Building discourse on explosive weapons

We have a new website you should check out (and bookmark) at: www.ExplosiveWeapons.info.

But hold on, I hear you say, what about Disarmament Insight? Don’t worry, it’s not disappearing. But over the course of 2010 our efforts will be on this new website, with which we’ll be able to do things we can’t with dear old Blogger.

Originally set up in 2007 to accompany our work that year as part of the 'Disarmament as Humanitarian Action' project at UNIDIR, the Disarmament Insight blog you’re reading now continued a lot longer - and achieved a much wider readership - than we ever hoped. In particular, the blog's commentary became one reference for those seeking independent analysis on what was going on during the Oslo process on cluster munitions. However, the DI blog covered all sorts of other issues relevant to humanitarian disarmament work from anti-personnel mines to primate behaviour, evolutionary psychology to explosive violence.

Blog readers will have noticed that over the last few months our blogging has tapered off, with some conspicuous exceptions like Tim Caughley's thought-provoking analysis of the Conference on Disarmament’s Shannon Mandate. That's because toward the end of last year Maya and I completed our project at UNIDIR on a history of international efforts on cluster munitions, which resulted in a book I wrote entitled Unacceptable Harm: A History of How the Treaty to Ban Cluster Munitions Was Won. After that marathon we both took a break from the blinking cursor for a while.

Among the things it covers, ‘Unacceptable Harm’ looks at what lessons banning cluster munitions might hold for future efforts to protect civilians from the effects of explosive weapons. This was also a topic explored over the course of the blog (just type ‘explosive weapons’ into the search box at right to get a list of posts). In that regard, I’m pleased to report that in January of this year we commenced a new project at UNIDIR on Discourse on Explosive Weapons (DEW), with the kind financial support of the Government of Norway.

The effects of explosive weapons on civilians represent a distinct humanitarian problem—one recognized by the UN Secretary-General in his 2009 report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict (S/2009/277).

Explosive weapons range from unitary bombs, cluster munitions, rockets and missiles to grenades, shells, improvised explosive devices and mines. The blast wave created by the detonation, projection of fragments, and sometimes the collapse of structures in the surrounding area is a major cause of civilian harm. Explosive weapons also cause damage to infrastructure vital to the civilian population and leave behind unexploded explosive ordnance, which poses a post-conflict health risk and negatively affects reconstruction and long-term development.

Representatives of States seem to find it difficult to engage in substantive dialogue on how to address the concerns raised by the use of explosive weapons in populated areas. Policy practitioners lack a common vocabulary and conceptual tools to enable them to productively frame these issues.

Meanwhile, the process leading to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions provides an example of how the international debate on a weapon category was re-framed to put the protection of civilians at its centre. In addition, a 2009 report by Landmine Action (now re-branded Action on Armed Violence) on Explosive Violence showed that States already tacitly recognize explosive weapons as a single category from a technological and ethical standpoint.

Greater focus on the humanitarian effects of explosive weapons could enhance civilian protection, support the effectiveness of legal norms applicable in armed conflict, contribute to reducing the global burden of armed violence and represent a further step toward creating the conditions for general and complete disarmament. Practical ways to achieve that is what the DEW project is exploring.

As part of the project’s work, alongside symposia and the generation of resource materials, we’ve set up the explosive weapons website. This is where news and resources related to our explosive weapons work will appear during the course of 2010 including background papers, podcasts and summary reports from our symposia. There’s even a Twitter feed… (We also have a project page at UNIDIR here.) We invite you to follow our work and avail yourself of the stuff we’re producing.

As always, thanks to all of our readers and please keep following our work!

John Borrie

Picture: 'Explosion, Abkhazia' (Simon Conway, Landmine Action).

Protecting civilians from explosive violence: time for states to raise their voices

Last week the United Nations Secretary-General submitted his annual report to the Security Council on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. The language of the report represents something of a break-though of a sort that's pleasing to see from the editorial perspective of this blog. Hopefully now states will also begin to make their voices heard in supporting the Protection of Civilians report's content both in the Security Council chamber and in elsewhere.

The Secretary-General's report observed that the "choice of weapons is critical in minimizing and reducing the impacts of hostilities on civilians". While this might sound obvious, it's worth noting that heavy weapons such as artillery and rockets were nevertheless used in populated areas in conflicts in recent months such as Gaza and in Sri Lanka, something the report also commented on in its paragraph 36:

"As demonstrated by this year’s hostilities in Sri Lanka and Israel’s campaign in Gaza, the use in densely populated environments of explosive weapons that have so-called “area effect” inevitably has an indiscriminate and severe humanitarian impact. First, in terms of the risk to civilians caught in the blast radius or killed or injured by damaged and collapsed buildings. Secondly, in terms of damage to infrastructure vital to the wellbeing of the civilian population, such as water and sanitation systems."

These are certainly issues that individually some Security Council members are taking very seriously. Only today, for instance, the New York Times reported that the new American military commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, would sharply restrict the use of airstrikes there in an effort to reduce the civilian deaths he had concluded were undermining the American-led mission. In today's warfare, in which the lines between military objectives and civilian concentrations are usually blurred, those on the cutting edge of military thought are increasingly aware that the use of explosive violence in such areas can be counter-productive, as well as morally and legally unacceptable.

The Secretary-General further noted in last week's report that the Security Council "has a critical role in promoting systematic compliance with the law" including condemning violations "without exceptions", threatening and if necessary applying targeted measures against the leadership of parties violating their obligations to "respect" civilians and keeping track of violations and mandating commissions of inquiry "where concerns exist regarding serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law".

The British NGO Landmine Action issued a media release responding to the Secretary General's report, which

"welcomes the clear expression of concern from the UN Secretary-General regarding the humanitarian problems caused by explosive weapons. Landmine Action urges States, international organisations and civil society to further document the civilian harm caused by explosive weapons, work to prevent the use of explosive weapons in populated areas and support all efforts to minimise the post-conflict harm that explosive weapons cause."

One of the key points underlined by multilateral processes representing 'disarmament as humanitarian action' such as the Ottawa process to prohibit anti-personnel mines and the Oslo process resulting in the Convention on Cluster Munitions is that the collection and analysis of empirical evidence is crucial in changing policy makers' minds and re-framing issues in ways that make them more tractable. Nevertheless, weapons-specific processes like these require a huge amount of effort that is difficult to sustain throughout treaty implementation, let alone repeat for other weapons.

And, a risk of weapon-specific multilateral processes in general is that governments opposed to stigmatising the use of explosive violence in populated areas will succeed in breaking up and subdividing issues around use of explosive weapons (as Richard Moyes at Landmine Action has pointed out) that muddy the waters, or denude relevant multilateral processes of real value.

There is a need for the international community to begin looking beyond just the weapon specific to highlight explosive weapons as a broad category of concern at time of use and post-conflict. This is something a few of us have already begun trying to do (Landmine Action's media release mentioned, for instance, Disarmament Insight's work at facilitating such discussion).

In light of the Protection of Civilians report, the Security Council could be one place for states and international organisations to take the new discourse forward. But it also needs to be a broader debate. The international community should do more to ensure civilians are protected, and that will necessarily entail some fresh thinking.

John Borrie

Image downloaded from Wikipedia: "A Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) weapon is prepared for testing at the Eglin Air Force Armament Center on March 11, 2003. The MOAB is a precision-guided munition weighing 21,500 pounds and will be dropped from a C-130 Hercules aircraft for the test. It will be the largest non-nuclear conventional weapon in existence."

What could the CCW do about improvised explosive devices?

If there is a weapon that reflects our times, it is the improvised explosive device (IED). These weapons come in myriad forms– whether it's the suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest approaching a checkpoint in Afghanistan, the command-detonated roadside bombs encountered by troops in Iraq or, indeed, the seizure of passenger planes in mid-air by hijackers to be used as flying bombs – as occurred on 911.

Most often on this blog, when we’ve provided commentary on the work of the UN Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) it’s been with reference to its Group of Government Experts’ efforts on cluster munitions. However, the CCW is a framework treaty that contains five protocols, two of which – Amended Protocol II on mines and booby traps, and Protocol V on explosive remnants of war – have active sub-processes of their own.

Last week, in a discussion facilitated by the Swiss, states party to Amended Protocol II began a discussion about IEDs. Presenting were Chris Clark from the UN Mine Action Service, Richard Moyes from UK NGO Landmine Action, Erik Tollefsen from the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining, and Colin King, an independent explosive ordnance consultant.
An IED is

“A device placed or fabricated in an improvised manner incorporating destructive, lethal, noxious, pyrotechnic, or incendiary chemicals or explosives and designed to destroy, incapacitate, harass or distract. It may incorporate military stores, but is normally devised from non-military components.” (IED Factsheet)

Colin King observed there has been an evolution of attacks using IEDs over the last few decades. In the 1970s, non-state armed groups like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) really did have to improvise using commonly available materials such as nitrogen-based chemical fertilizers, stolen blasting caps and mechanical or electronic timers cannibalized from devices like alarm clocks. The IEDs tended to be unreliable, and to have uncertain effects in terms of explosive yield and signature. In other words, these types of IED were low-tech, basic weapons not particularly well suited to their targets.

The 1970s seem rather halcyon days now. Armed groups making and deploying IEDs in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have become highly sophisticated in terms of funding and organisation: as their experience and access to materials began to match the scale of their ambitions and inventiveness, it has made life increasingly hazardous for both soldiers and civilians.

The IRA’s best chance of destroying a vehicle in Britain or Northern Ireland in the 1970s, for instance, was by physically attaching a time-delay bomb. More recently, insurgents in Iraq and many other places have long had access to shaped-charge explosives like the High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT) rounds launched from rocket-propelled grenade launchers. But in recent years they’ve also been able to hold of explosively formed penetrators able to destroy modern armoured vehicles - potentially from a significant distance, we were told. And along with the technology, methods of attack involving sophisticated means of coordination have made counter-measures against IEDs a difficult cat-and-mouse game for military forces.

And, as Richard Moyes pointed out, IEDs are certainly an issue in humanitarian terms too. Landmine Action’s research into incidents of explosive ordnance based on English language news reports of 1,836 incidents in 38 countries over six months revealed that 60 per cent related to IEDs causing many civilian deaths and injuries.

It’s a moot point what the CCW can actually do – if anything – about IEDs, not least because the primary makers and users of IEDs are armed non-state actors, not governments bound by agreements like Amended Protocol II. And, as the International Committee of the Red Cross pointed out, there isn’t anything especially novel about the fact a munition is improvised from a humanitarian law perspective. IHL rules still apply.

Nevertheless, in a ‘food for thought’ paper for the meeting, the Swiss set out some possible avenues for discussion about specific measures such as:

“What are specific best practices to cut the supply?
• What can be done in order to avoid that AXO, UXO, badly managed stockpiles, and commercially available products provide the explosives)?
• Could the CCW APII work towards a best practice guide for the improved storage, security, and transport of explosives?
• What mechanisms would help better controlling the manufacture and trafficking of explosives?
• Are there different approaches to deal with IEDs under domestic criminal law?”

Certainly last week’s CCW talks didn’t come up with any clear answers about what to do next. But, as presenters like King pointed out, a lot of IEDs are ‘local manufactures’ – mass produced, but using parts like abandoned or stolen military munitions. Artillery shells have become a favoured source of explosive for many roadside or vehicle-borne IEDs in Iraq, for instance.

So, governments undertaking practical work at the national level to tighten up stockpile management and storage of explosive material in places under their jurisdiction or control would be an important start. Another thing states can do is to join and fully implement the CCW’s ERW protocol to ensure that unexploded and abandoned ordnance is cleared up quickly, and not diverted to putting the bang into IEDs. Not sexy stuff, but worthwhile.

John Borrie

Image: IEDs made from military munitions found in Baghdad (retrieved from Wikipedia Commons, sourced in turn from U.S. Department of Defense).

CCM: Positive developments

Earlier this week, the Lao People's Democratic Republic ratified the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) at a special event in New York at United Nations Headquarters.

Lao PDR’s accession to the CCM is significant not least because this South East Asian nation is the most heavily affected country in the world from unexploded submunitions due to a secret American bombing campaign in the 1960s and 1970s that pulverised entire areas of the country such as the Plain of Jars. A generation on, and Lao PDR’s people – the majority of them not even born during the bombing period – are saddled with a deadly legacy of unexploded ‘bombies’ (submunitions) in their fields, rivers and woods that threaten livelihoods and their very lives.

The figures are staggering. Lao PDR’s National Unexploded Ordnance Programme believes that, even under ideal firing conditions, at least 30 percent of the more than 260 million submunitions dropped on the country during the Indochina War would have failed to function as intended, leaving an estimated 78 million bombies to pose hazard to people going about their daily lives. Fifteen of Lao’s seventeen provinces were left affected by cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance, and today ten provinces are still severely infested – with an estimated 300 people injured or killed per year.

As such, Lao PDR is always going to be a special case for the new treaty. It is generally (if tacitly) recognised by others involved in the Oslo process that – even with the international assistance promised by other members of the CCM – Lao PDR is unlikely to achieve the treaty’s ten-year deadline for clearance and will eventually require an extension (as has just occurred in the Mine Ban Treaty context, for example, for certain countries that have not completed anti-personnel mine clearance activities for various reasons). But, hopefully, membership of the CCM will be a means to continually draw attention to and resources for post-conflict activities to reduce the hazards of unexploded submunitions and other ordnance on Laotian civilians.

At the same ceremony, the Democratic Republic of the Congo – another cluster munition-affected country – signed the CCM, which makes it the 96th to do so. And Iraq made a statement indicating its intent to join the CCM once domestic steps have been completed. Also, a week earlier, on 11 March, the Mexican Senate approved that country’s ratification of the CCM.

Although a country can provisionally apply the CCM at any time, to enter into force internationally the CCM needs to be ratified by 30 states. Less than five months after the CCM’s signing ceremony in Oslo last December, the treaty can already count on 6, and more will surely follow as 35 other states have publicly committed to ratify as soon as possible. As Iraq’s statement indicated, the number of signatories, which presently stands at 96, is also certain to increase soon.

So far many of the world’s largest producers and users of cluster munitions remain outside of the treaty. But there were encouraging developments last week in the US. On 11 March, President Obama signed the Omnibus Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2009, already passed by Congress. It enacts a ban on American exports of most cluster munitions, and has been described as a “qualified ban”.

Meanwhile, many members of both chambers of Congress have apparently cosponsored legislation to enact a ban on most cluster bombs – galvanised by Senators Patrick Leahy and Dianne Feinstein. And President Obama’s transition team are apparently studying the issue of whether the US should go the whole hog and join the CCM.

We’ll seek to provide more analysis in coming weeks.

John Borrie

Photo credit: Mary Wareham. Ambassador Kanika Phommachanh, Permanent Representative of the Lao PDR to the UN in New York, depositing her government's ratification of the Convention on Cluster Munitions with the UN's Office of Legal Affairs represented by Treaty Section Chief Annebeth Rosenboom. Laos became the fifth state to ratify - a total of 30 are required for the treaty to enter into force.

Lao reference: Lao PDR National Regulatory Authority, Lao National Unexploded Ordnance Programme and UNDP, Hazardous Ground: Cluster Munitions and UXO in the Lao PDR (2008).

Losing Control

Unless you've been on Mars these last weeks, the unfolding international financial crisis centred on Wall Street can't have escaped your notice. Some of Wall Street's biggest names have disappeared, either having collapsed (such as Lehman Brothers) or having been pushed into commercial shotgun marriages (Bear Stearns bought by JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch by Bank of America). The American taxpayer now owns the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and early last week the U.S. Treasury stepped in to bail out and effectively nationalise American Insurance Group (AIG).

In the last day or so, after enjoying decades of being Wall Street darlings, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last of the Wall Street independent investment banks, have sought to become bank holding companies. Analysts have noted that this subjects the two institutions to far greater regulation and closer government supervision, but the banks' motive is to gain access to the full array of the U.S. Federal Reserve's lending facilities. Times are that tough.

The New York Times opined in a headline that "Goldman and Morgan Shift Marks End of Era in Finance". More bluntly, to paraphrase a a commentator I heard on CNBC today, it marks the impact point in a period in which Wall Street has enjoyed the profits and socialized its losses. The group picking up the tab for the U.S. Treasury's rescue package, which some estimates put at US$700 billion, is of course American taxpayers. (Central banks and Treasuries in other countries are mounting their own efforts, like those underway in Great Britain: these costs are not included and ultimately their taxpayers will foot the bill for their endeavours.)

To put this 700 billion dollar Wall Street rescue package into perspective, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies' 2008 Military Balance, the U.S. National Defense Budget Authority request for this year was estimated to be 695 billion dollars, plus loose change of a few tens of millions. This included supplemental funding requests of almost 190 billion dollars for the so-called Global War on Terror (GWOT). (Incidentally, according to IISS, with the supplemental enacted as of May 2007, Congress had approved a total of around 610 billion dollars since 11 September 2001 - more than two-thirds of it spent in Iraq.) Although the figures are not neat, it's clear that we're not talking loose change here - either for a Wall Street bail out or the GWOT.

No doubt these expensive financial rescues are necessary under the circumstances, although it's by no means certain whether they'll actually serve to prevent the global financial meltdown, the prospect of which frightens governments and investors alike. Political and financial leaders, with the spectre of the Great Depression of the 1930s over their shoulders, are doing their best to soothe fragile investor confidence. And, of course, the public is worried too: in a globalized world anyone with a bank account, a job, a car loan or even a warranty on a toaster is stuck in this together.

Meanwhile, economists talk about the externalities of economic decisions. This sounds more abstract than it is. To quote that paragon of accuracy (it serves well here), Wikipedia:

"Standard economic theory implies that any voluntary exchange is mutually beneficial to both parties involved in the trade. This is because if either the buyer and the seller would not benefit from the trade, they would refuse it. An exchange, however, can result in additional effects on third parties. From the perspective of those affected, these effects may be negative (pollution from a factory), or positive (honey bees that pollinate the garden)."

Rising interest rates are an externality of recent aggregated economic decisions: positive if you have money in the bank (although inflation is rising too), but negative if you have a mortgage or other debts. Many people are finding this out the hard way, and an approaching backlash is palpable. I was in the UK last week, and the newspapers all contain increasing numbers of stories about fat-cat city boys, especially if they're getting their comeuppance in a falling property market or a courtroom. Some stories verged on the nasty, but underline the resentment growing about the allegedly greedy and amoral activities of those involved in high finance.

The fact is that such blatant moral hazard - in which an elite reap the majority of benefits from some activity, but others largely pay the price (or seem to) - is hardly limited to international finance. We have only to look to the international arms trade and its effects. The reality is that, in much of the world, many communities are suffering the effects - the externalities - of transactions of arms they weren't involved in. The effects on civilians of weapons like anti-personnel mines and unexploded cluster submunitions are cases in point. Another is the illicit trafficking in small arms and light weapons such as assault rifles. Many were supplied by the superpowers during the Cold War to their proxies in brushfire conflicts, but now these weapons slosh from insecure environment to insecure environment arming paramilitaries, violent insurgents and criminal gangs. The people who suffer from the presence and use of these weapons aren't just the ones who wield them, but ordinary people whose lives and livelihoods they threaten.

So spare a thought for those who endure such externalities and lend your support to ways to reduce their insecurity. Following the Wall Street crisis, governments and voters are going to be more wary (at least for a while) of unconstrained market activity as an end in itself. We should be similarly wary of the international arms trade in its current form: even when legal the longer term effects of the arms trade can be hard to predict, and can come back to haunt us. All the more reason for an Arms Trade Treaty, and continued implementation of the Programme of Action on curbing the illicit trade in small arms.

John Borrie


Reference

International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2008 (London: Routledge/IISS: February 2008).

Paul Rogers' book Losing Control: Global Security in the Twenty-first Century (2nd edn), (London: Pluto Press: 2002) explores and analyzes big themes such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the impact of human activity on the environment, paramilitaries and the growth of hypercapitalism and attendant inequality, poverty and insecurity. Paul's Open Democracy column is also well worth following.

Picture credit: 'Free Fall in the City' by cactusbones (8 January 2008) downloaded from Flickr.

Explosive issues

In between following the political and diplomatic progress of disarmament processes like those related to cluster munitions, small arms, the arms trade and nuclear weapons, Disarmament Insight posts have also looked at some broader issues. Last week in 'The Use of Weapons' I discussed aspects of David Edgerton's book, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 - focusing on Edgerton's analysis of Second World War technologies like strategic bombing, atomic weapons and the V2 rocket and implications for today.

One nice thing about blogging is that you sometimes receive feedback about your posts. For instance, our site offers a comment function (see the link at the foot of each post) on which readers can post their remarks or questions.

Last week a chap named Ward Wilson contacted Disarmament Insight. Ward wrote an article in International Security journal last year on "The Winning Weapon? Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima" - an interesting analysis that re-examines the widely-held presumption (which I also touched on my blog post) that nuclear weapons played a decisive role in winning the war in the Pacific. I'd been unaware of Ward's article, and it appears he was unaware of Edgerton's book until reading our blog, so it seems we're all better off.

Ward, it seems, is quite a busy guy, as he too has a blog, entitled 'Rethinking Nuclear Weapons', which is worth checking out. Ward says it's part of a project "to explore the practical realities of nuclear weapons".

In addition, Ward's also just been awarded the Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Challenge Essay Contest's Grand Prize for a piece he wrote entitled "The Myth of Deterrence". This is a big deal. Hopefully Ward's article will be available somewhere online soon. In the meantime, congratulations and well done to him.

Someone else out there on the World Wide Web doing some hard thinking about questions related to aspects of armed violence is Richard Moyes, Policy & Research Manager at the British NGO Landmine Action. Richard has just started a new blog entitled 'Explosive Violence' that examines news reports and issues related to the use of explosive weapons in crime and conflict.

Throughout the twentieth and early twentieth centuries we've seen the boundaries between the use of force in the battlefield and in civilian areas increasingly blurred, whether you think of strategic bombing in the Second World War or South East Asia, or suicide bombing. And what was nuclear deterrence during the Cold War if not the threat to unleash massive quantities of explosive force in populated areas, no matter how strategic planners tried to dignify it?

Recent efforts, like the new Convention on Cluster Munitions, are doing something about this as regards certain specific weapon types, and the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons has tried and is trying - with varying success - to tackle this in its own manner. The use of explosive force in populated areas is an elephant in the room in both multilateral disarmament and arms control and in international humanitarian law efforts and its logical that greater efforts are made to consider what the implications of that are.

So good luck to both Ward and Richard, and we look forward to reading their future thoughts on aspects of these issues and more.

John Borrie


Reference

Wilson, Ward. "The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima." International Security 31 4 (Spring 2007): 162-179.

Picture: 'Explosive!' by Lili Vieira de Carvalho downloaded from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

CCW: No rest for ...

It's July, summer has finally come to Geneva and, under normal circumstances, the thoughts of disarmament diplomats would now be turning to a few weeks of holidays before the Conference on Disarmament resumes again on July 28. This year, though, any such vacation plans have been dashed by three weeks of work to "negotiate a proposal" on cluster munitions, which began on Monday in Geneva, and one week of talks on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons, which begin on Monday in New York.

Negotiations on cluster munitions? I hear you ask; "hasn't that all been taken care of by those Dublin negotiations Disarmament Insight wrote so much about in May?" Well, yes and no. The Dublin Conference on cluster munitions, which was part of the stand-alone "Oslo Process," did agree a treaty banning cluster munitions, which was adopted by 111 States and is due to be signed in Oslo on 3 December.

In parallel, however, States party to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) - about two-thirds of which participated in the Dublin conference but which also includes some not in Dublin including the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel - are also engaged in an effort to negotiate a proposal on cluster munitions that would balance military with humanitarian concerns.

The big question before the CCW meeting began on Monday was: How would States that had adopted the new Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) approach the negotiations, bearing in mind that the CCW negotiations had virtually no chance of setting the same high standards of international humanitarian law (IHL) as had been achieved in Dublin? The answer now seems apparent. These States - most of them at any rate - do not want to end up in the CCW with a Protocol developed in the CCW that would, in effect, countenance the further use of cluster munitions rather than stigmatizing them.

Adopters of the new CCM want a CCW outcome on cluster munitions that complements their achievement in Dublin, not undermines it. Possible acceptable outcomes for these States could include a CCW Protocol that prohibits the transfer of all cluster munitions, or that prohibits the use of cluster munitions in or close to civilian areas.

And a number of States and organisations raised concerns this week that suggested language for a new CCW Protocol on cluster munitions, as had been outlined in a Chair's paper, ran a real risk of rolling back existing IHL rather than building on it. These concerns were first raised in April (see our blog on 'Cherry picking at the CCW' for background) and again at this CCW meeting, partly stemming from the fact that the proposed text reiterated (in some cases with modifications) selected existing rules and principles of IHL, while remaining silent on others.

There were tough discussions under the Japanese Friend of the Chair in the latter part of the week in a key suggested Article in the Chair's paper, on 'protection of civilians and civilian objects', with New Zealand, Austria, Mexico, Germany, Canada, the UK, US and India the most active in the debate. These differing views should have convinced Japan that its current tack of trying to get countries to accept reformulations of existing IHL rules they feel deeply uncomfortable about is unlikely to yield results. Of course, it would be good to see this approach abandoned in favour of one that focuses on elaborating new rules and principles, whatever these may be. But there remains fundamental opposition to that, as New Zealand found in defending the square-bracketed language in paragraph 3 of Article 3:

"It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians [or in areas normally inhabited by civilians] the object of attack using cluster munitions."

Overall, the third session of the CCW negotiations got off to a sluggish start this week, with most negotiating sessions running well under their allotted time. Perhaps it has something to do with the hot and heavy weather and thoughts of squandered vacation time. More likely, though, it can be put down to the unfamiliar and downright awkward situation of trying to do something that has already been done very well elsewhere. It's hard to draw motivation from that.

Patrick Mc Carthy


Photo Credit: Geneva's Jet d'Eau by neurosis on Flickr.

Cherry Picking at the CCW ?

While the main cherry blossom season is drawing to an end in Japan, the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) Group of Governmental Experts engaged in what was, from a legal point of view at least, something of a cherry picking exercise in Geneva last week. In its capacity as Friend of the Chair, Japan held several informal meetings to identify rules and principles of international humanitarian law (IHL) of particular relevance to the use of cluster munitions, and to elaborate new provisions and best practice guidelines to strengthen IHL implementation in this context. The results of this “fruitful debate” on IHL implementation (as Japan described it) were attached to the meeting’s procedural report as an annex (Annex III), in the form of “draft elements on international humanitarian law” and “draft elements of best practice guide” (this report should be up on the UN's CCW webpage soon).

Several states and the ICRC said these draft elements were cause for some concern. Whereas certain “draft elements on IHL” are taken verbatim from 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, others have been reproduced with wording that differs from the original text. For instance, articles 51(1) and (2) and 52 (1) of Additional Protocol I on the protection of civilians have been drawn together without reiterating the prohibition of reprisals against civilians and civilian objects and the prohibition against spreading terror among the civilian population.

Other rules that would appear to be highly relevant to the use of cluster munitions have not been included in the list at all. One notable omission is the explicit prohibition of indiscriminate attacks, as reflected in article 51(4) of Additional Protocol I. According to this provision, indiscriminate attacks are, inter alia, “those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective” or “the effects of which cannot be limited” as required by the protocol.

Selectiveness in the choice of norms and modification of their original wording risks creating the impression that certain rules and principles of IHL do not apply, or are of minor importance, to cluster munition use. This would create legal uncertainty for IHL implementation at the operational level. And the existing set of rules and principles on the conduct of hostilities that applies to all types of weapons could be undermined.

The “draft elements of best practice guide” add to this concern by listing under the heading of “voluntary” national mechanisms for IHL implementation several measures that a majority of states are already legally obliged to take. States parties to Additional Protocol I have, for example, a legal obligation to determine the lawfulness of new weapons (article 36). Other suggested measures are incumbent on all states as customary international law obligations, such as the obligation to provide instruction in IHL to their armed forces (see Rule 142 of the ICRC’s Customary Law Study).

Japan sought to reassure those involved in last week’s informal consultations that its work aimed at the mere restatement and application of existing IHL principles to cluster munitions – in contrast to the creation of new norms. This sounds like a simple task. Yet several draft elements on IHL are in brackets, which leads some to worry that states will not even agree on which principles are relevant.

But states’ difficulties are perhaps not so surprising. First, in a fragmentary international legal system, states are bound by different treaties. Second, their interpretations of indeterminate and general legal principles (such as the principle of proportionality) differ. Third, states often frame the factual issue to be regulated differently. This leads to divergent views as to which principles are relevant in a given context. In this case, there is disagreement over whether and to what extent the inherent characteristics of cluster munitions mean that they cause unacceptable harm to civilians.

Finally, the application of a general norm in a specific factual context always involves interpreting, specifying and adapting the norm itself, which results in its recreation in an ongoing dynamic process. A clear-cut distinction between “simple” restatement of existing norms and the creation of new ones is therefore something of an illusion.

Why should this work be of any interest to anyone but lawyers? Because it potentially has very real consequences for combatants and civilians both during and long after a conflict. This is why the CCW Group of Governmental Experts’ work last week is of broader concern, and should not be regarded as a routine and summary exercise.


This is a guest blog by Maya Brehm. Maya is a PhD fellow in public international law at the University of Copenhagen, and currently a visiting Disarmament as Humanitarian Action fellow at UNIDIR.

Photo by byte retrieved from Flickr.

Body counting

The Atlantic Monthly online is running an interesting story in its April issue looking at the on-going - and increasingly nasty - debate over the grim question of how many Iraqis have died as a result of the March 2003 invasion.

Estimates of these deaths vary widely, from around 80,000 to as high as a million, according to the article. Estimates out there include a 2006 study in the Lancet, a British medical journal , research by the World Health organisation published in the New England Journal of Medicine and (not mentioned in the article) on-going documentation work by an independent research group based in the UK, Iraq Body Count.

Debate about methodologies and numbers is all useful in the name of thorough research (although it seems to have become personally rather bitter over Iraq). But whichever estimate proves to be nearest the mark, we should always remember the shattered human lives and the misery and insecurity behind the statistics - otherwise such concerns take on a tinge of ghoulishness. Even the lowest Iraq estimates demonstrate the civilian casualties are considerable, as they are in a number of other conflicts around the world not paid so much attention.

In addition, Megan McCardle, the Atlantic Monthly article's author, puts an interesting spin on the debate by introducing the notion of "anchoring effects" - well known thanks to cognitive scientists like Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky, whose work on mental biases we've discussed before on this blog. Their empirical research, and that of others, has shown that human beings tend to fixate on numbers we've heard, even if they're arbitrary or wrong. These effects persist, even when the number has been discredited.

"We anchor most strongly on the first number we hear, particularly when it is shocking and precise—like, say, 601,027 violent deaths in Iraq. And even when such a number is presented only as a central estimate in a wide range of statistical possibilities (as the Lancet study’s figure was), we tend to ignore the range, focusing instead on the lovely, hard number in the middle. Human beings are terrible at dealing with uncertainty, and besides, headlines seldom highlight margins of error.

When information supports positions we already hold, we of course tend to accept it less critically; when the opposite is true, we can be quite good at shutting the information out. “Motivated reasoning” is a mighty force, as anyone who has argued politics in a bar at 2 a.m. can attest. Scientists have observed the process, using a functional MRI machine to peer into the brain while it processes political statements, and their report is unsurprising. When we are assessing neutral statements, activity is concentrated in the areas that control higher reasoning. But when we process statements with political valence, suddenly our emotional cortices light up as well. Indeed, some research indicates that the emotion precedes, and governs, the higher cognition—that logic is, literally, an afterthought.

But cognitive bias is not limited to partisans; we all anchor on the numbers we hear. The Lancet article’s central estimate exerts a gravitational pull on even its harshest critics, who seem to be mentally benchmarking their estimates by how much they differ from that 601,027. Others who are not motivated to disprove that number tend to orbit even closer."

Collecting data on conflict is difficult and, by necessity, rather imprecise, which is why in the domain of statistics methodology is so important. Relative margins of error can have huge impacts on data, as could the consequences of embedding spurious "facts" in the minds of the public and of policy-makers. Something we all have to bear in mind.


John Borrie

Picture by mattsmith569 retrieved from Flickr.com.

Re-humanize yourself: The Belgrade Conference of states affected by cluster munitions

Unexploded ordnance clearance experts are among the unsung humanitarian heroes. Their work is tricky, often tense and - because rendering unexploded munitions safe is an art rather than a science - also sometimes unavoidably dangerous. Disposing of unexploded submunitions is one of the worst jobs because these weapons are anything but "duds": they're unpredictable, difficult to locate (being small and hard to see), unreliable and yet often deployed in large numbers.

These brave, ordinary people ultimately put themselves at risk to protect civilians. Bad things can and do happen to them.

In 2000, Branislav Kapetanovic, a Serbian UXO clearance expert, was working to render an unexploded submunition safe when it detonated. Branislav was lucky: he lived. But he lost both legs and the ends of his arms and now gets around in a wheelchair. The rehabilitation process has been long and hard, especially in a country in which resources are scarce - as they are in all but the richest nations of the world.

This week, I was fortunate to meet Branislav, who has become a spokesperson for the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) - a network of civil society groups dedicated to banning these weapons - in Serbia at the Belgrade Conference of states affected by cluster munitions. I've just returned from that Conference, and thought I should offer a few impressions.

The idea behind the Belgrade Conference was to allow affected countries to share their experiences and jointly produce some recommendations to feed into international efforts to deal with the humanitarian consequences of cluster munitions. The Conference agenda focused on survivor assistance, explosive ordnance clearance, and international assistance and cooperation.

It was preceded by a half-day civil society forum organized by the CMC on 2 October, in which cluster munition survivors talked about their horrific, real-life experiences - as they were also able to do during the latter Conference.

Well, so what? After all, affected states have long played a major role in the implementation of the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, and a special emphasis put on ensuring the participation of landmine survivors. Indeed, a slogan of the Landmine Survivors' Network - a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) - is "nothing about us without us".

But, in the disarmament field, the Mine Ban Convention has largely stood alone. Talks on cluster munitions in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) have, for years, been largely of military, legal and technical nature. They've often felt rather remote from the actual concerns of those living with the effects of this weapon - whether victims like Branislav, relatives of victims, or communities adversely affected by unexploded submunitions.

In February of this year, a new international track emerged, the so-called Oslo Process, with much more ambitious objectives to "address the humanitarian problems caused by cluster munitions". Since February, the number of states associating themselves with the Oslo Process has grown to more than 80 and it prompted the Belgrade Conference.

The Conference was important in several respects:

- It was specifically intended to bring together representatives from affected states (including survivors), interested countries, UN agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the CMC and others to discuss how a new treaty should effectively address the specific needs of states, communities and individuals affected by this weapon.

- It highlighted the plight of individuals maimed by cluster munitions from places such as Afghanistan, Croatia, Cambodia, Lebanon, Laos, Serbia and Tajikstan and their needs. Hearing their stories, while often painful for them and shocking for all, has helped to humanize the issue. It's one thing to talk about international measures concerning cluster munitions in the abstract - quite another when you've met victims face to face. Medical and ordnance clearance personnel also shared their practical experiences.

- It's added additional impetus to the Oslo Process. Despite many evident political and practical challenges over the year ahead to achieve a treaty, there was much to gain strength from.

- Notably, civil society campaigning on cluster munitions has grown markedly in sophistication and effectiveness over the last 12 months, and this Conference added yet more impetus and energy.

- And, increasingly, affected countries - who are mostly developing countries with scant diplomatic resources and who are usually marginalized in discussions dominated by cluster munition user and producer states in the CCW - are speaking out too.

I was particularly affected by the story of one Serbian cluster munition survivor, a clearance expert like Branislav (I didn't catch his name) who lost an arm and a leg to a submunition. He told the Conference that initially he didn't want to talk about his experiences as a survivor, because he didn't think it could make a difference. Imagine what he must have been through, and yet be made to feel like that? But emerging international efforts, primarily the Oslo Process, had changed his mind, he said.

It's vital that we don't let these people down. As Emil Jeremić, Regional Representative of Norwegian People’s Aid in South East Europe told the Belgrade Conference, “Negotiating a ban treaty is not all about technical issues and military interests. It is first and foremost about protecting human lives”.

Next time you're told something can't be done, be reminded about the real costs of failing.


John Borrie


References

CMC Press Release, "Contaminated Countries Embrace Ban on Cluster Munitions" (2 October 2007).

Photo by John Borrie.

When is it acceptable to harm civilians?

My colleague John Borrie is in Belgrade this week participating in a meeting of States against whom cluster munitions have been used (he previewed the meeting in his last posting and will report back to this blog at the end of the week on how things went). The Belgrade meeting forms part of the so-called Olso Process on cluster munitions, which aims, by the end of 2008, to produce a new treaty banning cluster munitions that cause "unacceptable harm" to civilians.

As I suggested in a previous posting entitled, "Facing the facts on cluster munitions," the crux of the Oslo Process negotiations will be defining what "unacceptable harm to civilians" actually means. The fault-lines of this debate are already being drawn.

NGOs in the Cluster Munition Coalition claim that all cluster munitions cause unacceptable harm to civilians due to a combination of their wide-area affects at the time of use and to the fact that they leave behind unexploded duds that continue to kill civilians - a high proportion of them children - for years afterwards. The burden of proving that some cluster munitions do not cause unacceptable harm, argue the NGOs, falls on the governments who wish to continue using such weapons.

As the guardian of International Humanitarian Law - otherwise known as the Law of War - the International Committee of the Red Cross argues that what leads some cluster munitions to cause unacceptable harm to civilians is their inaccuracy and their unreliability. The ICRC suggests that technical solutions could be found to these problems, such as sensor fuzing, for example, or reducing the failure rates of sub-munitions. Harm to civilians could also be reduced by not using cluster munitions in, or even close to, civilian areas. At the core of these arguments is the international humanitarian law rule of proportionality, which balances military advantage against civilian casualties.

As for the States participating in the Oslo Process - now over 80 of them - most have still to declare their hand on this question and are most likely planning not to do so until the hard negotiating begins next year.

That is why the Belgrade meeting is so important. In Belgrade, over 20 States that have had cluster munitions used against them will share their experiences of living with the legacy of the attacks and of the explosive remnants left behind. This will be an important reality check for the Oslo Process; one that should persuade participating States to make up their minds sooner rather than later on the "acceptability" of the civilian harm caused by cluster munitions.

In the words of Branislav Kapetanovic, a Serbian clearance expert who lost both legs and arms in an accident while at work in 2000, "We know what it means to live through cluster bomb attacks and the consequences of unexploded submunitions, we know the painstaking and dangerous work it takes to clear them, and we know the challenges of assisting those who survive an accident caused by cluster bombs."

One may hope that, by the end of this week, this knowledge will be more widespread than it was before.


Patrick Mc Carthy


References

Cluster Munition Coalition press release on the Belgrade Conference of States Affected by Cluster Munitions, "Contaminated Countries Embrace Ban on Cluster Munitions" (2 October 2007).

Photo Credit: truelovecj on flickr

Cluster munitions: hearing the voices of the affected

Some years ago, in 2003, I wrote a global survey of explosive remnants of war for the British non-governmental organization (NGO), Landmine Action, to feed into work in the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).

The survey was a fairly preliminary piece of desk-research. It simply aimed at pulling together existing bits of information about explosive munitions (apart from landmines) that had been abandoned or failed to function as intended, in order to produce a 'snapshot' of the ERW problem around the world for the year 2001.

One of the survey's conclusions was that:

"cluster submunitions appear to pose an especially severe risk to civilians in the limited set of conflicts in which they have been used. This trend, associated with the face that cluster munitions are being procured or manufactured by an increasing number of countries, means that their post-conflict threat to civilians can be expected to further increase given the high failure rates and high lethality of this weapon type."

A great deal of research has been carried out since, and a wide range of sources only strengthen this finding. Although there's more research to be done, the reports that have been produced offer enough information to underline the problematic nature of cluster munition use, the most comprehensive recent report being Handicap International's 'Circle of Impact'. Moreover, the conflict in Southern Lebanon in 2006 underlined the humanitarian problems that cluster munitions create, whether used by professional military forces or armed non-state groups.

Unlike the anti-personnel mine ban campaign in the 1990s, the world - fortunately - doesn't yet face a cluster munition 'epidemic', although current trends being what they are this may well change. And, unlike anti-personnel mines, explosive submunitions are designed to kill rather than maim. So images of victims haven't been so prominent yet in international efforts to address the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions through a new treaty for at least two reasons: because there is a smaller pool of victims - for now, and so far as we know - and because more of that total pool of victims of cluster munitions are dead rather than injured. The dead simply don't tell their tales so emphatically.

A third reason is that, until now, there hasn't been an opportunity for states affected by cluster munitions to gather specifically in order to assess the human costs of cluster munitions around civilians.

Next week that will change. The government of Serbia is convening an international conference in Belgrade of states affected by cluster munitions, in which international organizations including the United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross, and NGOs (many of whom are member of the Cluster Munition Coalition) will also play a part.

The topics to be discussed at the Belgrade Conference will focus on three main elements:

- survivor assistance;

- explosive ordnance clearance; and

- international assistance and cooperation.

The aim is to allow affected countries to share experiences and jointly produce some recommendations - recommendations which are likely to be incorporated into the Oslo process, if not the CCW's work.

As Serbia itself has pointed out:

"The input of countries affected by cluster munitions is crucial in establishing a treaty that addresses the needs of cluster munition survivors. A future treaty must take into account the experiences, challenges and concerns faced by people who live with the everyday consequence of cluster munition attacks."

It sounds to me like disarmament as humanitarian action in practice. I'll be attending and will report back to you about it on this blog.


John Borrie

Analyzing armed violence: the Taback - Coupland model

Promoting human security will benefit from meaningful data. I recently attended a meeting organized by the Small Arms Survey (SAS) in Geneva, Switzerland, on the potential of using the Taback-Coupland model for human security mapping.


Nathan Taback, a Canadian statistician, and Robin Coupland, an advisor on armed violence at the International Committee of the Red Cross and former field surgeon, have developed a model that converts media reports into data in order to document and analyze the effects of armed violence.

The model is constructed around four parameters, which the researchers assume to be the “risk factors” for the effects of armed violence. It includes the nature of the weapon, the number of weapons used, the way the weapon is used, and the victim’s vulnerability. Coupland and Taback describe their model in a chapter of our third volume of research (“Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations”).

The idea is that, by extracting significant information from media reports – like the number of people killed, the number of people wounded, the type of weapon used, the number of weapons and the vulnerability of the victim (for instance, was there a wall to take shelter behind?) – then it’s possible to draw conclusions about the intent of the perpetrator.

This is pertinent to international criminal law. By providing a context, the Taback-Coupland model permits an “evidence-based” dialogue about the perpetrators and their intents and about the victims and their vulnerabilities.

A second way to use the model is to conduct probabilistic risk assessment of a country or a region and draw conclusions on which scenario is particularly risky for a specific vulnerable group.

Taback and Coupland tested their model using news reports on attacks on journalists, as these events tend to be well reported. Further applications – some already putting the model into practice, others at a preliminary stage – include a registry of explosive violence (Landmine Action UK), a registry of sexual violence in Democratic Republic of the Congo, and test-cases for country assessments carried out by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey (in Uganda, Nigeria, Mauritania and Nepal).

Many participants at the meeting pointed out the poor quality of media reports and their lack of reliability. However, although not comprehensive, media reports are the only day-to-day public source of information about human insecurity. While one should be be careful when using media reports, it’s sometimes the only information available and it’s nevertheless possible to glean useful information from it.

Moreover, a long-term perspective could be to develop the model as a tool for journalists, who could directly enter the relevant data of the events linked to armed violence they observe.

While there are international surveillance systems for monitoring infectious disease outbreaks, no such system exists (yet) to evaluate on a regular basis the effects of armed violence on peoples’ lives. With that in mind, the method developed by Taback and Coupland is a useful contribution to international efforts to enhance human security, including in disarmament.


Aurélia Merçay


References

Cost Working group meeting on Using the Taback-Coupland Method for Human Security Mapping in SAS Country Assessments, Small Arms Survey, Geneva, Switzerland, 3 September 2007.

Picture inspired by a scheme presented by Robin Coupland at the meeting.

For more information, see N. Taback & R. Coupland, “Security of journalists: making the case for modelling armed violence as a means to promote human security”, published in Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations.

For a further introduction to the thinking behind the Taback-Coupland model see Robin’s chapter in our first volume of research, entitled “Modelling armed violence: a tool for humanitarian dialogue in disarmament and arms control”.

0800-HOW-IS-MY-DIPLOMACY? Technology and humanitarian action

Regular readers of the Disarmament Insight blog will have gathered that, among many things, we're interested in the impacts of technology on international decision-making. Patricia Lewis, for instance, has offered some of her personal observations about the changes mobile phones and Blackberries have wrought on interactions in multilateral meetings she's attended (See "Zapped! Mobile technology in the conference chamber").

There seems little doubt that continued improvements to wireless communications have radical implications for the coordination of international activities at many different levels.

For instance, The Economist newspaper ran a story on 26 July entitled "Flood, Famine and Mobile Phones". In it, the Economist argued that technology is transforming humanitarian relief - and shifting the balance of power between donors and recipients.

It all sounds great. But the Economist conceded that - beyond anecdotal evidence - there isn't a definitive verdict yet on how much of a difference such new technologies have made in achieving more effective humanitarian aid delivery.

Nevertheless, the evidence has been compelling enough to result in a brace of new initiatives. Non-Governmental Organizations have begun forming consortiums like NetHope, which spreads the cost of satellite communications and internet links. UN agencies like UNICEF and the World Food Programme have taken a particular interest in trying to achieve practical benefits in aid delivery from better communications, activities which should (in principle at least) result in superior coordination.

Meanwhile, even in the poorest parts of the world, technologies like mobile telephony are increasingly widespread. It's likely that such technologies really do have the capacity to transform aid delivery in some disaster situations - if donors and deliverers of aid are willing to listen to feedback from aid recipients and, of course, if the technological infrastructure itself still works or can be made to work in the midst of the disaster (a big "if" indeed, and glossed over by The Economist).

There's also another, deeper, point here. Quite often, there's a temptation to think of disaster victims as passive beneficiaries of aid, who should be grateful for anything they get. This attitude has to change: the ability of affected people on the ground (or in the flood water) to contribute to the information loop and decision making about their own welfare is crucial to improving responses to disasters, whether natural, man-made or conflict-related. Packages dropped to people from relief helicopters are only aid if they're what those people actually need. (The Economist noted the NGO Save the Children's finding that, in some recent humanitarian relief situations, victims would prefer cash help to food hand-outs.)

In other words, accountability is important, even in apparent situations of altruistic giving like disaster relief. Accountability is something we would do well to bear in mind in disarmament and arms control. In a recent book, former British diplomat Carne Ross argued that diplomats are a largely "unaccountable elite", who often don't take into account the interests of those they are supposed to be helping or representing, drawing on his personal experiences in the UN Security Council setting.

It's possible Ross over-states his case in parts. But in multilateral arms control there does sometimes seem to be a considerable distance between negotiators and those affected by lack of multilateral results, for instance on controls on small arms or the humanitarian impacts of cluster munitions.

It's a bit like the white van driver who may not care if she drives inconsiderately or even dangerously. The vehicle she drives belongs to the business she works for - it's hard to identify her or make her accountable. So in places like the United States, lots of business vehicles now come with a "how am I driving?" sign on them along with a hotline telephone number. Is 0800-HOW-IS-MY-DIPLOMACY? connected to a television hotline or Parliament maybe?

One question we perhaps need to ask is this: How - beyond their convenience - can new technologies make decision makers more accountable, and therefore more effective in achieving disarmament and humanitarian goals? Domestic electorates know remarkably little about what their diplomatic representatives do on their behalf overseas, and might be surprised at the degree of preoccupation of multilateral practitioners with process. Voices from the field therefore need to be heard and heeded more often.


John Borrie


References

The Economist, "Flood Famine and Mobile Phones", 26 July 2007

Carne Ross, Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite, London: Hurst: 2007.

Photo (Namibia: Helicopter rescues people from flood hit areas, Image ID: 20044304) courtesy of IRIN.

Does Terrorism Work?

Over the last few months, I’ve been researching cognitive biases and how they influence our decision-making. I looked at the confirmation bias, which is the human tendency to seek out and process information that confirms our preexisting beliefs. I also examined the self-serving attributional bias; when we blame unfavorable outcomes on external causes but take credit for positive ones. A recent article I read talked about a different bias: correspondent inference theory.

Correspondent inference theory is the human tendency “to infer the motives – and also the disposition – of someone who performs an action based on the effects of his actions, and not on external or situational factors.” Paying attention to what those around you are doing makes “evolutionary sense” – most of the time, it pays to infer as quickly as possible the intentions of those around you.

But it doesn’t work all the time in building an accurate picture of what’s going on.

A recent paper, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work” by Max Abrahms, draws attention to how responses to terrorism are influenced by correspondent inference theory. First, let’s look at a lighthearted example to shed light on this.

In the 1985 movie comedy The Man with One Red Shoe (which, by the way, is a remake of the French film The Tall Blonde Man with One Black Shoe), the CIA believes that a random civilian (Tom Hanks) is a spy so they set about investigating his life to prove it.

In one scene, CIA operatives tear Hanks’ flat apart to try and find anything that would establish he is a spy, like disconnecting pipes in the bathroom to see if anything is hidden inside. As they rush to piece everything back together, they inadvertently connect the toilet pipe to the sink. When Hanks returns home, he repeatedly flushes the toilet trying to figure out why water comes out the sink spout. CIA officers, listening to this via the bugs they’ve planted, infer that he’s flushing evidence down the toilet. By misinterpreting what Hanks is doing, the CIA needlessly send an officer into the sewer to find this “evidence”.

More seriously, Abrahms’ paper draws attention to the fact that it is sometimes assumed that the goal of terrorist activities is to kill innocent people and so instill fear or economic instability in a population. These assertions, according to Abrahms’ analysis of the policy objectives of 28 terrorist groups, aren’t necessarily correct.

Many terrorist groups have avowed strategic goals. For example, Abrahms notes that al-Qaeda’s goals have been consistent (like ending American support of Israel and eliminating U.S. interference in Saudi Arabia). These goals, however, haven’t been achieved. In fact, Abrahms claimed overall that, out of the 42 policy objectives for these 28 groups, only 7 percent were achieved. The rest of the policy objectives were not achieved.

What was the deciding factor between objectives that were achieved and those that failed? Abrahms’ data revealed that the target of the terrorist attacks was important. Groups that attacked military and diplomatic targets more than civilians were more effective in achieving their ends. Out of the 19 groups that primarily targeted civilians, there were 28 policy objectives between them. Twenty-five of these objectives were not achieved, and only limited progress was made toward achieving three.

Abrahms’ explanation for this effect rests on correspondent inference theory. High numbers of civilian casualties from terrorism lead citizens and governments alike to infer that the aim of terrorist groups is to kill innocent civilians and disrupt their way of life. This inferred “maximalist” agenda makes them more steadfast in their resolve not to negotiate with terrorists. As a result, the stated goals of the terrorist groups tend to go unmet.

Terrorism against civilians, it seems, isn’t a very effective tactic and, if Abrahms is correct, is even counter-productive if its aim is to compel governments to change their policies to meet the terrorists’ goals. Unfortunately, such terrorism goes on nonetheless.


Ashley Thornton


References

Wired Magazine, “The Evolutionary Brain Glitch That Makes Terrorism Fail”. 12 July 2007: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/
securitymatters/2007/07/securitymatters_0712

Max Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work.” International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2006).
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.31.2.42

Photo by "shoothead" retrieved from Flickr.com.