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105 Am. J. Int'l L. 244 (2011)
State Weakness, Irregular Warfare, and the Right to Self-Defense Post-9/11

handle is hein.journals/ajil105 and id is 248 raw text is: STATE WEAKNESS, IRREGULAR WARFARE, AND THE RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE POST-9/11 By Theresa Reinold* Sovereign states have a responsibility not only to protect their own citizens, but also to pro- tect-within their own territory-the rights and fundamental security interests of other states.' Many states around the world, however, lack the resources to do so. Unable to exercise effective territorial control, these weak states frequently become safe havens for terrorist net- works and other irregular groups. Yet the lack of such control is not the only reason for the existence of safe havens around the world; in some cases, the problem is not the host state's inability, but rather its unwillingness, to prevent irregular activity on its territory. The present article analyzes the challenges posed to thejusadbellum resulting from both types of safe-haven scenarios: states that are unable, and those that are unwilling, to exercise control. Safe havens have been defined as ungoverned, under-governed, or ill-governed areas of a country and non-physical areas where terrorists. . . are able to organize, plan, raise funds, com- municate, recruit, train, and operate in relative security because of inadequate governance capacity, political will, or both.2 Safe havens are not a novel phenomenon, and if it had not been for about three thousand American casualties from the attacks of September 11, 2001, the world would probably continue to view state weakness as a vexing, yet negligible, human- itarian problem, and not as a fundamental threat to international peace and security. After 9/11, the issue of weak, collapsed, or other states that fail to prevent the use of their soil for the perpetration of internationally wrongful acts took center stage in world politics. The inability or unwillingness of states to exercise effective territorial control raises thorny questions regard- ing their responsibility for the conduct of irregular forces that use their territory as a launching pad for attacks against other states. While the use of force against private actors has received considerable scrutiny in international (legal) scholarship,' the peculiarities of the weak/unwill- ing state scenario have not been adequately addressed in this literature and will therefore be explored in more detail in this article. * Theresa Reinold is a researcher in the Normative Order Cluster of Excellence at Goethe-Universitit, Frank- furt am Main. ' On sovereignty as responsibility, see FRANCIS M. DENG, SADIKIEL KlMARO, TERRENCE LYONS, DONALD ROTHCHILD, & I. WILLIAM ZARTMAN, SOVEREIGNTY AS RESPONSIBILITY: CONFLICT MANAGEMENT IN AFRICA (1996). 2 U.S. DEP'T OF STATE, COUNTRY REPORTS ON TERRORISM 2008 (Apr. 30,2009), at http://www.state.gov/ s/ct/rls/crt/2008/122438.htm. 3See, e.g., MAKING STATES WORK: STATE FAILURE AND THE CRISIS OF GOVERNANCE (Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff, & Ramesh Thakur eds., 2005); Gerald B. Helman & Steven R. Ratner, Saving FailedStates, 89 FOREIGN POL'Y 3 (1992/1993); ROBERT H. JACKSON, QUASI-STATES: SOVEREIGNTY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE THIRD WORLD (1990); GERARD KREIJEN, STATE FAILURE, SOVEREIGNTY AND EFFEC- TIVENESS: LEGAL LESSONS FROM THE DECOLONIZATION OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA (2004); DANIEL THURER, MATTHIAS HERDEGEN, & GERHARD HOHLOCH, DER WEGFALL EFFEKTIVER STAATSGEWALT: 244

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