Michael Brzoska - Security Sector Reconstruction and Reform in Peace Support Operations

This volume provides a framework for analyzing security sector reform under international tutelage.

Following violent conflict and military interventions, international organizations or coalitions of countries increasingly engage in post-conflict reconstruction. Part of the international post-conflict agenda is the reconstruction or reform of the security sector (SSR). In post-conflict situations, the security sector is often characterized by politicization, ethnicization, corruption of the security services, excessive military spending, lack of professionalism, poor oversight and inefficient allocation of resources. At the same time, there is great need for effective and efficient (re-)establishment of a legitimate monopoly of force. While initially this is in the purview of the external intervention forces, they also face the task of the building up of effective, efficient accountable and democratically legitimized security forces as quickly as possible.

The contributors analyze six pertinent cases: Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Haiti, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Timor Leste, focusing on issues such as priorities for security and for security sector reform, sequencing of reconstruction and reform, tensions between requirements of security and security governance and the interaction of domestic and external actors in security sector reform.

This book was previously published as a special issue of International Peacekeeping.

Michael Brzoska is Director of the institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg. He was previously Director of Research, Bonn International Centre for Conversion (BICC) and has published widely on the role of armed forces in developing countries, military expenditures and the arms trade and security sector reform.

David Law is Senior Fellow, Security Sector Reform, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and coordinator of the DCAF Working Group on Security Sector Reform.

Security Sector Reconstruction and Reform in Peace Support Operations

Edited by Michael Brzoska and David Law

First published 2007 by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

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ISBN10 0-415-37786-2

ISBN13 978-0-415-37786-7

Contents

MICHAEL BRZOSKA

Following violent conflict and military interventions, international organizations and coalitions of countries increasingly engage in post-conflict reconstruction. Part of the international post-conflict agenda is the reconstruction or reform of the security sector (SSR). In post-conflict situations, the security sector is often characterized by politicization, ethnicization and corruption of the security services; excessive military spending; lack of professionalism; poor oversight and inefficient allocation of resources. The term reconstruction of the security sector pertains to the need to rebuild domestic public security institutions and to reestablish a legitimate monopoly of force. The term reform highlights the necessary or desired changes to governing principles and procedures of domestic security institutions, particularly with respect to soft issues, such as democratic civilian oversight and the monitoring of human rights. Both aspects are part of the post-conflict security transition agenda, focusing on the prevention of renewed conflict, establishment of rule of law, democratization, and sustainable development, all eventually under full domestic ownership.

The international community is increasingly playing a strong role in these situations. The most pertinent cases are peace support operations. Similar in many respects are other cases in which the international community has had strong political leverage. The most prominent recent post-conflict cases of externally sponsored policy measures in the security sector include Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH), Georgia, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, Liberia, Macedonia, Mozambique, Tajikistan and Timor-Leste. It is safe to predict that the international community will be faced with more cases where national order breaks down, or where internal warfare destroys the social and political fabric of societies, increasing the need for instruments and policies that can support nation and state building.

Unfortunately, security sector reconstruction and reform inhabit a policy area where the need for action is not concomitant with sound advice. While much has lately been produced in terms of suggestions for instruments and policies, there is still very little knowledge about the effects of priorities and sequencing in particular constellations. In this vein, situations with strong international influence are particularly useful in accumulating knowledge about the application of instruments and policies of security sector reconstruction and reform, as the international community occupies a strong position to apply recently designed recipes for security sector reconstruction and reform.

Security sector reform (SSR) is a relatively new catchword, originally introduced by development donors.1 Beginning in the late 1990s, a comprehensive approach to the security sector began to be propagated by some development donors, international organizations and consultants working in international affairs. The propagation of a holistic approach to security sector reform, with the full range of objectives and covering all security sector institutions2 is sound in theory but problematic in practice. The major disadvantage of the holistic approach is that it is not very helpful for making decisions about policy priorities or sequencing. Decisions on priorities and the sequencing of steps, however, often need to be made. External players, for instance, may be pressed to provide security, even though this is detrimental to improving domestic control over security forces.

SSR has three major objectives: