Kinship and insurgency
Christopher Merriman, a second year student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, writes:
At a February 12, 2020 talk hosted by the SAIS African Studies department, Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University Janet Lewis proposed a theory that networks of ethnic kinship in Uganda help rebel groups expand from upstart organizations into viable groups.
Lewis’ research looks at 16 incipient rebel groups that have operated in Uganda since 1986. Her research question asks, “What factors enabled four of these groups to become ‘viable’ while the other 12 failed?” Lewis defines a rebel group as “viable” if it reaches a “minimal threshold of threatening the authority of the central government.” This threshold includes being based in the target country for more than 3 months and having at least 100 troops.
Lewis’ study found that the four rebel groups that became viable operated in ethnically homogeneous areas. Meanwhile, all of the 12 groups that failed to become viable operated in ethnically heterogeneous areas. Ethnic homogeneity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a rebel group to become viable. Not all groups from homogeneous areas became viable but viable groups all came from homogeneous regions.
Lewis grounds her argument in the precondition that incipient rebel groups are vulnerable to civilians telling the government of their existence. Rebel groups depend on civilians to keep their secrets. They are more likely to keep quiet if they have a favorable impression of the rebel group or think that the group will likely become “viable.”
According to Lewis, kinship networks in ethnically homogeneous regions facilitate the spread of positive information about the rebel groups. Members of ethnically-based kinship networks in homogeneous societies are much more likely to pass along information than groups of different ethnicities living in heterogeneous societies. Lewis conducted a study of two villages in Uganda that found that news traveled eight times more widely in a homogeneous village than in a heterogeneous one. These kinship networks will not necessarily spread “good news” about the rebel groups. However, kinship networks are necessary in order to spread favorable views of the rebel groups that prevent civilians from reporting the rebel group to the government. Kinship networks represent a necessary but not sufficient condition for a rebel group to become viable.
Lewis also found that the grievances of rebel groups are sometimes fueled by government responses to initial violence. Local grievances are often cited as a major reason for the formation of rebel groups or insurgencies and for their subsequent success. However, Lewis finds that rebel groups sometimes initiate violence, and only then gain grievances against the government due to government reprisals. She cited this as a reason for studying all rebel groups early on in their formation, not just those who become viable to the point that they become well-known.
Lewis does not consider group ideology a major factor in her analysis. In my view, this as a shortcoming of her model. For example, she compared two groups (one that became viable and one that did not) and argued that the main difference between the two was operating in a homogeneous/heterogeneous area. However, one group was fighting to return deposed president Milton Obote to power. Surely, this affected how the local people viewed this rebel group.
There are currently no rebel groups operating in Uganda. Lewis attributed this largely to the reign of president Yoweri Museveni, who himself started as a rebel. According to Lewis, Museveni understands the importance of controlling the flow of information. As a result, he has installed a “deeply penetrative civilian intelligence network.” Every village in Uganda has a security representative. As a result, no one bothers trying to start a rebel group anymore.
Museveni has been able to maintain security in Uganda by controlling access to information to the point that he can prevent incipient rebel groups from forming in the first place. Lewis, however, noted the negative side of this penetration. Uganda is a very repressive country with few civil liberties or viable opposition parties.
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Stevenson’s army, February 14 and 15
February 14
When I saw the list of military programs cut in order to fund the border wall in the new reprogramming request, I was reminded of the congressional backlash when Jimmy Carter, newly in office, vetoed a water projects bill, claiming waste. Speaker Tip O’Neill, who never did develop good relations with Carter, said, “He may know what’s in the budget, but he doesn’t kn ow WHERE it is.”
The Atlantic Council has more on NSA O’Brien’s talk, which it hosted. He claims he’s going back to the Scowcroft model. We can talk about that next week.
A close reading of Huawei statements suggests it can secretly access mobile networks.
NYT has more details on how the US-Taliban agreement will work in practice.
And remember, only a small fraction of people account for most political Tweets.
February 15
The White House sent its explanation/justification for the Suleimani killing to Congress on Friday. Just Security has a legal analysis. WaPo has a news story.
Sarah Binder notes the significance of the Senate vote on Iranian war requirements.
Pompeo’s revenge? He’s cutting aid to the NGO honoring Ambassador Stevens, killed at Benghazi.
DHS at war? Look what it’s doing.
Since US-India trade is part of next week’s exercise, see this CFR backgrounder.
Also see this new CRS paper.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Making retreat sound good
The United States is getting ready to retreat from Afghanistan. After more than 19 years of war following the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks, Washington has reached an agreement for a seven-day lull in attacks (not a formal ceasefire), after which the Taliban will negotiate a broader peace with Afghanistan government officials supposedly acting in their personal capacities. The US will reduce its presence from 13,000 troops to below 9,000 within months, whether or not the Afghans reach an agreement. Other arrangements remain secret but presumably include some sort of Taliban pledge not to provide safe haven to international terrorists as well as commitments on human rights, though these are likely to be vague, unenforceable, and perhaps worthless.
What this amounts to is US retreat from a theater in which more than about 2500 American military have lost their lives, and something like 10 times that number have been wounded. President Trump will vaunt this as fulfilling his campaign promise to end endless wars, but a substantial number of troops will remain at risk. The Afghanistan government may survive in Kabul, but the Taliban already control about 18% of its districts and contest another 48%:
US withdrawal and refocus on counterterrorism will likely increase those percentages, unless the Afghan security forces demonstrate much greater capability than they have to date.
At this point, there isn’t much of an alternative. The American public, pliable as it is on use of force in a crisis, doesn’t want recommitment to the fight in Afghanistan. President Trump has long been impatient with the war there. The Democrats don’t like it either. It has been clear since last fall’s abortive agreement, which Trump cancelled at the last minute due to renewed violence, that the American envoy, Zal Khalilzad, had no mandate or desire to press the Taliban for more than a decent exit and commitment to staving off Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
The Taliban see them at least in part as rivals for establishing Islamic governance, so there may be some reason to hope that they won’t quickly provide the kind of safe haven that Osama bin Laden enjoyed in the 1990s. Taliban ambitions mainly focus on restoring the Islamic Emirate inside Afghanistan, not projecting power beyond or provoking further intervention. They may even be prepared to fight the more internationally minded jihadis, if only to keep the Americans from renewed activity.
Afghanistan’s President Ghani, however, will have a lot to worry about once the Americans have drawn down. New York and Washington will not be at immediate risk, but Kabul will be. The population there may not want the Taliban to return, but history suggests the government has a hard time defending itself from insurgents in the countryside. Factiousness is endemic in Afghanistan. Ghani is not a man who compromises readily, and he wrote the book on Western-style statebuilding: Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding a Fractured World. Protecting the human rights of women, minorities, and Afghans committed to real democracy is going to be a tall order.
This is not the first of Trump’s retreats. He settled for little in the renegotiation of NAFTA, caved on the tariff war with the Chinese, backed off denuclearization of North Korea, all but abandoned the opposition to President Maduro in Venezuela, and floated a peace plan for Israel and Palestine that dropped like a stone. While he remains verbally belligerent to Iran, he thankfully seems to have given up on the drive to war. He has little to nothing to show for his belligerence and bravado on the world stage, where he is regarded more as buffoon than champion, except in Israel and Russia.
Being able to claim that he has ended the long war in Afghanistan will stand Trump in good stead with those who know nothing about Afghanistan during the coming election campaign. The flim-flam man will make a necessary retreat sound good.
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Ethiopians at loggerheads
The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, for restarting peace talks with Eritrea. Since taking office in 2018, he has initiated a series of reforms founded in a new ideology: medemer. Translated from Amharic, medemer means synergy and collectivism. On February 13, the United States Institute of Peace hosted a panel titled, A Changing Ethiopia: Understanding Medemer, with guests from Addis Ababa and Washington D.C.
The conversation was moderated by Aly Verjee, Senior Advisor of the Africa Program at USIP, with attendance from, Fitsum Arega Gebrekidan, Ethiopian Ambassador to the US, Lencho Bati, Senior Political, Diplomatic, and Foreign Policy Advisor, Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Mamo Mihretu, Senior Adviser on Policy Reforms and Chief Trade Negotiator, Office of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and Etana Dinka, Visiting Assistant Professor of African History at Oberlin College. The panel was very tense at moments and the discussion involved many audience reactions in the form of both applause and verbal boos.
What is medemer in practice?
Verjee persistently directed the panel numerous times to illuminate what medemer means in practice in Ethiopia, rather than what it means as an ideology. Despite Verjee’s tenacity, his question, although reemerging many times, lacked concrete responses. Ambassador Fitsum delineates medemer as a social contract for Ethiopians to live together and pool their sources and efforts to achieve collective prosperity. He professes it as “a convenant of peace that seeks unity in our community, humanity, practicing love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.” Lencho explains medemer as the Prime Minister’s way of organizing a society and achieving a middle ground between different ethnic, religious, and federal sectors. He classifies it as striking a balance between competition and cooperation. Mamo professes that memeder is used as a framework to reform policy by engaging the past in a productive way through acknowledgement and lessons of what was successful and unsuccessful, rather than completely erasing it. Etana, taking a radically different view than the government officials, proclaims, “for ordinary citizens, medemer is hell.”
Ongoing Reforms
Much of the panel discussion was composed of biting remarks between the Ethiopian government officials and Etana. When engaging with Verjee’s question about the type of reforms that Ethiopia should undergo, the officials agreed that the “home-grown economic plan” of partial privatization is necessary moving forward. Ambassador Fitsum identified this plan as a tailored, Ethiopia-specific plan that will help shift its agrarian society to become more industrialized. Overall, the officials noted a much more progressive society since the PM’s election.
Etana disagreed with this rosy analysis, claiming that since 2018, when the Prime Minister took power, Ethiopia has experienced significant violent clashes in the countryside and instead of fixing and reforming Ethiopia, the PM Prime Minister has been building a foundation to stay in power. Etana sees the main obstacle to reform as the Prime Minister.
In response, Ambassador Fitsum conceded that the government has been trying to implement this new philosophy first by teaching and then by applying law, highlighting that there is still room for growth in this process.
Abiy Ahmed as a Federalist?
The government representatives declare that the Prime Minister is a federalist; however, this received vehement criticism from Etana, who professes that the government is ignoring identity politics as well as the sharing of state power. Etana claims that if the Prime Minister were actually a federalist then there would not be clashes in certain states in Ethiopia and the Prime Minister would not be failing to recognize that some people want separate statehood.
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RS in doubt
Delvin Kovač of Vijesti.ba asked questions; I answered:
Representatives of Republika Srspska (RS) at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) will suspend their participation in decision-making on any matter within the jurisdiction of the BiH authorities until a new Law on the Constitutional Court of BiH is adopted, with no foreign judges.
This position was taken at yesterday’s meeting of RS officials, institutions and representatives of parliamentary parties based in that BiH entity, after the decision of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which declared unconstitutional the Law on Agricultural Land of the Entities of RS.
How do you see this newly created political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Seems like Bosnia remains politically deadlocked…
A: Indeed, deadlocked due to the Dayton peace accords, which left gaps and ambiguities that the RS exploits.
Q: Milorad Dodik said: “Either political leaders will come to a new agreement on what the Constitutional Court should look like, or Bosnia will be no more.” Is this a serious threat to Bosnia’s as well as Balkan’s peace and stability/security?
A: It certainly is, but it is not new. Dodik has been threatening the state for years. Were I a citizen, I would be concerned.
The real question is not whether the state should exist. It is whether RS should continue to exist, if it continues to make the state dysfunctional.Dodik also said that the RS National Assembly will adopt a decision to remove Serbian judges from the Constitutional Court of BiH. Can a lower level of government impose it’s decisions to a State?
I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that the RS Assembly can name judges to the Court. I don’t know if can remove them. Nor do I know what happens once their seats are empty. I imagine the Court could continue to function without them.
Q: Dodik also said he would inform president of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić about the newly created situation, adding that he would ask for Vučić’s “understanding”. What do you think about that?
A: I think it amounts to Dodik demonstrating once again his disloyalty to the state. Vučić needs to read Dodik the riot act, which in English means telling him that he has to stop the nonsense.
The EU accession process is becoming more conditioned. Brussels should make it clear to Vučić that getting Dodik to stop undermining the functionality of the state in Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the conditions for Serbian progress in negotiating accession.
Q: We now have HDZ BiH and it’s leader Dragan Čović blocking the formation of the Federation government by imposing changes to the Election Law on one side, as well as SNSD and it’s leader Milorad Dodik blocking the work of state instutitions on the other side. How do you comment on that?
A: Bosnia and Herzegovina is suffering because Dayton ensured the persistence in power of ethnic nationalists who conducted the 1992/95 war and remain uncommitted to the state. Until that is fixed, such blockages will remain frequent. Ultimately, it is up to the citizens whether they vote to undo the legal and constitutional provisions that make governance so difficult.
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Stevenson’s army, February 13
– Senate likely votes today on Sen. Kaine’s Iran war powers measure. Should pass, sure to be vetoed.
– A pro foreign aid group [yes, there is one] has its summary of the international affairs budget proposals by the administration.
– In our topic on the media and interest groups, we read a section from Dan Drezner’s book, The Idea Industry, where he raises concerns about foreign funders .of US think tanks. There’s a new report on that topic, which Drezner evaluates.
– In that same topic, I plan to add a new reading from Ezra Klein, who has a fine new book explaining why US politics has become so polarized. Here’s a review, telling some of its ideas.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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