The Complex Security Development Nexus – Practical Challenges for Development Cooperation and the Military Fouzieh

It has become commonplace to emphasize the interconnection between security and development in the context of debates on com­ prehensive approaches to international crisis management and peace building. “No security without development and no development without security” has come to serve as an agreeable formula which gained currency not only in round tables and essays but also in policy papers and high­ level strategy documents. But what exactly do we mean by the security­development nexus? What practical challenges does it imply and are we fit to tackle them? Following these three questions, this article will analyse the understanding and practical challenges from development and military points of view in detail. It will be demonstrated that the security­development nexus has highly different implications for civilian and military actors. Finally, the findings of this article suggest that both development and military actors have made considerable improvements and adjust­ ments in order to tackle the challenges imposed by the security­development nexus. Though much remains to be done, the main impediments to more strategy­driven common efforts of international crisis management and peace building, however, are due to deficits in cross­departmental decision making at the politico­strategic level.


What Exactly is the Security-Development
Nexus?
F irst, we will introduce a development 1 point of view.With regard to work in poor and conflictprone countries and/ or peace building contexts, insecurity has a farreaching • People´s well-being, as it leads to economic stagnation or negative growth; b.The sociostructural dimension of development by negatively affecting • The social structure and peace of a society, as insecurity may lead to flows of refugees and internally displaced persons, often causing new conflicts and creating an atmosphere of intolerance and xenophobia, • Vulnerable groups and minorities, as it particularly affects women, children, and the poor; c.The governancedimension of development by negatively affecting • The capacities and performance of government institutions, as insecurity aggravates regime vulnerabilities, binds financial and personnel resources, and may facilitate bad governance, • The legitimacy of government, as it weakens or delegitimizes government institutions and gives way to an increase of corruption and crime, • Regime stability, as it may undermine the state monopoly of force, • The balance between legislature, judiciary and executive, as it may lead to a militarisation of politics and induce a dominance of the executive; d.The international dimension of development by negatively affecting • Inter-state and trans-border relations, as insecurity may stir or aggravate conflicts and encourage the proliferation of small arms and weapons, • Relations to neighbouring states, as it creates suspicions, may pose a threat to, or cause new conflicts with neighbouring states, • The international standing of a state, as it may undermine the state's credibility at the international level or harm its external economic relations.
As insecurity thus affects all dimensions of a society's development, it affects development cooperation in conflict and/or peace building contexts in three aspects: • As a structural condition of delivering development support, • As an impediment to the achievement of specific project objectives, • As a cause and by the same token as an effect of conflict, weak governance and poverty, thereby requiring development policy to be securitysensitive in all practical fields of engagement.
From a military stabilisation point of view, development deficits impact: a.The technical, logistical and infrastructural dimension of operational capability by negatively affecting • Transportation and movement of equipment and personnel, as poor road conditions impede manoeuvrability, • Catering for troops, as local markets do not offer sufficient commodities in the required quality, • Provision of healthcare for troops, as local facilities, drugs, or personnel usually do not meet international standards and/or are overburdened, • Provision of shelter, as construction material or skilled local craftsmen and construction workers are hard to be found in sufficient amount/numbers; b.The dimension of cooperation with the host nation by negatively affecting • Day-to-day communication with representatives of the host nation, as communication infrastructure is often poor and unreliable with remote areas often hard to connect with, • The establishment of trustful working relations to representatives of the host nation, as corruption and greed may hinder confidence building, • The conduct of effective cooperation, as poor infrastructure and lack of means, procedural rules, or steering mechanisms may impede good intentions on the partners' side; c.The risk and threat dimension by negatively affecting • The protection of troops, as poverty and resentments combined with a lack of understanding/knowledge may create suspicion or hostilities against the foreign military, • The 'hearts and minds' of the local population, as hostile feelings against the foreign mission due to disappointments or lack of improved living conditions can be easily exploited by adversaries, • The dividing line between combatants and noncombatants, as poverty, fragile statehood, violent conflicts, flows of refugees, etc. either drive people into the arms of nonstatutory armed groups or provide safe havens and recruitment bases for them, • The maintenance of public security, as local security forces are not capable of enforcing law and order or form part of the problem; d.The opportunities for military exit by negatively affecting • The perception of the population, as there is only a fine line between external military forces appearing as liberators/protectors or invaders/occupiers, • The mobilisation of local development and peace potentials, as poor development in combination with violent conflict often boosts factors which lead to even less development and more conflict, • The structural conditions for establishing functioning institutions and economic growth, as the majority of factors that induce or are a result of development deficits cannot be overcome in the relatively short time span of military mission deployments; • The capacities of the host nation to assert the state monopoly of force and improve government performance, thereby prolonging the necessity for foreign military deployment.
T The Complex Security-Development Nexus  From the perspective of a military stabilisation mission, underdevelopment of the host nation has the strongest effects on the risk and threat environment as well as on opportunities for stabilisation, thereby directly affecting the possibilities to develop military exit strategies.The securitydevelopment nexus, as depicted, cannot be easily defined in generalizable terms.If it is to be more than a handy policy formula, we have to take into account that it shapes operational conditions for civilian and military actors in remarkably different ways.
Hence, the specific impact of the securitydevelopment nexus depends on the respective practical viewpoint.

What Practical Challenges Stem from the
Security-Development Nexus?

Practical Challenges for Development Actors
Tackling the securitydevelopment nexus from a development point of view first and foremost requires knowledge and understanding of the nature of security policy, of risks and threats, of security actors, roles, and responsibilities, and of the complex interdependencies between development and security.This expertise is rare among development policy makers and practitioners, partly as a natural consequence of functional specialisation, partly due to a traditional reluctance to get involved with security issues.Ideologically, development policy had long been conceptualised as an altruistic activity; historically it originated in economically motivated self interests of former colonial states.However, both strands of identity had a common denominator in distancing themselves from the realistic school of thought and its preoccupation with national security.
A second challenge is related to professional identity.Development policy has not only a traditional bias against the forcebased instruments of national power, but dealing with issues of security and security actors also invokes the delicate question of its legitimatory point of reference: is development policy part of foreign relations and as such dedicated to national interests, or does it epitomize a policy instrument sui generis, derived from principles of political ethics?
Third, concrete challenges emerge when it comes to practise.Development policy is a field with a very sophisticated set of specialised guidelines and procedures of decision making, planning, conduct of programs/projects, and evaluation, tailored to each of its broad range of activity areas.Security on the one hand may be a distinct thematic field where development policy has specific contributions to make.These possible contributions need to be identified and profiled without surrendering a development orientation or interfering into areas where other actors have more expertise.On the other hand, security is a crosscutting matter and at least in most fragile and/or conflictprone states, it needs to be mainstreamed in all developmental activities by integrating it into existing concepts, guidelines, approaches, checklists, handouts, etc. or by developing new ones.
In addition, new networks and formats of cooperation need to be created.Encounters and cooperation with security actors, to a certain extent, require acknowledging their rules, be it their ranking system, their strict formal hierarchies, or the limits of information exchange regarding classified information.
Last but not least, dealing with security issues implies a greater exposure to risks and threats for personnel.Aspects such as safety of vehicles, buildings, or personnel are as important as premission training to prepare how to take preventive measures, how to behave at a check point, or what to do in cases of attack or abduction.Moreover, engagement in highly fragile countries requires systematic security concepts including risk assessment, early warning and alarming systems, evacuation plans, and in some cases also the need to organise armed protection.
Particularly the latter poses a challenge to development actors since development work lives on close contact with the target group and confidence built on commonday presence.

Practical Challenges for the Military
Military actors have very similar deficits when it comes to knowledge and understanding of the nature of development policy, its instruments and approaches, structures and organisational setting.They find it particularly hard to understand and cope with the different institutional culture of development actors and their advisory approach (see below for more detail).
The professional identity of the military may be less affected by encounters with developmental issues/actors than vice versa.However, there is an underlying tension when it comes to comparisons of the military with civilian actors, which is due to the fact that the military is an instrument deployed by order of the government, (usually) mandated by international law and national decisions, and acting under close supervision of the public.The individual soldier has no choice to make as to whether or not he/she will be deployed.From a military perspective, this creates an undue imbalance, particularly when the military is perceived to bare the bulk of the risks and duties in a stabilisation or peacebuilding endeavour, compelled to filling civilian gaps like in Afghanistan for example.Although political reasons need to be accounted therefor, there is a tendency within the military to blame 'the civilians' out of a bias to reflect issues in operational rather than political terms.
A third challenge for the military is posed by the fact that development processes cannot be planned in a similar fashion as military operations, and civil populations or civilian actors cannot be integrated into a hierarchical chain of command.
In other words, for the military living on effectiveness and reliability through adherence to hierarchical procedures, it is highly challenging to cope with subject areas and actors which simply do not fit into this logic by demanding participation or autonomy, or simply by being highly contingent.This becomes relevant in all practical instances where the military is required to support or take over civilian tasks.
The greatest challenge for the military with respect to the securitydevelopment nexus, however, is a paradox: While it is highly dependent on progress in terms of development in order to accomplish its task and leave again, it has neither a mandate nor the capabilities to influence the course of peace building and development processes directly.The military is dependent on effective and successful development actors.If development policy for whatever reason is not able to make a visible difference, the military will very likely have to stay longer.Development actors will continue with their work as long as the security situation allows, even if it is impeded and its effectiveness hampered.If the security situation collapses, they simply leave.In other words: Development policy needs security in order to be effective, but if security actors fail to provide for a minimum of security, conditions for development activities are not given anyway and they will be halted.In contrast, the military is forced to stay should development efforts fail.This reveals that from a military perspective, the securitydevelopment nexus implies an imbalanced interdependency, with the military compelled to shoulder the bigger part of the burden.

Practical Challenges Regarding Civil-military Interfaces a. Divergent roles and mandates
By nature, security and development actors are ascribed to different roles and mandates in peace building processes.While the military is tasked for watching over ceasefire agreements, deterring renewed outbreaks of aggression, protecting borders, supporting security system reform efforts and other civilian activities if needed, development actors are responsible for the bulk of reconstruction and longterm institution and capacity building tasks.Despite their comparably narrow scope of engagement and fields of responsibility, military operations are usually legally authorized and thereby enjoy a comparably high level of political and public attention, at least in the early phases of an operation.In contrast, although development actors are usually deployed for longer time periods than the military and involved in a much broader range of activities, their engagement is considered part of the routine business of development departments, and due to a lack of any legal mandate, it is conducted largely beyond public interest and attention.
This implies several challenges.First, there is an uneven awareness and knowledge about the civilian and military pillars of engagement, often resulting in misperceptions of the overall trend of developments.Second, although the military benefits from a legal authorisation of their operations, a loss of acceptance over the course of an operation can easily undermine the acceptance for civilmilitary engagement as a whole, with possible negative impact on political commitments and development funding.Third, the gap in political attention often induces a severe imbalance in funding and equipment of the civilian and military strands of activity.Moreover, it abets a bias of military problem solutions to the detriment of addressing the longterm causes of conflicts and crises.Finally, while the definition of civilian and military roles in peace building scenarios seems to be clearcut in theory, it often is blurred onsite due to the security situation or the gap in assets and equipment, resulting in a military mission creep.

b. Conflicting self-conceptions and organisational cultures
Different roles yield different selfconceptions and organisational cultures.While the military is entitled with the mandate and capacities to use force, development policy relies on mutual acceptance and cooperation.Consequently, this results in opposed selfconceptions: being an instrument of power on the one hand, and a provider of aid/supporter on the other.The point of reference of the military is the nation state; its ultimate legitimacy (in democratic societies) is the political will of the legitimate authorities, based on national interests.The point of reference for development actors, however, is ambivalent and differs among donor nations.In some donor countries, the normative dimension is at the fore, namely the idea of equal rights and opportunities for all and the derived political goal of poverty reduction and improvement of living conditions for the disadvantaged (Germany, Netherlands, or Scandinavian countries).In other countries (US or UK), accent is put on the link between national interests and development goals, regarding development policy as an instrument of foreign policy, serving national interests and aimed at the proliferation of the own model of political order.
Along with diverse roles and selfconceptions, civilian and military organisational cultures differ significantly.In the development community, it has been shaped by its modes of delivery: process and consensusoriented, highly tolerant for diversity, with a strong reliance on trust and personal relationships.Military organisational culture has been shaped by requirements of combat situations with goal orientation and the principle of order and obedience, strict hierarchies, and strong discipline being a function of effectiveness and survival.These differences complicate communication processes and confidence building between military and civilian actors.

c. Different planning and operational logics
Military actors conduct operations, development actors implement programs and projects.This is not only a difference in terminology, but also in approaches, procedures, and time horizons.The military entertains a huge apparatus for the single purpose of swift readiness to deploy and achieve full operational capability and, if necessary, to sustain these capabilities without performance losses for as long as they are needed.This requires standing structures with large numbers of personnel, permanent training, established procedures and mechanisms, transportation capacities, and a broad logistical base at home and abroad.Although it has to have the ability to sustain, the military as an instrument is rather designed for shortterm deployments.In comparison, implementing structures of development policy are lean.A usually small staff of permanent employees recruits personnel, builds up the logistical base, and sets the ball rolling for each individual program or project, suited to the specific project needs.Despite contingencies due to funding, development programs/projects T H E M E N S C H W E R P U N K T | Alamir, The Complex Security-Development Nexus are usually designed for a longterm presence of several years, with deployed personnel supposed to living side by side with local partners.
While military planning is understood as the process of anticipating the way to achieving goals by preparing for contingencies in detail, i.e. something that principally happens in advance, planning in development programs and projects is more of an iterative process with the finetuning of a project already being part of its implementation.According to military hierarchies, military planning follows the way from the politico/military strategic via the operational down to the tactical level; development organisations do not maintain any equivalent to the operational level.In consequence, onsite civilian actors usually have much more competencies regarding financial and policy decisions.Any attempt of coordination or cooperation between military and development activities will have to take this into account.

d. Gaps in assets
When we speak of gaps in assets we refer to those assets that are necessary for everybody on the ground: modern communication infrastructure, transportation, logistics, health care, and evacuation capacities in case of emergency.
Usually, the military is better equipped in this regard, inducing an imbalance in mutual support needs.The military may need the knowledge and experience of development actors in terms of cultural characteristics, who is who among locals, etc.; the development side has much more support needs vis àvis the military.Moreover, asking the military for support is an ambivalent issue from a development standpoint as one might be associated with the military, lose credibility in the local arena, or even become a target for an attach oneself.On the other hand, the military faces the dilemma that support activities are usually not a core task, and mission design usually does not provide for many redundancies regarding the assets in question.In consequence, gaps in assets cannot be easily overcome by the idea of mutual support.

e. Sensitive information
Sensitive information bares different connotations for military and development actors.For the military, exchanging classified information with actors who have not been screened, is very difficult and allows only few solutions: declassification of selected parts of information, which is a very lengthy process; screening of selected individuals, which is equally timeconsuming; or not exchanging information, which may contradict cooperative intentions.For development actors, sensitive information refers to insights gained on the basis of trust by partners who should remain anonymous.Exchanging this information with the military may undermine credibility and trusted relationships with the own target group.Hence, assuming that development and military actors have complementary information is correct, but that does not automatically imply that they can easily exchange information for common purposes.

Practical Challenges for Common Efforts a. Lack of shared situational awareness
Different government departments apply different criteria for assessing situations, apart from different interests in terms of budget, political profile, and power.The same holds true for the much higher number of civilian and military actors on the ground, aggravated by the fact that actors onsite do not operate under a common umbrella, but represent multiple national and organisational perspectives and interests.Civilian actors derive their situational picture from their longterm presence and experience in the country and most importantly from exchange with their local partners.Thus, they may know more about how the population feels, but their picture might also be distorted or biased, depending on their local target group.Military intelligence, in contrast, relies on more systematic intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance, but often lacks adequate human intelligence input, thus remaining an outsider's construction.There are only few common databases accessible to civilian and military actors and serving both civilian and military purposes or bridging the gaps.In consequence, actors at the strategic, and to a much higher extent at the tactical level lack a common situational picture leading to different understandings and interpretations of the priority needs and action requirements.This is an obstacle to more and better coordination.

b. Lack of institutionalised coordination mechanisms
Though most longterm and complex peacebuilding scenarios display a dense network of coordination mechanisms, they are the result of an unsystematic process, most of them informal or semiinstitutionalised and grown bottomup.
As international engagement in conflict management and peacebuilding processes does not follow institutionalised formats or at least general habitual patterns, mechanisms of crossorganisational information exchange, communication, coordination, and cooperation evolve anarchically and depend highly on individuals.Due to high personnel fluctuation, ties between organisations thereby are in a constant flow, and even if strong bonds may be forged in one scenario, they are unlikely to intrude into the organisational memory and be transferred to another.Hence, the buildup of effective coordination mechanisms is timeconsuming, slow, and usually starts almost from scratch in every new scenario.

c. Lack of common training
Training and the preparing of personnel for deployments in conflict management or peacebuilding missions start at home.It is here, where foundations of knowledge and understanding are laid and mindsets created, also with regard to cross organisational cooperation.It is also here, where we can offer a chance of encounter and of common learning before people meet onsite.However, the overall purpose of an engagement, the list of involved organisations, their roles, mandates, areas of activity, modes and possibilities of coordination and cooperation, etc. are not part of the premission training of Alamir, The Complex Security-Development Nexus | T H E M E N S C H W E R P U N K T most organisations.Thereby, the timeconsuming process of learning and getting to know each other is more often than not shifted to the mission abroad.

Are Development and Military Actors Fit to
Meet these Challenges?
Two separate, though interrelated strands of thought influenced the way in which development and security actors have adapted to the challenges depicted above.One of these strands evolved around the decisions in the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 2005, according to which selected securityrelated expenses were to be counted as official development assistance.In this context, debates on security system reforms (SSR) offered the first forum where civilian and military actors came together to scrutinize possible modes of common developmentoriented SSR programs.These debates gave strong impulses for subsequent discussions and adaptations of development policies of the OECD countries.
All big donor states and organisations have dedicated rising parts of their development budgets to conflict, peace and security issues.half a decade ago, there were heated debates at the grassroots level of development communities, whether development policy should get involved into security topics at all, the acknowledgement of the securitydevelopment nexus today has become common ground and it is rather a question of 'how' and 'to what extent' development should address security issues.Among nongovernmental agencies, there has been greater reluctance visàvis the security theme and its representatives.
In sum, development cooperation has taken considerable steps to address the challenges of the securitydevelopment nexus and its implications, either by mainstreaming or by developing new concepts, policies, structures, and approaches.
The other relevant debate in our context originated in NATO and was driven mainly by experiences in Afghanistan since 2001.In the face of dire needs for better coordination of international engagement in Afghanistan at all levels, the debate around the concept of the Comprehensive Approach stirred intensive discussions within the international security community about the interdependencies between security and development in crisis management and peacebuilding processes.
NATO's onsite headquarters have adapted planning, intelligence, and information operation procedures by including more civilian expertise and taking into account wider aspects of the civilian reconstruction environment.In addition to the wellknown position of political and legal advisors in military headquarters, we now also find development and cultural advisors as integral staff elements.The role of CIMIC as the institutional link of the military towards civilian organisations has been extended.Not only at the tactical level, but also at the politicostrategic level, NATO has taken efforts to improve exchange and relations to humanitarian and aid organisations.Numerous NATO or national military exercises have been dedicated to aspects of improving civilmilitary interaction in the spirit of the Comprehensive Approach.Many NATO nations have mainstreamed improvements of military abilities to interact with civilian agencies in concepts and training curricula, or have integrated more civilian experts into their line structures.Particular attention has been put on the aspect of improving situational awareness and understanding by experimenting with respective methods and tools.
On the whole, also the military has undergone a relevant process of adaptation with regard to improving its capabilities to interact with civilian organisations.Much remains to be done of course, but it seems justified to state that as far as measures from the development as well as the security communities are concerned, they have been going in the right direction and have made a difference.Not only in terms of raising awareness, of approaching each other, but also in terms of improving practise bottom up.This needs appreciation.
However, we should not conclude that we are on the way to master the securitydevelopment nexus, as we are in fact far from doing much better than a decade ago in terms of successful peace building.But this is not due to the pace of improvements or adaptations in the respective policy communities.The main impediment to more effective and efficient international crisis Gauster, Comprehensive Approach in zivil-militärischen Einsätzen | T H E M E N S C H W E R P U N K T Comprehensive Approach in zivilmilitärischen Einsätzen -(k)ein Mehrwert in Afghanistan?
Markus Gauster* Abstract: The international debate on civilmilitary interaction and coordination efforts in international crisis management has increased substantially since the beginning of the military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001.Only by 2006 had it become clear that lacking "success stories" made international organisations, states and especially military actors ambitious with regard to comprehensive approaches (CA).The basic idea behind CA is to include most of the relevant actors at different levels in a structural manner to improve the impact of external engagement.However, the impact of this new strategy has not yielded sufficient results so far on the ground and appears hard to implement.At least the interaction between civilian, military and local components and the division of tasks can potentially be improved by increasing and improving communication.Instruments to achieve synergy effects from planning to implementation are at an early stage and the "peace dividend" as an added value for the local population is still missing.The political, conceptual and practical obstacles to implement CA are enormous.This article examines various levels of interaction, civilmilitary interfaces, indicators and the respective outcome derived from the engagement in Afghanistan in order to propose an analysis model for CA.This could contribute to the feasibility of future innovative CA concepts with regard to other conflict scenarios.
Keywords: Afghanistan, comprehensive approach, whole of government approach, unity of efforts Afghanistan, umfassender Ansatz, WholeofGovernmentAnsatz, Kohärenz management and peace building lie in the very nature of the international crisis management system itself.As long as we will not get closer to common integrated crisis management or peacebuilding concepts and strategies, based on at least a minimal political consensus of the representatives of the concerned country and major international donors about the intended end states and how to get there, real progress is unlikely.Deficits in accounting for the complex security development nexus when engaging in peace building are -at the national level -mainly due to political conflicts of interest between departments and/or political parties, to the structural inclination of modern policy making mechanisms for short term perspectives and symbolic rather than substantial actions.At the international level, these factors are exponentiated by the lack of any international regulatory framework that would reduce and channel the blind powers at work among interested states and organisations willing to engage or contribute.The promising evolutions in the development and security communities call for more attention and political will for improvements to tackle the challenges of the security development nexus in the capitals and strategic international fora.
Some countries have developed new governmental structures to deal with security/development issues, such as the British Stabilisation Unit, which is composed by members of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the UK Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, or the German Action Plan for Civil Crisis Prevention and the respective CrossDepartmental Body.The European Union has accounted for the security development nexus in the European Security Strategy of 2003.While security issues lie in the responsibility of the Council and development issues are dealt with in the Commission, this division has been loosened or bridged in recent years, not only in concepts but also in structural terms.New institutions have been created in the framework of the European Security and Defence Policy, such as the CivilMilitary Cell as part of the EU Military Staff and the Committee for Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management at the level of the Political and Security Committee inter alia.However, crisis management operations of the EU in Bosnia or in the Democratic Republic of Congo have shown that there is still a long way to go until the EU will be able to act as an integrated civilmilitary actor. 2 On the other hand, there has been much progress on integrating security issues into the EU's development activities, a good example of which is the EU's support of the African Peace and Security Architecture in the framework of its comprehensive Africa Strategy. 3See also Christian Bueger, Pascal Venneson: Security, Development and the EU's Development Policy, European University Institute, April 2009.