Working for Security, Development & Peace in Afghanistan and Liberia
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SIDE BY SIDE OR TOGETHER? WORKING FOR SECURITY, DEVELOPMENT & PEACE IN AFGHANISTAN AND LIBERIA A Report on the March 30 & 31, 2007 Workshop “Coordinated Approaches to Security, Development and Peacemaking: Lessons Learned from Afghanistan and Liberia” held by the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies (CMSS), University of Calgary and the Institute of World Affairs (IWA), Washington, D.C. By Lara Olson and Hrach Gregorian Co-Directors, PDSP © The Peacebuilding, Development and Security Program (PDSP), Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, October 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. OVERVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP AND REPORT OBJECTIVES .............................. 1 1. The Coordination Challenge in International Peace Missions................................... 4 2. Levels of the Coordination Challenge ....................................................................... 7 3. Factors Contributing to the Coordination Problem.................................................. 16 4. Key Challenges........................................................................................................ 24 5. Introduction to Workshop Results ........................................................................... 28 II. CASE STUDY: LIBERIA ........................................................................................... 29 1. Overview of International Assistance...................................................................... 29 2. Main Challenges for the Liberian Transition........................................................... 31 3. Views on the Links between Security – Development in Liberia’s transition ........ 35 4. Coordination Models and Practices in Liberia......................................................... 37 5. What has worked? What hasn’t? Why?.................................................................. 39 6. Conclusions and Analysis........................................................................................ 45 III. CASE STUDY: AFGHANISTAN................................................................................. 51 1. Overview of International Assistance in Afghanistan ............................................. 51 2. Main Challenges for Afghan Recovery ................................................................... 53 3. Coordination Structures and Practices in Afghanistan ............................................ 56 4. Assessments of Coordination Effectiveness ............................................................ 58 5. What has worked? What hasn’t? Why?.................................................................. 60 6. Conclusions.............................................................................................................. 67 IV. ORGANIZATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON COORDINATION ................................. 75 1. The Value of Common Models for Peacebuilding .................................................. 75 2. Agency Understandings of the Purpose of Coordination ........................................ 76 3. Diverging Principles Guiding Decision-Making ..................................................... 77 4. Different Timeframes............................................................................................... 79 5. Insights into Effective Coordination........................................................................ 79 V. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.......................................................... 80 1. Sources of Coordination Problems .......................................................................... 81 2. The Coordination Dynamics in Afghanistan and Liberia ........................................ 82 4. Spheres for Improvement in Coordination Processes....................................... 86 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................... 93 ANNEX A – COORDINATION STRUCTURES AND PRACTICES IN LIBERIA........... 101 ANNEX B – COORDINATION STRUCTURES AND PRACTICES IN AFGHANISTAN107 ANNEX C – WORKSHOP AGENDA.............................................................................. 113 ANNEX D – WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT’S LIST......................................................... 116 ANNEX E – GLOSSARY OF TERMS.............................................................................. 118 Side by Side or Together? Lara Olson and Hrach Gregorian I. OVERVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP AND REPORT OBJECTIVES Do current attempts to forge more coordinated approaches between multifaceted assistance agencies really translate into more effective assistance to protect civilians from violence, avert humanitarian catastrophes and rebuild economies and livelihoods? Do they result in bringing security, development and peace to war-weary populations more quickly, or in a more sustainable way? On March 30 and 31, 2007 the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies (CMSS) and its Washington, D.C. based partner, the Institute of World Affairs (IWA), hosted 35 practitioners and academics for a workshop, “Coordinated Approaches to Security, Development and Peacemaking: Lessons Learned from Afghanistan and Liberia,” at the University of Calgary. The workshop focused on Afghanistan and Liberia as case studies to understand if current coordination efforts amongst assistance actors effectively address the interlinked challenges of providing security, enabling effective relief and development and solidifying a lasting and sustainable peace. Lara Olson, Research Associate at CMSS, and Dr. Hrach Gregorian, President of the Institute of World Affairs, organized and facilitated the event, assisted by a team of CMSS graduate students.1 The workshop aimed to better understand the widely acknowledged gap between the policy level consensus promoting greater aid coordination and coherence in recent years and the actual practice in the field2, asking two basic questions: 1) How are the aid coordination and coherence policies of international assistance actors being turned into practice in Afghanistan and Liberia? 2) Are these efforts leading to more effective work? The idea was not to promote an agenda of greater or less coordination amongst assistance actors but rather to step back to examine the record of what works and what doesn’t. As the following report shows, there are important tensions and tradeoffs between promoting security, development and peace that only become evident in practice and raise important questions. Is greater explicit coordination amongst agencies involved in security, 1 The organizers would like to thank CMSS graduate students Corin Chater, Rob Barrett, Valerie Yankey-Wayne, Kris Kotarski, Clayton Dennison, and Royal Roads University practicum student Cody Woitas for all their invaluable assistance in planning, organizing and hosting this event. We would also like to acknowledge the very helpful contributions of an informal advisory group that provided expert advice on the design of the workshop and the state of the field. This advisory group consisted of: Professor David F. Davis, Director, Peace Operations Policy Program, George Mason University, Dr. Allison Frendak-Blume, Academic Director, Peace Operations Policy Program, George Mason University, Dr. Roland Paris, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Fergus Watt, Chair, Peace Operations Working Group, Canadian Peacebuilding Coordinating Committee. 2 Patrick, Stewart and Kaysie Brown, Greater than the Sum of its Parts? Assessing “Whole of Government” Approaches to Fragile States (New York: International Peace Academy, 2007). 1 Side by Side or Together? Lara Olson and Hrach Gregorian development and peacemaking advisable? If it is advisable, why, when and where? Are there specific issues on which it is clearly possible? How do we do it well? Conversely, are there cases where coordination is best avoided? What are the costs and benefits to greater coordination and who bears these? While we did not expect to understand all these issues through a single workshop, we did hope to gain some practical insights that would be helpful to organizations and agencies engaged in efforts to promote security, development and peace in war affected countries. The workshop sought to analyse the broad range of coordination relationships, using the term “coordinated approaches”. This spectrum of relationships ranges from complete independence and a policy of non-contact, to information sharing, to cooperation on specific programs or issue areas, to coordination of overall strategies, to joint planning, and integration of key activities under a single chain of command. Afghanistan and Liberia were chosen as cases to ground the discussions in the concrete experiences of two different models of coordination. In Afghanistan, a context of an ongoing insurgency, the joined – up approach is used by most major donor countries and is institutionalized in the NATO-ISAF Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs), yet there is no unitary chain of command amongst the diverse civilian and military actors such as the UN, NATO, the EU, World Bank, and many donor countries that contribute to the overall international mission. Liberia, which has enjoyed relative security and stability over the last three years provided by UNMIL peacekeeping forces, represents the most integrated UN peace operation to date, bringing the military, political, and humanitarian arms of the UN under a unified chain of command. Workshop Participants Participants