by Alex Evans | Aug 18, 2010 | Conflict and security, North America
Back when Barack Obama was running for President, he promised “a break with the past” on how America’s intelligence machinery was managed: no more renditions, no more torture, no more secret prisons.
Odd, then, as this excellent piece in the Washingtonian from back in March observes, that the President then confirmed Steve Kappes as Leon Panetta’s deputy at the CIA – in large part at the behest of Democrats on the Hill. Consider:
When Obama’s intelligence transition team had visited Langley, it had gotten a pitch from Kappes and other CIA officials to “retain the option of reestablishing secret prisons and using aggressive interrogation methods,” according to an anecdote buried in a Washington Post story.
“It was one of the most deeply disturbing experiences I have had,” David Boren, the moderate Oklahoma Democrat and former Senate Intelligence committee chair who led the transition team, told the Post.
Or:
…the case of Khaled El-Masri, a German car salesman abducted by the CIA. Masri was picked up while on vacation in Macedonia in December 2003, flown to Afghanistan, and thrown into a secret dungeon, where he was interrogated and tortured for five months. Eventually he was released with no charges against him, flown back to Albania, and dumped onto a highway. In 2007, the Supreme Court let stand an appeals-court ruling that rejected Masri’s suit against the CIA, saying it posed a “grave risk” of damage to national security by revealing “state secrets.”
“From the start, the rendition team suspected that his case was one of mistaken identity,” Jane Mayer wrote in the New Yorker last year. “But the CIA officer in charge at Langley—the agency asked that the officer’s name be withheld—insisted that Masri be further interrogated.”
Even after it was determined that Masri’s German passport wasn’t a forgery and that he wasn’t the man the CIA was looking for, the officer in charge refused to release him, Mayer and others say. Masri went on a hunger strike, losing 60 pounds, until finally “skeptics in the agency went directly over the officer’s head to [CIA director George] Tenet, who realized that his agency had been brutalizing an innocent man,” Mayer wrote.
Despite all this, the woman in charge of the operation has been promoted—twice—by Kappes, according to Mayer and sources who corroborated her story.
by Richard Gowan | Aug 17, 2010 | Africa, Conflict and security
At the weekend, I noted increased tensions in Darfur after violence in a huge IDP camp near the town of Nyala. Today, good news: the Sudanese government has allowed humanitarian workers into the camp for the first time in over a fortnight. Meanwhile, the UN peacekeeping force (UNAMID) is using old-school tactics to secure Nyala:
UNAMID said it had agreed with the government to dig a security trench 2 meters (yards) wide by 2 meters deep around Nyala, the town most frequently targeted by the kidnappers.
“The trench … will span approximately 40 km long and is expected to be completed within 4-5 weeks,” UNAMID said in a statement, adding it had begun work on its half on Sunday. Such trenches are intended to prevent vehicles from entering a populated area on the small dirt roads which kidnappers use.
The situation sounds more and more desperate. How long can it go on?
by Alex Evans | Aug 17, 2010 | Climate and resource scarcity
If you’re in DC on 2nd September, the environmental change and security program at the Woodrow Wilson Center is organising an event on resource scarcity and integrated analysis with me and the National Intelligence Council’s Mat Burrows as speakers and New Security Beat‘s Geoff Dabelko, who’ll be guesting on GD this autumn, as chair – invitation below. The event will also be webcast live at www.wilsoncenter.org at 12pm EST / 5pm UK time (you’ll need Windows Media Player to watch).
Integrated Analysis for Development & Security: Scarcity and Climate, Population, and Natural Resources
Alex Evans, Head of Program, Climate Change, Resource Scarcity and Multilateralism, Center on International Cooperation, New York University and Writer and Editor, Global Dashboard
Mathew J. Burrows, Counselor and Director, Analysis and Production Staff, National Intelligence Council (NIC)
Geoffrey D. Dabelko (Moderator), Director, Environmental Change and Security Program, Woodrow Wilson Center
Thursday, September 2, 2010, 12 noon – 2:00 p.m.; 5th Floor Conference Room, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004 USA. Please RSVP to ecsp@wilsoncenter.org with your name and affiliation.
Alex Evans thinks energy, climate, food, natural resources, and population trends are mistakenly considered separate challenges with a few shared attributes. He suggests instead that scarcity provides a frame for tying these sectors together and better understanding of the collective implications for development and security. As a regular advisor to the United Nations and national governments, Evans will outline practical policy conclusions that flow from a focus on scarcity and integrated analysis.
As counselor and director of the analysis and production staff, Mathew J. Burrows manages a staff of senior analysts and production technicians who guide and shepherd all NIC products from inception to dissemination. He was the principal drafter for the NIC publication, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World, the NIC’s flagship, long-range integrated analysis assessment that prominently featured natural resource, climate, and demographic trends. Burrows will share insights on producing and presenting integrated analysis for practitioners and policymakers.
by Alex Evans | Aug 16, 2010 | Economics and development, UK
Lots of agitation on the internets this weekend with news of cancellation of various DFID funding priorities. It all seems to stem from this leaked submission from DFID’s Policy Director, Nick Dyer, on the subject of “which previous public commitments DFID should track and honour”.
The new government took office with over a hundred such commitments on the books, the submission notes – before recommending keeping just 19 of them (including, thankfully, the £1 billion for food and agriculture and the £1.5 billion for fast start climate finance). Here’s the list of which commitments the submission proposes dropping.
Cue predictable howls of outrage from, well, everyone you’d expect (see this post on Left Foot Forward, and this Observer piece from over the weekend), plus an accusation from Caroline Crampton in the Statesman that “a silent withdrawal from the ringfencing policy seems to be underway”.
Well, hmmm… I’m not so sure. I have questions of my own about where Andrew Mitchell is taking DFID – I really hope the ultra-low profile he’s been keeping on big global policy issues like climate change is a reflection of a tactical decision to lie low until after the Spending Review, rather than a ‘new normal’; I’m seriously worried about what’ll happen to DFID’s headcount if its admin (rather than programme) budget is deemed eligible for the 25-40% cuts other departments are facing, given that DFID’s lost 1 in 6 staff since 2005 as it is; and of course I disagree with some of the items included on the proposed cancellation list (Gareth Thomas is right, for example, that cancelling funding to CERF would be a seriously bad idea, and would undermine the UK’s track record of leadership in pushing for a more coherent and effective UN humanitarian assistance system).
But overall, the howls look a bit overdone to me. For one thing, reviewing how DFID spends its budget is not the same as undoing the ringfencing over the size of that budget (as Caroline Crampton must realise). There’s no sign of the coalition backing away from its commitment on 0.7, and I honestly can’t see them doing it after all the political capital they’ve committed on the issue (for sure, there are questions about what else may be counted as aid, but that’s not what this submission is about).
More fundamentally, it’s legitimate to question some of these funding commitments. How exactly are we honouring the principle that developing countries get to decide how to spend the aid the UK gives them, if ministers keep announcing one sectoral fund after another? And what about the fact that a good few of the items on the proposed list of cancellations were the result not of careful policymaking, but of Gordon Brown phoning up DFID and demanding an announceable (usually less than 24 hours before a speech)?
Me, I think the jury’s still out on Andrew Mitchell. The themes he’s developed so far – transparency, outputs and outcomes, accountability – are all OK as far as they go, if a bit boring. I don’t see the outlines of his ‘grand strategy’ on development yet, but hopefully we’ll hear more about that in the autumn. In the meantime, reviewing where DFID’s money goes and which of the ancien regime‘s commitments he’ll retain seems not unreasonable to me.
by Alex Evans | Aug 16, 2010 | What we're watching
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvUdruvbdmI[/youtube]
