Transforming the Conflict Trap: From Theory to Practice
Nancy Kay Hayden, PhD
Sandia National Laboratories
36" International Conference of the System Dynamics Society
August 6-10, 2018
Extended Abstract
Even as the threat of international conflict between great powers re-emerges, violent civil
conflict remains one of the greatest threats to human security and global stability.
Persistent conflicts — those that have been active for twenty years or more with repeated
cycles of violence and recurring civil wars— are the dominant form of armed conflict in the
world today and resulted in 65 million forcibly displaced persons worldwide at the end of
2017. This record high is an increase of 20 percent from the previous year. In Africa
alone, more than 35 such conflicts continue to pose the utmost challenge for conflict
resolution despite investments of over a trillion dollars in peacebuilding and foreign aid by
the international community, and the engagement of over 100,000 uniformed personnel in
peace operations.
These conflicts raise difficult policy questions of when and how third-party interventions
achieve their objectives -- considering normative, material, economic, and political factors.
Creating the right balance and coordination among security assistance, military peace
operations, humanitarian relief aid, and long-term peacebuilding remains an elusive goal.
Are these intervention failures due to insufficient theorizing, to unsuitable policies and
practices, to the fundamental intractability of the conflicts, or some combination of all?
Academics, practitioners and policy makers increasingly recognize that lifting social and
political systems out of conflict traps requires a systems approach. Such an approach must
consider not only the nature and context of the conflict, but also the scope, timing, and
dynamic interactions among different modes and types of interventions.
This research combines comparative statistical analysis of dynamic reference behaviors of
35 persistent conflicts in Africa, with qualitative causal loop modeling based on field
research on the Somalia conflict to (1) examine the relationship between conflict
persistence and factors associated with conflict contexts, peacekeeping and aid
interventions, and (2) identify the underlying theory, principles and practices for those
conflict interventions most likely to result in conflict transformation that increases human
security, and those most likely to sustain conflict. Specific findings are that:
(1) Violence in persistent armed conflicts in Africa over the past 25 years display one of four
types of archetypal reference behaviors: Exponential Growth; Sustained Oscillations;
repeated episodes of Overshoot-and-Collapse; or Damped Impulse (an intense but limited
stimulus followed by gradual decline). The Somalia case study suggests that these
behaviors scale from local to state level. Once established, the behavioral dynamics
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology &
Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the
U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.
become self-reinforcing and dictate the likelihood of conflict persistence or
transformation through interventions. To interrupt these dynamics, one must understand
the systemic drivers of, and limits to, conflict growth and the combined, interactive effect
of interventions with these drivers and limits.
(2) Regression analysis of the reference behaviors shows that the prospect of conflict
transformation is strongly correlated with two endogenous factors, opportunity costs of
conflict and gender equality, in combination with processes by which external
interventions are implemented. Specifically, the likelihood of successful conflict
transformation is highest when accompanied by gender empowerment and implemented
through transparent, inclusive mechanisms at the local level that provide accountability,
that scale from local to national levels, and that ensure coordination between security and
humanitarian operations. Absent such process mechanisms, the resources provided
through interventions are more likely to prolong conflict and human suffering than
provide pathways for transformation.
(3) Causal Loop Modeling, based on narratives from field interviews and previous research,
shows that security and aid interventions interact at local levels to reinforce conflict
structures and capacities. In so doing, they are “fixes that fail”, as they become
endogenous to the conflict and contribute to the resilience of combatants. Conflict
transformation must account for, and interrupt, these dependencies. For example,
humanitarian aid delivery in conflict settings often requires security measures to protect
aid workers and prevent cooptation of aid by combatants. Unintended consequences are:
a. The local economy becomes dependent on the conflict-driven demand for security
measures. The creation of “security-entrepreneurs” among local populaces by the
aid community has been a repeated programming challenge for NGOs and
peacekeeping operations alike in East Africa.
b. Competing war lords are created to oversee aid distribution. Empowerment of
rival warlords in Somalia, Liberia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to help
with UN aid delivery significantly increased the intensity and duration of violence
in those conflicts.
c. Communities become isolated and vulnerable in humanitarian deserts in the wake
of limited peacemaking operations that may drive combatants out, but not away.
The combatants profit by imposing road taxes (“zaqat”) where they control access
of aid workers to the communities. This is a common practice by Al Shabaab in
Somalia and various combatants in Syria.
These findings show that expectations of interventions in persistent conflicts must be tempered
by realities of the conflict setting and appropriately resourced and managed (not too much nor
too little). Delivery of security and aid interventions must be coordinated and employ
mechanisms that are inclusive, transparent, and accountable at the local level. Moreover, conflict
transformation cannot occur without structural changes to break cycles of dependency on conflict
resources. In short, intervention failures have as much to do with the dynamics of how they are
implemented (e.g., verbs) as what they are (e.g., nouns).
Sandia National Laboratories is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology &
Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the
U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.
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