Leaving no one behind in fragile states

Posted in Daniel Serwer - March 2, 2016 - 0 Comment

SAIS second year student Alexandra Martin reports from the World Bank’s Fragility Forum meeting this week in Washington:

The world appears to be particularly volatile these days, facing challenges that threaten and undermine development progress that has been achieved in the last decade. With an unstable MENA region and a disastrous war in Syria, the most alarming refugee crisis since the end of the World War II, and an increasingly fragile environment across the globe, the ambitious agendas of various international organizations are at risk.

From 1 to 3 March the World Bank is hosting the Fragility Forum 2016 under the theme “Take Action for Peaceful and Inclusive Societies.” Development, humanitarian, security and diplomatic actors are looking for ways forward in collaboration, in order to identify important new steps in reducing the underlying causes of fragility, conflict and violence. The World Bank Group has committed to achieve its own twin goals: to end extreme poverty by 2030 and to promote shared responsibility in a sustainable manner.

The opening panel of the Fragility Forum featured high level global personalities who discussed how to push forward the sustainable development agenda, including in particular the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: peace, justice and strong institutions. Here are a few of the highlights:

Sri Mulyani Indrawati (COO, The World Bank) emphasized the twin goals of the Bank and reiterated that the current and emerging threats such as extremism and inequality jeopardize efforts at ending poverty. She also called for collective institutional action that would enable closer cooperation between humanitarian, development, government and peace-building communities.

Jim Yong Kim (CEO, The World Bank) reminded the participants that “we put at risk our collective hope” to achieve our goals. Inequality has substantially increased and instability has become “normal.” The current situation in the Middle East and North Africa, especially the ongoing war in Syria, creates spill-over not only in the region but also beyond. Violence against civilians, forced displacement and terrorism are now part of a new paradigm in which peace and development must go hand in hand and not sequentially.

Kim asked the participants at the forum to respond to six questions relevant for work in the fragile environments:

  1. Fragility is not limited anymore to low income countries. How do we cope with this phenomenon in middle income countries?
  2. How do we improve service delivery and technical capacity in low income countries?
  3. How can the humanitarian and development people work better together: one humanity, shared responsibility?
  4. Most of the refugees around the world don’t live in camps anymore, creating pressure on the local communities. How can we ensure that both refugee and local communities are well served and their needs met?
  5. There is not enough ODA to satisfy current needs. What are the innovative financial instruments which can be implemented? For example, the newly created MENA Financing Facility ($1 billlion).
  6. We don’t know enough about refugees, who they are, what they want, what are their skills and capabilities, whom they left behind. How can we better adjust our programs to meet their needs?

In conclusion, he highlighted the risk of paying attention only when there is an acute crisis, like the refugee situation in Europe now. Intervention without follow-on efforts creates instability. The World Bank is committed to work together with its partners and join efforts to find new ways forward.

UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson brought to participants’ attention the new “5P agenda”: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. He cited the latest achievements at the global level, such as the SDGs and the Paris Agreement. “There is no peace without development, no development without peace and neither peace nor development without respect for human rights,” the UN DSG said while emphasizing that finding a settlement for protracted conflicts is increasingly difficult. There are several factors that trigger conflict: political rivalry, international interference, human rights violations, extremism or weak governance, but it is in everyone’s interest to find peaceful solutions to conflicts.

Eliasson conveyed three key messages:

  1. Preventing conflicts should become a top priority. This implies a better understanding of the early trends, before there is escalation. Much more pre- and post-conflict work is needed, from the first signs of instability to full recovery. Reducing the risks and building resilience remain an important objectives.
  2. The humanitarian needs must be reduced. Demands are overwhelming supply. 125 million people need humanitarian assistance today. The $16.4 billion UN response is falling short. The lack of funds affects peoples’ lives
  3. We must work together. To achieve sustainable peace, more targeted resources that reduce the sources of conflict must be put together. National ownership, national capacities and national leadership need to be supported with international technical assistance.

Last, but not least, Eliasson asked the participants to think about the shared humanity and responsibility that drive our actions and the importance to us all of responding to the expectations of impoverished people. Multilateral cooperation, combined with more credible institutions, are a way forward. Fragmentation of efforts is costly and ineffective. There are no quick and easy fixes to address the disillusion and grievances of the people worldwide.

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Filling Bosnia’s reform gaps 2

Posted in Daniel Serwer - March 2, 2016 - 0 Comment

Kurt Bassuener of the Democratization Policy Council replied to my Filling Bosnia’s reform gaps:

You’re right, Dan, about the fear element in voting. But fear and patronage are usually a package deal. For example, if a) you’re not sure your vote is actually secret (a commonly held concern) and b) Uncle Adnan has a public sector job and feeds a family of five, are you really going to vote for the powers-that-be? Doubtful. You may stay home, disgusted with all the options on the menu – 46% of the eligible electorate did precisely that. And voters have voted in the past for alternatives, but have usually been disappointed. Witness the SDP’s rise in 2010 and fall in 2014, after a massive proportion of its vote punished the party for perceived betrayal.

So the sense of disgust, despair and hopelessness around elections is justified – one’s vote, at least above the municipal level (where mayors are directly elected), doesn’t seem to matter a bit in terms of delivering meaningful change. The fact that the SDA and HDZ, two parties which have been at the trough since Dayton (with brief spells in the wilderness at the state and entity, but never cantonal, levels) got elected not in spite of what they are, but because of what they are: parties of power and patronage. All voters are rational actors acting within a perverse incentive structure that once was constrained by the “international community,” but hasn’t been for a decade. Voting is purely transactional for a large segment of the electorate, not votes of affirmation.

What’s telling is that even the self-described civic parties – SDP, DF, and Nasa Stranka – exerted no appreciable effort to seek Serb votes in the RS. I’m not saying that’s an easy task. This assessment of seven polls by Valery’s former colleague Raluca Raduţa demonstrates there is a lot of potential common ground with which to work. But to transform that latent potential into political and social power, an effort to develop a supermajority behind a positive agenda for a rules-based society would have to begin well before an election. The only way to change the system through the system would require a coherent 2/3 majority (including overriding the entity vote) behind a common agenda. Nobody is aiming that high right now.

There is no obvious political vehicle – and as you note, no international will to be a catalyst. The understandable but myopic focus solely on “CVE” [countering violent extremism] neglects the fact that by effectively paying for quiet (while thinking it is buying stability), the West is supporting the patronage structure and maintaining a system which can only generate violent extremism. So the current approach amounts to whack-a-mole triage to deal with effects after years of unwillingness to tackle the systemic root cause: institutionalized lack of accountability.

This isn’t a problem that can be solved programmatically; it’s a POLICY problem. Absent the will to be confrontational with the beneficiaries of the Dayton system, who are supposed to be partners in reform according to the EU’s enlargement theology, even the programs you suggest, Dan, won’t make a dent. The West has it within its power to painfully constrain the political class’ room to maneuver by reducing their ability to leverage fear, then their ability to employ patronage funded with external infusions. Then developing a partnership with citizens to squeeze them in the right direction is possible.

Finally, “holding perpetrators accountable” means getting them convicted and keeping them convicted in the second instance, which rarely if ever happens. Right now, it seems likely that the EU will surrender on a crucial element of BiH’s judicial architecture – the ability of the state to assume cases begun at lower levels if it is determined the crimes in question have sufficient impact on the state. RS Prime Minister Dodik has wanted this for a long time, but politicians in both entities would benefit from a retreat on this, getting de facto immunity.

If the US and EU were serious on criminal accountability – and on “CVE” – we’d maintain that extended jurisdiction, and furthermore return international prosecutors and judges to the state judicial systems organized crime and corruption investigation, prosecution, and adjudication continuum. The Organized Crime and Corruption  chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the body which tries violent extremism and terrorism-related cases, so if we’re really serious, that’s where it will show.

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Filling Bosnia’s reform gaps

Posted in Daniel Serwer - March 1, 2016 - 3 Comments

This USAID “gap analysis” for Bosnia and Herzegovina dropped into my inbox last week. I encourage those interested in the prospects for political and economic reform there to have a flip through the powerpoint slides. Bottom line: whatever the international community and the Bosnians have been doing about reform since 2006, it isn’t working.

There are likely several reasons for this. The ethnonationalist polarization of Bosnian politics intensified rapidly in 2006 after the rejection of the “April package” of constitutional amendments. Bosniak candidate for the presidency Haris Silajdzic amped up his rhetoric against Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik, who replied in kind. Both enjoyed political success as a result, though Dodik has last much longer and gotten much louder.

At about the same time, the European Union chose Christian Schwarz-Schilling as the international community’s High Representative responsible for ensuring implementation of the Dayton accords. Schwarz-Schilling was committed to lightening the touch of the Hirep and vowed not to use the dictatorial “Bonn powers” that had been bestowed on that office in 1997. This relieved a great deal of the pressure for reform and freed the country’s politicians to pursue their private interests at the expense of the state, as they would no longer find themselves summarily sacked for doing so.

The financial crisis of 2007/8 then took the wind out of the Bosnian economy’s sails. With growth slackening, the politicians found less cream to skim and naturally slowed the pace of reform even further, hoping to husband some state resources for their own benefit and to protect themselves from the electorate’s wrath at the reduced patronage benefits available. The corrupt and costly consequences of their behavior are well-documented. Corruption in Bosnia is not an aberration. It is the system, as Valery Perry has recently shown.

The question is: what should a foreign assistance organization like USAID do with its money in a situation like this?

Obviously not what it was doing before, which was grants to lots of widely scattered even if worthy projects. Nor, in my view, should it try to push reform by financing it. The money AID is likely to have in the future for Bosnia is nowhere near enough to convince a rational actor to undertake the kinds of reforms that are needed. Only the EU and the international financial institutions have that kind of money these days.

But conditionality and external pressure is not enough. The current Bosnian leaders won’t reform unless they feel some pressure not only from the international community but also from their own constituencies. One of the few reforms Bosnia has gotten right in recent years is its electoral system, which runs reasonably well. The problem has been that voters keep electing the same ethnonationalists who promise to protect them from other ethnonationalists. This mutual security dilemma keeps all three varieties in power, each for fear of the others.

Were I in charge, I would take all of the AID money and put it on a single objective: mounting a serious, sustained campaign across ethnic lines to unseat corrupt politicians and replace them with people committed to transparent and accountable governance, again across ethnic lines. The money might go to independent investigatory media, auditing bodies, judicial training, civil society organizations and thinktanks to support the kind of analysis and social mobilization required to unveil corrupt practices and hold perpetrators accountable.

The 2009 AID Anticorruption Assessment Handbook recommends pretty much that kind of program. In a country where “high-level figures collude to weaken political/economic competitors,” it suggests:

–seek gradual pluralization of political system with new competing groups emerging based on open, vigorous and broad-based economy

–build independence and professionalism in the bureaucracy, courts and legislative institutions.

There is a serious question whether an effort of this sort can be run out of an American embassy. Valery Perry thinks yes. I doubt it. American embassies have too many  other urgent priorities to worry about the merely important. The latest is countering recruitment of foreign fighters, which has pretty much taken precedence in all countries with significant Muslim populations for the past year or two. Bosnia has contributed a more than proportionate number of fighters, so that priority is likely to crowd out most everything else.

Of course any ambassador  worth her salt would want to know if the US government is funding a program of the sort I suggest and exercise oversight. But wisdom might dictate that it be conducted, transparently and accountably, through non-governmental channels. There are lots of American and non-American civil society organizations capable of such work. I hope they get the resources needed to make a real go of it.

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Drumpf

Posted in Daniel Serwer - February 29, 2016 - 0 Comment

@ShibleyTelhami recommends this John Oliver video as “biting and hilarious; worth watching.” I think it is more sad than hilarious, but still worth watching:

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ISIS recruitment

Posted in Ceighley Cribb - February 29, 2016 - 1 Comment

On Thursday, the Middle East Institute and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies hosted ‘Recruiting for Jihad: The Allure of ISIS.’ Charles Lister, Resident Fellow at the Middle East Institute, Ahmet Sait Yayla, Terrorism and Radicalization Specialist and Chair of the Sociology Department at Harran University, Turkey, and Anne Speckhard, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University and Director of the International Canter for the Study of Violent Extremism, all presented their thoughts on who ISIS attracts. Daniel Serwer, Professor of Conflict Management at Johns Hopkins SAIS and Scholar at the Middle East Institute, moderated.

Lister believes that every case is unique when it comes to who is recruited into ISIS. It recruits from all over. There is no single profile of a person most likely to join.Its strategies have been effective to the point where it is no longer only a regional terrorist organization, but a global one. In the past few years, ISIS has recruited about 50,000 people. The group now has a presence in countries in and around North Africa and the Middle East. ISIS has an unofficial presence in many other countries.

Lister attributes ISIS success in recruitment to five factors:

  1. Exploitation of chaos in Syria
  2. Military success
  3. Undermining of its rivals and adversaries
  4. Creation of a clear, alternative way of life
  5. Exploitation of media and social media

Though ISIS uses all these methods for radicalization, recruitment is most successful with personal contact, both over the Internet and in the privacy of homes. This makes forming effective counter-recruitment  difficult.

Lister suggested several counters to ISIS recruitment. Fighting ISIS directly on the battlefield, targeting its leadership and finance, working more with rebel groups on the ground, and enhancing border surveillance are all ways to combat ISIS. Lister added that encouraging a safe space for a healthy, dynamic debate on sensitive issues will help in the fight against the Islamic State.

Yayla spoke mainly on the ISIS presence in Turkey and Turkish fighters that joined ISIS. Out of the 5,000 people from Turkey currently fighting with various groups within Syria, around 1,200 to 1,400 are working with ISIS. These people keep passing the Turkish-Syrian border. On the border, villages are close together, and many of the people directly across the border are friends and family. Villagers and the ISIS Turkish fighters know each other well and do what needs to be done for one another. Many of the people passing these borders are smuggling weapons and supplies.

For ISIS recruitment in Turkey, social media has a large impact. Facebook videos of Turkish ISIS and Jahbat al-Nusra fighters convince some to join the groups. They subtitle these videos in Turkish to appeal to the Turkish audience. Many Turkish recruits worked previously with al-Qaeda previously. They reach out to their close circles of friends in order to recruit. Criminals from Istanbul and Ankara are attracted to ISIS as they need money. ISIS provides $200/month stipends. Living on the streets in Turkey is much worse to these people than living a better life with ISIS in Syria.

Speckhard has interviewed terrorists, defectors, and family members of terrorists. She believes ISIS has been successful in recruitment because of four factors:

  1. Representation of an alternative world order
  2. Promotion of its ideology
  3. Some level of social support
  4. Individual vulnerability

Speckhard focused on the individual vulnerability to recruitment. Desires for revenge and prior trauma make people vulnerable. Those not in conflict zones watch videos of places like Iraq and want to be a part of something. Unemployment is a big factor in recruitment. Sexual rewards, as an ISIS fighter is given a wife, are also a motivation in joining. ISIS provides immediate satisfaction and relief. People are drawn to this.

ISIS provides an alternative to marginalization. Speckhard pressed for a civil rights movement and more effective integration, especially in Europe. The solution to marginalization will have to be legally enforced. She added that it is important to work with Turkey and support Greece going forward, in order to lessen the number of vulnerable people.

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Peace picks February 29-March 4

Posted in Ceighley Cribb - February 28, 2016 - 0 Comment
  1. Analyzing the Results of the February 26 Iranian Elections | Wednesday, March 2nd | 10:00-11:30 | Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The event will analyze the results of the February 26 elections for the Consultative Assembly and the Assembly of Experts, focusing on how these elections will influence Iran’s domestic and international policies. Panelists will also discuss recent political and economic developments in light of the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Speakers include Bernard Hourcade, Global Fellow at the Wilson Center and Senior Research Fellow Emeritus at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Suzanne Maloney, Deputy Director of Foreign Policy and Senior Fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy, Energy Security and Climate Initiative at Brookings Institution, and Mohsen Milani, Executive Director of the USF World Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies (CSDS) at the University of South Florida and Professor of the Dep’t of Gov’t & International Affairs. The moderator will be Haleh Esfandiari, Public Policy Fellow and former Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
  1. Libya: What’s Next? | Wednesday, March 2nd | 3:30-5:00 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | In recent weeks, policymakers in Western capitals have expressed an increasing willingness to intervene militarily against the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) in its Libyan coastal stronghold of Sirte, driven in part by an uptick in devastating attacks on Libya’s oil ports by ISIS fighters and the group’s expanding influence along Libya’s coast. Please join the Atlantic Council on March 2, 2016 for a discussion on the protracted struggle for political and military control over Libya. Claudia Gazzini will share her expertise and research on Libya’s recent developments, the rise of ISIS, and recommendations for the development of Libya’s institutions based on recent visits to Tripoli. Karim Mezran will moderate the discussion. As Senior Analyst for Libya, Dr. Claudia Gazzini oversees and directs International Crisis Group’s reporting and analysis on Libya. Dr. Karim Mezran is a Senior Fellow at the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, where he focuses on the political developments of North Africa.
  2. Internet Freedom in the Age of Dictators and Terrorists | Thursday, March 3rd | 10:00-11:30 | The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe | The original promise of the internet as a mechanism for free exchange of information and greater democratization seems a dream from a distant past. Authoritarian leaders in China, Russia and around the world seek to build walls around their country’s internet and censor incoming information and online discourse, while in free societies we are grappling with the right balance between security and privacy of online information in the face of terrorist threats. The briefing will focus on internet freedom broadly, including censorship and surveillance; and trends in how internet companies are evolving to handle increased government requests from law enforcement. In addition, panelists will discuss the role of export controls in ensuring that U.S. and European technologies do not contribute to human rights abuses. The following panelists are scheduled to participate: Lisl Brunner, Director of Policy and Learning, Global Network Initiative, Rebecca MacKinnon, Director, Ranking Digital Rights, and Tim Maurer, Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
  3. Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics | Friday, March 4th | 10:00-11:00 | Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Dr. Joseph Sassoon’s book, Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics, investigates the system of authoritarianism in eight Arab republics through the prism of more than 120 memoirs of senior officials and opponents. This book aims to enrich the understanding of authoritarianism that prevailed in these countries and the difficult process of transition from authoritarianism that began after 2011. Joseph Sassoon, Associate Professor at Georgetown University and former Fellow at the Wilson Center will give a talk, while Henri J. Barkey, Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center will moderate.
  1. Beyond 2016: Security challenges and opportunities for the next administration | Tuesday, March 1st | 9:00-4:15 | Brookings | REGISTER TO ATTEND | On March 1, the seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium will feature the independent research produced by members of the military services and federal agencies who are currently serving at think-tanks and universities across the nation. Organized by the fellows themselves, the symposium provides a platform for building greater awareness of the cutting-edge work that America’s military and governmental leaders are producing on key national security policy issues. With presidential primary season well underway, it’s clear that whoever emerges in November 2016 as the next commander-in-chief will have their hands full with a number of foreign policy and national security choices. This year’s panels will explore these developing issues and their prospects for resolution after the final votes have been counted. During their keynote conversation, the Honorable Michèle Flournoy will discuss her assessment of the strategic threat environment with General John Allen, USMC (Ret.), who will also provide opening remarks on strategic leadership and the importance of military and other federal fellowship experiences. After each panel and discussion, participants will take audience questions. Panel information and panelists may be found here.
  1. Human Rights Abuses in Putin’s Russia | Wednesday, March 2nd | 2:30-4:00 | Atlantic Council | On February 27, one year ago, Boris Nemtsov was gunned down just steps away from the Kremlin. His murder has since become the symbol of the increasing oppression and human rights abuses in Russia under President Putin. To mark the one year anniversary of Boris Nemtsov’s death, the Senate Human Rights Caucus and the Atlantic Council will host a discussion on human rights abuses in Putin’s Russia. This briefing will also seek to examine the current political environment in Russia and address important questions, including: What human rights violations are occurring? How can policymakers support human rights in Russia? This will be a conversation with Senator Mark Kirk, Illinois senator, U.S. Senate, Carl Gershman, President of the National Endowment for Democracy, Rob Berschinski, Deputy Assistant of State for the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor for the U.S. Department of State, and Paula Dobriansky, Senior Fellow for the JFK Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. John Herbst, Director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council will introduce and moderate the event.
  2. Violence and Gender: The Other Side of Pakistan’s Urban Unrest | Wednesday, March 2nd | 3:00-4:40 | Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Much of the international focus on violence in Pakistan’s cities tends to revolve around terrorism perpetrated by Islamist extremist groups. In reality, a variety of other major factors drive violence in urban Pakistan as well—including issues associated with water access, waste disposal, transport, and drugs and alcohol. In these cases, gender considerations play a key role. Canada’s International Center for Development Research (IDRC) and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) recently funded a two-year research project examining how gender and violence intersect in the megacity of Karachi, Pakistan’s financial capital and largest city, and in the twin cities of Islamabad/Rawalpindi, the federal capital and home to military headquarters, respectively. The research was jointly undertaken by the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi and King’s College in London. This event will highlight some of the project’s major findings and possible implications for international assistance programs in urban Pakistan. Speakers include Amiera Sawas, Researcher at Imperial College, London, and Daanish Mustafa, Reader of the Department of Geography at King’s College, London.
  3. The Syrian Jihad: A Book Launch with Charles Lister | Friday, March 4th | 12:00-1:15 | Middle East Institute | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The Middle East Institute (MEI) is pleased to announce the U.S. launch of the latest book by terrorism expert and Middle East Institute Resident Fellow Charles Lister, The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Evolution of an Insurgency (Oxford University Press, 2016). In the book, Lister assesses and explains the emergence of Sunni jihadist movements within Syria’s fledgling insurgency, charts their evolution, and situates them within the global jihadist project. Unprecedented numbers of foreign fighters have joined such groups, who will almost certainly continue to host them. The book scrutinizes the strategic and tactical lessons learned from other jihadist conflict zones, as well as the complex interplay between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and how their relationship has influenced the jihadist sphere both inside Syria and worldwide. Copies of the book in limited number will be available for purchase and signing at the event. MEI Vice President for Policy and Research Paul Salem will moderate.
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