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 The Journal of Conflict Studies

Quasi-States, Nation-Building, and Terrorist Safe Havens

by
Ken Menkhaus

INTRODUCTION
When conventional wisdom and empirical reality part ways, as they peri-
odically do in matters of state, the result is policy which can produce paradoxi-
cal outcomes at an astronomical cost. That is precisely what is happening in the
international community’s approach to nation-building. Current nation-building
practices may inadvertently yield exactly the kind of states – weak, ineffectual
“quasi-states” – within which terrorist networks thrive, producing the very sanc-
tuaries for terrorism which the US and its allies are seeking to eliminate.
Unintended consequences are hardly a surprise in the messy and chaotic
context of collapsed states like Somalia and Afghanistan. But in this instance the
problem is also the result of a partial misdiagnosis of the relationship between
terrorism and failed states – a product of conventional wisdom led astray by a
seemingly self-evident set of assumptions about the kinds of operating environ-
ment terrorist networks need. That misdiagnosis, combined with chronically sub-
optimal execution of nation-building – one driven by the compromises inherent
in multilateralism, financial foot-dragging, sub-contracting to the UN, risk aver-
sion, and a preference for quick fixes – is yielding half-way measures rather than
a comprehensive, strategic, and effective long-term response. When it comes to
the pursuit of nation-building in the name of combating terrorism, half-way
measures are not merely inadequate – they are actively counterproductive.

Nation-building in the 1990s

“Nation-building” – the generally pejorative term used to describe efforts
to revive and rebuild governance, peace, stability, and rule of law in places run-
ning chronic deficits in those commodities – is enjoying a renaissance of sorts.
In the early 1990s the issue served as ground zero for a nasty and partisan for-
eign policy debate in the US when both the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations
encountered the post-Cold War phenomenon of failed states. Advocates of
nation-building justified their position as one of enlightened self-interest, argu-
ing that the anarchy of collapsed states threatened American and global interests

Ken Menkhaus is Associate Professor of Political Science at Davidson College.

He is currently working on a study of protracted conflict in the Horn of Africa on
a research grant from the US Institute of Peace.

7
Fall 2003

in a stable world order. Detractors viewed nation-building as misguided social

engineering that diverted attention and money to small and remote countries of
marginal relevance to vital American interests, bogged the US and UN down in
Third World quagmires, and eroded the combat readiness of the American mili-
tary. Worse, these critics argued, nation-building in some instances placed the
armed forces in harm’s way for what amounted to social work. The 1993 deba-
cle in Somalia appeared to vindicate this position decisively. The disaster in
Mogadishu gave nation-building such a bad name that the expression simply
went out of parlance for a time, except as an epithet occasionally hurled at liber-
al internationalists. It also destroyed any appetite American politicians had for
humanitarian intervention, an aversion which includes the now embarrassing
refusal to respond to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
But lost in the smoke and heat of angry debates over America’s policy to-
ward failed states was a loose, passive consensus which emerged more by default
than design and which spanned across Republican and Democratic administra-
tions. That consensus was built on several propositions: first, regardless of
whether or not collapsed states are a threat to American interests, it is politically
necessary to support (or at least appear to support) efforts to address them; sec-
ond, the US lacks the political will to sustain a long-term commitment to inter-
vention and nation-building in collapsed states and is usually not the appropriate
actor for such interventions; third, a direct US role in collapsed states should be
limited to initial phases of armed interventions and only when significant
American interests are at stake; and, fourth, longer-term, messy, and high-risk
tasks of nation-building are best sub-contracted out – usually to the United
Nations.
The result is a now familiar pattern. In collapsed states and complex emer-
gencies where the US has strong security or political interests (such as northern
Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Afghanistan), the crisis culminates in a US-led,
UN-sanctioned armed intervention. Occasionally a US ally with stronger inter-
ests in the crisis area plays the role of initial intervener (France in Rwanda,
Australia in East Timor). Thereafter, a rapid handover occurs to a UN operation
which enables the US and friends to partially or fully withdraw forces. The UN
successor mission includes peacekeeping troops and a collection of UN civilian
departments which are tasked with different aspects of nation-building – every-
thing from reforming the judicial and police sectors to overseeing elections to
reviving the economy. The UN mission is sometimes joined (and occasionally
overshadowed) by multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, the
Organization of European Cooperation and Development, or the Organization of
American States. Hundreds of non-governmental organizations and a dozen or so
UN specialized development agencies (UNICEF, UNDP, UNHCR, etc.) create a
crowded playing field for nation-building, competing over donor funds for thou-
sands of unconnected projects promoting a dizzying array of goals: rule of law,
judicial and police reform, demobilization, peace-building, good governance,

8
 The Journal of Conflict Studies

decentralization, capacity-building, civil society empowerment, gender and

minority rights, youth outreach, education, economic recovery, and more. This
collection of aid programs is never referred to by donors and implementing agen-
cies as “nation-building” – the term carries far too much political baggage.
Instead, agencies from the World Bank to UNDP are savvy enough to refer to this
line of work as “post-conflict reconstruction.” But what is happening from
Kosovo to Sierra Leone and, most recently, Iraq, is nation-building dressed up
in more palatable development jargon.
The denouement to this ritual also follows a familiar pattern. Mounting
frustrations and setbacks plague efforts to promote nation-building. Armed con-
flicts may re-emerge, and criminality soars. Donor interest in the country plum-
mets; budgets drop accordingly. Top international specialists in “post-conflict”
development jump to the next front-page crisis, leaving a second-string team of
variable quality overseeing projects. Whether these problems eventually culmi-
nate in a complete withdrawal from the country (Somalia, Haiti, Angola) or con-
tinuation of nation-building efforts in a state of suspended animation (Kosovo),
or a hasty declaration of “mission accomplished” despite serious unresolved
crises (Cambodia), the final result can rarely be termed a success. When post-
conflict development is given only lukewarm financial or political support from
major donor states, the intervention can look to some like a charade, with exter-
nal actors seen as “going through the motions” on a mission no one believes will
succeed but which everyone needs to be perceived as supporting.
The sub-contracting out of nation-building tasks to the UN and other agen-
cies has held numerous advantages for the US. First and foremost, it shifts the
risk of failure onto another political actor. This allows American political leader-
ship to claim credit for the initially successful portion of the intervention (the part
with all the quick and easy photo-op victories – protection of humanitarian relief
deliveries, cessation of hostilities, refugee repatriation) while handing the UN the
unenviable and high-risk task of long-term post-conflict reconstruction. The UN
and its specialized agencies would complain if failure came at some cost to them,
but happily for multilateral development organizations they are able to sustain an
extraordinarily high rate of failure in “governance” and other post-conflict pro-
grams with virtually no repercussions. But America’s preference for sub-con-
tracting its way out of nation-building duty comes with a price – namely, an even
higher rate of failure. As Marina Ottaway recently argued, in peace operations
“US participation is important because the country is the most powerful member
of the international community. Otherwise, the United States sends the message
that it doesn’t care what happens next – and in so doing, it undermines fragile
new governments and encourages the emergence of feuding factions and war-
lords.”1
The high failure rate of nation-building ventures in the interregnum period
from 1989 to 11 September 2001 was for the most part acceptable in Washington,

9
Fall 2003

for the simple reason that, with few exceptions, the countries in question
appeared to pose little if any threat to vital American interests. Even crisis-rid-
den Haiti, which attracted a US-led, multi-billion dollar international interven-
tion in 1994 and which has the potential to create considerable headaches for the
nearby United States, was quietly abandoned by donors in 2000 out of frustra-
tion with political corruption and paralysis. What was significant about inter-
ventions in the 1990s was not just the rate at which they occurred, but also the
rate at which the US and the West walked away.
This dynamic was a function of the fact that the interventions themselves
were driven mainly by political, not strategic, interests – by the need for admin-
istrations to “do something” about a stomach-turning humanitarian or political
crisis saturating the evening news. When the stakes are political, not strategic,
then the policy choices will also be driven by political rather than strategic con-
cerns. That tends to place decision-making authority in the hands of a US presi-
dent’s pollsters rather than the National Security Council, and focuses priorities
more on the appearance of solving a problem (until the media departs for the next
crisis) than on actual success.

The Securitization of Nation-Building

That, however, appears to have changed since the al-Qaeda attacks of
September 2001 and the subsequent war on terrorism. Now, failed states are
viewed by American policy-makers as potential security threats of a high order.
US President Bush’s National Security Strategy document of September 2002
declares that “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are
by failing ones.”2 A recent study co-produced by the Center for Strategic and
International Studies and the Association of the United States Army summarizes
an argument which has quickly become conventional wisdom:
One of the principal lessons of the events of September 11 is that
failed states matter – not just for humanitarian reasons but for nation-
al security as well. If left unattended, such states can become sanc-
tuaries for terrorist networks with a global reach, not to mention
international organized crime and drug traffickers who also exploit
the dysfunctional environment. As such, failed states can pose a
direct threat to the national interests of the United States and to the
stability of entire regions.3
Nation-building and post-conflict reconstruction have consequently been,
or are in the process of becoming, “securitized” – that is, they are now justified
not as worthy humanitarian, development, or commercial objectives but rather as
a tool with which to promote a broader national security goal. That objective is
to combat terrorism by “draining the swamp” to deprive terrorist networks of
safe operating bases. Failed states are part of the swamp.

10
 The Journal of Conflict Studies

The securitization of nation-building in the aftermath of 11 September has

led to a renaissance of sorts for the concept of nation-building. Now, the con-
stituency for post-conflict reconstruction is considerably broader and includes a
much larger (though not necessarily enthusiastic) chunk of the US national secu-
rity establishment than before. At least for the moment, nation-building is earn-
ing a grudging place in the portfolio of realist thinking on national security. The
lethargic Western responses to nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq attest to
the precariousness of this commitment, which at this point in time appears to be
a mile wide and an inch deep.
Detractors of nation-building (generally from the conservative side of the
political aisle, but increasingly from the left) still voice occasional concerns but
have largely been converted or silenced.4 Traditional conservative objections
about nation-building which not long ago enjoyed an air of hard-nosed realism
now seem timid. A recent Foreign Policy cover page featuring the title “Nation-
Building Is Not for Sissies” almost seemed a taunt aimed at those who would
dare to invoke old buzzwords like “quagmire” and “mission creep” in opposition
to nation-building.5 Hawks may still prefer strategies which emphasize aerial
attacks and hunt-and-destroy missions to eliminate terrorist targets, and may pri-
vately bristle at the idea of nation-building, but are hard-pressed to present an
alternative as part of the long-term strategy in the war on terrorism, especially
since important elements of nation-building – such as building up local policing
capacities – are now enshrined in the US National Strategy for Combating
Terrorism.6
Second, the securitization of nation-building has considerably increased
the political and strategic importance of those small and remote countries which
not long ago were considered marginal to US national interests. Presidential can-
didate George W. Bush campaigned on a promise to focus our foreign policy on
“big countries,” but like his predecessors Bill Clinton and George H. Bush, he
too has found most of his attention drawn to unexpected threats from small and
remote countries. In the expanded war on terrorism, the list of countries most
often invoked as sites of potential threats – Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Kenya,
Pakistan, the Philippines – reads more like the bottom rung of the UNDP
“Human Development Index” rankings.

Misdiagnosis of Collapsed States and Terrorism

The securitization of nation-building insures more sustained American and
Western attention to failed states as a matter of national interest. This is a wel-
come development. But sustained attention is no guarantee of success if nation-
building strategies are based on a misdiagnosis about the relationship between
collapsed states and terrorism.
Conventional wisdom holds that collapsed states constitute a safe haven
for international terrorists. The logic behind this proposition is, on the surface,

11
Fall 2003

entirely reasonable and compelling. Zones of state collapse appear to offer a

sanctuary beyond the rule of law, where terrorists can establish bases or staging
grounds with little risk of detection. Terrorists will, therefore, naturally prefer the
impunity of anarchy to the risks of operating within the reach of a national secu-
rity and police force.
This was the logic which propelled so many in the US government and
media to short-list Somalia as a site for an expanded war on terrorism following
the 11 September bombings. Somalia is not only a completely collapsed state –
it is an Islamic society with a known and active radical Islamist group, al-Ittihad
al-Islamiyya (AIAI). As such, it was self-evident that the country would be a
likely place for al-Qaeda to flee and regroup. The claim that Somalia hosted ter-
rorist camps was repeated so often by government officials and media pundits
that it became gospel, despite the absence of credible evidence that such a threat
existed in Somalia. It nearly led to direct US military action against suspected
terrorist bases in Somalia, until closer investigation revealed no such targets pre-
sented themselves in the country. Subsequently, Somalia has been kept under
close surveillance, but evidence of significant terrorist threats emanating from
within its borders has not, to date, been compelling. The environment assumed
to be most attractive as a safe haven for al-Qaeda was, for some reason, not.7
The case of Somalia suggests that external observers may have been mis-
taken in our assumptions about the relationship between terrorism and collapsed
states. The reality is that, at least up to now, transnational criminals and terror-
ists have found zones of complete state collapse to be relatively inhospitable ter-
ritory out of which to operate. There are certainly exceptions – the fiefdoms of
drug-lords and radicals in parts of Colombia, for instance. But in general, terror-
ist networks have instead found safety in weak, corrupted, quasi-states –
Pakistan, Yemen, Kenya, the Philippines, Guinea, Indonesia. Terrorist networks,
like mafias, appear to flourish where states are governed badly rather than not at
all.
Why are areas of state collapse such as Somalia apparently not so attrac-
tive as safe havens? First, in zones of complete state collapse, terrorist cells and
bases are much more exposed to international counter-terrorist action; violations
of state sovereignty by a US Special Forces mission would be less problematic
(or would even go undetected) where a central government either does not exist
or is unable to extend its authority to large sections of the country. Second, areas
of state collapse tend to be inhospitable and dangerous, meaning few if any for-
eigners choose to reside there. The fewer the foreigners, the more difficult it is
for a foreign terrorist to blend in unnoticed. In an environment like Somalia, a
non-Somali’s presence is known to all, and the agenda of that foreigner a matter
of great interest to local communities. To the extent that secrecy matters to a ter-
rorist cell – and it is safe to presume it matters a great deal – a collapsed state is
not necessarily an ideal location. There, terrorists may be beyond the rule of law,

12
 The Journal of Conflict Studies

but not beyond the purview of curious and suspicious locals.

Third, the lawlessness of areas of state collapse may reduce the risk of
apprehension by a law enforcement agency, but it exponentially increases vul-
nerability to the most common crimes of chaos – kidnapping, extortion, black-
mail, and assassination. The same security threats which plague international aid
agencies in these areas would also afflict foreign terrorist groups. Once in place,
a terrorist cell would find itself at the mercy of hosts who fully appreciate the
bargaining leverage they have over the fugitives; the risk of betrayal by local
interests hoping to cash in on an anti-terrorist bounty would be quite high. One
American defense official concluded that in Somalia “the environment is so
opportunistic . . . that any [terrorist] presence there is liable to being sold out.”8
Finally, external actors find zones of endemic state collapse and armed
conflict a notoriously difficult environment in which to maintain neutrality.
Local contacts and supporters are invariably partisans in local disputes, and the
external actor – whether an aid agency or terrorist cell – can quickly become
embroiled in those disputes and be seen as having “chosen sides.”
The apprehension of suspected terrorist Suleiman Abdalla in Mogadishu in
March 2003 is instructive on this point. Suleiman, a Yemeni national believed to
have played a central role in the 1998 al-Qaeda bombing of the US Embassies
in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, sought refuge in Mogadishu, taking on a business
partnership with a Somali as co-owner of a hotel. In March 2003, he was appre-
hended by some combination of local, Kenyan, and American forces, and turned
over to Kenyan authorities for questioning.9 The fact that this foreign terrorist
suspect was exposed and apprehended in Somalia despite the absence of a func-
tional police force reinforces the argument that stateless Somalia is a treacherous
and non-permissive environment for terrorists. Competing Somali rumors which
subsequently flowed about the arrest – one claiming he was kidnapped and
turned in by a rival sub-clan to that of his Somali business partner, the other that
his business partner served him up in order to assume full ownership of the hotel
– may or may not be true, but both accounts share the common motif of treach-
ery. On the other hand, the fact that Suleiman was apparently able to live and do
business in Somalia for over four years is a worrisome indicator that in some cir-
cumstances foreign terrorists are able to exploit Somalia as a safe haven. The
case of Suleiman Abdalla suggests that both interpretations are probably right. In
the short-term, most anyone can make arrangements to live and work in Somalia.
But the longer one stays, the more one accumulates grievances with local part-
ners, the more information leaks out about the visitor, and the more prone to
extortion, threats, and betrayal the visitor becomes. This pattern is painfully
familiar to international aid agencies, which with only a few exceptions follow a
predictable cycle in Somalia – initial welcome, followed by “mistakes” which
create enemies, followed by mounting security problems which culminate in ter-
mination of the project, often via an inglorious evacuation. This reflects a long-

13
Fall 2003

standing tradition in Somalia of the commoditization of guests, who are quite

rightly viewed as resources to conserve, protect, expend, exploit, and dispense
with as the situation dictates. By contrast, quasi-states offer a modicum of pro-
tection. Governments, however weak, enjoy and fiercely guard juridical sover-
eignty, forcing the US and key anti-terrorist coalition allies into awkward and not
entirely satisfactory partnerships with those governments in pursuit of terrorists.
The mixed track record the US has had with the government of Yemen over
investigations into the terrorist attack on the USS Cole is a case in point. Anti-
terrorist joint ventures with governments of quasi-states are cumbersome and
often ineffective, since the capacity of such states is often very low. They can
also be dangerous, since governments of quasi-states are often riddled with civil
servants and military officers with divided loyalties to both the state and the
cause. Information-sharing in such a setting can quickly lead to leaks, failed mis-
sions, and the danger of compromising informants. Finally, rulers in quasi-states
are often exceptionally vulnerable to internal opposition and are as a result unen-
thusiastic about embracing anti-terrorist actions which might alienate radical
groups with whom they have established a modus vivendi. This is an important
political dynamic even in relatively strong states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia,
as the journalist Thomas Friedman has so vigorously pointed out.10
The alternative – to simply violate the sovereignty of a quasi-state in pur-
suit of individuals or groups suspected of terrorist links – is an option, but one
loaded with political complications, a fact which terrorist networks no doubt
appreciate. Such an operation would create a political backlash even in a friend-
ly but weak state (such as Kenya, Yemen, or Pakistan), generating a windfall of
angry new recruits for al-Qaeda, reinforcing the conviction in some quarters that
the real threat is American/Western imperialism, and possibly jeopardizing the
government in power or forcing it to take anti-American positions for the sake of
political survival. A botched operation – one in which innocent locals were
killed, or counter-terrorist forces taken hostage – would be enormously difficult
to manage if it was conducted without the consent of the government of the
quasi-state. Though it is easy to disparage the principle of state sovereignty as a
legal fiction, the fact is that a military violation of a quasi-state’s sovereignty in
the pursuit of terrorists carries a hefty price tag.
A second reason terrorist cells prefer weak states over collapsed states is
because they play host to a large foreign community – diplomats, aid workers,
businesspeople, teachers, tourists, missionaries, and partners in mixed marriages,
among others. That gives foreign terrorists a decisive advantage in their ability
to move about and mix into the society without arousing immediate attention. In
cases like Kenya and South Africa, where the citizenry is already thoroughly
multi-ethnic (including African, Indian, European, and Middle Eastern descent),
this advantage is magnified still further. Large, unpoliced, multi-ethnic cities and
slums are especially easy places to dissolve into the crowd. The large foreign
presence not only provides cover but also a range of soft targets, a reality that

14
 The Journal of Conflict Studies

Kenya has now endured twice in recent years – first with the 1998 bombing of
the US Embassy, and more recently with the attack on Israeli tourists at
Mombasa.11 By contrast, the zones of state collapse – southern Somalia, south-
ern Sudan, eastern Congo, Angola – present a paucity of enticing Western targets,
unless that country’s crisis happens to attract a UN peace operation.
Third, quasi-states generally feature very corrupt security and law
enforcement agencies, but not such high levels of criminality that a terrorist cell
is especially vulnerable to lawless behavior. Bribes to police, border guards, and
airport officials allow terrorists to circumvent the law even while they enjoy a
certain level of protection from it. Whether such corruption is a function of the
economic desperation of underpaid policemen or the greed of rich civil servants,
the effect is the same – a virtual carte blanche to operate under the radar screen
of internal and external security monitors. The extraordinary denouement to the
December 2002 terrorist attack in Mombasa, Kenya – in which the suspects
“escaped” from police who are widely suspected of accepting a bribe in
exchange – is the most damning evidence of how corruption produces a permis-
sive environment for terrorists.
All this means that a terrorist network in a region such as East Africa would
have a strong and logical preference to work out of Nairobi, Dar Es Salaam, or
even Kampala rather than Somalia. And that is precisely what has occurred – the
weak quasi-state is repeatedly preferred over the zone of complete state collapse
as a base of operation, a lair for evading detection, and a setting for terrorist
attacks.12
That is not to argue that the world can rest easy about terrorist exploitation
of anarchic zones of collapsed states such as Somalia. Areas of state collapse
clearly appear to have a niche role to play in the terrorist playbook. Available evi-
dence suggests they are useful primarily as transit stations, through which the
movement of men, money, and materiel can be arranged into neighboring states
with little fear of detection.13 The Horn of Africa is currently awash in unpo-
liced, cross-border smuggling of small arms, people, and goods; indeed, the top
commercial activity in Somalia has for a number been transit trade of basic con-
sumer goods from Mogadishu beach ports overland into Kenya’s lucrative mar-
ket. The use of collapsed states for terrorist transit operations has the advantage
of exploiting the already flourishing smuggling networks (so little suspicion is
aroused, and hiring of trucks and agents is routinized) while keeping such
involvement in the collapsed state short-term in duration, thereby minimizing
risks. Local agents need not be members or sympathizers of a terrorist move-
ment; for a fee, virtually any merchant or local warlord will assist in the transit
of a shipment, a money transfer, or a convoy of people with no questions asked.
This underscores the fact that careful monitoring and surveillance of zones of
state collapse is an entirely justifiable component of the war on terrorism. But it
suggests that monitoring in those areas should focus more on beach ports and

15
Fall 2003

cross-border smuggling than on a search for terrorist cells and training camps. It
is not what is in these zones of anarchy, but what passes through them, which is
of greatest immediate danger.
There is also the risk that individual terrorists, either indigenous or foreign,
will, like Suleiman Abdulla, seek to safe haven in collapsed states. Indeed, the
more successful counter-terrorism measures are elsewhere, the more likely indi-
vidual terrorists are to turn up in places like Somalia, where they will assume a
role in business or an Islamic charity in hopes of remaining undetected. Recourse
to such environments is hardly a first choice, however; it is reasonable to pre-
sume that a growing presence of foreign terrorists in places like Mogadishu sug-
gests a measure of weakness and lack of alternatives. Still, this scenario demands
much closer scrutiny of and transparency on the part of business partnerships and
Islamic aid agencies.14

Swamps of Concern
If an important component of the Western counter-terrorism strategy is to
“drain the swamp,” and if collapsed states are among the “swamps of concern,”
then the obvious prescription is to promote vigorous state-building and post-con-
flict reconstruction in collapsed states. Leaving states like post-Taliban
Afghanistan in a state of chaos would clearly be self-defeating. Hence, the US
and its allies have pledged billions of dollars in post-conflict reconstruction to
Afghanistan, a commitment which attracts the usual armada of international
agencies crowding the state-building playing field wherever states have col-
lapsed and funding is promised. By the same logic, a current Kenyan-sponsored
peace initiative to resolve the Somali crisis and create a government of national
unity there has attracted much more active support from the US, the European
Union, and some international advocacy groups. The promise of substantial
assistance for post-conflict reconstruction is being used to entice Somali leaders
to agree to the revival of a central government which would presumably devel-
op a police and security capacity to control terrorist elements within its borders.
In practice, there are a number of distinct problems with the enterprise of
rebuilding functional governments in collapsed states with the expectation that
they will grow into reliable partners in a war on terrorism. First, many local fig-
ures in places like Afghanistan and Somalia simply do not share our agenda.
Setting aside the many local authorities with little stomach for a war on terror-
ism or with lingering sympathies to terrorist causes, the bigger concern are the
many more who are not even interested in the revival of effective government
and rule of law. Many contemporary crises of collapsed government are products
of warlordism and war economies, in which powerful local (and sometimes
external) actors profit economically or politically from a continued state of law-
lessness, armed conflict, and state collapse. These conflict constituencies – often
including the very individuals whom external mediators repeatedly convene to

16
 The Journal of Conflict Studies

the negotiating table in hopes of brokering a peace – risk losing out on lucrative
illicit business ventures were rule of law to be reintroduced. “Blood diamonds”
in several of Africa’s complex emergencies are the most famous but hardly the
sole commodity associated with crises wherein war is an instrument of enterprise
and “durable disorder” a desired outcome for parochial political or economic rea-
sons.15
This sobering observation is even more worrisome when one takes account
of the fact that these same conflict constituencies exist and operate in some rather
strategic quasi-states. In Kenya, for instance, efforts to improve the state’s capa-
city to crack down on endemic lawlessness are stymied in part because impor-
tant sections of the Kenyan police are themselves complicit in criminal behavior
ranging from corruption to extortion to murder. Likewise, efforts to mediate
peace in some of Kenya’s extraordinarily violent pastoral clashes – conflicts
which have rendered much of the northern portion of the country beyond the rule
of law and hence a zone of concern in the war on terrorism – fail not because
these clashes are captive to timeless tribal hatreds but because Kenyan elites at
the highest levels have profited from and orchestrate these bloody, commercial-
ized cattle raids.16
In these situations, nation-building projects which aim to produce rule of
law and a robust police and security capacity to enforce the law will either
encounter active resistance and sabotage by powerful political actors, or will be
quietly subverted by local authorities who will gladly go through the motions
required by externally-funded capacity-building programs, but with no intention
of allowing them to become effective. This game of charades is distressingly
familiar to aid workers and diplomats who have worked in post-conflict settings
from Haiti to Sierra Leone.

The Projectization of Nation-Building

Post-conflict reconstruction is also handicapped by the fact that the present
system of implementation for nation-building in collapsed states is broken, so
much so that it almost appears purposefully designed to produce unwanted
results. The long string of failed or frustrated nation-building ventures the inter-
national community has attempted in the past 15 years should in and of itself be
ample evidence on this score.
In policy discussions, nation-building as an enterprise tends to be dis-
cussed in the abstract. Very few of the policymakers and pundits pronouncing
judgement on the matter have any direct field experience in post-conflict recon-
struction, and even the informed public would be hard-pressed to explain how we
actually “do” nation-building. It is simply assumed that the tools, expertise, and
system are all in place to build capacity, good governance, and public security.
This assumption is reinforced by the often inflated reporting and rhetoric of those
agencies which deliver those “products” to post-conflict societies.

17
Fall 2003

The reality is that the operationalization of nation-building on the ground

is alarmingly weak. Strategies of post-conflict reconstruction are, to put it char-
itably, a work in progress. The main actors in funding and delivering post-con-
flict reconstruction assistance – the US Agency for International Development,
the World Bank, the UN Development Program, the UK’s Department for
International Development, and dozens of non-profit organizations and think-
tanks – have been scrambling to devise effective approaches to capacity-building
and good governance projects, but little consensus exists among them. Most of
the flood of recent literature on effective peace-building and post-reconstruction
aid are either collections of self-evident bromides or are “lessons learned” exer-
cises aimed at sifting through the debris of a decade of failure. More coherent
strategies may eventually emerge from these efforts, but for the moment strate-
gy on the ground is ad hoc.
Delivery of post-conflict reconstruction is even weaker than strategy.
Nation-building in practice in settings like Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Somalia is
little more than a cacophony of hundreds of projects large and small. This “proj-
ect” orientation to nation-building is a direct import from conventional develop-
ment assistance, and the template is fundamentally flawed. Multiple donor agen-
cies allocate funds to a virtual army of UN specialized agencies and internation-
al NGOs to execute projects within a broader post-conflict reconstruction pro-
gram. Those agencies jostle at the feeding trough for position in high-visibility
sectors and regions. Agencies then often sub-contract out to local organizations
to do the actual project implementation – training workshops for police, demo-
bilization projects, media training, teacher training, training of trainers, and so
on. Where peacekeeping forces are present, foreign military units with no exper-
ience in development work often participate in this process as well, both in direct
training and joint exercises with local military forces and in participation in civil
society projects such as bridge, road, and school repairs. Efforts are made to
coordinate these efforts – indeed, inter-agency coordination meetings become an
almost full-time occupation for exhausted aid officials. But coordination in such
settings is akin to herding cats. The projectization of nation-building insures that
the delivery of post-conflict reconstruction is chaotic and as balkanized as the
post-conflict societies for which the aid is intended.
Nation-building at the operational level has been thoroughly captured by
the quarreling and competitive agencies which collectively comprise the devel-
opment industry. This is on aggregate very bad news for nation-building. Those
agencies were initially reluctant to tread in the unfamiliar and often dangerous
(or at least uncomfortable) settings of collapsed states. But once it became clear
in the mid-1990s that post-conflict reconstruction was where the bulk of aid
funding was being targeted, the fleet of mainly North American and European
NGOs and their UN agency rivals were quick to position themselves as special-
ists in capacity-building, peace-building, and good governance, though few
could legitimately make such a claim. Their success in marketing themselves as

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nation-building sub-contractors insured that all of their shortcomings as devel-

opment agencies were transferred to the nation-building enterprise. These short-
comings include variable and generally low levels of expertise in post-conflict
reconstruction; low institutional memory and high personnel turnover; internal
reward systems for winning project contracts, not achieving successful results; a
strong aversion to cooperation and coordination with rival agencies, which occa-
sionally erupts into open turf battles; preoccupation with internal bureaucratic in-
fighting, budgets, and procedural matters; lack of flexibility and quick-response
capacity; a tendency to recruit top local staff at much higher pay than local gov-
ernment can offer, thereby creating a brain-drain which erodes capacity in the
name of building it; variable but chronic problems of accountability and trans-
parency; a focus on meeting narrow, superficial, and measurable project outputs
rather than the broader and more sustainable objectives of capacity-building; and
a very short-term vision and commitment.
The last point is critical. A short-term mentality is antithetical to a long-
term process such as nation-building. Yet projects are inherently short-term in
nature. Project funding is year-to-year (and often delayed), project proposals are
usually premised on impact and completion within a few years, and internation-
al project personnel tend to move onward and upward within a year or two.
Nothing about a project approach to post-conflict reconstruction lends itself to
long-term commitment and vision. The projectization of nation-building thus
builds a serious flaw into the enterprise.
The public relations units of these UN specialized agencies and interna-
tional NGOs will rush to refute this portrait of post-conflict reconstruction, argu-
ing that their organization is not like the others. Some are correct. There are a
number of first-rate, thoughtful, and committed organizations working to pro-
mote aspects of nation-building. But those agencies operate in a sea of medioc-
rity, opportunism, and indifference. For the moment, the sub-contracting out of
nation-building to UN agencies and international NGOs, and the project template
which these agencies operate on, virtually insures that post-conflict reconstruc-
tion efforts will fall well short of objectives, even in those rare occurrences when
external funding is timely and adequate.

The Security Paradox of Nation-Building

Perhaps the most critical problem of all in nation-building is temporal. The
task of rebuilding the capacity of a collapsed state to govern and police effec-
tively is enormous, and even in the best of situations can require a decade or two
of sustained assistance. Most assessments of the prospects of nation-building
worry that the United States is unable to commit to such long time-frames, that
political pressures for quick fixes, exit strategies, and zero casualty interventions
will overwhelm efforts to stay the course in collapsed states. This is not a mis-
placed concern, but there is an even greater temporal obstacle – the problem of

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transition from collapsed state to fully functional government. The long stretch
of time which passes between state collapse and effectively rebuilt government
constitutes a dangerous transitional stage, a period when the government on the
receiving end of nation-building efforts is weak, vulnerable, but sovereign – in
other words, a quasi-state. Hence the security paradox of nation-building: the
very success of post-conflict reconstruction in a collapsed state will produce a
temporary political situation in which terrorist networks appear to thrive.
Paradoxes associated with transitional phases in development are not new.
Samuel Huntington argued over three decades ago that while both traditional and
modern polities are stable, political instability is endemic in countries in transi-
tion from traditional to modern society.17 Likewise, economists have long been
aware of the paradoxes of transition in economic development, noting, for
instance, the tendency for gaps in income to actually widen as an economy devel-
ops before closing again around a larger middle class in a developed economy.
If this same transitional dynamic is true in nation-building and public security,
then we can expect that current sites of nation-building initiatives will likely
become more, not less, dangerous as terrorist safe havens in the short-term. This
outcome is possible even if post-conflict reconstruction initiatives are strategi-
cally coherent, vigorous, seamlessly coordinated, and flawlessly executed. But it
is almost a certainty if current nation-building systems and practices are left in
place, delivering the half-way measures which can do no better than produce
quasi-states.

Policy Implications
At the heart of the security dilemma of nation-building lies two proposi-
tions, both of which are disquietingly true. The first proposition, voiced by advo-
cates of nation-building, correctly identifies collapsed states as a major security
threat in the war on terrorism. The second proposition, offered by critics of
nation-building, correctly argues that nation-building as currently conceived is a
fool’s errand.
There are several potential policy responses to this dilemma. One is to qui-
etly abandon the nation-building enterprise and accept that the war on terrorism
will be reactive, not preventive, executed as a protracted military and counter-ter-
rorist operation against threats which thrive in swamps we have opted not to try
to drain. There are obvious costs and shortcomings with this approach, but it has
attractive virtues too. It has the simplicity of a duck hunt, and because it calls for
responses for which the US is well-equipped, it is entirely plausible that this
approach will win favor if and when frustration levels with nation-building hit
critical mass. A recent comment by US Senator Joseph Biden hints at this pos-
sibility. “Some of these guys [defense officials] don’t go for nation-building,” he
observed. “They think it’s cheaper to just go back in and empty the swamp again
if you have to.”18

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It is also plausible that nation-building practices will continue with only

incremental reforms, despite the fact that they are clearly failing. Nation-build-
ing as it is currently pursued has attracted a substantial collection of interest
groups eager to advance the cause and quick to attack proposed changes in pol-
icy. More importantly, current nation-building practices fulfill the important
political objective of demonstrating that we are “doing something” while blame
for failure can continue to be conveniently placed on locals and third parties.
Nation-building as an elaborate game of charades comes at a cost, however, in
that it cedes the playing field to terrorists.
A third option is to fix the broken system of nation-building. This approach
accepts the threat assessment that collapsed states are unacceptable security
risks, but not the hand-wringing position that nation-building is doomed to fail.
Overhauling post-conflict reconstruction so that it stands a much better chance
of success would be neither easy nor politically popular. The subcontracting of
management of post-conflict reconstruction to the UN would have to be
rethought; the US and its allies would need to assume much more direct over-
sight and control of nation-building programs in collapsed states if nation-build-
ing is ever to acquire the necessary level of strategic coherence and competence.
Second, the “project” approach to nation-building would also require serious
reconsideration, with an eye toward devising more systematic and truly coordi-
nated efforts that may involve direct execution by the US government. Third,
much closer attention must be paid to the development of strategies of post-con-
flict reconstruction which actually work in practice. There are organizations
working on innovative and long-term approaches to this challenge, but their crit-
ical voice is often drowned out. Finally, in some areas of state collapse the US
and a “coalition of the willing” may need to assume more direct involvement in
security and policing functions during the long transition from collapse to effec-
tive governance, to insure that the transitional period of nation-building is not
exploited by terrorists.
Some of these reforms would push the US and its allies into an acutely
uncomfortable policy discussion – namely, the politics of trusteeship.
Trusteeship-type solutions to the paradox of nation-building and global security
enjoy almost no constituency. The term itself is stained with the sins of its dis-
tant cousin colonialism. Many voices from the Third World object strongly to
any erosion of state sovereignty under any pretext, and would view the proposal
to establish a trusteeship over a collapsed state as a neocolonial Trojan horse.
The astronomical costs and risks which the US and its allies would have to shoul-
der in a trusteeship would generate strong opposition to the policy from within
the US public and government as well.
For these reasons, trusteeship has been a virtually taboo subject to date.
But the topic may soon be unavoidable.19 Post-war Iraq is the latest and most
controversial example of quasi-trusteeship arrangements being assumed by the

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US. In Iraq, however, the direct American administration is portrayed as a strict-

ly short-term and transitional arrangement until such time as an interim Iraqi
authority can be stood up. The kinds of quasi-trusteeship this analysis suggest
may soon be inevitable would be longer-term and more indirect in nature – a
security umbrella arrangement under which local law enforcement and gover-
nance capacities can gradually be built and strengthened without having to take
on the impossible burden of monitoring and asserting terrorist activity within its
borders before it has the capacity to do so.
For as unpleasant as trusteeship is, there appears to be no other way to
effectively monitor and combat terrorism during the long transition from col-
lapsed state to functional government. The key question – one which merits sus-
tained discussion and debate – is whether a new form of trusteeship can be
forged, a progressive rather than neocolonial trusteeship which would constitute
an opportunity for, rather than an imposition on, nations in receivership. Such a
trusteeship would have to combine the external security oversight required of a
war on terrorism while at the same time providing sustained political space for
progressive, democratic, and capable new national governments developed by
and for local populations.

Endnotes
1. Marina Ottaway, “Nation-Building,” Foreign Policy 18, no. 5 (September-October 2002), p. 18.
2. The White House, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America” (17 September
2002), p. 1 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss1.html).
3. John J. Hamre and Gordon R. Sullivan, “Toward Postconflict Reconstruction,” The Washington
Quarterly 25, no. 4 (Autumn 2002), p. 85.
4. For a recent conservative critique, see Gary T. Dempsey, “Old Folly in New Disguise: Nation
Building to Combat Terrorism,” Cato Policy Analysis no. 429 (21 March 2002)
(http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-429es.html).
5. See the cover of the September-October 2002 issue of Foreign Policy.
6. US Government, “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism” (February 2003) (http://usin-
fo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/strategy).
7. This conclusion tracks closely with the assessment reached by Matt Bryden in his article in this
issue of the journal.
8. Quoted in a background report, “Somalia/Terror,” Voice of America (29 May 2003).
9. See “Terror Suspect Flown to US,” The Nation (Nairobi), 27 March 2003, posted on
http://allAfrica.com. Like many aspects of this case, the details of the operation which appre-
hended Suleiman has been the subject of contradictory reports. Some reports portray the
episode as a Somali police operation, in which Suleiman was handed over to the Kenyans and
US. Others report it as a kidnapping by Somalis. Still others suggest a more direct role by
Kenyan and/or American forces. Suleiman’s whereabouts were subsequently the subject of
even more mystery, with Kenyan officials claiming that he was handed over to the US while
US officials suggest that Suleiman remains in the hands of East African authorities. For an
account of conflicting statements on the incident, see Kevin Kelley, “Gov’t, US Disagree Over
Terror Suspect,” The East African (Nairobi), 2 June 2003.

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10. Thomas Friedman, Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 (New
York: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2002), p. 57.
11. Kenya was also the site of a terrorist attack in 1980, when the Norfolk Hotel was bombed.
12. This is also the conclusion reached by a US Institute of Peace workshop, “Assessing Terrorism
in the Horn of Africa: Threats and Responses,” Washington DC (28 May 2003).
13. See Ken Menkhaus, “Somalia: Next Up in the War on Terrorism?” CSIS Africa Notes no. 6
(January 2002), pp. 1-9; and International Crisis Group, “Somalia: Combating Terrorism in a
Failed State,” (Brussels: ICG, May 2002).
14. Ken Menkhaus, “Terrorism in Somalia: Threat Assessment and Policy Options,” presented at
the US Institute of Peace, “Assessing Terrorism on the Horn of Africa: Threats and Responses”
workshop, Washington DC (28 May 2003).
15. Mats Berdal and David Malone, eds., Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars
(Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000).
16. Sam E. Kona, “Conflict and Insecurity Among the East African Pastoralists: The Kenyan
Experience,” presented at the Oxfam GB Regional Pastoral Programme Workshop, Arusha
Tanzania (28 February 2000); and Centre for Conflict Research, “A Conflict Map of Kenya: An
Overview of the Conflict Situation in Kenya, Issues Extent, and Effect,” The Great Lakes
Parliamentary Forum on Peace (Amani Forum) (August 2002).
17. Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1968).
18. Quoted in Bill Keller, “The I-can’t-believe-I’m-a-hawk Club,” The New York Times (8 February
2003).
19. Martin Indyk recently broached the subject in reference to Palestine; see “A Trusteeship for
Palestine?” Foreign Affairs 82, no. 3 (May-June 2003), pp. 51-66.

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