What lessons should be learnt from 15 years of counter-terror and stabilisation?
By aiding and abetting abuse, corruption and bad governance in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan, Western actors fell into the ‘stabilisation trap’: trading away a long-term focus on rights and governance for short-term stability – but ultimately guaranteeing abusive governance, chronic instability and deep public resentment. As these examples show, ‘terrorists’ may not be the worst threat to stability in conflict contexts, and lasting peace in contexts like Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan will prove elusive without facing up to the cynicism and abuse of supposed ‘partners’.
Phi Beta Iota: We lack intelligence with integrity across all of our institutions. This is not a hard problem to fix — but we have to want to fix it.
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