Explaining third world security structures

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Explaining third world security structuresHillel Frischa Departments of Political Studies and the History of the Middle Eastin Bar-Ilan University, IsraelPublished online: 04 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Hillel Frisch (2002) Explaining third world security structures, Journal of StrategicStudies, 25:3, 161-190, DOI: 10.1080/01402390412331302805

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Explaining Third World Security Structures

HILLEL FRISCH

Why did the Palestinian Authority established in 1994 create 12 security forces whenEritrea, which achieved independence in 1994, made do with one conventional army?This article attempts to explain the variation in the structure of national securitysystems in Third World states as a function of two basic factors: the state’s politicaland social heterogeneity and the state’s relative importance to US foreign policy andsecurity concerns. Authoritarian one-party and centralizing states tend to fragmenttheir security forces more than states that cultivate social or political pluralism.Fragmentation is a classic exercise of divide and rule. But a tradeoff exists betweenfragmentation and assuring internal security on the one hand, and ensuring offensivecapabilities to ward off external enemies, on the other. Hence the importance of astrong foreign ally – preferably the United States. According to this model, centralizedhomogenous states enjoying US protection will tend to fragment or bifurcate theirsecurity systems most.

No one is quite sure how many internal security agencies the PalestinianAuthority, founded in 1994, actually operates in the 1,200 km2 under itscontrol – an area smaller than that of Long Island, NY. One source counts11, another 12 (excluding the ‘national security forces’ – the unofficialarmy).1 By contrast, the Eritrean state which achieved independence a yearearlier has a similar population size but controls 100 times more space(121,144 km2). Nevertheless, it makes do with an offensive army only.Considerable variation exists in state security structures elsewhere. WhileSaudi Arabia’s security system is characterized by a bifurcated equilibriumbetween the armed forces under one leading prince and the national guardunder another, Jordan places its trust in more unified armed forces.2 InRumania, the Securitate were numerically inferior to the army but werebetter trained and armed.3 In Tito’s Yugoslavia, again, a unitary armed forceprevailed.4 These comparisons raise the question: what explains thetremendous variation in security structures in the Third World, ranging fromexcessive proliferation and duplication of security agencies to extremehomogeneity?

In the present article I will try to demonstrate that the variation in thestructure of national security systems is a function of the state’s political andsocial heterogeneity and the state’s relative importance to United Statesforeign policy and security concerns. States that promote social and

The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (September 2002) pp.161–190PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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institutional pluralism will tend to fragment their security forces less thancentralized one-party states that try to make societies more uniform. Thelatter will fragment their security forces to achieve internal security. Butfragmentation of the armed forces reduces offensive capabilities and makesthem prey for more centralized neighbors. Such states will seek powerfulallies as a way out of the dilemma. Thus, states that fragment most are statescharacterized both by social pluralism and a strong alliance with a strongforeign power – preferably the US. To understand why this may be the caseI look at the theoretical literature on Third World security and generatehypotheses linking systemic and internal variables to explain the variationin the structure of security forces. Finally, I show how these hypothesesstem from the experiences of the Palestinian Authority and Eritrearespectively.

Explaining Third World Security

All states are concerned with ensuring internal and external security. Theydiffer, however, in the relative importance they attach to achieving thesetwo goals. This is reflected not only in different ratios of allocation ofresources, but also in the development of different types of security anddefense forces to ensure the goals. States that value external security willtypically develop a conventional army with both conventional andunconventional offensive capabilities. States that value internal overexternal security will create and duplicate security agencies at the expenseof allocating resources towards the development of conventional force.They also often fragment the security apparatus lest it itself becomes adanger to the regime rather than a bulwark supporting it.5 This basictechnique is referred in the literature as counterbalancing.6 Researchers haveclaimed that developed democratic states for the most part earmark theirresources to ensure high offensive capabilities in order to deter externalthreats. By contrast, regimes in developing states expend most of theirenergies and resources in ensuring domestic security by fragmenting theirsecurity forces in order to play one side against the another.7

Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg, in a particularly well-cited article,explain why this is the case: ‘At the level of international society, a frameworkof rules and conventions governing the relations of the states in the region [ofBlack Africa] has been found and sustained for almost two decades.’8 Theyargue that while in the past chronic internal instability usually invited outsideinterference and frequently resulted in the demise of the ruler and theabsorption of his territory by his more successful opponent, today normsprevailing in the present international system assure these states’ safety fromoutside intervention. States enjoy what they call ‘juridical statehood’.9

162 THE JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC STUDIES

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Protected by the norms of international society, these often inept and corruptregimes or dictators are able to sustain themselves by devoting most of theirenergies to protecting their home front. Jackson and Rosberg then go on tostress that this normative safety net has not been all for the better: ‘byenforcing juridical statehood, international society is in some cases alsosustaining and perpetuating incompetent and corrupt governments’.10

Jackson and Rosberg’s focus on norms, however, is problematic. If normsare the major systemic variable and all states enjoy juridical statehood, thenall Third World states, or at least those states with constant levels of domesticillegitimacy, should be equally concerned with internal security. Theytherefore should exhibit the same mix in the allocation of resources andemploy the same techniques in securing domestic security. How, then, canone explain that the Palestinian Authority, one of the most recent examplesof state-building, has spawned so many domestic security forces in a territorythe size of Long Island, while another new entity, Eritrea, controlling a muchvaster space, possesses only a conventional army?

To explain why fragmenting security forces is so common, I look atdomestic variables. To explain variation in the patterns of fragmentation andduplication, I look at variables at the systemic level. I will try todemonstrate the plausibility that the proliferation of security agencies isdependent on power configurations at the systemic level and levels of socialand political heterogeneity at the domestic level rather than on the existenceof ‘juridical statehood’.

These assertions can be transformed into the following three hypotheses:

1. Proliferation is greater in centralized Third World states than in statesthat allow for a degree of institutional and social pluralism.

2. This correlation is especially marked in areas of sufficient interest to theUnited States to make the institutionalization of a form of PaxAmericana and the role of regional policeman worthwhile.

3. There is a tradeoff between enhancing internal security through theproliferation of security services and enhancing offensive capabilities.

To prove these assertions the present article is divided into three parts. In the first, I discuss the internal security dilemma faced by rulers and

present the theoretical foundations for how proliferation of security forcesand playing off sides works.

In the second part, I present the theoretical underpinnings for a linkagebetween the salience of the Third World state to United States interests andthe domestic proliferation of security forces.

Finally, I test the validity of these hypotheses against the Palestinian andEritrean experiences.

163THIRD WORLD SECURITY STRUCTURES

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The Nature of the Third World State’s Security Dilemma

To explain the importance of devoting resources to domestic security andfragmenting them, it might be instructive to look at the most fragile regimesin the past half a century – monarchies in the Third World. Thirty years ago,Huntington predicted the demise of monarchies in light of the monarch’sdilemma:

On the one hand, centralization of power in the monarchy wasnecessary to promote social, cultural, and economic reform. On theother hand, this centralization made difficult or impossible theexpansion of the power of traditional polity and the assimilation intoit of the new groups produced by modernization. The participation ofthese groups in politics seemingly could come only at the price of themonarchy. This is a problem of some concern to the monarch: Musthe be the victim of his achievements: Can he escape the dilemma ofsuccess or survival? More broadly put, are there any means whichmay provide for a less rather than a more disruptive transition fromthe centralizing authority needed for policy innovation to theexpansible power needed for group assimilation?11

Let us begin with the nature of the dilemma: centralization andmodernization of the political system, as both Huntington and Charles Tilly12

have noted, engenders resistance among the landowners and clergy who arethe monarch’s traditional allies. But the new middle class that emerges in thecourse of state-sponsored reforms typically do not reciprocate with gratitude.Often they will even go so far as to join a broad coalition against thereforming monarch that includes their enemies and the monarch’s formerallies, the landowners and clergy. Huntington cites at least two examples.

The first is the Young Ottomans in the Ottoman Empire who overthrewthe Sultan in 1876 and forced Abdulhamid II to adopt a constitution basedon the Belgian model, only to be repressed soon afterwards byAbdulhamid’s counter-coup.13

The second is the Persian constitutional movement of 1906 whenwesternizers allied with warlords, clergy and landowners against the Shah.The reformers sought to limit the monarchy and introduce Westerninstitutions such as public modern education. The warlords, clergy andlandowners wanted to ensure non-centralization to protect their privileges.14

However, the most striking example, the Iranian revolution, occurredover a decade after Huntington wrote Political Order in Changing Societies.The Shah seemed to upset everyone. The conservative coalition of clergyand landowners was upset both by the Shah’s veneration of Iran’s paganlegacy (reflected in the opulent festivities commemorating the 2,500th


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anniversary of the Persian empire), and the land reform he executed as partof his ‘white revolution’. The middle class were disappointed by the lack ofmeaningful political participation the Shah offered them.15 In due course hecountered their combined opposition with outright repression. Despite thevast differences between these two groups – the clergy and the liberalmiddle classes – they joined forces in toppling the Shah. Only after therevolution did the middle classes become the victims of the clergy in amanner that recalled the Bolshevik Revolution, when the more numerousbut less organized and lethal Mensheviks succumbed to the organizationalpower and brutality of their numerically inferior Bolshevik opponents.

The Shah might have been the classic victim of noble intentions. Hisreforms and centralization policies, however, transformed Iran into aregional power.16 This was clearly in evidence when Iran forced Iraq toaccede for the first time since its creation in 1921 to sharing sovereignty inthe Shatt al-Arab in the 1975 agreement and forced the Gulf states’acquiescence to its control of the Tunb islands in 1972.

HOW MONARCHIES SOLVED THE DILEMMA – THE INTERNAL ARENA

A dilemma by definition has no solutions. For this reason Huntington’sprognosis 30 years ago for monarchies was dire. They would continue todisappear as they had disappeared in Europe in the previous century.17 Hewas not entirely correct. Even regarding Iran he predicted only part of thestory; the monarchy indeed succumbed to revolution but the winners wereneither the middle classes nor the praetorian guard but the ‘traditional’bazaris and the neo-traditional students.18 Nor did the winners form apraetorian state but a revolutionary theocracy. Meanwhile, Morocco,Jordan, the Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia continue to survive as absolutemonarchies. The rulers of Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait do so with someparliamentary trappings.19 The others make do with consultative councils ofvarious sizes. The largest of these consultative bodies, that of Saudi Arabia,consists of 90 appointees designated by the King.20 In fact, since Huntingtonmade his prediction three decades ago, only one Arab monarchy, Libya, hassuccumbed to a praetorian fate.

The survival of the monarchies, then, raises the question of how theysolved the dilemma. For the wealthy oil states the answer may be obvious –ample funds allowed the state to co-opt the opposition. This is, however, aninadequate explanation, for it may be argued on the basis of the Second GulfWar that increasing wealth makes for increasing external vulnerability. Itcertainly does not explain the survival either of the Moroccan monarchy,which rules over a population greater than Saudi Arabia and the Gulf statescombined, or that of the Jordanian monarchy. Both are countries onlymodestly endowed by nature. Jordan is by world standards classified as a


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lower-middle class state with a per capital annual income of $1,300 (albeitsignificantly higher if corrected for purchasing power parity) and Morocco,with a $700 per capita annual GDP, is situated on the upper edges of thelow-income countries. Both states have faced ‘bread’ riots, Morocco’s riotsbeing more frequent and more severe.21 The differences are probably dueboth to higher absolute levels of poverty and a higher level of incomeinequality in Morocco than in Jordan.

The solution they found was twofold. These monarchies ensured, andoften in fact promoted, pluralism within the societies they ruled and at thesame time they allied themselves firmly with the Western power. (Twicethere was an exception to this rule when Jordan, feeling threatenedsimultaneously on both the domestic and external fronts, decided tobandwagon with Egypt in 1967 and with Iraq in 1990).

Domestically, the monarchies encouraged pluralism in society. Suchpluralism enables the monarchy to play off sides and stave off thecrystallization of broad-based coalitions against their rule. John Waterbury,in his classic study on the Moroccan monarchy, has demonstrated theimportance of the monarch’s role as arbiter.22 The monarchies of Jordan andMorocco tolerated, to some degree, opposition parties and multi-partycompetition – if not within parliament as in Jordan, at least outside it.23

Thus, when Jordan suspended parliament from 1967 to 1984, the statetolerated multi-party competition within the trade and professional unions.

Morocco is noted in the Arab world for the strength and duration of itspolitical parties. The Istiqlal (Independence) Party, the National Union ofPopular Forces (NUPF) and the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (SUPF),an offshoot of the NUPF, were established in 1943, 1959 and 197224

respectively and have been active ever since.25 The latter was markedly lesstolerated by the monarchy than the other parties. Since 1997, however, Abdal-Rahman Yusfi, a founder of the SUPF and former opponent of themonarchy who had spent more time in prison than in parliament, has servedas the Moroccan Prime Minister.26 The liveliness of the Moroccanparliament, albeit suspended several times in the 1960s and 1970s, isunrivaled in the Arab world.27

Socially, both states adopted policies that tolerated if not encouragedsocial differences and autonomy along ecological, linguistic, and religiouslines. Jordan has for a long time promoted Bedouin lore and culture,tolerated customary law even when in conflict with civil law, encouragedthe Chechen minority to maintain diaspora ties and even tolerated limitedPalestinian national activity in its midst.28 As in most Arab states, personallaw, in substance as well as in form, is adjudicated in religiousdenominational courts assuring that basic denominational boundaries arefirmly maintained.


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The electoral system reflects a similar pluralist thrust. In Jordan, seats inthe 80-strong parliament are allocated to Christians in the districts in whichthey reside, to the Circassian-Chechen minority who share the same Sunnireligion as the overwhelming majority of the Jordanian population, and to‘northern’ and ‘southern’ Bedouin.29 The most numerous and problematicsegment of the population, the Palestinians, who reside principally in the bigcities and towns, are the most underrepresented in the parliament butrepresented nonetheless.30 In Egypt, Syria and Iraq, by contrast, they are notcitizens. This calculated gerrymandering has been going on since Jordanwas an emirate.

The Moroccan monarchy, relatively harsh to the culturally andlinguistically conscious Berbers,31 adopted a pluralist policy in religious lifeby continuing to encourage the Zawiyas or Sufi orders that permeateMoroccan life despite reformist and fundamentalist pressure at imposing amore normative ‘Jacobin’ Islam.32 Just as pan-Arab nationalist secularregimes tried creating the ‘new Arab man’ so do the religiousfundamentalists try creating the ‘new-old Islamic believer’ by imposingnormative standards on what often has been practiced as folk religion.33 Thenovelty is not reformism per se – in Islamic countries reformist movementspredate the emergence of the modern Arab state while the modernreformists or fundamentalists would like to use the modern state and thecoercive power at its disposal to impose these standards. The differencebetween the two forms of standardization lies in the direction and substanceof the thrust. In the case of opposition groups the standardization to date(with the exception of Iran, Afghanistan and the partial exception of Sudan),flows from society, is religious in nature and is opposed by the state,whereas in Syria and Iraq the state preaches standardization.34

Morocco’s efforts to maintain the plural nature of Moroccan society isalso reflected in its civil service, which is as much tribal as it is civil,especially in the lower rungs. Local officials are called qaids or tribal chiefs.These are terms that reflect the extent to which they are rooted in traditionalsociety.35 The monarchy traditionally allocates positions in the local publicbureaucracy with the aim of maintaining the segmented nature of Moroccansociety. By contrast, the radical republican Arab regimes (Egypt, Syria andIraq) tried to various degrees to transform society and create the new Araband socialist man.

The policies implemented by the Moroccan and Jordanian monarchies,and the political rationale behind them, can be depicted graphically inFigure 1. The y-axis measures the degree of internal security threat faced byany given state. The x-axis plots the degree of political and socialhomogeneity\heterogeneity in society. As society becomes moreheterogeneous the internal security threat faced by society decreases, but


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only to the point where the marginal gain of fragmenting the potentialopposition is offset by the marginal cost of administering this increasingheterogeneity.36 From this point fragmentation is detrimental. The curveproduced is therefore U-shaped, depicting the relationship betweenpluralization and internal security. The aim of the ruler is to achieve,through appropriate policy mechanisms, the level of pluralism where themarginal gain to domestic security is offset by the marginal cost ofadministrative costs and foregone development. The latter cost can quicklybe transformed into a security threat to the regime in the form of bread riots.

Because the political benefits of pluralism are at some point offset by theadministrative costs of increasing pluralism, the model is only suitable torelatively homogenous states such as Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Algeria.The populations of these states are overwhelmingly Sunni Islamic andArabic-speaking (Many of the Berbers in Morocco have by now beenArabized) and the rulers possess the same distinguishing characteristics asthe majority. The same cannot be said of Syria and Iraq. These states are notonly more heterogeneous than Jordan and Morocco – in Syria only 65 percent of the population is Sunni,37 and in Iraq, the majority of the populationis either Shiite (though Arabic speaking) or Kurdish speaking (thoughSunni) – but the rulers belong to the minority communities.38 Like his father,Bashar Asad belongs to the Alawite minority – a heterodox offshoot ofIslam traditionally regarded as being outside the pale of monotheism and


High

Domestic security threat

Political Administrativecosts costs

Low

Homogeneity Heterogeneity

FIGURE 1THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HETEROGENEITY AND

DOMESTIC SECURITY THREAT TO REGIME

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therefore, from the Sunni perspective, of toleration.39 Saddam Hussein is aSunni, a sect that forms the majority of the Arab world. In Iraq, Sunnis arevastly outnumbered by the Shiites who reside both in the capital and in thesouth and are presumably only slightly more numerous than the Kurds whoinhabit the north of the country.

It was only natural that these rulers adopted a radical variant of pan-Arabism as the official identity of the state.40 Pan-Arabism not only servedto stress the common denominator between Sunnis and Shiites but also togave pride and place to the unity of an Arab world populatedoverwhelmingly by Sunnis (approximately 75 per cent of the population ofArabic-speaking states). In terms of the model, states such as Iraq, Syria,Iran, India and Pakistan are naturally at the point where administrative costsoutweigh the benefits of pluralism. These states, given their in-built socialheterogeneity, might have had no choice but to centralize and engage inuniform nation building and run the risks of countering a united politicalfront against them. This means, graphically, that while Jordan and Moroccohave had to move forward along the continuum to maximize security, statessuch as Iraq, Syria, and Iran (where minorities comprise 50 per cent of thepopulation), might have to pull ‘back’ along the x-axis in order to achievethe same maximum. (The model might also explain partially why thesestates are so aggressive, as war makes the state and the state makes war.41)

THE REPUBLICAN RESPONSE – THE FRAGMENTATION OF THE ARMED

FORCES

It was not rational then, according to the model, for states such as Syria andIraq to forego policies of centralized nation-building. At the same time, itshould be remembered that they suffered in the past from recurrent coups andelite infighting. The solution the present rulers devised can be called theSecuritate model, based on the Romanian experience. It is similar to thepluralizing model, except the former applies specifically to the security forceswhile the latter is applied by the more homogenous states to society at large.Elisabeth Picard has documented the unprecedented growth, since the 1970s,of paramilitary forces at the expense of conventional armies in most Arabstates.42 She credits the institutionalization of this internal ‘divide and rule’structure with the end of the phenomenon of recurrent and attempted coupsand the transformation of the Arab world from a region characterized byregime instability into an area of states ruled by aging dinosaurs. The betterknown, Libya’s Mu’ammar Qaddafi and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, have eachruled for over 20 years. Even Hosni Mubarak’s rule has recently surpassed theduration of Nasser’s rule over Egypt.

Quinvilan comes to the same conclusions as Picard from a slightlydifferent perspective.43 Arab rulers often rule on the bases of tribal or


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regional solidarity or any combination of these. As a former Dutchambassador and scholar of Syrian politics put it, ‘it takes a village to ruleSyria’.44 Yet a village or a tribe cannot possibly provide the manpowerneeded to control the population at large. In Syria, for example, the Alawitesmake up 12 per cent of the population. Even supposing that all Alawites areloyal to the regime, and that all in the relevant age groups would join thesecurity forces, they could still provide less than 14 security personnel perthousand population – a ratio between security personnel and generalpopulation that is less than half the ratio that presently exists in Syria.45

In Iraq, it depends on what is considered the relative reference group. Ifit is the al-Bu Nasir tribe to which Saddam Hussein’s forebears belonged,then the tribe, even under these hypothetical conditions, can only provideone-fiftieth the necessary manpower. If the reference group is the Sunnis atlarge, the ratio is once again half of what the regime determines to benecessary.46 These regimes must then resort to divide and rule and balance-of-power strategies by leaving their more trusted cronies with the task ofcommanding these rival forces.

Not only have republican regimes fragmented their security forces;centralized monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia and Oman, have employed thesame tactics.47 Even the largest royal family is small relative to the population.Moreover, as in the case of Saudi Arabia, the good life from birth hardly actsas an incentive to join the military –especially where basic duty training takesplace in 50°C weather. What matters is not the ideology of the regime but thedegree of political and social pluralism the state fosters. States that havefostered or at least tolerated political and social pluralism will not have tofragment their security forces to the same extent as states more intolerant ofsocial and political differences. Morocco and Jordan, which tolerated politicalparties and parliamentary life for extended periods, had to fragment securityforces less than Saudi Arabia and Oman, which have never tolerated them.The key factor is structural rather than ideological. The more plural the state’spolicies, the more unitary the security establishment.

Republican states, in fact, are busy adopting the same social tactics andpolicies that 30 years ago they berated as reactionary.48 Iraq is nowencouraging both the tribalization of the armed forces as well as theresurgence of tribal loyalty and customary law.49 Segmenting society alongtribal lines has the virtue of promoting a division that attenuatesconsolidation along more all-inclusive national and and religious lines.Characteristic of tribal life in Iraq was a disregard for both dimensions.Alliances most often cut across religious and linguistic lines. Many imperialpowers promoted tribalism as a bulwark against nationalism, including themonarchy of Iraq the British set up in 1921. Now its ‘revolutionary’successor is engaging in much the same policy.50


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The argument should not be overstated. As Frazer demonstrates, thereare examples of centralized states that did not succumb to coups or coupattempts and therefore did not resort to counterbalancing.51 Most of thesestates engaged in long-term conflict against the colonial power beforeindependence. The key variable, however, is not necessarily the intensity orlength of the conflict, but the internal consolidation of the party and theeffectiveness of its ideology. Most communist states did not have tocounterbalance while many states that underwent long-term conflict, likeAlgeria, had to counterbalance against potential coups.

HOW MONARCHIES SOLVED THE EXTERNAL DILEMMA

Unfortunately, states that either pluralize society or who fragment theirsecurity forces to assure domestic security forgo the military advantages ofcentralization and increase their vulnerability to external forces. This is sobecause fragmenting security forces comes at the expense of offensivecapabilities. According to Jackson and Rosberg, this tradeoff hardly poseda problem given the benefits of juridicial statehood.52 Neither was it aproblem for Huntington, who wrote that ‘the principle threat to the stabilityof a traditional society [in Third World states] comes not from invasion byforeign armies but from the invasion of foreign ideas.53

Their assertions do not, however, conform to the facts.54 Inter-statemilitary confrontations between 1950 and 1990 in Latin and Central America,the Middle East, and Central and East Asia, and even arguably in Africa,exceeded those in Europe, even controlling for population.55 The imbalancemight have become even more pronounced in the 1990s when inter-state andcompound conflict – characterized by both outside involvement and civil war– ravaged Africa to an even greater extent than in the Balkans. Developingstates on the whole suffer more insecurity both domestically and externally.This means that the tradeoff between securing internal and external securityis even more acute in these states than for developed states.

The modern political history of the Middle East is rife with examplesboth of states that pluralized society, falling prey to militarily centralizingpowers, and states that promoted uniform society, but fragmented theirsecurity agencies performing poorly against states with more conventionalarmies. Muhammad Ali, widely known as the ‘founder of modern Egypt’embarked in the second and third decades of the nineteenth century on aradical program of centralization and modernization encompassing landregistration, taxation, export-crop cultivation, the introduction of Western-style education and industry only to enhance his military capabilities. Hismilitary achievements were remarkable. In under 30 years, he and his sonIbrahim subdued the Sudan, routed the fundamentalist Wahabiyyamovement in areas now part of Saudi Arabia between 1812 and 1818, and


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finally almost destroyed the Ottoman Empire itself between 1832 and 1840.The Ottoman Empire was saved by British and French intervention.56

A century later, Gamal Abdul Nasser, a leader who resembledMuhammad Ali in many ways (including ignominy at the end of hispolitical life), sent his forces in 1964 to rout the royalists in Yemen as partof the cold war he waged against the Arab monarchic regimes.57

Syria’s occupation of much of Lebanon in the early years of civil warmay be seen in much the same light. While Syria centralized under a regimethat used the Ba’th Party in much the same way Stalin used the CommunistParty, Lebanon institutionalized an extreme form of consociationalism wherethe parts (the religious denominations) were stronger than the whole (thestate).58 And though Syrian leaders fragmented the security apparatus, Syrianevertheless maintained a large and growing conventional army.59 Theimbalance between a centralizing and plural state was played out in the earlystages of the Lebanese war when Syria switched sides to support theChristian forces that formerly fought the pan-Arab ideology Syria waspromoting, and then occupied large parts of Lebanon. This situation hasprevailed ever since. One tends to forget that Syria, before the centralizationof power under the Ba’th, was an object of penetration by other states, (eitherby Hashemite Jordan and Iraq or Egypt before it formed a union with Syriato create the United Arab Republic), very much like Lebanon is today.60

The most striking example of a centralizing state’s supremacy is, ofcourse, Iraq’s lightning invasion of Kuwait, even though numerous otherfactors, such as demographic size and resources, were involved ininfluencing the outcome.

So far, we have looked at plural states faring badly against relativelycentralized states. Evidence for the trade-off between fragmented securityforces and offensive capabilities may be found in the course of warsthemselves. The conventional wars in the Middle East illustrate the point.

Mark Heller attributes Iraqi weakness in its offensive against Iran in theautumn and winter of 1980 to excessive fragmentation of the securityservices and to the lack of effective conventional military training amongBa’th-led popular army troops and the Republican Guards.61 Prior to the wartheir primary function was to protect the regime by policing and monitoringsociety. It was only in the 1984 Iranian offensive across the Iraqi border,after Saddam Hussein gave in to army commanders and strengthened andmade the Republican Guard forces more professional, that Iraq effectivelybegan turning the tide against Iran in 1988.62

On the Iranian side the same dynamics came into play earlier.63 TheIranians succeeded in ousting the Iraqis from Khorramshar in 1982 onlywhen the army replaced the Pasadran (Iranian Revolutionary Guards) asthe key offensive force in driving out the Iraqi forces that occupied the city.64


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The Iranian regime, much like the Iraqis a year later, deviated from anessentially Securitate-style model which balanced the revolutionary guardsagainst the army. After compromising once again on army professionalism,and paying for it once more on the front, the regime refocused on the armyto achieve in February 1986 its major success – the capture of Faw, Iraq’smajor port.65

Looking at the Israeli–Arab wars leads to similar conclusions. The Arabstates often performed badly against the Israeli army because they weremainly equipped to defend the regime rather than meet the external dangerof effective offensive enemy forces. In 1967, Israeli forces met, much totheir surprise, less resistance than they had expected as they made their wayfrom the Hula valley up the Golan Heights, a steep ascent of over 3,000feet.66 It turned out that just before the outbreak of the war most of theSyrian troops were no longer deployed on the heights but had been calledback to protect the regime from internal foes. The regime worried more overpotential coup-makers than over Israel, even after considerable militaryescalation between the two states.

De Atkine, a US military officer writing from the perspective of aconsultant to Arab armies, explains why the tradeoff between internalexternal security is so great. One of the major reasons for winning warsstems from the ability of the army in combat to carry out highly co-ordinated and technically sophisticated combined arms operations.According to De Atkine, a regular Jordanian infantry company is ‘man -for-man as good as a comparable Israeli company; at the battalion level,however, the coordination required for combined arms operations, withartillery, air, and logistics, is simply absent. Indeed the higher the echelonlevel, the greater the disparity.67

The problem is relatively simple. To win wars, one needs coordination.The more symmetrical the contesting forces (and worse yet if the enemy hasthe edge), the more one needs coordination to enhance speed of movementand to concentrate firepower. To ensure their survival, regimes, however,need to balance forces and divide-and-rule. A divide-and- rule strategy offragmenting security forces undermines coordination. You simply cannothave both at the same time. ‘Leaders look at joint commands, jointexercises, combined arms, and integrated staffs very cautiously for allarmies are a double-edged sword. One edge points toward the externalenemy and the other toward the capital.’68 No wonder, then, that ‘no Arabruler will allow combined operations or training to become routine’.69

Incidentally, the fragmentation principle is even reflected in ensuring thatthe various security forces receive different weapon systems.

The acuity of this tradeoff transcends the Middle East. Biddle and Zirkledemonstrate, in their comparative study of the effectiveness of the


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Vietnamese and Iraqi air defense systems, why the Vietnamese were soeffective and the Iraqis so inefficient, despite comparable levels of militarymodernization.70 The highly centralized Vietnamese regime, assured of thearmy’s loyalty due to its effective indoctrination by a dedicated CommunistParty, did not interfere with internal army functions.71 As a result, thisoffensively structured conventional army performed well against US airpower. By contrast, Saddam Hussein, who mistrusted his army and utilizedall the techniques identified by Horowitz, Frazer, Belkin and others tomeddle in army affairs to maintain internal security, harmed Iraqi air-defense capabilities against an albeit more formidable foe.72 Donald L.Horowitz identifies the tradeoff in colonial Africa:

If the mission is conquest, then fighting qualities are the paramountconsideration in recruiting troops. If, however, the mission is tomaintain internal control, to put down disorders and threats to theregime, then reliability in times of domestic disturbance becomesparamount. The different qualities required for different missionsmight point to recruitment from different ethnic groups.73

Even a theory that places more stress on social stratification thanethnicity per se, suggested by Stephen Peter Rosen, comes to essentially thesame conclusion.74 A more cohesive army emanating from a more cohesivesociety will militarily outperform an opponent less socially cohesive atsimilar levels of military technology. It was true of the British against Indianrulers in the early nineteenth century just as it was true of the Germansagainst the Soviets in World War II.75 A more cohesive army and society, inthe context of the Third World, might, however, increase the internalpolitical risks for the ruler.

Huntington erred, then, in diagnosing the monarch’s dilemma. Thedilemma faced by monarchies is not between internal socio-economicsuccess and political failure, but between fragmenting and balancing bothsociety and the security forces in order to secure domestic security, only toincrease the state’s vulnerability to external forces.

We saw above how the monarchies solved the internal problem. Theypluralized both society and the armed forces. The question remains as tohow they solved the growing asymmetry between the coup-prooftechniques and their growing weakness in the face of more centralizingand offensively capable neighbors. One possibility a ruler who hasfragmented his security forces may take is to engage in low intensityconflict. Belkin claims that the more the ruler engages incounterbalancing, the greater the tendency to engage in terror andguerrilla warfare. He argues that by engaging his forces against anexternal enemy he is effectively deflecting them from aiming for the


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capital. Yet low intensity conflict is also considered a useful tool againstmore powerful neighbors.

Many rulers, particularly in monarchies and other conservative states,however, have preferred to enter into enduring alliances first with Europeanpowers and later with the United States, despite deep-seated ideologicaldifferences stemming from their radically different regimes. After all,theocratic and monarchic Saudi Arabia is a mirror image of republican UnitedStates. Saudi Arabia emerged to turn the theocratic idea into reality; the UnitedStates to become the first modern republic.76 The United States emerged as anideological revolutionary alternative to both king and crown and to theinterlinking of church and state. Yet, Saudi Arabia allied with the West in orderto provide itself with a safety net against centralizing and predatory neighbors.In the case of Jordan, the Western allies also doubled as a source of aid withwhich to co-opt and placate the domestic population.77 In one case at least, aswe shall see, the Palestinian Authority was able to do both.

I am not of course claiming that the United States assures these regimes’existence. The dilemma requires two policies – pluralization either ofsociety or the armed forces and maintaining an alliance with the UnitedStates. This indeed is the lesson of the Shah’s downfall. He allied with theUnited States but embarked on reforms aimed at transforming Iran into auniform society rather than maintaining its plural traditional character.78

The Relationship Between Systemic Factors and Internal Security

The solution to the dilemma allows us to understand the relationshipbetween systemic factors and internal security. Few states possess theluxury of superpower protection as do Middle East monarchies. UnitedStates protection is a scarce public good. It is expensive to deliver, the costsof which are typically under considerable domestic scrutiny. It is thereforelimited to states in areas regarded vital to United States strategic interests.This is perhaps why absolute monarchies continue to exist only in theMiddle East, where 70 per cent of proven oil reserves are to be found. Infact, eight of the 18 Arab states (the three other members of the ArabLeague, Djibuouti, Somalia and Mauritainia, are not ethnically Arab orpredominantly Arabic-speaking), are monarchies.79

We have seen that more centralized states will have to fragment theirsecurity forces to a greater degree than states with heterogeneouspopulations. Since fragmenting the security forces and balancing themagainst each other serves as an insurance policy for regimes, the morepolitically centralized the regime the more likely will it attempt to fragmentits security forces. But it will excessively fragment its security forces onlyif it secures its external environment from attack by outside forces. I posit,


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then, that centralized states under the United States umbrella (or any othereffective collective security arrangement) will have the most fragmented or‘balanced’ security structure.

The relationship between centralization, which creates the need topluralize the security establishment, and the effect the United Stateshegemon has on the proliferation of security agencies, can be seen in Figure2. The horizontal axis measures the salience of any given state to theinterests of the United States and therefore the extent to which it is cansecure its protection from predatory neighbors. The perpendicular axismeasures political centralization and homogenization. I assume that morehomogenous states under the American umbrella will have the mostfragmented security establishment (Quadrant I) and that centralized andhomogenous states in regions not salient to the United States will have thesecond highest (Quadrant II). This group will be followed by plural statesthat enjoy the US umbrella that can allow themselves the luxury offragmented security forces but do not have a pressing domestic need tofragment the security forces because of pluralizing policies and aheterogeneous society (Quadrant III). States that duplicate their securityforces least are plural societies that cannot command US interest andcommitment in their security (Quadrant IV).


HOMOGENOUS

Quadrant I Quadrant II

Fragmented securitystructure

SALIENT MARGINAL

Quadrant III Quadrant IV

Unitary security structure

HETROGENOUS

FIGURE 2RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SALIENCY TO US INTERESTS AND HETEROGENEITY

AND THE PROLIFERATION OF SECURITY FORCES IN THIRD WORLD STATES

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Each quadrant consists of a group of states within a certain range ofproliferation. Jordan, for example, will fragment its security forces less thanSaudi Arabia even though both are arguably in the third quadrant, becauseoil-poor Jordan cannot command the same degree of US interest in itssecurity as can Saudi Arabia.

The Evidence

A comparison between Eritrea and the Palestinian Authority (PA)demonstrates the plausibility of the model. The two political entities sharecharacteristics; both emerged within a year of each other after long-termconflict against an occupying regional power, and are of similar populationsize. Yet they exhibit polar opposite security establishments, as thefollowing analysis reveals.

THE PALESTINIAN CASE

The Homogeneity of Palestinian Society. Should the PA become a state, itwill be one of the most religiously, linguistically and ethnicallyhomogenous states in the world, in sharp contrast to the states (Israel, Syriaand Jordan) that surround it. Arabic is the spoken language of virtually allPalestinians. At least 96 per cent of Palestinians are Sunni Muslims.80 Thesmall Christian population concentrated mostly in Ramallah, Jerusalem andBethlehem has reportedly dwindled considerably in the past 20 years, somuch so that Bethlehem and Ramallah, once predominantly Christiantowns, now have Muslim majorities.81 The tiny community of Samaritans,an Arabic-speaking sect related to Judaism, who live on the outskirts ofNablus, generates ethnographic interest but is otherwise politicallyinsignificant. Meanwhile, the spread of vehicle transport, the steep rise inliteracy and education, the expansion of a more modern service economyand until recently work opportunities in Israel, have reduced differencesconsiderably between urban and rural inhabitants. A study reported that by1979 only eight per cent of rural households depended exclusively onagriculture as a source of income.82

The American Security Umbrella. Arafat can afford to duplicate andmultiply his security forces at the expense of these forces’ offensivecapabilities because both Israel and the PA are firmly linked to a US-ledpeace process. The extent of this protection was clearly demonstratedduring the incidents surrounding the opening of the Temple Mount tunnelby the Israeli authorities in September 1996. Even though Israeli forcesincurred unusually high loses (13 deaths in three days of demonstrations; asmany military casualties as in two years, on average, over the six-year-long


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Intifada), Israel refrained from attacking areas under sole control of thePalestinians, despite the military wherewithal to carry out such anoperation.83 The restraint was related primarily to the United States’commitment to the peace process that a large-scale Israeli reprisal couldhave jeopardized.

The same could be said of the low intensity conflict that broke out inSeptember 2000. Only after numerous massive terrorist attacks within Israel inthe summer of 2001, eight months into the conflict, did the Israel DefenseForces (IDF) penetrate these areas for the first time. When Israeli incursionsbecame frequent in late September and early October 2001 in reaction to aspate of terrorist attacks both within Israel and on Israeli settlements in Gaza,President Bush responded by pronouncing for the first time that he supporteda Palestinian state.84 The Sharon government understood the message when,after the killing of an Israeli minister on 17 October 2001, and subsequentquasi-permanent deployment of IDF troops in PA areas, it declared that Arafatwas ‘irrelevant’ as a negotiation partner, but not the PA.85

So potent has been the United States umbrella that after Israeli forcesbriefly took over key refugee camps and towns in the West Bank and Gazain mid-March 2002 the United States supported a UN Security Councilresolution, which for the first time came out in support of a Palestinianstate.86 After Israeli troops took over four big refugee camps and cities at thecost of only three soldiers’ lives, the IDF was presumably prevented by theUnited States from attacking the ‘muqata’a’, the Palestinian central militarybase in Ramallah to which major sought-after terrorist suspects fled.87 Thus,an astounding temporary military victory for the IDF and a resoundingdefeat for the Palestinian irregulars was transformed into a political victoryfor the Palestinians.

Counterbalancing. The desire to play off sides in a homogenous societycoupled with United States protection allowed Arafat to engage incounterbalancing. The Palestinian Authority was originally conceived in theDeclaration of Principles signed on the White House lawn on 13 September1993. However, it came into being only in the wake of the Cairo Accords of4 May 1994 that outlined its basic structure: Annex 1 of these accordsidentifies a Palestinian Directorate of Police composed of four branches: thecivil police, public security, intelligence and civil defense.88 The CairoAccords limited the number of police personnel to 12,000, but the ceilingwas subsequently raised in the 26 September 1995 agreement.

The latest study on the subject reports that the Palestinian Authoritycontrols 12 security agencies.89 (The Palestinian Independent Commissionfor Civil Rights, counts 1390). Ten operate under the General SecurityServices, an umbrella organization. They are the National Security Forces


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(NSF), the Civil Police, its highly specialized Rapid Deployment SpecialPolice Unit, Preventive Security Forces, General Intelligence, the MilitaryIntelligence Apparatus, the Military Police, the Coast Guard, the AerialPolice, Civil Defense and the Provincial Guard, chiefly in the town ofNablus.

By far the largest of the ten is the National Security Forces, whichnumbers an estimated 14,000 troops.91 The NSF is in fact the PA’s unofficialarmy. Personnel receive a minimum of three months basic training and areorganized up to the battalion level. All personnel on duty wear brown orcamouflaged uniforms and carry as a minimum a semi-automatic weapon,mostly Soviet-made AK-47s but heavier weapons as well.92 They manoutposts along the perimeters of Palestinian controlled area, and, until theoutbreak of hostilities in October 2000, participated in joint patrols withIsrael border guard units. To date the NSF has refrained from large-scaleinvolvement in the conflict, presumably because it is more valuable toArafat in addressing internal security and too vulnerable to a massive Israelireprisal.93

The second most important of these services is Preventive SecurityForces (PSF), which numbers an estimated 5,000 men and is internallydivided between two separate branches in the West Bank and Gaza. Theheads of these two branches, Jibril Rajoub in the West Bank, andMuhammad Dahlan in Gaza, are important political personalities and havebeen involved in the Israeli–Palestinian negotiation process. The PSF isdistinctive among the official services for being manned and led by menfrom the territories themselves. Ferreting out informers and quellinginternal dissension are its two major functions.

Two other security services, the Special Security Force and the 3,000-strong Presidential Guard, even formally report directly to Yasser Arafat.94

The personnel in both are highly trained and both are manned mostly bymen Arafat brought with him when he entered Gaza in July 1994. ThePresidential Guard is almost always identified in the foreign and Palestinianpress as Force 17, a PLO elite force from which most of the members of thePresidential Guard were recruited. In fact, their bases bear the latter name.Force 17 personnel have participated on an individual basis in numerousguerrilla and terrorist acts since the outbreak of hostilities in greaternumbers than individuals from other security agencies.95 In February 2001,a cell of Force 17 members collaborated with Hizballah in firing mortars ona Gaza strip settlement.

The thirteenth organization is the Fatah Tanzim, an irregular forcewhose precise size is unknown. Estimates range from 35,000 to 50,000, ofwhich only one quarter are involved in actual crime prevention andcontrol.96 The Tanzim (which means ‘apparatus’ in Arabic) is the military


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arm of Fatah, the largest faction and political movement in the PA. Arafathas headed the movement since its foundation in 1964. The Tanzim iscomposed exclusively of Palestinians from the territories and was recreatedin 1996 to counter the power of Preventive Security. In the present lowintensity conflict Tanzim groups call themselves the al-Aqsa Martyrs’Battalions and are presumably responsible for the bulk of Israeli casualties.97

Significantly absent in the Palestinian security complex are even themost rudimentary structures associated with military establishments. ThePalestinian military lacks a defined officers’ corps, a general staff apparatusand professional corps such as a signal and surgeon corps that could havebeen established within the parameters of the limitations imposed by theinterim peace agreements.98

The proliferation of these security services reflects the difficulties thediaspora-based PLO faced in asserting its authority over a local society thathad succeeded in waging a five-year long Intifada against Israel and inproducing an organized Islamic opposition, Hamas, which was adamantlyopposed to the Oslo peace process. It is of critical importance to note that thefragmentation of the security services was, in part, a consequence of theopposition it encountered. A major confrontation broke out when PA forcesshot and killed 15 demonstrators outside a Hamas-dominated mosque in Gazaon 18 November 1994 which made it clear to Arafat that he needed formerPLO-Fatah activists from the ‘inside’ to cope with the Islamic opposition.99

This move was reflected in the expansion of two separate branches of thePreventive Security Force in the West Bank and Gaza that recruited mainlyFatah activists from the ‘inside’. These activists had participated in theIntifada before the arrival of the PLO leadership in the territories.

Arafat needed such forces even more after the September 1995agreement was reached with Israel that extended PA control to the six townsof the West Bank. The West Bank towns were strongholds of ‘inside’political organization to a far greater extent that Gaza where Arafat and hisfollowers from the diaspora first took over. The PA took control of thesetowns soon after the Cairo agreement of 28 September 1995, whichauthorized the move.100

Proliferation has been an effective way to assure the survival of theregime. The events surrounding the killing of the student Wasim al-Tarifi inRamallah, the unofficial capital of Palestinian society in the West Bank andformerly the bastion of Palestinian civil society, is probably the best thoughby no means the only indication.

On 24 October 1998, while Arafat was visiting various Arab capitalsafter the Wye plantation agreement, the Fatah ‘inside’ known as the Tanzimhad arrested and tortured two men for molesting women linked to theirorganization. The two had friends in the Military Intelligence Apparatus (al-


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Jihaz al-Istihbarat al-Askariyya), composed mainly of Fatah members fromoutside the territories. The Military Intelligence Apparatus attacked thecentral offices of Fatah in Ramallah and presumably sequestered twoguns.101 The Fatah offices were the home base of the Higher Committee ofFatah Affairs, headed by Marwan al-Barughthi, a leader of the ‘inside’ anda vociferous critic of the ‘outside’. He also heads the Tanzim. The followingday, Fatah mobilized its youth and student movements to stage peacefuldemonstrations outside the offices of Military security. During thedemonstrations shots were fired from a nearby building, killing a secondarystudent who belonged to one of the wealthiest and most powerful familiesin Ramallah, one of whose members was the Minister of Civil Affairs andnegotiator in the Oslo peace process.102

The family demanded that the killers be hanged and that the head ofMilitary Intelligence be compelled to resign. Instead, four personnel fromthat security agency were arrested and swiftly tried for attacking Fatahoffices without authorized warrants. They received sentences ranging fromthree to four years in prison. The move did not placate either the family orcivil society. On 26 October, two days after the killing, the family printedon the front-page of a Palestinian newspaper a strong condemnationclaiming that killing ‘opens the door wide open to national civil war’.103

Despite the uproar, Arafat remained abroad. Demonstrations in bothRamallah and Nablus, the major centers of opposition during the followingtwo days, did not convince him to come back. The family, which hadpostponed the burial in the hope that Arafat would attend the burial andannounce the dismissal of Musa Arafat, acknowledged defeat by buryingtheir son on 29 October before Arafat’s return to Gaza the following day.104

Only two and a half years earlier, Arafat, was almost forced to fleeRamallah, the main town in the West Bank, for authorizing a raid on anearby university that served as a center of opposition to Israeli rule.105 Atthat time, however, the PA still had not riveted society with competingsecurity forces. The Wasim al-Tarifi incident occurred soon after the WyeAccords, perceived as a diplomatic failure by many Palestinians. Evenwhen the low intensity violence got out of hand, resulting in the death of ayoung student from a prominent family, violence remained both local andrelatively short lived.

The role of the security agencies is not limited to contesting praetorians.They also collect unauthorized taxes (from gas stations in the form ofprotection), arrest car thieves, steal cars, cow editors and universitylecturers, and have even beaten members of the legislative council.106 Muchof their activity comes at the expense of both the institutionalization of thestate and ultimately that of the welfare of Palestinian society. This is true ofmany Arab states as well.


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THE ERITREAN CASE

The Heterogeneity of Eritrean Society. The Eritrean struggle forindependence chronologically parallels the Palestinian experience. Thelaunching of the political struggle by the Eritrean Liberation Front in1961 against Ethiopian rule preceded the Palestinian armed struggle byonly four years.107 The two movements differed both in the form ofstruggle they waged and the political dividends they secured. While thevictorious Eritreans captured Asmara in May 1991 by routing theEthiopians in a conventional war and secured full independence two yearslater, the Palestinians conducted low intensity conflict and had to make dowith an interim government established as a result of the Oslo peaceprocess.108

Two more differences differentiate the Eritrean from the Palestinianexperience. Arafat had to secure his footing in areas inhabited by arelatively homogenous population. Though half were refugees and theirdescendents and half were indigenous to the area, they nevertheless allspoke the same language and 96 per cent or more of the population practicethe same religion. In Eritrea, by contrast, there are at least nine languagegroups, divided along religious lines as well.109

The overall population in Eritrea is divided between Christians andMuslims. The cleavage is most pronounced between the two dominant‘nations’, as they are called; the Coptic Tigranis, the dominant ethnic groupwho mainly inhabit the highlands, and the Muslim Tigres, who residemainly in the lowlands. The predominantly Christian Eritrean leadership inthe Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) had, in the course of thestruggle for independence, roundly defeated the rival, predominantlyMuslim Eritrean Liberation Party, and thus faced fewer challenges to its rulethan did Arafat. Ruling a plural society, the Eritreans did not have topluralize their armed forces well.110 On the contrary, to counter the strongcentrifugal pressure of ruling over so many social, linguistic and religiousdivisions the Eritrean government felt it necessary, in the view of onescholar, ‘to create significant others by means of violence. State violencethrough the mobilization and use of the national army whose recruits aredrawn from all ethnic groups in the country, is thus viewed as a practical andaccepted means by the power-holders to forge and sustain a nationalunity.’111

The Absence of United States Protection. Even though Eritrea’s 1,000-kilometer-long coastline is a major oil transit route on the Red Sea, theUnited States has not deemed the area sufficiently important to warrantdirect military intervention in the area. Instead, it has played a major role in


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providing military aid to both Eritrea and Ethiopia when war broke outbetween the two in May 1998 and has committed itself diplomatically inpeace-making efforts between the two sides.112

Mediating peace between its two allies, has been by far the moreimportant of the two roles played by the United States in the region, forgood reason. According to one academic expert, the two-year war‘displaced one third of Eritrea’s population, froze foreign aid andinvestment, sparked a bilateral arms race and defense spending spree, anddrove the two countries’ real growth rates to zero’.113 The outbreak of warcame soon after President Clinton’s well-publicized visit to Africa anddissipated the considerable optimism the visit evoked.

This is perhaps why the United States proceeded with alacrity when bothparties to the conflict asked Susan Rice, US Assistant Secretary of State, tocome to the region to defuse tensions after the war broke out in May 1998.Rice and her team worked closely with Rwandan Vice President PaulKagame. In addition to fostering a peace plan, US diplomats specificallysought to bring an end to the air war that was having particularly devastatingeffect on the civilian populations of both sides. President Clinton was alsopersonally involved in these efforts.114 These efforts were buttressed when inlate 1998 President Clinton named as a special envoy former US nationalsecurity advisor Anthony Lake to try to mediate the conflict.115 ThoughAlgerian President Bouteflika, operating on an Organization of AfricanUnity mandate, became the key mediator towards the end of the war, UnitedStates diplomats played a major role in prolonging ceasefires and bringingthe war to an end.

Yet, despite the critical United States role in providing the militaryexpertise to produce a detailed peace implementation plan in 1999, therewas no question at any time of US military intervention or meting outpunishment on either of the sides. This fact became clear when Ethiopia,albeit after a nine-month ceasefire, launched a massive offensive wellwithin Eritrean territory, despite the umbrage of the United States.116 Theoffensive forced the Eritreans, arguably the revisionist side at the beginningof the war, to sue for peace.

A Conventional Army. The Eritrean leadership never had the luxury offragmenting its armed forces. For six out of seven years between Eritreanindependence in May 1993 until June 2000, Eritrean forces had beenengaged in armed conflict with neighbors.117 Since 1994, the Eritrean armyhas been involved in clashes both with Sudanese and Djibouti forces.118 Inlate 1997 hostilities broke out between Eritrea and Ethiopia, leading to theoutbreak of a full-scale war in May 1998. As the SIPRI Yearbook –2001makes note, ‘on 6 May 1998 Eritrea and Ethiopia began one of Africa’s few


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interstate wars in the post-colonial era and one of the world’s deadliestconflicts in recent years’.119 It took two conventional armies to produce thateffect. Eritrea, with a population of 3.5 million, mobilized an army of260,000, almost 8 per cent of its population.120 In Badme alone, the Eritreansfielded seven divisions.121 Early successes in the war were attributed to theEritreans’ highly centralized command.122 Eritrea’s arm purchases before theoutbreak of hostilities confirm the conventional nature of its army. Eritreaafter its independence acquired six Russian MiG-29 fighters and ItalianAermacchi warplanes.

These planes were put to use in one of the largest conventional battleswaged in Africa, when Ethiopia launched surprise attacks during the monthof March 1999 on both the Badme and Zela Ambessa-Egala fronts. Thebattles were characterized by infantry assaults on trenches and barriers, anduse of tanks, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.123 In the counter-attack onthis front in June 1999, the Eritreans deployed one commando brigade, twomechanized and 11 infantry divisions.124 Eleven months later, there werestill eight divisions manning their defenses on the western front.125 Anestimated 50,000 to 60,000 soldiers and civilians were killed in the war thatterminated in June 2000.

Fragmentation – Bad Militarily but also Politically

Different mixes of social and political heterogeneity and strategicimportance result in different security structures. A comparison between thePalestinian and Eritrean experiences demonstrates that not all states enjoyjuridical statehood. The variable protection they enjoy is not due, asRosberg and Jackson claimed, to international norms, but to the willingnessand the ability of a world power to protect them. The relative homogeneityor heterogeneity of any given state’s security forces might be a function ofexternal protection as well as the social and institutional pluralism that therulers promote within their societies.

Though Jackson and Rosberg might be wrong about the causes ofexternal protection, they are probably right about the implications ofexternal protection on state- building. States that enjoy United Statesprotection and thus duplicate security agencies to solve the internal securitydilemma pay for it not only in terms of reduced offensive capabilities but interms of successful state consolidation. Third World states are on a differentstate-building trajectory from that of Western European states in the past,not because norms allow the continuation of weak states ruled by weakrulers, but because they are protected by foreign states or unduly fragmenttheir societies and armed forces.


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NOTES

1. Gal Luft, The Palestinian Security Services: Between Police and Army, ResearchMemorandum No.36, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (Nov. 1998), p.4.Mary Aboud claims there are at least 14 but does not list them; see her article ‘Keepingthe Peace’, Palestine Report (March 2000) p.5 <http//mail.jmcc.org/media/report/2000/Mar/1.htm>.

2. James T. Quinvilan, ‘Coup-Proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East’,International Security 24/2 (Fall 1999) pp.131–65.

3. James F Burke, ‘Romanian and Soviet Intelligence in the December Revolution’,Intelligence and National Security 8/4 (Oct. 1993) p.28.

4. Adam Roberts, Nation in Arms: The Theory and Practice of Territorial Defense (NY:Praeger 1976).

5. For an early yet extensive study of these techniques see Donald L. Horowitz, EthnicGroups in Conflict (Berkeley: U. of California Press 1985), part 4, especially pp.532–59.More recent works include Jendayi Elizabeth Frazer, ‘Sustaining Civilian Control:Armed Counterweights in Regime Stability in Africa’, PhD dissertation, StanfordUniversity 1994 and Aaron Charles Belkin, ‘Performing the National Security State:Civil-Military Relations as a Cause of International Conflict’, PhD dissertation, Univ.ofCalifornia, Berkeley 1998, pp.20–53.

6. Belkin (note 5) p.iii.7. See Edwar E. Kolodjiez and Robert Harkavy (eds.) Security Policies of Developing

Countries (Lexington Books 1982); Mohammad Ayoob, ‘The Security Problematic inthe Third World’, World Politics 43/2 (Jan. 1991) pp.257–83; Michael Barnett, ‘HighPolitics is Low Politics: The Domestic and Systemic Sources of Israeli Security Policy,1967–1977’, World Politics 42/4 (July 1990) pp.529–62.; Michael Barnett and JackLevy, ‘Domestic Sources of Alliances and Alignments: The Case of Egypt, 1962–1973’,International Organizations 45/3 (Summer 1991) pp.369–95; Ole R. Holsti, P. TerrenceHopman and John D. Sullivan, Unity and Disintegration in International Alliances:Comparative Studies (NY: John Wiley, 1973); Edward E. Azar and Chung-in Moon(eds.) National Security in the Third World: The Management of Internal and ExternalThreats (College Park, MD: Center for International Development and ConflictManagement, U. of Maryland 1986).

8. Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, ‘Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: TheEmpirical and the Juridical in Statehood’, World Politics 35/1 (Oct. 1982) p.24.

9. Ibid. p.22.10. Ibid.11. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale UP

1968) p.177.12. Charles Tilly, ‘Reflections on European State Making’, in Charles Tilley (ed.) The

Formation of Nation States in Western Europe (Princeton UP 1975) pp.1–76.13. Huntington (note 11) p.161.14. Ibid. p. 62.15. This disappointment reached its peak in June 1963, as thousands of middle-class workers,

bazaaris, clergy, students and unemployed Iranians took to the streets in protest at theShah’s reforms. See Ervand Abrahmian, Iran: Between Two Revolutions ( Princeton UP1982) p.424.

16. Richard Cottam, Iran and the United States: A Cold War Study (U. of Pittsburgh Press1988) p.143.

17. Huntington (note 11) p.191.18. Nikki R. Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New

Haven, CT: Yale UP 1981). Keddie emphasizes the central role of the Bazaaris(pp.243–6) and the pivotal role played by the student organizations in the revolutionarymovement, both on and off campus (pp.235–7).

19. Abdullah Juma Al-Haj, ‘The Politics of Participation in the Gulf Cooperation Council States:The Omani Consultative Council’, Middle East Journal 50/4 (Autumn 1996) pp.559–71.


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20. R. Hrair Dekmejian, ‘Saudi Arabia’s Consultative Council’, Middle East Journal 52/2(Winter 1998) pp.204–18. Dekmejian provides a comprehensive review of past andcurrent Shura including a demographic breakdown of its current members.

21. For more, see Curtis R. Ryan, ‘Peace Bread and Riots: Jordan and the IMF’, Middle EastPolicy 6/2 (June 1998) pp.54–66; David Seddon, ‘Winter of Discontent: Economic Crisisin Tunisia and Morocco’ MERIP Reports 14/8 (Oct. 1984) pp.7–11.

22. John Waterbury, The Commander of the Faithful (NY: Weidenfeld,1972). See Ch.14,‘The Monarchy as Orchestrator of the Segmented System’, pp.267–74.

23. Sami al-Khazendar, Jordan and the Palestinian Question (London: Ithaca 1997)pp.111–12.

24. Third World Quarterly10/2 (April 1988) p.539.25. David M Mednicoff. ‘Civic Apathy in the Service of Stability? Cultural Politics in

Monarchist Morocco’, Journal of North African Studies 3/4 (Winter 1998) pp.11–21.Note that the UNFP was the predecessor to the SUPF.

26. Ahmad Diab, ‘Al-Intikhabat al-Tashri’iyya al-Maghríbiyya’ [The Moroccan LegislativeElections], Al-Siyasa al-Dawliyya 132 (1998) pp.193–6.

27. For a chilling rebuttal of this perception of monarchic rule in Morocco under KingHassan II, which he sees as being based on brute power and suppression, see HenryMunson, Jr, Religion and Politics in Morocco (New Haven, CT: Yale UP 1993),pp.133–8. The description is based on John Pierre Entelis’s Comparative Politics ofNorth Africa (Syracuse UP 1980).

28. Al-Ahzab al-Siyasiya al-Urdunniyya [The Jordanian Political Parties] (Amman: MarkazDirasat Urdun al-Jadid 1997) p.16.

29. Timothy Piro, ‘Parliament, Politics and Pluralism in Jordan: Democratic Trends at aDifficult Time’, Middle East Insight 8/6 (July–Oct. 1992) p.39.

30. Schirin H. Fathi,. Al’Amil al-Filastini fi al-Iintikhabat al-Barlaminiyya al-Urdunniyyal’il-`Am 1989 [The Palestinian Factor in the Jordanian Parliamentary Elections in 1989](Jerusalem: PASSIA 1990) pp.3–4.

31. Louis-Jean Duclos, ‘The Berbers and the Rise of Moroccan Nationalism’, in ErnestGellner and Charles Micaud (eds.) Arabs and Berbers From Tribe to Nation in NorthAfrica (London: Lexington Books 1972) p.223.

32. Emad Eldin Shahin, ‘Under the Shadow of the Imam: Morocco’s Diverse IslamicMovements’, Middle East Insight 11/2 (Jan.–Feb. 1995) p.40.

33. Uri M. Kupferschmidt, ‘Reformist and Militant Islam in Urban and Rural Egypt’, MiddleEastern Studies 23/4 (Oct.1987) p.403.

34. Itamar Rabinovitch, Syria Under the Ba’ath 1963–66: The Army-Party Symbiosis(Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press) p.205.

35. Jean-Jaques Perennes, L’eau et les hommes au Maghreb. Contribution à une politique del’eau en Méditerranée (Paris: Karthala 1993) p.370. Perennes, borrowing from RemyLevau’s Le fellah morocain, défenseur du trône (Fondation nationales des sciencespolitiques 1976), shows how the Moroccan King, soon after independence, began toreplace the local notables with a modern bureaucracy manned by middle-class officials.However, he ended up reconstituting the local power structure as it existed during theprotectorate.

36. On the economic costs of increasing administrative fragmentation in the Moroccancontext, see Mohammad Naciri, ‘Territoire: contrôler ou dévelolpper, le dilèmme dupouvoir depuis un siècle’, Maghreb-Machreq 164 (April–June 1998) p.27. Themonarchy increased the number of provinces from 14 in 1959 to 53 in 1994, out of allproportion to demographic growth. The economic and political costs of heterogenizationform the basis for Ernest Gellner’s explanation regarding the relationship betweennationalism and state-building. The geographical expansion of the state will be fixed atthe point where the benefits of disseminating high culture and promoting socialhomogenization in order to achieve economies of scale will be offset by the costs ofsuppressing heterogeneous populations along the frontier. See his Nations andNationalism (Oxford: Blackwell 1983) p.25. States like Morocco and Jordan are muchless concerned about promoting nationalism than about fragmenting society but, as


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Gellner highlights in a different context, the possibilities for doing so are not infinite. Atsome point administrative inefficiency will translate into political costs.

37. For a breakdown of ethnic diversity in Syria, see Nicholas Van Dam, The Struggle forPower in Syria: Policies and Society under Asad and the Ba’ath Party (London: I.B.Tauris 1996) p.15.

38. On Ba’thist ideology in Iraq, see Amatzia Baram, ‘Neo-Tribalism in Iraq: SaddamHussein’s Tribal Policies, 1991–96’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 29/1(February 1997) p.2.

39. Patrick Seale, Assad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris1980), pp.332–4.

40. Baram (note 38) p.19.41. Charles Tilly, ‘War Making and State Making As Organized Crime’, in P. Evans, Theda

Skocpol and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (eds.) Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: CUP1985) p.172.

42. Elizabeth Picard, ‘Arab Military in Politics: From Revolutionary Plot to AuthoritarianState’, in Giacomo Luciani (ed.) The Arab State (London: Routledge 1990).

43. James T. Quinlivan, ‘Coup-proofing: Its Practice and Consequences in the Middle East’,International Security 24/2 (Fall 1999) p.140.

44. Van Dam (note 37) p.1.45. Quinvilan (note 43) p.13646. Ibid. p.137.47. Ibid. p.138.48. Ibid. p.140.49. Baram (note 38) p.23.50. Hassan Abou Taleb, ‘Al-Iraq ‘Ala Masharif Qarn Jadid’ [Iraq on the Threshold of a New

Century], Al-Siyasa al-Dawliyya 139 (Jan. 2000) p.149.51. Frazer (note 5), see abstract.52. Jackson and Rosberg (note 8) pp.12–16. 53. Huntington (note 11) p.155. Huntington juxtaposes the unimportance of inter-state

conflict on state formation in Third World states to its overriding importance in theEuropean context mentioned on pp.122–3. His insight was overlooked by Charles Tillyin his criticism of Huntington’s theory of political development. Tilly arrived at the sameidea and made warfare the core of his state-building theory regarding Western Europeanstate formation. See his ‘Reflections on the History of European State Making’, inCharles Tilley (ed.), The Formation of Nation States in Western Europe (Princeton UP1975).

Overlooking the importance of cross-border and inter-state conflict on Third Worldstate formation is not of course unique to these scholars. Tilly, in his Coercion, Capitaland European States (London: Basil Blackwell 1990) p.6, claims that all the four majorschools of thought that focused on state formation, the modernization theorists and therational actors who focus on processes within the state, and the realists and world systemtheorists representing the external systemic perspective, have overlooked the importanceof external conflict on Third World state formation. These scholars are to be singled out,however, for explicitly denying its importance. For a comprehensive treatment of thesubject from a point of view similar to mine, see Michael Barnett Confronting the Costsof War: Military Power, State, and Society in Egypt and Israel (Princeton UP 1992),Ch.1.

It is interesting to note that while for International Relations scholars the importanceof internal conflict and its theorization is a relatively recent phenomenon, the same is true,though to a lesser extent, regarding external conflict in the field of comparative politics. Apioneering and influential work that synthesized both is Theda Skocpol’s States and SocialRevolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (Cambridge: CUP1979). It is therefore not surprising that the past decade or more has been characterized bysome blurring of disciplinary lines and perspectives regarding conflict, the internationalsystem and state formation.

54. Barnett, Confronting the Costs (note 53) p.5.


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55. Paul K. Huth, Standing Your Ground: Territorial Disputes and International Conflict(Ann Arbor, MI: U. of Michigan Press 1996) pp.27–9.

56. For a full account of the life and conquests of Muhammad Ali, see Khaled MahmoudFahmy, All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt(Cambridge: CUP 1997).

57. P.J. Vatikiotis The History of Egypt, 3rd ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1986)pp.402–3.

58. Ian Lustick, ‘Stability in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism versus Control’,World Politics 31/1 (April 1979) pp.332–3.

59. Seale, Assad of Syria (note 39).60. Elie Podeh. The Decline of Arab Unity: The Rise and Fall of the United Arab Republic

(Brighton: Sussex Academic Press 1999). 61. Mark Heller, ‘Iraq’s Army: Military Weakness, Political Unity’, in Amatzia Baram and

Barry Rubin (eds.) Iraq’s Road to War (NY: St Martin’s Press 1993) p.46.62. Ephraim Karsh, ‘Lessons of the Iraq–Iraq War’, Orbis 33/2 (Spring 1989) p.215.63. Ibid. p.216.64. Ibid.65. Gary Sick, ‘Trial by Error: Reflections on the Iran-Iraq War’, Middle East Journal 43/2

(Spring 1989) p.238.66. Edgar O’Ballance, The Six Day War (London: Faber 1972) pp.227–8. It is important to

note that despite the Syrian’s regime deployment of most troops in the interior to protectthe regime and the absence of effective offensive plans or capabilities, Syrian troopsnevertheless put up a tough resistance to the Israeli attack.

67. Norvell De Atkine, ‘Why Arabs Lose Wars’, Middle East Quarterly 6/1 (Dec. 1999)p.24.

68. Ibid. p.25.69. Ibid.70. Stephen Biddle and Robert Zirkle, ‘Technology, Civil-Military Relations, and Warfare in

the Developing World’, Journal of Strategic Studies 19/2 (June 1996), pp.172–5.71. Ibid. pp.190–1.72. Ibid. pp.178–83. For citations on Frazer and Belkin, see above (note 5).73. Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: U. of California Press 1985)

p.446.74. Stephen Peter Rosen, ‘Military Effectiveness: Why Society Matters’, International

Security 19/4 (Spring 1995) pp.5–6.75. Ibid. pp.21–6. 76. For the evolution of Saudi Arabian government through the twentieth century, see Nadav

Safran, Saudi Arabia: The Ceaseless Quest for Security. (Cambridge, MA: BelknapPress of Harvard UP 1985).

77. The latter point is Laurie A. Brand’s central thesis in Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations: ThePolitical Economy of Alliance Making (NY: Columbia UP 1994) pp.81–3.

78. This point complements Benny Miller’s model that systemic factors are responsible formovement from cold war to cold peace but are unable to influence either the change fromcold war to hot war and cold to warm peace. Only US hegemony, a systemic factor, canensure the protection of these regimes from outside forces. Domestic security is ensuredonly by domestic factors, as the Shah’s downfall suggests.

79. Iliya Harik, ‘The Origins of the Arab State System’, in Ghassan Salame (ed.) TheFoundations Of The Arab State (London: Croom Helm 1987), p.19. On the importanceof monarchies in state building see Lisa Anderson, ‘Absolutism and the Resilience ofMonarchy in the Middle East’, Political Science Quarterly 106/1 (Spring 1991) pp.1–16.

80. Daphna Tsimhoni, ‘Israel and the Territories: The Disappearance of the ChristianCommunity’, Middle East Quarterly 8/1 (March 2001) p.32.

81. Ibid. p.36.82. Salim Tamari, ‘Building Other People’s Homes: The Palestinian Peasant’s Household

and Work in Israel’, Journal of Palestine Studies 11/1 (Autumn 1981) p.36.83. Ha’aretz, 26 Sept. 1996.


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84. Ha’aretz, 3 Oct. 2001.85. ‘Arafat’s Choice’, The Economist, 15 Dec. 2001, p.35.86. Jerusalem Post, 14 March 2002.87. Jerusalem Post, 15 March 2002.88. Beverly Milton Edwards, ‘Palestinian State-Building: Police and Citizens as Test for

Democracy’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 25/1 (May 1998) p.96.89. Luft, The Palestinian Security Services (note 1) p.4.90. Al-Ayyam, 28 Oct. 1998.91. Gal Luft, ‘The Palestinian Security Services: Between Police and Army, MERIA Journal

3/2 (June 1999) pp.1–2. 92. Gal Luft, ‘The Palestinian Security Forces: Capabilities and Effects on the Arab-Israeli

Balance’, ACPR Policy Paper (Shaarei Tikva, Israel: Ariel Center for Policy Research2001).

93. Ibid. p.26.94. Ibid. p.4.95. Luft, ‘The Palestinian Security Forces: Capabilities and Effects’ (note 92) p.14.96. Ibid.97. According to a senior official of the General Security Services as of mid-Dec. 2001, the

Tanzim and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade were responsible for 56 per cent of the attackson Israelis. The Hamas was responsible for 23 per cent, the PFLP for 14 per cent and theIslamic Jihad for seven. I assume that attacks carried out by security services personnelacting as individuals or unofficial groups were included under the Fatah category. SeeArieh O’Sullivan, ‘Shin Bet Sources: Arafat Unlikely to Crack Down On Terror’,Jerusalem Post, 19 Dec. 2002.

98. Luft, ‘The Palestinian Security Services’ (note 91) p.8.99. Khalil Shikaki, ‘The Peace Process, National Reconstruction and the Transfer to

Democracy in Palestine’, Journal of Palestine Studies 25/2 (Winter 1996) p.9.100. Danny Rubinstein, ‘Hafred Umshol Nosach Filastin’ [Divide and Rule – Palestinian-

Style], Ha’aretz, 30 Sept. 1995.101. Al-Ayyam, 24 Oct. 1998.102. Al-Ayyam, 26 Oct. 1998.103. Ibid.104. Al-Ayyam, 1 Nov. 1998.105. Ha’aretz, 1 March 1996.106. Brutal beatings of journalists and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council by

security forces were reported by both the Palestinian press and civil rights groups inAug. 1998. They were protesting the killing, presumably by Palestinian security forces,of a fundamentalist implicated in terrorist bombings. See condemnation by Council ofPalestinian Human Rights Organizations against the beatings and report in thePalestinian daily Al-Ayyam, 26 August 1998. For the most comprehensive account of theother abuses see synopsis of the Investigative Report of Palestinian National AuthorityActivities compiled by the Comptroller’s Committee of the (Palestinian) LegislativeAssembly in Al-Ayyam, 30 July 1997 and al-Bilad, 7 Aug. 1997. On extortion by securityforces see report on session of the Legislative Council in Al-Ayyam, 19 Oct. 1999.

107. Medahne Tedessi, The Eritrean-Ethiopian War: Retrospectives and Prospects in theMaking of Conflicts in the Horn of Africa 1991–1998 (Addis Ababa: Mega 1999) p.7.

108. Ibid. p.7.109. David Pool, Eritrea: Towards Unity in Diversity (London: Minority Right Group

International 1997) pp.8–9.110. Aneesa Kassam , ‘Eritrea: Towards Unity in Diversity’, Journal of Modern African

Studies 36/4 (Dec. 1998) p.708.111. Kjetil Tronvoll, ‘Borders of Violence – Boundaries of Identity: Demarcating the Eritrean

Nation-State’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 21/6 (Nov. 1999) p.1054.112. ‘U.S. Did Little to Deter Buildup as Ethiopia and Eritrea Prepared for War’, New York

Times, 22 May 2000. US military aid both for training and arms purchases amounted to$2,292,000 in FY1997 compared to a military budget estimated at $180 million. For


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further details, see <www.Ciponline.org/africa/countries/data/eritrea .html>.113. John Prendergast, ‘U.S. Leadership in Resolving African Conflict: The Case of

Ethiopia’, Special Report (Washington DC: US Institute for Peace, Sept. 2001) p.2(available on <www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr74.html>).

114. Ibid. p.7.115. Paulos Milkias, ‘Ethiopia and Eritrea at War’, Horn of Africa 17/1–4 (Dec. 1999) p.44.116. Prendergast (note 113) p.8.117. Ibid. p.1046.118. Ibid. p.1047.119. SIPRI Yearbook – 2001 (Oxford: OUP 2001) p.26120. Jaques Charmelot, ‘AFP Views Eritrean Military Strength’, FBIS-AFR-199-01215.121. The Times, 12 Jan. 1999.122. Charmelot (note 120).123. SIPRI Yearbook –2001 (note 119) p.29.124. Milkias (note 115) p.47.125. Ibid. p.52.


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Documents

Explaining third world security structures