ABSTRACT
A close examination of the evolution of the SSR process in Afghanistan yields a distinct pattern. The initial design and elaboration of the SSR agenda – as reflected in the rhetoric, policies and programme documents of Afghan government and donor stakeholders – broadly conformed to the fundamental norms and principles of the SSR model. However, as the difficult ground-level realities of Afghanistan’s transition – such as the lack of human and institutional capacity, the adverse security environment and fragmented power and political dynamics – began to challenge the fundamental assumptions of the orthodox model, the agenda began to fray and stray from its conceptual roots. Gradually, the liberal elements of SSR that define and distinguish it from previous forms of security assistance –its people-centredness, its focus on governance and its prioritisation of human rights – were stripped away, leaving only a ‘hard’ security shell. The process still endeavoured to create ‘Western-style’ security and justice structures, but in a mediated, pared-down form, emphasising coercive capacity and institutional technologies rather than liberal norms and principles. SSR became little more than a euphemism for more conventional forms of security assistance, a legitimating device to demonstrate the liberal credentials of the project. What was actually happening on the ground was a train-and-equip process driven by donor strategic imperatives and political interests rather than the human security needs of the Afghan population. Three broad themes can be discerned from the overview of the Afghan SSR process in Chapter 4. First, the quintessential modern liberal notion of human security that underpins SSR and the wider liberal peace project has not been internalised by the Western donor states that champion it. Donor political and security interests, with few exceptions, trump human security in practice, a reality that undercuts the SSR model, which depends on the capacity of donors to align, and even subordinate, their immediate interests in the recipient country to the goal of fostering sustainable, people-centred and locally driven solutions. In Afghanistan, the short-term exigencies of the ‘war on terror’, which originally brought the US and its coalition partners to Afghanistan, always suffused and drove SSR assistance. Although subtle at the beginning of the SSR process, the influence of the realist counterterrorism
Second, the SSR model assumes that recipient countries universally desire the Western, liberal security and justice systems that it intrinsically seeks to implant. Moreover, it assumes that its precepts offer the only route to sustainable security and stable governance in conflict-affected states. The model touts its principles, norms and best practices as the international standards to which all countries should and do aspire, ignoring non-Western forms of authority and governance, particularly those of the non-state variety. These liberal, hegemonic assumptions prompt SSR practitioners and policymakers to overlook the local context – its peoples, history, traditions and existing mechanisms for maintaining political and social order. They invariably seek to superimpose Western norms and structures on recipient societies rather than engage indigenous realities. This approach is often defended with reference to the human rights agenda. There is an implicit assumption on the part of the orthodox SSR model that non-Western, non-state structures, irrespective of their form, violate universal human rights principles and standards. This ingrained bias ignores the reality that states, even liberal ones, frequently breach their own human rights covenants and can engage in predatory behaviour vis-à-vis their own populations. In Afghanistan, reformers have largely ignored key ordering elements of Afghan society in advancing their reform agenda, whether it is Islam or traditional tribal authority. It became apparent as the SSR process evolved that many of the Western structures being advanced were not viable in the Afghan context, and did not provide security, access to justice and broad societal order as effectively as existing norms, actors and structures. Local leaders may have paid lip service to the Western SSR and liberal peace agenda, signing on to the strategies and plans proposed by Western reformers, but it was more a political tactic to secure resources and international legitimacy than a serious commitment or affinity to the reforms they entailed. Lastly, from an instrumental or utilitarian perspective, donors lack the tools and modus operandi to advance the SSR agenda in conflict-affected countries. While the SSR concept has been mainstreamed in the international development and security policies of most Western donors, they have not developed the implementation structures, strategies, capacities, aid modalities and political approaches to actually implement it in the field. This has led to consistent implementation breakdowns, and a widely recognised policypractice gap. Donors typically approach SSR as a technical process, which, as the formula dictates, will invariably succeed if endowed with the right level of resources and capacity. This approach ignores the power and political realities of SSR, which inevitably creates winners and losers and triggers spoiler behaviour. Donors rarely employ nuanced political strategies to confront these realities or effectively engage local actors and elites to advance reforms and mitigate risk. Moreover, donors have proven incapable of adopting the long-term outlook that SSR orthodoxy demands, typically planning in timeframes no longer than two to four years, mimicking their democratic elect-
The Afghan SSR process has exposed the deep flaws in the orthodox SSR model and, by extension, the wider liberal peace project. Five main flaws in particular can be identified through analysis of donor policies and behaviour in Afghanistan: the prioritisation of donor interests over recipient needs through the employment of a regime-rather than a people-centric approach; the proclivity for apolitical, technical outlooks and approaches; a tendency to jettison the democratic principles of SSR and encourage illiberal practices and forms of behaviour; a failure to develop an adequate understanding of the local context and adapt reforms to it; and a penchant for short-term approaches and a lack of consideration for issues of reform sustainability. The analytical framework outlined in Chapter 3 helps to inform and structure the analysis of these flaws – common in many conflict-affected SSR contexts – which cumulatively show that it may be a misnomer to refer to the Afghan security assistance programme as SSR. Afghanistan’s process diverges from all of the core principles of the orthodox SSR model despite being advanced under its name. Since Afghanistan is widely accepted to be a critical and challenging case of SSR and the liberal peace project, and since domestic and external stakeholders presented SSR as an indispensible element of the postTaliban transition, its deviation from SSR orthodoxy raises doubts about the viability and utility of the SSR concept itself.
