PRESS CONFERENCE ON PROFIT AGENDA IN CIVIL CONFLICTS

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE ON PROFIT AGENDA IN CIVIL CONFLICTS

Civil wars and internal conflicts were not just about human suffering and costs, but were also about profit and gain for certain parties, Mats Berdal, director of studies of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, told journalists at a press conference at United Nations Headquarters today.

The press conference concerned a book called "Greed and Grievance; Economic Agenda in Civil Wars", a project of the non-governmental organization International Peace Academy. Mr. Berdal was joined at the press conference by the co-editor of the book, the President of the International Peace Academy, David M. Malone.

The book explored how, in many cases, conflicts were not driven by the desire to advance political aims, but rather by powerful economic motives and agendas, Mr. Berdal explained.

There were many examples that sprang to mind, he said. In Liberia, Charles Taylor -- a good friend of Sierra Leone's rebel leader Foday Sankoh -- was thought to have made more than $400 million a year from the Liberian civil war when it was at it worst between 1992 and 1996.

One essay in the book, he continued, on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, demonstrated very persuasively through solid empirical research that certain neighbouring countries, like Uganda and Rwanda, had now become major exporters of raw materials, including gold and cobalt, which they did not naturally possess. Those resources were looted from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and exported to world markets. Timber, palm oil, coffee, elephant tusks and precious minerals had become major sources of foreign exchange for some of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's resource-deprived neighbours.

Everyone knew about Angolan rebel links to the diamond industry, he continued, but not much had been said about the government side. The Movimento Popular de Libertaçao de Angola (MPLA) business elite in Luanda had also benefited from Angola's war economy, by selectively granting attractive foreign exchange and import licences, as well as by selling weapons to the Government's adversary, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). And collusion between parties theoretically opposed to each other was not unique to Angola. It had been seen in Cambodia between 1993 and 1997, when the Khmer Rouge, government officials and the Thai military were perfectly capable of cooperating to enrich themselves by exporting illegal timber and trading in gems. Even in the horrific war of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, there were unlikely alliances motivated by economic agendas.

In the history of warfare, plundering and making money from conflict was hardly new, he said. However, the book tried to demonstrate that the nature of the world economy at the moment -- the process of economic globalization and increasing deregulation -- enabled warlords and warring factions to tap into processes of international exchange in a way they had not been able to before. In other words, he said, modern war economies were not self-sufficient, and warring parties, although they might control local assets, remained heavily dependent on external actors. That was particularly true for the purchase of arms, but warlords also needed access to global markets to sell resources over which they had gained control.

To the extent that such an axis had become easier because of globalization, it had also become easier for local elites to benefit economically from continued violence -- indeed from the institutionalization of violence at a certain level of intensity. That, in turn, adversely affected the balance of incentives in favour of peace, and provided an explanation for the seemingly intractable nature of many contemporary civil wars.

Members of the Cambodian Government, the Khmer Rouge and the Thai military had very few difficulties exporting gems and tropical timber to world markets, he continued. In Sierra Leone, the sale of diamonds and gold on the world market had kept the war going and generated wealth for officials, commanders and various international companies and businesses. Another classic case was Angola.

Thus, a different type of conflict had been created, he said. That assertion was not simply an attempt to reduce everything to economic factors, but rather to acknowledge the interaction between the political and economic agendas of the parties on the ground. Such interaction made them much more resistant to external intervention.

One of the most obvious consequences was that it did not make a lot of sense to talk about conflict and post-conflict states as distinct, he said. Such a distinction assumed that the end of hostilities marked a definitive break with previous patterns of violence. That was rarely the case even in the best of circumstances. Grievances and conflicts of interest persisted after the end of hostilities, affecting all peace-building activities. That was particularly the case where civil wars were not played out, but ended by ceasefires and agreements.

What was required was for transitions from war to peace to be recognized as involving realignments of political interest and readjustments of economic strategies, rather than clean breaks from theft to production, or from oppression to democracy.

Maps of who was benefiting and who was losing from a conflict must be made, he said, and then a set of incentives that reinforced the position of those with an interest in maintaining peace must be constructed.

Mr. Malone added that it was difficult for the United Nations to deal with the fact that warlords and kleptocratic governments behaved in exactly the same ways. In fact, governments had an advantage in that they possessed sovereignty -- a marketable commodity -- but their behaviour was otherwise exactly like that of warlords.

As an organization of States represented by their governments, the United Nations placed considerable confidence in governments, he observed. Representatives of governments spoke for countries at the United Nations. Civil wars, however, were often caused by appalling policies of governments, some seeking to marginalize certain communities and others seeking personal and group enrichment.

The situation in Sierra Leone highlighted the important role played by neighbouring communities, he added. Foday Sankoh was entirely kept afloat by his close relationship with Charles Taylor of Liberia, and certain other neighbouring States like Burkina Faso. He was heavily reliant on access to international markets to sell his diamonds and buy weapons, and this access was provided by neighbouring countries. As the United Nations looked for strategies to deal with the horrendous situation in Sierra Leone, it had been suggested that the channels that Charles Taylor and Burkina Faso represented be used. However, insufficient attention was paid to those "channels" as actors in the drama who greatly contributed to the current situation.

An important element of a strategy to deal with such situations should be to make it clear that support for murderers and criminals, like Foday Sankoh, placed governments and individuals "beyond the pale" to other governments, he said. Not much attention had been paid to that question.

Another thing not much mentioned was the possibility of redress, he said. Work on international criminal law in the 1990s meant the arm of justice was much longer than it used to be. The Security Council had created two international criminal tribunals to date, and more might be created in future. Foday Sankoh must be made aware of this. The International Criminal Court was created to deal with precisely the kind of abominable behaviour seen in Sierra Leone over the past few years. Focusing efforts on putting together peace agreements, which were later abrogated by one of the parties, missed the mark.

In future, the International Peace Academy would examine the criminalization of economies in civil wars: the interaction of international criminal networks with warlords and governments, thus, subverting countries' economies, he explained. It would also examine what an international regime for white-collar crime would look like, given that much attention had been rightly paid to human rights violations, but very little paid to white-collar crime. Efforts to trace ill-gotten gains began only when the actors were dead or safely in jail, as happened with the Abacha family in Nigeria and the Marcos family in the Philippines.

It would also examine the role of the private sector in civil wars, he said. Private-sector actors could be divided into two types. There were the "bottom feeders" who were often found on the ground in places like Sierra Leone -- individuals willing to take tremendous personal physical risks, in order to reap very high profit margins in situ. At the other end of the spectrum were very large corporate actors in the extractive industries, such as oil, minerals, gems and timber, who were involved, whether or not they wished to be, because they provided markets for products. The Academy would try to understand how these companies designed strategies to cope with civil wars, and how those strategies might be influenced to create incentives for peaceful settlement and disincentives for the continuation of conflict.

Asked why they thought United Nations officials and diplomats would not comment on the economic aspects of civil war, Mr. Malone said that the United Nations, following the discussion of the new economic order in the 1970s and 1980s, had a rather confrontational relationship with the international private sector. The private sector believed the United Nations was trying to regulate it without understanding how it functioned. Industrialized-country governments came under heavy pressure to protect their private sectors from United Nations interference. In the early 1990s, he did not think that it was fully appreciated by a number of delegates at the United Nations -- although it was by some Secretariat figures -- how important economic agendas were in conflicts the United Nations was dealing with.

More recently, it had been better understood, he said, but countries preferred to deal with micro-phenomena rather than problems as a whole. For example, Canada's work on the Angolan sanctions had been extremely useful in highlighting the role diamonds played in the conflict, but did little to highlight the role oil played for the Angolan Government. It did not draw attention to the importance of signing bonuses for exploration contracts that went to the Angolan Government, the benefits of which did not seem to flow to the people of Angola.

The problems were complex, inconvenient, and did not lend themselves to the easy solutions that the Security Council had wanted to design in the past, he continued. What was admirable about Canada's efforts was that names of countries and individuals who were doing well out of sanctions busting were published. That was a very powerful beginning. Generally, on matters like economic factors and civil wars, the United Nations operated at such a high level of abstraction that very little of the talk was useful.

There was still a desire among industrialized countries to protect their own industries, he said. They might be open to discussing industries that operated elsewhere. Not much was understood about how very large multinational corporations functioned in fields of war. It was clear that a number of those corporations wanted to connect with Kofi Annan and serve his agenda on issues like health and education. That might present opportunities. The private sector would probably respond better to co-option than coercion, he added.

Mr. Berdal said that, of necessity, the United Nations operated in a State-centric framework. The matters the book discussed would inevitably be uncomfortable for officials in some Member States. He was talking about warlordism, sub-State violence, and shadow States. It had been suggested that a map that looked at resources, geographical features and so on, rather than countries, was needed to understand current conflicts in Africa. That posed difficulties for the United Nations. One needed only look at the reaction and concern that greeted the Secretary-General's humanitarian agenda proposed last year.

In response to a question about the United Nations intervention in Sierra Leone, Mr. Berdal said that, in that particular case, the economic dimension was crucial in addressing the root causes of the conflict, and should have been addressed at an earlier stage. There was a strong sense last year that participants in the ceasefire had to be given the chance to see it through, and it was hard to argue against that. However, the link between Sierra Leone and Liberia had been evident all along.

One thing was missed by many governmental actors at the United Nations, Mr. Malone added. It was clear that the Lomé accords were distasteful, in that they provided an amnesty for Foday Sankoh, and inherently fragile, because not that much was known about his real intentions. In order to maximize the chances of his compliance with the agreements, sustained pressure should have been applied on the countries that provided him with markets. Instead, attention was focused on Foday Sankoh and his actions in Freetown, but what was going on in Monrovia and elsewhere was lost from sight. The role of neighbouring countries was still not receiving enough attention. That was partly because governments did not like being rude about other governments, but also because the culture at the United Nations -- which was very often productive -- was to try to induce good behaviour, rather than shame countries into good behaviour. With a regime like Charles Taylor's in Liberia, he wondered if inducement would work.

In answer to another question, Mr. Malone explained that one had to examine the specifics of each conflict to formulate the correct form of intervention. In Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Sierra Leone and Angola, for example, the conflicts were very much about loot. In others, such as Sri Lanka, rebels were fighting for a cause rather than for economic benefit.

Asked about the potential negative impact of humanitarian interventions in conflicts, Mr. Berdal explained that a distinction must be made between short- term and long-term provision of aid. It was in long-term humanitarian interventions, such as the 10-year operation in the Sudan, that the question of who benefited must be broached.

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