What are the prospects for security sector reform in the Middle East? This article finds that most states in the Middle East have strong security institutions and little incentive to embrace reform. Security sector reform (SSR) provides an opportunity to these states to improve their political legitimacy. However, such an impetus needs to come from the states themselves and there are limits to how much the international community can affect this process.
Security-sector reform offers a menu of ways to modernise, improve and manage security sectors based on international norms of transparency, accountability and the rule of law. The Middle East is characterised by states that have too little, or too much, security. International efforts to bring stability to the region have focused on states with profound security deficits: Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon. Most of the region, however, suffers from the opposite problem: states have consolidated their hold on territory and citizens by developing strong security institutions. These latter states see little reason to change security policies in the absence of an external threat.
Nevertheless, the demand for change, liberalisation or democratisation is growing. The security sector should be part of this larger story. Regimes might even determine that some reform in the security sector, creating a more respectful interaction between the state and its citizenry, would help them remain in power.
- Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq come closest to the traditional post-conflict model of SSR, and are actively engaged, with international partners, in security-sector reform.
- The six nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council are also embarked on various kinds of security-sector reform. The most important international dimension of this process is under the auspices of NATO’s Istanbul Cooperation Initiative which offers cooperation ranging from technical to strategic assistance.
- The Arab Gulf states are developing an increasingly multifaceted approach and more open discourse about the perceived security threat from Iran. Security sector reform is strengthening the capacity of the region to manage security threats and to work political as well as military channels to achieve acceptable outcomes.
International governments, multinational institutions and non-governmental organisations are facilitating and supporting reforms in security practices around the world. However, there are limits to how much the international community can create a demand for such activities, or create incentives on the part of leaders who face no acute threats. Sovereign states need to take the first step in determining that reforms will serve a national purpose for security and defence.
- In the end, security-sector reform is a choice, and it must reflect a state of mind. It must start from a leadership conviction that change is desirable and that state-society understandings need to be updated from time to time.
- SSR cannot close all of the profound gaps in political legitimacy that lead to security deficits and violence, but it can make an important contribution to changing behaviour and attitudes about the relationship between power and people.
- Security actors can, in the Middle East as well as anywhere, develop new skills in understanding the rule of law and respecting and protecting citizens, their rights and their property, and in so doing, can strengthen the legitimacy of the state and improve its prospects for stability.
