Month: February 2015
Blueprint for revolution
Srdja Popovic, one of the Otpor (Resistance) leaders who were vital to bringing down Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000, will talk at SAIS Tuesday morning 10-11:30 in the Rome building about his new book, for which this is the promotional video:
Please RSVP to itlong@jhu.edu
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Corruption continues to erupt
Twenty years have passed since Moses Naim coined the phrase, “the corruption eruption.” As Sarah Chayes outlined this week in a talk at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, there is no sign of the eruption ending anytime soon. Promoting her book Thieves of State, Sarah outlined the push and pull factors driving corruption’s omnipotence in conflict environments. Systemic corruption is not merely the byproduct of war, but often an accelerant of conflict.
She opened the discussion with two common misperceptions of corruption:
1. Corruption is not merely “chump-change” siphoning off small amounts of money. It has real economic significance and implications for the social wellbeing of society. In Afghanistan for example, corruption amounts to a daily attack on people’s dignity. It creates an atmosphere of hopelessness and despondency that often leads to rage and violence.
2. There is a tendency to think of corruption as a sort of corrosion eating away at government. She turns this theory on it’s head: corruption is in fact a system created by the government. The levers of state power are put into the service of vertically integrated kleptocratic networks. It is not merely that state weakness can give space for corruption to seep in. Corrupt networks purposefully weaken institutions that will not work with them.
The policy community in Washington needs to wake up and realize that pervasive corruption has real and dangerous security implications. By enabling corruption, as the US has done in Afghanistan, it is only making the security problem more severe.
Sarah spent seven years living there. She helped Afghans rebuild homes and established a cooperative that aimed at encouraging Afghan farmers to produce flowers, fruits and herbs instead of opium poppies. It is through this work, and through her interactions with the American aid establishment, that she became aware of the extent to which corruption is destroying American efforts for peace in Afghanistan.
Anti-corruption assistance aimed at civil society can help build the expertise of local reformers who are challenging the government. But if the bulk of the US government interaction with a country reinforces corruption then these programs don’t stand a chance. Chayes believes that not enough emphasis is put on good-governance strategies, which are too often trumped by strategic considerations.
A survey conducted by the US military in Kabul asked captured Taliban prisoners why they joined the insurgency. The most common response was not anger at the US presence in their country, or a religious claim, but rather that the Afghan government was irreversibly corrupt. This sense of grievance and hopelessness has the power to fill ordinary citizens with feelings even worse than anger. They want revenge.
Intelligence collection and analysis should play a major role in fighting corruption, but that is not now the situation. She suggests subjecting intelligence agency payments to key members of corrupt governing networks to high level interagency debate, increasing the number of personnel assigned to study the structure, manning and other characteristics of corrupt governing networks (including corruption in annual assessments of security risks compiled by intelligence communities), and to design new collection requirements to fill knowledge gaps regarding corrupt networks, especially the ways in which Western governments and private-sector actors enable such systems.
The solutions are not simple or straightforward, but a better understanding of the nature of corruption and it’s implications for international security would contribute to improved policy and practice in government, civil society and business.
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End of status quo
Vetëvendosje Movement member of parliament Ilir Deda writes from Pristina:
Kosovo has entered a turbulent year. The winter started with the election of a new government composed of former rivals – the PDK of Hashim Thaçi and the LDK of Isa Mustafa. The Western Embassies were satisfied – the status quo seemed ensured. Three out of twenty-one cabinet posts were given to the Serbia-created, -funded and politically -controlled Serbian List, which emerged victorious among Kosovo Serb political parties.
The new American/German brokered government, whose sole purpose is to maintain the status quo, signaled the end of hope for Kosovo’s people, 70 percent of whom voted in the June 2014 elections against the PDK in government. On November 20, 2014 – a day after it was announced that PDK and LDK would govern together, buses of hopeless citizens began leaving Kosovo towards Hungary – through Serbia – and on towards Western Europe. As a direct consequence of the creation of the PDK-LDK government, over fifty-five thousand people have left Kosovo since the end of November.
Amid this despair, the leader of the Serbian List, Aleksandar Jablanovic, led a bus with Serb pilgrims who were trying to come to the western Kosovo town of Gjakova to celebrate Orthodox Christmas. Jablanovic was accompanied by Djokica Stanojevic, the former ethnic Serb mayor of Gjakova during Milosevic’s occupation of Kosovo, who was directly involved in crimes against Albanians in the city and the area.
Gjakova proper and the surrounding area was among the worst hit areas during the Kosovo war in 1998-99, where not only some of the strongest fighting took place, but also thousands of civilians were executed and massacred. Thousands more went missing, and still are unaccounted for. The leading association of missing persons, “The Call of Mothers,” organized a protest to block the visit of the Serb pilgrims. The bus was stoned. Jablanovic called the protesters “savages.”
While over the last 150 years he is not the only Serb politician who called Albanians savages, he is the first Kosovo Serb minister of the government of the Republic of Kosovo to do so. Several days later, Jablanovic questioned the well-documented record of war crimes committed by Serbia’s police and military forces, saying he “didn’t know” whether they had occurred.
A week later, Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, came to Kosovo for a “religious purpose” – to celebrate the Orthodox New Year. When asked whether Serbia would apologize for the state crimes in Kosovo, he added fuel to the fire by responding “everybody can dream.” To the protesting Albanians he said that next time he would bring “books to educate them on politeness.”
Vucic was a minister in the Milosevic’s government in 1998 – 1999, which was responsible for ethnic cleansing, war crimes, execution of civilians, deportation of Albanians and destruction of public and private property in Kosovo. The apology cannot be a “dream” but a firm political position of the Kosovo government as a precondition for normalization of relations with Serbia.
The first two protests were held in Gjakova on January 10 and 17, gathering five and ten thousand protesters respectively, organized by “The Call of Mothers,” Vetëvendosje and few civil society organizations. The same demand was repeated the following week when thousands took to the streets in eight other Kosovo cities.
Amidst these protests, the government sponsored a law to nationalize Trepça – a mine rich in zinc, silver and lead, with deposits worth more than $14 billion – in an attempt to save it from liquidation. Serbia protested and held a joint meeting with the three Serbian List ministers of the Kosovo government. The Kosovo government backtracked on its initial a plan to nationalize Trepça because of Serbia’s opposition. The public was left aghast to see that 15 years after the war and removal of Serbia’s say in Kosovo’s domestic affairs, and almost seven years after the declaration of independence, Serbia still had a say in Kosovo’s affairs. This reversal of history is unacceptable to the people of Kosovo.
On January 23 “The Call of Mothers” and Vetëvendosje, supported by other opposition parties, civil society organizations, unions and independent public figures organized the largest protest held in Kosovo since 1999 in Prishtina, gathering over thirty thousand people. The government was issued a deadline – to dismiss Jablanovic and sponsor the law on nationalization of Trepça in two days, or the protest would continue. At the end of the protest, a small crowd of several dozen people threw rocks at the government building.
The government and its controlled media began the expected propaganda, accusing Vetëvendosje of being behind the violence. The international sponsors of the government followed the same line. Meanwhile, all the security institutions in Kosovo had credible information that Vetëvendosje was not behind the violence, but did not come forth publicly with this information. Instead, the government said that Jablanovic would not be dismissed.
January 27 saw twenty thousand people gathering in Prishtina. Since early morning the police, under orders from the government, showed hostility and brutality – it did not allow the organizers to set the stage in the center of the city, confiscated protest materials, and prevented citizens from other cities from joining the protest in Prishtina. The police started throwing tear gas at the crowd while the speeches of the opposition figures were ongoing. One hundred seventy people were injured, as the police used tear gas, water cannons, and UN-banned rubber bullets on the protesters, while the protesters threw rocks at the police. The clashes lasted over six hours. Almost two hundred protesters – mostly young – were arrested. Such police brutality has not been seen in Kosovo in the last fifteen years. Nor was such anger of young protesters, who blame the government for the lack of hope.
The government accused the opposition of wanting to “violently overthrow” the government. Prime Minister Mustafa went further – he accused the media of aiding the opposition in the “destabilization of the state,” because media were broadcasting live scenes and reporting from the protest. In the US, it is quite normal for CNN and other media to broadcast from such events. In Kosovo, the PDK-LDK government began using rhetoric similar to the worst totalitarian regimes.
On February 3, the prime minister informed the public that Jablanovic would not be part of the Government any more, while the opposition halted the protests to await the response of the government on Trepça. If the law on transforming Trepça into a public company is not proposed soon, the protests will continue.
The protests brought the return of hope among the citizens, who see that an arrogant government can be forced to be accountable to its people, and not only to Western Embassies. The protests were not against the Kosovo Serbs, as alleged continuously over the last month. The anger of Kosovo’s people 15 years after the war with the overall state of affairs – no economic development, high unemployment, high corruption, Serbia’s destabilizing role, and alarming poverty of half of the population – has reached extreme heights. There is no more space for unconvincing justifications of incompetent politicians. This is the beginning of the end of the fifteen years status quo in Kosovo. The majority of people who are determined to stay in Kosovo are resolute to see the state succeed. They are determined to have a dignified life in the Republic of Kosovo.
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Drums don’t win wars
A president who was trying to extract America from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is now preparing to escalate the war in Ukraine and the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Yesterday, his nominee for Defense Secretary made it clear he supports sending lethal armaments to the Ukrainian government to fight off Russian aggression, a position also advocated by former officials. The White House is also preparing to send Congress a request for an authorization to use military force (AUMF in Washington parlance) against ISIS, something the administration is already doing.
Both these moves fall in the inevitable category. We’ve pretty much run out of alternatives.
ISIS is universally regarded as not only a threat to vital interests but also one with which it is impossible to negotiate. They seem intent on proving that with the immolation a month ago of a Jordanian pilot whom they then feigned being prepared to exchange for an Al Qaeda terrorist. If we are going to fight ISIS whenever and wherever, it is certainly proper that there be a Congressional authorization. Hawks will want it broad. Doves will want it narrow. But both will want it, even though it will make little difference to what the US actually is doing.
In Ukraine, the government is losing control of the southeastern Donbas region and could lose control of even more of its territory to insurgents fully backed by Russia’s substantial military might. I’ll leave to military experts assessment of whether American assistance with lethal but defensive weapons will have a serious impact at this point. It could take a year or more before any significant materiel and training is deployed on the battlefield. In the meanwhile, Moscow will use any American decision to arm the Ukrainians as an excuse to redouble its own efforts.
So neither of these noisy headline issues is likely to have any quick impact. Drums don’t win wars. And these two wars are not only conventional force-on-force clashes between organized military forces, even if they involve some battles of that sort. Both involve counter insurgency, the kind of war (known in the Pentagon as COIN) the US loves to forget.
I’ll leave to the COINistas the analysis and policy prescriptions on the military side. The important point for me is that COIN necessarily involves an important civilian component. You win the war against insurgency by protecting the civilian population. You have to win the peace over a decade or more by ensuring a continued safe and secure environment, establishing the rule of law, ensuring stable governance, growing the economy and meeting social needs. If you fail to do those things in the aftermath of war, you end up with Libya: a weak state that has collapsed now into civil war, leaving breeding grounds for extremists.
The civilian efforts required are in the first instance the responsibility of the governments involved. But their capabilities are at best limited and at worst nonexistent. In Ukraine, even a government victory would likely require peacekeepers to ensure stability in Donbas and avoid reignition of conflict. In Iraq, it is hard to picture the Baghdad government’s security forces welcomed in Anbar and Ninewa provinces. Some kind of local governance with its own security forces (the proposed National Guard?) will be needed. In Syria, Bashar al Asad has shown no sign of willingness to govern fairly or effectively in areas the government retakes. There too some kind of local governance will be needed.
The international capacity to contribute to these efforts is also limited. The State Department has shrunk its civilian conflict and stability operations capability, which was never substantial. The European Union has grown weary and leery of deploying its much more substantial capacity. The UN is stretched thin. OSCE is doing a yeoman job of observing the much-violated ceasefire in Ukraine, but it is a giant step from that to peacekeepers and monitoring implementation of a peace agreement.
We are embarking on another long period of war. We should be strengthening not only our military capacities, but also our civilian ones.
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Yemen: failed policy in a failing state
Speaking at Georgetown University on Tuesday, former ambassador to Yemen, Barbara K. Bodine, took a critical view of current U.S. policy in Yemen. While President Obama in September was praising U.S. successes in fighting Al-Qaeda in Yemen as a model for the ISIS campaign, Ambassador Bodine argued that US policy has largely failed to achieve its aims in the country, and has corroded its relationship with Yemen’s government and people. At a time when Yemen is once more teetering on the edge of disruption, Bodine called for broader US engagement on development and governance.
Yemen, argued Bodine, is a country that has wobbled on the margins of collapse for a long time. Historically, the country has been the host of other states’ proxy battles, from the war between Nasserists and Saudi monarchists in the 1960s to the ongoing war on terror. Domestic challenges have also been prevalent, with Yemen having the youngest population in the Middle East. It is severely lacking in natural resources, including access to water.
At the same time, Yemen has a tradition of pulling itself back from the brink. The former ambassador pointed out that in the aftermath of the 2011-12 uprising that ended the reign of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen emerged relatively successful. The crisis ended in the negotiated transfer of power, the confirmation of the new president (Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi) in a referendum and the establishment of a National Dialogue Conference that was broadly inclusive. Compared to the rest of the region, Yemen seemed to have fared relatively well in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.
At the same time, challenges have haunted the Yemen transition, leading to the current collapse. The Houthis had been excluded from the political process in the GCC transition plan, along with a number of other political actors. The inability to proceed also led to extension of the terms of the feckless transition government, while criticism of government corruption grew louder within the country. In launching their campaign on the capital in September of last year, the Houthi rebels were kicking in an open door.
Initial steps taken by the Houthis were also largely constructive, including the establishment of a capable technocratic government that could implement the promises of the 2012 political transition agreement. Since then however, the political situation has been spiraling out of control, culminating in the Houthi occupation of the presidential palace and the resignation of president Hadi’s government two weeks ago. Yemen, on the verge of political – and financial – collapse, is now rapidly running out of options.
In light of the bleak political situation, the former ambassador called upon the US administration to alter fundamentally its approach to Yemen. Bodine lamented the use of drones “as a strategy rather than a tool” of Yemen policy, pointing out that since the use of drones was escalated in Yemen under Obama, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) numbers had swelled from the hundreds to the thousands.
Instead, the US needs to make a commitment to governance and economic development a more explicit part of the its strategy. This would not require a significant change in the resources at the administration’s disposal. Sadly however, neither Americans nor Yemenis seem to be aware of these efforts. Increased publicity abouit this aspect of American policy would be a cheap and effective way to support fragile transition efforts.
Bodine warned against accepting the Saudi narrative of the Houthi rebels as Iranian stooges. While Iranian support of the rebels is evident, the Houthi movement is in essence an indigenous movement, and should therefore be approached as local political actors first and foremost. The prospect of a failed Yemen, with the potential for AQAP expansion in the south, would be a far more threatening scenario to the Saudi monarchy and its Western allies than the specter of increased Iranian influence.
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Why pay attention to Kosovo?
If you stick around international affairs long enough, some of the people you met in the earlier years are likely to turn up in high places later on. I first met the still youthful Hashim Thaci, a two-term prime minister who is now foreign minister, in 1999, when the US Institute of Peace hosted a post-war meeting of Kosovo Albanians at Lansdowne in Virginia.
The issue at the time was not so much conflict between Serbs and Albanians. With notable exceptions, NATO brought large scale interethnic violence to a fairly quick end after the war, until rioting in 2004 unsettled things again. At Lansdowne we were concerned with Albanian on Albanian violence, as different factions vied for post-war dominance. The dialogue and the Lansdowne Declaration they agreed on that occasion are often credited with ending an incipient civil war and turning both the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and its more peaceful rivals in the direction of political rather than military competition.
Hashim Thaci was a key figure at Lansdowne, representing an important faction of the KLA that had fought the Serbs from the mid 1990s until the war ended in June 1999. His role was mainly a political one. He had also been a key figure at the failed Rambouillet negotiations that preceded the war and played a role in the UN administration of Kosovo, though he remained out of power until he was elected prime minister in 2007. He presided over independence in 2008 and governed until this year, when his party won a plurality in parliament but failed to be able to put together a majority without giving up the prime ministry.
His talk here today focused on Kosovo’s post-war transition, its increasing role in the region, Russian efforts to influence the Balkans, Kosovo’s efforts to counter violent extremism, and the importance of keeping the country on its democratic and European trajectory. He is looking for American help to keep the doors to NATO and the EU open, as well as private sector American investment.
I asked the foreign minister about the firing yesterday of a Serb minister from the government. He underlined that the minister was fired for inappropriate remarks he had made, not because he is a Serb. That’s the right thing to say, even if it is a bit of distinction without a difference in this circumstance. No Albanian would have made the same comments. I also asked about the special tribunal Kosovo is supposed to create to prosecute in The Hague crimes committed during and after the NATO/Yugoslavia war. He said he thought there was no need for it to convene in The Hague, but the legislation will pass and the court will be created, enabling EULEX to proceed with indictments.
Thaci pledges cooperation in countering the flow of extremists to Iraq and Syria and the influence of Russia, both of which are inimical to Kosovo as well as the US. Moscow is now more active than in many years in Serbia, Bosnia’s Republika Srpska, Macedonia and even Montenegro, which has rejected the Russian overtures. The number of Kosovar “foreign fighters” is not huge–hundreds rather than thousands–but it represents an important qualitative shift in a country that has generally not taken religion too seriously. The government is now cracking down and has arrested more than 130 returnees.
Washington has a hard time even remembering that it once saved Kosovo from a Serbian onslaught that made half the Albanian population refugees. With threats throughout the Middle East and in Ukraine, few care much about Kosovo. But it behooves us to remember that a bit of diplomatic dynamism to help Kosovo to get into the EU’s visa waiver program and to sign a Stabilization and Association Agreement as well as enter NATO’s Partnership for Peace could go a long way to preventing further radicalization and ensuring that Kosovo becomes the consolidated European democracy it aspires to be.
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