Community policing in areas of limited statehood: The case of Lebanon

ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact of community policing on democratic policing in conflict-affected areas of limited statehood with divisive politics by way of a case study of Lebanon from 2008 to 2016. It argues that community policing leads to unequal empowerment and that it reflects and reproduces the existing politics of the context in which it is applied rather than promoting democratic changes, as the proponents of community policing usually claim. Specifically, the analysis of two cases of community policing in Lebanon shows that it reflects policing aimed against perceived threats to the country’s consociational power-sharing arrangement and the sectarian balance on which it is based, namely Palestinian and Syrian refugees as outsiders who do not fit into consociational categories. The community policing projects in the Palestinian Nahr al-Bared camp and the urban Ras Beirut area of Beirut represent different contexts within Lebanon and so also show variation in the state’s intent behind, and approach to, community policing. Still, the similarity in outcome in both cases, policing of ‘outsiders’ as threats to the consociational order, suggests that community policing exhibits flaws independently of where, how, and why it is being applied.

KEYWORDS:

• Lebanon
• community policing
• democratic policing
• refugees
• areas of limited statehood

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and the editorial team for their attention to the manuscript. Also thanks to Reinoud Leenders, Dimitris Soudias and the participants of the 2019 ISA Annual Convention panel International Interventions and Local (In)Security: Critical Perspectives on State-Building in the Arab Region for their comments on earlier drafts. Most of all, I am grateful to all my interlocutors for their generosity when taking the time to speak to me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Interlocutors

1. Security Sector Consultant, Downtown Beirut, 29.06.2015

2. Former Senior Officer in the ISF, Suburb east of Beirut, 09.12.2015

3. Consultant in Pilot Policing Project, East Beirut⁠, 16.07.2015

4. Officer at an UN Agency, Downtown Beirut, 14.07.2015

5. Senior Government Official, West Beirut⁠, 21.09.2015

6. ISF Patrol Officer 1, Ras Beirut⁠, 02.11.2015

7. ISF Patrol Officer 2, Ras Beirut⁠, 02.11.2015

8. NGO Worker, East Beirut, 30.04.2015

9. Community policing trainer, East Beirut, 15.03.2016

10. Security Sector Consultant, East Beirut, 02.11.2015

11. RBPS Station Commander, Ras Beirut⁠, 02.11.2015

Notes

1. According to David H. Bayley (2005, pp. 18–21), democratic policing involves a police that is accountable to law rather than government, that protects human rights, especially those necessary for democratic participation, that is accountable to external entities, and that prioritizes serving individual citizens and private groups rather than taking orders from government.

2. Areas of limited statehood are commonly understood as spaces ‘where state authorities (such as national, regional, or local governments) lack the ability to implement and enforce rules and decisions and/or in which they do not control the use of force’. (Börzel et al., 2021, p. 34).

3. The decisive and violent response of the police and military to anti-government protests demanding the end of the sectarian power-sharing regime in 2015 and 2019 bear testament to that.

4. In Lebanon, personal matters, such as marriage and divorce, are handled in religious courts.

5. Syria has often acted as a de facto arbiter between Lebanese politicians to break such gridlock. See El-Husseini, R. (2012) Pax Syriana : elite politics in post-war Lebanon. 1st ed. Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press.

6. These alliances are named after the dates of demonstrations in 2005 against (March 14) and in favour (March 8) of Syrian presence in Lebanon.

7. For a detailed overview of incidents since 2005 (see Dinu, 2022, pp. 297–9).

8. According to UNCHR, 825,081 refugees from Syria were registered with the agency in Lebanon as of September 2022 while the Lebanese government estimating that number at 1.5 million. See https://www.unhcr.org/lb/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2023/01/UNHCR-Lebanon-FactSheet-October-2022.pdf (accessed on 23 January 2023).

9. A security consultant shared these results with me informally during our meeting on 29 June 2015, yet I was not granted full access to the survey data.

10. A mukhtar is a locally elected state representative; comparable to a magistrate, who usually issues residence documents, birth and marriage certificates and identity documents.

11. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Additional information

Funding

I wish to acknowledge the generous funding that the Zeit Stiftung’s Trajectories of Change program and the Orient Institute Beirut provided to support my doctoral research on which this paper is based.

Notes on contributors

Francisco Mazzola

Francisco Mazzola is currently a Visiting Lecturer at City, University of London. He holds a PhD in War Studies from King’s College London.