-security operations: sometimes you need to be able to protect people using what is known as hard power. But militaries must work together with civilians—police officers, health workers, development experts, and others—and their role is very different from traditional war fighting. In the Barcelona and Madrid reports, the study group that Kaldor convened developed six principles of human security that apply to both military and civilians working together in zones of insecurity.

These are

1. The Primacy of Human Rights. In human-security operations, the goal is protecting civilians, not defeating an enemy. This means that human rights, including the rights to life, education, clean water, and housing—must be respected—even in the midst of conflict. If they are not, outside interventions can fuel insurgencies.

2. Legitimate Political Authority. In the long run, human security can only be provided by local authorities whom people trust. This might be a state, a municipality or a provincial administration. The job of outside forces is to create safe spaces where people can freely engage in a political process that can establish legitimate authorities.

3. A Bottom-up Approach. The population affected by violence and insecurity must be involved in a human-security strategy, and yet the international community often operates in protected enclaves without communicating with people. Ultimately, the people who live in areas of insecurity must solve their own problems. Outsiders can help but only if they understand what is needed; otherwise they risk making things worse.

4. Effective Multilateralism. If outsiders are to have the consent of the local population, they must be seen as legitimate, which means operating within the framework of international law, especially under a UN mandate. Security policies cannot be effective if they are spread out among many different agencies, governments, and NGOs.

5. Regional Focus. Human insecurity has no clear boundaries. It spreads through refugees, criminal and extremist networks, and through economic and environmental calamities. There are many ‘bad neighbourhoods’ in the world such as Central Asia, the Horn of Africa, the Caucasus, and parts of the Middle East and Central Africa.

6. Clear Civilian Command. In human security operations, civilians are in command. This means that the military must operate in support of law and order and under rules of engagement that are more similar to those of police work than to the rules of armed combat. Everyone needs to know who is in charge, and leaders must be able to communicate politically with local people as well as people in the sending countries.

We are frequently asked how a human security paradigm applies to ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In particular, how would a human security approach fit in the alternatives that are being proposed, at the time of writing, by the Obama Administration? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were conceived (in 2003 and 2001) as conventional military conflicts and they remain substantially affected by that initial conception. In both places, the level of violence, as we argue in Chapter 4, is much higher as a consequence of the way force was used in the early stages. It is very difficult, half way through an as yet incomplete war, to shift direction if for the previous several years you have been shooting at the people you are now offering to protect. It lacks credibility. Local populations are deeply sceptical of such claims—and with good reason.

So while the principles of Human Security are important in both countries, the application of them is hindered by the fact that conventional miltiary engagements have recently dominated in both places.

The human security that the book describes is aimed at helping to end conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq but, much more, at preventing the future misuse of ineffective twentieth century militarism without denying the fact that the world’s democracies need to be engaged in the politically and economically needy insecure parts of the world. So, bearing that qualification in mind, what would a human security strategy for Afghanistan entail?

Human security is both an ends and a means. If a human security approach were to be adopted in Afghanistan, the goal would be the security of ordinary Afghans. At present, the goal of Western operations in Afghanistan is the defeat of what are seen as foreign enemies. As President Obama put it in his speech announcing the surge at West Point on December 1, 2009: “Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.”⁵

Those who oppose the war in Afghanistan argue, with some justice, that far from defeating Al-Qaeda, the international presence in Afghanistan provokes new attacks. Al-Qaeda is one of those Hydra-headed phenomena that pop up in different places. The terrorists who attacked London in July 2005 were all British and all went to school in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, even though they later trained in Pakistan. The terrorist who nearly blew up a KLM plane travelling to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 was a British educated Nigerian who trained in Yemen. The raison d’etre of Al-Qaeda is the war against the west, which they call jihad. The more Al-Qaeda is attacked, the more it attracts disenchanted and alienated young people. Every air strike, especially when civilians are killed, seems to offer evidence for a storyline in which to make sense of their frustrations.

A human security approach would favour the international presence in Afghanistan but not primarily to defeat Al-Qaeda rather to protect Afghans. Of course, the surge strategy emphasises the security of Afghans. In his surge speech, President Obama talked about bringing an end to the “era of war and suffering,” but this is seen as a means to an end—the defeat of Al-Qaeda—rather than an end in itself. In a human security approach, it should be the other way round. It might be necessary to defeat Al-Qaeda in order to protect Afghans. The difference is not merely semantic. It matters in both political and practical terms. Afghans will never fully trust the outside presence as long as they fear that Afghan lives are secondary to the lives of internationals,. In practical terms, Afghan lives will be risked if the primary goal is to defeat Al-Qaeda. If attacking terrorists, with air strikes or drones or whatever, is considered necessary—even if it means risking the lives of Afghan civilians—then it will be very hard for Afghans to trust the international presence and it will be even harder to stabilise Afghanistan. The tension between the security of Afghans and the war against Al-Qaeda, the War on Terror in another guise, is the central contradiction of current operations.

Western policymakers and policy shapers argue that the Western public would never accept a rationale based on the security of Afghans rather than the threat of Al-Qaeda. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, insists that it is only because of the link between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda that the international presence is needed.

“If the Taliban were just another awful odious social movement with terrible values, with certain points of view we don’t agree with, it would be a serious problem, but it would not justify the commitment of what will ultimately be 100,000 American troops after this build-up is completed and a good number of our allied troops numbering in the 35 [thousand] to 45,000 range at least, including build-up and commitments still to come.”⁶

Why, it is argued, should we protect Afghans and not, say Congolese or Somalis?

There are two answers to this question. One is that we have a special responsibility to Afghans because we invaded their country in 2001. Whatever the rightness or wrongness of that initial decision, we cannot now leave Afghans less secure and less free than they were in 2001. The other is that if we are to be secure, the world needs to be secure and we do, indeed, need to be able to help Congolese and Somalis along with others. In the long-term, this means a much greater global commitment to providing the resources - people, money, expertise—for human security. This may not mean a commitment on the scale of Iraq and Afghanistan simply because, as we elaborate in this book, the use of conventional military force in twenty-first century crises makes things much worse.

So if human security is the goal, what are the means? It would involve a big commitment of military and civilian personnel acting according to the principles of human security. Perhaps the biggest difference between a human security approach and a counter-insurgency approach is the first principle—primacy of human rights. Of course, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are the main groups violating human rights. But other sources of human rights violations would have to be addressed and the Taliban is adept at exploiting those violations to mobilise support. Particularly important is collateral damage. Roughly the same number of civilians (slightly less) have been killed in air strikes as killed by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. General McCrystal, the Commander in Afghanistan, has ordered troops not to pursue Taliban fighters at the risk of civilian casualties—nevertheless some 1013 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in the first half of 2009, at least half from American air strikes. Moreover there have been some 600 drone attacks against targets in Pakistan since President Obama took office.

There is a strange disconnect in thinking about attacks on Al-Qaeda. President Obama is very sensitive to the need to follow the precepts of human rights and ‘just war’ doctrine as he made clear in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize. This is why he ordered an end to torture and the closing down of Guantanamo Bay. Yet drone attacks are also human rights violations. They would be unthinkable against home grown terrorists. Imagine if the British government had decided to attack Huddersfield in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings. Of course we have to catch terrorists, but through intelligence and policing. Suspects need to be arrested not arbitrarily killed. Drone attacks exemplify the double standards about the lives of Afghans and Pakistanis compared to Americans or Europeans. The lyrics of a popular Pakistani song say the Americans regard Pakistanis as insects.

Other human rights violations experienced by Afghans include violations by the government, the police, and governors—who rule in a corrupt, repressive, predatory way within a weak rule of law and an absence or perversion of justice; domestic violence including widespread violations of women’s rights; criminality, especially the drug trade, which now accounts for a large share of the total economy; unemployment; poverty; lack of access to healthcare and education; clean water and sanitation; and other violations of economic and social rights. These human rights violations need to receive as much attention as the threat from the Taliban insurgency.

There has been, at the time of writing, a lot of emphasis on the civilian surge—assistance in helping build up security forces, police and justice systems, and development aid—especially for agriculture as an alternative to the drug economy. But the numbers of civilians are tiny in comparison with the military effort and they are hampered by the dominance of the military.

The civilian effort depends on the establishment of humanitarian space—protected zones in which economic and social needs can be addressed and in which a political process free of fear can be initiated. But that is extremely difficult in the midst of a shooting war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, even though there are very important efforts going on now to help create protected communities along these lines.

The second principle is legitimate political authority. Perhaps the biggest obstacle to a human security approach at the moment is continued Western support to the Karzai government. The Hamid Karzai’s administration includes many former commanders, often known as warlords, who violate human rights and are heavily engaged in the drug trade—and which just passed repressive legislation on women. In particular, the police, whom the West trains, are corrupt and predatory. The fraudulent elections in the autumn of 2009 may have made things worse, even though Western governments extracted promises from President Karzai to reform.

What is needed is much more emphasis on justice—the vetting of people in key positions like members of parliament, governors, police, and soldiers—and the reconstruction of governance at local levels. As McCrystal has said: “It is not about how many people you kill—it’s about how many you convince.”⁷ As long as the government lacks legitimacy and indeed preys upon the population, Afghans may seek protection from the hated Taliban. Recent proposals to start a reconciliation process with the Taliban are seen by many Afghans as a way of making the government even less legitimate, creating an unholy alliance of warlords and the Taliban. They also fear that effort to attract low level fighters to the government side through inducements may merely result in increased recruitment to the Taliban.

To establish a legitimate political authority, the bottom-up approach is critical. Legitimacy is all about the relationship between the government and the people, and it is civil society that mediates this relationship. Unfortunately, most members of the international community that remain are confined to bases and travel around in protected convoys so they have little interaction with the population. A lot of emphasis is placed on cultural understanding and the assistance of anthropologists and other experts. But the real point is that Afghans are at least as sophisticated and self-reflective as Americans. The best way to understand what is going is to have long discussions with Afghans, not social scientists, although the latter can help. The emphasis on culture is actually a bit patronising—Afghans can understand different cultures, but there is such a thing as basic human respect and politeness. A very important element of the surge strategy is the injunction to ‘Live alongside the population’; this is critical for developing a bottom-up approach at local levels. But it is also important to engage with civil society in the cities. It is often argued that the English-speaking intellectuals in Kabul do not really understand what is going on in the countryside. Actually, many civil society activists in cities do not speak English and complain that internationals take their translators to talk to warlords but not to them. But whether or not they speak English, those educated Afghans who organize NGOs and human rights groups or who teach in schools and universities, know at least as much as internationals and need to be much more involved in discussions about strategy. It would be odd if governments in London or Washington ignored the policy communities in those cities on the grounds that they are out of touch with the rest of the country.

Internationals tend to talk more to the warlords because they are often the problem but, though this may be necessary, civic activists can offer guidance on the best approach.

The third principle is effective multilateralism. At present, in Afghanistan, there are two commands—the NATO command authorised by the UN and the U.S. Command Operation Enduring Freedom. Even though McCrystal has taken command of both, in effect these two commands epitomize the tension between human security and the War on Terror. There should be a single UN command, explicitly aimed at the protection of Afghans.

In addition, in Afghanistan there are huge numbers of different agencies, governments, NGOs etc, very badly coordinated and all absorbing the aid effort that is supposed to be for Afghans. There needs to be better coordination, fewer separate agencies, and a common coherent strategy. Indeed, this is one of the arguments for a human security approach. It is very difficult to achieve institutional coherence when every new mechanism created to coordinate the institutions tends to add another bureaucratic layer. But human security could provide the basis for conceptual coherence—something that is impossible at the moment because not all of the agencies and NGOs accept the American rationale.

The need for regional focus, the fifth principle, is obvious. The “new war” in Afghanistan extends over borders, especially into Pakistan. Indeed, the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 exposed the regional ramifications of the violence. The drug routes and human trafficking routes go through Iran and Uzbekistan. And Russia and China are needed to help with alternative supply routes. This is why Afghanistan’s neighbours have to be involved in a common strategy. There should be regional talks at all levels of government and civil society.

The final principle is clear civilian command. Counter-insurgency is a military strategy. A human security approach needs to be led by a powerful civilian—the UN Special representative or Richard Holbrooke as the U.S. Special Representative. Even though Richard Holbrooke is supposed to be the civilian counterpart to General Petraeus, he is much less visible both in the region and internationally. The military need to be thought of as contributing to a civilian strategy rather than the other way round. Civilian control is necessary if the needs of people are to be put at the top of the agenda in practice as well as in theory. Civilian control would have to mean different rules of engagement, based on human rights rather the “laws of war.” It would also create more space for economic, social and political development.

The surge strategy undoubtedly moves in the direction of these principles. But they are hampered both by the strategic narrative - the emphasis on the defeat of Al-Qaeda—and by the fact that they are militarily led. The McCrystal strategy should have been the Holbrooke strategy. There needs to be a public face to the international effort—a person who communicates with Afghans as well as the international community and who is not seen as a war leader.

The argument for a human security approach is not an argument against addressing the problem of terrorism. On the contrary, the terrorist threat is so serious we cannot afford to elevate the status of Al-Qaeda by treating them as traditional enemies. Rather than being defeated or killed, they have to be isolated, marginalised and arrested. That is how criminals are dealt with in societies that take human security for granted such as the United States or Britain.

If ours is an era of persistent conflict, as the United States Army Chief of Staff has said, then we must change our thinking, change the paradigm, and change the language. This book is a kind of manual for human security and, at the same time, it is a learning process. It is not intended to blame any one political grouping or philosophy, but rather to challenge twentieth century conventional wisdom and to start a discussion about a new language that is relevant to all people in the twenty-first century. This new language is as important for the government, academia, NGOs, and the general public as it is for the military. It is a 360 degree shift in security thinking.

This book journeys through various regional conflicts and tries to show the limitations of twentieth century approaches to the kinds of security challenges that we believe will characterize the current era. It also tries to describe what an alternative approach might look like.

We conclude by reflecting on our title: “The Ultimate Weapon.” The ultimate weapon in the twenty-first century simply cannot be something like the F-22 combat aircraft—not even something conceptually close to it. Indeed, we argue that in some circumstances the F-22 is almost as damaging to its user as it is to its targets. Finding the ultimate weapon requires a radical change of mindset. Even though most of us believe in human equality in the abstract, in practice, we do not act as though Afghan or African lives are equal to American and British lives. But they are, and that is where human security begins.