By Jason Thomas
While TE Lawrence, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia, engineered the military defeat of the Turkish in the Middle East during World War I, it was through a careful study of the human terrain and resisting the urge to impose Western constructs that enabled his extraordinary campaign to succeed.
Fearing his demise on the battlefield, Lawrence’s superiors asked him to put his strategy in writing following the battle at the Jordanian port of Aqaba. In August 1917, Lawrence published his now legendary 27 Articles in The Arab Bulletin. They could easily be a prescription for resource companies operating in hostile, culturally complex or high-risk environments. Lessons to reduce community conflict and violence as well as improving security and creating a more predictable operating environment can be found in Lawrence’s work. For brevity, I have condensed Lawrence’s Articles down to 10. They are merely a guide and respectfully are not meant to suggest practitioners do not already apply similar principles.
Feels like counter-insurgency
Resource and mining companies operate in complex human environments. The task of extracting globally-important minerals is made even more demanding when seeking to develop a Greenfield site located in a conflict-prone or fragile, tribally divisive landscape. Much like what Lawrence was confronted with as he set about building a coalition of normally warring tribes across the Arab desert.
Often, the ore body is situated in a remote part of the country where the host government has little influence and local politics is fiercely contested. At the same time the military and police may have a poor reputation among the population and stand accused of human rights abuses.
Armed anti-government forces could – and often do – operate in the hills, and the lack of government services and a poor history of engagement with foreigners often results in a community highly suspicious of outsiders. The promise of a future paved in billions of dollars of taxes and royalties means little to a villager who lives off the land. There will also be intense monitoring and instantaneous reporting from international non-government organisations (INGOs) and environmental groups, who conveniently forget that while they are anti-mining, nearly everything they use to run their anti-mining campaigns is derived from mining.
Author (rear – 4th from right) pictured with locals
Meanwhile, local contracting companies with deep political connections are rubbing their hands together for the big construction gigs in the oft-blissful ignorance of the Western rule of law and transparent bidding required by multi-national listed entities to advance their projects. The mining company’s base camps resemble Forward Operating Bases – with armed guards, watch towers and travel restriction zones for staff. It feels like a counter-insurgency operating environment. Mismanaging any of the issues just mentioned can result in security risks.
To deal with these social and cultural challenges, Western Governments, human rights organisations, the media and social development lawyers have devised Western constructs such as the Voluntary Principle on Security and Human Rights, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Equator Principles, Free and Prior Informed Consent, school building and health or hygiene clinic programs, detailed capacity building and social development activities. It looks like nation building. Resource companies are led to believe that as long as they keep implementing social development projects and corporate social responsibility packages, the locals will stop looting their camps, shooting at their workers and blockading the roads. In fact, there are often existing layers within a community that could provide the resource company with a more enduring level of security and stability.
This is where TE Lawrence’s 27 Articles could be a guiding set of principles for how resource and mining companies should engage in these challenging human environments to reduce security, community and political risks as well as improve their standing within the communities in which they operate. However, as Lawrence said, they are only his personal conclusions, arrived at gradually while he worked in the Hejaz and now put on paper as stalking horses for beginners in the Arab armies. Handling Hejaz Arabs or any other culture in isolated, conflict prone communities is an art, not a science.
The 10 Principles of Security & Community Engagement
This guide is meant to help harmonise security and community engagement for the future success of resource companies in winning and maintaining a social licence to operate.
1. Patience is a virtue
Go easy for the first few months, carefully working your way into the inner circle of a tribe or community leadership. A bad start is difficult to atone for, and the tribal people tend to form their judgments on external cues that we ignore or simply do not see. One, two or three power presentations, lunches, cups of tea, eager hand-shakes and smiles do not equal acceptance by the local leadership or its population. Behind the smiles, they will find you just as puzzling as you may find them.
2. Know Your Area (Areas, Structures, Capabilities, Organisations, People, Events)
Study and get to know the people, topography, economy, history, religion, culture and nodes of influence. Know every village, road, field, population group, local produce grown, traditional ceremonies, tribal leader and old grievances, and develop a mental model and map of your area. Understand the broader area of influence – this can be a wide area especially with social media and instant communication platforms. Local oppositions can draw on global support and global opponents can use local causes to promote their own standing with governments, media and well-connected donors. Get equally familiar with those who like you as well as those who do not want the project or worse – do not understand it or see benefit from it. You cannot avoid the local tough guys because it might offend the corporate lawyers. You need to work out not what will make them love you, but what will get them – at a minimum – to leave you alone; not do you, your people or your project harm.
3. Be There
Establishing a permanent physical presence is crucial. You cannot know your area, understand the opposition, and build cultural and situational awareness if you are not physically present. You cannot manage from afar. Resist calls from head office to close down the camp at the first sign of trouble or sounds of gun fire. In many places, these kinetic events have been part of the community well before your project arrived.
You cannot convince the local population, most of who will remain on the sidelines, that you are truly committed, if you abandon the area every time there is a threat – in many cultures this is a sign of weakness. This demands a residential approach – living in the area in close proximity to the community rather than short drop-in visits with large shiny fast-driving convoys of SUVs invading impoverished villages. Provide as many opportunities as possible for the local population to see you as real people who they can do business with and trust.
4. Build Trusted Networks
These networks comprise of community leaders, local security providers, NGOs, religious leaders, supporters who may have connections to opponents and others like cultural or trader groups. Actions that build trusted networks and popular, rusted-on support take precedence; first by persuading or proving to people that their best interests are served by the project’s success and second by convincing them that their cultural heritage, their natural environment and traditions will be protected and even enhanced. Calculated self-interest is what matters – not well-meaning ‘tick the box’ Western emotions with idyllic views of the world. It’s not about making local people love your presence, but you must win their respect and accept that your actions will benefit them. There is an ownership factor here. Don’t just talk to people who already support the project – community engagement involves activity that works outwards like the ripples of pebble thrown into a pond – gradually work your way out to areas where the local people are yet to be convinced or may even be hostile.
5. Avoid Over-reacting
Resist reacting to every single security or community incident. This may be local groups sorting out differences that have nothing to do with you or your project. Daily village life in isolated parts of the world may not have changed for hundreds of years, even if the firepower has. Opponents of the project may also be trying to provoke an overreaction by the project operators or local security and law enforcement authorities that then destroys community trust.
6. Strengthen local leadership
Win and keep the confidence of local leaders. Respect them. Strengthen their prestige at your expense in the presence of others when you can. Never refuse or quash schemes a local leader may put forward in public. Always welcome their suggestions in public, and in private work to modify them if you must, causing the suggestions or refinements to come from him or her, until these local leaders are in accord with a united commitment. Unfortunately, the reality is that local leadership may not be the kind of people you invite home to meet you mother. Yet, these are the local stakeholders who you must deal with in order to reach an understanding and bring on board the rest of the community.
7. Diagnose the challenges
Who makes up the opposition and what drives them? Research this well – refine it, and refine it again. How well connected are they to the local population? Some of the hardest leaders of the opposition may mirror members of your own field-team leaders. Much of their grievance is due to poor services, a history of being exploited, fear of outsiders and broken promises from politicians. See the project through their eyes. While some may welcome jobs, others may be nervous about the arrival or intrusion of outsiders and the related large-scale change in their neighbourhood.
Seek opportunities to engage, communicate and meet with opposition leaders or antagonists. Back channels are often an important peace-building mechanism in tribal societies, where the violent dispute can just as easily stop as it began. Understand the project and the population in relation to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. Avoid funding or supporting the first request that comes from the local people – often these will be superficial and will not generate rusted-on commitment to the project or your presence – most people will always accept free-stuff and rarely say no. Worse, in a hard society, something for nothing is often not respected.
8. Exploit a simple, single narrative – chicken economics
Consistently communicate at every opportunity a locally relevant simple and single narrative as to why you are there and the benefits of the project. This is why building a trusted network is so important. This will allow you to understand exactly what is important to the local people, what motivates them, what fears they have. Refrain from presentations that focus on the millions or billions in currency and royalty payments. Instead, talk about “chicken-economics” – how many chickens, local vegetables, potatoes and other supplies could and need to be purchased from local producers. Opponents to the project have a narrative built on their own interpretation of facts and events. Your narrative must undercut that of the opponents and not go over the head of often ill-informed, lazy or biased media opinion leaders and into the wider population.
9. Apply local solutions
Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the local people do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. These environments can be lethal for those who peruse the perfect at the expense of the good. The most beneficial actions or solutions will most likely be from local ideas and customary ways. It is their land, and you are there to help them, not to take over. The way forward must carry not only their support, but their ownership.
10. Local security knows best
Isolated communities or those with a long history of influence from anti-government forces and criminal bandits often have their own local ‘neighbourhood watch’ and security elements. Work by, with and through these groups; understand if they can be supported or indeed left alone. Facilitating or coordinating with the local instruments of peace and order is going to provide you with a more community-focused and workable security arrangement. While they may have never heard of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, they have a deep connection to their environment and their people, and they are committed to stability in their village or region.
Avoid playing ‘cops and robbers.’ You are not the local law enforcement authorities. Indeed, you are no more than visitors seeking acceptance. Let them handle crime and the pursuit of criminals. Offer support or training in medical and emergency trauma for the police or local security units – they will be grateful for this more than telling them how to run things.
This is not a cynical rebuttal of the rule of law or a disregard for human rights, and international principles. TE Lawrence had a deep respect for the cultural traditions of the tribes around him. He was a humanitarian as much as a warrior.
While some of these principles may seem incongruent with conventional security practices; as many of you will have experienced, get these things wrong and you will have serious security problems for your company’s staff and assets. As I said before this is by no means an arrogant suggestion that readers do not already apply similar rules. Essentially, these are principles derived from reaching back into history inside the mindset of one of the most heroic men of our time, aimed at suggesting a fresh operational security culture for the resource sector.
About the Author
Jason Thomas worked alongside US forces in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011. He has also worked in South Sudan, and the Civil War area in Sri Lanka. Jason is undertaking his PhD on counter terrorism and in his spare time he takes disadvantaged kids up the Kokoda Track battlefield in PNG.
