Day: December 19, 2012
There is no safe
It was State’s fault. That’s the journalistic version of the Accountability and Review Board (ARB) unclassified report on the killing of Ambassador Stevens and three of his colleagues in Benghazi last September. State has been quick to react: Hillary Clinton accepts the report and is asking Congress to transfer $1.3 billion from funds that had been allocated for spending in Iraq. This includes $553 million for additional Marine security guards; $130 million for diplomatic security personnel; and $691 million for improving security at installations abroad.
I accept without question the ARB’s conclusions about the Benghazi incident. They know better than I do when they say officials in Benghazi and Tripoli reacted appropriately and bravely, the facility had inadequate physical security (including a minimal guard force), there was no intelligence suggesting an attack was imminent, and different parts of the State Department failed to provide leadership and collaborate in providing the resources required.
It is on the broader issue of how to protect American diplomats (and other civilians who work abroad on behalf of the United States government) that I would fault this report. The Board recognized the basic problem:
…the ARB has examined the terrorist attacks in Benghazi with an eye towards how we can better advance American interests and protect our personnel in an increasingly complex and dangerous world….the United States cannot retreat in the face of such challenges, we must work more rigorously and adeptly to address them…American diplomats and security professionals, like their military colleagues, serve the nation in an inherently risky profession. Risk mitigation involves two imperatives – engagement and security – which require wise leadership, good intelligence and evaluation, proper defense and strong preparedness and, at times, downsizing, indirect access and even withdrawal. There is no one paradigm. Experienced leadership, close coordination and agility, timely informed decision making, and adequate funding and personnel resources are essential.
But that is the last we hear of the need for agility. The paradigm reflected in the report, and in the State Department’s quick reaction, is to pile on more of the same, not to change the way we do things.
Mine is a hard argument to make. Arguably, Ambassador Stevens was doing exactly what I think is often safer: moving without too much security, engaging in ways that gave him intimate knowledge of the local situation and not building up a high profile of fixed security investment that makes so many of our facilities obvious targets and limits the mobility and engagement of our diplomats. The ARB notes:
The Ambassador did not see a direct threat of an attack of this nature and scale on the U.S. Mission in the overall negative trendline of security incidents from spring to summer 2012. His status as the leading U.S. government advocate on Libya policy, and his expertise on Benghazi in particular, caused Washington to give unusual deference to his judgments.
Ambassador Stevens was handling things the way he thought best. It did not make him safe.
But that is just the point. There is no “safe.” The Ambassador retreated, in accordance with State Department practice, to a hardened “safe haven.” It wasn’t safe because the attackers set the building in which it was located on fire. I’ll get in trouble for this, but the Arabic-speaking Chris Stevens might have been safer walking out the back door of the compound and knocking on the first Libyan door he came to. The odds are 99 in 100 that he would have been welcomed and made comfortable while he awaited rescue.
I do know something about the environment in Benghazi, which I have visited twice since Qaddafi fell. It is profoundly friendly towards Americans, who are credited with saving the city from a massacre. I have run along the harbor in Tripoli. I have driven through demonstrations outside the court-house in Benghazi repeatedly at a snail’s pace, revolutionary flags draped over the windshield and happy Libyans giving the obvious foreigners the thumbs’ up sign.
But there are bad guys in Benghazi as well, and no serious police force, as the ARB report notes. That’s why the Benghazi facility depended on a militia group for its guard force (with which however the Americans were in a labor dispute, according to the ARB). Chris Stevens knew all about both the militia and the radicals, as he talked with a Libyan the morning he was killed who had recounted to me a two months earlier the order of battle of extremist groups in Derna, a hotbed of radicalism to the east. He would certainly have asked his interlocutor (that’s diplomatese for the person you talk to) about extremist groups and the militias.
There are extremist groups just about everywhere these days. So the State Department reaction is understandable: raise the barriers to successful penetration of our facilities. The trouble is there is no guarantee that makes you any safer, and it certainly inhibits engagement. There is always some level of force that can overcome defenses. Only a fully capable and committed host government can make a diplomatic facility relatively safe. An embassy or diplomatic office in a conflict zone soon after a revolution cannot be 100% safe. Once we have acknowledged that, we should have a serious discussion about what makes it “safer,” and less safe.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Fantasyland
Anyone who thought, as The Economist and others have reported, that Serbia was softening its position on Kosovo and would yield to sweet reason has to be disappointed today. The Belgrade platform for negotiations on Kosovo represents a giant step backwards in Serbia’s position, as it pretends to meet international community demands for dismantling of illegal Serbian institutions in Kosovo by legalizing and unifying them, with the entire “autonomous” province under Serbian sovereignty. Serbs in Kosovo would gain not only separate and equal institutions, but also a legislative veto, their own justice and police systems and many other powers. This would apply not only to the northern bit of Kosovo still under Serbian control, but also south of the Ibar river to communities that have at least partially accepted and integrated into Kosovo government institutions.
What Belgrade has failed to do is come to terms with the independence and sovereignty of Kosovo. This is not surprising, but it is still important: it means that Kosovo will need to equip itself for a future in which Serbia continues to claim sovereignty over the entire territory. I don’t envy Pristina. To my knowledge, no two countries that fail to recognize each other and establish a clearly demarcated border have an untroubled relationship. Serbia is Kosovo’s most powerful and threatening neighbor, its largest potential market and its historical metropole. Good neighborly relations would be a big plus for Kosovo. It isn’t going to happen based on the platform Belgrade has written for itself.
Belgrade has also failed to apply a simple but critical equity test to its own propositions: how much of what it proposes would it be ready and willing to offer to Albanians in southern Serbia or Bosniaks in Sandjak? Almost none of it. It is profoundly sad, and risible, that Belgrade claims for Serbs who have left Kosovo (including their descendants) the right to return when such rights have been blatantly violated by Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I’ve heard few in Belgrade bemoaning that (I hasten to add that those few are wonderful people).
International community reaction at this point is important. There will be an enormous temptation for the European Union and the United States, having waited long for this platform and no doubt tried to influence its contents, to try to see at least parts of it in a favorable light, or at least as a basis for negotiation. That would be a mistake. This platform stops just short of a declaration of war on Kosovo’s institutions and on the international community’s at least partially successful efforts to build a democracy in Kosovo. There is precious little in it that I would advise Pristina to discuss. Washington and Brussels should be profoundly disappointed and say so.
So what now? Belgrade is unhappy with the technical talks that it pursued with Pristina for more than a year, as they view them as having encroached on political issues. They are correct. While Belgrade celebrated each and every agreement as a Serbian triumph, the technical talks were gradually establishing Belgrade and Pristina as equal negotiating partners. That was the intention in both Brussels and Washington. But the talks were also reaching the limit of what could be achieved without deciding on Kosovo’s status: is it an autonomous province of Serbia, as Belgrade continues to want to claim, or is it a sovereign state, as half the UN General Assembly now recognizes? There really is no doubt about the answer to this question, but the EU has to tiptoe around it because of its five members who don’t recognize Kosovo.
Pristina should of course continue to be willing to meet with Belgrade on an equal basis and expect all agendas to be reciprocal in both letter and spirit. If Belgrade wants to discuss governance in northern Kosovo, it has to be willing to discuss governance in southern Serbia. That’s a non-starter, so there is no need for Pristina to discuss Kosovo’s own internal political arrangements with Belgrade. They are spelled out clearly in the Ahtisaari plan for a Comprehensive Peace Settlement that both the EU and the U.S. adhere to. Pristina has shown good faith in trying to implement them.
A note to non-recognizers of Kosovo: if you thought that your non-recognition was in any way helping to soften Belgrade’s stance or promote a negotiated solution, Belgrade’s platform for the negotiations should be enough to convince you otherwise. The best possible response to this gross overreach is to recognize and establish diplomatic relations with Pristina.
A note to Albanians: I can well imagine how angry this Serbian document will make those of you who have worked hard to establish serious democratic institutions capable of treating Serbs and other minorities correctly. The right response is a peaceful one, no matter how strong the passions. Anything else will play into Belgrade’s narrative that the Balkans won’t be safe from violence if Kosovo is sovereign and independent.
A note to Serbs: Kosovo is lost to Belgrade’s sovereignty. Protection of Serbs in Kosovo is still a legitimate interest. That’s what the talks with Pristina should be about, not about Kosovo’s status, which has been decided in a political process foreseen in UN Security Council resolution 1244. You did not like the result, but that will not change it. You can block UN membership for Kosovo, but it would be a mistake to try to change the facts on the ground. The effort to ensure that Serbs are governed only by Serbian majorities on their own territory has led Belgrade into war several times in the past. It is a profound error to stick with it. Go visit Kosovo: see for yourselves the reality. Then come back and tell me whether you want to continue living in Fantasyland.
RSS - Posts
