Recent (US) and European Union (EU) security sector assistance in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen has focused on counterterrorism at the expense of building democratically accountable security institutions. This Carnegie Endowment for International Peace paper reviews and evaluates the political and operational effects of the US/EU security sector reform (SSR) approach in these countries. Pursuing counterterrorism in the absence of rule of law perpetuates undemocratic governance of the security sector and undermines statebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction.
Since 2002, the US and EU have pledged US$30 billion in aid and development assistance to the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon and Yemen. However, only a fraction of this has been allocated for SSR, despite describing it as essential to statebuilding and reconstruction. Their approach has been characterised as “fixing broken windows” – to fix what they can.
US SSR assistance to Palestine is marked by changing objectives, contradictory policy assumptions and inadequate resources; EU financial assistance has been modest. The US has been slow to realise the need for Lebanese SSR; EU efforts have been modestly funded, piecemeal and achieved low-impact results. The primary purpose of SSR assistance in Yemen as well as in Palestine and Lebanon has been to counter terrorism, overlooking deeply fractured states and societies.
The following are the practical effects of US/EU emphasis on counterterrorism at the expense of integrated approaches to SSR:
- Selective US/EU assistance aimed at “going after militants” threatens to bifurcate local security sectors, reinforce dysfunctional tendencies and undermine statebuilding.
- US/EU SSR project-by-project assistance impedes setting objectives and priorities and results in inefficient or inadequate resource allocation.
- The US/EU “cherry pick” security agencies or programmes to support based on their own strategic agendas. Support is also based on aid recipients’ support of political parameters and/or their ability to provide intelligence, patronage or good public relations.
- Cherry-picking reinforces “stovepiping” – the construction of segmented security agencies based on personal or factional loyalty and clientilism.
- Poor coordination and donor competition to cultivate particular relationships leads to wasteful duplication and inefficiency of effort. Donors do not support integrated reform of agencies and institutions such as ministries of interior and intelligence services that are critical to SSR.
- The US and EU generally provide stopgap funds that focus on the most immediate needs of recipient security sectors. In many instances, while selective funding is substantial, the most pressing SSR needs are seriously under-funded.
The following are political lessons learned from US/EU SSR agendas, policy assumptions and strategies in Palestine, Lebanon and Yemen:
- The US/EU should emphasise reconciliation and consensus building among domestic actors.
- They should not make assistance conditional on exclusionary policies towards domestic opposition.
- All assistance alters domestic power balances and distorts incentive structures. It is naïve to assume disadvantaged actors will not react accordingly and seek to impede reform.
- The US/EU should put rhetoric about engaging stakeholders into practice.
- While the counterterrorism agenda is legitimate, pursuing it with little investment in comprehensive SSR undermines the US and EU declared objective of enabling statebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction.
