‘Hunting ghosts of a difficult past’: the International Crisis Group and the production of ‘crisis knowledge’ in the Mano River Basin wars

This article explores the relationship between the International Crisis Group’s (icg) interpretation of the civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone and the main academic ‘greed and grievance’ debate at the time. It shows that the icg’s early policy recommendations were basically in line with the interpretation of these wars as caused by ‘opportunistic warlordism’. However, this supposed causal link is less evident in the analytical parts of its early reports, and in the policy recommendations of later reports. These contradictory findings point to both internal developments within the icg and to its ‘two faces’: it seeks to influence policy makers using detailed empirical analysis on the ground in countries in conflict or transition, but is also aware that policy makers do not generally read long reports, thus it produces executive summary and policy recommendations for this target audience. The article argues that policy recommendations cannot work without the analytical parts of the reports: the analysis sections’ main function is to add legitimacy to policy recommendations and the organisation overall, contributing to its image as a genuine ‘on-the-ground producer’ of crisis knowledge and fostering its expert authority.