© REUTERS/Emilie Regnier

In recent months, there has been a steady stream of bad news from the Sahel region of Africa. Kidnappings, terrorist attacks and assaults on military camps keep the population, security forces and governments on high alert. More than 4,000 people were killed last year. International engagement has not been able to prevent a deterioration of the security situation: it’s time for a rethink, and that includes Germany.

At present, international engagement in the Sahel is pursuing several objectives: fighting terrorism, training security forces, supporting the implementation of the peace agreement in Mali, and promoting development, including good governance, transitional justice, and decentralization.

Altering Assumptions

Three important assumptions related to these objectives need to be put to the test. First, there is the focus on counterterrorism and jihadist groups. It is true that attacks on the civilian population as well as on military camps continue to spread and cause high levels of casualties. But jihadism is not the core problem. It is rather a symptom of the dysfunctional relationship between the state and its citizens. In Mali, people are experiencing a state that has received large sums of development aid for decades, but that has invested little of it in schools, hospitals, roads and markets in peripheral regions.

Before the crisis of 2012/13, Mali was considered a “donor darling” that worked well with the donor community. Unfortunately, there was hardly any room for the opposition in Mali’s “facade democracy,” as author Charlotte Weidemann describes in detail. Then as now, donors shy away from demanding structural reforms, worried that they might overburden a weak state.

The second problematic assumption concerns the security sector. It is true that the security forces of the G5 states (Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad) are hardly in a position to protect the population from armed groups. But at least as important as having an effective combat force is its acceptance by the population. The training and capacity-building provided by the Bundeswehr in Mali and Niger will have little effect unless it is closely linked to structural reforms of the entire security sector.

This means greater transparency, parliamentary control and representation of the population in all its diversity. There is a reason why German soldiers have been complaining about unsuitable candidates for the courses provided by the EU Training Mission in Mali. With limited training success, course participants are immediately sent to the front unprepared for combat operations from the instructors’ point of view. The result is the high losses suffered by the Malian army, protests by relatives, and a withdrawal of army posts that have become too dangerous to hold.

Third, the armed groups cannot be defeated by military means alone. Yes, there are some ideologically motivated and determined leaders and members of the jihadist groups. But surveys of former fighters show that many young men join these groups not primarily for ideological motives but for a combination of self-protection, opportunism and socio-economic reasons. In some areas, jihadist groups ensure a brutal but better regulated life than before.

Demands for a dialogue between religious leaders have been around at least since a national conference in 2017, and they also resurfaced in the “inclusive national dialogue” in Mali at the end of 2019. France blocked such efforts in 2017, but in 2020 the Malian government has announced that it will take them up again.

Be More Flexible

The current review of the mandates for the international missions of the United Nations and the European Union in Mali and of German contributions to them provides an opportunity to adapt international policy to these changing assumptions.

The donor community must make greater efforts to establish a robust political dialogue with the G5 countries. The traditional conditionalization of development cooperation may have become more difficult because, with the rise of countries like China or Saudi Arabia, there are now more donors that don’t demand structural reforms.

As long as counterterrorism and migration control are the decisive motives for Europeans, authoritarian regimes such as in Chad and Niger or ailing democracies such as in Mali will always be able to resist pressure. In some cases, however, donors will also have to become more creative in order to finance projects more quickly and with more agility under dangerous conditions. The Sahel Alliance’s plans for establishing a special fund are a step in the right direction, as are the civilian stabilization projects funded by Germany’s Foreign Office.

The EU should adapt the EU Training Mission Mali. More extensive and detailed training courses can provide a more solid result. In return, the EU would have to accept that the effective training and reform of the Malian armed forces requires a long-term commitment. Moreover, EU training and bilateral training by the Bundeswehr can be used as leverage to call for greater transparency and to fight corruption in the armed forces. At present, the Malian Ministry of Defense refuses to publish official figures about the size of the army and distribution of ranks. In view of the fact that Europe is considering  the extension of the training mission to Burkina Faso as well, such lessons are particularly important.

Finally, European governments should respect the delicate efforts towards opening a dialogue with jihadist groups in Mali. The UN peace mission MINUSMA also supports consultations with local communities in its areas of operation, particularly across ethnic boundaries. It plans to expand the Mission’s presence. To do so, however, it needs high-value capabilities such as additional helicopters that are difficult to obtain. Germany could help here.

More Confidence with Partners

The course corrections described above require a more active approach by Germany towards its partners both in the region and in Europe. The German government should develop more confidence vis-à-vis France in particular. France’s experience, networks and interests in the Sahel create a structural imbalance in the partnership with Germany.

It was only at the beginning of January 2020 that President Emmanuel Macron surprised Berlin with the Pau Declaration, which speaks of a “Coalition for the Sahel”—one of numerous international initiatives in the region. An additional German contribution to MINUSMA,  the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, could also make it easier for the German government to stand by its “No” to the French “Takuba” initiative for the training of special forces, including mentoring in the field. Good friends must also be able to look each other in the eye when they disagree and, in case of doubt, promote their own position.

Germany continues to enjoy a fairly good reputation in the Sahel region. It is time to use this political capital more effectively.

The post Rethinking Germany’s Sahel Policy appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

In his speech to the UN General Assembly at the end of September, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas promised more “sustainability” in foreign policy. Crisis prevention would play an essential role in this, he said. On the same day, the German government presented three new policies on crucial areas of preventive action: security sector reform (SSR), rule of law support, and transitional justice. They represent a welcome step forward but need to be developed further to be effective.

Since 2014, the German government has significantly increased its involvement in fragile states. The German Foreign Office’s project funds for crisis prevention, stabilization, and peace-building alone have quadrupled since then—to €396 million in the current budget. These funds are in addition to Germany’s development aid, the majority of which is spent in fragile states as well. Iraq, Mali, Afghanistan, and Niger are some of the countries where the Auswaertiges Amt uses the stabilization funds to support humanitarian mine clearing, police training, or peace mediation.

Three Sectors Shaping Transition Processes

Security sector reform, transitional justice, and rule of law shape social transformation processes in fragile states. What sounds quite technical actually has real-life consequences for millions of people in countries undergoing transition periods after war and authoritarian rule. Germany’s new strategies recognize the most important challenges related to these concepts.

For authoritarian leaders, the police, armed forces, and government-aligned militia are key instruments to secure their rule. Retraining forces, demobilizing militias, and reducing the military’s control of the economy are crucial for conflict transformation. International support for security sector reform needs to be finely calibrated. There may be considerable resistance to giving up power and access to resources. Moreover, training and equipping government forces may deepen distrust among parts of the population that see them as representatives of a deeply discriminatory state.

After war and tyranny, smoldering grievances can trigger new conflicts if left unaddressed. Truth commissions, special tribunals or compensation mechanisms can make an important contribution to reconciliation and help prevent renewed violence. There has been considerable international experience since the Nuremberg trials in the 1940s and the truth commissions in South Africa and South America in the 1990s. One of these lessons is that there is never a straightforward path toward transitional justice, and that the expectations for truth, justice, reparations, and healing may differ widely between national and international actors, as well as among different victim groups.

In countries marked by repression, violence, and weak state capacity, the justice system is often deeply dysfunctional. In Sri Lanka, a relatively wealthy and capable state, it still takes 10 years for a serious criminal offence to reach an indictment at the High Court, and an additional seven years for the appeals process. Moreover, powerful politicians or business people have substantial resources to delay or evade judicial proceedings altogether. Authoritarian regimes stuff courts with biased judges or adopt discriminatory laws. Reforming the justice system is thus not just a technical task but touches on politically sensitive areas as well. Lastly, informal, traditional and religious mechanisms may offer complimentary sources of justice, but international actors like the German government are right to insist on their alignment with the protection of fundamental rights, including those concerning minorities and women.

Focus, Details, and Embassies

There is strong conceptual thinking in the document that are going to underpin the German government’s work on prevention and stabilization. At the same time, Berlin needs to develop them further to ensure they are not just policies, but strategies worthy of that name. Three areas stand out.

First, focus. The three strategies differ widely in their discussion of the value-added that Germany can provide. The transitional justice strategy shows the greatest coherence. It identifies four priorities and allocates individual measures to them. The German government wants to embed transitional justice in a “prevention agenda” of political reforms, empower victim groups, promote gender equality and make use of Germany’s specific experience in dealing with its Nazi and communist past.

In the area of promoting the rule of law, the strategy mentions that the focus should be on binding administrations to the rule of law. However, this is not further explained or used as an ordering principle. The SSR strategy even manages to not set any priorities. This is surprising in so far as Germany’s system of parliamentary control of the armed forces and the leadership concept in the Bundeswehr (“Innere Führung”) could provide valuable lessons for its SSR support.

Second, details. Monitoring and evaluation are important, and they are mentioned in all three strategies. On SSR, the government commits itself to conflict-sensitivity, the “do no harm” principle and “more exchange” between the ministries. Except for such generic commitments, it remains unclear, however, to what extent the government will vet individual participants in SSR programs and trace their deployment after their training. On rule of law, the strategy mentions the rule of law dialogues with China and Vietnam as examples of long-term engagement. Here it is important to reflect more on the ambition of such dialogues: While individual legislative proposals may be defused, the overall one-party-system remains in place. On transitional justice, it is baffling that the strategy doesn’t mention the on-going practice of German law enforcement to pursue mass atrocity crimes under the principle of universality, for example in Syria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Third, embassies. All three strategies emphasize the importance of political dialogue accompanying programmatic efforts. Significant portions of this political dialogue will fall on German embassies in fragile countries, which are frequently ill-equipped for the growing demands placed on them. With often less than a handful of staff, German diplomats not only need to provide country analyses, but also spot opportunities for programmatic efforts, monitoring their progress and ensuring continued political buy-in with national stakeholders. In addition, the more projects there are in fragile countries, the more likely are visits by German policymakers, which absorb significant bureaucratic resources. Embassies will also need to replicate the growing cooperation between government ministries and non-governmental organizations in Germany at an operational level in their respective country. Only if embassies have enough qualified staff can they adequately fulfill these tasks, and remind their counterparts of their political commitments, if necessary.

Overall, the strategies are a demonstration of Germany’s growing investment in prevention and stabilization. They are testament to a new way of doing business marked by growing transparency, agility, and cooperation with outside experts. This is not enough though. Credibility and larger issues matter, too. Global trade, economic, climate and arms export policies can be structural drivers of conflict. A sustainable foreign policy worthy of the name needs not only verifiable strategies, but also a holistic approach.

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