Month: December 2010
Where are the civilians when we need them?
Our friends at the UN Peacebuilding Support Office (thank you David Harland!) have taken a hard look at a long list of limits to international civilian capacity in an e-discussion conducted by the International Stabilization and Peacebuilding Initiative over the past month (Summary of Responses – e-Discussion – UN Review of Intl Civ Cap):
- difficulties recruiting civilians,
- competition with the private sector,
- slow recruitment times, links among training,
- rostering and recruitment,
- vague work descriptions,
- generalized competencies,
- diversity of organizational cultures, values and visions,
- lagging national (host country) capacity development,
- differences between international and national strategies,
- getting the right people for the right jobs,
- expertise gaps, relevance of training
- and gender balance.
They’ve also looked, less successfully, at planning processes for development of civilian capacities and at bottlenecks that impede deployment: bureaucratic obstacles, insecurity in conflict zones, lengthy recruitment times and civilian logistics limitations.
Perhaps the most innovative part is on interoperability from the UN perspective, where it is clear that despite the obstacles there is sometimes real benefit to the UN drawing on others’ capacities. The natural outcome of this discussion is a series of recommendations for more coordination and coordination bodies, a subject that I confess leaves me cold. I think what all of us need are agreed strategic endstates and frameworks rather than undirected coordination meetings.
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Democracy in the balance? Iraq’s next government
Please see Event writeups or the Washington Institute website http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3280
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The Brits are coming: DFID at Carnegie
| Security and Development in Fragile States
UK Minister of State for International Development Alan Duncan |
EVENT DETAILS
Security concerns emanating from fragile states like Yemen and Somalia have dominated headlines recently. Alan Duncan, Minister of State for International Development for the United Kingdom, will discuss the challenges facing the international community in assisting fragile states. Marwan Muasher will moderate.
Speaker The Right Honorable Alan Duncan MP was appointed as Minister of State for International Development on May 13, 2010. Duncan joined Parliament in 1992 as the Conservative Member for Rutland and Melton. In 1997, he was appointed vice-chairman of the Conservative Party and Parliamentary Political Secretary to the Rt. Hon. William Hague MP. He held a number of positions in the Shadow Cabinet, most recently as Shadow Secretary for Trade, Industry and Energy (2005). In 2009, Duncan was appointed Shadow Leader of the House and shortly after, he became Shadow Minister for Prisons and Probation. Duncan’s Ministerial portfolio at the Department for International Development includes: Asia, Middle East, Caribbean and Overseas Territories; international finance, international relations; and trade policy. Moderator Marwan Muasher is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, where he oversees the Endowment’s research in Washington and Beirut on the Middle East. Muasher served as foreign minister (2002–2004) and deputy prime minister (2004–2005) of Jordan, and his career has spanned the areas of diplomacy, development, civil society, and communications. He is also a senior fellow at Yale University. If anyone is interested in writing this event up for peacefare.net, please contact daniel@peacefare.net |
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Stay the course, smartly
Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has broken the monotony of reports recommending early withdrawal from Afghanistan. Its Responsible Transition: Securing U.S. Interests in Afghanistan Beyond 2011, takes as given the Administration’s time line: start of the turnover to Afghan security forces in July 2011, completion by the end of 2014. It also imagines a continuing substantial counter-terrorism and support presence (25-35,000 troops) beyond that date.
This is the most forward-leaning of the recent reports on Afghanistan, and it is likely correct in regarding the July 2011 and 2014 dates as locked in by the recent NATO Summit. Its definition of vital U.S. interests is not markedly different from those others have put forward: preventing Al Qaeda from regrouping and attacking the U.S. as well as stabilizing Pakistan. It attempts
to craft an effective middle ground between large unsustainable expeditionary force commitments that would sap the long-term power of the United States and “offshore” minimalist strategies that would fail to disrupt, dismantle and defeat transnational terror groups.
The emphasis is mainly on the military side, but it also focuses on politics, commending the ongoing refocus away from support for the government in Kabul and towards more support for local governance and implicitly viewing President Karzai as a problem rather than a solution. The text gets notably vague when the issue of preventing corruption and dealing with warlords at the local level comes up, and how the local focus will be sustained when drawdown starts is not at all clear. As the Iraq precedent shows, once the U.S. military starts withdrawing the civilians go too.
The report’s treatment of Pakistan is robust. It recommends significant toughening of the diplomatic message and a reduced but long term commitment in Afghanistan aimed at convincing the Pakistanis that they will have to do more about the Taliban and Al Qaeda, or the U.S. will do it for them. The Pakistanis, no longer believing that the Americans are leaving soon, will then have less need to hedge their bets by allowing the Taliban to continue operating and more incentive to crack down so that the Americans don’t come calling.
This is a “stay the course” report, but one that pays serious attention to resource limits. But will we maintain even 25-35,000 troops indefinitely in Afghanistan? Will the Afghans want them there?
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See event writeups: Pristina prepares for negotiations with Belgrade
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