The I4S: assumptions, approach and revision

The I4S was developed during the positive ‘upswing’ of 2008-09 as a support strategy for the 2008 Goma accords, when a large number of armed groups laid down their arms and decided to reintegrate after years of war. The country was supposedly moving towards ‘normalcy’ and there was a strong sense of international urgency to roll out activities under an integrated framework to support this transition, bring the state back in, and, in the process, serve as an exit strategy for MONUC. The mission brought the full weight of its military and civilian sections behind the design and roll-out of what would become the I4S. In 2009, after the joint GoDRC-Rwanda operations against the FDLR, Kinshasa drafted its own stabilization strategy, the STAREC, for which the I4S formally became the support strategy.

The original I4S, which ran from 2008 to 2012, was based on the principles of counter-insurgency operations, of ‘clearing, holding and building’ to restore the state and build its capacities to manage conflict.[124] In North and South Kivu and Ituri, six strategic geographical axes were identified where there was the threat of a return to conflict. Along these axes, army-led, MONUC-supported military operations would ‘clear out’ the last remaining pockets of armed resistance. Roads would be rehabilitated and in strategic centres along these roads the administration, police and justice would be supported with buildings, training and equipment so the area could be demilitarised and state services restored. Along the axis, activities for socio-economic recovery, health, sanitation and education would be set up to provide a ‘peace dividend’ and economic alternatives to groups at risk of mobilisation. In the meantime, a DDR programme would set up camps across the east and support the reintegration of armed groups, and new efforts would be made for security sector reform and training of the army to take over from the peacekeeping mission where possible. Most of the programmes were managed by UN agencies with support from MONUC sections and a smaller number of NGOs.

What stands out, is that the I4S was exactly in line with what the government had been asking international partners to support, and what MONUC/MONUSCO and the Security Council had been emphasising as a viable solution for a post-conflict society: roll out the presence of the state and provide jobs for people who might otherwise join armed groups. It was never clear what the end goal of the I4S was, or what was actually meant by ‘stabilization’.[125] It was more about what would be done than why. The I4S was a classical example of a ‘top-down’ product as well: it had been developed rapidly in Kinshasa, between MONUC and the central government with little input from the provinces.

The results of the I4S between 2008 and 2012 were somewhat ambiguous. The technical progress of the strategy was undeniable: more than 60 projects worth some US$368m were implemented.[126] Tens of thousands of ex-combatants were demobilised, a network of infrastructure was built with hundreds of kilometres of roads rehabilitated, more than 90 buildings constructed and training provided for more than a thousand police officers, administrators and others. Socio-economic support was provided to close to half a million people. However, a (rough) situation and impact assessment of the I4S in 2011 brought home what many working with the strategy already knew at this point: despite all those projects, the actual impact of the strategy in terms of peace consolidation was quite limited.[127] The post-2009 cyclical downturn was in full swing, insecurity was rapidly worsening, and the government was disengaging from the east, all circumstances under which any international strategy could only have limited effect. Moreover, there were growing doubts that the sort of programmes which had been set up were actually doing much about the drivers of conflict in the eastern provinces.

This led to some serious soul searching among the I4S partners and, subsequently, a fundamental revision of the stabilization strategy between 2012 and 2015, through a series of inclusive workshops with government and international and civil society partners.[128] The revised I4S turned into a much more detailed and developed strategy than its original incarnation. The new strategy defined what was meant by ‘stabilization’, that is, a process of building the capacity of state and society to mitigate local drivers of conflict.[129] This made the I4S let go of top-down, state-centred interventions and gave it a more context-specific, damage control-focused approach. This was reflected in its thematic pillars as well, with security and state authority activity emphasising the building of relations between state actors and local communities, and socio-economic recovery work the need to specifically target conflict dynamics. Most importantly, the revised I4S would use community dialogue as a basis for activities. Theories of change and a new M&E framework that put the perceptions of communities at the centre further supported the new structure. Finally, a series of conflict assessments for the two Kivus and Orientale province were undertaken by NGO partners, which in turn led to provincially specific priority plans, drafted with the government. International donors re-engaged with the I4S as a strategy that had clearly learned from past shortcomings. At the time of writing, early 2015, the revised I4S is starting to be implemented.

The I4S experience between 2008 and the present day illustrates three points. First, that technical interventions for peace consolidation, popular as they are with the government and MONUSCO, do not ‘stabilize’ the east. Second, that the central government is not interested in political peacebuilding or social transformation. And third, that MONUSCO is not capable of engaging with stabilization and peace consolidation in a manner that is not in line with its limited strategy.

How technical interventions did not ‘stabilize’ the east

The experience of the I4S showed that, even while the Congolese government and MONUSCO have been promoting this as a solution, technical, ‘blueprint’ interventions to support military operations and demobilisation, the deployment of state officials and the creation of jobs have little impact on conflict transformation..

As the peace process fell apart after 2009, military operations seemed to only worsen the situation in the east. The serious human rights violations that resulted from them even led MONUSCO to put in place a conditionality principle so as to not be too closely associated with the FARDC. Training and equipment of the army had clearly not had much impact. The construction of army barracks became an issue as well; instead of the originally proposed construction of temporary camps close to the frontlines, the FARDC insisted on having large (relatively) luxurious barracks close to major towns. Once these were constructed, a struggle began between competing army factions over who would occupy them.[130] The demobilisation and reintegration programme simultaneously ran into trouble: the government kept the programme open-ended, which led to armed groups actually mobilising to take advantage of the reintegration packages it offered.[131]

Experiences with the roll-out of the state into the countryside through roads, buildings and training also had rather dubious results. If assessments had looked more closely at existing state-society interactions, it would have been more careful to put in place technical blueprints for the restoration of what was still a predatory state. Wherever roads were rehabilitated, barriers for illegal taxation mushroomed, usually manned by the army, the police and assorted state officials.[132] State officials were trained and deployed across the countryside but as they were rarely paid and not mentored, they subjected the population to new forms of abuse with impunity.[133] Newly installed courts were sidelined by traditional authorities, who saw them as a threat to their customary right to judge cases.[134] Many of the newly deployed police officers came from armed groups, and brought their own (often ethnically biased) agendas with them. There was simply no causal relationship between training and equipment and better behaviour, and little solidarity between the deployed state agents and the population. A fitting example is what happened in Luvungi in 2012, when the town’s contingent of specially selected, trained, armed and actually paid police officers ran away from a small group of mostly underage mayi-mayi Cheka.[135] There were many experiences like this, which debunked the idea that salary, training and equipment creates enough esprit de corps for officials to do their job. Paddon and Lacaille (2011) quote an official saying, ‘How can the UN have a mandate both to protect civilians and stabilize the state, when it is agents of that state that need stabilizing in order to bring about protection?’[136]

Experiences with rather generalised development activities claiming to promote socio-economic recovery and conflict prevention were not always positive either. Programmes for agriculture, health and education were put in place to support development ‘as such’, without defining how this would diminish conflict. They took place in different, usually safer, zones from where there were security and state authority interventions, and were aimed at ‘low-hanging fruit’ – activities that would have quick and visible small-scale impact.[137] As Bailey (2011) notes about one of the integrated UN programmes for socio-economic recovery: ‘An observer would not be able to distinguish it from any “normal” intervention to support reintegration and a transition to longer-term development (…) There is insufficient evidence to demonstrate the impact of assistance to basic services and livelihoods on security and conflict transformation.’[138] This is not to say that the resulting increase in crops, schools and water pumps didn’t help people, but it was not primarily aimed at conflict transformation and therefore not really ‘stabilization’ either.

The government’s disengagement with stabilization

Experiences with the stabilization strategy also show the government’s cyclical disengagement from the east, and its interest in expanding state structures and undertaking countrywide projects instead of engaging with the political drivers of instability.

The central government barely took an interest in its own stabilization programme, STAREC, nor in the I4S, which was supporting it, despite the frantic activities of international partners.[139] STAREC had been set up in 2009 to make the government look committed to the east, but it was never really a stabilization strategy, more a long list of humanitarian and development activities worth US$700m, for which Kinshasa had barely budgeted.[140] STAREC’s proposed activities were focused on expanding the state through infrastructure and equipment, and undertaking classic development work for the entire eastern DRC as well as the western province of Equateur. Kinshasa was wary of what it saw as the I4S’s ‘discriminatory’ approach, with its focus on only a few axes, moving resources down to local level and becoming increasingly vocal on the political preconditions for stabilization to succeed. This made the I4S increasingly popular with provincial governments: they saw funds coming in and were put in the driving seat for coordination, but that led to disengagement from Kinshasa. However, the strategy was no threat, and as it mobilised resources Kinshasa let it be, though it certainly did little to support it. While high-level coordination meetings ground to a halt,[141]the I4S was helping the government do what it wanted to do, in terms of expanding the visibility and control of the state over sources of patronage. However, that was not a process which Kinshasa saw as requiring further financial resources from their side, particularly not at a time when the main security challenges to the state had temporarily been taken care of.

The gap between the expectations of national and international partners around stabilization in the east is likely to widen in the coming years. A presidential decree of May 2014 made STAREC a nationwide programme, and added even more development infrastructure and humanitarian activities to it.[142] On top of that, an ‘integrated programme’ has been proposed, which is supposed to act as an umbrella for all inter­national humanitarian, stabilization and development activities across the country. As usual, neither of these programmes includes a conflict assessment, theories of change or proposals for many activities beyond technical development. The revised I4S is digging more and more downwards, into local conflict systems and proposing context-specific solutions, when, at the same time, the government is changing the few programmes it has for the eastern provinces into national programmes with broad outcomes.

Beyond MONUSCO’s comfort zone

Finally, the I4S brought home the limitations of MONUC/MONUSCO’s support for stabilization in the east. As we have seen, the pressured peacekeeping mission mainly works on short-term, technical activities to ‘restore state authority’. The I4S has always been a rather uncomfortable framework for the mission.

The I4S was meant to be a mid- to long-term undertaking for the UN, but when in­security worsened after 2009, MONUC let go of ‘holding’ the stabilization priority axis and went back into a more standard peacekeeping mode, deploying forces in reaction to the activities of armed groups. The military and civilian wings of the stabilization strategy grew apart: few MONUSCO-staff nowadays would be aware that support for military operations, disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) and security sector reform (SSR) were once an integral part of the I4S.[143] The mission more or less lost interest in the strategy after 2009, with constant pressure from New York to focus on military operations, elections and other ‘politically relevant’ issues rather than stabilization. The strategy practically ceased to exist in reports to the Security Council, except under the ‘state authority’ banner, when it built a road or trained police – and even then, the I4S was rarely mentioned as the organising framework.[144] This is perhaps not surprising. Even when the I4S was undertaking the sort of activities MONUSCO promoted between 2008 and 2012, such as technical interventions for state roll-out, buildings, roads and training, the strategy became increasingly vocal about the fact that security and state authority interventions were not working in the absence of Kinshasa’s willingness to budget for their operationalisation, and discipline their troops, police officers and officials. Yet these were issues that MONUSCO was fundamentally incapable of addressing. After 2009, the mission retreated into its shell in many ways, battered into a corner by the government, and fell back on short-term technical interventions and ‘quick, visible results’ while the I4S raised questions about the very essence of what MONUC/MONUSCO had been supporting in the Congo up until that point. In this scenario, even the I4S strategy’s US$368m worth of visible results was not enough to emphasise its importance.

The peacekeeping mission’s declining interest in the I4S impacted directly on the strategy’s success and also had an important spillover effect, as several UN agencies started to (informally) de-couple their programmes from it. To some of the agencies, the I4S had always felt restrictive, specific as it was as to where and how things should be done, and as its donors mainly cared about visible results as well, it became easier to go back to ‘development business as usual’.[145] The I4S gradually became one of the many development frameworks in the country rather than a special undertaking for the east. In this environment, the small MONUSCO coordination unit for the strategy, the Stabilization Support Unit, struggled to keep the partners together.

A critical piece of evidence of how stuck MONUSCO was to its limited strategy of rolling out the state came in 2013/14, when the revised I4S strategy was forced to compete with a new concept of the peacekeeping mission, the ‘Islands of Stability’. The exact meaning of ‘Islands of Stability’ seems to have shifted over time: from an end state (when a territory is liberated from an armed group, it becomes an Island of Stability), to a methodology, deploying staff to the field for short-term support of the deployment of police, administration and justice.[146] Quick-impact projects were used for the rehabilitation of buildings and for putting people to work through manual labour projects. The ‘Islands’ were presented as a first step towards stabilization, but it is difficult to see their direct links with the revised I4S. Island works are set up where military operations push out armed groups, so are based on political necessity and focus on towns or population centres, whereas the I4S zone selection is based on an analysis of local conflict drivers and targets wider zones.[147] Moreover, the Islands approach carries out the sort of activities which the I4S has shown have limited impact, and in some cases may even do harm: e.g., rolling out the state without support for state-society relations and dialogue with the government to monitor and follow up.[148] It is unclear how Island activities are meant to have an impact, when the I4S, working on a much larger scale, failed to do so. Worryingly, judging from formal reports and other communications, the Islands of Stability seem to have replaced the I4S as the mission’s main stabilization effort.[149] This is quite remarkable: MONUSCO’s own Stabilization Support Unit revised the I4S on the basis of a Security Council request, the new strategy provides novel ideas about the peacekeeping operation, provincial governments support the strategy and donors are willing to fund it, yet still the mission backs away from it in favour of more of the same things it has always done.

The Islands are, however, a much more comfortable concept to the mission than the I4S is. They play to the mission’s traditional capacities, fit into the work plans of its sections, are straightforward, provide quick little results that look good in reports, and do not ask difficult questions about impact, theories of change or political preconditions for success. With the pressure the mission is under from New York and the knife-edge it has to walk across in Kinshasa, it is perhaps not surprising that MONUSCO has focused on rapid and visible activities, even if their impact is doubtful. The ‘stabilization’ label has, once more, come to mean everything and nothing.