ABOUT THE NON-STATE SECURITY PROVIDERS PROJECT
This is the second of four papers produced as part of the CSG’s project on Non-State Security Providers and Political Formation in Conflict-Affected States. The project was made possible by generous financial support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The project considers new aspects of the relationship between security and development by examining how the presence of non-state security providers affects political development in conflict-affected societies.
The established “security-development nexus” maintains that security and development are mutually reinforcing, and conversely that insecurity and underdevelopment are mutually reinforcing. While these links are of obvious importance, more recent work suggests two other relationships of equal significance: between insecurity and development insofar as violent conflict may fuel political formation; and between underdevelopment and security insofar as supposedly “underdeveloped” and conflict-affected areas may feature unique and unconventional security structures. The project has explored these largely uncharted relationships by examining processes of political formation in societies that host a diverse array of non-state security providers and assessing the effects of the latter on processes of state formation, deliberate state-building interventions and the emergence of unconventional governance structures. Drawing on three case studies—Afghanistan, Somalia and South Sudan—the project’s main research questions are: how does the presence of diverse nonstate security providers affect the process of state formation and state building, and how should this shape donor state building approaches? The overarching goal of the project is to stimulate a discourse and make initial policy recommendations on how donors can better engage non-state security structures in the context of state building and security sector reform programs.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The arrow boys, a militia in South Sudan’s south-western region were established as a civilian protection mechanism. The arrow boys are active in an area that has in recent years seen a resurgence of support for reinstating a particular position of traditional leadership, the Zande King. The arrow boys and the Zande King could be regarded a nonstate answer to the official government. However, this paper argues that the dividing line in how citizens relate to the arrow boys and the Zande King does not correspond to the state and non-state dichotomy. Using empirical quantitative and qualitative data, the paper shows that support for an actor seems is divided along models of governance-- military and civilian— that actors represent. The paper concludes with implications of this finding for understanding state formation processes and security sector reform (SSR), suggesting that SSR requires a focus on the civilian modes of governance first.
INTRODUCTION
In a remote village near South Sudan’s border with the Central African Republic (CAR), a group of young men, interviewed in 2013, had a clear plan for their future. They were members of the “arrow boys,” a loosely organized local militia born out of the need to protect civilians from attacks by the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which was very in this area until 2010. The arrow boys had achieved fame by controlling LRA attacks on the community — by many accounts more successfully than South Sudan’s military force, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA); the African Union, primarily represented by Uganda’s army, the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF); the UN peacekeeping mission or, indeed, US military advisers who had been sent to the region in 2011 to assist in the military operations against the LRA. With the arrow boys patrolling through the bush that covers this border, LRA activity died down. Although some areas of the community were still paying a special tax to support the arrow boys, or providing food items for the patrols, it was not clear how long the current set-up was going to continue.
Given the uncertainty of their own situation, the assembled arrow boys made an intriguing suggestion: since there was also a movement in their part of Western Equatoria State (WES) to reinstall the Zande king — a traditional authority — could the two not work together?
The last of the Zande kings, King Gbudue, was killed in a British skirmish in 1905; his death concluded the attempts of the British colonial administrators to turn what were formerly known as the Zande kings into government chiefs that better fit the model of indirect rule they were pursuing. Asked about the future of the arrow boys, one young man from the group said: “In case [the] LRA is no longer there and there is no government support, we will keep the group. And if the king is crowned, we will turn into the militia of the king to protect the community.” Another further explained “the king used to have basingere [king’s guards]. The king is a big position and he can have guards and protect the people.
Because the arrow boys already have the experience of protecting the community.”