Book Description

As providers of essential public or commercial services, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are important in modern economies. Since SOEs are ubiquitous in the global economy, they are likely to be present in conflict-prone societies. In such environments, the defining political and economic systems within which the SOEs exist are likely to embody the interests both of participants in the conflict and of those hoping for an end to the conflict. In stability operations, the imperative for SOEs is to become productive in a way that helps create stability. Achieving this result is apt to be difficult. SOEs are often tainted with the very elements that created the original conflict. They can be microcosms of the societal and economic problems that led to conflict, and the struggle for control over them among actual or former combatants can serve to sustain the original conflict. To avoid that outcome, campaign and development plans must address SOE issues decisively, comprehensively, and pragmatically. Although revitalizing SOEs can be complex and ambiguous, the task can be a useful, intermediate objective on the road to the end state of a sustainable economy. One multinational force commander with experience in Kosovo and Afghanistan described those particular conflict environments as "mosaic wars" offering many perspectives, which therefore made them difficult to visualize. In similar contexts, SOEs offer focal points for visualizing the intended end state of the operational environment, precisely because they often are a microcosm of a country's pre conflict power structure. Consequently, if handled correctly, SOEs can be stepping stones toward stability. Recent experience in stability operations demonstrates the value of gaining early control of and effectively restructuring SOEs. In one Liberian example, United Nations (UN) security forces took steps to enable the state-owned electric power company and state-managed rubber plantations to serve as the basis for political stability. This action yielded three immediate benefits that enhanced stabilization: (1) economic production, (2) employment, and (3) symbolization of governmental control. In contrast, the hands-off approach of the occupying UN authority in Kosovo allowed ex combatants to assume control of the all-important electric power company, which resulted in a politicized workforce and continued instability. In Iraq, Coalition forces lost opportunities for stabilization when they initially failed to reactivate potentially viable state enterprises, which might have absorbed into the legitimate workforce the potential recruits for the insurgency. In Mozambique, UN authorities failed to integrate the SOEs in a comprehensive short- and long-term development plan, owing to the UN agencies' own competing visions. The experience of countries at peace confirms the potential for SOEs to contribute to mid- and long-term economic development even in conflictprone environments. In former centrally-managed economies, as well as in free market, efforts to make SOEs more productive have centered on privatization, the process of transferring ownership to private interests. Generally, post-conflict privatization is the end state of a lengthy process, the preliminary phase of which involves repair and refurbishing of plant and equipment, restructuring of management, and revision of policies and procedures, all of which aim to make SOEs competitive in the market-place.