The Internationalization of Internal Conflicts

Threatening the State

Amy L. Freedman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134904358
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Internal security crises, from environmental disaster, extreme poverty and deprivation, armed conflicts, or ethnic or religious conflict, provide sites of opportunity for those seeking to internationalize conflicts. Domestic conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia have started as internal problems, but have taken on regional and international dimensions as parties to the conflict within the country and sympathetic external forces have joined forces with each other for mutual gain.

This book examines the international dimension to internal conflicts and asks: under what conditions do domestic conflicts become opportunities for regional or global actors to become involved? Why have some countries been able to successfully deal with this problem while others have not? Who are the actors who seek to internationalize conflicts? Why and with what means do they become involved and how do their agendas get internalized/localized? Cases include: the separatist movements in the Philippines, Southern Thailand, Aceh (Indonesia); and the civil wars in Rwanda/Congo, and Sierra Leone/Liberia, Lebanon, and Iraq.

This book finds that a combination of greater democratization internally, coupled with constructive outside mediation efforts, can produce conditions necessary to prevent conflicts from escalating or diffusing, and can facilitate peace-building.

Several chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Asian Security.

1 Explaining the internationalization of insurgencies

Amy L. Freedman and Sarah Davies Murray

DOI: 10.4324/9781315541211-1

Introduction and overview

With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, there was an enormous sense of optimism that the end of the Cold War would translate into a new era of peace and stability across the globe. The hope was that great power rivalries and domestic conflicts backed by the United States or the Soviet Union would end and therefore the number of wars overall would shrink dramatically. While conflict over ideology has greatly diminished, sadly, since 1990, there has been no shortage of bloodshed and conflict throughout the world. It is noteworthy that the wars which have taken place over the last twenty years have been different than previous conflicts. Many of the episodes of violence which have occurred throughout the globe have prompted scholars to rethink how we understand different types of conflict. This book seeks to enhance our knowledge of the connection between domestic conflicts and international relations. The study of civil wars, conflicts occurring within state borders, used to be understood as being entirely different from international conflicts, or wars between two or more nation-states. That neat distinction no longer makes sense and has been questioned by a number of scholars who describe a new sort of war, one harder to categorize as either a civil war or an international war, a new combination of domestic and regional or international factors come together in what many scholars refer to as the “new civil war” thesis. ¹ “New civil wars” are characterized as fundamentally different from “old” ones. New civil wars are viewed as internal conflicts that draw in or are taken advantage of by outside actors. They are sometimes seen as criminal, de-political, private, and predatory; whereas old civil wars are viewed as ideological, political, collective and even noble. ² While not fully agreeing that these wars are indeed a new phenomena, this book does point out the increasingly complex dynamics of internal conflicts and it develops some generalizable arguments about the connection between internal conflicts and regional, or international security questions. It contributes to the literature on new civil wars by emphasizing the importance of domestic, regional and international political factors in explaining the reasons why some conflicts escalate, why some have been resolved, and why other conflicts continue.

As Zartman lays out, few civil wars are really confined to internal issues, spaces, or actors, and the external dimension has significant effects on how the conflict might be resolved. ³ Internal security crises, whether from power struggles, environmental disaster, extreme poverty and deprivation, or ethnic or religious conflict, may provide sites of opportunity for involvement by various actors seeking access to power, economic gain, or to advance goals of co-religionists or co-ethnics. Domestic conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia have started as internal problems, but have taken on regional or international dimensions, as parties to the conflict within the country in question and external forces sympathetic to the internal forces, have joined with each other for respective gain. During the Cold War, many domestic conflicts were ideological in nature and tied directly to the international rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Similarly, many internal insurgencies or conflicts from the 1950s through to the 1980s also stemmed from contested processes of decolonization. As new nations in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East grappled with independence, conflicts arose over boundaries, identities, ideologies, and power. Often the great powers found themselves intervening to support one side or the other, seeing each conflict as part of a greater struggle for ideological hegemony. Today, one of the remarkable things about the conflicts examined in this volume is that they are NOT primarily about lingering Cold War rivalries between Marxism and Capitalism, and they are NOT primarily about superpower balance of power questions. Instead, they are much more about problems inherent in weak states, regional struggles and conflicts, and about questions of identity and domestic politics.

Questions, answers, and puzzles

This volume looks at the domestic, regional, and in some cases international, dimensions to internal conflicts and asks the following questions: under what conditions do domestic conflicts become sites of opportunity for regional or global actors to become involved? In other words, why have some internal conflicts become “internationalized”? And, why have conflicts in some countries been able to avoid this? Who are the actors who seek to internationalize conflicts? Why and with what means do they become involved? Finally, this project offers an explanation of why some conflicts have been successfully resolved while others have not. The book looks at several types of internal conflicts: separatist movements in the Philippines, the violence in Southern Thailand, the separatist movement in Aceh, Indonesia; regionalized conflicts such as those in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and in Sierra Leone and Liberia; and cases in the Middle East such as Lebanon and Iraq. Each of these cases will be examined in order to understand the dynamics of the conflicts, when domestic conflicts have become “internationalized” and what conditions might need to exist in order to effectively end the conflict. The first section of case studies in this volume examines how domestic conflicts become internationalized. In particular, authors ask how and why do domestic conflicts provide sites of opportunity for both external and internal actors?

The conflicts in Mindanao, Philippines, the Great Lakes Region of Africa (primarily the DRC and Rwanda), Lebanon, Iraq, and Sierra Leone/Liberia have all escalated or become tied to larger more regional conflicts and insurgencies. The insurgency in Southern Thailand and the one in Aceh, Indonesia have also been violent, deadly conflicts, yet, these struggles have not become internationalized, that is they have not escalated into larger regional or international conflicts.

Looking at Table 1.1, two basic points stand out: first, in conflicts where countries have undergone a transition to democracy, peace is more likely to occur. However, improving political institutions alone is not always sufficient to result in peace. In countries where there has been meaningful outside mediation ALONG WITH democratization, peace is more likely. This volume will show that when an insurgency has escalated or diffused (internationalized), it is vastly more difficult to democratize and to get meaningful mediation or peacekeeping to occur.

Table 1.1 Examples and status of domestic conflicts

Conflicts	Internationalization	Democratization	Outside mediation/PKO+	Peace
Aceh	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Sierra Leone	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Liberia	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
S. Thailand	No	No	No	No
Mindanao	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Iraq	Yes	Yes	Yes*	No
Lebanon	Yes	Yes	Yes**	No
Dem. Rep. Congo	Yes	No	Yes**	No
+ PKO Peacekeeping Operation. * In Iraq the US Coalition forces have been a catalyst for much of the violence, in addition to trying to be a peacekeeping force. ** In Lebanon and Democratic Republic of Congo there have been multiple PKO attempts at different points in time by outside actors to mediate resolutions to long running conflicts there.

The cases developed here represent a variety of outcomes that demonstrate important elements of the issues presented here. Firstly, these cases examine how local crises become larger regional or international conflicts. Two chapters show us domestic conflicts which have not escalated to become regionalized or internationalized: the chapter on Southern Thailand by Marc Askew and Kirsten Schulze’s chapter on Aceh, Indonesia. Samir Khalaf’s chapter on Lebanon, John James Quinn’s chapter on Rwanda and the DRC, Glenn E. Robinson’s chapter on Iraq all provide detailed examples of internal conflicts that have escalated to become regional and international conflicts. While there are some reasons for optimism that peace can come to these civil wars, there is also a significant likelihood that the violence and fighting will continue for some time. Secondly, the cases also examine the possibilities for resolving conflict. Two chapters provide case studies where long running, violent conflicts have been peacefully solved; again Schulze’s chapter on Aceh and M’Cormack’s on Sierra Leone and Liberia. Mely Caballero-Anthony’s chapter on Mindanao in the Philippines provides a case study in missed opportunities, but there is still a fair amount of optimism that peace will stick in Mindanao.

The case studies also discuss a range of possible explanations both to understanding how conflict becomes internationalized and to achieving a stable outcome. In doing so they provide support to the main thesis of this volume, that conflicts that do not become internationalized, undergo democratization with a state apparatus that can provide services to its citizens and is seen as legitimate, as well as meaningful mediation that help solve grievances between groups are more likely to have better outcomes. For example, in the region around Aceh and Southern Thailand there is a fair degree of regional stability, and the nature of the insurgencies there have more to do with local grievances against the state(s) than they do with ethnic or communal identity (although these two conflicts, like the others, do have ethnic/religious elements to them). The lack of internationalization of these conflicts has provided for a peaceful outcome in Aceh and perhaps a more optimistic outlook for Southern Thailand although as Askew points out, the persistence of nondemocratic forces at the national level, combined with a lack of coherence and leadership in the South continues to enable the conflict.

The conflicts where there has been significant success in dampening violence, and even in resolving the more horrific elements of the problem, include the peace settlements in Aceh, as well as in Liberia and Sierra Leone, and there is now a peace agreement signed and at the beginning stages of implementation in the Philippines (and possibly Iraq). While these cases differ as to the level of internationalization (as noted above, Aceh remained local), they all share the following two essential characteristics: 1) dramatic domestic political changes undertaken by both Indonesia as well as in Liberia and Sierra Leone (and to a lesser extent the Philippines); and 2) the involvement of international actors such as the UN or other outside brokers. All three countries have undergone transitions to democracy (albeit imperfect democracy). As a consequence of this change, the nature of the legitimacy of the state has changed. Instead of ruling by the power of force, legal rational processes are being created for channeling different interests into the political process. Similarly, the chance that the insurgency in Mindanao may see a firmer resolution is also attributable to strengthening of both state capacity and legitimacy. In places where power is based primarily on religious or ethnic identity, Lebanon, Iraq, Thailand, Rwanda, the legitimacy of the state may also be bound up in power relations based on one’s ethnic or religious identity. A transition to democracy would need to include new ways of sharing power and state legitimacy based on fair political processes and laws, rather than identity politics. Where such transitions have not taken place, resolutions to conflict tend to be based on the projection of military power. This might temporarily halt the violence, but it does nothing to address the larger problems at hand. Thus, there is no clear end to the turmoil in Southern Thailand, Lebanon, or the Great Lakes Region of Africa. The relatively successful resolutions to the conflicts in Aceh, Liberia and Sierra Leone appear to demonstrate the benefits of moving away from identity politics and the importance of building state capacity and state legitimacy, but through democratic institutions. And, these “successes” also illustrate the importance of constructive mediation and intervention by outside actors.

This chapter will first explore terminology and definitions and then describe who becomes involved in insurgencies and why. It then moves to look at the conditions which seem to lead to greater intervention or escalation by outside actors. The introduction then turns to preview the empirical cases in the book and to offer some initial conclusions. The second chapter examines the scholarly literature related to explanations of internationalization and assesses its utility to the cases here. We believe that there are several reasons that this is an important project. First, the empirical, or “real world” reality of many of today’s crises is such that even problems that appear to be domestic in nature often have regional and international participants and repercussions. Conflicts were once thought to be either international, that is between two or more states, or civil, occurring within a nation. In today’s interdependent world, that distinction is no longer as useful and this study provides an understanding of the connection between domestic politics and international relations.

Terminology

All of the conflicts examined here involve armed groups willing to use violence to achieve their goals. An insurgency is a conflict characterized by small, lightly armed bands practicing guerrilla warfare. As a fighting tactic, insurgency can be employed to achieve diverse political agendas, motivations, and grievances. At the heart of all of these goals is the drive to undermine the state or occupying authorities. We use the term insurgency and domestic conflict in similar ways. All of the conflicts in this book involve fighting between agents of the state, or proxies of it (including the country’s official military, police units, as well as militia groups who may have the backing of the state) and organized non-state actors who seek to either take control of a government, to take power in a region, or to use violence to change government policies. ⁴

Some of the conflicts examined here go beyond being an insurgency and rise to the level of a civil war. Regan (2000) has defined civil wars as violence against the recognized government of a state with 200 or more deaths in a year. Insurgencies can escalate into a full-fledged civil war, but not all do. For example, the conflicts in Aceh, Mindanao, and Southern Thailand clearly meet the definition of insurgencies, but do not rise to the level of violence required to be classified as a civil war. The conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the DRC and Rwanda, and at times the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq fall into the category of being civil wars. ⁵

Although there is a difference in the level of violence and disruption/displacement among the cases examined here, the conflicts share a number of similarities. They all reflect questions of state legitimacy and state weakness; all the cases relate to larger regional security issues, and all involve ethno-religious or communal differences. Max Weber famously defined legitimacy as the right to rule and the assent of the governed, and he outlined three sources of state legitimacy: governments can derive their legitimacy from the a) charismatic authority of a leader, as is sometimes the case with revolutionary leaders or tribal or religious heads;...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• 1 Explaining the internationalization of insurgencies
• 2 Theories, tools, and lenses
• 3 The nexus of the domestic and regional within an international context: the Rwandan genocide and Mobutu's ouster
• 4 Foreign brokered pacts and communal hostility in Lebanon
• 5 Iraq's insurgencies in comparative perspective
• 6 (No) helping hands: external factors affecting the conclusion of the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone
• 7 Revisiting the Bangsamoro struggle: contested identities and elusive peace
• 8 Transforming the Aceh confl ict: from military solutions to political agreement
• 9 Thailand's strange southern war: insurgency, disorder and the fragile state
• 10 Conclusion: explaining peace
• Index