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