Fast And Frugal Conflict Early Warning In Sub-Saharan Africa (Original Research)

Now that AFRICOM has officially stood up, there is likely to be a much greater emphasis on understanding the culture, economics, politics and seemingly inevitable conflicts of sub-Saharan Africa. While a number of authoritative sources are busy cranking out some really good products on Africa, simple, effective conflict early warning systems seem to be in short supply.

With this as background, one of Mercyhurst's graduate students, Bradley Perry, recently took a stab at trying to come up with such a system in his thesis, "Fast and Frugal Conflict Early Warning in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Intelligence Analysis."

Bradley was in a unique position to write this thesis. In the first place, he came to us a bit later in life than most grad students, having spent a number of years in Ghana. In addition, while technically here, he completed his strategic intelligence project (on local reactions to a planned expansion of a national park) from a tent in Malawi. He was in Kenya about the same time as the recent upheavals there and is now working for iJet (where he was a member of the iJet team that recently took a share of the prize at the ODNI's Open Source Conference).

Riffing on Gerd Gigerenzer's research (outlined in his fascinating book, Gut Feelings) regarding "fast and frugal" evaluative systems, Bradley went looking for "good enough" indicators of potential conflict that he could chain together to form a predictive model. He found three promising indicators in the literature, political freedom, ethnic homogeneity, and income inequality, and proceeded to build exactly what he wanted to build -- a fast and frugal model for conflict prediction for Sub-Saharan Africa.

He tested the model on previous conflicts and got reasonably good results. The model tended to overpredict conflict in some cases but never failed to predict confict where one ultimately occurred. He was also able to rank order the potential conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa by likelihood. Using recent data and plugging it into his model, he believes that, from most likely to least likely, Swaziland, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Congo (Brazzaville), Congo (Kinshasa), Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Cameroon, Cote D'Ivoire, Eritrea, Chad, Guinea and Sudan will see violent conflict (See the map below from the thesis).


Beyond the model and the predictions it makes, the literature review on other early warning systems concerning Africa and on the validity of various indicators that predict conflict is definitely worth the read. It is an excellent work and, if interested, you can download the entire thesis here.

Related Posts:
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Security Sector Reform In Sub-Saharan Africa: An Estimate (Original Research)

When Tom Dempsey of the US Army's Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute ("the US military's premier center of excellence for mastering stability and peace operations...") agreed to sponsor a strategic intelligence project with my graduate students last winter, I have to admit I was nervous. I had worked with Tom before and I knew he was going to ask tough questions and demand good, well researched and thoroughly analyzed answers. That didn't bother me, though. That is just another day at the office. What bothered me was the topic.

Africa.

I knew Tom was interested in security sector reform in Africa and that is a tough nut to crack from here in Erie. It requires our very best student analysts to use their most sophisticated open source skills to acquire and then analyze relevant and reliable information from Africa. Its not impossible; just hard to do and in a ten-week course, there is not much room for failure.

Fortunately, the team that put together A Strategic Study Of Security Sector Reform In Sub-Saharan Africa was top quality and their wiki based product is available as of today for public viewing (Tom was even kind enough to link it to the PKSOI site). Specifically, the students were asked to provide answers to the following questions (part of their Terms of Reference):

• What international or regional authorities, bilateral partnerships, or non-governmental organizations currently are and are likely to remain major players in security sector reform, specifically with regard to the civil oversight, administration of justice, and law enforcement sectors, in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan?
• What are the strategies and resources that are being used and are likely to continue to be used to build capacity and sustainability in the civil oversight, administration of justice, and law enforcement sectors in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan? Why have these strategies been selected and, if appropriate, why are they likely to continue to be used? Can any of these strategies be used as benchmarks for effectiveness?
• What are the likely short (12 months), medium (2-3 years), and long term (3-5 years) impacts of civil oversight, administration of justice, and law enforcement reform policies currently in place in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan?

The students provided over 70 summary and supporting reports that provided estimative answers to each of these questions. All of the reports are loaded onto the wiki along with internal and external hyperlinks to sources used in the reports, pictures, maps and videos used to support the reports and an extensive resources page for anyone who gets bored and needs something else to read.

If you are not particularly interested in security sector reform in any of the four targeted countries (Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Southern Sudan or Sierra Leone) and you are already familiar with wiki-based analytic projects (like this one and this one and this one), you might still find the methods used in the study to be of some interest. The students used a multi-method approach (much like the study on the role of non-state actors in sub-Saharan Africa) that included comparative case study analysis, accelerated analysis, social network analysis and a matrix-style analysis. The multi-method approach allows analysts to essentially triangulate their estimates and can be very effective if, as here, done correctly.

Of particular interest from a methodological standpoint are the social network analyses and the multi-attribute matrix. The social network analysis examined the connections between each of the organizations within the country in order to determine a wide variety of qualities (such as "closeness" and "betweenness") attributable to each of the organizations examined. The chart below is one of the 3-D graphs of a social network of agencies in Sierra Leone built using the amazing UCINET software.


The multi-attribute matrix looked at each of the programs in all four countries against the stated goals of those programs with respect to security sector reform and made estimative evaluations about how successful each of the programs was likely to be in meeting those criteria. Some of the programs did not do very well because they were small, some did not do well because they were only partially designed to impact the security sector and some did not do well because the political environment was not conducive to the methods that the program was using. Whatever the reason, in the end, the students were able to give a rough estimate of what were likely to be the most and least effective programs attempting in whole or in part to reform the security sector in the four countries. Combined with the data from the other methods used in the analysis, they were able to come up with some pretty nuanced answers to the questions they had been asked and some interesting trends in general.

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Country Reports On Human Rights Practices (State Department)

The US State Department has just released its massive, 2 volume, 3000+ page report to Congress on human rights practices "of all nations that are members of the United Nations and a few that are not." You can get Volume 1 (covering Africa, East Asia, the Pacific, Europe and Eurasia) here and Volume 2 (which covers the rest of the world) here. Expect them to take some time to download...

The reports are exhaustive and based on 2006 data (apparently it took over a year to collate and confirm the reports based initially, at least, on US embassy reporting). The introduction to this comprehensive report is 11 pages long and pretty much defies summarization. That said, here are some of the highlights I have picked out (Boldface, italics and hyperlinks are mine):

• "These reports describe the performance of governments in putting into practice their international commitments on human rights. These fundamental rights, reflected in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, constitute what President Bush calls the 'non-negotiable demands of human dignity.'"
  

• "The United States takes its human rights commitments seriously. We recognize that we are writing this report at a time when our own record, and actions we have taken to respond to the terrorist attacks against us, have been questioned."
  

• "The reports review each country’s performance in 2006. Each report speaks for itself. Yet, broad patterns are discernible and are described below, supported by country-specific examples."
  

• "First, the advances made in human rights and democracy were hard won and challenging to sustain."
  

• "Despite President Musharraf’s stated commitment to democratic transition and ‘‘enlightened moderation,’’ Pakistan’s human rights record continued to be poor. Restrictions remained on freedom of movement, expression, association, and religion. Disappearances of provincial activists and political opponents continued, especially in provinces experiencing internal turmoil and insurgencies. The security forces continued to commit extrajudicial killings. Arbitrary arrest and torture remained common. Corruption was pervasive throughout the Government and police forces."
  

• "Though Egypt held a first-ever, multi-party presidential election in 2005, in 2006 public calls for greater democratization and accountability sometimes met with strong government reaction. The continued imprisonment of former presidential candidate Ayman Nour raised serious concerns about the path of political reform and democracy in the country. Continuing a trend begun in 2005, the Government arrested and detained hundreds of activists affiliated with the banned-but-tolerated Muslim Brotherhood, generally for periods lasting several weeks. Two senior judges were brought in for questioning in February for publicly calling for an independent judiciary. Egyptian police arrested and detained over 500 activists for participating in demonstrations in support of judicial independence. In addition, severe cases of torture by authorities were documented. The Government also arrested, detained, and abused several Internet bloggers."
  

• Note: Liberia, Indonesia, Morocco, the Democratic Republic Of Congo, Haiti, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Venezuela, Fiji and Thailand are also highlighted in this section.

• "A second sobering reality is that insecurity due to internal and/or cross-border conflict can threaten or thwart advancements in human rights and democratic government."
  

• "Despite the Iraqi Government’s continuing commitment to foster national reconciliation and reconstruction, keep to an electoral course, and establish the rule of law, both deepening sectarian violence and acts of terrorism seriously undercut human rights and democratic progress during 2006. Although the Iraqi constitution and law provide a strong framework for the protection of human rights, armed groups attacked human rights from two different directions: those proclaiming their hostility to the Government—Al- Qa’ida terrorists, irreconcilable remnants of the Ba’athist regime, and insurgents waging guerrilla warfare; and members of Shi’a militias and individual ministries’ security forces—nominally allied with the Government—who committed torture and other abuses."
  

• "Although Afghanistan made important human rights progress since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, its human rights record remained poor. This was mainly due to weak central institutions and a deadly insurgency: the Taliban, Al-Qa’ida, and other extremist groups stepped up attacks against government officials, security forces, NGOs and other aid personnel, and unarmed civilians; and the number of suicide bombings rose dramatically during the year, as did attacks on schools and teachers. There were continued reports of cases of arbitrary arrests and detention, extrajudicial killings, torture, and poor prison conditions. In December President Karzai launched a Transitional Justice Action Plan designed to address past violations of human rights and improve the institutional capacity of the justice system."
  

• Note: Lebanon and East Timor are also singled out in this section.

• "Third, despite gains for human rights and democratic principles in every region of the world, much of humanity still lives in fear yet dreams of freedom."
  

• "In 2006 North Korea remained one of the world’s most isolated and repressive regimes. The regime controls almost all aspects of citizens’ lives, denying freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association, and restricts freedom of movement and worker rights. The constitution provides for ‘‘freedom of religious belief,’’ but genuine religious freedom does not exist. An estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people, including political prisoners, were held in detention camps, and many prisoners died from torture, starvation, disease, and exposure."
  

• "The Iranian Government flagrantly violated freedom of speech and assembly, intensifying its crackdown against dissidents, journalists, and reformers—a crackdown characterized by arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, disappearances, the use of excessive force, and the widespread denial of fair public trials. The Government continued to detain and abuse Baha’is and other religious minorities and hosted a widely condemned conference denying the existence of the Holocaust. In the lead-up to the December 15 Assembly of Experts elections in Iran, more than two-thirds of those who had applied to run—including all female candidates—were disqualified, leaving many seats uncontested. Hundreds of candidates in nationwide municipal elections also were disqualified. The Government continued to flout domestic and international calls for responsible government in 2006 by supporting terrorist movements in Syria and Lebanon as well as calling for the destruction of a UN member state."
  

• Note: Burma, Zimbabwe, Cuba, China, Belarus and Eritrea are mentioned in this section as well.

• "The fourth sobering reality is that as the worldwide push for greater personal and political freedom grows stronger, it is being met with increasing resistance from those who feel threatened by political and societal change."
  

• "In Russia in 2006, a new NGO law entered into force in April imposing more stringent registration requirements for NGOs, strict monitoring of organizations, extensive and onerous reporting requirements on programming and activities, and empowering the Federal Registration Service to deny registration or to shut down an organization based on vague and subjective criteria. Freedom of expression and media independence declined due to government pressure and restrictions. In October unknown persons murdered human rights defender Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent journalist known for her critical writing on human rights abuses in Chechnya. The Government used its controlling ownership of all national television and radio stations, as well as of the majority of influential regional ones, to restrict access to information deemed sensitive."
  

• "The Syrian Government strictly controlled the dissemination of information and prohibited criticism of the Government and discussion of sectarian issues, including religious and minority rights. There were detentions and beatings for individual expressions of opinion that violated these restrictions, for example the February arrest of journalist Adel Mahfouz after he called for interfaith dialogue following the controversy surrounding the depiction of the Prophet Muhammed in cartoons. The Government relied on its press and publication laws, the penal code, and the Emergency Law to censor access to the Internet, and it restricted electronic media. Harassment of domestic human rights activists also occurred, including regular close surveillance and the imposition of travel bans when they sought to attend workshops and conferences outside the country."
  

• Note; Other countries mentioned in this section include Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Burundi, Rwanda, Venezuela, China and Vietnam.

• "Genocide was the most sobering reality of all. "

• "Almost 60 years after the adoption of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights—an expression of the outraged conscience of mankind to the enormity of the Holocaust and the cataclysm of the Second World War—genocide continued to ravage the Darfur region of Sudan."
  

• "Secretary Rice also issued ten guiding NGO principles regarding the treatment by governments of nongovernmental organizations. These core principles will guide U.S. treatment of NGOs, and we also will use them to assess the actions of other governments."
  

• "When democracies support the work of human rights advocates and civil society organizations, we are helping men and women in countries across the globe shape their own destinies in freedom. And by so doing, we are helping to build a safer, better world for all."
  

• "We must defend the defenders, for they are the agents of peaceful, democratic change.'
  

Report On Net Food Importing Countries That Is Far More Interesting Than It Sounds (World Bank)

The World Bank has just published a report titled, "Who Are The Net Food Importing Countries?" that is far more interesting than it sounds. This report (download full text here) has surprising implications for national security and intelligence analysis (particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa). The report is also packed full with data making it something you would probably want to file away for that day when someone asks you "What are the net non-oil imports into Burkina Faso?" Check out these highlights from the conclusion (Boldface and hyperlinks are mine):

• "This paper shows that while it is true that most low-income countries are net food importers, their imports are negligible, and they have a large trade surplus in other agricultural commodities which can be easily substituted for foods if relative prices change significantly."
  

• "Part of the reason for this small food trade deficit is the oil exporters and countries in conflict which have large raw food deficits. If these are excluded, then even low income countries have a surplus in food trade."
  

• "While a large number of low-income countries are net food importers, majority of them are net agricultural exporters, and their agricultural trade surplus is almost 5 percent of their imports. If the oil and conflict countries are excluded, the trade surplus increases to 6 percent of imports."
  

• "Being a net food importer and an agricultural exporter is especially pronounced in low income SSA."
  

• "There are only 3 vulnerable low-income countries, i.e., countries whose net narrow food trade deficit is more than 10 percent of their imports, excluding oil exporters and conflict countries. Of these 3, Benin and Guinea-Bissau export cotton and nuts, respectively, and Senegal exports peanut oil which is not included in our measures."
  

• "Low-income countries, excluding the ones in conflict and oil exporters, have moved from a deficit of 1 percent of their imports in 1980/81 for raw food trade, to a surplus of about 1 percent of the imports in 2004/05. SSA countries have not experienced the same transformation."
  

• "These results suggest that the almost automatic reaction, that food price increases are bad for low-income countries, needs to be qualified."
  

• "On the other hand, there are a group of countries that are experiencing civil conflicts and are large importers of food, and can not easily adjust their production and meet their basic needs. They also need special assistance in the distribution of food within their boundaries."