by David Steven | Jun 23, 2008 | Global system, Middle East and North Africa, North America
Alhurra – the Arab language TV station and America’s most costly public diplomacy boondongle – has been regularly slagged off, but this superb report from Pro Publica patches all the criticism together into a damning indictment.
Here was the promise – in George Bush’s 2004 State of the Union:
As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny and despair and anger, it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friend. To cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda, the Voice of America and other broadcast services are expanding their programming in Arabic and Persian — and soon, a new television service will begin providing reliable news and information across the region.
And here’s the reality:
- Half a billion dollars spent for an audience share of around 2% (about the same as Hezbollah’s TV station – which is run on a shoestring).
- Can’t document its expenditure to the satisfaction of its auditors.
- Run by a President who doesn’t speak Arabic, who is “is unable to understand anything broadcast on the radio and television networks he is paid to manage,” and who sits through editorial meetings without being provided with translation.
- Based in Springfield, Virginia, where it employs “an untrained, largely foreign staff with little knowledge of the country whose values and policies they were hired to promote.” (Yes, the Simpsons is set in Springfield. No, it’s not the same one. Yes, it might as well be.)
- Regularly slags off the US and supports the policies of its enemies. Describes Israel as waging a holocaust against the Palestinians.
- Promised to fire a reporter who “told viewers that Jews had provided no scientific evidence of the Holocaust” but didn’t.
- Believed by the US’s (former) top public diplomacy official in the Middle East to be stocked “with radical Shi’a Islamists who favored their political brethren and discriminated against and intimidated members of other parties … especially during the Iraqi electoral season.”
- Found by the State Department’s Inspector General to have had a hiring process that “may have been marred by favoritism toward Lebanese candidates or candidates of Lebanese ancestry.” Put a Lebanese hairdresser on a $100k salary to do the news anchors’ hair.
- Paid guests $150-1500 dollars for a single appearance – even if they were from Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
- Doesn’t even cover the United States as well or in as much depth as Al Jazeera.
Read the whole thing and weep.
by Charlie Edwards | Jun 23, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa
You have to hand it to three US intelligence amigos: Donald Kerr , Tom Fingar and Mike McConnell. They don’t just subscribe to the concepts of need to share and the responsibility to provide intelligence. They are systematically trying to embed new processes across the intelligence architecture.
One of the key areas they are currently eyeing up is diversity – for pretty obvious reasons. The agencies need to better understand countries like Indonesia and China, find and develop new technologies and listen to and share from different experiences (think more outreach to think tanks and academic institute). In a speech to The 2nd Annual Intelligence Community/Heritage Community Summit Donald Kerr gives an example of diversity in action:
In this work there are countless stories about the importance of diversity. There’s one I recently learned from an FBI intelligence analyst who had worked on Saddam Hussein’s debriefing team in Iraq. While Saddam was being interviewed, a key component of the strategy was to keep him isolated from people outside of the FBI agencies who were questioning him, but he was fluent in several languages. Not deeply so, but sufficiently, and the interviewers needed to find guards who could speak a language that he wouldn’t understand.
It turned out to be really difficult. He knew bits of Spanish, but not the rapid fire Spanish of Puerto Rico. So Puerto Rican speakers would really flummox him, they certainly do me. And that’s what the FBI settled on for his guards. US military members who were native Puerto Ricans in terms of the Spanish that they spoke.
by Alex Evans | Jun 22, 2008 | Influence and networks, UK
An interesting signal in the ether today from Sky News’s political editor Adam Boulton, who has this to say:
It could be said that Tony Blair’s domestic achievements were overshadowed by international misadventures. It may be said that Gordon Brown’s premiership is working in reverse.
For all the travails at home, GB is beginning to cut a substantial (if unshowy) figure on the world stage. He may tour the world in aircraft more suited to rock-star has-beens than international statesman, but supported by a strong foreign affairs team, GB is developing a credible foreign policy.
Despite a wobbly start with the Americans, relations with the White House are back on track. The PM has taken an admirable lead on Zimbabwe and was the lead voice at last weeks EU crisis summit in Brussels. The sceptics are having a field day with the PM’s Jeddah proposals, but he’s taken a risk by being the only head of government to travel here and the ideas put forward are interesting, if untested.
Blair (and Thatcher for that matter) retained a unstinting belief in the UK’s place in the world. I’d argue that Brown is more realistic and, possibly, constructive.
Boulton’s line is worth noting, given that it’s at odds with the prevailing view among the commentariat (c.f. Jonathan Freedland’s verdict earlier this week – “A year in, it’s clear: we got Brown wrong. He is simply not up to the job”).
Still more interesting is the fact that it’s foreign policy that Boulton sees as Brown’s strong suit. In the early days of Brown’s tenure as PM, the general assumption was that Brown was far less interested in matters international than his predecessor (international development being the one exception); for many, his early unwillingness to go to Brussels seemed to confirm the fact.
But Boulton may well be right that things are changing. Brown did indeed show deftness with Bush and Brussels alike last week (notwithstanding an unlucky hat-trick of comms mess-ups: see here, here and here). The PIPA global polling data on trust in world leaders puts him in second place behind Ban Ki-moon. And on top of that, there’s been a definite pick-up of momentum within Whitehall on the PM’s foreign policy agenda, especially on reforming international institutions and on food, energy and climate change. A lot of serious thinking is underway – both on the content of the agenda, and ways to deliver it – and departments seem to be pulling together more than usual.
As David and I noted last year (and I recalled in a post earlier this week), leaders can become statesmen quickly during a period of flux in international affairs like the current global interregnum. It may be too soon to talk about tides turning just yet – but Brown is asking the right questions on the most fundamental global issues, and putting real resources behind the process.
by Daniel Korski | Jun 22, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
The Pro-European Serb President, Boris Tadic announced yesterday that talks to form a governing coalition with the Socialist Party would begin.
Several weeks after its election, Serbia’s still has no government. The parliamentary elections in early May saw moderate pro-European parties win a razor-thin majority in Serbia’s parliament. But for weeks it looked as if the current Prime Minister, Vojislav Kostunica, would cobble together an anti-EU, nationalist coalition with the Radical party.
With yesterday’s announcement, it looks as if a coalition by President Tadic’s party (DS) and the late Slobodan Milosevic’s party, the Socialists (SP), will be formed in a matter of days. Recent weeks have witnessed behind-the-scenes horse-trading about government jobs with the Socialists and other minority parties. The Socialists have been demanding control of key ministries like the Ministry of Interior, which is one of the most powerful portfolios in the Serbian government.
In turn, prime ministerial candidates all come from the President’s party with Mirko Cvetkovi?, the current Finance Minister, high on the list. All eyes will also be on United Serbia (JS) leader Dragan Markovi? Palma, the mayor of Jagodina, who famously wanted to invite Mozart and Bethoven to perform in his city. A Richard Armitage-look-a-like, Dragan Palma is expected to become a government minister.
What happens in Serbia matters. The Balkans are still fragile and Belgrade can play an important role both for good and for bad. A new government is likely to continue a hard-line stance on Kosovo, but will improve Serbia’s relationship with the EU. The Stabilistation and Association Agreement – the first real step towards EU integration – is likely to be ratified by the new parliament and after a two year hiatus the legislature may actually begin passing much-needed laws.
But how long the stability will last nobody knows. The government’s majority will be wafer-thin and on many issues the two coalition partners – DS and the Socialists –sport not only different policies, but different worldviews. Will they have the appetite to arrest Ratko Mladic – one of the world’s leading war criminals – tackle the country’s deep-seated corruption, and counter the isolationist, anti-Western sentiment most Serbs – even young people – now hold?
Kosovo will not go away either and the EU will continue to press for its rule-of-law mission, EULEX, to be allowed into the Serb-dominated northern part of the newly-independent country. Most Serbs know in their hearts of hearts that Kosovo is and will remain independent. But they still hope the northern part, where most Serbs live, can join Serbia. Either way, it is taboo in Serbian politics to admit that Kosovo is no longer part of Serbia proper whatever the Belgrade government says or does.
Pro-European government made up of the President’s party and the Socialists is an good thing. But many challenges still remain for a country that could be the region’s linchpin.
by Alex Evans | Jun 22, 2008 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
From Reuters via John Robb:
U.S. motorists are risking rampant drug violence in Mexico to drive over the border and fill their tanks with cheap Mexican fuel, some even coming to blows over gas shortages and long queues.
The gap between Mexico’s subsidized gasoline and record U.S. prices has made it well worth making the trip, and U.S. drivers are even shrugging off the dangers of Mexico’s drug war which sees almost daily shootings in border towns.
Some say they can save up to $100 a month by filling up every two weeks in Mexico. The extra demand is causing shortages at hundreds of Mexico’s border gas stations, some of which are starting to ration fuel.
“It’s worth taking the risk even with the violence,” said a retired California engineer named Terry, who declined to give his surname, as he filled his red Ford pick-up truck in Tijuana, over the border from San Diego. “I know they could kill me or kidnap me, but the cost of filling my tank in the United States is just too much,” he said.
(See this post from 10 days ago for background and links on current violence in Mexico.)
