The 2011 World Development Report on conflict, security and development highlights the centrality of ‘external stresses’ for generating insecurity and increasing the risk of violence in fragile areas. West African states are particularly vulnerable, with serious concerns around cross-border violence and illicit drug-trafficking. Policy responses need to: tackle the region’s recent legacy of conflict and violent upheaval; address weak governance and entrenched corruption; improve regional cooperation; and support border and outlying communities that have been marginalised by insecurity, poverty and unemployment.UK Department for International Developmen

Collodi, J

English

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 External stresses in West 
 Africa: cross-border violence 
 and cocaine trafficking
The 2011 World Development Report 
(WDR) has been instrumental in 
highlighting how ‘external stresses’, 
including global and regional drivers of 
conflict and crime, can have an important 
effect on fragile areas. The West Africa 
region is particularly vulnerable to 
external stresses because a large 
number of countries have porous 
borders that are not clearly demarcated. 
These countries also lack accountable 
and transparent governance, and 
include sizeable populations that have 
been marginalised by poverty and 
unemployment – including social groups 
that often have stronger allegiances to 
cross-border ethnic and political groups 
than to the nation-state. To a large 
extent these factors are a consequence, 
and become drivers of, the political 
conflict and violent upheavals that have 
taken place in West Africa in recent 
years. 
This briefing analyses two examples of 
the impacts of external stresses on 
fragile areas: cross-border violence in 
the Mano River Union region (MRU), 
specifically along the Côte d’Ivoire–
Liberia border; and cocaine trafficking, 
a region-wide problem that has 
particular impacts on some countries, 
notably Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. 
Cross-border violence between 
Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire
The MRU region (Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, 
Guinea and Sierra Leone) has been in a 
near-perpetual state of insecurity and 
violent turmoil since the late 1980s, 
with the most recent conflict in Côte 
d’Ivoire only ending in 2011. Violence 
along the border between Liberia and 
Côte d’Ivoire is driven by exiled radical 
supporters of former Ivorian president, 
Laurent Gbagbo, who have reactivated 
contacts with Liberian warlords and 
established themselves in the border 
regions. These very active networks 
have been responsible for a sustained 
number of deadly border incidents – 
five in both 2012 and 2013 – with the 
most recent (as at time of writing) 
occurring on 23 February 2014. The 
most significant attack, in June 2012, 
resulted in the killing of seven Nigerian 
UN peacekeepers and 10–15 civilians in 
south-western Côte d’Ivoire. 
Illicit rents and cocaine trafficking 
in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau
Changing global dynamics of drug 
supply routes have also seen West Africa 
emerge as a key transit point for the 
trafficking of cocaine from Latin 
America to Europe. Guinea and Guinea-
Bissau are at the centre of regional 
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ISSUE 60 • MAY 2014
The 2011 World Development Report on conflict, security and development 
highlights the centrality of ‘external stresses’ for generating insecurity and 
increasing the risk of violence in fragile areas. West African states are particularly 
vulnerable, with serious concerns around cross-border violence and illicit drug-
trafficking. Policy responses need to: tackle the region’s recent legacy of conflict 
and violent upheaval; address weak governance and entrenched corruption; 
improve regional cooperation; and support border and outlying communities 
that have been marginalised by insecurity, poverty and unemployment.
“‘External 
stresses’, 
including global 
and regional 
drivers of 
conflict and 
crime, can have 
an important 
effect on 
fragile areas.”
operations, with political and military elites in 
both countries actively complicit in generating 
illicit rents from transnational cocaine 
trafficking, which also appears to help them 
maintain political power and patronage 
networks. According to UN figures, the volume 
of the cocaine trade has increased significantly 
since the mid-2000s, possibly reaching a high 
of 47 tons in 2007 and apparently continuing 
in sizeable form thereafter. The gross domestic 
product (GDP) and national budgets of the 
smaller countries in the region are dwarfed by 
the hundreds of millions of dollars that are 
estimated to be generated annually through 
West African participation in global 
drug-trafficking.  
It is in the face of such scenarios that the UN 
Secretary-General and Security Council have 
repeatedly warned that the hard-won end to 
the armed conflicts that ravaged Sierra Leone, 
Liberia, Guinea-Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire in 
the 1990s and 2000s is at risk of being 
reversed.
Impacts of external stresses on 
governance and development
The WDR 2011 asserts that external stresses 
aggravate and exacerbate internal stresses. 
Certainly, in the case of the Côte d’Ivoire-Liberia 
frontier, border violence has aggravated and 
highlighted weak civil–military relations, the 
unresolved legacy of the conflict and a lack of 
efficient and permanent coordination between 
the two countries.
However, beyond WDR 2011, it is important to 
recognise that external and internal stresses 
can actually constitute and reinforce each other 
– as evidenced by those West African states 
that are most affected by cocaine trafficking, 
which have seen their existing modes of 
governance influenced and transformed. The 
high value of the transnational cocaine trade 
has increased the risk of corruption in the 
public sector and changed the political economy 
of corruption itself in Guinea and Guinea-
Bissau. Key actors have emerged with the 
capacity and financial means to challenge and 
transform existing power relations, established 
elites and their patronage networks. This in 
turn becomes a socially accepted form of 
commerce by broader groups. Such 
‘normalised’ illegality breeds more illegality 
and, if not addressed, can become an established 
mode of wider socioeconomic behaviour and 
governance. In extreme cases, such as Guinea-
Bissau, this can result in coups d’état by factions 
of the military and political class who not only 
compete over drug-trafficking rents, but seek 
to capture the entire state for drug-trafficking 
interests.
Furthermore, external stresses can have 
stabilising effects on states and state systems, 
and offer new opportunities to those who are 
beyond the reach of official support or far 
removed from established centres of 
commerce. Sustained elite systems of loyalty 
and patronage can provide stability and 
mitigate potential violent upheaval or change, 
while weak border controls can facilitate an 
unchallenged flow of goods and opportunities 
for employment and trade. 
This is not to downplay the negative effects of 
external stresses. As well as enabling the flow 
of licit and illicit activity, weak border security 
is a potential blind spot for human rights abuse. 
In the MRU countries, for example, people in 
border areas that are void of state control also 
have little recourse to land tenure rights, with 
livelihoods and food security suffering as a 
result. So, while there can be short-term 
positive political gains, the long-term cost is 
likely to be the corrosion of democracy, which 
will only serve to further perpetuate insecurity 
and violence. 
IDS POLICY BRIEFING EXTERNAL STRESSES IN WEST AFRICA: CROSS-BORDER VIOLENCE AND COCAINE TRAFFICKING ISSUE 60 • MAY 2014 www.ids.ac.uk
“External and 
internal stresses 
can actually 
constitute and 
reinforce each 
other – as 
evidenced by 
those West 
African states 
that are most 
affected by 
cocaine 
trafficking.”
IDS POLICY BRIEFING EXTERNAL STRESSES IN WEST AFRICA: CROSS-BORDER VIOLENCE AND COCAINE TRAFFICKING ISSUE 60 • MAY 2014 www.ids.ac.uk
“A regional 
approach is 
critical to 
addressing 
insecurity in 
Liberia and 
Côte d’Ivoire.”
What have been the policy responses? 
Cross-border violence in Liberia and Côte 
d’Ivoire:
• Militarisation: The Liberian government 
launched Operation Restore Hope (ORH) in 
June 2012, in partnership with Ivorian forces, 
in immediate response to the killing of seven 
UN peacekeepers. Publicly, the United Nations 
Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) declared ORH a 
success; however, there are question marks 
over its efficacy, as local communities have 
been attacked in August 2012, and January 
and March 2013. The five-month lull in cross-
border incidents (from August 2012 to January 
2013) is just as likely to be attributed to reduced 
funds to finance Liberian military incursions as 
it is to ORH.
• Enhancing the capacity of justice and 
security services: The Liberian government 
has pledged regional hubs in each of the 
country’s five sub-divisions in order to 
decentralise and enhance access to justice 
and security services. The first hub, in 
Gbarnga, was opened in February 2013 but 
has faced severe logistical problems. Two 
further hubs – in Zwedru and Harper – are 
planned, and while they are better situated 
to reach out to marginalised communities, 
they will need to be more effective. This is 
particularly important in light of the ongoing 
drawdown of UNMIL forces, which are viewed 
as a critical security presence by local 
communities.
• Regional response to security and peace: 
A regional approach is critical to addressing 
insecurity in Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire – with 
the Economic Community of West African 
States (ECOWAS) a key forum – as neither 
state’s security problems can be resolved in 
isolation from the rest of the region. In early 
2012, the MRU set up Joint Border Security 
and Confidence Units in 12 locations throughout 
the sub-region. However, they have proved to 
be poorly coordinated and the MRU under-
resourced for the task.
Cocaine trafficking:
• Current global anti-drugs policy: Counter-
drug strategies in West Africa focus primarily 
on the interdiction and seizure of drug 
shipments, the dismantling of trafficking groups 
and networks, and the capture and prosecution 
of traffickers (as well as users). Addressing the 
complex governance and socioeconomic 
problems associated with drug-trafficking 
receives less attention and fewer funds. 
Subsequently, counter-drug measures in 
unstable and/or poor producer and transit 
countries have little to offer by way of improving 
people’s living conditions, and carry the risk 
of human rights violations.
• Regional responses: Although a number of 
mechanisms have been established by West 
African and Western governments to tackle 
cocaine trafficking, a lack of technical and 
financial support, as well as slow implementation 
by ECOWAS member states, means their 
impact has been minimal. In addition, initiatives 
to coordinate efforts between West Africa, 
Latin America, and Caribbean states have 
foundered due to marked differences in 
institutional capacity, and programmes not 
being linked to interventions addressing 
organised crime in Europe and between Europe 
and West Africa.
• Need to focus on global as well as national/
regional response: The WDR 2011 asserts the 
importance of building strong national and 
regional buffering institutions for countering 
the effects of external stresses. However, this 
approach is insufficient in the face of 
transnational drug-trafficking, which requires 
a global dimension to supplement regional and 
national policy responses. 
IDS POLICY BRIEFING ISSUE 60 • MAY 2014 www.ids.ac.uk
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Further reading
Allouche, J. (forthcoming) 
Cross Border Violence as an 
External Stress: Policy Response 
to Cross-border Dynamics in the 
Border between Côte d’Ivoire 
and Liberia, Brighton: IDS
Cliffe, S. and Roberts, N. (2011) 
World Development Report 
2011: Conflict, Security and 
Development, Washington DC: 
World Bank
Schultze-Kraft, M. 
(forthcoming) Getting Real 
about an Illicit ‘External Stressor’: 
Transnational Cocaine Trafficking 
through West Africa, Brighton: 
IDS
Schultze-Kraft, M. (2013) 
‘External Stresses’ and Violence 
Mitigation in Fragile Contexts: 
Setting the Stage for Policy 
Analysis, IDS Evidence Report 
36, Brighton: IDS
Credits
This IDS Policy Briefing was 
written by Jason Collodi and is 
based on the work of Dr Jeremy 
Allouche and Dr Markus 
Schultze-Kraft. It was produced 
as part of the IDS Addressing 
and Mitigating Violence 
Programme, which aims to 
provide policy analysis on 
‘newer’ forms of violence and 
organised crime as well as the 
changing dynamics of long-
standing situations of violence. 
The programme is funded by UK 
Aid from the UK Department 
for International Development.
The opinions expressed are 
those of the authors and do 
not necessarily reflect the 
views of IDS neither do they 
reflect the UK government’s 
official policies. 
Readers are encouraged to 
quote and reproduce material 
from the IDS Policy Briefing 
series. In return, IDS requests 
due acknowledgement and 
quotes referenced as above.
AG Level 2 Output ID: 62
© Institute of Development Studies, 2014 
ISSN 1479-974X
Policy recommendations
National policy responses should: 
 • Include concrete measures to address the root causes of insecurity, and specifically 
border insecurity, as well as the grievances of the population in these areas, around 
issues such as land tenure rights, access to natural resources, and unemployment. 
 • Implement strategic outreach programmes, in collaboration with civil society 
organisations, to improve the capacity of security forces to engage effectively with 
local populations, particularly in border/marginalised communities.
 • Engage with ex-combatants in a meaningful long-term manner to give them the capacity, 
opportunity, and desire to engage in positive ventures, particularly in terms of livelihoods.
 • Reduce the incentives for former commanders and corrupt political and military elites 
to engage in drug-trafficking and cross-border violence by offering sufficiently 
attractive alternative income opportunities as well as protection from persecution.
 • For cross-border violence: The governments of Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire should engage in 
stronger cooperation and coordination of response strategies. Joint border security meetings 
should be enhanced through consistent joint border security patrols and information sharing. 
 • For cocaine trafficking: There is a need to strengthen formal and social accountability 
mechanisms so as to increase the capacity of state entities, civil society organisations, 
and the media to probe and expose official involvement in drug-trafficking.
Regional policy responses
 • Member states of ECOWAS and other sub-regional groupings, such as the MRU, need 
to develop a regional strategy that provides a comprehensive framework for addressing 
common and cross-border challenges – including drug control agreements and institutions, 
and key regional governance, security, violence prevention and public health issues.
 • For cocaine trafficking: There should be stronger cooperation and exchange of 
information on drug-trafficking and organised criminality between West African 
regional entities and governments, and their Latin American and European 
counterparts, so as to increase capacities in the region to respond to both ‘push’ and 
‘pull’ factors along the transnational cocaine route.
International policy responses
 • Civil society organisations and regional networks can play a vital role by monitoring 
drivers of and trends in insecurity, acting as an advocacy platform for messages to policy 
actors at national, regional and international levels.
 • The UN should develop a method to evaluate the capacities of national security forces 
in post-conflict situations, including political tensions and movements of armed groups 
across the border, before the process of UN military drawdown begins.
 • Foreign donors should increase their financial and technical assistance to West African 
states but provide it in tandem with continuous high-level political and policy dialogue with 
regional organisations such as ECOWAS, and partner governments, so as to mitigate the 
risks of any unintended negative consequences of counter-drug and anti-crime assistance.
 • For cross-border violence: The UN should consider reviewing the process of UNMIL 
drawdown and put in place mechanisms to address Liberian security issues that emerge 
during the transition. 
 • For cocaine trafficking: There should be increased investment in public health-focused and 
human rights-based interventions to significantly reduce cocaine demand in Europe and 
other large consumer markets such as the USA, Brazil, South Africa and Russia.


External Stresses in West Africa: Cross-border Violence and Cocaine Trafficking

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External Stresses in West Africa: Cross-border Violence and Cocaine Trafficking

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