Security Fears and Power Sharing the Credible Commitment of Rebel Military Integration and Durable Peace by Matth
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INTO THE FOLD: SECURITY FEARS AND POWER SHARING THE CREDIBLE COMMITMENT OF REBEL MILITARY INTEGRATION AND DURABLE PEACE BY MATTHEW C. MARTIN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Paul Diehl, University of Texas – Dallas, Chair and Director of Research Associate Professor Carol Leff Associate Professor Xinyuan Dai Professor Jeffrey Mondak ABSTRACT The challenges to peace following civil conflicts are many. Following peaceful negotiations to end the conflict, the state’s goal is to regain its monopoly over the use of violence within its borders. This requires the rebel groups to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate (DDR) back into society, leaving them vulnerable to renewed violence by the state. The government can attempt to reduce the severity of this credible commitment problem by including power-sharing mechanism in the peace agreement. One such power-sharing mechanism is the integration of rebel fighters into the national military. I argue that this military integration provides the disarming group the ability to provide their own security as well as sanction the government if it fails to hold up its side of the agreement, thereby reducing the chance of agreement failure. A popular alternative to address the problem is the use of peacekeepers to provide security and improve the government’s credible commitment. As I show in this study, the involvement of peacekeepers brings its own challenges and problems, negatively affecting the credible commitment and durable peace. This study combines a quantitative analysis of military integration provisions with a two- by-two qualitative case comparison. Using the unique dataset that I created based on the UCDP Peace Agreement Dataset (Harbom et al. 2006, Högbladh 2012), I found that military integration of rebel fighters was just as successful, if not more so, than deploying peacekeepers; and, it was more effective than just performing DDR alone. Performing both a cross-case and within-case comparison of military integration and peacekeeping, I found that the challenges to third party interventions, especially peacekeepers, can delay the onset of a durable peace. Power-sharing reduces the chance of agreement failure, but providing an effective security mechanism in addition to addressing the grievances is both necessary and sufficient to achieve a durable peace. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have so many people to thank for their help and support on this project. I would first like to thank Bernard Brennan, for bringing up the idea of military integration during a class discussion at the University of Illinois, and allowing me to run with it. During my time at Illinois, the faculty members were amazing. Whether it was joining my committee at the last minute due to scheduling issues or helping me wade through the statistical analysis, they were always willing to help and lead me to produce better work. Carol Leff, Jake Bowers, Jeff Mondak, Xinyuan Dai, and John Vasquez were essential to the completion of this study, providing critical guidance and asking those questions that made me dig deeper into the potential applications of this study. I am especially grateful for Paul Diehl’s assistance in bringing this idea to fruition. He was instrumental in keeping me on time and helping me to focus my ideas. I am also thankful for the time that Colonel Tom Drohan, PhD, provided me for writing while I worked for him at the United States Air Force Academy. I don’t know when I would have finished without his support and scheduling flexibility. I also appreciate the great discussions I had with Terry Peirce, whose continuous encouragement made the work a little easier. I am truly humbled and blessed by the unending sacrifices made by my wife and children while I completed this study. My family has been incredible, providing me time and space away from them to work, all the while cheering me on. I am very lucky. I’m not sure who is happier that it is finished, but I know we are all looking forward to the future. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER 2: SECURITY FEARS AND PEACE DURATION ................................................. 11 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN ........................................................................................... 40 CHAPTER 4: QUANTITATIVE RESULTS ............................................................................... 69 CHAPTER 5: MILITARY INTEGRATION WITHOUT PEACEKEEPERS ........................... 100 CHAPTER 6: MILITARY INTEGRATION WITH PEACEKEEPERS ................................... 176 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION ................................................................................................... 262 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 290 APPENDIX A: RESEARCH DESIGN ...................................................................................... 304 APPENDIX B: QUANTITATIVE RESULTS ........................................................................... 313 iv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The ultimate cause of any situation of violence is exclusion from political, cultural, economic, or social life. - Otty Patiño and Vera Grabe, co- founders and former commanders of the rebel group M-19 When rebel groups sign a peace agreement with their national governments following civil conflict, there is usually a provision requiring the rebel group to disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate (DDR) back into civil society.1 The state must regain its monopoly on the use of violence within its borders. This requires rebel groups to disarm, giving up their ability to continue the conflict or challenge the government with violence. Following DDR, rebels are vulnerable and have legitimate fears for their continued security, which contributes to an unstable peace. Disarmed rebels can provide a tempting target for government violence, retribution, and repression. This results in cooperation difficulties, longer negotiations, and a higher potential for renewed violence during the peace process, as was the case in late 2008 when the Ugandan military attacked Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) forces assembled in northern Democratic Republic of Congo after the LRA stalled the negotiations. Nevertheless, some civil conflicts are able to overcome the challenges to cooperation and sign lasting peace agreements such as the ones involving the Communist Party of Nepal – Maoist (CPN-M) in 2006, the Ugandan People’s Democratic Army (UPDA) in 1988, and the Ugandan National Rescue Front II (UNRF II) in 2002. What aspects contribute to the variation of peace agreement success after one side disarms? 1 See Omach (2012) for a discussion of DDR and its limitations. 1 I argue that the challenges to success are rooted in the idea of security. Specifically, I argue that signatories are able to provide their own security. This ability not only serves as a defensive security capability, but it can also be used to sanction their opponent should implementation not occur. This occurs through post-conflict security sector reform (SSR), which allows some part of the disarming group to retain their weapons and integrate into the national military or police. Self-enforcement aspects of military integration will provide a more durable peace following post-settlement DDR. This study focuses on the effect of military power-sharing provisions following civil conflict. An alternative contribution to longer peace durations is a third-party intervention to provide a security guarantee. Security guarantees reduce the threat of violence against the disarmed group, allowing them to cooperate better with its former opponent. For example, the UN Mission in Liberia was established in 2003 “to support the implementation of the ceasefire agreement and the peace process…as well as assist in national security reform, including national police training and formation of a new, restructured military” (un.org/en/peacekeeping 2015). This mission provided security to both disarming groups as well as the nation as a whole during the creation of a new military. Security-focused interventions and third party mediation efforts – such as Great Britain’s security guarantee in the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement as Rhodesia became independent – do not usually occur without the agreement of the warring parties. Most contemporary civil conflicts end, at least temporarily, via a negotiated settlement. Settlements vary in their specific provisions, but nearly all contain some combination of political, territorial, and military power- sharing provisions and require common expectations by both sides on the outcome of a future hypothetical conflict (Hartzell 2016). Some conflicts are resolved permanently while others flare 2 up again and again over time. Approximately half of the nations that have experienced a civil war relapse into renewed conflict, even after several years of inactivity (Gleditsch et al. 2016). What aspects of the peace agreement actually lead to a sustained domestic peace once the actors agree to stop the violence? Is it the conditions of the conflict (such as intensity or duration), the qualities of the state (level of democracy or gross domestic product), or is it more specific