Day: June 12, 2013
Thaci: a fine performance
I tweeted most of the substance of what Kosovo Prime Minister Thaci had to say today at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. He was moderate, clear and careful. He defended the agreement he reached in April with his Serbian counterpart, Ivica Dacic, and the implementation plan that has been elaborated since. He looked forward to further agreements on electricity and telecommunications by June 20. He said nothing I heard that would make trouble for his negotiating partners in Belgrade, though the press may spin things in the other direction.
Thaci outlined steps that will be taken to implement the April agreement on regularizing the north, a small portion of Kosovo’s territory still controlled by Serbia. He made it clear the changes would come peacefully, in consultation with the northerners. My guess is that those consultations are of necessity mostly between the northerners and Belgrade, not between the northerners and Pristina. He underlined that barricades would be removed with KFOR cooperation to allow freedom of movement and commerce, rule of law would be established in cooperation with the European Union mission for that purpose, development funding would be made available, elections would be held with support from the Organization for Security and Cooperation and in Europe (OSCE) and after that police commanders would be chosen for the north in accordance with the procedures in the agreement. Read more
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We all have problems
I tweeted this morning about my weekend in Doha:
Hard to imagine a more telling indictment of US energy policy the past 40 years!
Why did I say that? Because it’s true: the extraordinary construction, wealth and obesity that characterize the tiny emirate of Qatar are the result of the almost 40 years since Richard Nixon’s declaration of intent to make the United States energy independent. Qatar is per capita the highest GDP country in the world today. It has a tiny population of citizens (I’m told the official number is secret, but fewer than 250,000 citizens seems to be the consensus) out of a total population of 1.9 million. The country’s wealth is due almost entirely to its exports of oil and natural gas.
A weekend there is a strange experience, especially if you are attending a conference on US/Islamic World relations. Very few Qataris were present, not least because the Emir is once again suggesting that he will retire soon, making the big thobes jockey for advantage and worried about musical chairs. So I spent three days couped up (not exactly imprisoned) in a very fine hotel kept at frigid temperatures and learned a lot of interesting things, few of them about Qatar. But even a short drive through town is enough to understand that there is an enormous amount of money, and sometimes even good taste, behind the extensive building projects. I’m also told there is a fine Islamic art museum. Maybe I’ll get there next time. Read more
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Bahrain: silence is a war crime
Protests in Bahrain have attracted media coverage outside the country, but there has been little international attention paid to its government’s efforts to block media coverage inside Bahrain. On Tuesday, Nada Alwadi, a Bahraini journalist and co-founder of the BPA, presented a 2012 report that tries to elucidate: Bahrain: Silence is a War Crime at the National Endowment for Democracy. Alwadi was joined on a panel by Delphine Hagland from Reporters without Borders and Adel Iskander from Georgetown University. David Lowe, Vice President for Government Relations and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for Democracy, facilitated the discussion.
Nada Alwadi described the status of Bahraini media before the protests. By 2010, the government controlled radio and TV stations as well as most of the major newspapers in the country (Alwasat newspaper was a notable exception). The government also monitored blogs and online news outlets. As a result of this state monopoly, the Bahraini press became largely ineffective. Without government funding, independent news outlets could not always sustain themselves. Alwaqt newspaper closed down in 2010 for lack of funding. Read more
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Is war inevitable?
This brings us to Iran. With the first round of the Iranian presidential election on Friday, the West is once again focused on the Iranian nuclear program, negotiations on which will resume once a new president is in place. To date, international sanctions have sought to punish the Iranian leadership for its defiance of the non-proliferation regime. As Iran gets closer to the production of its own nuclear weapon, sanctions have increasingly targeted Iran’s economy, hoping to change the cost/benefit analysis of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. As a result , oil exports have dropped from 2.6 million barrels per day to 1.1 million barrels per day and overall government revenue has seen a 17% drop compared to Iran’s five-year average. Despite these effects, sanctions have been unsuccessful in compelling Iran to suspend its program.
On Monday, members of a newly-established Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs Iran Task Force met to discuss the challenges facing US national security vis-à-vis a nuclear Iran. Chaired by Ambassadors Eric Edelman and Dennis Ross, the task force spans the political spectrum, across which there is a common belief that a nuclear Iran would be detrimental to US strategic interests and dangerous to regional stability. As the experts on the task force made clear, the Iranian nuclear program is now significantly more efficient and operating on a much larger scale than in the past. While the Iranians are careful to avoid so-called international redlines such as breaching 20% uranium enrichment levels, some estimate that they are only a matter of months away from breakout capability – a significant turning point where the only obstacle to weapons production would be their own restraint or military action. Read more
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