But the real stand-out blog here is from Sherard Cowper-Coles, our man in Kabul. Apart from the fact that he’s written far more content than any of the other bloggers (and posted four YouTube videos in a week), it’s also much more interesting. This is less for what he says about policy (not much, for obvious reasons, though he is forthcoming about differences with the US over aerial spraying), and more for what you learn about operational realities. It’s intriguing, for instance, to learn that the UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency has “a big presence” in Afghanistan, and still more so to discover that HM Ambassador whiles away his Friday nights getting thrashed by DFID Kabul’s head of comms on a Nintendo Wii.
Still, if there’s one piece of content in particular that’s worth a look, see Cowper-Coles’ interview with Brig. John Lorimer, the outgoing Commander of Task Force Helmand. Asked by Cowper-Coles to offer “a few thoughts” about Helmand, Lorimer emphasises “good progress”. How? Well, relationships with the Governor and some of his line ministers are “much improved”. And levels of cooperation between the military team, the FCO and DFID are “a real step forward” [from what? – ed.] But, er, what about the military side?
The aim has always been to say goodbye to the enemy and that’s what we’ve done and we have beaten them many many times during the last six months.
Which just about says it all where fourth generation warfare is concerned… Still, top marks to Cowper-Coles for public diplomacy. (Has he been reading David Kilcullen?) There’s something refreshingly un-Foreign Office about an ambassador who talks you through a visual tour of the Kabul skyline while a member of his Royal Military Police close protection team obligingly acts as cameraman.
If [the downward spiral of events in Europe before the First World War] reminds us of the Middle East today, it should. There too we see a series of crises, each holding the potential of kicking off a much larger war. There are almost too many to list: the war in Iraq, the U.S. versus Iran, Israel vs. Syria, the U.S. vs. Syria, Syria vs. Lebanon, Turkey vs. Kurdistan, the war in Afghanistan, the de-stabilization of Pakistan, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and the permanent crisis of Israel vs. the Palestinians. Each is a tick of the bomb, bringing us closer and closer to the explosion no one wants, no one outside the neo-con cabal and Likud, anyway.
A basic rule of history is that the inevitable eventually happens. If you keep on smoking in the powder magazine, you will at some point blow it up. No one can predict the specific event or its timing, but everyone can see the trend and where it is leading.
In the Middle East today, as in Europe in the decade before World War I, the desperate need is for a country or a leader to reverse the trend. Then, the two European leaders most opposed to war, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, were able to do little more than drag their feet, trying to slow the train of events down. That was not enough, and it will not be enough today in the Middle East either.
Where do we see a leader who can turn aside the march toward war? Not in the Middle East itself, nor among American Presidential candidates, only two of whom, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, represent a real change of direction. Not in Europe, whose heads of government are terrified of breaking with the Americans. Not in Moscow or Beijing, both of which are happy to see America digging its own grave. No matter where we look, the horizon is empty.
The filming of Kite Runner is causing trouble in Afghanistan…
Ahmad Jaan [father of an actor whose character is raped in the film] says his fears are two-fold – that the film will worsen relations between Hazaras and the dominant Pashtuns (both the boy rapist and the principal character Amir are Pashtun); and that his own family may be in danger when the film comes out, because of Afghan concepts of dishonour.
“Of course I’m worried about it,” he says. “My own people from my own tribe will turn against me because of the story. I am so worried they may cut my throat, they may kill me, torture me.”
His son has been quoted as saying he fears his friends will shun him because they think he really was raped.
Osama’s new video is worth watching / reading in full. He’s been reading Chomsky, and it shows. Multinational corporations figure heavily, and there’s even strong criticism of the US withdrawal from Kyoto.
At the time of last winter’s World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, and at meetings of the WEF Global Risk Network (of which I’m a member) over the following months, much was said about the mismatch in the risk perceptions of the investment community and the policy community.
Then, it seemed as though the financial and investment community was full of the joys of spring – and apparently oblivious to all the risks that people in the policy community and the global commentariat were becoming increasingly concerned about. Risks like…
…how the US is badly bogged down in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; an increasingly unstable Middle East and dangerous energy dependence; nuclear proliferation that has already occurred in North Korea and that is coming in Iran; the potential weakness of lame-duck political leaders in the US and other major democracies; record global trade imbalances and rising protectionist pressures; increased levels of public and private sector borrowing combined with record low saving in the US; falling home prices and middle class economic insecurity.
Yet, as former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers (whose words are quoted above, from the FT on 26 December 2006) observed:
The new year will begin with the greatest divergence for a generation between the general view of global risks as reflected by conventional wisdom and the risks as priced in financial markets. While the commentariat has been more alarmed about the state of the world than global markets for some years, the gap increased in 2006 as markets became more serene and everyone else grew more anxious.
Fast forward to today, and the tables have turned through 180 degrees. The current crisis in the markets has made minimal impact on commentariats and non-financial policymakers. Newspapers other than the FT are not covering it on the front page (or indeed outside the business section); it has yet to make any serious impression in foreign affairs ministries; there is no buzz about it in on the international summit circuit (e.g. the forthcoming APEC summit).
Yet in the business and financial press, people are going nuts. Yesterday, the FT devoted five full pages to the crisis. A letter to the editor from the global head of market economics at BNP Paribas – admittedly one of the firms worst hit by the sub-prime crisis – showed signs of panic:
When the patient is in seizure and the extremities are starting to turn blue it is not the time to worry about the patient’s longer-term dietary plans or about undesirable side-effects of the current treatment. Yet I fear that this is what central banks will do. The next set of steps had better be convincing and decisive, otherwise a much wider financial market implosion and economic recession will become very likely.
As with the ‘red’ and ‘blue’ sections of the US, the apparent inability of the financial community to communicate with or understand the wider policy community – and vice versa – is something that ought to cause worry on both sides.
And here’s another thought. If this is what happens when just one of the chickens cited by Lawrence Summers comes home to roost, what are the prospects if more than one comes fluttering in at once?
