The securitisation of NGOs post-9/11

Abstract

This article argues that the securitisation of an issue can involve not only negative, exclusionary and repressive extraordinary measures but also more positive, inclusionary and productive strategies of engagement. It also argues that such bifurcated strategies of security can evoke a spectrum of responses that sets limits on the process of securitisation. It examines these two arguments through the lens of the securitisation of development NGOs post-9/11. Development NGOs have become associated as a potential ‘second-order’ security issue related to the macro-securitisation of the War on Terror. After the launch of President Bush's War on Terror, US and allied governments shifted their approach to development NGOs from one of enthusiastically courting them as co-producers of development and security to an approach that cast greater suspicion on their activities. Aware that development NGOs still had a positive role to play in development and security, Western governments adopted a bifurcated strategy of containment and engagement towards development NGOs. State attempts to restrict development NGOs have evoked a spectrum of responses, ranging from ready compliance to outright resistance that has led to only partial success in securitising development NGOs.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Stuart Gordon and Tim Forsyth for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper and to Patrick Kilby for sharing with me a chapter of his forthcoming book. The comments of two anonymous reviewers were invaluable in refining the article further.

Notes

^1. This quote was referred to in Quigley and Pratten, Security and Civil Society, 27.

^2.Buzan et al., Security, 23–24.

^3. Ibid., 25.

^4.Buzan and Waever, ‘Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations’.

^5. They argue that ‘[i]t is easy to understand the GWoT, especially in its “long war” formulation, as representing similar aspirations to provide an overarching securitisation that relates, organises and possibly subsumes a host of other middle-level securitisations’. Ibid., 256.

^6. Ibid., 267.

^7.Rabinow, The Foucault Reader; Dean, Governmentality.

^8. In Buzan's words, moving issues ‘out of this threat-defense sequence and into the ordinary public sphere’. Buzan et al., Security, 2.

^9. The article draws on analysis of over 200 interviews with key informants in NGOs, relevant government departments, international development agencies, foundations and research institutes in Afghanistan, Kenya, India, USA, UK and Denmark, as well as primary and secondary literatures. The research was funded by the ESRC.

^10. Civil society refers to the terrain of actors, spaces and organisations outside of government and the market that are engaged in the deliberation of public affairs. Sociologically, it includes a wide range of organisations such as trades unions, mosques, human rights groups, environmental networks, virtual coalitions, NGOs and faith groups. Development agencies, politicians and donors often use the term civil society and NGO interchangeably. Moreover, in the USA the term ‘non-profits’ or private voluntary organisations is more commonly used than NGOs and in the UK voluntary sector organisations and NGOs are often used interchangeably.

^11.Stritzel, ‘Towards a Theory of Securitisation’, 367. In arguing this Stritzel sought to challenge the Copenhagen School for not paying sufficient theoretical attention to the social context within which speech acts occur.

^12. Ibid. Stritzel develops an externalist position on securitisation that links the momentary speech acts to a broader discursive context. His framework sets up a triangle of securitisation forces, namely, the performative force of threat texts, their embeddedness in existing discourses and the positional power of actors who define meaning (Ibid., 370).

^13.Salter, ‘Securitisation and Desecuritisation’, 326.

^14.Balzacq, ‘The Three Faces of Securitisation’, 193.

^15. Buzan and Waever, ‘Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations’.

^16. In 1967 Ramparts magazine exposed the CIA's clandestine connections with the National Student Association and other so-called private voluntary organisations in the USA. As part of a covert strategy to counter communist propaganda, the CIA funded political parties, set up media outlets such as Radio Free Europe targeting Eastern Europe, and established the Asia Foundation to confront communist influence in Asia (Marchetti and Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, 23).

^17. Ajee, On the Run; Marchetti and Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence; Saunders, The Cultural Cold War.

^18.Ahmed and Potter, NGOs in International Politics, 75–96.

^19.Kilby, ‘The Origins of ACFID’.

^20. Ibid.

^21.Oakman, ‘The Politics of Foreign Aid’, 255.

^22.Oakman, ‘The Seed of Freedom’, 68.

^23.Pergande, ‘Private Voluntary Aid’, 165.

^24. Kilby, ‘The Origins of ACFID’.

^25. Ibid.

^26. Ibid.

^27. Ahmed and Potter, NGOs in International Politics, 102–104.

^28.Hilton, ‘International Aid and Development NGOs’, 461.

^29. Ahmed and Potter, NGOs in International Politics, 104. See also Hilton, ‘International Aid and Development NGOs’, 454, for a similar comment on this era.

^30.Edwards and Hulme, Making a Difference.

^31. Ahmed and Potter, NGOs in International Politics, 104.

^32.Keck, State funded NGOs in Civil Wars; Pergande, Private Voluntary Aid and Nation Building in South Vietnam; Flipse, The Latest Casualty of War.

^33. Flipse, The Latest Casualty of War, 252.

^34. Keck, ‘State funded NGOs in Civil Wars’, 416.

^35.Baitenmann, ‘NGOs and the Afghan War’; Goodhand, ‘Aiding Violence or Building Peace’; Vaux, ‘Humanitarian Trends and Dilemmas’; Waisova, ‘Post-War Reconstruction in Afghanistan’.

^36. Kilby, ‘The Origins of ACFID’, 10.

^37. Flipse, ‘The Latest Casualty of War’, 255–263.

^38. Baitenmann, ‘NGOs and the Afghan War’, 82.

^39. Baitenmann, ‘NGOs and the Afghan War’, 80.

^40. Ibid.

^41. Flipse, ‘The Latest Casualty of War’, 255.

^42. Hilton, ‘International Aid and Development NGOs’, 463.

^43.Horn and Podraic, Transnational Moments of Change. New public management theory refers broadly to the theory justifying reform of the public sector through processes of privatisation, streamlining, competition and subcontracting service provision to NGOs and the private sector (see Minogue, ‘Power to the People?’ for further discussion). The World Bank has been a keen promoter of such reforms in the developing world.

^44.Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad; Mendelson and Glenn, The Power and Limits of NGOs; Sandstrom, Funding Civil Society.

^45. For an interesting critique of the narrative that NGOs pioneered the rights-based approach to development, see Hilton, ‘International Aid and Development NGOs’.

^46.Howell and Pearce, Civil Society and Development.

^47. Hilton, ‘International Aid and Development NGOs’, 465.

^48. Carothers, Aiding Democracy Abroad; Ottaway and Carothers, Funding Virtue; van Rooy, Civil Society and the Aid Industry.

^49. Howell and Pearce, Civil Society and Development.

^50. Indeed the connections between security and development have roots that can be traced back to the colonial period (see Duffield, ‘The Liberal Way of Development’; Evans, ‘Foucault's Legacy’).

^51.Howell and Lind, Counter-terrorism, Aid and Civil Society; Caparini, ‘Enabling Civil Society’; Pearce, ‘A Case-Study of IDRC-Supported Research’; Anderlini and Conaway, ‘Security Sector Reform’.

^52.UN, ‘We the Peoples’.

^53. See for example the recent case of media accusations that Muslim Aid was funding Islamic extremist groups and the Charity Commission's findings that such claims were unsubstantiated (Gilligan, ‘Muslim Aid’).

^54. Ahmed and Potter, NGOs in International Politics, 62–67.

^55.Hulme and Edwards, NGOs, States and Donors.

^56. Buzan et al., Security.

^57.Bigo and Tsoukala, ‘Understanding (In)security’, 5.

^58.DFID, Fighting Poverty to Build a Safer World.

^59. For an analysis of financial surveillance post-9/11 see Amicelle, ‘Towards a “New” Political Anatomy’; and de Goede, ‘Risk, Pre-emption and Exception’.

^60.Charity Commission, Inquiry Report, 31–35. The Charity Commission completed the last inquiry in February 2009 and recommended that it renounce its membership of the Union of Good, because of the latter's links with designated entities. By mid-2008 the Charity Commission had found only two registered charities with any proven links to terrorism, namely, the Tamil Relief Organisation and the Finsbury Park Mosque in North London.

^61. The FATF is the world's main anti-money laundering body. In 2002 it agreed to try to make its rules binding on all countries. Special Recommendation VIII extended the rules to money-service businesses, including hawala finance transfer system, charities and universities. The Recommendation states ‘[n]on-profit organisations are particularly vulnerable, and countries should ensure that they cannot be misused: (i) by terrorist organisations posing as legitimate entities; (ii) to exploit legitimate entities as conduits for terrorist financing, including for the purpose of escaping asset freezing measures; and (iii) to conceal or obscure the clandestine diversion of funds intended for legitimate purposes to terrorist organisations’.

^62.InterAction, ‘Impact of Legal Restrictions’.

^63. The panel was organised by the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Charity and Security Network to discuss ‘Commitment to Charitable Giving: One Year After Obama's Cairo Speech’. The panel included legal, tax and academic experts on counter-terrorism. Ellen Willmott, a Deputy General Counsel, has represented Save the Children at meetings with various US government bodies dealing with counter-terrorism regulations.

^64. This was introduced in December 2002 (Interview, USAID, Washington, DC, 23 April 2008).

^65. Interview, USAID, Washington, DC, 23 April 2008.

^66. See Dixon, ‘Hearts and Minds’ for a closer discussion of origins of ‘hearts and minds’.

^67.Perito, The US Experience with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan; Perito, The US Experience with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq and Afghanistan; Gordon, ‘The New Humanitarians’; Gordon, ‘The UK's Stabilisation Model and Afghanistan’.

^68.Ruteere and Ogada, ‘Regional Challenge, Local Response’.

^69. Author's interview, DANIDA, Nairoibi, 22 January 2007.

^70. This analogy draws on the title of Mamdani's 2005 book entitled Good Muslim, Bad Muslim.

^71. I draw here on the work of Bloodgood and Tremblay-Boire, ‘Counter-Terrorism and Civil Society’, who classify NGO responses in terms of ‘hiding, shirking, vocal opposition, participating and litigating’.

^72.ACLU, Blocking Faith, Freezing Charity; Guinane and Sazawal, ‘Counter-Terrorism Measures’, 57.

^73. Author's interview, Washington, DC, 24 April 2008.

^74.USIP, ‘Terrorism in the Horn of Africa’.

^75.Sidel, ‘Counter-terrorism and the Enabling’; Vaux, ‘Humanitarian Trends and Dilemmas’.

^76. Author's interview, Nairobi, 16 January 2007.

^77.Sidel, More Secure, Less Free?, 96.

^78.Petersen, ‘Islamizing Aid’, 129.

^79. Sidel, More Secure, Less Free?, 96.

^80. Interview, InterAction, Washington, DC, 23 April 2008.

^81. See Brief and Summary Points of experts' Roundtable on ‘Civil Society and the Securitisation of Aid in Europe’, held in November 2006 at LSE.

^82. Interview, Washington, DC, 23 April 2008.

^83.Oxfam, ‘Whose Aid Is It Anyway?’.

^84.McHugh and Gostelow, Provincial Reconstruction Teams; Gordon, ‘The UK's Stabilisation Model and Afghanistan’; Gordon, ‘The New Humanitarians’.

^85. Interview, Christian Aid, Kabul, 21 August 2006.

^86.IRD, International Relief and Development. Author's interview, Oxfam, Kabul, August 2006. Others include the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee and Helping Afghan Farmers Organisation (Gordon, Winning Hearts and Minds).

^87. Interview with director of Afghan NGO, Herat, Afghanistan, 3 September 2006.

^88. See author's interview, by telephone, with ACLU, May 2008.

^89. Hassan Fatah and Robert Worth, ‘Relief Agencies Find Hezbollah Hard to Avoid’. New York Times, 23 August 2006. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/world/middleeast [Accessed January 2012].

^90.Guinane, ‘US Counterterrorism Laws’.

^91. Ruteere and Ogada, ‘Regional Challenge, Local Response’.

^92. Petersen, ‘Islamizing Aid’, 131.

^93. Interview, DANIDA, Nairobi, Kenya, 22 January 2007. Note that organisations are not named here to ensure confidentiality.

^94.Vaughn, ‘The Unlikely Securitzer’; van Brabant, ‘Operational Security Management’; Renouf, ‘Understanding How the Identity’; Renouf, ‘Do Private and Military Security Companies’.

^95. As Renouf notes in ‘Understanding How the Identity’, apart from issues of principle, there are also other issues at stake such as balancing the requirement of insurance companies to meet minimal security standards with the willingness of staff to accept constraints on their movements; and the organisational goal of providing relief and development with the limitations of remote programme management.