Policy discussions around counter-terrorism efforts now state a difficult lesson learned of international intervention so common that it has become a trope: tactical fixes don’t fix political problems. You cannot train   a   few   officials   to   be less   corrupt when they exist in a system which is little more than a patronage network serving a few elites. It is not   enough   to   train   a   few   soldiers to   protect   civilians   - leaving systematic racism, sexism and impunity untouched. Worse, you cannot    arm    an    ethnically    one-sided    army and then be surprised when they continue to commit atrocities. In the 20 years since 9/11, policies in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, and the Sahel have acknowledged the limits of tactical fixes, yet relied on them all the same. To examine how this has happened and what the impact has been, this article examines the way in which security sector reform (SSR) throughout this period has been implicitly based on two self- deceptions. The first self-deception is that training (in military or police tactics, human rights, or gender sensitivity) can achieve anything when better trained officials go back to unreformed      institutions . The second self- deception is that there   exists   a   monopoly   of   the use   of   force   in   countries   deeply   fragmented   by conflict and civil war. Despite mounting evidence that these assumptions were ill-founded, policies by the U.S., the U.K., France, and other countries continue to rely on them. This has had profound implications for the security sectors of these countries, as well as the safety of people and the long-term prospects of peace. Training away violence “In support of counterterrorism objectives, the international community is providing high volumes of security sector training and assistance to many conflict affected countries, but our programs are largely disconnected from a political strategy writ large, and do not address the civilian military aspects required for transitional public and citizen security.” -2018 U.S. Stabilization Assistance Review Such an admission regarding U.S. security sector assistance highlights the challenges and pitfalls of providing military training to weak and fragile countries in the absence of addressing structural issues. Security training was often framed as stop-gaps until “ domestic political will ” enabled change, but in reality had a profound political impact and often made the chances of peace significantly worse. Training was often provided to militaries with a record of abuses, but was accompanied by little effort to address these larger systematic issues. In the short term, military training further undermined human security when populations were trapped “between    increased violence   of   abusive   security   forces   and   the   terror of   non-state   armed   groups.”   In the longer term, building the capacity of predatory armed forces fed a self-perpetuating cycle of violence and conflict. Nigeria    scholar    Jean    Herskovits    noted that while “approximately 25 percent of Nigeria’s budget for 2012 [was] allocated for security…the military and police routinely respond to attacks with indiscriminate force and killing.” Interviews with U.K. soldiers delivering training in Somalia, Kenya, Mali, and Nigeria reveal major concerns around providing greater military capacities to those countries’ armies as doing so was a “huge   recruitment   tool” for violent non- state armed groups. For example, in a study on young Fulani people in the regions of Mopti (Mali), Sahel (Burkina Faso) and Tillabéri (Niger), International Alert found that “real or perceived state abuse is the number one factor behind young people’s decision to join violent extremist groups.” According to Herskovits, for many Nigerians from the northeast of the country “the army is more feared than Boko Haram.” In response, as one British    soldier    undertaking training   in   the   country aptly put it, international efforts were “treating the symptoms not the causes of the problem [when] the whole defence structure here needs institutional reform.” False monopolies Policies often mistakenly assume that recipient countries maintain a united security force, despite   being   deeply   fragmented   by   conflict   and civil      war . International interventions often operate under this assumption. In Mali, the EU trained   large   numbers   of   local   troops in basic soldiering without exerting much pressure on the government in Bamako to introduce structural reforms despite accusations of ethnic bias. In Nigeria, John Campbell - former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria from 2004 to 2007 - noted that training did little to grapple with the fact that “the military and police are made up of various ethnic, religious, and regional groups, few … native to the areas in which they serve.” U.K.    soldiers    in    Somalia    claimed    the Somalia National Army was “just another militia, albeit an apparently legitimate militia.” By 2014, many Iraqis   bemoaned   that the Iraqi Army would be “lucky if it can be considered the fourth strongest army in Iraq - behind, Kurdistan’s Peshmerga forces, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, largely Shia paramilitaries) and Iraqi tribal fighters.” Accelerating the growth of an unrepresentative force in the context of ongoing conflicts between different ethnicities is extremely detrimental to long-term security. In many cases, civilians paid the price as international firepower was manipulated to settle local disputes. For example, in Somalia, on 25th August 2017 near Bariire, there were claims   that the   U.S. had once again been drawn into local clan dynamics and had killed civilians based on the belief they were al-Shahab fighters. While the rivalries in the region had been going on for the last two decades, U.S. counter-terrorism operations had presented the clans with new opportunities to make gains against each other. In an investigation led by C hristina   Goldbaum   for Daily   Beast a number of interviewees claimed that the group the U.S. had worked with in the lead-up to the raid had links to one of the clans. In other cases, providing support to military units has risked long-term peace and security when military support to an unrepresentative force has undermined political efforts to build a united, legitimate force. For instance, in Libya in 2016, training to militias (such as those from Misrata) seemed to undermine the international community’s backing of the Government of National Accord (GNA). These militias were aligned with the GNA but, as leader of the Presidency Council (which headed the GNA) Fayez al-Sarra lamented in November 2016: “They do as they please...Whenever they want to go out and fight, they don’t ask us and we end up firefighting these battles.” By directly supporting these groups rather than going through the GNA, Western forces have shown “how little [the GNA] was actually able to deliver to the forces on the ground in terms of weapons, money or political support” and contributed to their declining legitimacy. This has been shown even more dramatically in the military coups by Western trained militaries. There have been at least eight    coups    led    by soldiers    who    trained    with    Americans    forces in Africa in recent years, the latest occurring    in Niger , where a military junta took power from President Mohamed Bazoum, who was democratically elected in 2021 in Niger’s first peaceful transfer of power. More of the same? Western strategy has long since acknowledged that every international intervention has a political effect and either consciously or inadvertently engage in political processes. In recognition of this reality, the U.S. (in the   Global Fragility   Act ), the UN (in the   New   Agenda   for Peace ), the U.K. (in Elite   Bargains   report ), and Germany (in the Shaping        Stabilisation whitepaper ) have noted the need to be explicitly involved in political processes in order “to shape the political environment, aimed at influencing key actors, curbing violence and promoting political and societal negotiation processes”. Yet, to look at counter-terrorism policy in places like Iraq, Somalia, Mali, Niger, the Philippines, or Nigeria one could be forgiven for thinking no lesson has been learned at all. As international attention focuses on the war in Ukraine, and politicians in the West increasingly proclaim that “we don’t do counter-terrorism anymore,” there is a danger that these global interventions creep on with no political will to end them or change them for the better. The enduring impact of failed policies based on lessons learned the hard way have become too clichéd to highlight. But this should be warning enough to implement strategies in security sector assistance, lest they be repeated again.