Month: September 2014
Tailored diplomacy
My wife tells me this is a funny story, so I’ve decided to tell it outside the confines of my close friends and family.
Several years ago I was headed to Ljubljana, from which I am departing today, hoping the Slovenes will forget this story by the time I get back. Ljubljana then was the first leg of a Pristina/Sarajevo jaunt. The foreign minister had asked me to come by and talk with his Balkan folks, which I was glad to do.
Slovenia had done well for itself. It was already a NATO and European Union member. But traditionally it turned up its nose a bit at “the Balkans,” from which it had escaped. It preferred to be regarded as central European. I was happy that the Slovenes were exploring how they could be helpful to their southern neighbors.
With lots of time to prepare for departure, I closed up the small rollie that is the maximum I take anyplace, had a leisurely lunch with my wife, and headed to Dulles in good time for a flight to Frankfurt. Transiting there, I glanced down at the suitcase and wondered why it looked less chock a block full than usual. Sure enough: I had forgotten my business suits, which were still hanging in a closet in DC, so as not to get wrinkled the night before departure.
Panic set in, but not despair. I sent a quick email to my wife asking for help (T-mobile, which functions most places on earth at minimal cost, really is the provider of choice for international travelers, despite iffy service in DC). And another quick email went to Kosovar friends living in the US, to see if they knew anyone traveling to Pristina in the next day or two. Surely my network would come up with something.
No answers by the time I arrived in Ljubljana, so I decided to make shopping for a suit the afternoon’s entertainment. Ljubljana is a small town but it took me a couple of hours to case the men’s shops and try on a few candidates. One I found at the Galerija Emporium was really nice.
But it cost $1200. Euroland is not cheap for Americans. So I asked the friendly salesman whether there wasn’t a cheaper source of business suits in town. Sure, he said. Try Zara.
I’d never heard of Zara, as this cheap source of (often too) stylish clothes is kept secret from anyone over 40. But I took the advice and found an excessively fitted suit for a small fraction of $1200.
But they don’t do alterations. Yes, they recommended Maria, down the street in the underpass. But I had better hurry, as it was close to closing time. I found Maria’s shop, with difficulty, but she was only open two afternoons per week. Not my afternoon, of course.
Back to the hotel. Trusty sewing kit at the ready (don’t you carry one?). I gave up on the sleeves–they were too long, but maybe that would pass for stylish. The pants needed hemming, one way or the other. I did my best. Ran out of gray thread. Leaned on the concierge for some more. The hemming wasn’t pretty, but it was better than showing up in the foreign ministry with the pants rolled up.
The meetings went well both there and at the prime ministry. No one asked why my pants looked as if I had hemmed them myself.
Afternoon comes. Time to call my wife, who no doubt has figured something out.
Not a chance. Yes, she got the email, but it was a plea for help from someone who has never asked for help previously. She figured it was a Nigerian scam and didn’t even want to click on it. And no, the Kosovars didn’t know anyone headed for Pristina.
But they had a solution: their sister would meet me on arrival in Pristina and get me tailored right away.
Comforted, I boarded for Pristina, suited up because the Kosovars are good to me and always bring me through the VIP lounge to a ministry car, whose driver on this occasion announces that I am to go directly–do not pass Go–to the minister’s office.
No time for tailoring, I told my friends’ sister in a quick call, until after the meeting with the minister, who again seemed not to notice that my pants looked as if I’d hemmed them myself.
On my way back to the hotel, I arrange to rendez-vous with my Kosovar guardian angel. I had managed to get 45 minutes between meetings. The shop she takes me to doesn’t look like it is in Europe, but it is open and does alterations. One of the three busy people at sewing machines invites me behind a curtain that hides a back room, where I surrender my pants and jacket.
Standing in my shirtsleeves and underwear, I hear a loud rrrrrrip, as the tailor tears out my hour’s worth of hemming. Now I know the process is irreversible.
Ten minutes later I’m trying on the suit, with pants and jacket sleeves redone perfectly. I race back to the foreign ministry. No one notices that I’ve just had my suit altered.
My wife did eventually convince a colleague coming to Sarajevo to carry my suits and deliver them to me there. I never wore them. I like the Zara suit a lot.
PS: a colleague tells me he ripped open the rear seam of this pants on arrival in a foreign capital. The concierge obliged not with gray thread but with a stapler, employed with the pants still on. That makes me cringe.
PPS: one reader says I might have done worse at Zara.
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How to degrade and destroy
President Obama has now clarified his goal in the war on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL): it is to degrade and destroy. His model is what was accomplished against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That should be little comfort to those who live in areas where ISIL operates. A dozen years of war have rendered parts of the border area of Afghanistan and Pakistan even more lawless and ungovernable than it was before the US intervened there starting in 2001. But it is fair enough to say that the remnants of Al Qaeda that remain there are little threat to the United States.
What will it take to defeat ISIL?
The military campaign will require a 360 degree effort against ISIL. This means an international coalition that includes not only those NATO members willing to engage but also the security forces of Iraq and Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan as well as Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), all of which are seriously threatened if ISIL is able to consolidate its position inside Iraq and Syria. The precise division of labor will have to be negotiated, but the United States should expect that its bombing of ISIL in both Syria and Iraq is only the tip of the spear. Iraq and the Syrian rebels will need to provide the biggest share of the ground forces. The others should be prepared to attack from the air or provide funding, advice and equipment.
The military campaign against ISIL will go much faster and much better if the mainly Sunni populations in the areas it controls rise against it. This is what enabled the American “surge” in 2006 and 2007 to succeed against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Then it was the Sunni tribes that rebelled and helped the Americans to destroy Al Qaeda. Any serious effort to destroy ISIL will need to make something similar happen now. But it won’t be easy: without boots on the ground, the Americans will be unable to organize or pay for a Sunni “awakening.” The Saudis and UAE have shown little aptitude in this direction, but it is high time they learned how to get what they pay for.
While confronting ISIL militarily, the coalition acting against it will need to weaken its sources of financing and recruitment. This is shadowy work that requires the best efforts of many intelligence agencies working together. The focus on foreign fighters coming from the US and Western Europe may be necessary to prevent their flow back to those places. But most of them appear to be coming from other places and need to be slowed or stopped, whatever their origins. This is an area where the Russians can contribute: Chechnyans play a significant role, as do others from the Caucusus. Rumors of Qatari financing have been rife. It is time to stop any supposedly private contributions going from Doha to ISIL or its supporters.
The toughest issue in dealing with ISIL will be preventing its return to the places where it is militarily defeated. President Obama may think leaving the border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan devoid of effective governance is all right, because eventually Kabul and Islamabad will fill in. But it is going to be a long time before Damascus or Baghdad can govern effectively in the eastern provinces of Syria or the western provinces of Iraq, respectively. If you want to degrade and destroy ISIL there you are going to have to make some provision for governance, justice and public services.
This cannot be done by remote control. Someone is going to need to establish a presence in the areas ISIS currently controls, unless we want to see it go the way of Libya, whose various militias are tearing the country to shreds. In Syria, it might be the moderate revolutionaries, but then they will need protection from Bashar al Asad so long as he rules Damascus. In Iraq, it will likely need to be Sunni Iraqis who take control and govern–initially at least–without much reference to Baghdad. International humanitarian and other assistance in both countries will be vital, unless we want to see them go the way of Libya, where militias are now battling each other for control of the state. The UN or maybe the Arab League had better get ready for big challenges.
Presidents have to deal with the world they are dealt, not the one they prefer. “Degrade and destroy” will take years, not months. Obama would prefer to do retrenchment. Maybe his successor will get the opportunity.
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Balkans regional cooperation
I moderated a panel of Balkans luminaries this week at the Bled Security Forum, an annual Slovenia-hosted gathering that this year devoted itself to the theme of “trust” (and distrust). For my panel of present and aspiring foreign ministers, the organizers posed the question of why regional cooperation in the Western Balkans (that means the six republics of what was once Yugoslavia, plus Kosovo and Albania) has generated such meager results. As Hoyt Yee, the lone American on the panel, noted, there is no lack of regional initiatives–one of his interns found upwards of 60 just searching online with Google.
Serbian deputy prime minister and foreign minister Ivica Dacic was first out of the gates with one answer that held up well during the rest of the 90-minute session, even if his Yugo-nostalgia for Tito missed the mark with the other participants. What is needed, he said, is political will and courage. Only those who have got it will be prepared to accept compromise, which involves getting half of what you don’t want along with half of what you do want. The Belgrade/Pristina dialogue, he suggested, achieved little until it was raised from the technical to the political level (which meant to him, as he was at the time prime minister). The European Union magnet is important: the EU is more popular in the Balkans aspirants than it is in the member states.
Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic suggested a different answer. Trust is not really the issue, and political will isn’t necessarily lacking. But leaders in the Balkans are still working out what their national interests really are. Only once they they get a good fix on what will serve their countries well will they be able to negotiate effectively and work with their neighbors cooperatively, which is vital for all. She underlined that she had advocated regional cooperation before it was popular to do so. But capacity to understand and enunciate priorities is still lacking.
This is particularly difficult in a country like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ana Trisic-Babic said, because of its internal divisions. Bosnia needs new political leadership and a new social contract. Reform is vital to grow the economy and raise GDP. How long will people continue to put it off? There was more trust before the Dayton agreement than right now. Bosnia needs EU candidate status, sooner rather than later.
Senator Benedetto della Vedova assured all concerned that the Italian EU presidency will try to accelerate EU membership for all Balkans countries. It was a mistake for the EU not to have integrated Yugoslavia in the 1980s. But now integration of the Western Balkans with the EU is clearly having a big, positive impact, for example on Serbia as well as Montenegro. It should be no more than 10 years before all the Balkans countries become members.
Marko Makovec*, foreign policy adviser to the Slovenian President, noted that at one time some in Slovenia wanted to leave the Balkans behind. That is no longer the case. Now the question is what Slovenia, which has been an EU member for 10 years, can do to help its southern neighbors. The Balkans are going to need more tools than the normal accession process offers. Montenegro’s EU accession negotiator Aleksandar Andrija Pejovic confirmed that he gets a lot of help from the neighbors, who compare notes often on the EU accession process.
Macedonian Foreign Minister Poposki noted that Skopje continues to prepare for EU accession, and to behave as if it is a NATO member, but is stalled in the formal processes of accession to both organizations because of the “name” issue. There is no lack of communication on the issues, especially with Germany and Greece. But so far there has been a failure to implement shared democratic principles in resolving the name issue.
Regional Cooperation Council Secretary General Goran Svilanovic, fresh from a Berlin meeting that underlined the importance of regional infrastructure projects, noted that the Balkans states are already heavily indebted. They need highways and railroads that interconnect them more tightly, but they will not be able to borrow to fund these projects. Working together, they will need to prioritize and seek EU funding.
Yee wrapped up with a further plea for prioritization. The United States is still engaged in the Balkans and wants Bosnia’s internal difficulties and the Macedonia name issue to be resolved with a sense of urgency. Balkans citizens going to fight in the Middle East are a new and important issue. So too is energy security. It is important that solutions be based on common principles and values. We have seen how important these are in the crisis in Ukraine, where the principle of territorial integrity has been violated. Where we can get common ownership of clear principles and values, that is where we can expect success.
*PS: This did not do justice to Marko Makovec presentation, the written version of which he has kindly provided. It is attached here.
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The Pashtun question, and answer
I’ve been anxious not to let the summer go by without reading Abubakar Siddique’s The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Abubakar is a journalist at Radio Free Europe born in Waziristan, the heart of the “Afpak” border area.
Why would anyone want to know more about a question whose predicate is an ethnic group few of us know the least thing about?
That’s why. While we may not know anything about the Pashtuns, the territory they inhabit on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan has been an important stage for many of the protagonists Americans have had to worry about over the last twenty years. The predominantly Pashtun but explicitly anti-ethnic and Islamist Taliban, who governed in most of Afghanistan 1996-2001, originated in part there. It is there that Al Qaeda and other extremist groups have enjoyed safe haven and operational freedom, including recruitment among the Pashtuns. The Pakistani Taliban, who continue to wreck havoc in much of Pakistan, also originate there. If you want to make the world safe from terrorism, there are few more important parts of the world than Pashtunistan.
Abubakar’s wide-ranging assessment of what is going on there is likely to be the definitive work on the subject for a long time to come. This is the book he was born to write. Who can match his knowledge of the territory, the people, their customs, their history and their ambitions? Plus, he has reported on the main events and interviewed the protagonists of the last two decades, with admirable allegiance to the best standards of contemporary international journalism. His Gandhara blog, named for an ancient kingdom that corresponded more or less to Pashtunistan, is must reading for those interested in what is going on there.
The picture Abubakar paints is up close and personal. He sees the Pashtuns in all their complexity: there are Islamists and nationalists, tribesmen and city dwellers, traditionalists and modernizers, extremists and moderates, democrats and authoritarians, Sunnis and some Shia. The one thing he claims they have in common is that the two countries whose border their homeland straddles–Afghanistan and Pakistan–have both marginalized them.
The rise of Islamist extremism among Pashtuns is a reaction to this marginalization. The consequences for Pashtuns have included horrendous atrocities, widespread physical destruction, displacement, social disruption and drastically lowered living and educational standards. Caught on a battlefield where the United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan array their forces to fight one or another enemy, or in Pakistan’s case to pretend to fight them while actually helping them, many ordinary Pashtuns find nowhere to run, nowhere to hide in their devastated homeland, where extremists now rule the roost. So they move, carrying their hopes and resentments to Karachi and beyond.
Given this gloomy assessment, it would not be surprising if Abubakar concluded with pessimism or a clarion call for Pashtuns to unite and throw off their chains, seceding from both Pakistan and Afghanistan. He doesn’t. Instead he takes a cautious look at the ingredients for a peaceful Pashtun future. These include a stronger Afghan state able to reconcile with at least some Taliban, a democratic Pakistan that stops providing safe haven to Islamic extremists and trying to control the government in Kabul, and an America that sustains its nation-building engagement in Afghanistan “for many more years.” Then he adds something as welcome as it is unanticipated:
Sooner or later, the two countries will have to come to terms over the question of the Durand Line, which has vexed relations for seventy years. A Pasto language proverb says: “You cannot separate water with a stick.”
The Durand Line is the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in Pashtun-populated areas. Pakistan recognizes it. Afghanistan does not. Abubakar’s view is that it will have to be recognized, then opened to cross-border movement and trade, which have grown enormously since 2001 and have much greater potential, not least because of the youth bulge in both countries’ populations.
So Abubakar not only asks the Pashtun question, he also answers it, not only for the Pashtuns but also for Kabul and Islamabad. The odds aren’t good for the peaceful future he envisages, but he has more than earned the right to imagine it.
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Gloomy but determined
That was a gloomy but determined President Obama who spoke today in Talinn, Estonia about hope for the future of human dignity, liberty and respect for human rights. He said everything the most frightened Baltic citizen would want to hear: the NATO Alliance is all for one, one for all, America will preposition equipment and rotate its forces through more than in the past, Russian aggression against any NATO member will trigger an Alliance-wide response. He was also clear that the United States would not accept changing borders by force, in Ukraine or elsewhere.
He explicitly invoked the Baltic example: the United States never accepted their incorporation into the Soviet Union. When I was growing up, we were taught that Lativa, Lithuania and Estonia were “captive nations” that would one day be free. Most of us thought this was laughable, since it was impossible to imagine that the Soviet Union would one day evaporate. But that is precisely what happened.
What this means for Ukraine is not cheering. The Alliance has no obligation to defend Ukraine against Russia and will not do so. The best Ukraine can hope for is a refusal by NATO members to accept the annexation of Ukraine, the independence of Luhansk or Donetsk, or incorporation of any part of the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine into Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Poroshenko seems to think Russian President Putin has agreed to a ceasefire, while the Russians are still claiming they are not a party to the conflict so any ceasefire has to be with the rebels. That is not a good sign, since it is clear Moscow is not only sending in its own army and equipment but also financing, arming and training rebel forces. It is high time that Putin accept responsibility for the mess he has created. It is hard to picture any ceasefire holding for long that does not stop the flow of Russians, arms and financing across the border into Ukraine.
Moldova and Georgia, both of which have unwelcome Russian troops on part of their territory, got a bit of cheer from the President. He promised them support for their democratic aspirations, though not for removing the Russian troops. That leaves them more or less where they were before the speech, but failure to mention them would have been interpreted as abandonment.
There was also some small comfort for Montenegro, Macedonia and other Balkan candidates for NATO membership. The President said the door would remain open for those who want to enter and meet the requirements. Both Montenegro and Macedonia meet them already. They won’t be admitted at the NATO Summit tomorrow and and Friday in Cardiff, Wales. Montenegro was too small an addition to the Alliance to risk irritating the Russians over. Greece is blocking Macedonia because of its name, over which Athens claims exclusive rights. Both Montenegro and Macedonia should get invitations to join the Alliance at the next opportunity if the President does what he promised.
There are times in diplomacy when reiterating policy is as important as making it. This was one of those times. Gloomy but determined is the right approach.
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Boots on the ground in Iraq, or not?
While the Middle East Institute published my piece on confronting the Islamic State in Syria today (see also below), The Hill published one on doing the same in Iraq:
Vice President Biden claimed late last month that the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) “can be routed by local forces without U.S. boots on the ground.” He cites as evidence the Kurdish peshmerga and Iraqi army recovery of the Mosul Dam from ISIL.
But a military operation to recover a big, fixed installation in an unpopulated area is far easier than retaking Mosul, a city of about 2 million (the second largest in Iraq, after Baghdad). ISIL has deep roots in Mosul, which it had ruled at night for some time before it frightened off the Iraqi police and army in the daytime. ISIL has held at least parts of Fallujah and other towns in Anbar province since the beginning of the year, eradicating local resistance and established governing structures that are arguably doing better than the Iraqi government in delivering services. ISIL captured Tikrit more recently, but it is proving difficult for the Iraqi security forces to retake it
To roll back ISIL…
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