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Tracing Conflict Minerals – Blockchain Beyond Cryptocurrencies

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by Andrew Scanlon

Photo credit: Unsplash

The use of minerals to fund conflict presents one of the clearest cases of the vast complexities of globalisation. Materials extracted in one region will be sent to a second region to be used in production of goods which will then be sold in a third region. In some cases, this cycle fuels and prolongs conflicts near the origin points of the metal. Tracking these supply chains is crucial in cutting off the flow of funds which arms groups use for conflict. Blockchain technology is the most promising means of doing so. Blockchain is both inherently decentralised and integrated. No one person can control the entire chain of data, but all actors with permission can see the entire ledger. The peer-to-peer decentralized ledger within blockchain provides a credible and verifiable real-time tracing tool that provides clarity as to the origins of each product and trace inconsistencies to a specific point in the supply chain. 

Armed groups often attempt to control and profit from natural resources that fund and extended conflicts. Cases range the spectrum of minerals and regions including Myanmar, Afghanistan, Angola, and Peru. Amongst the various minerals that can fall into the classification of conflict minerals. One of the most famous examples are conflict diamonds. However, in recent years more attention has been paid to gold and the three Ts – tungsten, tin, and tantalum. These minerals have been the target of EU and US regulation. In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act required restrictions on these materials as a result of their use in funding conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On January 1, 2021 new EU import rules regarding minerals took effect. The regulations impose some new due diligence measures on importers and require them to determine if their import volumes exceed mandated thresholds, conduct audits of their supply chains and third-party contractors, and assess risk management strategies. This is a positive initiative and a step in the right direction, but it will ultimately fall short of what is needed to stem the flow of conflict minerals and the income they create if they do not incorporate emerging technologies.

The mineral industry can be incredibly important to local economies. Although armed groups may control a mine whose proceeds contributes to conflict, it must be noted that not all mining in the area is used to fund all conflicts. Previous efforts at regulating conflict minerals have imposed restrictions on locals who rely on the industry for a living while not sufficiently solving the problem of minerals funding conflict groups. These efforts relied on more traditional means of supply chain management and oversight that can be prone to mistakes, fraud, and bribery. Many of these issues are the result insufficient resources and the fragmented nature of supply chains. Blockchain offers a compelling new method to trace and verify goods and transactions along a supply chain. The use of distributed ledgers offers a number of advantages over traditional methods. Its core features increase transparency and reliability while reducing costs and corruption. A central component of blockchain is its immutability; once data is entered into the ledger it is not capable of being erased or overridden without a consensus approval from other nodes in the chain.

And blockchain has been noted to cut down on transaction costs along various points in the supply chain. If integrated properly it can help digitise and automate border entries. Recently, Brexit and the entry of British goods into French ports has provided a real-world lesson in the importance of efficient border crossings. Mexico, Peru, and Costa Rica have been working with the Inter-American Development Bank to develop CADENA, which uses blockchain to modernize their customs operations and mutual recognition agreements. These cuts in transit costs offer miners, importers, and manufacturers incentive to integrate the technology into their supply chains. 

The technology has already been utilised in efforts to increase sustainable supply chains management and strengthen fair trade practices in commodities such as coffee. The idea to introduce blockchain into the sphere of conflict minerals is not completely novel, Usman W. Chohan wrote on its applicability to the case of the mineral cobalt. Its interoperability is an asset that allows for various jurisdictions to combat a globalized problem more efficiently. 

However, blockchain, as with any emerging technology, does present a few challenges. First and foremost, the governance of blockchain is still in need of work as it continues to grow and mature. The same interoperability which makes the technology an asset also presents the challenge of coordinating policies across jurisdictions and enforcement bodies. Procedures for issuing certificates, verification of authorised actors, and end-station protocols would have to be agreed upon before it could successfully be implemented. 

Additionally, blockchain’s success in tracing conflict goods is dependent on its implementation at the origin point of the supply chain. If a percentage of miners are not willing to implement the system and tag their minerals at the source, then that same percentage of minerals may not be accurately labelled as conflict-free. At a certain point the percentage would negate the usefulness of the remaining supply chain. Ensuring that all legitimate miners are included in the blockchain is essential to the success of the overall project. 

However, as long as armed groups seize control of natural resources and use the profits to fund conflict, we will need to scrutinise supply chains. Traditional methods have left gaps open, challenged locals who rely on the industry for their livelihood and allowed bad actors to continue profiting. There are issues to any disruptive technologies, but the benefits outweigh the challenges. Blockchain offers the most innovative and efficient way to manage supply chains, cut the flow of conflict minerals, and ultimately help slow the conflicts they perpetuate.

Andrew Scanlon is an MSc student in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh and an external representative for Strife. His research interests focus on the Indo-Pacific region and the use of emerging technologies in international regimes.

Sri Lankan War Crimes: Will victims ever receive justice?

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by Prachi Aryal

A tank rusting by a tree in the area around Elephant Pass. The area is strategically significant – it has a military base which controls access to the Jaffna peninsula – and has therefore been the site of several battles between Tamil rebels and the Sri Lankan Army in the Sri Lankan civil war. The area is currently under the control of the LTTE, which captured it from the Sri Lankan Army following a fierce battle in April 2000. Photo by Thomas Berg is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0

The United Nations Human Rights Council recently passed a resolution allowing the collection, consolidation, and preservation of information and evidence surrounding the gross violations of human rights that occurred in Sri Lanka during the Civil War. Sri Lanka’s Civil War was a protracted conflict that took place between 1983 and 2009 resulting in over 100,000 deaths and 60,000 enforced disappearances.

The Origin of Ethnic Violence

Having gained independence from British rule in 1948, Sri Lanka has since been in a constant struggle for peace, with its Sinhalese-Buddhist majority in near-perpetual tension with its minority populations, who have been systematically excluded through discriminatory practices. The government, in a series of attempts to disenfranchise minority populations, made Sinhala the official language and Buddhism the nation’s primary religion. The actions taken by the government reduced the scale of civic participation for minority groups that spoke other languages. The Tamil migrant plantation workers and Muslim minorities had reduced access to education and government jobs, relegating their position in society. The Sinhalese government, who were wary of British favouritism towards Tamils during colonial times, enacted these discriminatory procedures, ultimately sowing the seed for prolonged ethnic strife.

The growing feud, divided along ethnic lines, concurrently led to the formation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran. The organization, formed in 1976, began campaigning for a Tamil homeland in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka. Started initially to campaign for an independent Tamil homeland, the LTTE morphed into an armed group as members became increasingly convinced it was the only way to affect change. In 1983, the LTTE ambushed an army convoy thereby triggering to a fully-fledged armed conflict between the group and the government.

The LTTE employed tactics of suicide bombing and guerrilla warfare to coerce the government into negotiations. The conflict waxed and waned through fragile peace processes brokered by third-party mediators and finally came to an end in 2009 when the government employed a ferocious military offensive against the group.

The conflict witnessed a period of gross human rights violations from both the LTTE and the Sinhalese majority government. Lasting almost 30 years, it resulted in over 100,000 deaths of which almost 40,000 were civilians. The war also led to over 60,000 disappearances and internal displacement.

Aftermath of the conflict: scars of the past

Following the end of the conflict in 2009, the Sri Lankan government has faced increased scrutiny from the international community. Some attempts have been made to promote reconciliation in the country but without much effect. Tamil families are still searching for thousands of people who disappeared during the war.

The government has attempted to promote national cohesion and integration through the introduction of bilingual policies and civic education. The bilingual policy essentially establishes Tamil as a national language alongside Sinhala, with the aim of fostering communication and integration between ethnic groups. Similarly, through the introduction of civic education, the school curriculum is instrumentalised to promote cohesion amongst different ethnic groups. However, the policies seem to have had little effect on inter-communal relations and are concentrated only around the urban areas, rather than in rural spaces where the conflict was mostly conducted.

Similarly, the reparation program, limited only to education, seems to have done little to heal the scars of families who continue to search for their missing loved ones. A report by Amnesty International states that Sri Lanka has one of the world’s highest number of disappearances, with a backlog of investigations on over 60,000 enforced disappearances.

In 2015, The Sri Lankan government committed to establishing four mechanisms of transitional justice: a Commission for Truth, Justice, Reconciliation, and Non-Recurrence, the Office on Missing Persons, the Office for Reparations, and a Judicial Mechanism with a special counsel by co-sponsoring Resolution 30/1 at the UNHCR. However, despite multiple efforts, the commission is yet to achieve any substantive result. Furthermore, with the initiatives led by the same nationalist politicians and generals who were in office at the end of the war, the commission finds itself in a place with reduced freedom of operation.

Sri Lanka Today

The Human Rights Watch World Report 2021 has highlighted that the human rights situation in Sri Lanka has deteriorated under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s administration. Rajapaksa was the defence secretary during the civil war period, and with his election reconciliation looks like a far-flung goal. The government revoked its commitment to the UNHCR and is continuing to appoint individuals implicated in war crimes into the administration.

There is a rise in Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism fuelling sectarian divides and the country is witnessing new waves of violence. The systematic prejudices that resulted in the conflict remain unaddressed and a new fear of sectarian policies continues to trouble minorities. Various reports have highlighted the shrinking civil society space and the increased surveillance and intimidation of human rights activists, victims of past abuses, lawyers, and journalists. Furthermore, the government has taken several decisions, for instance, banning the Burqa and Niqab alongside targeted closures of Madrasas (Islamic educational institutions), stoking the fear of another ethnoreligious rift.

Hopes for accountability

The UN Resolution passed on the 23rd of March, offers some hope in the reconciliation process for victims. The resolution grants the UN human rights office (OHCHR) permission to gather evidence for future prosecutions and make recommendations to the international community. It thereby significantly ramps up international scrutiny and gives hope to the victims waiting for justice. The resolution, if upheld, may herald the beginning of an end to the culture of impunity in Sri Lanka.

The resolution comes at a time when the Sri Lankan government is, yet again, being criticised for marginalising various minority communities and targeting civil society actors. It is hoped that the report will pave the way for a process of accountability and reconciliation amongst the people in Sri Lanka.

Prachi Aryal is an MA student in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. Her research interest is inclined towards Gender, Human Rights, and Cross border conflicts in transitioning nations and how visuals from conflict zones play a role in communicating the realities of conflict to the broader world.

She completed her BA in Journalism from the University of Delhi, India.

The role of women in ISIS: From Wives and Mothers to Soldiers

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by Christina Chatzitheodorou

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

In much of the academic discourse on terrorism, the role of women tends to be overlooked. However, women have held a variety of roles in terrorist organisations. Such roles vary from logistics support to espionage, giving birth to a new generation of fighters, and sometimes operational and leadership positions. Ideology tends to have an effect on the roles women can hold in each organisation. For instance, in leftist organisations, women tend to hold more operational positions than in Islamist organisations, where their participation tends to be more about being a wife, a mother, a proselytiser, and a teacher. In the case of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), the role of women changed from being wives and mothers of the fighters to more combatting roles out of operational necessity due to its territorial losses, or as Rita Katz mentions, “How Do We Know ISIS is Losing? Now it’s asking women to fight”. 

More precisely, up until 2019, when ISIS lost its last piece of territory, many women travelled to join ISIS despite its exceptional violence against women. Since its zenith in 2014, women have joined ISIS for the same reason that men decide to get involved: attraction of a new, noble cause to fight for and sentiment of inequality and marginalisation in their current societies. For the above reasons, some women travelled to Iraq and Syria to get involved romantically with ISIS members. Despite the reasons behind women’s decisions to join the terrorist organisation, their roles have been underexamined in the literature, especially the ones concerning the combat operations.

 Therefore, despite ISIS’ treatment of women, which has placed the organisation among the world’s worst perpetrators of gender-based violence, women support the organisation through various roles, from simply being wives and mothers of ISIS fighters or even by recruiting new members to participate in the jihad, in a struggle against non-believers and a moral betterment against one’s sinful proclivities. Consequently, even though the mistreatment of women in ISIS does not need further analysis, women were recruited both willingly and unwillingly, which shows women’s agency and the lack of it respectively and depending the case. Since 2015, 15 per cent of voluntary migrants to the Caliphate have been women, which makes it difficult to support a manichaeistic division, where women in ISIS are seen either as complete victims of sexual violence or women as independent agents that willingly travelled from the West to fight for the organisation. 

The most popular role of women in ISIS that was presented in the Western media revolves around the notion of the jihadist bride. Both women who travelled to Iraq and Syria and locals were expected to marry an ISIS fighter and give birth. The issue was first mentioned when the religious police female al-Khansa Brigade published a manifesto setting out the ideal role of women in the caliphate. As such, in 2014, their role could be summarised in giving birth to as many children as possible, as the concept of family in building the caliphate was essential. Women were to stay hidden, and only remain in the background, as keepers of the Islamist family values and morals. ISIS opposes the notion of gender equality and female education, which leads to abandonment of family values. Contrary to the expendability of men, women need to stay alive and give birth to the next generation of jihadists. Accordingly, it was common for jihadist brides to celebrate their husbands’ martyrdom and, at the same time, re-marry as soon as possible. However, it must be mentioned that even though women in ISIS had to build and maintain the Ummah and theoretically were prohibited from combat roles, it was an oxymora that the al-Khansa Brigade, acting as a hisba, a morality police force, were patrolling the streets with rifles in their shoulders. 

Moreover, women also helped recruit new members. Especially if a woman was a widow or remained unmarried, it was more possible to assign her such roles. Additionally, ISIS’s strategy relied on Western female recruits in order to motivate more women from abroad to join the organisation. Those women were also responsible for helping newly possible female members with technical issues on what to bring with them and what not to, any vaccinations that may be needed, and navigating them through the whole process.

Even though ISIS at its zenith repeatedly refused engaging women in qital, which means fighting in the way of Allah and it is not such a broad term as jihad, it reconsidered its firm position as soon when it started losing most of its territory. Such shift became apparent in 2017, when women’s involvement in combat operations from tenuous became permissible under circumstances. The abandonment of that ideological approach towards the role of women came as a result of ISIS territorial and military losses, which made the use of women in combat roles necessary. For instance, the Zura Foundation, a female-focused media platform aligned with ISIS, influenced women’s opinion in a variety of issues from carrying guns to cooking for ISIS fighters. The platform pointed out that it is permissible for women to fight due to operational necessity, at least in a defensive context and if they were instructed to by their emir, in case there are not enough men to defend their land. Moreover, in October 2017, ISIS openly called on women to fight against unbelievers and engage themselves in qital.  ISIS did not frame the participation of women in such extended roles as a result of losses, but as a natural extension of woman’s duty to defend the caliphate by using examples of women that fought for the Prophet. Their participation in the fight was seen as necessary in order to fight against evil, and hence, it was legitimised through the defence of their collective honour.

Some women also became suicide bombers in the name of faith and religion. Such a development came as a result of the sustained attack against the organisation. Therefore, in comparison with Boko Haram in Nigeria, where female suicide bombers became a famous tactic already since 2014, the first incident of female suicide terrorism in the caliphate only took place in 2017. It was in Mosul, in the last ISIS-held territory, that the Iraqi television crews filmed a woman being exploded with her baby. Since then, dozens of female suicide bombers have tried to approach the Iraqi troops with explosives, which points out the change of attitude concerning women’s participation in combat. 

Hence, as Charlie Winter argues, despite the established convention that derives from a doctrine dating back to the early years of Islam, where women stayed in the private sphere and were not supposed to fight, there are specific circumstances in which this becomes permissible. Accordingly, ISIS tried to reconcile its radical Islamist ideology, where women are not supposed to bear guns, and the practical need of recruiting women for combat roles due to its territorial losses to the Iraqi and Syrian government. These losses shifted IS strategy from the offensive to defensive and as a response to this new reality its rhetoric on women bearing arms also changed. 

In sum, women’s participation in combat has been justified based on operational needs, where the need for survival led to an ideological rationalisation that justifies the participation of women in combat roles due to the existential threat against the caliphate. The bifurcation of gender roles where women are seen as wives and mothers and men as the provider and the protector, or what Guidere calls the “theology of sexuality,” remained as long as it was beneficial to the organisation. However, the ideological change that appeared may end up more decisive for losing the support of its population base than the military and territorial losses in the area since 2017, as the gender division based on traditional roles was one of the elements that united the caliphate. Subsequently, other terrorist organisations may gain the support of a radicalised population by presenting themselves as the true believers in comparison with ISIS. 

Born and raised in Greece, Christina Chatzitheodorou studied International, European and Area Studies at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens. She has a keen interest in strategic studies, irregular warfare and conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.

She currently studies War Studies at King’s College London and she volunteers in the Churchill War Rooms. She speaks English, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish and she is currently learning German and Arabic.

Plan Colombia’s Security Legacy and the Need to Consolidate Gains

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By Matthew A. Hughes

picture-alliance/dpa/EFE/C. Escobar Mora

The Colombian government has been engaged in a low-intensity asymmetric war since the 1960s, mainly against two leftist insurgent/terrorist groups: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). Colombia ‘seemed on the brink of collapse’ in the 1990s when these groups controlled large swaths of rural territory, homicide rates reached regional highs, and the economy struggled. In 2000, the Colombian government (with considerable financial support from the United States) implemented a six-year strategy known as ‘Plan Colombia’ to (1) reduce illicit drug production (mainly cocaine) by 50 per cent in six years and (2) improve security conditions by reclaiming control of territories occupied by illegal armed groups. Plan Colombia rendered considerable improvements to Colombian security, but U.S. policy is misaligned to sustain these successes because it is overly focused on counternarcotics. Instead, a more comprehensive policy with greater emphasis on security can (1) consolidate security gains from Plan Colombia to ensure the 2016 Peace Accord endures and (2) weaken the ELN to its breaking point and participation in a formal peace agreement.

After failing to achieve benchmarks by the time horizon, the U.S. and Colombia extended Plan Colombia and adjusted strategies to reduce coca production, reclaim territories controlled by insurgent groups, and strengthen institutions. By 2016, the U.S. had contributed $10 billion to Plan Colombia and its associated programs. Despite climbing eradication statistics, Colombia’s coca cultivation did not subside. Security efforts, however, weakened insurgent groups to the point of negotiations. The Colombian government successfully reached a peace agreement with the FARC in the 2016 Peace Accord, wherein FARC leaders committed to laying down weapons. The government failed to reach a peace agreement with the ELN.

A resurgence of terrorism and violence threatens the longevity of Plan Colombia’s security successes. Plan Colombia improved security, as annual kidnappings decreased from 2,882 in 2002 to 687 in 2006, and then to 207 in 2016. Similarly, homicide rates decreased, dropping from 23,523 in 2003 to 12,402 in 2016. Immediately following the 2016 Peace Accord, these figures continued to decrease, as did the frequency and severity of terrorist incidents, which dropped from 224 in 2016 to 123 the following year. Meanwhile, coca cultivation and cocaine production did not experience any lasting decline. This led the Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission to declare in its December 2020 Report that Plan Colombia was ‘a counterinsurgency success, [but] a counternarcotics failure.’ 

Citizens and authorities remain sceptical of long-term security improvements, however, given the lack of a peace agreement with the ELN and continued violence perpetrated by FARC dissidents and the ELN, which has fostered the resurgence of terrorism and homicides, threatening the longevity of Plan Colombia’s security successes. Since the 2016 Peace Accord, FARC dissidents and ELN members have moved into territories formerly controlled by the FARC to fill the power void, which has fostered violence.

Current U.S. policy has a singular counterdrug focus that repeats Plan Colombia’s failures, pulls resources away from security, and weakens public support. According to the Transnational Institute, Plan Colombia’s ineffectiveness in reducing coca cultivation was evident as early as 2003, when Colombian forces eradicated increasing crop areas compared to previous years, indicating that Colombians were using more and more land to cultivate coca despite the government’s 25 years of manual eradication and aerial spraying. The U.S. and Colombia strengthened their commitment to this faulty, high-cost/low-yield strategy throughout Plan Colombia and since 2016, pulling resources away from security efforts with no lasting benefit.

In 2017, as cocaine cultivation and production soared, President Trump threatened to decertify Colombia and cut funding if the country failed to correct course. Months later, the March 2018 U.S.-Colombia High Level Dialogue included the bilateral commitment to halve coca cultivation and cocaine production by the end of 2023, reminiscent of ineffective eradication strategies and benchmarks since 2000. A year later, coca eradication increased, but cocaine cultivation hit record highs. Despite the inefficacy of eradication efforts, the Colombian government has pulled an increasing number of armed forces away from security missions to conduct labour-intensive manual eradication of coca fields. This pressure has also driven the new Defence Minister to confirm Colombia will restart aerial fumigation with the dangerous chemical glyphosate in April 2021, after it was outlawed for use against coca cultivation in 2016 due to fierce opposition from Colombians and the international community for its health risks.

The U.S. should re-evaluate coca eradication benchmarks and conditionality for continued funding. U.S. policy has pressured Colombia to reassign military forces conducting security missions to manual eradication of coca crops, which ultimately threatens the longevity of Plan Colombia’s counterinsurgency successes due to resulting security gaps. The trajectory of current policies will carry Colombia to a more violent state that threatens the 2016 peace deal, continuing a trend of more terrorism incidents. The U.S. should encourage Colombia to redirect forces from eradication to providing security in areas reclaimed from the FARC.

The U.S. Department of Defence should also liaise with Colombia’s new Counter Drug Trafficking and Transnational Threats Command to facilitate information-sharing and foster planning nested with strategic objectives. The Colombian armed forces should delegate counternarcotics tasks to this new unit so that others can focus on security. The U.S. should also encourage this new unit to prioritise the destruction of cocaine labs and selective manual eradication of large-scale producers in areas where the government can retain control, rather than perpetuate a faulty widespread manual eradication strategy. U.S. intelligence support can cue manoeuvre assets for effective targeting that incorporates lessons learned from Plan Colombia’s counternarcotics strategy and grants this unit legitimacy through counternarcotics achievements.

FARC dissidents also threaten the longevity of Plan Colombia’s security successes associated with the 2016 Peace Accord. Around 13,000 FARC ex-combatants are still participating in the reintegration process outlined in that agreement, while dissidents and their recruits still fighting the state total around 2,200-2,600 across 23 groups. These dissidents have filtered into areas formerly controlled by the FARC and applied violence to reclaim territory and fill the power void, contributing to an increase of terrorism in Colombia from 152 incidents in 2018 to 403 in 2020.

The ELN is the other lingering variable threatening Plan Colombia’s security legacy. Initiatives in Plan Colombia and external factors weakened the ELN in the last two decades, but not to its breaking point. Aviation initiatives in Plan Colombia enhanced the Colombian Army’s ability to penetrate FARC and ELN strongholds in Colombia’s rural areas, but security initiatives fell short with regard to the porous border with Venezuela. Crossing points are key terrain for FARC dissidents and the ELN, providing passage to support zones where they can recruit and engage in illegal financing operations without the danger posed by Colombia’s armed forces or Venezuela’s military. The ELN contains around 3,000 members, but 1,400 operate in Venezuela among 36 ELN camps. ELN membership has only slightly decreased, as ELN recruiting has managed to generally make up for those captured or killed in military operations. Multiple sources have also reported that FARC dissidents and the ELN formed an alliance in 2018 which has reduced violence between the two groups and fostered cooperation.

Colombia should increase police presence along the Colombia-Venezuela Border to deny FARC dissidents and ELN members access to support zones in Venezuela. Unless there is a black swan event wherein a political or military leader supplants Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela will continue to be a safe harbour for FARC dissidents and ELN members. In addition to continued military operations targeting insurgent bases and support zones, Colombia must sever supply lines from Venezuela to sufficiently weaken the ELN and compel its members to participate in a lasting peace agreement.

Military operations under Plan Colombia and other factors contributed to a cohesion crisis currently affecting the ELN. An intercepted ELN communique published in February 2021 reveals that the ELN struggles with internal division due to geographic dispersion and ideological rifts between those favouring demobilisation and those continuing armed conflict. FARC disarmament is harming ELN morale and weakening the group’s solidarity. The ELN lost 700 members through Colombian military actions in 2020 and several members are abandoning the ELN due to this internal division, but the group is not sufficiently weakened to the point of an enduring peace agreement.

An information operations campaign can expose ELN ties to narcotrafficking to further divide and discredit the ELN. A central facet of ELN policy is opposition to drug trafficking and coca cultivation, which includes severe punishments for ELN members guilty of ties to illicit drug production or trafficking. The U.S. and Colombia can capitalise on this ideological commitment by exposing ELN factions and members guilty of violating this ELN policy. Doing so can further widen the group’s cohesion crisis and foster infighting or encourage more members to abandon the cause and lay down their arms.

Successful fulfilment of government and FARC commitments outlined in the 2016 Peace Accord can foster conditions for a successful peace agreement involving the ELN, but violence perpetrated by FARC dissidents threatens the agreement’s legacy of a safer state. This resurgence of terrorism necessitates a greater focus on security as opposed to counternarcotics. These policy reforms can help the U.S. and Colombia exploit the ELN’s current cohesion crisis and eventually reach a peace agreement that has the potential to endure.

 

Matthew A. Hughes is a graduate student attending Johns Hopkins University. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. Also, the appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the U.S. Army, the DoD, or the U.S. Government of the referenced sites or the information, products, or services contained therein.

On the Ceasefire Babies, the Inheritance of Trauma, and the Legacy of Lyra McKee

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by Natasia Kalajdziovski

Photo is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

‘Derry tonight. Absolute madness’. These were the last words tweeted out by Northern Irish journalist Lyra McKee on the evening of 18 April 2019, before she was shot in the head by the dissident republican group The New Irish Republican Army (New IRA). A promising young voice for her generation – one which has been dubbed the ‘Ceasefire Babies’ – McKee was murdered just a week after the twenty-first anniversary of the signing of The Good Friday Agreement (GFA)[1] which brought an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland.  Although the Troubles, as it is colloquially called, formally ended over two decades ago, its legacy continues to claim the lives of people in Northern Ireland.

The context which led to McKee’s death is not unfamiliar to those with knowledge of the Troubles. McKee had recently moved to Londonderry, or Derry,[2] from her hometown of Belfast to be with her partner, Sarah Canning. A night of rioting had engulfed the Creggan Estate and McKee – in her role as a journalist and extensive writer on life in Northern Ireland – went to observe. This was a kind of rioting that was far from unknown to Derry and its people. The city housed some of the first civil rights events during the Troubles, including the march on 5 October 1968 – frequently cited as the true starting point of the conflict – in which the province’s police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), baton-charged protesters in full view of television cameras broadcasting the event. It was also the site of the infamous Battle of the Bogside, a three-day riot in August 1969 between the RUC, the B-Specials, and civilians which led to the establishment of ‘Free Derry’, a self-declared Irish republican ‘no-go’ enclave of the city. Rioting spread to other parts of Northern Ireland and the fallout of the event, most notably, firmly entrenched Westminster into Northern Irish affairs through its deployment of the British Army on its own soil – one which would come to be the Army’s longest continuous deployment in its history.

The potential for violence in spring 2019 was not unexpected: it was April, a time in which the Easter Rising of 1916 was always marked, and the New IRA – alongside their political wing, Saoradh – had been more vocal on their social media channels leading up to the GFA’s anniversary on the 10th. In the week between the latter’s anniversary and McKee’s murder eight days later, local social media posts showed a convoy of police crossing the River Foyle in preparation for any potential clashes. The intervening days witnessed boys in hoodies, tracksuits, and scarves come together to hurl petrol bombs and other ‘missiles’ at the police, resulting in a van being set alight, followed by a car.

By this juncture, a riot such as this – of the police coming in; of local youth responding in kind – had become a kind of orchestrated dance, a playing of parts, so well-versed after more than fifty years of repetition on the same stage. For McKee, her experiences of the riot would have been similar to so many others who had come before her in Derry: the civil rights marchers; the Bogsiders; the civilians who were met with bullets on Bloody Sunday in 1972. McKee would meet the same fate as those who were killed on Bloody Sunday, this time silenced by the guns of dissident republicans intent upon continuing the armed struggle despite the protestations of an exhausted society who overwhelmingly want nothing to do with it.

For McKee and the Ceasefire Babies, it was not supposed to be like this – it was not supposed to be more repetitions of the past on a well-worn stage. McKee wrote extensively on the Ceasefire Babies, a generation to whom, being born in 1990, she belonged. They are, in her words, ‘those too young to remember the worst of the terror because we were either in nappies or just out of them when the [1994 ceasefire] was called’, although it is a name she has ‘always hated’, for it suggested that ‘growing up in the 90s in Belfast was a stroll’.

In a ground-breaking 2016 article entitled ‘Suicide of the Ceasefire Babies’, McKee found that in the 16 years which proceeded the end of the Troubles, more people had taken their own lives than died during them at the hands of paramilitary or state violence – a staggering reality. While suicide had most strikingly affected those who had lived through the worst period of Troubles-related violence, from 1970-1977, it had disproportionately affected the Ceasefire Babies, too. They were the ones who were supposed to reap the greatest benefits from a newly peaceful Northern Ireland – and yet, nearly one-fifth of suicides recorded since 1998 come from this generation who had no direct experience of the violence. In just over a six-week period in 2004, the Ardoyne area of Belfast alone saw 13 Ceasefire Babies, all young men, kill themselves – an incomprehensible level of loss for one community at an unfathomable generational cost.

Further, according to findings presented in McKee’s investigation, 39% of the Northern Irish population suffers from post-traumatic stress related to events experienced during the conflict. But it seems, too, that the inter-generational trauma of violence has seeped its way into the lives of McKee’s generation – either from a mental health perspective or, in McKee’s case, in the physical manifestation of that lingering connection to the past. Perhaps most unjustly, however, the Ceasefire Babies have little interest in the baggage of the past which they are invariably forced to carry. Writing in 2014 about the irrelevance to her generation about the old constitutional debate, McKee put plainly: ‘I don’t want a united Ireland or a stronger Union. I just want a better life’.

It is perhaps McKee’s general observations of the conflict and its ongoing memory that bear most repeating:

Many people have grown to dislike the use of the word ‘war’ to describe what happened here. The term ‘the conflict’ became a more acceptable alternative, even if it made a 30-year battle sound like a lover’s tiff. It’s got the ring of a euphemism, the kind one might use to refer to a shameful family secret […] I witnessed its last years, as armed campaigns died and gave way to an uneasy tension we natives of Northern Ireland have named ‘peace’, and I lived with its legacy, watching friends and family members cope with the trauma of what they could not forget.

Living with – and dying as a result of – the legacy of the Troubles has unfortunately come to define Lyra McKee’s life. And yet, its legacy is not just the burden to bear of the people of Northern Ireland; rather, it is arguably that of the British state, too.

At McKee’s funeral, British Prime Minister Theresa May and Northern Irish Secretary Karen Bradley – alongside Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Irish President Michael D. Higgins – were all in attendance as both a sign of solidarity and as a collective condemnation of the violence which had led to McKee’s death. After the funeral, Canning – McKee’s partner – revealed in an interview that when they had come to shake her hand during the service, she ‘took each of them to task for failing to take responsibility for Northern Ireland, thus creating a vacuum that Lyra’s killers had occupied’. Although in mourning, Canning was not acting in grief. Rather, she took her chance to speak a kind of truth to powers which had, alongside the actions of violent paramilitary groups operating during the conflict, left a legacy for which not all lingering questions felt addressed. The lack of answers, the lack of closure, the lack of truth and reconciliation, can only work to impede the civilian population’s ability to cope with, in McKee’s words, ‘the trauma of what they could not forget’.

The legacy of the Troubles, however, need not be one that is solely defined by its trauma, injustice, and violence. It is one defined by hope, too, and the potential for change – and the responses to McKee’s death are a testament to that hope. A few days after her death, on the famous ‘Free Derry’ corner that defines the Bogside area of the city, someone had spray-painted ‘Not in Our Name. RIP Lyra’, to reflect the revulsion felt about her murder. Further, dissident slogans spray-painted around the city were graffitied over, including one which removed the ‘un’ from the infamous republican phrase ‘unfinished revolution’. One Sinn Féin councillor in the city, Kevin Campbell, noted the kind of sea change that such action had marked by unknown activists, in which dissident republican messaging had been previously untouchable. In Campbell’s words, such action ‘shows they’re not afraid of them’.

Murals related to the conflict, of which Belfast and Derry are famous, are part of that collective memory of the conflict, used most frequently to honour and exonerate paramilitary men killed during the Troubles, and many remain untouched today. And yet, slowly things change, and new heroes are defined. Around the corner from where McKee grew up on the ‘Murder Mile’ in Belfast – a Catholic area once known as the stalking ground for the murderous loyalist paramilitary group, the Shankill Butchers – another mural has emerged in the time since her death. It is one of McKee laughing, posed beside the words she had written to her 14-year-old self, about what it was like to come out in a largely religious society. These words are not those of gun- and bomb-toting men intent on violent political change; rather, they are the words of a young and promising journalist who just wanted more for her generation, and for Northern Ireland:

‘It won’t always be like this. It’s going to get better’.

If you have been affected by any of the themes in this article and need to talk, you can reach Samaritans in the UK and the Republic of Ireland at 116 123, CALM in the UK at 0800 58 58 58, and Lifeline in Northern Ireland at 0808 808 8000.

[1] Formally, The Belfast Agreement (1998).

[2] For those familiar with the politics of Northern Ireland, the name of Londonderry/Derry remains contentious. To avoid delving deeply into this debate, and to avoid any potential accusations that the author has taken a political position on the city’s name, this article will ascribe to the BBC’s news style guide, which states that: ‘The city should be given the full name at first reference, but Derry can be used later’. As such, hereafter throughout the remainder of the article, the city shall be called ‘Derry’. For more, see: BBC. “BBC News Style Guide”. 14 August 2020. Accessed 27/10/2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/d

Natasia Kalajdziovski is a senior editor at Strife.

She is a PhD candidate at Middlesex University, where she was awarded a fully funded research studentship to complete her studies. She holds a first-class MA from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and an Honours BA from the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Broadly speaking, her research examines the role and conduct of intelligence practice in counterterrorism in the national security context, using historical case studies as the foundation of her research. Outside of academia, Natasia frequently contributes to publications in the counterterrorism field, and she consults with various organisations as a subject-matter expert in her areas of research expertise. She is also a junior research affiliate with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS) and an elected postgraduate member of the Royal Historical Society.