Post Conflict Justice, Peacekeeping, and Civil Conflict Recurrence

ABSTRACT

This article studies how when post-conflict justice works alongside a peacekeeping operation following a civil conflict, a two-pronged pacifying effect is activated. While justice mechanisms deal with the factors underlying the conflict, peacekeepers increase the costs for the potential spoilers of the peace while also supporting the justice processes. The findings in this study have important implications for conflict-ridden states attempting to escape the ‘conflict trap’.

KEYWORDS:

• Internal armed conflict
• peace
• post-conflict justice
• peacekeeping
• conflict recurrence

Acknowledgments

I thank Michelle Benson, Vesna Danilovic, Jake Kathman, and the three anonymous reviewers for their feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

About the Author

Abdulaziz G. Almuslem is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Kuwait University. He received his MALD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and his PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His research focus includes international organizations, transitional justice, and civil conflict.

ORCID

Abdulaziz G. Almuslem http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9501-9940

Notes

1 Walter, Conflict Relapse and the Sustainability of Post-conflict Peace, 1. See also Quinn, Mason, and Gurses, “Sustaining the Peace.” They explained, ‘Over half of all civil wars that began and ended between 1944 and 1997 were followed by at least one if not more episodes of civil war’.

2 Binningsbø et al., “Armed Conflict and Post-Conflict Justice, 1946–2006,” 732.

3 A ‘conflict trap’ where the risk of repeated conflict escalates while rival leaders benefit from the fighting as civilian suffering increases. For an elaboration on the ‘conflict trap’, see Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap, 4. I use ‘civil conflict’ to refer to ‘a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 [battle-related] deaths in a calendar year’. See Upsalla Högbladh Stina, “UCDP GED Codebook Version 19.1,” 28.

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

4 Binningsbø et al., “Armed Conflict and Post-Conflict Justice, 1946–2006.”

5 Traditional justice mechanisms, like the post-genocide Rwandan Gacaca courts, and the Ugandan Mato oput for example, are not included in the PCJ dataset. Mato oput is practiced in Uganda and is used when a member of one clan kills another. Informed by restorative justice principles, Mato oput entails a process of mediation, confession, payment of compensation, and a reconciliation ceremony. See Clark, “Peace, Justice and the International Criminal Court,” 543. International factors may have to do with side-lining traditional justice mechanisms in the post-conflict setting. In the case of Uganda and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the Ugandan authorities were willing to implement ‘traditional justice’ instead of having the ICC maintain the arrest warrants for the LRA leadership. However, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has kept the arrest warrants for members of the LRA despite calls by the Ugandan authorities to drop them. In this regard, the ICC’s pre-trial chamber recalled that, ‘the Government of Uganda [had] not conducted and [did] not intend to conduct national proceedings in relation to the persons most responsible for […] crimes, so […] the cases may be dealt with by the ICC instead’. The pre-trial chamber therefore decided, ‘at this stage the Case is admissible under article 17 of the Statute’. See Pre-Trial Chamber II, “Decision on the Admissibility of the Case under Article 19(1) of the Statute, ICC-02/04-01/05-377 (2009),” 20.

6 Loyle and Appel, “Conflict Recurrence and Post-conflict Justice.”

7 Ibid., 691. The unequal redistribution of resources among different social groups or the systematic discrimination against a particular group can create a sense of grievance among the deprived side, which would contribute to a higher propensity for the deprived group to rebel in an attempt to correct the perceived unfair treatment. Saxton and Benson, “Structure, Politics, and Action.” They showed that political and economic differentials among ethno-nationalist groups are positively associated with protest and rebellion.

8 Loyle and Appel, “Conflict Recurrence and Post-conflict Justice,” 691. In contrast to the grievance-based explanations, the competing view of what motivates groups to challenge the authority argues that rebels are opportunists, using a rational framework to determine whether they are better off challenging a weak government. See Grossman, “Kleptocracy and Revolutions.” In response, Cederman et al. explained that the research rejecting the grievance-based explanations for civil conflict ‘rest on questionable theoretical and empirical grounds’. See Cederman, Weidmann, and Gleditsch, “Horizontal Inequalities and Ethnonationalist Civil War.”

9 While the author writes about signalling at the interstate level, we can borrow from that literature to inform the interaction between rival groups at the intrastate level. See Morrow, “The Strategic Setting of Choices,” 86.

10 Ibid., 84–7.

11 Loyle and Appel, “Conflict Recurrence and Post-conflict Justice,” 694.

12 Trager, “The Diplomacy of War and Peace,” 217.

13 She explains that ‘[…] the long term goal of utilizing transitional justice institutions to shift the terms of debate on past abuse is often in tension with the goal of facilitating inclusive dialogue in the immediate aftermath of transition’. See Leebaw, “The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,” 112.

14 Ibid., 110.

15 Ibid., 109.

16 Rothe and Mullins, “Building Justice after War,” 87.

17 Ibid., 92.

18 Ibid., 103.

19 Licklider, “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements.”

20 Ibid., 681–90.

21 Benson and Kugler, “Power Parity, Democracy.”

22 Quinn, Mason, and Gurses, “Sustaining the Peace,” 171. They emphasized the importance of the organizational dimension and explained that the military defeat of a rebel group may contribute to durable post-conflict peace because the organizational capacity of the rebels would weaken. However, they also added that the rebels ‘can avoid annihilation on the battlefield by blending into the civilian population and awaiting that time in the future when they can muster sufficient strength to revive the conflict’ (174). In this case, the rebels whether opportunistic, grieving, or both, would pose a repeated challenge once they feel that the state’s capacity is sufficiently weak, or if their organizational structure recovers.

23 Albin and Druckman, “Equality Matters.”

24 Wagner and Druckman, “Drivers of Durable Peace.”

25 The Nuremburg and Tokyo tribunals are examples of one-sided justice (also known as victor’s justice) at the interstate level.

26 Lie, Binningsbø, and Gates, Post-conflict Justice and Sustainable Peace (English).

27 Loyle and Appel, “Conflict Recurrence and Post-conflict Justice,” 697.

28 I should mention that Loyle and Appel’s data for PKOs, which they derived from the Kreutz (2008) dataset, does not distinguish between PKOs that have an intrastate and interstate mandate. (Ibid., 697.) For this reason, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which originally had an interstate mandate as opposed to one dealing with the civil conflict in the country, is included in their data. The updated Kreutz dataset can be found here: Kreutz, “Replication Data For,” Harvard Dataverse, V1.

29 Peter, “Peacekeeping,” 40.

30 Fortna, “Interstate Peacekeeping,” 485, 488–9. Fortna also described the pacific effect that peacekeepers have, and noted that the effect can remain helpful for the durability of the peace so long as the peacekeepers stay in the conflict zone or the PKOs determine that the peace is no longer fragile. Ibid.

31 Ruggeri, Dorussen, and Gizelis, “Winning the Peace Locally.”

32 Werner and Yuen, “Making and Keeping Peace,” 271.

33 United Nations Peace Keeping. https://peacekeeping.un.org/en (accessed December 1, 2017).

34 “UN Observer Mission In El Salvador (ONUSAL) – Facts and Figures.” peacekeeping.un.org. Accessed December 13, 2019. https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/past/onusalfacts.html.

35 The war included the extrajudicial killing of thousands of people, including ‘arbitrary arrests, murders and […] disappearances of leaders’. See United Nations, “Report of the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador,” 27. The truth commission functioned for a period of eight months, in which it registered more than 22,000 complaints, mostly about extrajudicial killings. These acts were, according to the testimonies of the victims, mostly perpetrated by agents of the state and paramilitary groups allied to them. Ibid. Of the 22,000 complaints, the STC addressed 32, with the rest ‘catalogued without further investigation’. See Seils, “The Limits of Truth Commissions in the Search for Justice,” 780. When the STC began collecting the testimonies of past crimes, the commission’s work was undermined by a right-wing campaign depicting the STC as ‘designed to destroy the armed forces’ of the state. See Sriram, Confronting Past Human Rights Violations, 88.

36 United Nations, Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador, S/1994/1212 (31 October 1994): 4, available from http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/Get?Open&DS=S/1994/1212&Lang=E (accessed August 28, 2019).

37 Loyle and Appel, “Conflict Recurrence and Post-conflict Justice.”

38 Abdullah and Muana, “The RUF of Sierra Leone,” 179.

39 Poole, “Post Conflict Justice in Sierra Leone.”

40 Map produced using Arc-GIS software with data from Sundberg and Melander, “Introducing the UCDP Georeferenced Event Dataset.”

41 Abdullah, “Bush Path to Destruction,” 223.

42 Abdullah and Muana, “The RUF of Sierra Leone,” 179.

43 Abdullah, “Bush Path to Destruction,” 223. He explained the RUF did not have ‘any meaningful relationship with the peasantry based on the acceptance of a common programme produced within the context of a revolutionary dialogue’. Such was the case with other revolutionary movements. In Cuba, for example, Castro enjoyed public support when he challenged the Batista government in 1953. Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered, 134–5. Poole, “Post Conflict Justice in Sierra Leone,” 567–8.

44 Waterfield, “Charles Taylor.” According to him, ‘The value of the diamonds looted by Sierra Leone’s rebels and allegedly traded for weapons with Taylor, a warlord and then president in neighbouring Liberia, could have been as high as £950 million’. Poole explained that the primary source of revenues for the RUF was the sale of diamonds to ‘reputable companies’ such as South Africa’s De Beers diamond cartel. Poole, “Post Conflict Justice in Sierra Leone,” 575–6.

45 The text of the agreement can be found at Peace Agreement between the Government of Sierra Leone and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) (Lomé Peace Agreement) https://peacemaker.un.org/sierraleone-lome-agreement99, (accessed July 17, 2018). As the rebel group pursued the expansion of its power in Sierra Leone, the country still managed to hold an election in 1996 that resulted in the victory of Ahmed Kabbah. The RUF entered negotiations with the new president after a few breakdowns in the negotiations and military confrontations. The accord also granted the group and its leader Foday Sankoh amnesty for the crimes they had committed during the conflict (Article 9). Another important aspect of the agreement can be found in Articles 16 and 17, which had Kabbah and the RUF agree to the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of all armed groups and the creation of a new Sierra Leonian armed force.

46 The mission’s official duration of operation was for just over six years, from 22 October 1999 to 31 December 2005.

47 The UNSC preference for the government side actually shows in earlier resolutions. When the RUF toppled the Kabbah government in May 1997 in cooperation with the Sierra Leonian military for a period of five months, the UN Security Council expressed its condemnation for the military junta (see UNSC resolution 1132). The wording used by the Security Council, where they demanded a restoration of the democratic government, indicates the Security Council’s preference or ‘bias’ for one of the two conflicting sides (See Benson and Kathman, “United Nations Bias and Force Commitments,” 355).

48 Gberie, A Dirty War in West Africa, 173–4.

49 Ibid., 173.

50 UNAMSIL: United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone – Mandate. https://peacekeeping.un.org/mission/past/unamsil/mandate.html (accessed July 17, 2018).

51 United Nations, Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, S/2003/321 (17 March 2003): 10, available from https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N03/277/53/IMG/N0327753.pdf?OpenElement (accessed December 23, 2019).

52 Ibid.

53 UNAMSIL: United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone – Mandate. https://peacekeeping.un.org/mission/past/unamsil/mandate.html (accessed July 17, 2018).

54 The subject matter jurisdiction of the court includes crimes against humanity, which are violent acts such as murder, torture, different types of sexual violence, and other inhumane acts. In addition to common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which includes pillage, outrages on personal dignity, taking of hostages, terrorism, and even the threats of committing such acts. The subject matter jurisdiction also included ‘serious violations of international humanitarian law’ such as the recruitment of child soldiers. In addition to international humanitarian law, the SCSL statute also incorporated Sierra Leonean domestic law dealing with the mistreatment of children, especially girls, and the wanton destruction of property. Temporally, the court’s jurisdiction covers violations committed after 30 November 1996 in the territory of Sierra Leone.

55 S/RES/827 (1993).

56 S/RES/1315 (2000).

57 In this case, the sender is ‘other’. Binningsbø et al., “Armed Conflict and Post-Conflict Justice, 1946–2006.”

58 UN Security Council, Statute of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, 16 January 2002.

59 United Nations Security Council, “Report of the Secretary-General,” Paragraph 22, cited in Poole, “Post Conflict Justice in Sierra Leone,” 581.

60 Like other international criminal courts, the SCSL recognized preliminary motions challenging the exercise of jurisdiction. 23 people were indicted by the SCSL, including the leader of the RUF, Foday Sankoh, and Liberia’s president, Charles Taylor, in addition to members of the Sierra Leonean army that participated in the coup of 1997. The sentences ranged from a 1-year probationary period to 52 years of imprisonment. The court also acquitted a few of the indicted people. The court functioned for almost 12 years, from 16 January 2002 until it concluded its mission on 2 December 2013. The message that the SCSL sent to other potential opportunists is that those thinking of challenging the state can and will be made accountable for their actions in a court of law. Of course, the small number of people indicted indicates that not all victims of the conflict were able to face their abusers in court.

61 Nkansah, “The Dance of Truth and Justice,” 212.

62 Rothe and Mullins, “Building Justice after War,” 103.

63 TRC Commission Act 2000. http://www.sierra-leone.org/Laws/2000-4.pdf (August 30, 2019).

64 Poole, “Post Conflict Justice in Sierra Leone,” 579.

65 Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 59.

66 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, http://www.sierra-leone.org/TRCDocuments.html (July 1, 2018).

67 War Reparations. NaCSA – War Reparations | Sierra Leone. http://www.nacsa.gov.sl/programmes/war-reparations.html, accessed July 18, 2018.

68 What we do, https://www.iom.int/files/live/sites/iom/files/What-We-Do/docs/Support-to-the-Implementation-of-the-Sierra-Leone-Reparations-Programme-SLRP.pdf (July 22, 2018).

69 Ibid. The reparations did not only come from the NaCSA. One of the penalties that can be applied to those found guilty by the SCSL can serve the reparations process. According to Article 19(3) of the SCSL statute, the trial chamber has the power to ‘order the forfeiture of the property, proceeds, and any assets acquired unlawfully or by criminal conduct, and their return to their rightful owner or to the State of Sierra Leone’.

70 The PCJ dataset includes all non-interstate conflicts from 1946 to 2006 and this includes extra-systemic (colonial) conflicts, internationalized-internal, and internal conflicts. Binningsbø et al., “Armed Conflict and Post-Conflict Justice, 1946–2006.”

71 Mullenbach, “Third-Party Peacekeeping in Intrastate Disputes, 1946–2012.”

72 Estimating the post-conflict Peace Time involves a simple manipulation of the PCJ dataset. The dataset observes 357 conflict events, and each conflict has an identification code that allows us to determine whether the conflict is an extension of a previous conflict or a new one. Using this identification code, I am able to produce the recurrence dummy variable that indicates failure in the survival analysis where 1 would indicate conflict recurrence after the end of a conflict and 0 no recurrence. Peace periods that last until 2006 are right censored. To produce the Peace Time data, I subtract the year in which the conflict previously ended from the new conflict start year. For example, if country X has two civil conflict episodes coded as part of the same conflict, one that ended in 1960, and another that started in 1980, I subtract 1960 from 1980 to produce the Peace Time of 20 years. Conflicts that did not end by 2006 are right censored and have a Peace Time of 0. The measure of Peace Time for countries that had one civil conflict without a recurrence would simply be from the conflict episode’s end date until 2006 where the data are right censored.

73 Mullenbach, “Third-Party Peacekeeping in Intrastate Disputes, 1946–2012.”

74 The Mullenbach data include different peacekeeping missions that cover the same conflict. For example, NATO’s Implementation Force (IFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina functioned simultaneously with the UN mission there (UNMIBH) for a full year from 1995 to 1996. Such a case would mean a code of 1 for the peacekeeping dummy variable. There is also one case where the PCJ data codes for two separate conflicts that happened in the same state at the same time. This is the case of the Congo Crisis (1960–1965), where two different separatist movements (South-Kasai and Katanga) emerged with the decolonization of the Belgians. A single peacekeeping force (the UN Operation in the Congo or ONUC), however, was assigned to both situations instead of assigning separate peacekeepers to the two separatist movements. In this case, I code for both conflicts as having a peacekeeping mission assigned to them during Peace Time.

75 The five-year period is a ‘convention in the post-conflict literature […] that ensures that a given PCJ process truly occurs in the aftermath of war’ so to influence the chance of long-lasting Peace Time. For this reason, South Africa’s famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is excluded from the dataset, because the conflict in South Africa ended in 1988, while the TRC was established eight years later in 1996. See Binningsbø et al., “Armed Conflict and Post-Conflict Justice, 1946–2006,” 733.

76 Regarding the senders and targets of these processes, I apply the same classification used by Loyle and Appel (2017) described above. As a reminder: The motivation category includes (1) truth commissions initiated by the government that target either the challengers, the government, or both. (2) Amnesties initiated by the government that target the challengers or both the government and challengers. (3) Reparations initiated by the government that target the challengers or both the government and challengers. (4) Comprehensive trials initiated by the government or the international community that target both sides. As for the opportunity category, such processes are initiated either by the government or by both sides after the conclusion of a peace agreement. It includes (1) trials that target the losing side only, in addition to (2) exiles and (3) purges irrespective of the target. Generating the dummy variables for the motivation and opportunity processes revealed 66 post-conflict territories in which at least one opportunity process was established, and 65 post-conflict territories in which at least one motivation processes was implemented. The summary statistics are in table II below.

77 Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.”

78 Nunn and Pugga, “Ruggedness.”

79 Licklider, “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements.”

80 Binningsbø et al., “Armed Conflict and Post-Conflict Justice, 1946–2006.”

81 The PCJ dataset codes for the existence of any type of process such as amnesty, trial, exile, purge, reparations, and truth commissions, if such a process occurs within the first five years after the end of the conflict. For this reason, South Africa’s famous Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is excluded from the dataset, because the conflict in South Africa ended in 1988, while the TRC was established eight years later in 1996.

82 Mullenbach, “Third-Party Peacekeeping in Intrastate Disputes, 1946–2012.”

83 See Appendix 1 for the list of 71 post-conflict events that had/have a PKO – note 10 observations found in the appendix are missing in Parts iii and iv of Figure 11 because the conflicts in these cases were ongoing in 2006.

84 Recall that as per the categorization of motivation and opportunity processes, only the comprehensive trials factor in international senders.

85 See appendix 2 for estimates that control for the internationalized comprehensive trials.

86 See appendix 3 for coefficients of individual processes without the interaction terms.

87 Licklider, “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements.”