by Richard Gowan | Aug 1, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, South Asia
My recent extended growl about the parlous state of peacekeeping has been cited as evidence in a fascinating online debate among Indian security analysts on whether their army should stay committed to UN operations. This debate is significant because (i) India is consistently among the top three contributors to UN forces, along with Pakistan and Bangladesh; (ii) it is even more important in terms of hard-to-find assets like helicopters; (iii) it is suffering a run of negative publicity about how badly some of its troops behave (the fact that a lot of this snark comes from the BBC irks some in the debate, who detect post-colonial prurience).
With India’s economy growing fast, the payments it receives from the UN in return for its troops are increasingly irrelevant. So might there come a moment when India decides that blue helmet deployments no longer befit its status and interests as a great power? Yes, and the sooner the better, according to two hawkish strategists in the Indian Express in early July. Edited highlights:
More Indian troops have died in the line of their UN duties than from any other country. According to the Indian Embassy in the US, “India has risked the lives of its soldiers in peacekeeping efforts of the United Nations, not for any strategic gain, but in the service of an ideal. India’s ideal was, and remains, strengthening the world body, and international peace and security.” That the Indian government should take pride in risking the lives of Indian soldiers in the “service of an ideal” is appalling. It now serves little more than bureaucratic interests.
In order to give the issue the attention it demands, India should immediately suspend all further UN deployments. This should be followed by a graduated withdrawal of all Indian troops operating under the UN flag. There might be a case for a small, token presence, in carefully chosen theatres. It is time for India to stop seeing foreign troop deployments as “risking lives in the service of an ideal.” Rather, they should be seen as being tightly coupled with vital foreign policy objectives, like for instance, securing India’s construction crews in Afghanistan. As India’s economic interests expand globally, it is likely that the need for such deployments will increase.
You can follow the debate sparked by these comments over at Pragmatic Euphony, a blog devoted to India’s national interest. Fears of new violence ahead in the eastern Congo suggest that Indian peacekeepers may be in the headlines again this summer, as this is one of the theatres in which they are squarely on the frontline. A rapid drawdown of Indian forces isn’t imminent – New Delhi has good reasons to look responsible after (i) it took flak for helping kill off Doha (whatever the merits!) and (ii) the IAEA signed off on the US-India nuclear deal this week.
But these online stirrings may be the start of something bigger. India could well lose faith in the relevance of peacekeeping – recent violence in Kashmir and reports that Pakistan was implicated in July’s attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul are reminders that it has urgent problems on its doorstep to tend to. New Delhi is also deeply skeptical about all the current talk about the Responsibility to Protect (as it demonstrated during the Burmese cyclone crisis) and is liable to demand an ever-greater say in UN strategy-making if it is to stay involved. That raises the tricky question of when if ever India will get a permanent Security Council seat…
If India cut back on its peacekeepers it would be incredibly difficult to sustain big peace operations in places like the Congo. This is often obscured by (i) a lazy assumption that the South Asians will be peacekeepers forever out of habit; (ii) a focus on the views of African troop suppliers, especially in Darfur; and (iii) possibly excessive excitement about the prospect of other countries getting involved, like China. China’s peacekeeping commitments are still less than a quarter of India’s.
I’ve got yet another academic analysis of the dynamics of UN ops out, in a book on “Strategies for Peace” (don’t be put off by the lime-green cover). I wrote it ages ago, but it highlights the South Asian contribution and how UN missions rely on a global compact between three categories of state: “those in which large-scale peace operations are deployed (mainly in Africa); those which supply the bulk of peacekeeping forces (most notably in South Asia and Africa); and those that provide most of the funding for peace operations (the United States, EU members and Japan).” Lose the Indians, and that compact starts to unravel.
Unfortunately (or thankfully, depending on your perspective) this new article isn’t online. But it concludes along the lines of a shorter think-piece I published last year about developing a new strategic consensus that all those involved in UN ops can buy into if they are to keep on keeping on… a consensus, I infer from the Indian online debate, that should be couched in interests not ideals.
UPDATE: check out Pragmatic Euphony’s interesting riposte to this post here.
by Daniel Korski | Aug 1, 2008 | Conflict and security, Global system, South Asia
That cheeky discusser Alex seems to be both praising me and taking me to tasks for believing that a supply-side approach to the Afghan drugs trade will make a difference to drug use in Britain.
Why I have never. . .in fact, I have never. I have never been a supply-sider, at least as CN is concerned. I think we need to help the Afghan government deal with the ballooning opium economy because its existence is deeply corrosive of the Afghan state. If we do not, it will never be able to establish itself, deliver basic services (like order) and deal with threats to its power and the lives of its citizens.
That’s not the same thing as saying that a supply-side strategy will combat drug use worldwide. As David Mansfield, Britain’s leading drugs researchers, notes: “The overall success of supply side interventions will be contingent on reductions in demand both internationally and increasingly in source countries.”
A prime example of the failure of supply-side policies is the U.S crackdown on drugs in Colombia, which Alex highlights. Despite the progress that has been made within Colombia’s borders, little effect has been had on the overall drug war — due to the persistence of American demand, Peru and Bolivia have moved to fill the supply vacuum. But not only did regional production not decline, there were unforeseen political consequences in the countries where coca growth was resurgent – for example the rise of Evo Morales, a former coca grower who rallied the support of Bolivia’s coca growers to won the presidential elections.
But that does not mean all supply-side is useless. It means that you need both supply-side and demand-reduction. For me, CN in Afghanistan was part of the state-building project. I realise that Tony Blair, when he agreed that Britain should be the G8 lead for counter-narcotic, was focused on the flow of heroin into Britain – and probably hoped to keep the British public supportive of the Afghan mission if they could see a direct connection to their daily lives. But few people I worked with on the issue while I was in the Civil Service thought that way.
In addition, we worked hard to highlight the need for demand-reduction inside Afghanistan where demand-reduction facilities are low and the risk of Hep C and other diseases attacking a vulnerable and at-risk population were considerable.
When the UN’s 2005 survey of drug usein Afghanistan was published – estimating that there were 920,000 drug users in the country – I went around the Ministry of Counter-narcotics making bets with the Minsters and senior officials to see if they could guess the number of users. The then-Deputy Minister – now Minister – General Khodeidad guesses a high 10.000, and refused to believe me when I gave him the right figure. In other words, the Afghans themselves are quick to talk about our demand reduction, but struggle to deal with their own demand.
by Alex Evans | Jul 31, 2008 | Conflict and security, Global system, South Asia
Daniel’s a hundred per cent right to call for an end to some of the more stupid measures taken in Afghanistan in the name of counter-narcotics work. Take aerial spraying off the table? Absolutely. Avoid alienating farmers in order to avoid swelling the insurgents’ ranks? Sign me up.
But I think we need to go much further than this. Daniel argues that coalition forces in Afghanistan should focus on:
…arrests and the prosecution of drug lords and their backers in government. Unless these “narcotics entrepreneurs” are targeted, arrested and prosecuted, little will change.
As he noted yesterday, the FT’s recent leader on this subject agrees with him, arguing that:
…while crop eradication and locking up bad guys may be an important part of addressing the crisis, they are not by themselves a solution. That can only come over years of a sustained and consistent strategy to develop a real market economy which would provide a better livelihood for farmers than the dangerous and volatile drugs business.
That will, it is true, require security and a role for the military. It will mean targeting the middlemen, smugglers and, yes, chemists who operate the infrastructure of the drugs business, hitting their finances and improving co-operation with Afghanistan’s neighbours.
Above all, it will mean that while the small poppy farmer escapes the attentions of the authorities, the big drug barons do not. That demands ending the de facto impunity enjoyed by some Afghans, a move that can be sanctioned by only the president.
I hate to be a sceptic, but, well, I’m a sceptic. Targeting the big drug lords, the middlemen and smugglers is certainly preferable to targeting small farmers from a development point of view. But it’s still pretty pointless. Just look at Colombia, where massive resources to the war on drugs have made negligible impact. True, interdiction efforts can influence the street price a bit – maybe even quite significantly, as in the aftermath of the destruction of the Medellin Cartel in 1989 – but the effects never seem to last much beyond a year. For all the hullabaloo about the war on drugs, the long term price trend for most illegal narcotics has been downwards.
What’s more, we all know that this emperor has no clothes. When I worked in the government, I used to ask the Afghanistan experts I came across what assessment had been made of what effect even a best case scenario on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan would have on the street price of heroin in the UK, or how we could be sure that production wouldn’t just be displaced to Turkmenistan instead. The answers I got back were never very encouraging.
None of this, of course, is to dispute the underlying point about just how corrosive organised crime is to the legitimacy and effectiveness of states (c.f. Mark’s recent post on Guinea-Bissau, or mine on Italy and Mexico). But the point is that if we want to halt that process of corrosion, the it’s not Helmand, or even Kabul, that’s the front line. The real front line is with our policy of Prohibition, and the fantastically profitable economic opportunities that it introduces.
The war on drugs will never, ever be won on the supply side. And until we figure that out and internalise it in our policies, the margins on illegal drugs will remain astronomical, the incentives for organised crime and insurgent movements will stay irresistible, and states will keep failing. After all, we can all see that Prohibiton in America created and sustained Al Capone. So which bit about sustaining his inheritors at the global level is it that we don’t get?
by Daniel Korski | Jul 30, 2008 | Conflict and security, Economics and development, South Asia
I hope my fellow bloggers will forgive me this self-indulgent post, but I could not resist. You see, the FT has a leader about the Afghan drugs trade, arguing:
The first thing to say is that while crop eradication and locking up bad guys may be an important part of addressing the crisis, they are not by themselves a solution. That can only come over years of a sustained and consistent strategy to develop a real market economy which would provide a better livelihood for farmers than the dangerous and volatile drugs business.
That will, it is true, require security and a role for the military. It will mean targeting the middlemen, smugglers and, yes, chemists who operate the infrastructure of the drugs business, hitting their finances and improving co-operation with Afghanistan’s neighbours.
Above all, it will mean that while the small poppy farmer escapes the attentions of the authorities, the big drug barons do not. That demands ending the de facto impunity enjoyed by some Afghans, a move that can be sanctioned by only the president.
Wise counsel; but is it also a little familiar? This is what I wrote on 27 May and again on 4 June this year:
First, the international community must forego the idea that it can sequence coercive and development activities; it is simply not possible given the conditions now or in the foreseeable future. Better therefore not to promise development in exchange for poppy eradication or think conditionality can work.
Second, the international community needs to take aerial eradication off the table and make clear that traffickers, not farmers, are the problem. Because Afghan farmers do not use chemicals, aerial eradication will likely be blamed as the cause of disease, premature deaths or crop destruction, which is a regular but unrelated occurrence in Afghanistan, as in any developing country. The Afghan government, already mistrusted, would suffer from any backlash, thus turning an insurgency into an insurrection.
Instead, the government should focus on rolling out the Afghan state, prioritizing the provision of security to local farmers. The international community, in turn, should focus on building local capacity to maintain security and deliver basic services.
Crucially, this should be coupled with arrests and the prosecution of drug lords and their backers in government. Unless these “narcotics entrepreneurs” are targeted, arrested and prosecuted, little will change. Though, this should be done under the nomenclature of anti-corruption – which Afghans care about – and not of counter-narcotics, which most Afghans think is a Western focus.
The difference lies in the FT’s focus on the development of a market economy and my added point that insecurity comes from the corrupt Afghan police, the reform of which is a sine qua non of an improved counter-narcotics policy. Readers may remember that I advocated drastic solutions to be on the table, including dismantling the Ministry of Interior entirely, placing the police force under the Afghan National Army, or setting up a new gendarmerie-style police initially under the army.
Pardon me, dear readers, but I feel quite pleased with myself. If I could actually spell and string a well-sounding sentence together I too could have been writing FT leaders (even if only on a small and obscure topic). Not a bad feeling to end the day on.
by Daniel Korski | Jul 27, 2008 | East Asia and Pacific, North America, South Asia
Bill Emmott, the former editor of The Economist, has a great – if glibly-titled – piece in The Times today, articulating what I have thought for a while (OK – what I should have thought): that while Fareed Zakaria talks about a post-American order where U.S influence is giving way to the power of the “Rest” (China, India etc.) both Barack Obama and John McCain seem to live in a decidedly Euro-centric world.
Look at Senator Obama’s stops on his recent trip – Europe, the Middle East and, of course, Afghanistan. The itinerary is hardly any different from what Bill Clinton’s would have done in 1992 – that is, go to Europe, the Middle East and to where U.S forces are deployed. But, as Emmot says, the future of the U.S may be determined in Asia, not Europe or even the Middle East:
Three issues in Asia will be, or should be, high on the new president’s briefings when he enters office in January. In order of immediacy they are inflation, climate change and the balance-of-power politics.
So what do Obama and McCain say about a rising China, a resurgent Russia, rivalry between India and Pakistan Asian countries? Very little. Or, at least very little compared to what they say about other issues.
At the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Obama said:
In Asia, the emergence of an economically vibrant, more politically active China offers new opportunities for prosperity and cooperation, but also poses new challenges.
To deal with these, Obama will “forge a more effective regional framework in Asia that will promote stability, prosperity and help us confront common transnational threats such as tracking down terrorists and responding to global health problems like avian flu.”
Nothing wrong with this, but a profound policy statement it is not. Nor does it deal with many of the gremlins in the U.S-China relationship like the trade balance.
McCain has been more forward on how he would deal with China and Russia. He has meet with the Dalai Lama and urged China to address human rights concerns and free Tibetan prisoners.
His tough-guy stance is even tougher on Russia. The U.S, says McCain, should respond harshly to Russia’s anti-democratic actions, and warns of the “dangers posed by a revanchist Russia”. On the campaign trail, McCain jokes that when he looks in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, he sees three letters: KGB.
But while the Arizona senator’s stance is tough and clear, he can hardly have thought through the implications of such a stance against Moscow, given the price of oil, the views of America’s allies etc.
Bottom-line is that while both candidate have talked about U.S relations with the “Rest”, both lag behind today’s leading foreign policy intellectuals in developing a serious set of U.S. policies towards the new powers and seem more comfortable in a Euro-centric mindset. That may be good for Europe in the short-term, but bad in the long-term. For the way in which the U.S and Europe relate to these new powers will determine how the world looks in the next 10 years.
