Description
The past decade has witnessed an intensified debate around the urgency to resort to stabilisation efforts in order to address the challenges posed by conflict and terrorism. Despite its conceptual ambiguity, stabilisation has gained ground as an international practice and its meanings have undergone a process of gradual adaptation. Initially interpreted as part of ad hoc military coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has since been integrated in UN peacekeeping missions in Congo, Mali and CAR. More recently, it has evolved as predominantly civilian-led efforts in diverse contexts such as post-Islamic State Iraq, the Lake Chad region, and Mozambique. Scholarly literature underscores that stabilization efforts in conflict-affected contexts deviate from previous peacebuilding or statebuilding approaches in several key aspects. Notably, they highlight how stabilization prioritises security over transformative objectives such as democratic change and envisions a diminshed role for traditional intervening actors. In an effort to broaden the discussion on the potential of stabilisation, this paper investigates how stabilisation efforts not only entail a change in objective, but also in the relationship and dynamics among actors at the international, regional, national, and local levels. How these actors are perceived locally then become key in order to assess the achievement of stabilization efforts. Through a case study of stabilisation efforts in Mosul following its liberation from the Islamic State, the paper presents the results of a local perceptions survey conducted in the city in November-December 2023. Based on the findings, the paper argues that local perceptions of stabilization are influenced by people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of the actors involved in stabilization.
