Modern conflict of the intra-state variety in the setting of fragile states has characteristics that have serious implications for aid implementation. These characteristics render the type of monitoring typically used for aid interventions in more stable developmental contexts either inadequate or unfeasible.[4] Without pretence at comprehensiveness, four such characteristics seem particularly salient in the context of this report:

Characteristic 1: Contemporary intra-state conflicts feature informal political systems of rule with significant levels of exclusion and corruption.

Practically, this means that the political economy of conflict environments has rather different operating rules from those used by organisations that provide aid in such settings. This leads to clashes of expectation, administration and impact. There are two ways in which this gap can be bridged, with most current aid practice being situated between the two:

To provide an example to illustrate how this can work in practice, consider the case of providing (humanitarian) aid to Syria. Any basic analysis would have clarified early on that providing humanitarian aid in Assad-held areas of Syria would be controlled and partially appropriated by the Syrian regime, given the latter’s socio-economic control, warfighting difficulties and systematic corruption. Instead of conducting such an analysis, scandal broke out in 2016 alleging that the United Nations had basically thrown President Assad’s regime a financial lifeline through its humanitarian operations.[5] Perhaps the UN had simply accepted the risk and considered the alleviation of humanitarian needs a higher priority than informally strengthening the regime, but the point is that the trade-off does not seem to have been recognised or made transparent. This risks institutional reputation, as well as popular and political support for, in this case, humanitarian aid.

In a similar vein, it was also clear that when the Syrian uprising turned violent, opposition-held areas could be overrun by either the regime or extremist groups and would feature increasing levels of corruption and diversion by either opposition, regime or extremist forces due to a growing war economy. On the one hand, this means this significant attrition and financial loss of aid programmes is unavoidable and must be recognised – even with the best monitoring and implementation mechanisms in place. On the other hand, it makes recurrent and high-quality political-economy analysis an essential approach to navigating or monitoring a dynamic and complex conflict environment, as it does for adaptive programming as a tool.

In short, mitigating aid implementation risks effectively starts by knowing the political order in which an activity is implemented.

Characteristic 2: Dispute resolution in contemporary intra-state conflict settings takes place via the rule by law or (under the threat of) the rule of the gun.[6]

The logic of survival and coercion that arises from conditions of conflict means that institutional and socio-cultural morality will gradually regress as conflict continues, with a reduction of integrity and ethics as a result. Practically, this means that disputes about project space, means, activities and implementation in conflict settings are unlikely to be resolved by the rational, rule-based logic of log frames, administrative regulations or legal provisions of aid activities. Instead, informal negotiations, mediation and probably even coercion or threats are more likely to take their place.

The recent exposure of the practices of the French-owned Lafarge cement factory in northern Syria provides a good example. The factory’s management was able to keep its premises and production prospects intact by facilitating, negotiating and bribing a wide range of armed groups – from the Free Syrian Army to the Islamic State.[7] The rational-technical language of Western aid project management is sometimes used to re-frame the results of such practical settlements in ways acceptable to the funder (in the more commercial Lafarge example, this would, for example, amount to additional ‘security’ and ‘consultancy’ expenses) – until it is exposed in public or in court as an unacceptable distortion of reality.

In short, mitigating aid implementation risks effectively requires knowing what rules or mechanisms will determine access, operational space and dispute settlement (e.g. in case of disagreement over funds, activities and/or purchases in situ). Only when these rules or mechanisms are known, can an aid activity be designed to include a menu of pre-authorised response options that can help it navigate the inherent ethical dilemmas swiftly and with some legitimacy. Alternatively, if such rules or dispute settlement mechanisms cross red lines for a donor – for example, it involves the need to deal with groups that have been explicitly formed as terrorist groups – it should probably choose not to fund a particular activity.

Characteristic 3: Contemporary intra-state conflicts are extremely fluid in terms of amities and enmities.

For various reasons beyond the scope of this report, both ‘status’ and ‘actor’ ambiguity are very high in intra-state conflicts. The consequence is that the environment in which aid activities are implemented is not only different in terms of its (in)formality, political order and rule structure, but also constantly changing in terms of its cast of actors. In terms of ‘status’, contemporary conflicts are often ‘internationalised’, that is, they are primarily domestic in nature, but domestic parties are in turn supported by external actors (Russia in Ukraine or Iran/Russia/Gulf states and the US in Syria), and yet this internationalisation is often denied or poorly grasped. Moreover, battle lines exist not only on the map but also between socio-ethnic groups and within armed groups as well as within communities. In terms of ‘actors’, the distinction between civil, military and commercial organisations tends to blur as conflict persists, as does the distinction between rebel and government forces. Hybrid actors become more prominent while rent-seeking actors inject themselves into the (war) economy. Allegiance becomes a political commodity in the service of shifting war-time objectives. A good example is the kaleidoscope of armed groups (pro and contra regime) in Syria and their shifting alliances.[8] But this phenomenon is by no means limited to Syria, as evidence from Afghanistan, the DRC, Mali, Somalia or Sudan shows. This means that aid organisations must deal with local conflict actors who will at some point have re-oriented themselves in terms of their allegiance, and as a result might be less (or more) positively inclined towards a particular intervention than they were before.

It can happen, for example, that an aid-supported civil society organisation suddenly finds itself in an area now controlled by violent extremist groups. It is subsequently likely that this armed group will enforce some form of (financial) contribution from that organisation. As one interviewee put it: ‘In Somalia you do not gain humanitarian access, you buy humanitarian access.’[9] Thus, the problem of fluid relationships (characteristic 3) compounds the problem of alternative dispute settlement mechanisms (characteristic 2) in relation to aid activity implementation. Put differently, a benign operating environment with a certain set of dispute resolution rules can change overnight into a more hostile operating environment with a different set of rules through a re-alignment or change of alliance of conflict stakeholders, especially armed groups.

In short, mitigating aid implementation risks effectively requires the permanent mapping of the main conflict-related actors relevant to the intervention. It is also necessary that an intervention have the ability to adapt to shifts in stakeholder alliances and enmities. It is here that adaptive programming comes into play once more as a key response to monitoring findings.[10] As both continuous monitoring through actor mapping and executing adaptive programming correctly are hard to accomplish, programmes tend to conduct standard, one-off conflict assessments and stick to the implementation of the resulting log frame instead. This, however, has the inevitable consequence that programmes become unmoored from at least part of the socio-political reality in which they operate.

Characteristic 4: Contemporary intra-state conflicts feature many possibilities for making the fog of war denser through misinformation.

In any conflict, donors face a ‘fog of war’, which leaves them operating with a high degree of uncertainty and possibly also a high level of misinformation. Apart from the fact that information relevant to the programme might be difficult to obtain due to political sensitivity, while life-threatening security conditions impede the collection of additional data, conflict parties also have an interest in framing conflict events to their advantage.[11] Modern communication platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, have greatly increased the possibilities for creating convincing alternative conflict narratives. Where such information is of an operational nature, this can have direct or indirect consequences for activity implementation. On the least harmful side, it can generate misinformation that confuses but is ultimately uncovered without adverse effects. But it can also lead to incorrect funding allocation decisions, tactical implementation errors, programme termination without good cause and incremental muddling through when activities should have been terminated.

In short, effectively mitigating aid implementation risks requires that activities feature a permanent and well-resourced protocol for the triangulation of (mis)information that lays out common information reliability problems, information asymmetry challenges, the kind of political pressure or decision-making difficulties that can occur as a result, and how these can be resolved.

Table 1 summarises these four characteristics of contemporary, intra-state conflicts and their implications for aid activities.

On a final note, while the needs of local populations in conflict-affected environments are much greater and more urgent, the nature of contemporary intra-state conflicts has profoundly limiting effects on the nature and extent of outcomes that can be expected from aid-funded activities in such settings, and how they should be designed and implemented.[12] Programming in conflict settings is not business as usual and requires additional steps, forethought and more human resources.

For the specific purpose of fiduciary and accountability monitoring, conflict settings present two types of challenges that need to be addressed: (1) increased fiduciary and accountability risks that need to be monitored, and (2) unique challenges for effective monitoring itself. The next section examines these points in more detail.