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As this editorial is being written Turkish riot police in Istanbul and An-kara are employing tear gas to disperse anti-government protests com-memorating the one-year anniversary of similar rallies last year that re-sulted in thousands of casualties. The ongoing turbulence in Turkey has as its epicentre the increasing totalitarianism of the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and forms just one part of a global crisis of authority. The collapse of traditional political systems across the Arab world, the attacks on sovereignty in the South China Sea as much as in Ukraine - all of this reflects the fracturing of western, democratic power in the world, a worrying trend evident as much in internal politics as foreign affairs.

The result of this is widespread uncertainty as to the form and lo-cation of authority. Of course, these questions are not new, but now is an especially pertinent time to ask questions on the theme of au-thority. All of the recent turmoil in the world, of which only a few ex-amples were outlined above, illustrate that this is an issue that has not been resolved and requires more attention, more work, more thought. We are confident that the pages of this journal will contrib-ute to this process, and thank all our authors for their hard work.

Finally, a few words must be said of our authority. We tried as hard as we could to retain the style of each of our writers. We attempted to wield the blue pencil so as to resemble a tyrant as little as possible, and we hope that the results of our efforts will be evident in the diverse articles con-tained in these pages. Similarly, both of us have tried to avoid the position of dictator, and any success that may be ascribed to this issue rests on the shoulders of our patient, diligent and outstanding team. Josh Dol-phin, Mina Pollman, Becky Knott, Camille White, we are in your debt.

Isaac and Fergus

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EDITORS: ISAAC GREENWOOD & FERGUS PEACEDEPUTY EDITORS: JOSH DOLPHIN & MINA POLLMAN

COPY EDITOR: BECKY KNOTT PUBLICITY & SPONSORSHIP: CAMILLE WHITE

ContentsKONY: THE WARLORD AND THE CHARISMAQUESTIONELEANOR BEEVOR // 6

TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY IN SOUTH AFRICARICHARD MCLAVERTY // 12

SCOTTISHINDEPENDENCE& AUTHORITYNATAN BRAM // 18

AUTHORITY AFTER THE EXPENSESSCANDALGABRIEL LAWSON // 28

AN AUDIENCE WITH HM AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINEMOLLY MCPARLAND // 22

CONSTRUCTINGAUTHORITY IN FAILED STATESNICHOLAS TAN // 32

A BASELESS JIHAD: ISLAMISM AFTER BIN LADENEMMA BRAND // 40

SOUTH AFRICA’SDECLININGAUTHORITYKAMEEL PREMHID // 47

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Bill Emmott, former editor-in-chief of The Economist and honorary fellow of Magdalen College, is developing a new sta-tistical indicator of how well western countries are prepared for the sort of world we can expect in 2050.

The 2050 Vitality Index will offer a ranking of countries ac-cording to how well they are shaping up.

He invites you to submit proposals, of between 500 and 1,000 words, for measures that would be sustainable across coun-tries and time, and would offer striking indications of future vitality.

It is said we are in a “knowledge society”: but how best to de-fine and measure that? Or innovativeness? Or how well we are adjusting to our changing demographies? Or climate change? Or the quality of our rule of law, the working of our democra-cies… Or, rather, what you think matters.

The best entries will be published on his non-profit’s website, www.wakeupfoundation.eu, and rewarded with bottles of champagne—a measure of a certain sort of vitality.

Applications should be sent to bill@wakeupfoundation.eu There is no closing date, but the sooner the better.

COMPETITION

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You’d be forgiven for thinking the world doesn’t want to hear any more about Joseph Kony. The Ugandan warlord catapulted to viral video fame two years ago by the ‘Kony 2012’ video cam-paign and became the internet’s epitome of evil for his Lord Re-sistance Army’s (LRA) mass con-scription of child soldiers. Before long, though, Kony’s grotesque outline had vanished from our screens, almost as conspicuously as it had appeared. We were left aware of Kony, as the campaign intended us to be, but not all that knowledgeable. Yet aspects of the campaign itself are oddly telling about its enigmatic subject. For a video to get away with a narra-tive that one critic described as “a blend of Heart of Darkness and Glee”, it had to have an exception-

ally seductive capacity to make stopping Kony seem so wonder-fully easy, practically and mor-ally. Though this brand of click-bait was never meant to capture the true nature of the LRA, it is interesting that Kong is the only figure on whom it could work at all. Some of his high command-ers were abducted too young to be relegated so easily to the “evil” binary. Other rebel groups, such as the militias of eastern Congo, are too political to receive this treatment. Why, then, can Kony?

There’s a word that seems to fol-low Kony around, sometimes, but not always, linked to the talk of spirit possession that sur-rounds him: his “charisma”. Do a Google search for “Joseph Kony charisma”, and you’ll find tens of pages of news articles describing

eleanor beevor

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his power as such. It infiltrates academic literature too. One of the most widely cited articles on the LRA describes Kony as “pos-sessed of a charisma bordering on the prophetic…”, and it’s far from the only one. There’s sever-al problems with this statement. Firstly, it isn’t really an answer, but a fig leaf for a lack of one. It’s often then used as a springboard for allusions to “exotic” African mysticism. But most glaringly of all, applying the term “cha-risma” to Joseph Kony is sheer contradiction in terms. When Max Weber coined the term, he described it as “a certain quality of an individual personality […] regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, […] recognition is a matter of complete personal devotion to the possessor of the quality”. Kony’s LRA is exception-

al among guerrilla movements for its overwhelming reliance on abduction to fill its ranks. Why, then, is he constantly described akin to the kind of leader who inspires a voluntary following?

In fact, those who describe him as “charismatic” are absolute-ly right, and Kony can teach us how this kind of authority works because of this contradiction. He is forced to construct, in the most extreme fashion, an effect, which brings to life the kind of “quality” Weber described; in this case, a direct link to the di-vine. Because it is so coerced, the lynchpins of this effect are exposed. What they reveal is the point at which a person embodies their own legitimacy, and so it is they, rather than a message or ideology, that peo-

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ple are following. There’s a fine line between populists, or poli-ticians described as charismatic, and those who make themselves indispensable to their own vision, and thus independent of institu-tions and procedures. It’s a line worth identifying at a time where the institutions we believed would eventually rule the world seem to be eroding under a furore of emotive, nationalist politics.

The charismatic may become in-dependent of institutions, but not

the most notorious of which was fronted by Kony’s cousin.

Alice “Lakwena” was named after the Christian “holy” spirit that she claimed possessed her, gave her a notorious healing power, and lat-er instructed her to form an army to fight Museveni. Her healing power was a potent trait after decades of Acholi involvement in battles for power. In Acholi cosmology, the spirit of a person who died violently, or cen, haunts the killer, bringing sickness and

circumstance; historical context is crucial. Kony is an Acholi, a northern Ugandan ethnic group which has been economically marginalised since the colonial period. This regional rift swayed post-colonial power struggles, and came to a head in 1986, when the current President Yow-eri Museveni’s rebel army oust-ed two Acholi military officers, who had recently taken pow-er in a coup. Fearing reprisals, the Acholi fled north and began several insurgency campaigns,

misfortune to them and their neighbours. Such beliefs blend-ed well with Christian idioms of “purity”, rebirth and the cleansing of sins. Her soldiers were ritual-ly “purified”, and told, as a result, that they were bulletproof, and could throw rocks which would explode like bombs, provided they obeyed a list of rules known as the “Holy Spirit Precautions”. Though she gathered thousands of followers, she was eventually defeated, and claimed the spir-

“The process of abduction is strategic, designed to spread fear among civilians, and terrify the abductees into compliance.”

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it had left her. Kony seized his chance to borrow her fame, and claimed that the spirit now pos-sessed him. With a small band of followers, the LRA was born. Kony’s personal motivations are dubious, though seem to be at least part theocratic. A former senior commander told me Kony envisioned himself as a prophet, who would one day theologically direct the national president. An-other former abductee told me Kony abducted and killed his own people because he saw himself as a “rod” with which to discipline the sinful Acholi; his violence was a form of purification. These answers are vague at best, and, interestingly, such justifications aren’t greatly discussed by ana-lysts, nor found in their records of former abductee testimonies. Kony’s charisma obviously didn’t depend on justifying his actions.

To understand his power, we have to begin with the most common point of entry to the LRA. The process of abduction is strategic, designed to spread fear among civilians, and terrify the abduct-ees into compliance. They are often made to walk for hours to rebel camps, but will be killed if they collapse from exhaustion.

Violence tends to be a feature of abduction; usually beatings, but sometimes they are forced to take part in killings or mu-tilations of their fellows. Some are released, and the stories they tell once home spread intense fear. These acts of violence are a demonstration of Kony’s cosmo-logical power, as well as engines of fear. If his soldiers can kill free-ly, without fear of haunting by the victim’s cen, they have an even more powerful spiritual force on their side. Abductees are then rit-

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ually anointed with shea nut oil, which they are told will purify them of their sins, and also al-lows Kony to read their minds.

To be told Kony can read minds and to believe it are different things, yet the majority of re-turned fighters did believe Kony had this supernatural ability, amongst others. One of my infor-mants, the abducted “wife” of a high commander, described what happened when Kony’s “rules”, similar to Alice Lakwena’s Holy Spirit Precautions, such as food and sex taboos, were broken.

“there would be times that he would tell them… that the god in him is telling them to fast… When they were fasting, those who would sneak and eat, every time they were in battle they would get shot in the mouth… but somehow they would not die. They become living testi-monies of Kony’s greatness.”

It is the flexibility of these rules that concentrates power in Kony’s hands, since he is the only one possessed by the spir-it, and the rules change accord-ing to the spirit’s diktats. Certain taboos are imposed at certain

times, and sometimes the taboos change. It is adherence to these rules that, according to Kony, keeps you alive in a climate of constant terror and violence. Researcher Ben Mergelsberg re-calls the words of one abductee:

“The rules strengthened me a lot. Because I saw that if I fol-low the things, there was noth-ing. I would stay alive, be safe… It kept me living with no fear.”

Kony could maintain absolute power, so long as he was the only one with access to information about how to protect them. This is why the inherent ambiguity and change in the rules is so im-portant. If they could be learned as a fixed set of codes, he would be replaceable, and susceptible to internal power struggles. By creating intense fear through abduction, and ritually incor-porating the abductees in ac-cordance with both Acholi and Christian cosmology, he made himself a quasi-divine presence.

This ambiguity of doctrine is the tipping point that makes the char-ismatic authoritarian. When their ideology is sufficiently vague that it cannot be interpreted or enacted

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without their presence, they can operate independently of institu-tion and procedure, and of fear for their monopoly on authori-ty. In a world where institutions don’t seem to have the ideological grip they once did, it is a point we should watch out for. Kony may not be the most dangerous force in central Africa any more, but we should not dismiss what he can tell us about power as easily as we did him from our screens.

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TRANSITIONAL AUTHORITY IN SOUTH AFRICA richard mclavertyBefore 1994, having an apart-heid Security Branch member in your home signalled one of two things: either you were in trou-ble with the law and about to be arrested, or you held sufficiently important information that war-ranted a visit. Fast-forward 20 years, apartheid is over and the Security Branch is dismantled. I’ve gone back to South Afri-ca to conduct some research for my master’s dissertation. The intercom goes off signalling the

arrival of my guest and I rush to welcome Brian Mitchell in. Over tea we sit down and begin to chat about his time in the South Afri-can Police Force. At 57, Mitchell is far from what I imagined the typical policeman to be like. He’s short, quiet and speaks softly. His voice almost has a tranquil calm about it. In fact, the first sense I get of his policing background is after I apologise profusely for the noisy disturbance coming from the neighbours. “Call the

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“In order to build a better, consolidated, future South Africa would need to better manage its

past. Reconciliation, not revenge, would be the ideals guiding the way forward.”

police,” he says. But Mitchell, in some aspects, is not your typical pre-1994 policeman. His person-al story is unique and reflects, in large part, the transition of South Africa, generally, and its security services, in particular. It is his story, and the reflection it offers into our past that still has me questioning how far we have actually come. Mitchell, after all, was the first serving policeman to be charged with, and convicted of, carrying out a politically mo-tivated murder during apartheid.

How Mitchell comes to be here, then, sitting in my parents’ home, in most respects a free man, re-quires some explanation. It starts in a small farming communi-ty outside the picturesque area of New Hanover, KwaZulu Na-tal. There, a little-known village called Trust Feed hidden among the sugarcane has become an im-portant case study in South Afri-ca’s recent history. On December

3rd 1988, at about 3am, a group of policemen opened fire on a house, shooting and killing elev-en people at point-blank range. The demographics of the dead convey the devastation caused by the policemen’s actions: three men, six women and two chil-dren – one of whom was just four years old – died that day. The police, the courts were later told, were acting on orders. Their task was to stabilize a volatile area that had been torn apart by vio-lence between the Zulu-dominat-ed Inkatha and the rival United Democratic Front (UDF). But instead of hitting a house where so-called “terrorists” were being harboured, the police wrong-ly attacked another home where a family was holding a funeral wake. Captain Brian Mitchell, then Station Commander of the New Hanover district, insisted that although he had given the order to kill, he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself. After a lengthy

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trial, Mitchell and four other spe-cial constables were found guilty on eleven counts of murder and two of attempted murder. Mitch-ell, despite ‘not having pulled the trigger,’ was sentenced to death by hanging. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

“Yes, I ordered the special consta-bles to attack the UDF… I knew they were going to kill people; my decision to use special con-stables was taken that night. I did not expect the specials to shoot up a house indiscriminately and I did not seek the death of wom-en and children. I saw myself in the midst of a civil war involving Inkatha and the UDF. I saw my-self on the side of the government and I sympathized with Inkatha at the time,” Mitchell tells me.

In 1996, Mitchell was released from prison after being granted amnesty by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. South Africans had negotiated a difficult political journey and, as part of the deal, both sides (the liberation movements and the apartheid state) agreed that reconciliation would best be achieved by learning to forgive each other for acts carried out

in the name of liberation and apartheid, respectively. Both the merit of this process and, indeed, whether the lack of closure for the victims made it worth it in the end, are questionable. The logic, however, is clear. In order to build a better, consolidated, fu-ture South Africa would need to

better manage its past. Reconcil-iation, not revenge, would be the ideals guiding the way forward.

A few months after his release, Mitchell met the families of his victims. He has returned to Trust Feeds every year since. Leaders from across the political divide,

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including President Jacob Zuma, have praised Mitchell as an ex-emplar of genuine reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa.

Mitchell’s dedication to recon-ciliation is unique but his role in state-sponsored violence against liberation movements is not. The

police under the then ruling Na-tional Party were regarded as a political instrument to be used against the liberation move-ments. On February 2nd 1990, when President F. W. de Klerk announced the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and others, including the

Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the South African Commu-nist Party (SACP), not only did it signal a new era in South Af-rica’s history but also it signalled significant changes for the police.

Up until that point, the South Af-rican Police had been involved in an armed conflict with the libera-tion movements. The understand-ing among commentators, and de Klerk himself, was that the police would be resistant to change. Pri-or to 1994, the police had consis-tently been a political tool used to suppress liberation movements and act against the spread of com-munism. This coupled with a leg-acy of colonial era policing and the counter-insurgency role that it played had resulted in an authori-tarian police force that brutalised the majority of South Africans. The senior and middle ranks of the police predominantly consist-ed of white and Afrikaans men who were far removed from the lives of those whom they policed. The very nature of policing was deeply embedded in a racist ide-ology of domination and control.

In a series of events, police officials were informed that change was in-evitable and that they would need

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to accommodate the new emerg-ing political order. While many officers stayed on, some senior officials were removed and others opted for retirement packages. For years the police officers had engaged in a war with the ANC, but now they would have to work for them. For the future of South Africa enemies would now have to work alongside each other. Change was required, but how would that be possible in a po-litically fragile country where in-stitutional memory ran so deep?

In the transition to democra-cy significant changes began to take place. The most immediate aim was to demonstrate that the police needed to be built on the foundations of human rights. In 1991, for example, the Security Branch was disbanded and ab-sorbed into the Detective Ser-vice. A new name was given to it – the Crime Information Service – that attempted to go beyond rebranding. It marked a shift in the role the branch played. The subjection of intelligence ser-vices to the rule of law under-pinned by a constitutional order which valued de-politicisation and independence was another example of this kind of epoch-

al change. The police’s military rank structure was abolished and the name “force” was replaced with “service.” A new badge and logo were adopted, along with new colours, image and symbols.

Despite the violent institutional history of the police force and the continued hostility police officers faced in black townships, the ini-tial response to change from both the police and South Africans seemed overwhelmingly positive. Whether as an act of self pres-ervation or a genuine attempt at reconciliation the police seemed to be taking steps in the right di-rection. However, recent events bring into question whether the police have actually changed. For many South Africans the regret-table events at Marikana in Au-gust 2012, when 44 people died – 34 at the hands of the police – in a single day, were reminiscent of the dark days of policing during apartheid. So to was the killing of Andries Tatane, who was shot dead on live television by the police during a service delivery protest. Or again, the case of Mo-zambican national Mido Macia who died of head injuries after being dragged along the street handcuffed to the back of a police

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van. All of these incidents illus-trate to some degree similarities between the current police force and National Party rule during apartheid. Why then despite the promise to reconcile has there been a return to a militarized and authoritarian police force? These issues and many others have re-sulted in the South African po-lice force facing a crisis of con-fidence and trust as they did at the time of the transition. In the past, political lines defined the role the police played but today,

despite the political commitment to human rights, the authoritari-an culture persists and police offi-cers are facing a crisis of identity. After speaking to Mitchell that day, I was left with a deep sense of ambivalence with regards to the future of the police in South Af-rica. While so much progress has indeed been made, so much still needs to change. Whether South Africa possesses the political lead-ership to bring about such change is a different question altogether.

“In the past, political lines defined the role the police played but today, despite the political commitment to human rights, the authoritarian culture persists and

police officers are facing a crisis of identity.”

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SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE:WHOSE AUTHORITY?

natan bramLast term Oxford Lawyers without Bor-ders organised a talk entitled ‘What can Scotland learn from South Sudan?’ It turns out that is more than you would expect. Jure Vidmar, an expert on international law and correspondents for The Independent (James Cusick) and The Guardian (Simon Tisdall) discussed the international prec-edents of territories seceding and forming new entities. In 2011 over 98% of South Su-danese voted in favour

of independence from the rest of Sudan, with a turnout of over 97%. The best the Yes cam-paign in Scotland can hope for in September, given their continued deficit in the polls, is a slender victory on a significantly lower turnout. Though this would not invalidate Scottish indepen-dence, the panellists raised the point that it would certainly raise questions of legitima-cy for the newly creat-ed state. If a slim ma-jority vote for Scottish independence, even with a high turnout of 70 or 80%, only a mi-

nority of eligible voters would have approved of the monumental decision to secede. The South Sudanese state, despite facing many extremely serious problems, at least came into existence with the overwhelming sup-port of its citizens.

However South Sudan is no longer the new kid on the secession block. In March 2014, Crimea seceded from Ukraine and then ac-ceded to the Russian Federation. Which begs the question: what can Scotland learn from Crimea?

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“The South Sudanese state, despite facing many ex-tremely serious problems, at least came into existence

with the overwhelming support of its citizens.”

There are many im-portant differences between the process-es by which Scotland seeks to become inde-pendent and Crimea joined Russia. The cli-mate of violence and intimidation which surrounded the ref-erendum in Crimea is absent in Scotland. And while the inter-national community would undoubtedly

recognize Scotland’s independence (should it choose to secede), there is no interna-tional recognition of Crimea joining the Russian Federation. However, the most interesting difference between the two pro-cesses is the time it took for authority and sovereignty in Crimea to be transferred from Ukraine to Russia and

the time it is expected to take for the same transfer of authority and sovereignty from the United Kingdom to Scotland. The refer-endum in Crimea took place on March 16th and by March 21st it was formally part of Russia. The swiftness of this transition has left no doubt about who is in control in Crimea, regardless of

teen months. Much has been written about what will need to be discussed between the Westminster Parlia-ment and Holyrood between a Yes vote and Independence Day, from the national debt to Trident to a curren-cy union. But there has been little discus-sion about who will have the authority to make decisions in this

the opinion of the in-ternational communi-ty. By stark contrast, if Scotland votes Yes in September, the Scot-tish government hopes Scotland will become an independent coun-try in March 2016.

This leaves a great un-solved question about who has authority over Scotland for the inter-vening period of eigh-

switch over period. Le-gally, nothing changes if Scotland votes Yes on the 18th of Sep-tember: the vote just gives the Scottish gov-ernment a mandate to negotiate with the Westminster govern-ment to secede. The Westminster govern-ment would retain all the powers it currently holds in the existing constitutional set up.

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However, exploring a couple of hypothetical situations highlights the potential problems with this arrangement. If Britain were to deploy troops abroad during this interregnum, and this mission stretched into 2017 or beyond, should Scottish troops join the mission? If they do, these troops would then come under the com-mand of a foreign nation in the middle of the mission. On the domestic front, if a Scottish bank collapses and requires a bail out, this could have seismic econom-ic consequences for the Scottish economy. What happens if the Scottish government wants to take a different course on this matter than the Westminster one? The Westminster government could legally take decisions in 2014 and

2015 that have a sizeable impact on the medium and long term future of Scotland – after the Scottish people democratically decided to free themselves from decisions made by Westminster.

However, if the Westminster gov-ernment refrains from making any major decisions concerning Scotland during the transition period this would leave Scotland without a proper government for over a year. The Scottish Parlia-ment would only have the powers devolved to it in 1998 (and in the subsequent Scotland Act 2012). For nearly a year and a half, no entity would have the authority to tackle Scotland’s most sensitive and important political issues.

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“A Yes vote in September could leaveScotland lacking a fully effective

government for over a year and a half.”

This may not be a problem at all. In the United States, a new president does not take office for more than 2 months after being elected. The in-cumbent president continues to govern as a so-called ‘lame duck.’ The incumbent president, though le-gally retaining all the powers of the presi-dency during the lame duck period, does not have the authority to take major decisions because of the lack of mandate. However this two-month peri-od of lame duck pres-

idency is significant-ly shorter than what Scotland may have to face after September.

A Yes vote in Septem-ber could leave the Scottish lacking a fully effective government for over a year and a half. Effective coop-eration and commu-nication between the authorities in Edin-burgh and Westmin-ster with mechanisms in place for joint de-cision-making would make for a smooth transition with mini-mal disruption to the governing of Scotland.

But with no precedent in place for how this cooperation would work, there is no mod-el to follow, nor any guarantee that such co-operation could pro-duce desired results. If a crisis strikes and de-cisive action is needed, these decisions may simply be avoided or made unilaterally by a government that the majority of Scottish electorate have voted to abandon. Neither of these scenarios signals an auspicious start for independent Scotland.

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a new Cold War?AN AUDIENCE WITH SIMON SMITH, BRITISH AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE

molly mcparlandSince 2012, Simon Smith has been the British Ambassador to Ukraine in Kyiv, and in that time has witnessed some of the most dramatic political upheaval in the modern Ukrainian state since it achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Political turbulence in modern Ukraine is not unprecedented; the most memorable case of which being the Orange Revolution in 2004-2005 where protests over elector-al malpractice in the 2004 Presi-dential elections saw Yanukovych forced by the Ukrainian Supreme Court to submit to a re-vote, eventually losing by a consid-erable margin to the pro-West-ern Yushchenko. The events of the last year, however, have been considerably more dramatic. Not only has Yanukovych been over-thrown, this time through dis-tinctly less democratic channels, but over the last 7 months the

worldhasborne witness to an outright, pub-lic, and bloody battle over compet-ing visions of the future of Ukraine. As Ambassador Smith believes, events in Kyiv mark a fundamen-tal shift, not only internally within the political system of Ukraine, but in international relations; as a re-sult of the crisis, relationships be-tween the West and Russia will be fundamentally different. Though he, unlike some analysts, does not believe that we are necessarily en-tering a new Cold War, he admits that in the current climate of mis-trust the West’s relationship with Russia is deteriorating rapidly.

The situation is much more com-plicated than, as some have pre-sented it, a battle between a Euro-pean and a Russian Ukraine. For those who occupied the streets and squares across the country,

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particularly in the early days of the Maidan, it was a protest in support of reform. The protestors saw their country, with its huge reserves of industrial, agricultur-al and human resources, as being brought to its knees by corruption and poor institutional design. Ambassador Smith notes that the first crunch point experienced by Ukraine was not an identity dispute, but rather an econom-ic crisis. Ukraine currently only has the liquid reserves to cover a few weeks of imports, neces-sary economic reforms have not been enacted and the Ukrainian shadow economy is one of the biggest in the world—at around 50% of GDP. Taxes in Ukraine are therefore often not collected or even properly institutionalised in the first place. Additionally, it is now estimated that $37 bil-lion had gone missing from state finances during Yanukovych’s rule: evidence of blatant state corruption further decimating an already beleaguered economy.

This economic crisis exacerbat-ed the second crisis identified by Ambassador Smith – that of a collapse of the confidence in political parties and their repre-sentatives. Political institutions

had not performed effectively: parties were fragmented, rule of law was weak, and people did not believe that they were be-ing properly represented or pro-tected. The initial protestors that stormed Independence Square were calling for institutional re-form – for removing corruption and implementing a univer-sal rule of law. As Ambassador Smith commented, “it was about a recipe of success for Ukraine”.

However, this initial idea of a “recipe of success” has been sub-sumed as peaceful protests have been overrun by violence. Am-bassador Smith places much of the onus here on the actions of the Russian Government. Per-ceiving pro-democratic reforms

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“Russian identity is still steeped in ideas of imperialism and the concept of the Greater Russia expanding past the bor-ders of the contemporary Federation. An integral part of Russian history and culture, many scholars have agreed that

Russian identity would find the loss of Ukraine intolerable.”

and pro-Western cooperation as a threat to Russia and Russian interests in the region, Putin has exploited an already tense situ-ation by employing systematic attempts to destabilize parts of Ukraine. It is understandable that Russia feels threatened by any Ukrainian attempts to move away from the Russian sphere of influence. Russian identity is still steeped in ideas of imperialism and the concept of the Greater Russia expanding past the bor-ders of the contemporary Fed-eration. An integral part of Rus-

sian history and culture, many scholars have agreed that Russian identity would find the loss of Ukraine intolerable. Despite this, the strength of the Russian reac-tion has still been a shock, result-ing in what Ambassador Smith has determined as the third and fourth crises facing Ukraine: those of national identity and, following the illegal annexation of Crimea, of territorial integrity.

Reports of the Ukrainian crisis have increasingly been character-ized as a clash between Western

Ukrainians and Eastern, Russian Ukrainians. However, as Ambas-sador Smith has found through-out his time in Russia, it is ex-tremely difficult to establish any clear divide between the two. In his experience, the vast majority of people speak both Ukrainian and Russian and seem prepared to speak any language in which they can communicate. Even in Crimea Smith believes that pro-Russian separatism has been hugely manufactured. Just weeks before the referendum on a union with Russia took place, only 41%

of those polled had voted to join Russia. Though this suggests that many of the population did feel a strong attachment to Russia, it also casts doubt on the idea that 41% could have translated to over 70% in just a few weeks. Am-bassador Smith suggests that the 30,000 armed militants belong-ing to units of the Russian armed forces, deployed into the region in the interim, may have played a role in the disparity of results. The 40,000 Russian troops that Rus-sia has been maintaining on the border with Ukraine, combined

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“Russian identity is still steeped in ideas of imperialism and the concept of the Greater Russia expanding past the bor-ders of the contemporary Federation. An integral part of Russian history and culture, many scholars have agreed that

Russian identity would find the loss of Ukraine intolerable.”

with excessive amounts of propa-ganda regarding the nationalist nature of the new government in Kyiv, have served to further destabilize Eastern Ukraine – a situation that some have warned could deteriorate into civil war.

Other regional experts have been more reluctant to place so much blame on Russia and Putin, how-ever. Archie Brown, Emeritus Professor of Politics and former Director of the Russian and East European Centre at the Universi-ty of Oxford, believes that West-

Smith does agree that the govern-ment in Kyiv is not blameless in the current crisis. Policies such as initially revoking the status of the Russian language are now widely seen as a mistake, and opportuni-ties to make politics more inclu-sive, reaching out to more distant parts of the country, have been missed. However, Smith believes that he cannot find in Kyiv’s new government any evidence of the fascism or extremism from which the Russians claim to be protect-ing their citizens. Instead, he says, politicians are merely faced with

ern actions have also served to polarize and inflame ethnic ten-sions. He argues that the West should have known that any at-tempts to incorporate Ukraine into the Western sphere of influ-ence would be intolerable to the leadership in Russia, resulting in a feeling of a hostile encroach-ment into the Russian heartlands. The revolutions in Kyiv, he notes, were non-constitutional (in the way that revolutions by definition are), and therefore risk merely re-placing one authoritarian govern-ment with another. Ambassador

the difficult dilemma of dealing with Yanukovych’s ex-cronies quickly enough to appease the protesters and reformers, while not enacting any policies that would alienate people, particu-larly in the East of the country. It will be a difficult tightrope to walk, but Ambassador Smith is confident that there is the polit-ical will in Kyiv to build a dem-ocratic and prosperous Ukraine.

As to what can be done, Ambas-sador Smith believes that, inter-nationally, the onus is on Russia

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to take positive moves to calm the situation. European sanctions may take some time to be effective, but are important in demon-strating to Russia that there will be increas-ing costs if they con-tinue to be uncooper-ative. These sanctions are particularly sig-nificant to the leaders of industry within the Russian Federation – it is the businessmen

who truly understand just how much their country has to lose if they can no longer work with the EU. Though the process of economic sanctions will take time – as Eu-ropean countries es-tablish how to separate themselves from their energy dependence on Russia – in the long

term Smith believes they could be effective in convincing Russia of the benefits of reform. It will by no means be smooth sailing, how-ever, as adapting the Russian economy to be in line with the Eu-ropean Single Market, though economical-ly beneficial, would mean devolving exten-sive amounts of power and decision-making to independent bod-

ies and actors outside of the Kremlin – a proposition that will hardly appeal to Putin.

Within Ukraine, there are rising calls that the state can only be main-tained under a federal system. Supported by Russia, in what many assume to be an at-tempt to institutional-

ize power away from Kyiv into regions more amenable to Moscow’s influence, there has been an increasing ac-ceptance by the inter-national community that federalism may be the only feasible option. As Ambassa-dor Smith points out, within Ukraine Feder-alism is a deeply mis-trusted system, and Ukrainians themselves have repeatedly shown

little support for a Fed-eralized state. How-ever, he believes that in concept decentral-ization in workable, and could be wholly beneficial to stabiliz-ing Ukraine and im-proving its democrat-ic culture. As Archie Brown adds, there is no reason to suppose that asymmetrical

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devolution could not work in Ukraine. It works in far more es-tablished democracies such as the UK and Spain. The process is still going to need some very convinc-ing selling to a wary population however – which is currently im-peded by the presence of militias. If the gov-ernment in Kyiv could successfully convey to the population that it

wants to let people in the regions make local and financial decisions but that state unity will be maintained, federalism could be a viable option for, at the very least, further discussion. However, as Smith underlines, “it is difficult to focus on what exact budget-ary powers should be

transferred from Kiev to Luhansk, when you’ve got guys with balaclavas and guns in the Eastern cit-ies scaring everyone”.

In the last few weeks there have been the first signs from with-in Moscow that some Russian elites may be beginning to think again with regards to Russian action in Ukraine. There is,

therefore, some rea-son to be hopeful that a worst-case scenario may be avoided. As to his original ques-tion of whether the Ukrainian crisis (or any of the four sep-arate crises that he identifies) marks the beginning of a new Cold War, Smith be-lieves that this can be

avoided through the strengthening of dip-lomatic efforts. The important thing, he argues, is to avoid con-frontation with Rus-sia, and to encourage cooperation through organizations such as the OSCE. Crimea has created a dangerous precedent for the Rus-sian destabilization of breakaway regions and possibly entire countries, creating a

climate of mistrust. Increasing both the carrots and the sticks, through diplomatic efforts and sanctions, may help to convince Russia to cooperate with the West before the situation deteri-orates any further.

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gabriel lawsonin UK politicians seems to plumb new depths every year - the pub-lic’s faith in an increasingly dis-tant and out of touch political class is at an all-time low, with a majority of people polled in a BES study believing ‘Most MPs are corrupt’. Despite the fact that news on MPs’ expenses first broke in May 2009, the scandal appears to have left a deep scar on British politics, as seen with the resignation of Maria Mille in April 2014. At the same time, the prosecution of Nigel Evans has revealed what some newspa-pers describe as a ‘hard-drink-ing culture’ in Parliament, with research claiming that one third of parliamentary workers have

been sexually harassed. What exactly does this apparent expo-sure of widespread sleaze among our political elite mean, and how will it affect us in the near future?

The expenses scandal was a ma-jor event in recent political his-tory, at least from the public’s point of view. Politicians often overestimate the public’s aware-ness and interest in issues, but by the end of 2009 over 95% of those surveyed were aware of the abuse of MPs’ expenses, and 91% were ‘very angry’ at this, both in-credibly high numbers. This in-dignation appeared to translate into action, with several of the worst offenders prosecuted and convicted of fraud or false ac-counting, and all those found to

Confidence

DUCK HOUSES & DIRTY MOVIES

political and moral authority after the expenses scandal

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“What all this evidence reveals is a widespread belief that MPs are morally dubious and that pol-iticians are generally acting in their own interests rather than those they have been elected to serve.”

have falsely claimed were required to pay back what they had taken from the public purse. The Indepen-dent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) was set up as a watchdog in order to prevent abuses of this kind occurring again.

However in the long run public anger faded and very little seems to have been actually achieved. Peers such as Baron Hanning-field, who was convict-ed of false accounting and sentenced to nine months imprison-ment, were allowed to drift back into the chamber after their suspensions were up, not subject to election as MPs are. In 2012/13 the total amount claimed by MPs under

the new regime was actually an increase on that claimed in 2008/09, £98 million as opposed to £95.4 million. IPSA has continued to allow MPs to employ family members, something which 155 MPs take advantage of, possibly explaining the rise in staffing costs in recent years. Meanwhile the trial of Nigel Evans has revealed what appears to be a worrying cul-ture in which sexual harassment is widely permitted. Voters do seem to be aware of all this, with only two in ten agreeing that pol-iticians are ‘behaving in a more professional manner than they were a few years ago’. Sur-veys taken yearly since 2010 reveal that a ma-jority of the public are

sceptical of the reasons people go into politics, and over 75% desire MPs to act according to a set of guidelines regarding their be-haviour and should have to undertake ethics and standards training. What all this evidence reveals is a widespread belief that MPs are morally du-bious and that poli-ticians are generally acting in their own interests rather than those they have been elected to serve. This is neatly encapsulated by the fact that a focus group asked to name an animal whose at-tributes they thought best typified those of MPs came up with, among others, a sloth, a pig and a weasel.

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Most striking here is the increase in public apathy; already only 65% of people bother to vote, down from 84% in 1950, and in the immediate aftermath of the revealing of fraudulent expenses in 2009 a poll showed that only 45% of people were committed to voting in the next general elec-tion. It may be suggested that the public’s opinion of politicians has changed drastically, with expec-tations lowered and competence now the major factor in accru-ing support, rather than convic-tion or any form of morality.

rent free by the party. It seems that those outside of the three largest parties are not immune to the impulse to claim as much as possible. However, UKIP’s in-creasing success may have rami-fications in that protest votes are still votes, and giving seats to a party that seems unable to prop-erly vet its candidates (who seem to produce a new gaffe week-ly) does not appear to be wise.

It is therefore a Catch-22 in Brit-ish politics that the only parties possessing the money and ma-

Many commentators also sug-gest that UKIP, unsullied due to its lack of MPs and seen as more representative of ‘ordinary peo-ple’, will reap the rewards at the polls. UKIP recently reached a high of 14%, something that is unlikely to win it any MPs but large enough to demonstrate po-litical disaffection on a large scale. This is despite the fact that UKIP leader Nigel Farage was recent-ly accused of claiming £15,500 a year to run an office given to him

chinery to promote capable can-didates are the three major parties which have maintained a stran-glehold on power for decades and arguably no longer represent public opinion, barring regional parties such as the SNP or Plaid Cymru which could never hope to win a general election. First past the post makes it unlikely that any new party could compete with the machinery already in place and win a large number of MPs, even if its policies did man-

“What we face here is a situation in which political authority is vested in a select group

which has shown itself to be corrupt.”

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age to attract a signifi-cant number of votes. In addition, although public dissatisfaction with the major parties is at an all-time high, their success is some-thing of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that many people see smaller par-ties as a ‘wasted vote’ and therefore are un-likely to choose their candidate over one selected by the major

parties who is seen as actually electable.

What we face here is a situation in which po-litical authority is vest-ed in a select group which has shown it-self to be corrupt. The system makes change difficult to accomplish and, more strikingly, the public appears to be unwilling to force change, accustoming

itself to politicians’ attempts to cheat the system rather than at-tempting to improve upon that system. How this state of af-fairs is to be ended is unclear, but it seems unlikely to stop un-til voters take defini-tive action and begin to elect those who they actually want to represent them.

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Authority in Failed Statesnicholas tanThe latest failing

state has arguably command-ed more attention than Somalia ever did; the world now watch-es, helpless, as Russia continues to destabilize and delegitimize Ukraine’s control of Crimea, sowing the seeds for a prolonged civil war that threatens to under-mine Kiev’s ability to govern in the east. While nowhere near the level of violence in places such as South Sudan, Ukraine edg-es closer than ever to the plight that already beleaguers too many nations in the developing world.

What has been the world’s re-sponse to the Ukraines and South Sudans in the past decade? The old, tired refrain – that ‘some-

thing must be done’ – and subse-quent inaction has unfortunately characterized the phenomenon of failed states. Shockingly little has been done for a problem that should have commanded glob-al attention since the collapse of Somalia in 1991. If there has been help, it has been inconsistent, conditional, and usually inept. Yet this is a problem that rep-resents a genuine security threat to the international community, even if it is not always viewed as a significant geostrategic con-cern. Failed states from Yemen to Syria have recently become breeding grounds for Al Qaeda affiliates, shipment points for il-licit drugs, and transit points for the proliferation of weapons of

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mass destruction. If it took the steady slide of Ukraine for us to notice these harms, we are long overdue.

Enough ink has been spilt on the dangers to security posed by failed states. It is time we turned our atten-tion to what means, if any, are available to reestablish authori-ty in failed and fail-ing states. Some of these states, including Ukraine and South Su-dan, may be fortunate enough to escape war and conflict in the near future. They will be in need of a long-term plan to restore author-ity and governance, and the internation-al community should start considering how to give them one.

The fundamental cause behind much of state failure is the government’s loss of legitimacy, which fu-els the vast array of

the trust of the citi-zenry, leaving the state unable to enforce its mandate. This is cur-rently the situation in Ukraine, where police are now frightened to patrol the streets, having lost the trust of the people after their role in cracking down on protests against former president Ya-nukovych. In the vac-uum created, armed militias and warlords are often able to roam freely and carve out their own fiefdoms, with often disastrous and deadly results.

These circumstances often lead to the mis-taken belief by inter-vening countries that a failed state has effec-tively lost all control, and feeds the mental-ity that an imposition of a new brand of au-thority is necessary to wipe the slate clean. Yet most commenters such as Lyons have indicated that this is

problems that emerge afterward. Citizens depend on the state and central govern-ment to protect their persons and property, and provide a sense of security from aggres-sors, both without and within. In most failed states, however, this protection is absent. The state is either par-ty to the violence that plagues its citizens (Sudan), or is simply helpless to intervene (Somalia), having lost what Weber describes as a ‘monopoly on force’. In such circum-stances, security forces may have already lost

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“It may perhaps be anathema to Western observers to accept that political structures best-suited for recon-

structing authority may be less than democratic.”

far from feasible – because while failed states do indeed suffer from a crisis of governance, they are not completely ungoverned spac-es. With few exceptions, many failed states retain either nominal or limited authority. Their exis-tence, along with the complex factors behind the state’s original failure (such as ethno-religious divisions), warrants a more inci-sive approach. Intervention and reconstruction initiatives cannot afford to ignore this, but must in-stead consider an adaptive model which builds on the governmental

and economic systems that have survived the failure of authority.

The reason why economic assis-tance so often fails, despite the generous amounts of aid offered, is because it is often conditional. Failing states with weak govern-ments can hardly afford to refuse their benefactors, and are thus forced to reconstruct their econ-omies along the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). If the IMF’s failed Struc-tural Adjustment Programmes in Uganda and Zambia in the

1970s-80s were any indication, these foreign programmes have rarely addressed the root caus-es of economic malaise, leaving them doomed to fail. The pro-grammes attempted to liberalise the local economies by embark-ing on a campaign of tariff elim-ination and privatization of state subsidies. Although some prof-ited from this, the programmes nonetheless led to deleterious effects in developing economies, whose primary industries were dictated by volatile commodi-ty markets. The consequence of

this neglect was the collapse of local industries, and consum-er prices reaching unaffordable levels. Likewise, in Sierra Leone, an annual United Nations (UN) and Department for Internation-al Development expenditure of $16.4 billion (between 1999 and 2004) did not salvage the coun-try. Citizens simply did not trust the direction of funds toward the reconstruction of a despotic state that had been responsible for re-pression and corruption in the pre-war period. IMF spending caps were also responsible for sti-

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fling increased spend-ing on crucial sources of state legitimacy, such as education and government salaries. It is difficult to envision how the state can ever regain the loyalty of its citizens, while tied to the whims of foreign powers with little in-terest in local welfare. Conditional aid might sometimes be neces-sary (consider how Ghana reneged on the terms of IMF assis-tance), but when tied to unrealistic expecta-tions of overhaul and reform from foreign parties, it is clearly not going to succeed.

So what kind of eco-nomic assistance do these countries need? Well-meaning inter-national organizations need to accord more respect for the unique socio-economic con-ditions of these states, as research has shown that there are func-tioning informal en-

tities that still retain some level of legitima-cy. The private sector is a notable example, with financial services having endured de-spite the absence of au-thority in some coun-tries. In Somalia the hawala (transfer) sys-tem sustains foreign remittances that pro-vide crucial income in to impoverished citizens. Likewise, in nominally-commu-nist North Korea, the underground market economy provides many of the necessities which the government has failed to deliver (and is nurturing op-position to the regime in the process). Even in Nigeria, informal sector employment covers close to 70% of the workforce. Tech-nocratic assistance should (where pos-sible) explore how to build on these systems in the interim, many of which have been a source of sustenance,

and thus legitimacy, for the populations of failing states. They are hardly enduring models of growth and will almost certainly need to be replaced when genuine reform occurs (as is occur-ring in China’s shadow banking system), but in the interim, they are important and easy sources of stability when the state has lost popular legitimacy.

In the long term, these countries will also need to emphasize ba-sic service delivery to build on and eventual-ly replace the informal systems, a fact which the international com-munity has helpfully noticed. The World Bank’s assistance in rebuilding Liberia appears to have suc-ceeded in this regard, by funding a two-stage Poverty Reduc-tion Strategy between 2008 and 2011 that focused on expanding

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basic infrastructure such as roads, and other amenities such as education and em-ployment. A helpful emphasis on recon-structing the civil ser-vice – by establishing training schools for human resources and financial management and attracting Liberi-an expatriates back to the country – was also vital. These reforms, targeted at restoring the basic elements of a state and its respon-sibilities, increased the prominence of the Liberian state in the eyes of its citizens and rectified many of the causes of failure. It is a work in progress, and perhaps a model for long-term economic reform in failed states seeking a way back from the brink. But let’s not kid ourselves – blind technocratic assistance of the UN and IMF brand will not solve their prob-lems, and slavish de-

votion to standard economic models and the rule of law will not earn a state the trust it needs to survive. An adaptive, needs-based economic reform model might well be the answer these countries need to re-store their legitimacy.

The most crucial re-form is of govern-ment. It may per-haps be anathema to Western observers to accept that political structures best-suit-ed for reconstructing authority may be less than democratic. But the priority in renew-ing political structures should be on the key problems that led to state collapse (such as ethnicity), even if this means accepting alternative structures that fail to meet the standards of a liberal democracy. Winning the loyalty of citizens, who are often more aligned with ethnic

or clan identities, is crucial if the state is to survive in the long term. Nowhere is this truer than in places like Ukraine, where the divide between Ukrainian-speaking Westerners and Rus-sian-speaking East-

erners has been an easy source of conflict for Russia to exploit. Likewise, the South Sudanese divisions between Dinka and Nuer have added an unfortunate ethnic di-mension to a continu-ing political conflict

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between the elites of the ruling Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

No one wants to see the restoration of the old state, but neither do citizens want a foreign-imposed gov-

ernment tied to solely majoritarian interests or external parties. It is difficult to envision how Russian-speaking Ukrainians can ever trust a government in Kiev that refuses to place Russian-speak-ers in positions of

authority, and which continues to receive Western aid, advice and assistance. But if so, what kind of model will help a failed state transcend its ethnic and civil divisions? Liberal democracy is not the only model – Coyne, in an analysis of US-led reconstruc-tion efforts, has calcu-lated a disappointing 26% success rate for the imposition of this model in the past cen-tury. Rotberg likewise notes that Somalia’s earliest governments, while democratic, failed to create a na-tional identity that might have led to a more credible and sus-tainable state. These failures have made the issue clear – the key to legitimacy is not the blunt imposition of a fractionalized demo-cratic system that pays lip-service to diver-sity. What is perhaps needed is a model of consociational gov-

ernance that empha-sizes proportionality in government posts and segmental auton-omy, similar to the Belgian or Lebanese experiences. Such a system must be firmly committed to repre-senting the competing interests of multiple stakeholders, despite the challenge it poses to our conception of majoritarian democ-racy. But even this is not a panacea, if the state allows the sys-tem to widen ethnic cleavages, rather than serve as a means for elite bargaining and re-legitimization of state institutions. The collapse of Lebanon’s government in 2013, and Belgium’s politi-cal deadlock in 2010-11 are all testament to the wasted potential of this framework, if political leaders fail to use its representa-tive structure to tackle the underlying caus-es of ethnic division.

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“Both local and foreign actors have betrayed a deliberate ignorance of local conflicts and needs. This deplorable state of affairs only reinforces the need to shore up failing states with more incisive policy

approaches before they turn into an international security dilemma.”Given the ambitious reach of this eventual system, a functioning, autonomous government is re-quired in the interim, to stave off terrorists and ambitious military leaders, or the kind of insurgen-cies that now plague Ukraine. Yoo, in the Berkeley Law Review, has posited that, without any ex-pertise in governance or suffi-cient trust in the state, temporary forms of joint sovereignty should be explored – like the model of joint UN trusteeship and local government that currently keeps Kosovo (and Cambodia before it) afloat. But this model is not universally applicable; a NA-TO-supported government in Kiev will not assuage fears in the eastern regions of the country of Western dominance. This is why foreign (and even international organization) intervention must be applied cautiously in the wake of reconstruction, taking into consideration the sensitivities of ethnic tensions in the region. Sovereignty remains the centre of the nation-state philosophy, and a trustee authority must be care-

ful to involve local elements in reconstruction, preferably along the consociational model, and eventually transit to a superviso-ry role when viable local admin-istrative bodies (such as police and courts) are reestablished.

However, this is still a tempo-rary solution. A longer-term ap-proach must also ensure that new governments root out the key problems that delegitimize their credibility among the citizen population, chief of which is the plague of corruption. It flourishes in failed states and weak govern-ments, causing massive amounts of funding to be diverted away from useful projects (such as roads and infrastructure) to fig-ures such as military officers and government officials. This oc-curred on a tremendous scale in Angola between 1998 and 2002, when the Angolan government and military brass siphoned off state expenditure in the absence of any need for accountability. To guard against such a damaging force, it is crucial for assistance to

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“Both local and foreign actors have betrayed a deliberate ignorance of local conflicts and needs. This deplorable state of affairs only reinforces the need to shore up failing states with more incisive policy

approaches before they turn into an international security dilemma.”help reconstruct an honest, audit-ed civil service, while rebuilding a non-partisan judicial system that is able to act as a check on any interim government, espe-cially when it starts to make cru-cial appointments to the military or the upper echelons of the rul-ing class. A flawed judicial system (such as the one in Sierra Leone, which is beleaguered by extor-tion and bribery) only reinforces distrust in government and its capacity to deliver on its promis-es, allowing the state to deterio-rate further, and its legitimacy to crumble away. When citizens are confident that there are checks on a state with a legacy of failure, it is easier to persuade citizens to invest trust in and embark on the deep reforms that are required for long term development. As such, checking such destabilizing forces is instrumental in forming a more enduring model of legit-imacy that is likely to outlast a temporary trustee government.

The failed state poses many diffi-cult questions for diplomats and

development experts alike. But the incentive for both local and foreign actors to reconstruct the former state, or rely on tried-and-tested methods has betrayed a deliberate ignorance of local conflicts and needs. This deplor-able state of affairs only reinforc-es the need to shore up failing states with more incisive poli-cy approaches before they turn into an international security di-lemma. Even a resurgent Russia might not have threatened Kiev if the Ukrainian government had been a stable and inclusive au-thority, and seen as credible and legitimate by the eastern popu-lation. Former President Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy confessed that failing states have become greater threats than ex-pansionist ones, being incubators for terrorism, drugs, and weap-ons. Acknowledging this threat will require us to offer some hard answers – rather than letting the failures sink into further mal-aise, at our own expense and risk.

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In September 2013, at least six-ty seven people died during the siege of a Nairobi shopping mall reportedly carried out by mem-bers of al-Shabaab, a militant group based in Somalia, with connections across the East coast of Africa. In April this year, over two hundred Nigerian school-girls were abducted by the radi-cal Islamist group Boko Haram.

The fragmentation of post-Bin Laden Islamism

emma brandElements of the Western press are quick to al-lude to links between these acts of terror and these terrorists groups, and the transnational movement known as al-Qaeda. They have in-advertently constructed an image of al-Qaeda as a powerful overar-ching body that controls all the smaller insurgency groups around the world. This image is a myth.

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Although al-Qaeda still has transnation-al bases, the emphasis that the Western me-dia places on the in-volvement of al-Qaeda in local terror plots is misguided. Despite the perception that al-Qaeda is a glob-al organisation with decentralised cells across the world, this is not the case; these “decentralised cells” are in fact disparate movements, who do not report to the lead-ers of the now dimin-ished movement for global jihad. Al-Qae-da no longer has global authority, and perhaps it never did.

George W. Bush creat-ed this myth of al-Qae-da as a global power. He correctly identi-fied the group as the perpetrators of Sep-tember 11th, the most severe terrorist attack that homeland Amer-ica has ever experi-enced, but then estab-

lished the far-reaching “War on Terror”, the international mili-tary response to that tragedy, intended to wipe out al-Qaeda. In the process, he con-flated al-Qaeda with the Taliban, hostile Arab regimes, and angry young Muslims in general, render-ing the “War on Ter-ror” a war between the West and Islam.

Al-Qaeda rapidly be-came a rallying point for radical Muslims all over the world, who could claim to be acting as part of a recognised global ji-had. Had the “War on Terror” been less broad, and not in-cluded the invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda might have drowned amidst the wave of revulsion that poured out across the board, from local-ized jihadist groups to Western diplomats, in the wake of 9/11. By launching the “War

on Terror”, Bush gave the name of al-Qaeda global authority, and as long as it had its all-important figure-head, it retained that perceived authority.

But al-Qaeda un-doubtedly peaked at 9/11. It was at this point that bin Lad-en genuinely was the head of a transnation-al movement based in Afghanistan, compris-ing around three thou-sand fighters, largely Saudi and Yemenite. Despite speculation that it had been ac-tive since the 1980s, in 2001 the group had only existed for five years. Before that, bin Laden had been fi-nancing the localised terror plots of Saudi and Yemenite exiles, fighting the regimes in their home coun-tries deemed “ren-egade”. The idea of al-Qaeda as a well-es-tablished movement, strongly ingrained

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“Al-Qaeda no longer has global author-ity, and perhaps it

never did.”

into the Arab psyche and there-fore able to control the Mus-lim world is clearly flawed.

The hysteria of the Western me-dia created the illusion of a much more powerful threat. Although al-Qaeda did not immediately re-lapse into local groupings, it was undoubtedly weakened by the negative response to 9/11 and by the loss of its base in Afghanistan. With bin Laden in hiding, the thousands of young Muslims who flocked to avenge the “War on

leadership, was on the wane. The final blow came in May 2011 with the assassination of bin Laden, which revealed the power vacuum that his persona had concealed.

Thus, in spite a brief transna-tional period, the situation of the early 1990s has resurfaced, where extremists are carrying out jihad against their native governments rather than achiev-ing global reach. This time, there isn’t a sole funding figure like

bin Laden; the groups tend to be funded through their own crimes, and are almost entire-ly inward-looking. They do not have transnational authority, but they also do not view larger bod-ies as having authority over them.

This is particularly true of Boko Haram, a group largely funded through bank robberies, found-ed in 2002 by Mohummed Yu-suf with the aim of creating an independent state under Shari’a law in northern Nigeria. From

authority held by the elected gov-ernment. The group is responsi-ble for hundreds of deaths a year in Nigeria and its neighbouring countries, but while ideological-ly opposed to “Westernisation”, it has never tried to attack the West outside of its zone of influence. It has been reported that Boko Haram is connected to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, but firstly, they do not seem to have received any material benefit, military or financial, from outsiders, and

Terror” and the millions more who donated to the movement were joining an al-Qaeda that, without visible

its inception the group has tak-en advantage of the poverty and corruption rife in Nigeria, giv-en the lack of

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secondly, partaking in global jihad would conflict with their doctrine of avoiding interaction with the West. Boko Haram is using similar tac-tics to al-Qaeda, but it has a different aim and exists on a smaller scale. It could not take direction from the umbrella movement.

The case of al-Shabaab is more complex giv-en that it has a larger number of splinter groups than Boko Ha-ram. One such splinter group, Hisbul Islam, at one point identified Osama bin Laden as its leader, and in February

2012 al-Shabaab itself declared a merger with al-Qaeda. These facts undermine the notion of al-Qaeda’s increas-ing irrelevance, and of al-Shabaab’s pursuing purely localised ter-ror. However, when in December 2010 al-Qaeda tried to force a change of leadership upon al-Shabaab, they retained Moktar Ali Zubeyre (“Godane”) as their Emir. Al-Qae-da was undoubted-ly weak from nearly ten years of sporadic leadership, yet even the formal merger in 2012 was hardly a sign of strength on either side. They appear to

have banded togeth-er due to declining membership and strategic limitations caused by opposi-tion forces. In recent years, al-Shabaab has experienced set-backs, defeats and defections – it no longer possesses na-tional authority, let alone transnational. Boko Haram and al-Shabaab are defi-nitely linked, but whether this link is forged through a chain of com-mand deriving from global jihad remains in doubt.

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“The final blow came in May 2011 with theassassination of bin Laden, which exposed the

power vacuum which his persona had concealed.”Numerous other groups around the world claim kinship with al-Qaeda. But these groups tend to exist either where government is weak, or where the more rad-ical elements of society feel dis-enfranchised by their leaders, perceiving them to be Western-ised tyrants. Rather than having far-reaching power, al-Qaeda can only thrive where there is no oth-er form of authority to threaten it.

The Al-Nusra Front (ANF), per-haps the most aggressive of all the Syrian rebel fighters, typifies these factors. The leader of the ANF has declared his allegiance to the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and kinship with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Le-vant, also tied to al-Qaeda. The ANF is in some ways no different to the thousands of angry young Muslims who came to fill al-Qae-da’s ranks after 9/11, using the powerful name as a base to sup-port and justify their actions. The ANF, like Boko Haram, is against involvement in attacks against the United States. It instead desires to rid Syria of Western influence and

to establish a Pan-Islamic state in Syria subject to Shari’a law.

Although this is of course, no be-nign prospect to the West, it still differs vastly from the conception of a small, militant cell of a more threatening umbrella movement aiming for the destruction of Western civilization. Once again, we see al-Qaeda invoked as an au-thority in name alone, with no real power to influence global jihad.

The word “jihad” has two mean-ings. Most familiar to Westerners is the idea of Holy War – the cru-sade against “unbelievers”; those who do not accept the teachings of the Qu’ran and the proph-et Mohammed as divine truth.

Jihad’s less-reported meaning is that of the “inner struggle”. Though this second meaning usually implies a personal spiri-tual struggle, on a macrocosmic scale we might equate it with civil conflict. This is particularly apt given that the group waging such a jihad strives to project its Isla-mist identity onto its native coun-

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try, and to maintain that Islamism where it has been established. Rather than being at war with the outer world, these groups ig-nite struggles within their own countries – struggles which have implications for the wider world, but which can still constitute a battle between discordant ele-ments of the same body politic. It might have appeared under a foreign name, but such national insurgency is not unknown. The IRA, the PLO, the Tamil Tigers – all of these now more or less de-funct groups fought national ter-rorist campaigns along religious lines within their own states. They did not aspire to global authority; instead, they sought power within their homelands – they waged an inner jihad.

As we have seen from the ex-ample of al-Qaeda, to aspire to more is pure hubris. As a trans-national group, it was danger-ously powerful for a short time around the turn of the century, but it was never able to control a global army. Though that group still exists in name today, it has considerably less control over its proxies now than it did in its more flamboyant youth. In reality it has very little at all to do with

the nationalist struggles taking place on a daily basis in much of Africa and the Middle East.

Abu al-Walid, accused in his lifetime of being both a terror-ist affiliated to al-Qaeda and a member of the Saudi intelligence, was fiercely critical of the way in which bin Laden led al-Qaeda. He claimed that “absolute indi-vidual authority is a hopeless-ly defective form of leadership, an obsolete way of organisation that will end in nothing but de-feat.” Al-Walid was careful not to openly accuse bin Laden of

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poor leadership, merely stating that the autocratic model he em-ployed was out-dated and flawed. Whether or not we view bin Lad-en as a strong leader, it is clear from the decline of the movement following his disappearance and death that, by having such “ab-solute individual authority”, he created an anaemic movement, unable to support itself, let alone the plethora of different factions claiming to be associated with it.

While the name al-Qaeda con-tinues to evoke strong emotions, positive or negative, it cannot be called obsolete, even if has little power beyond that name. It is time to stop giving credence to smaller groups’ claims of align-ment with al-Qaeda, and to stop inventing associations that per-petuate a myth. Even if these groups really are affiliated to what they perceive to be a glob-al power with the ability to en-act a worldwide jihad that is not what matters. In fixating on the threat of al-Qaeda, we ignore the real dangers of the spread of ex-tremism in Africa, and the dam-age that is being done, not to the west, but to Africa itself. The kid-napping of schoolgirls in Nigeria deserves our attention in its own

right. In choosing to view al-Qae-da as the umbrella organisation behind the attack, we distract ourselves from the main story, and allow the myth of al-Qae-da’s global authority to flourish.

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SOUTH AFRICA’S DECLININGAUTHORITY

kameel premhidThe South African electorate recently handed Jacob Zuma and his African Na-tional Congress (ANC) another victo-ry at the polls. Though the ANC’s majority is reduced, and predict-ed to decline further still, the party com-mands a potent histor-ical legacy that makes it a significant force on the domestic political stage. With the pass-ing of Nelson Mandela South Africans, and people of the world, were reminded of the country’s miracle: a (relatively) peaceful transition from op-pression and global

isolation to freedom and global inclusion.

Thankfully, though, for Mr Zuma and the ANC, South Africans seem to be more con-cerned with econom-ic issues rather than foreign policy ones. Indeed, foreign policy issues receive little or no critical comment at all. The exception to this is on the rare occasion when South African troops are en-gaged in active combat and loss of like occurs. The recent loss of life in the Central Afri-can Republic (CAR), and why troops were even there in the first place, comes to mind.

Although this trage-dy resulted in a short period of heightened interest in foreign pol-icy, it was neither sus-tained nor particularly insightful. It respond-ed and reacted to im-mediate short-term issues, failing to ques-tion South Africa’s larger role in Africa.

Considering the high levels of inequality in the country and the significant macro-eco-nomic challenges that it faces, this should come as no surprise. However, as The Econ-omist has recently ar-gued, South Africa’s policy priorities can best be described as

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being ‘back-to-front.’ Though the country has made signifi-cant gains since the formal end of Apartheid in 1994, the per-nicious economic legacy of the system continues. The progress of society is skewed: whites and educated non-whites have done well but the majority still suffer. This is, understandably, a strong temptation to make policy-mak-ers, the media and the electorate focus internally only. The dan-ger of which, however, is that by maintaining a singular internal focus South Africa fails to ade-quately appreciate the role that foreign policy can play for max-imising its national self-interest (on issues at home and abroad).

In an article for The Atlantic Monthly Ronald Steel, the distin-guished writer and Professor of International Relations, argued as much. In The Domestic Core of Foreign Policy, Steel suggests that inward-looking isolation-ism would be to the detriment of the modern state. Domes-tic problems may, if untreated, have a global impact. They may also have an international solu-tion. The reverse is also true.

It is a curious thing, then, that Zuma’s first term of office should be marked by a foreign policy that can, at best, be described as being schizophrenic. While de-cision-makers, the world over, are aggressively pursuing inter-national agendas to advance do-mestic causes, Zuma can hard-ly be said to be doing the same.

Even though South Africa can be credited for leading the break-through at the Durban Climate Change Conference; joining the powerful BRIC-group of emerging nations; and playing a more prominent role with-in the African Union (AU), its foreign policy successes have been neutered by its mistakes.

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“The progress of society is skewed: whites and educated non-whites have done well but the

majority still suffer.”

Some of the examples include the significant damage done with-in the AU in the aftermath of a Zuma-ally to the chairmanship of the AU Commission; South Africa’s fractious relationship with, for example, the CAR and Malawi; and, most worrying-ly, South Africa’s deathly silence when the SADC Tribunal was shut down. South Africa’s con-tradictory and, often irrational, positions on Zimbabwe, Lib-ya and Syria (with respect to its

commitment to human rights in each) also makes matters worse.

Some may seek to explain away South Africa’s misfortunes as a result of the uncertain and an-archical nature of the interna-tional community. Others would suggest that South Africa’s in-ability to navigate these omni-present difficulties is as a result of a foreign policy ‘drift’ that has occurred under Zuma’s watch. This is in direct contradiction to the presidencies of Nelson Man-dela and Thabo Mbeki which

were respectively characterised by the Rainbow Nation and Af-rican Renaissance doctrines.

That is not to say that neither the Mandela nor the Mbeki adminis-trations would have faced foreign policy set-backs. They did. In the absence of absolute hegemonic power within the region, and in-ternationally, South Africa could not have hoped to achieve all its foreign policy interests. However, what distinguishes those periods

from this one is that South Africa’s could rationally be tied to a clearly defined agenda, whatever its mer-its. The same cannot be said now.

This is more than a signalling issue too. The entire conduct of South Africa’s foreign policy, as for any nation, depends on a co-herent set of principles that serve as the basis of its decisions. The danger of not understanding its purpose abroad, especially when considered in light of domestic policy questions, is that deci-sions are made in an incoherent,

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ad hoc and defragmented man-ner. The lack of policy certain-ty and dependability not only hurts South Africa’s reliability to its international partners abroad but also undermines South Af-rica’s long-term ambitions of be-coming more of a global player.

The impact of the absence of these clear hallmarks of a strong foreign policy is evident in how South Africa deals with partic-ularly tricky issues that crop up within the region. This is per-fectly encapsulated by its re-sponse to Uganda’s anti-gay laws.

When faced with an opportu-nity to condemn the laws, the South African Government not only failed to do so, its explana-tion of its own failure betrayed its understanding of its role in the world. The government, through the Home Affairs Min-ister, stated that it was the posi-tion of the South African Gov-ernment to not comment on the intrnal affairs of other states.

Even though the Government did emphasise, however, that creep-ing institutionalised homopho-bia would not be replicated in South Africa, given the country’s

strong equal protection provi-sions, the fact that it has equivo-cated on issues that are, suppos-edly, fundamental to it illustrates just how weak its ability to act as a regional authority actually is.

That it could maintain this as the official line and also suggest

that it should hold a permanent seat on a reformed UN Securi-ty Council (UNSC) is laughable.

Firstly, UNSC Members are in-clined to comment on and be concerned with affairs of other states – even where their inter-est is indirect at best. That is ow-

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ing to the nature of the work the UNSC undertakes: seeking to protect and maintain world or-der. While Uganda’s persecution of homosexuals has not escalated to an international security cri-sis, the initial observation of how the state is targeting (allegedly) gay people is cause for concern.

If South Africa cannot speak out in an ‘easy’ case involving a vio-lation of human rights, how can it legitimately aspire to more?

Secondly, the fact that South Af-rica has failed to push a human rights agenda as part of its for-eign policy is telling. In the first

case, it shows a questionable com-mitment to human rights. In the second instance, it shows that for all South Africa’s rhetoric as to its power within the region, its ability to exert that power and influence other regional powers is rather limited. This makes it questionable whether South Af-rica should be the beneficiary of UNSC reform. It’s inability to in-fluence actors within its ambit of influence robs it of the legitimacy that other UNSC members have for their ability to do the same.

Third, hiding behind sovereignty, especially in South Africa’s case, is deeply ironic. For let’s not forget that during Apartheid, frontier states were praised for making South Africa’s internal issue of ‘separate development’ very much their concern. And the ANC had no shortage of harsh words for the UK and the USA’s respective lead-ers, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan, and their supposed failure to [do the same]. It is deeply dis-appointing that a party who advo-cated for, and relied on, interna-tional support to overcome racial segregation at home cannot lend their voice in support to those who face similar denigration abroad. At worst it is callous negligence

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and at best it is rank hypocrisy.

The Zuma administration con-tinues to do itself no favours by failing to adopt a comprehen-sive foreign policy agenda. Even if that agenda were to be more classically realist and avert any discussion of human rights al-together it would be better than operating in a policy vacuum. The longer it fails to concretise

its position on world affairs, the more its authority – real and perceived – will diminish. As a pretender to the role of region-al hegemon, South Africa would greatly increase its standing by defining that policy and acting in accordance with it, even where that involves difficult decisions like commenting on the internal affairs of other states. To drift as it is, is merely asking for trouble.

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Image Attribution

Cover - https://flic.kr/p/3HSrUG - Luca Savettiere

Back cover - https://flic.kr/p/aDZyQK - Alexan-dre Dulaunoy

Kony header - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tian2992/7390215142/ - tian2992

Kony stencil - http://www.flickr.com/photos/whoshotya/6997369741/ - Nic Adler

Kony child soldiers - http://gemini.info.usaid.gov/photos/displayimage.php?pos=-1223 – L. Rose

S.Afr Police header - https://flic.kr/p/83zEKM - ER24 EMS

SA police dog - https://www.flickr.com/pho-tos/28646916@N06/11330901873 - FuTurXTV

Scotland header - https://flic.kr/p/82am8w - Number 10

Scotland Putin - https://flic.kr/p/mmbp98 - Isriya Paireeparit

Ukraine Simon Smith – http://www.kyivpost.com/content/politics/simon-smith-uk-ambassa-dor-hopes-for-proper-investigation-into-beating-of-journalists-in-kyiv-on-may-18-324629.html - courtesy of Kyiv Post

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Sir is the termly magazine of Oxford’s International Relations Society.

You can find us at irsoc.org/?page_id=890, as well as at sirmagazine.wordpress.com.

With thanks to: Mansfield College JCR, Magdalen College JCR, Bill Emmott, Jack Barber, & Hebe Foster.

Ukraine protestors - http://mstyslavchernov.com/ - Mstyslav Chernov

Parliament header - https://flic.kr/p/4QELxi - Davide Simonetti

Parliament sign - https://flic.kr/p/6tZqSc - secret-london123

Failed states header - https://flic.kr/p/63xmUF - Arsenie Coseac

Failed states Lagarde - https://flic.kr/p/yANjQ - World Economic Forum

Failed states UNHCR tent - https://flic.kr/p/i32oyJ - Oxfam International

Terrorism header - https://flic.kr/p/9U7N4f - Andres Perez

Terrorism Boko Haram - https://flic.kr/p/nvpC1J - Michael Fleshman

Terrorism twin towers - https://flic.kr/p/6XByfm - Marc AuMarc

S.Afr Decline Zuma - https://flic.kr/p/e1tsUT - GovernmentZA

S.Afr protest - https://flic.kr/p/8NzhuY - Avaaz