by Alex Evans | Jan 17, 2009 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa
Chances are you’ll already have seen media coverage of Generation Kill – HBO’s outstanding new mini-series based on Evan Wright’s book on his time as an embedded correspondent with a US Marine Corps reconnaissance battalion as they invaded Iraq. The series comes from David Simon and Ed Burns, the creators of The Wire (here’s an audio interview with Ed Burns, Wire fans). Lest you haven’t already sampled the extensive selection of clips on YouTube, here’s a small sample to whet your appetite:
[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aSLAIKjT7y8&feature=channel]
Book and series alike both give close-up perspectives on the failures of counter-insurgency doctrine that typified the early Iraq campaign. Even then, it’s clear that the more thoughtful marines portrayed in Wright’s account become steadily more aware of the hearts and minds dimensions of their campaign – especially in the case of Lt. Nathaniel Fick, who led the platoon in which Wright was embedded. Fick has since left the USMC for the Center for a New American Security, where he’s now co-authoring research with long-time 4th Generation Warfare expert John Nagl. (more…)
by Daniel Korski | Jan 7, 2009 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Global Dashboard
One of the presumed parts of Obama’s Afghan strategy will be to look at ways of coopting the country’s various tribes, much like General David Petraeus did it in Iraq. The idea has sparked off a torrent of criticism in the foreign policy community.
One of the smartest young Democratic things, Brookings security expert Vanda Felbab-Brown, wrote to Obama that his administration should cultivate Afghan tribal leaders, but it would be a mistake to expect them to play a military role in the counterinsurgency. Michael Williams, the US-born British academic spoke for many when he called the idea “a very high-risk strategy that cuts directly against counter-insurgency theory and will most likely be seen in hindsight as a serious mistake.”
Those with longer memories talk about the failure of the Red Army to work with the Afghan tribes. The Russians spent large sums of money arming and supporting tribes in their own “Vietnamization” strategy. So much money was, in fact, spent that Kandahar in the south of the country, saw an in-flux of clothes from Pakistan and shoes from France, were the norm. For a short period it worked. The defection of one commander, Esmat Muslim, to the Afghan government’s side was said to be a blow for the mujahedeen, who suddenly found all their routes to Pakistan had been compromised. But once the Soviets left the in-fighting began. Even Esmat Muslim was not able to manage all the problems in Kandahar.
Those who reject any comparison between Iraq and Afghanistan, like author Alex Strick van Linschoten highlight key differences in the two countries. The Taliban movement, even if it contains foreign fighters, has deep roots in Afghan society. Many Taliban commanders grew up through the 1980s jihad against the Soviets. In this, the Taliban are different than Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, who were run by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and seen by many tribesmen as foreigners.
A key factor in Iraq was also the cruelty of Al Qaeda, which proved too much for the Anbari tribesmen. Though the Taliban have displayed similar cruelty -– for example in the recent Maiwand atrocities where many Laghmani civilians were killed –- but the Afghan government has not been able to spread information about such acts. The final problem in transferring solutions from Iraq to Afghanistan is the nature of the Taliban’s recent success. Since 2005, the Taliban has bandied together with a strong network of drug barons, while forcing many tribesmen to be supportive or, at the very least, remain passive towards the insurgency. Reaching out to these groups is unlikely to succeed, it is claimed, as they benefit from the status quo and the U.S cannot offer a better, long-term alternative.
But in Rageh Omar’s latest documentary for Al Jazeera — Pakistan’s War: On The Frontline – another side emerges. In Bajaur province – where Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s second in command, is believed to be hiding – the documentary shows how the Pakistani army has managed to do exactly what the U.S is now contemplating. In their fight against the Pakistani Taliban the army has armed a particular tribe, which is now charged with keeping the peace in a number of cities. So far, it has proven successful and is being emulated in other places.
Yesterday, Omar was careful not to say the strategy could necessarily work elsewhere. But he was emphatic that it seemed to work in Bajaur; and that he knew of several examples where tribesmen had asked to be armed or had risen up against the Pakistani Taliban spontaneously.
So far, both the strategy of working with the tribes -– and the backlash against the idea –- seemed to be based on speculation and hunches rather than the kind of hard empirical research the question merits. Before any steps are taken let us hope the Obama administration commissions research on the tribes, and comparative experiences. For this is exactly the kind of complex policy dilemma that requires an evidence-based approach rather than the gut-based policy-making of the Bush administration or the arm-chair soldiering so beloved by left and right alike in Washington, DC.
by Richard Gowan | Jan 3, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system, North America, Off topic
Charlie has got some debate going with his ten predictions for 2009, and I’m not going to try to rival it. But after a year of following food prices unusually closely, I’ve decided to go where even Alex Evans has not gone before in an effort to tell the future: the official US Poultry Outlook Report – December 2008. And no, this isn’t about avian flu. It’s about how the global downturn is going to create a rift between increasingly internationalist turkey farmers and isolationist, America-first chicken and egg producers. Feathers will fly!
Let’s start with chickens (to the initiated, “broilers”). For the first nine months of last year, production was growing strongly. But as food prices slumped over the last few months, so did the number of “chick placements” – which I assume is code for “fattening the little critters up in a big shed until they can’t walk”:
Over the last 5 weeks (8 November to 6 December, 2008), the number of chicks placed for growout averaged 7.4 per cent lower than for the same period in 2007. With uncertainties about the domestic and world economies, the trend of year-over-year declines in chick placement is expected to continue well into 2009. With smaller chick placements forecast, the estimates of broiler meat production have been adjusted downward in fourth-quarter 2008 and in the first three quarters of 2009.
Who are we going to blame for this? Foreigners. Unless they like brown meat:
All the uncertainties in the global economy have combined to sharply reduce the demand for broiler exports . . . but declining exports may be slightly mitigated by lower prices for leg quarters, the primary export.
So expect the chicken farming lobby to turn inwards. Their disinterest in foreign affairs will only be compounded by increasing imbalances in the egg market:
Shipments of all shell eggs and egg products in October totaled 17.9 million dozen, down 13 per cent from the previous year. Much of the decline is due to lower shipments to Mexico and Hong Kong.
But it’s all very different on the turkey front. There’s a glut of the damn things – more and more are being put into cold storage – and production is expected to slow as a result. With supply higher than demand, the U.S. needs to offload large quantities of its national bird. Fortunately, there are proven markets available:
Turkey exports remained very strong in October, totaling 71.8 million pounds, up 36 per cent from the previous year. Much of the increase in October’s turkey exports was due to higher shipments to the largest markets — exports to Mexico, Canada, and the combined China/Hong Kong markets were all up considerably from the previous year.
So that’s good news… but wait a minute! Not only is China propping up the U.S. economy by buying vast quantities of American bonds, but now we discover that it will start underwriting the turkey industry? What if Beijing stopped buying? Even Mexico slapped a temporary ban on birds from some U.S. plants just before Christmas on health grounds. And last Tuesday Russia demonstrated its resurgent nationalism by slashing its total poultry import quota from the U.S. by 1.25 million metric tons to 952,000 metric tons. So here’s my first big question for 2009: can the U.S. poultry industry adapt to a multi-polar world?
Next week: a post in which I explain the new world order by tracking trends in the price of tea-leaves.
by Charlie Edwards | Dec 28, 2008 | Influence and networks, Off topic
My top 10 books of 2008 are an eclectic mix of insightful analysis, counter-intuitive reasoning, master story-telling, and solutioneering. Some brilliant books were published in 2008, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers just gets squeezed out but is still recommended reading. Below, in no particular order, are my top 10.
- Fixing Failed States, A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World, Ashraf Ghani & Clare Lockhart. Thousands of people can say that they have helped rebuild failing states, only a dozen or so can say they have then written about their own experiences and the experiences of other countries in lucid prose. But Fixing Failed States is not on my list solely for this reason. It’s really here because it’s the only persuasive critique of the ill-conceived, incoherent aid complex run by the U.N. and other agencies, which regularly undermines and supersedes weak states instead of stabilizing them.
- The Unthinkable, Who survives when disaster strikes – and why, Amanda Ripley. Fascinating and engrossing this book is a tour de force. Its gut-wrenching stories span the full spectrum of action under duress, from panic to heroism. Amanda Ripley has sifted through amazing tales of survivors from other disasters and mined various sociological, psychological, and neurological studies. Her insights are fascinating. Brilliant.
- The Forever War, Dispatches from the War on Terror, Dexter Filkins. To call Dexter a frontline reporter would be to diminish his work; for the most part he was not embedded in the U.S. Army — dangerous as that was – but rather embedded in both Iraq and the United States. He went out to the villages and to the countryside, talking to tribal leaders, village elders, and all the men and women (and children) he could engage. Unlike the stud scuds of the first conflict with Iraq, secure in their rear echelon hotels, and unlike the pundits and theorists, ensconced in their Washington think tanks, Filkins learned everything he has to tell us about the wars and occupations in these lands from firsthand experience. It is, quite simply, an awesome book.
- Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, Clay Shirky. This book will undoubtedly be a classic in years to come. It’s well researched, beautifully written and as Cory Doctorow suggests: “Clay has long been one of my favorite thinkers on all things Internet– not only is he smart and articulate, but he’s one of those people who is able to crystallize the half-formed ideas that I’ve been trying to piece together into glittering, brilliant insights that make me think, yes, of course, that’s how it all works.”
- Nudge, Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein. The story goes that Thaler and Sunstein were having lunch with their publisher when the choice of the title came up in conversation. Originally the authors wanted to call it Liberterian Paternalism, Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Unsurprisingly that mouthful didn’t go down well with the publisher who suggested that individuals often just need a nudge in the right direction. The rest, as they say is history.
- Predictably Irrational, The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, Dan Ariely. At the heart of the market approach to understanding people is a set of assumptions. First, you are a coherent and unitary self. Second, you can be sure of what this self of yours wants and needs, and can predict what it will do. Third, you get some information about yourself from your body. Standard economics, Ariely writes, assumes that all of us know all the pertinent information about our decisions and we can calculate the value of the different options we face. What the past few decades of work in psychology, sociology and economics has shown, as he describes, is that all three of these assumptions are false.
- McMafia, Crime Without Frontiers, Misha Glenny. This is an encompassing and wholly authoritative investigation of the now proven ability of organized crime worldwide to find and service markets driven by a seemingly insatiable demand for illegal wares. Whether discussing the Russian mafia, Colombian drug cartels, or Chinese labour smugglers, Misha makes clear how organized crime feeds off the poverty of the developing world, how it exploits new technology in the forms of cybercrime and identity theft, and how both global crime and terror are fuelled by an identical source: the triumphant material affluence of the West.
- The Atlas of the Real World, Mapping The Way We Live; Danny Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford. Created by three of the team behind the renowned website worldmapper.org this is a gem of book. Open this book on any page and you’ll learn something you never knew about the world – for example in an analysis of water resources, the rainforests of South America, with 30 per cent of the world’s fresh water, make the continent balloon whereas Kuwait – dependent on desalinated sea water – completely disappears from the map.
- Understanding Somalia and Somaliland, Ioan Lewis. This is a beautiful book and should be required reading for diplomats, journalists and NGO workers. Gerald Prunier neatly captures Lewis’ assessment of the country: Somalia is a walking and moving exception to many rules about the nation-state and that trying to deal with it in ‘usual’ fashion not only does not help but on the contrary tends to compound the problems.’
- Homicide, A Year on the Killing Streets, David Simon. Many people won’t have heard of Homicide, a fascinating account of criminality in Baltimore that won the 1992 Edgar Award winner for best fact crime, but readers of Global Dashboard will be familiar with David Simon’s most recent effort, the HBO series The Wire. Need I say more?
by Richard Gowan | Dec 13, 2008 | Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia
Long before this year’s Georgian war, I chatted to a European foreign policy expert recently returned from the Caucasian flash-point. He was shocked to discover that UN peacekeepers there did not patrol at night (similar limitations beset the UN in Congo, a problem during the ongoing crisis there). Now that the EU has its own monitors in-country, are they any better after dark? Maybe not…
EU cease-fire monitors in Georgia claimed a small victory when Russian forces pulled back from a disputed village near breakaway South Ossetia, but witnesses have said they returned with nightfall.
Georgia has condemned the Russian presence in Perevi as a violation of the cease-fire brokered after their five-day war in August, when Russia intervened in its ex-Soviet neighbor to halt a Georgian military assault on pro-Russian South Ossetia.
News of the troops’ departure eased fears of confrontation in the area, where some of the 1,100 villagers had packed up and left. European Union monitors said the pullback came at their insistence and followed discussions with the Russian Foreign Ministry and military.
But by nightfall, a regional police source said around 20 Russian soldiers with a single armored vehicle had returned to a checkpoint in Perevi. A police spokesman confirmed the account. An EU spokeswoman said a patrol would check the village in the morning.
