Failed States: The Need for a Realistic Transition in Afghanistan

By Musa Khan Jalalzai

Failed or failing states cause concern and spread chaos to their neighbors. They are an unquestionable and authentic source of terrorism, organized crime, drug trafficking, violence, disease, and economic breakdown. Afghanistan is an example of such a troubled state, which collapsed in 1992.
The Afghan state remained shattered and failed due to the inattention of the international coalition. In modern intellectual forums, most of the failed-state discourses are centered on the lack of a state's capacity to carry out the basic services for which it is responsible, such as the rule of law, good governance, and effective border control against external threats.
This book is a collection of articles on various issues leading to the Failed States written by eminent scholars and researchers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Release date: Apr 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9789389620214

Musa Khan Jalalzai

Musa Khan Jalalzai is a journalist and research scholar. He has written extensively on Afghanistan, terrorism, nuclear and biological terrorism, human trafficking, drug trafficking, and intelligence research and analysis. He was an Executive Editor of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan from 2005-2011, and a permanent contributor in Pakistan's daily The Post, Daily Times, and The Nation, Weekly the Nation, (London). However, in 2004, US Library of Congress in its report for South Asia mentioned him as the biggest and prolific writer. He received Masters in English literature, Diploma in Geospatial Intelligence, University of Maryland, Washington DC, certificate in Surveillance Law from the University of Stanford, USA, and a diploma in Counterterrorism from Pennsylvania State University, California, the United States.

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Introduction

Failed or failing states cause concern and spread chaos to their neighbours. They are an unquestionable and authentic source of terrorism, organized crime, drugs trafficking, violence, disease, and economic breakdown. Afghanistan is an example of such a troubled state, which collapsed in 1992. The country remained without a functioning state for more than eight years. In 2001, after the US and NATO invasion, an artificial state was established to serve their own interests. They also reinvented artificial institutions; such as the mercenary army, rogue intelligence infrastructure, militias police and corrupt judiciary, and handed over all these incompetent institutions to artificial people (warlords, war criminals, suspected terrorists and extremist) who adopted war as a profitable business. Eighteen years after the US and NATO brutal war, the security and political situation in the country remained irksome, and the artificial Afghan state has been on the brink.

The US army failed to control Afghanistan due to its fighting weaknesses, brutalities, atrocities, Dog-Rape culture, flawed security approach, and sarcastic intelligence infrastructure that never brought Gallus-Gallus to their military command. New York Times, in its recent report (09 December 2019) exposed the real transmogrified face of CIA and Pentagon in the country. The Washington Post also made public a trove of secret US government documents which revealed that the country’s senior civil and military officials put out of sight evidence on how the war had become unwinnable. The documents comprised hundreds of interviews with key figures involved in the almost two-decade-long war and were conducted as part of a federal ‘Lessons Learned’ project to examine the root failures of US authorities in the conflict-collected by the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR).

What did we get for this $1 trillion effort? Was it worth $1 trillion? said Jeffrey Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL and White House official under the Bush and Obama administration, in another interview, Osama was probably laughing in his watery grave considering how much we have spent. Many officials described a sustained effort by the US government to put out of sight the truth from the American public and Afghan government. Bob Crowley, a US Army colonel who served as a counterinsurgency adviser in Afghanistan said: Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible.

On 9 Dec 2019, Peter Beaumont reported hundreds of confidential interviews with key figures involved in prosecuting the 18-year US war in Afghanistan. Transcripts of the interviews, published by the Washington Post after a three-year legal battle, were collected for a Lessons Learned project by the SIGAR. The 2,000 pages of documents revealed the bleak and unvarnished views of many insiders in a war that costed out $1tn (£760bn) and killed more than 2,300 US servicemen and women, with more than 20,000 injured. Tens of thousands of Afghan were killed by the US and NATO forces intentionally and still continues to inflict fatalities on civilian population. John Sopko, the head of SIGAR, told Washington Post about the assessments contained in the project suggested that the American people were constantly been lied to. The documents, retrieved by Washington Post went to federal courts to ask for the interview transcripts, identify only 62 of the people interviewed. A total of 366 other names were redacted after SIGAR insisted they should be treated as whistleblowers and informants.

The Afghan state remained shattered and failed due to the inattention of international coalition. In modern intellectual forums, most of the failed-state discourses are centered on the lack of a state’s capacity to carry out the basic services for which it is responsible, such as the rule of law, good governance, and effective border control against external threats. A characteristic of state failure presents a quite different picture in Europe and Asia. The present-day states are facing countless challenges due to the expanding matrix of terrorism, radicalization, economic downfall and internal security turmoil. The fluctuation of financial market also causes a different type of societies and classes of citizens. However, the present Afghan, Somali, Sudanese and Iraqi states present the same picture of state failure. Sunni-Shia conflict and civil war divided Iraq on sectarian bases. In Syria, foreign involvement, and sectarian confrontations tortured state institutions with the sticks of corruption, sectarianism and civil war. Increasingly, weak state legitimacy is understood to be a key defining characteristic of fragility. States that fail to meet basic needs and to keep societal expectations and state capacity in equilibrium can also fail to establish reciprocal state-society relations or create a binding social contract. Expert Hideaki Shinoda has painted a brilliant picture of failed states and state-building process and argues that armed conflict and civil war cause state failure, while state without social foundations cannot sustain:

There are usually many fragile elements, including armed conflicts, in such a process. In the process, we will be able to see a long-term process of state-building, which covers conflict-prone states in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Developing countries, de-colonized in the process of the formation of ‘world international society’, constitute the conflict zone of the contemporary world, stretching from Africa to South East Asia. The fragility of these states can be explained in terms of the rapid universalization within an international society of sovereign nation-states in the 20th century after the geographical expansion of European international society in the 19th century. Armed conflicts, seen from a historical perspective, are not occasional appearances of ‘holes’ in a once-complete international society, but rather the constant appearances of hidden structural tasks in our ‘world international society’. There are similarities and differences between state formation in modern times and state-building in the contemporary world. Nation-states, including modern European states and latecomers, such as the United States and Japan, overcame the social structure of internal armed conflicts by joining an international society, where they exposed themselves to compete with other states. Until the 19th century, competition among nation-states was not just a sad reality; it was part of nation state-building itself. In contrast, state-building activities in post-conflict societies in the contemporary world are promoted by international assistance. Armed conflicts tend to take place in geographically specific areas where fragile states are accumulated. First of all, most of them occur as internal conflicts in states that became independent in the latter half of the 20th century on the tide of decolonization. Namely, the conflicts have been mainly happening in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. Their social foundations to sustain sound governmental functions have been rather weak and in fact, have been fragile since their independence. There are some more specific trends. Southern Africa and South East Asia were significantly volatile during and shortly after the Cold War. But these areas are now comparatively stable. On the other hand, the center of the world’s conflict zone is now the Middle East, especially since the Arab Spring. Africa, especially North Africa and the Sahel, remains volatile, even though African states are performing comparatively better now than previously.

Rosa Brooks paper also elucidates the process of state failure and poor track record of states and the state-centric international system: State failure-as exemplified by the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, etc. causes a wide range of humanitarian, legal, and security problems. Unsurprisingly, given the state-centric international legal system, responses to state failure tend to focus on restoring failed states to the status of successful states, through a range of short and long-term nation-building efforts. In large part, this is because most failed states were never successful states to begin with. Indeed, the state itself is a recent and historically contingent development, as is an international legal system premised on state sovereignty. Both states and the state-centric international system have poor track records in creating stability or democratic accountability.

The Crisis States Research Centre similarly defined a fragile state as one that is significantly susceptible to crisis in one or more of its sub-systems and particularly vulnerable to internal and external shocks and domestic and international conflicts (2007). Warlord states, such as Afghanistan and Libya are states where virtually all powers are channeled through a very real and highly organised (but not formally recognised) patronage system based on rulers’ control over resources and violence. Failure to deliver basic services including security, health, education and justice is understood as both a cause and characteristic of fragility; states that fail to meet a society’s basic needs.

In Libya, international intervention, tribalism and internal turmoil damaged the state. The war still continues to inflict fatalities on civilian population, while warring factions have established states within the state. All the above-cited states are still facing numerous challenges, and their weak and failed infrastructure is unable to manage conflicts, economy, and disorderliness and disorganization of social stratifications. A Compact of ideas have emerged to elucidate states that do not live up with common understandings of how states work, and how they deliver, ranging from collapsed, failed, and failing states, to fragile, rogue and sarcastic states, troubling partnership, and low-income state.

These ideas have often been used in different forms. State failure is a source of international insecurity elucidated by Rotberg in his well-written paper that the nature of weak and failed states correlates with the optimum habitat that terrorist organizations often seek. According to Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson; Some countries fail spectacularly, with a total collapse of all state institutions. What’s tragic is that this failure is by design. Modern debate on failed states begins to reflect on the importance of cities and the urban environment in the context of failed states. To elucidate causes of fragile, collapsed and failed states analyst Pureza (2005) argues: there is an absence of deep knowledge of local realities in line with the view that the literature privileges a uniformity of perception of fragility, constantly accompanied by one size solution. Researchers Monty G. Marshall and Benjamin have spotlighted contributing factors, and different concepts of state failure:

The concept of state failure has thus been epistemologically challenged nearly since its invention, affecting its use and analysis in both academic and policy circles and, perhaps, as many critics have argued, the way we understand the nature of and prospects for resolving the problem. At its core, however, the concept of state failure combines two research streams that had previously remained largely separate in Western thinking: state-building and economic development. What remained largely missing was the external, systemic influences emphasized by the dependencia critics of the Western developmental approach who argued that non-Western countries face unique hurdles to development stemming from both the historical legacies of colonialism and the uneven development of states comprising the world system. (Wallerstein 1974) Western approaches tend to presume that the legacy of the past is simply a quid pro quo, that is, that the uneven development of states is the natural result of political decisions and trade-offs made in the past that can be remedied in the future. What is perhaps the most pertinent take-away from the world-systems approach is Wallerstein’s idea of the politically relevant world as defining one’s preferred approach to understanding how that world works. For the world’s weaker states, their world may not extend much beyond their own borders; for stronger states, their world may include neighboring states or even extend across a geographic or cultural region; for more advanced states, their world may extend to include both a regional focus and a number of trading partners and strategic rivals in other regions; and for the strongest states, their world may extend across the globe and, even, beyond. States with global interests have strong incentives to better understand how the whole world works. More recent attempts to categorize and measure a broader class of weak, fragile, failing, failed, and recovering states, have recognized security as only one of several dimensions of state performance. Indeed, societal-systems analysis treats the state as a complex adaptive system, and state fragility and failure as the inhibition or collapse of such a system. The outbreak of violence contributes to systemic problems, but state fragility or failure could plausibly occur without violence, or with minimal violence. Indeed, the State Fragility Index includes only one category for exposure to violent conflict, which accounts for less than one-eighth of the scale; in practice, most fragility, and changes in fragility, is derived from other areas of systemic performance, such as economic, social, and political factors.

As mentioned earlier, states with weak and fractured infrastructure, unhealthy political and social stratification, normally demonstrate in opposite directions while their policies and strategies are not representing all social colours. The debate on fragile urban infrastructure, unemployment, poverty and social disobedience also contribute to the weakness of the state. There are different types of states in their capacity and capability. We have two kind of states; weak states and strong states. Weak states as we have already spotlighted are of low capacity to deliver, and strong states are competent, resourceful and reformed. These kinds of states and their institutions deliver services properly.

Failed states designate the consequences of a process of decay at the nation-state level. The capacity of those nation-states to perform positively for their citizens has become emaciated. State collapse or failure is the collapse of a state’s political structure and the state loses power to control its inner pain. Internal turmoil, political rivalries and foreign interference that support state failure usually stem from or have roots in ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other inter-communal enmity. Every nation-state fails due to its internal breakdown and economic collapse, and they are unable to deliver positively-because their control over territory is weak and their pillars are staggering. We have so many examples of state failure in Asia and Africa, where conflicts and civil wars caused migration, fatalities and economic breakdown. We have taken the case of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq and Libya where foreign interventions and internal conflicts damaged the state structure.

Robert I. Rotberg in his well-written book Failed States, Collapsed States, Weak States: Causes and Indicators has described some causes of state failure: In times of terror, moreover, appreciating the nature of and responding to the dynamic of nation-state failure have become central to critical policy debates.⁴ We have more than dozen of weak states in South and Southeast Asia, where citizens live in hardship, but corruption and detachment of successive governments further adding to their pain. Robert I. Rotberg is on the opinion that authorities in failed states are too weak and incompetent to secure borders, and this incompetency results in the loss of authority over a portion of the territory. He says; weak state typically harbour-ethnic, religions, linguistic, or other inter-communal tensions that have not yet, or not yes thoroughly, become overtly violent.

Marika Theros and Mary Kaldor (The Logics of Public Authority: Understanding Power, Politics and Security in Afghanistan, 2002–2014) in their research paper has painted a good picture of President Karzai’s selection in the Bonn Conference. His weakness and exploitable aspect of his personality was an important for the interests of US and NATO forces to use him easily for strengthening their hegemony in Afghanistan. After the fall of the Taliban regime, international community invested billions of dollars on security and reconstruction programs aimed at ending conflict and strengthening state legitimacy, but Afghanistan’s public authority and security landscapes remained highly variegated and often fragmented at national and sub-national levels:

Ironically, Karzai was propelled to power under the US-sponsored Bonn agreement precisely because he was considered a weak, and therefore exploitable, choice with a limited domestic network of independent support. It was this perceived weakness that convinced Northern Alliance commanders to give their consent to the preferred US candidate. When he became head of the Transitional Administration in 2002, he inherited a barely existent government with limited coercive capabilities and control over financial resources (Mukhopadhyay 2016). The elite settlement at Bonn, paired with the US decision to block the expansion of NATO forces beyond Kabul in 2002, further complicated his attempts to extend his authority and regulate inherited political arrangements in the provinces. His vulnerabilities were compounded by aid practices – including vast security assistance – that created an ‘aid-and-war economy’ which largely bypassed central government officials and channelled resources directly into the coffers of sub-national elites (Suhrke 2013: 275–6). What aid did flow through the central government was heavily ear-marked, further constraining Karzai’s budgetary authority for policy-making. The logic of a decentralized, rentier political marketplace was central to shaping presidential strategies for power and political survival. Within this marketplace, Karzai was only one of the newest entrants in a somewhat crowded field; and he controlled limited resources.

The Afghan failed and corrupt state is teetering on the brink. Internal political turmoil has worsened as differences over the power-sharing formula increased. Ethno-sectarian violence and the brinkmanship of the ruling class have further worsened the situation. The exponentially growing power of Daesh in northern and eastern Afghanistan and Taliban’s influence in the south means that the government and its allies have failed to bring stability to the country. In 2018, a Pandora box opened with the abrupt diatribe of Afghan Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum hammering President Ashraf Ghani for his wrongly designed ethnic policy, nepotism and power monopoly. Mr Dostum censured Abdullah for his failure to act independently. He also expressed dissatisfaction over the ethnic policy of the president and said: If you speak in Pashtu with President Ghani, you will be a good person, and if you speak Pashtu and you are from the Logar province, then you are a very good person.

Mr. Dostum also accused former NDS Chief Muhammad Masoom Stanekzai for making things worse, and criticised unmerited appointments within the armed forces: The corps commander for the north does not deserve his post, and he wants to paint General Dostum as a weak leader in the north and isolate him with their inappropriate behaviour… The jihadist figures appointed by President Ghani and Mr. Abdullah on key military posts had never seen a military base and could not command even 100 soldiers. We have many experienced generals in our country who are out of job. Why aren’t they appointed on military posts? The 50 percent distribution of power is totally wrong, and this way of governance leads soldiers to death. However, President’s Special Advisor for Governance Reforms, Ahmad Zia Massoud, accused Ghani of nepotism, and warned that his policy may further exacerbate ethnic tensions: What is good in this that I am in government as a Tajik and I bring all Tajiks to the government? This created a reaction. And what is good in this that a Pashtun is head of the state and then he appoints all Pashtuns in government offices? This is not good, and it creates a reaction from other ethnic groups.

In response to the vice President’s accusations, the office of the President termed the outburst as unexpected and said such accusations did not befit General Dostum. At present, Afghanistan has become a typical case of ethnic discrimination. Ethnic groups are more powerful in arms and fighting capabilities than the army of the country. In majority provinces, every powerful government official and military commander appoints members of his own ethnic groups to strengthen his position. In intelligence agencies like the NDS and RAMA and defence intelligence, Tajiks and Pashtuns are dominant, while Hazara and Uzbeks have one percent representation. On 01 September 2016, the funeral ceremony of Bacha Saqao turned violent in Kabul, in which at least one person was killed and several others were injured. The king’s supporters were mainly Tajiks who were later attacked by General Dostum’s supporters.

The role of state and private media is seen suspicious as it covers language-related topics. Television and radio channels spread prejudice, racism and discrimination day and night. Ethnic tension between Pashtuns and Hazaras and between Tajiks and Pashtuns in Northern provinces is openly discussed in talk shows. The recent tension renewed memories of the country’s long-running ethnic conflict that culminated in 1990s and continued till the end of the Taliban regime in 2001. The ethnic politics of government failed. Mr. Abdullah openly criticised Mr. Ghani for his ethnic favouritism. In Mazar-e-Sharif, Kunduz, Ghor, Baghlan and Takhar provinces, Pashtuns were humiliated, and their land was grabbed by Uzbek and Tajik war criminals.

Afghanistan is now caught up in a much broader series of violence. Afghan scholar, Dr. Zaman Stanizai, views the current ethnic conflict in the country as an unidentified and unaddressed issue: The current Afghan crisis is neither correctly identified nor adequately addressed. Pashtuns, who constitute the cohesive core of the otherwise ethnically diverse Afghan society, have earned the distinction of the most resistant for a reason. Like any other majority in any other state, they shoulder a heavier responsibility. The alienation of the majority will neither win hearts and minds nor will it help build institutions for a viable democracy.

Ethnic violence has created a hostile environment across Afghanistan. Pashtuns are being subjected to violence and torture in northern Afghanistan. Afghans who returned from Pakistan face violence and harassment and are struggling to survive in their own country, but regional warlords are not willing to allow them to return to their hometowns. There are more than two million internally displaced Afghans who also face the wrath of war criminals and private militia commanders. A number of Afghan parliamentarians from the Kunduz province accused the national unity government and its armed forces for supporting terrorist organisations like ISIS and Taliban. They alleged that military commanders were providing arms, financial assistance and sanctuaries to terrorists, and transported their suicide bombers to their destinations. These were some of the most disturbing accusations in the Afghan history on the floor of parliament.

The MPs also accused the Afghan National Army (ANA) commanders for handing over dozens of check posts along with sophisticated arms to the Taliban. An MP from the Kunduz province, Miss Fatima Aziz said that defence and interior affairs ministries failed to maintain security and law and order in the country. She also accused police commanders for facilitating Taliban against ANA positions. All Afghan officials in the Kunduz province, including the ANA, police and local government officials in cooperation with the people from central government, handed the city to the Taliban, said Miss Aziz. The Afghan opposition perceived disagreement between colours, and poor performance of the state as a reason Kunduz city fell to the Taliban. Moreover, prominent military analyst, Javed Kohistani, hammered the ANA for selling weapons to the Taliban. We have evidence that prove there are people inside the security forces that sell weapons and checkpoints to the Taliban and let their fellow colleagues being arrested by insurgents. There is the type of betrayal that exists among the security forces, especially the local police, said Mr Kohistani.

Other MPs also levelled the same accusations against ANA commanders and local administration. Lack of a coherent strategy in the Kunduz province and corruption are the bigger challenges [there], said Mirdad Nijrabi, head of internal security committee in parliament. Governor of the Kunduz province, Assadullah Omar Khel, slammed Vice Chief of Army Staff, General Murad Ali for the collapse of the city. I asked that first we should clear the entire city, but General Murad did not accept my suggestions and acted according to his own plan… In these attacks the people of Kunduz suffered a lot, said the governor. However, the Chief of the Afghan intelligence agency, NDS, apologised for his failure to counter Taliban insurgents. Muhammad Masoom Stanekzai acknowledged that the government failed to intercept the Taliban outside the Kunduz city.

This way of kleptocratic governance does not benefit the poor and insecure people of Afghanistan, a country where public aspirations are not respected, and national interests are not considered the top priority. The business of war and destruction has been more profitable in Afghanistan where American and Afghan warlords are dancing side by side. The current situation in the country is worse than at any time since 2001. State has failed. Today, the Taliban control more than 40 percent of Afghanistan, and target not just the capital but also provinces across the country. According to the report of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the issue of ghost soldiers has been too irksome. SIGAR also expressed concern about the war in the south and the north, and warned that the US money provided to the Afghan security forces could be pocketed by Afghan military commanders under the guise of paying soldiers who have deserted, died or never existed.

The growing military and political influence of Daesh in Afghanistan, and Taliban’s influence in the south means that the government and its allies have failed to bring stability to Afghanistan. On 01 Mach 2017, Taliban attacked Afghan capital, in which military recruitment centre was targeted. Taliban claimed that several people were killed and wounded. In an attack Taliban also targeted a unit intelligence office. Afghan military commanders in Helmand province admitted that their colleagues were selling weapons to Taliban. Afghan National Army (ANA) spokesman said that the sellers of heavy weapons were their military commanders who had open access to weapon depots. In the tail-end, all these failures and changing aspects of state in Afghanistan has been defined by Zubair Popalzai in his well-written paper:

State weakness, failure, and collapse have been defined in a number of ways, which are often overlapping and controversial. A state can be defined as weak when it lacks the capacities to penetrate society, regulate social relationships, extract resources, and appropriate or use resources in determined ways. Where these capacities are high, states are, in Mann’s terms, possessed of infrastructural power. Weak states, which lack this infrastructural power, are rather based on despotic power as state officials centralize, or try to centralize, decision-making rather than embed it in society. State failure, on the other hand, is difficult to define authoritatively and the distinctions drawn by scholars between state weakness and failure are controversial, at best, because the difference between a weak state and a failed state can be eroded by time and practice. The Crisis State Research Centre defines state failure as a condition of ‘state collapse’—e.g., a state that can no longer perform its basic security and development functions and that has no effective control over its territory and borders. In a failed state, the structure, authority (legitimate power), law and political order have fallen apart and must be reconstituted in some form, old or new. Rotberg notes that, in failed states, ruling cadres increasingly oppress, extort, and harass the majority of their own compatriots while privileging a more narrowly based party, clan, or sect. Armstrong and Rubin conceptualize state failure as the transformation of public power into privately held and often fragmented power, although sometimes individuals within a regime fragment and disperse power to weaken resistance to their regime and entrench themselves."

Musa Khan Jalalzai

January 2020, London

Chapter - 1

Weak States and Global Threats: Assessing

Evidence of Spillovers

Stewart Patrick

Abstract

A key motivation behind recent donor attention and financial resources devoted to developing countries is the presumed connection between weak and failing states, on the one hand, and a variety of transnational threats, on the other. Indeed, it has become conventional wisdom that poorly performing states generate multiple cross-border spillovers, including terrorism, weapons proliferation, organized crime, regional instability, global pandemics, and energy insecurity. What is striking is how little empirical evidence underpins such sweeping assertions.

A closer look suggests that the connection between state weakness and global threats is less clear and more variable than typically assumed. Both the type and extent of spillovers depend in part on whether the weakness in question is a function of state capacity, will, or a combination of the two. Moreover, a preliminary review suggests that some trans-border threats are more likely to emerge not from the weakest states but from stronger states that possess narrower but critical gaps in capacity and will. Crafting an effective U.S. and international strategy towards weak states and the cross-border spillovers they sometimes generate will depend on a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms linking these two sets of phenomena. The challenge for analysts and policymakers will be to get greater clarity about which states are responsible for which threats and design development and other external interventions accordingly. This paper represents an initial foray in this direction, suggesting avenues for future research and policy development.

1. Introduction

It has become commonplace to assert that the gravest dangers to U.S. and world security are no longer military threats from rival great powers but transnational threats emanating from the world’s most poorly governed countries. Since the end of the Cold War, weak and failing states have arguably become the single most important problem for international order, writes Francis Fukuyama.² Official Washington agrees. Nations that are incapable of exercising responsible sovereignty, says Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have a spillover effect in the form of terrorism, weapons proliferation and other dangers.³ This new focus on weak and failing states represents an important shift in U.S. threat perceptions. Before 9/11, U.S. policymakers viewed states with sovereignty deficits primarily through a humanitarian lens: they piqued our moral conscience but possessed little strategic significance. Al Qaeda’s ability to act with impunity from Afghanistan changed this calculus, convincing the Bush Administration that the United States today is threatened less by conquering states than we are by weak and failing ones.⁴

This new threat perception has quickly become conventional wisdom at home and abroad. Government officials, academics and the media have linked poorly performing developing countries to a vast array of threats to global security and well-being, from transnational terrorism to international crime, humanitarian catastrophes, regional instability, global pandemics, mass migration and environmental degradation.⁵

The New Conventional Wisdom

The attacks of September 11, 2001 reminded us that weak states can threaten our security as much as strong ones, by providing breeding grounds for extremism and havens for criminals, drug traffickers and terrorists. Such lawlessness abroad can bring devastation here at home.

-- Richard Haass, State Department Director of Policy Planning

(January 14, 2003)

When development and governance fail in a country, the consequences engulf entire regions and leap across the world. Terrorism, political violence, civil wars, organized crime, drug trafficking, infectious diseases, environmental crises, refugee flows and mass migration cascade across the borders of weak states more destructively than ever before.

--USAID, Foreign Aid in the National Interest: Promoting

Freedom, Security and Opportunity (2003)

Failed and failing states and those emerging from conflict pose one of today’s greatest security challenges. They are breeding grounds for terrorism, crime, trafficking, and humanitarian catastrophes, and can destabilize an entire region. Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, U.S. Department of State (2005) The idea that weak states can compromise security--most obviously by providing havens for terrorists but also by incubating organized crime, spurring waves of migrants, and undermining global efforts to control environmental threats and disease--is no longer much contested. Washington Post, June 9. 2004 Successful international actions to battle poverty, fight infectious disease, stop transnational crime, rebuild after civil war, reduce terrorism and halt the spread of dangerous materials all require capable, responsible States as partners. Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, Our Secure World (2004)

If states are fragile, the peoples of the world will not enjoy the security, development, and justice that are their right. Therefore, one of the great challenges of the new millennium is to ensure that all states are strong enough to meet the many challenges that they face. Kofi Annan, In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All (2005). Failed or failing states are among the great challenges of our age…They spread chaos to their neighbors and beyond. They are unquestionable and authentic sources of terrorism, organized crime, drugs, disease, and refugees…Something needs to be done. Yet nobody quite knows what. Mark Turner and Martin Wolf, The Dilemma of Fragile States, Financial Times, February 18, 2005

This new strategic orientation has already begun to have policy and institutional consequences. At home, it has informed recent U.S. defence, intelligence, diplomatic, development and even trade initiatives. The latest National Defense Strategy departs from a traditional focus on interstate war by calling on the U.S. military to strengthen the sovereign capacities of weak states to control their territories and combat the internal threats of terrorism, insurgency and organized crime.⁶ Beyond expanded training of foreign security forces, the Pentagon is seeking interagency buy-in for a comprehensive U.S. strategy to address the world’s ungoverned areas.⁷

The Central Intelligence Agency which has identified 50 such zones globally, is devoting new collection assets to long-neglected parts of the world.⁸ The National Intelligence Council is helping the State Department’s new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization identify states at risk of collapse, so that the office can launch conflict prevention and mitigation efforts.⁹ Not to be outdone, the US Agency for International Development has formulated its own Fragile States Strategy to bolster countries that may otherwise breed terror, crime, instability and disease.¹⁰

The Bush administration has even justified trade liberalization initiatives like the Central American Free Trade Area as a means to prevent state failure and its associated transnational threats.¹¹ This new preoccupation with weak states is not limited to the United States. In Great Britain, the Prime Minister’s strategy unit has advocated a government-wide approach to stabilizing fragile countries that might otherwise generate global ills ranging from uncontrolled migration to organized crime.¹² Governments in Canada and Australia are following suit. The United Nations has been likewise engaged. The unifying theme of the past year’s UN reform proposals was the need for effective sovereign states to deal with today’s global security agenda.¹³ Whether the threat is terror or AIDS, a threat to one is a threat to all, Kofi Annan has stressed. Our defenses are only as strong as their weakest link.¹⁴ Sharing this concern, UN member states in September 2005 endorsed the creation of a new Peace-building Commission to help war-torn states recover.¹⁵ The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD has been similarly seized, launching a Fragile States initiative in cooperation with the Low-income Countries under Stress (LICUS) program at the World Bank.¹⁶

The underlying message of all these efforts, as former Congressman Lee Hamilton notes, is that our collective security depends on the security of the world’s most vulnerable places.¹⁷ What is striking is how little empirical evidence underpins these assertions and policy developments. Analysts and policymakers alike have simply presumed the existence of a blanket connection between state weakness and threats to the national security of developed countries and have begun to recommend and implement policy responses.

They have rarely stopped to distinguish among categories of weak and failing states or to ask whether particular types of developing countries are linked to distinct threats. Nor have scholars or policymakers seriously considered or measured reverse causality: the prospect that transnational forces may weaken governance capacities in the developing world -- a subject that merits extensive study in its own right.¹⁸ Answering these questions will be essential for donors seeking to design effective policy interventions aimed at building state capacity and advancing global collective security. Too often, it appears that the entire range of Western policies toward poorly governed states is being animated by anecdotal evidence and isolated examples, like al Qaeda’s operations in Afghanistan or cocaine trafficking in Colombia, rather than by a deeper understanding of global patterns and of causal connections across a range of case studies.

The risk in this approach is that scarce energy and resources may be squandered in a diffuse and unfocused effort to attack state weakness wherever it arises, without appropriate attention to setting priorities and individualizing responses to state failure and its attendant specific spillovers. Before embracing a new strategic vision and investing in new initiatives, the United States and other donors should submit such sweeping claims of conventional wisdom to sober, detailed analysis. The ultimate goal of this fine-grained approach should be to determine which states are associated with which dangers. Such a line of inquiry would also help to integrate two separate streams of policy-relevant research: on state-building and on new security threats.

In recent years scholars have explored the causes and consequences of state weakness and failure,¹⁹ emphasizing the importance of building capable states and legitimate structures of governance to prevent the collapse into conflict and facilitate sustainable recovery from violence.²⁰ At the same time, few experts have explored the relationship between state weakness and cross-border spillovers. Moreover, most state-building research focuses on supporting generic state structures, rather than on building capacities most relevant to stemming and transforming those transnational threats.²¹ Similarly, analysts and policymakers have become preoccupied by the rise of non-traditional security threats, from terrorism to organized crime, global pandemics, energy insecurity, and even threats to human security, and by the practical challenges of managing such problems at the global level.²². They have also sought to identify long-term drivers of global instability like demographic pressures, economic dislocation and inequality, health crises, environmental degradation, and to better understand how these might undermine development, breed conflict, and threaten U.S. and global security.²³ Yet few scholars have analyzed how these emerging threats relate to poor state performance.²⁴

Clarifying the connection between these two sets of phenomena is critical not only to advancing collective security but also to promoting global development. It is the inhabitants of the developing world, above all, that bear the main brunt of state weakness and its attendant spillovers. Many low-income countries simply do not possess the institutional capacity and/or will to deliver the basic political goods required to achieve sustainable development. Lacking even minimal levels of resilience, they are more vulnerable than rich nations to illicit networks of terrorists or criminals, cross-border conflict, and devastating pandemics. For the inhabitants of these countries, the route out of poverty must include the creation of states capable of performing basic functions, including arresting or transforming transnational forces. This working paper seeks to initiate such a conversation. It concludes that weak states do often incubate and generate global threats, but that this correlation is far from universal. Crafting a more effective U.S. and international strategy towards state weakness in the developing world and the cross-border spillovers it sometimes generates will depend on a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms linking these two sets of phenomena.

Defining Weak and Failing States

The initial task is to identify the population of weak and failing states. State strength is a relative concept. It can be measured by the state’s ability and willingness to provide fundamental political goods associated with statehood, notably: physical security, legitimate political institutions, economic management, and social welfare. Around the world many states have critical capacity gaps in one or more of these four areas of governance, broadly conceived. In effect, they possess legal but not empirical sovereignty.²⁵ In the security realm; they struggle to maintain a monopoly on the use of force, provide security from external and internal threats, control borders and territory, ensure public order and provide safety from crime. In the political realm, they lack legitimate governing institutions that provide checks on political power, protect basic rights and freedoms, hold leaders accountable, deliver impartial justice and efficient administration, and permit broad citizen participation. In the economic realm, they strain to carry out basic macroeconomic and fiscal policies and lack a legal and regulatory climate conducive to entrepreneurship, private enterprise, open trade, natural resource management, foreign investment and economic growth.

Finally, they are unable or unwilling to meet the basic needs of their populations by making even minimal investments in health, education and other social services.²⁶ But not all weak states look alike far from it. They range along a spectrum from collapsed states, such as Somalia, which have gaps in all four capacities, to fragile good performers, like Senegal. In between we find a number of states that are struggling on many fronts or muddling through. Not by coincidence, weak and failing states tend to be among those states farthest from eligibility for the Millennium Challenge Account, which ranks states according to their commitment to ruling justly, investing in people, and promoting economic freedom.

State weakness is not just a question of capacity, but also of will. History provides repeated examples of corrupt, venal or incompetent regimes --Zimbabwe under Mugabe comes to mind²⁷ -- that have driven promising countries into the ground.²⁸ By distinguishing between capacity and commitment, we can differentiate four broad categories of states: (1) good performers with both the will and the way; (2) states that are weak but willing; (3) states that have the means but not the commitment; and (4) those with neither the will nor the way. Such analytical distinctions have policy utility, informing the mix of incentives that external actors can deploy in engaging poor performers. The goal is to move weak states toward the upper left quadrant, either by filling capacity gaps, persuading unreconstructed elites to mend their ways -- or both.

Capacity and will as dimensions of state weakness in developing countries

Strong Will

High Capacity Good Performers (e.g., Senegal, Honduras)

Low Will

Unresponsive/Corrupt/Repressive (e.g., Burma, Zimbabwe)

Low Capacity: Weak but willing (e.g., Mozambique, East Timor)

Weak-Weak (e.g., Haiti, Sudan)

Compared to other developing countries, weak and failing states are more prone to suffer from low growth and are among the developing countries farthest from the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals.²⁹ That is, their inhabitants are more likely to be poor and malnourished, live with chronic illness and die young, lack access to education and basic health care, suffer gender discrimination, and lack access to modern technology. They are also disproportionately at risk of violence and humanitarian crises, both natural and man-made.³⁰ The World Bank estimates that fragile states are fifteen times more prone to civil war than OECD countries, and such violence is both more extreme and longer-lasting than conflict in other developing countries.³¹ Such countries are the overwhelming source of the world’s refugees and internally displaced peoples, and many are among the world’s worst abusers of human rights.³² There is no consensus on the precise number of weak and failing states, because there is no consensus on how to define or measure state weakness.³³ The Commission on Weak States and U.S. National Security, established by the Center for Global Development, estimated some 50-60 countries in 2004.³⁴

The UK Department for International Development classifies 46 nations with 870 million inhabitants as fragile.³⁵ The World Bank treats thirty countries as Low Income Countries under Stress (LICUS).³⁶ These divergent estimates reflect significant differences in the criteria used to define state capacity, the indicators used to gauge it, and the relative weighting of various aspects of governance.³⁷ The most comprehensive and well-respected system for evaluating state performance is the World Bank’s Governance Matters data set, which ranks 209 countries and territories along six dimensions: voice and accountability; political instability and violence; government effectiveness; regulatory burden; rule of law; and control of corruption.³⁸ Below is the list of 44 countries that rest in the bottom quintile, ranked from weakest (Somalia) to strongest (Algeria).

Bottom Quintile of Aggregate Governance Rankings

1. Somalia (weakest) 2. Iraq 3. Myanmar 4. Democratic Republic of Congo 5. Afghanistan 6. Liberia 7. Haiti 8. Zimbabwe 9. Turkmenistan 10. Sudan 11. North Korea 12. Uzbekistan 13. Burundi 14. Central African Republic 15. Cote d’Ivoire, 16. Nigeria 17. Laos 18. Angola 19. Equatorial Guinea 20. Tajikistan 21. Republic of Congo 22. Belarus 23. Chad 24. Yemen 25. Solomon Islands 26. West Bank/Gaza 27. Pakistan 28. Ethiopia 29. Eritrea 30. Venezuela 31. Guinea 32. Togo 33. Azerbaijan 34. Bangladesh 35. Cuba 36. Iran 37. Nepal 38. Libya 39. Syria 40. Sierra Leone 41. Guinea-Bissau 42. Cameroon 43. Comoros 44. Algeria (strongest)

Source: Kaufmann-Kray Mastruzzi: Governance Matters IV (2005)

Three observations are in order. First, as defined by the Governance Matters data set, the weakest states are not necessarily the poorest states. Although the fifth quintile includes many of the worlds least developed countries, it also includes several lower-middle income countries like Venezuela and excludes some very poor countries like Cambodia, Gambia and Niger (which appear in the fourth quintile). This definition of state weakness differs from the policy adopted by the World Bank and bilateral donors of the OECD/DAC, which restrict the category fragile state to countries that are very poor and thus eligible for the Bank’s concessional (International Development Association) window and score lowest on its Country Performance and Institutional Assessment indicators.

While consistent with the poverty reduction mandate of aid agencies, this approach is overly restrictive for policy analysts and officials interested in the security implications of weak governance across the entire range of developing countries. Second, the list of weak and failing states in Table 3 obviously captures a diverse collection of countries that pose an array of potential challenges to U.S. foreign and national security policy--as well as for U.S. development policy. Most of the countries with the weakest governance are either in conflict or recovering from it, have experienced recurrent bouts of political instability, and rank among the lowest in terms of the human security they provide to their inhabitants.³⁹ Several are outposts of tyranny, in the Bush administration’s parlance (e.g., North Korea, Belarus, Cuba, and Zimbabwe), authoritarian states which appear superficially strong but rest on a brittle foundation.

Others are sites of ongoing U.S. combat and reconstruction efforts (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan); active or potential proliferators of weapons of mass destruction (e.g., North Korea, Iran and Pakistan); past or present safe havens for terrorism (e.g., Afghanistan, Yemen); anchors of regional stability or instability (e.g., Nigeria, Pakistan); bases for narcotics trafficking and organized crime (e.g., Burma); potential sources of uncontrolled migration (e.g., Haiti); critical energy suppliers (e.g., Venezuela, Nigeria); locations of epidemic disease (e.g., Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo), and settings for recent atrocities and humanitarian crises (e.g., Sudan, Liberia, Burundi, Sierra Leone). Needless to say, these categories of concern often overlap in particular states.

Third, as will become clear below, the relationship between state weakness and spillovers is not linear. It varies by threat. Some salient transnational dangers to U.S. security come not from states at the bottom quintile of the Governance Matters rankings, but from the next tier up - countries like Colombia, the world’s leading producer of cocaine, or Saudi Arabia, home to a majority of the 9/11 hijackers. These states tend to be better run and more capable of delivering political goods: indeed, nearly half are eligible -- or on the threshold of eligibility -- for the MCA in 2006.⁴⁰ Nevertheless, even these middling performers may suffer from critical capacity or political will gaps that enable spillovers. (Table below contains a list of fourth quintile countries).

Table: Fourth Quintile of Aggregate Governance Rankings (weakest to strongest)

1. Kazakhstan (weakest) 2. Georgia 3. Kyrgyz Republic 4. Paraguay 5. Cambodia 6. Kenya 7. Indonesia 8. Djibouti 9. Papua New Guinea 10. Rwanda 11. Swaziland 12. Niger 13. Ecuador 14. Guatemala, 15. Moldova 16. Russian Federation 17. Uganda 18. Ukraine 19. Vietnam 20. Bosnia and Herzegovina 21. Colombia 22. Malawi 23. Lebanon 24. Zambia 25. Honduras 26.