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Rethinking borderlines: Exploring borderland threats and vulnerabilities
Dr Francois VreÿStellenbosch University
2
Background
• The borderline focus • People, goods, services and globalisation• Governments, elites and securitisation• Reality of people ignoring borders• Militarization, economic liberalisation and criminalisation• Return to security: Militariation & criminalisation• Overstretched security forces vs political quick solutions• What gets overlooked?
• “It is about borders and borderlands”
Aim
• A twofold aim:
• First, to outline selected elements of border theory, strands of research and features of borderlands.
• Secondly, to describe the insecurities that reside in borderlands and the threats they hold to central government.
Scope
• Border theory and research
• Borderlands: The true threat?
• Threatening what? Aspects of politics
• Framing the threat: Government rule and sovereignty
• Appraisal and conclusions
“Food for border thought”
• Borders are incidental and an obstacle to peace and progress. Sound policy options follow new understandings and old understandings reproduce past mistakes.
• It is about unlearning what we take for granted.
• [Vale, P.C.J. Security and Politics in South Africa: The Regional Dimension, Boulder: Lynne Rennier Press, (2003)]
Border theory
• In retrospect: Zones of conflict to zones of cooperation• Formative actions: Human activities and social practices• Competing thought: A borderless world or securitization accentuating
borders• More choices: Regionalism and supra-nationalism & local identities -
Contemplating inner & outer borders• Dense human flows: Militarize or criminalize?• Border security: Lack of good decisions• A choice: Hard or soft borders?
• Suggestion: Borderlines a comfortable focus: What about borderlands?
[Brunet-Jailly, 2007]
Border studies research
• Multiplicity of government activities: Inclusive exclusive trends
• Role of borderland cultures: Integrative or fragmented
• Borderland communities: Political clout as organised activist entities
• Impact of market forces: Borderless world, RECs & globalisation
• Internal-external face: Where is the threat?
• Democracy & liberalism: Human security & human rights
• Soft threats: Refugees, crime, drugs, terrorism, pollution, dangerous materials
[Brunet-Jaillie, 2007 ; Walters, 2002]
National or regional security?
Inner borders Outer borders
A borderline fixation?
Disputed and insecure maritime borderlands?
Borderlands
• Cultures, market forces & local political clout
• Government activities
• Zones of transition & molded over time
• Reinforcing national identity : Facilitating local identities
• Militarisation, economic liberalisation & criminalisation
• Understanding borderlands & their communities
[Brunet-Jailly, 2007]
Threats from borderlands
• Earlier views:• Endemic instability in / from borderlands• Climate for anti-government sentiments• Distance factor: being there & responding• Local rapport and local cultures• Historic lands for brigands, criminals and rebels
• Influential actors: For, neutral or anti-• Borderland elites• People from the borderlands • Distant government• Provincial counterparts
• Borderland stability and co-operation• Alienated to coexistent• Interdependent to integrated
[Alroy, 1975 ; Baud & van Schendell, 1997]
Maturity and security of borderlands
• Maturity spectrum
• Embryonic: Unsettled• Infant: National sovereignty• Adolescent: Emergent integration• Adult: Uncontested and accepted• Declining: Supranational and
looses function – new contests• Defunct: No longer serves a
purpose
• Security spectrum
• Quiet borderlands: Tight stable amicable borderland relations
• Unruly borderland: Enmity and contest in relations with possible militarization
• Rebellious borderland: Direct challenges to central government and a contested borderline
[Baud & van Schendell, 1997]
Aspects of politics
• Framing challenges from borderland actors
• Political community: Opposition to or violent rejection of those who make up the state and make, execute and have to live with political decisions – Sudan & Thailand
• The political system: Values, rules, and structures guiding how binding political decisions are made – Nigeria & Afghanistan
• The authorities: Rejecting who rules on grounds of discrimination, values, corruption, incompetence – Zaïre - DR Congo
• Policies: Existing social political and economic policies perceived as discriminatory – Tuaregs in Mali
[O’Neill, 1990]
Africa: Borderland threats
Borderland communities
• Some observations
• Traditional and agricultural societies more sensitive• Growing impoverishment and unemployment• Critical of who rules and how they rule
• Inclusive-exclusive policies unfold as security-insecurity
• A coercive government response
or• Tolerance by central government for differences
[Prussin, 2010]
Threat of hybrid wars
• Over-extending the warfare typology overloads security forces: Conceptually, mentally and physically?
• Conventional, insurgent styled/irregular, terrorism styled• Mutations that fit with conventional operations• Simultaneity and multi agency: Dangerous and destructive• Local nature, networked & swarming: ZAPTISTAS• Security-insecurity migration of agencies• Pirates, militias, insurgents, PMSCs• Economic imperatives: Lootable resources• An ever-extending armed conflict continuum• The role of receptive borderlands?
[Hoffman, 2007 ; Bunker, 2010 ; Moller, 2009]
ZAPATISTAS:
Networking and swarming from a borderland
Where to start?
A typology of threats
• Challenging the rule: Ideological and leadership challenges, but the state and resources remain uncontested.
• Challenging the state: Resources and ethnic challenge the state, but ideology and ruler uncontested.
• Certain modes of contest along the spectrum of hybrid wars, depending on the intensity of the contest
• Resource and ethnicity generate most intense armed conflicts
[Angstrom 2001]
Suggesting a framework
[Angstrom 2001]
Borderlands: Porosity and stability
Local cross-border culture
Integrates or disintegrates borderlands
Policy activities of multiple government levels
integrate or disintegrateborderlands
Local cross-border political clout
Integrates or disintegratesborderlands
Market forces and trade flowsIntegrate or
disintegrate borderlands
Hypothesis (1): The More culture, political clout, and market forces are INTEGRATED, the MORE POROUS THE BORDERLAND.
Hypothesis (2): The MORE the policy activities of multiple governments are INTEGRATED , the LESS POROUS THE BORDERLAND
[Brunet-Jaillie, 2007]
Appraisal and conclusions
• Border dynamics largely human induced• Policy makers and borderland societies most influential• Border insecurity: perceptions of policies gone wrong• Borders reflect maturity-security interplay of borderlands• Borderlands absorb and distill or project and sustain threats and
vulnerabilities• Irregular threats and dangerous non-state actors• Aspects of politics key vulnerabilities for borderland threats• Challenges to the rule• Acute dangers threaten state integrity• Thoughts beyond militarisation-criminalisation?• Smart integrated border policies
Thank You
Questions?
References
• Alroy, G.C. Insurgencies in the countryside of underdeveloped societies, in Sarkesian, S.
(ed), Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare, Chicago: Precedent Publishing Inc. (1975). • Angstrom, J. Towards a Typology of Internal Armed Conflict: Synthesising a Decade of Conceptual
Turmoil, Civil Wars, 4(3), (2001).• Baud, M. and W. van Schendel, A Comparative History of Borderlands, Journal of World History, 8(2)
(1997).• Beckett, I. The future of insurgency, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 16(1), (March 2005).• Brunet-Jailly, E. Borderlands: Comparing Border Security in North America and Europe, Ottawa:
University of Ottawa Press, (2007).• Bunker, R. (ed), Non State Threats and Future Wars, Oxon: Frank Cass, (2005).• Cunningham in Bartholomees, J.D. 2006, Guide to National Security Policy and
Strategy, 2nd Ed, Carlisle: US Army War College. [Slide 19]• Hoffman, F.G. Conflict in the 21st Century: The Rise of Hybrid Wars, Potomac Institute for Policy
Studies, (2007).• McNall and Huggins, Guerrilla warfare: Predisposing and precipitating factors , in Sarkesian, S. (ed),
Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare, Chicago: Precedent Publishing Inc. (1975).• Møller, B. The security sector: Leviathan or Hydra? In Cawthra, G. (ed). African Security Governance:
Emerging Issues, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, (2009),
References cont…
• O’Neill, B. Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare, Washington: Brasseys, (1990).
• Prussin, A. The Lands between: Conflict in the East European Borderlands, 1870-1992, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2010).
• Vinci, A. Greed – grievance reconsidered: The role of power and survival in the motivation of armed groups, Civil Wars, 8(1) (2006).
• Walters, W. Mapping Schengenland: Denaturalising the border, Environment and Planning: Society and Space, 20(5), (2002).
• Yoon, M.Y. Internal conflicts and cross-border military interventions in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Post-Cold War era, Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 33(2), (2005).
Maps
• Piracy: Taken from Google maps Accessed 02/03/2011 @ http://www.carmania.org.uk/images/news/Map1.png• Chiapas: Taken from Google maps Accessed 02/03/2011 @
http://www.map-of-mexico.co.uk/images/chiapasenglish.gif • Africa: Taken from Google maps Accessed 02/03/2011 @ http://www.world-atlas.us/africa.htm 02/03/2011 • South Africa: Taken from Google maps Accessed 02/03/2011 @
http://www.wordtravels.com/Travelguide/Countries/South+Africa/Map
• SADC: Taken from Google maps Accessed 02/03/2011 @ http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/
• Off shore gas : Taken from Google maps Accessed 02/03/2011 @ http://images.pennnet.com/articles/os/cap/cap_0705offglobal2.gif