ARAB REFORM INITIATIVE ﻣﺒﺎدرة اﺻﻻح اﻟﻌﺮﺑﻲ OUT OF THE INFERNO? Rebuilding Security in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen Edited by Bassma Kodmani and Nayla Moussa August 2017 OUT OF THE INFERNO? Rebuilding Security in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen Edited by Bassma Kodmani and Nayla Moussa © 2017 Arab Reform Initiative. All Rights Reserved. To view a copy of this licence, click here This project was made possible thanks to the generous support of the International Development and Research Centre and contributions from theOpen Society Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Translation was done by Wael Sawah. Image: Yemeni counter-terrorism forces taking part in a US-supported training drill in the Sana'a area, Yemen, July 2011, (c) EPA. ISBN : 979-10-93214-05-4 EAN : 9791093214054 August 2017 Table of Contents 5 Foreword 7 The Chicken before the Egg: Security Frameworks and Democratic Transitions Bassma Kodmani 19 Colliding Concepts? Pluralism and the Military Florence Gaub 27 Plural Police Forces Florence Gaub 30 Bridging the Gaps: Who Can Build Security in Post-Conflict Iraq? Myriam Benraad 48 Make Politics, Not War: Armed Groups and Political Competition in Post-Qaddafi Libya Virginie Collombier 70 Can Syria Be Salvaged? The Role of the Military and Security Forces Abdel-Nasser al-Ayed 104 Bound to Fail: Does Anyone Care about Yemen’s Security? Nayla Moussa 125 Saudi Uncertainties and Divergent Strategies in the Gulf Fatiha Dazi-Héni 135 Contributors Foreword When the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) launched three years ago the study that led to this publication, world powers were in the process of shifting their defence and intelligence capabilities primarily to the fight against the latest brand of transnational terrorist movements, the so-called Islamic State. While this book hardly mentions terrorism, it is, in effect, entirely focused on what could ultimately rid Arab societies and the world of terrorism. It analyzes the contexts in which terrorism grew and continues to grow as security systems collapsed and societies fragmented. More importantly, it presents a thorough diagnosis of what currently works and what doesn’t in each of the four countries in conflict in the Middle East – Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen – at the local, regional, and national levels. Populations in these countries are said to be resilient, a word that hardly reflects the inhuman reality in which they live, one where each family needs to re-invent new means of survival every other day. Images of women and children on the roads symbolize the loss of a viable framework for social organization that a state is meant to provide. The question is not whether they will ever return to their homes – most of them wish to do so – but rather who can make their “once upon a country”1 safe again to return to and, from a selfish perspective of Western countries, what strategies would stand a chance of containing the consequences of the four infernos that have ignited in the Middle East over the last few years. Containment strategies have failed. Approaches to security applied so far are all in question. Europeans have learned the hard way that their security is inseparable from that of the Middle East, that if Arab societies remain insecure, they will remain unsafe. In other words, they need to get actively interested in designing ways of rebuilding security frameworks that bring stability to societies instead of merely fighting terrorism. The studies in this volume are the work of scholars with the academic expertise in the security issues of the Middle East and the intimate knowledge of the social contexts of each country. The first paper of the book defines the challenges of rebuilding security when states have all but collapsed and when societies need to engage in a re-foundation of the social contract that ties the different components of the nation together. The two following papers by Florence Gaub set the framework and bring comparative perspectives regarding the key features of the military and security forces of countries with diverse societies. In the four country studies on Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, authors Myriam Benraad, Virginie Collombier, Abdelnasser Ayed, and Nayla Moussa2 bring together the diverse insights and experiences of political, military, police and intelligence figures, members of armed groups, tribal chiefs and local council representatives, academics and non-governmental leaders. 1 “Once Upon a Country” is part of the title of the bookOnce Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Palestinian author Sari Nusseibeh. 2 Maha Assabalani and Maghed Madhagi contributed to this paper. TABLE OF CONTENTS 5 These diverse perspectives inform in-depth analyses of the security institutions in the four countries, institutions built on the legacy of their recent history and the processes of dismantlement, collapse, or fragmentation they experienced. The final paper by Fatiha Dazi- Héni looks at the strategies of the Arab Gulf countries whose role has been decisive in the four conflicts. The book represents a distinct contribution to the field of security studies in the Middle East. It is part of ARI’s continuous effort over the years to expand the body of knowledge on security issues as perceived and experienced by Arab societies and their rulers. A previous series of studies conducted prior to the 2011 Arab uprisings analyzed the structures of security institutions and their overwhelming dominance of state and society in what the contributors named the Arab securitocracies. After 2011, the prospects for democratic transition opened the way for ARI to begin to define roadmaps for security sector reform in different countries. Some of the same scholars prepared ambitious strategies to engage the new leaders in processes in which societies would define how security institutions should work and relate to the citizenry. But the behaviour of security institutions was never in concordance with the democratic changes to which societies aspired. Instead, ARI found itself investigating continued repressive practices and analyzing the resistance of the deep states and ultimately their revenge in all but one country, Tunisia. Each of the studies suggests directions for future work on the security institutions and offers some recommendations on where to start in each case. The security approaches implemented so far have brought limited success. We trust this book will set a path in the right direction. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS The Chicken before the Egg: Security Frameworks and Democratic Transitions Bassma Kodmani The Arab regimes of the last four decades before the uprisings were composed of mighty security apparatuses in which civil and political institutions never held much effective power. An accurate description of their systems is the wordsecuritocracies, constructed by a group of scholars and used as the title of a publication.1 Irrespective of the ideological veneer they chose, whether pseudo-socialist as in Iraq and Syria, communist as in South Yemen, liberal as in Egypt or Islamist as in Sudan, the effort of those who seized power by force or governed by monarchical descent focused entirely on building security systems that dominated relations between state and society. They all made sure horizontal relations among social groups were defined by distrust and fear, which, in turn, justified the ever-increasing role of their security agencies. They developed strategic relations and defence agreements with major powers and rendered services that made of them precious partners of the intelligence community in the West and globally. A key implication is that the governance systems that can replace these regimes are unlikely to be some individual charismatic leaders but are mostly going to be geared towards the building of alternative security schemes to the ones that controlled the countries under their dictatorships. Without a security plan defined in advance, no political authority is likely to control the territory of any of these countries. The concept of fragile states commonly used to refer to those countries captures only partially the phenomenon of the fragmentation of the political and security order. The approach taken in this volume is built on the premise that the international community is more concerned today with restoring security in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen than it is with the democratic rights of these countries’ citizens. While we share the view that security is a priority, we call for defining security arrangements that do not endanger the emergence of inclusive and credible political settlements. The contributors to this volume explore the security systems of the four Arab countries that witnessed a collapse of order and all-out war. Based on field research and information collected from local actors on the ground, the authors provide detailed insight into the situation in different regions of the countries, the motivations of the different players, the major turning points which explain why and when security went out of control, and how 1 ARI series on Securitocracies. TABLE OF CONTENTS 7 Bassma Kodmani transitions failed. They shed light on the interactions between the strategies of outside powers and the local dynamics and draw attention to the mistakes and flaws that continue to plague the international approaches aimed at fighting terrorism and rebuilding stability. After years of bloody conflict, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen have seen their central security systems fragment and alternative security orders emerge at the local level. Militias that oppose the regimes and units of the regimes’ security apparatuses alike, have increasingly become autonomous actors: intelligence leaders no longer answer to their hierarchical superiors as the chains of command are most often lost and have grown financially autonomous as they have all developed methods to levy resources through local networks and criminal practices. As the Libyan example shows, the overthrow of Qaddafi led to the collapse of the security order he had constructed and the emergence of militias across the country, one of which simply kidnapped the Prime Minister of a defenceless government in 2013.