by David Steven | Feb 24, 2009 | Conflict and security
Disgraceful comments today from Con Couglin, the Daily Telegraph’s ‘executive foreign editor’, on the release of Binyam Mohammed.
Coughlin thinks Mohammed should be sent to Pakistan – the country where he was tortured – “so he can learn what the Taliban was really like” and bring himself “up to date on the Taliban’s latest governmental practices, such as stoning adulterers to death and cutting off the limbs of those accused of theft.”
This is red meat for the Telegraph’s commenters. “The further costs of keeping this scum alive and here far outweighs any other consideration,” one writes.
Coughlin has good sources in US intelligence, sources who have assured him that Mohamed was a highly placed Al Qaeda operative, one who confessed to his US interrogators that “he met Osama bin Laden on several occasions.” That this confession was extracted under torture doesn’t seemto bother Coughlin at all.
Most galling of all is the fact that Coughlin isn’t able even to get the details of Mohamed’s arrest right, claiming he was “he was arrested wandering around Afghanistan.” Perhaps he should read his own paper, which accurately reports that Mohamed was arrested in April 2002 in Karachi airport, as he tried to board a plane back to the UK.
(It would not surprise me at all if Mohamed is/was a low level Al Qaeda operative by the way. If he was, torture has made it impossible to prosecute him.)
by Daniel Korski | Feb 20, 2009 | Cooperation and coherence
Irrational exuberance is alive and well. Spawned by Obama’s candidature and sustained despite his recent setbacks, many people still seem to believe that all manner of foreign policy challenges can be overcome.
One of the most interesting parts of Barack Obama’s rise to power was the frenzied enthusiasm he garnered along the way. Even the mob-fearing Germans turned out in their thousands to hear him deliver unwelcome policy missives (“The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda”). At times, Obama’s presidential candidacy verged on a cult of personality.
There were a few skeptics, to be sure. But most were curmudgeonly analysts or political adversaries. Few of the change-deniers seemed, well, seemed to be quite with it. In the main, people sang “Yes We Can”, swayed to Obama’s rhetoric and believed with all their hearts.
Little more than a month after his election, the sheen has not quite come off Obama, but his administration has taken a few direct hits. Tom Daschle, a former senator, was nominated as health secretary. As with two other Obama nominees, it subsequently emerged that he had failed to pay all his taxes, and he was forced to withdraw his name from consideration. The new treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, has proved les adept at handling the economy that hoped. His first press conference saw markets tumble.
Despite these set-backs, there is no shortage of exuberance. Even hard-bitten analysts believe that in 2009-2010, world leaders can agree on a new NPT regime, establish a follow-on to the Bretton Woods systems, re-start the Doha round of multilateral trade talks and hammer our a climate deal in Copenhagen. Some even think that the entire multilateral system can be re-ordered while the US deals with NATO’s Afghan mission, Iran’s nuclear programme, Pakistan’s potential collapse, Russia’s rise, and the threat posed by a festering Middle East.
However, the truth is this agenda is probably too broad for one president, even two terms and certainly for the many stakeholders that now have to be brought into any of the global deals. The multilateral system will not be revamped, but remain a mosaic. If we are lucky, the economic crisis will be contained, but do not expect a new kind of managed globalization. George Soros has called for a eurozone government bond market, but it is hard to see European governments accepting such an overtly federalist move (which, incidentally, they rejected when the ECB was originally set up).
As to the many structural issues –- the NPT regime, climate change, the trade talks –- one or two may be solved, but certainly not all and certainly not in the next two years. Politically, trade-offs will have to be made between Iranian help in Afghanistan or an Iranian nuclear bomb. Between European unity or European energy security. Perhaps even between our economic well-being and poverty-alleviation elsewhere.
Like in the NICE decade — non-inflationary constant expansion — in which people forgot economic gravity, so people now seem to have taken leave of their foreign policy senses.
But a new world awaits. It may not look much different than the 19th century: power politics, “concert of Europe”-style diplomacy, inequality of states, spheres of influence, and interests, not values, as the driving forces behind international politics.
by Daniel Korski | Feb 16, 2009 | Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia
Richard Holbrooke (the new US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan) and Sherard Cowper-Coles (his British counterpart) did not have South Asia to themselves for long. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier today appointed Ambassador Bernd Mützelburg as his Special Representative for – you guessed it – Afghanistan and Pakistan.
On top of that, there’s also EU Special Representative to Afghanistan, Italian diplomat Etorre Sequi, and the UN Special Representative Kai Eide.
Hopefully this will lead to more international cooperation – or perhaps just a great spread in Envoy Magazine (possibly with Holbrooke behind the wheels of a GMC Envoy XL…)
by Daniel Korski | Feb 13, 2009 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
Diaspora and exile groups may play an important, but sometimes also controversial, role in conflicts and political unrest in their countries of origin. Often their engagement is benign and comes in the form of remittances. But many diaspora communities also lobby decision-makers and parliamentarians in the new country of residence or collect money among co-nationals in order to support ‘the struggle’ at home.
Think of the Irish in the US, sending money to the IRA for decades. Or the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and the influence of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora. Or even the role of the Pakistani community in Europe.
This is by no means a new phenomenon. Yet, the growing number of intra-state conflicts, the enhanced possibilities for transnational communication, mobilization and action as well as the upsurge in domestic and international security concerns after 9/11, have focused attention on diasporas. Or at least should have.
For despite their role, most peace-building interventions — whether UN, NATO or EU led – spend little time engaging with diaspora communities. There is more and more writing, but it is hard to see governments taking this issue seriously, except as a domestic political issue (i.e MPs placating diaspora constituents by tabling EDMs).
In a time of dwindling resources, and assuming that unilateral or coalition interventions are less likely in the future, it may become important to engage these diaspora communities in a systematic way.
How can the British government engage the Pakistani community to ensure support for democratic forces in Pakistan? Should the Foreign Office consider, as a rule, having a Diaspora Desk Officer in its Afghan Group, or Iraq Unit? Should funds be set aside by DfiD for funding diaspora-led programmes?
Such programme may not be the most effective in, say, building schools but they may have an important function in challenging the role of organizations like Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the political and civic wing of the outlawed terrorist group Laskhar-e-Taiba, which is benefitting from the Pakistani government’s inaction in many of the IDP camps in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).
With decreasing resources, but constant if not increasing security demands, finding new ways of addressing conflict (prevention, management and resolution) will be key. Re-thinking how to engage with diasporas may be part of this.
by Richard Gowan | Feb 12, 2009 | Conflict and security, Economics and development, North America
Major league economic crisis trumps minor league terrorists:
Sounding more like an economist than the war-fighting Navy commander he once was, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair told a Senate panel Thursday that if the crisis lasts more than two years, it could cause some nations’ governments to collapse.
And a number of allies the United States depends on might no longer be able to afford to meet their own defense and humanitarian obligations, he said.
Blair said already the financial meltdown, which started in the United States and quickly infected other countries, has eroded confidence in American economic leadership and belief in free markets.
“Time is probably our greatest threat. The longer it takes for the recovery to begin, the greater the likelihood of serious damage to U.S. strategic interests,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee, as Congress prepares to vote Friday on a $789 billion stimulus package.
Blair’s 49-page statement opened with a detailed description of the economic crisis. It was a marked departure from threat briefings of years past, which focused first on traditional threats and battlefields like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
“The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications,” he said in a written statement for the committee.
One reason for the new ranking is progress made in the last year against al-Qaida. A year ago, al-Qaida was said to have reconstituted its operations in the lawless tribal area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But that has changed.
“Because of the pressure we and our allies have put on al-Qaida’s core leadership in Pakistan and the continued decline of al-Qaida’s most prominent regional affiliate in Iraq, al-Qaida today is less capable and effective than it was a year ago,” he said.
Four top al-Qaida operatives were killed over the last year — partially a result of newly aggressive rules of engagement for U.S. forces on the Pakistan border. The organization has had to promote junior players figured “considerably less skilled and respected” to fill those slots, he said.
