Tag: Democracy and Rule of Law
Kosovo’s contradictions
I’ve been slow to write about my stay week before last in Pristina, where I was teaching at the American University of Kosovo and talking with both old friends and new. Caveat emptor: they are overwhelmingly middle class folks in or near Pristina who are doing much better than average.
My impressions are contradictory. Here are some of the them:
- Pristina is a far more cheerful place than once it was, but the complaints are loud and long.
No one seems to think the city is improving, but the improvements are dramatic: the Mother Teresa Boulevard pedestrian zone is crowded day and night, mainly with young people and children. The restaurants and cafes have multiplied many times over the past twenty years. The cafes are jammed, the restaurants less so. New hotels are popping up here and there, including a Marriott on its way. The CityInn and its restaurant, where we stayed, were first-rate. Traffic often moves slowly, but Kosovar drivers are remarkably indulgent of pedestrians, at least those who cross on the zebra stripes, and respectful of the traffic signals. Neither honking nor screeching brakes are common. The airport, a chaotic nightmare for years after the war, is a model of order and decorum both arriving and departing.
2. The country is overwhelmingly Muslim, but few women “cover” and few men go to mosque.
Some Kosovars are undoubtedly more religious than once they were, especially in the countryside. It would be surprising if the end of Communist and Serbian repression of Islam did not lead to more overt signs of religiosity. Perhaps one in a hundred women on the street in Pristina covers her hair, many still wearing tight jeans. Far fewer wear burqas. The Saudis and especially the Turks have been paying to rehabilitate mosques, and one person, horrified, showed me a photograph of a couple of dozen men blocking a (small) street during Friday prayers. Young people out for the evening circulate mostly in single-gender groups, not mixed male and female. Still, Riyadh and Ankara must be disappointed in the returns on their religious investments, at least in Pristina.
3. Many people think the country is headed in the wrong direction, even if the economy is thriving relative to the rest of the Balkans.
Kosovo’s economy has grown every year since 2003, and the entrepreneurs I spoke with are pleased with how things are going, but recent NDI polling suggests a plurality of both Albanians and Serbs are disappointed. The focus of their disillusion is the government: it has failed to convince a large slice of the population that the institutions will treat them fairly, especially when it comes to jobs. Everyone complains about corruption, but somehow the same political parties and personalities keep winning elections. Patronage is part of the answer: the incumbents always seem to be able to offer employment and pensions. Corruption is a big issue for everyone I spoke with, but Kosovars tend to interpret prosecutions, which are increasing, as a sign of how bad things are rather than how the courts are beginning to do their job.
4. Kosovars got their own state, but they don’t all want to keep it.
Every time I visit Kosovo, I meet people who tell me they would give up independence and their own state for union with Albania. They hold that view despite the miserable performance of the Albanian politicians: political Tirana is far more conflictual than political Pristina. Governance there is pretty bad. But for some people ethnic solidarity is more important. “We are the same people” they declare, despite the history of differences. Albania during the Cold War was an isolated and absolute dictatorship allied with Communist China while Kosovo enjoyed relative autonomy in non-aligned Yugoslavia. The border between the two was a hard one, both politically and topographically. Kosovo’s links to Europe are mainly to Germany and Switzerland while Albania’s are more towards Italy. The Serb presence in Kosovo is also a key distinguishing characteristic. Without it, Kosovo would look much more like the eastern province of Albania than a distinct polity worthy of its own state. But you can’t expect someone who wants his capital in Tirana to worry much about that.
5. The environment is polluted, but nature is beautiful.
The big problem is air pollution. Pristina is among the worst cities in Europe to breathe in. But wherever the bulldozers have not yet arrived, the natural environment is appealing and sometimes spectacular. We drove from sleepy Dragas north through bustling Djakovica/Djakova to Decan/Decani, where the Serb monastery and church look out towards the mountainous route to Montenegro. I’ve been into the mountains around the Brezovica area as well. Very nice. We unfortunately didn’t make it to the Rugova Valley, which I gather is also attractive. Just outside Pristina is the huge Germia park, with its gargantuan swimming pool, and even the parks inside the city are improving.
6. The place is peaceful, but not reconciled.
One Kosovo politician told me Albanians and Serbs are no longer prepared to kill each other, almost no matter what. The fever has passed, he suggested. But there are still resentments and distrust. Little has been done to reconcile: Serbia has not apologized for its homicidal repression and Kosovars are still treating all their fighters as heroes, even though they are aware that some killed innocent Albanians and Serbs, including after the war. The peace is personal more than political. While I understand domestic violence is a serious problem in Kosovo, during a week of walking many miles in its streets and parks, I never heard a voice raised in anger, even addressed to a recalcitrant child. At least in public, where evereyone seems to know everyone else’s cousin, Kosovars seem determined to keep the peace.
7. It’s stable, even if the Prime Minister had to go to The Hague.
Called to face the Special Tribunal at The Hague charged with investigating crimes in Kosovo, Prime Minister Haradinaj resigned, a couple of days after he and I had a chat about the dialogue with Belgrade and the tariffs he had imposed on Serbian goods, in retaliation for Serbia’s successful campaign against acceptance of Kosovo in international organizations (most notably UNESCO and Interpol). His two previous war crimes indictments, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, caused unrest in Kosovo. This time around things have been calm. Elections are expected in September or maybe October. Ramush likely believes the court’s actions will redound to his eventual political benefit, as did the previous indictments. That has been true throughout the Balkans: those pursued by the courts have been greeted by their ethnic compatriots as heroes, not villains.
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Don’t blame Mueller
Yesterday’s appearance confirmed what we already knew about Special Counsel Mueller and his report: yes on President Trump’s obstruction of justice, no exoneration on either obstruction or conspiracy with the Russians, whose help the Trump campaign openly welcomed.
Some are disappointed. I’m not. No one should have expected this taciturn and self-controlled lawyer, a life-long Republican, to eviscerate the President.
But what he did is more than enough to begin an impeachment inquiry. Speaker Pelosi is holding back until she is certain of bipartisan support in the House and perceives an inkling that some Republican Senators might be amenable. That will only happen if public sentiment turns against Trump, which it manifestly has not yet. He is at the peak of his popularity, even if the peak is low. Pelosi is as savvy a political operator as exists on The Hill today. She is more interested in beating Trump in the 2020 election than in helping him turn out his base with an impeachment inquiry.
Mueller was interesting on the question of the President’s credibility. He hinted that lack of credibility was among the reasons he did not subpoena Trump–what light could a committed liar shed on the facts?–along with pressure to complete the investigation. We all know where that pressure was coming from. I might have preferred that Mueller force testimony from the President and catch him perjuring himself. That is what got President Clinton impeached. But to expect that of the super-cautious Mueller would be wrong. Unlike Ken Starr, he is not a perjury trap kind of guy. He stuck to his mandate.
The action now will shift in two directions: counterintelligence and financial investigations, the latter also in New York State. Mueller was unequivocal in calling out the Russians not only for interfering in 2016 but for continuing to do so up to the present, and intending to do so through 2020. His message was clear: you haven’t done enough to prevent it. Senator Majority Leader McConnell claims that a few hundred million dollars in grants to the states is a sufficient response. That amounts to less than $10 million per state. It’ll surely go far.
The President’s financial shenanigans are both obvious and obscure. Deutsche Bank, the only one prepared to loan Trump money after his bankruptcies, is under investigation for multiple malfeasances. It’s hard not to imagine that Trump’s real estate business was recycling Russian oligarchs’ ill-gotten gains, with the help of Deutsche Bank. We don’t yet have the outcome of a serious investigation, but there must be good reasons why Trump has gone into Federal court to block New York State from getting his tax returns.
Mueller did his job: he gathered incontrovertible evidence of Donald Trump’s unfitness for office. The problem is the country, which Trump has succeeded in dividing so profoundly that close to half of voters would let him shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, as he claimed in 2016:
America needs to set this right, either by impeachment and conviction or by electoral defeat. Neither course of action is Mueller’s responsibility.
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The waiting game should end
Since February 2019, millions of Algerians throughout the country have assembled en masse to demonstrate frustration and dissatisfaction with the political system of former president Abdel-Aziz Bouteflika, who had announced his candidacy for a fifth mandate. The combination of rampant corruption within the ranks of the senior officials alongside Bouteflika’s physical and mental impairment led Algerians to say enough. As the popular movement (Hirak) expanded and demonstrations grew larger and more consistent with each passing Friday, Bouteflika’s long-standing reign over Algeria came to an end in April with news of his resignation. Hirak now is in its 22nd week, maintaining its peaceful nature despite arrests and imprisonment of protesters and opposition figures.
Realizing the importance of Algeria, the Brookings Institution hosted an event on “Algeria’s Uprising: Protesters and the Military” on July 17. While the event was introduced by Vice President and Director Bruce Jones, the panel was composed of Africa Policy Analyst Alexis Arieff, Visiting Fellow Sharan Grewal, former Ambassador to Algeria Robert Ford. Brookings Senior Fellow Tamara Cofman Wittes moderated.
The event revolved around the findings of a survey Grewal conducted of over 9,000 Algerians via Facebook advertisements that targeted Algerians above the age of 18 and living in Algeria. In order to perform a comparative study between civilians and military personnel, the program used targeted individuals who showed an interest in or stated that they are part of the military in any way.
Of the 9,000 Algerians surveyed, over 7,000 were civilian, while just under 2,000 were military. Grewal presented the data through a series of graphs that covered topics such as support for protest goals, the scheduled July 4th Presidential elections, and potential civil-military frictions. Results showed a divide between junior and senior officers in the military, as soldiers and junior officers tended to side with the protest movement and the civilian population at large.
Following the presentation of the findings, Grewal was joined by Arieff, Cofman-Wittes, and Ford to discuss the numbers as well as the political climate in Algeria. What makes the Algerian movement so unique is that it has remained peaceful 5 months on—a feat that contrasts with the country’s brutal “Black Decade” civil war in the 1990s.
Arieff, comparing the two events, remarked that Algerians learned from the experiences of Syria and Libya as well as their own: they are reluctant to undergo a repetition of the civil war that traumatized a generation. Additionally, Arieff noted that the senior leadership in the military has observed that repression can backfire, as in Tunisia.
Although the Hirak has endured, it is not clear what will happen next. According to Grewal, the regime is unable to build a roadmap without the people’s consent since doing so will be rejected during the Friday protests. The next step should be a dialogue between the people and the current leadership; however, as Grewal pointed out, without the removal of the 2Bs (Bensalah and Bedoui)—both represent the old regime—such negotiations and talks will most likely not come about.
Ford noted that the next step should the emergence of a candidate or political group that represents Hirak; however, many have been reluctant to do so for fear of being discredited or targeted. Military pressure has not
As Ford remarked, “if you are in the game you can achieve gradual, but real change.” While the tens of millions of Algerians participating in the democratic protests for over 20 weeks is an achievement, setting the gears in motion for a governmental transition should be the next step.
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Calm in Pristina
I’ve been in Pristina all week, where yesterday Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj resigned. A Special Tribunal concerned with crimes committed after its 1998-99 war has summoned him to The Hague. It is not yet known whether he is an indictee or a witness. He has been tried twice before at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and found not guilty.
I talked with the Prime Minister Wednesday. He gave no hint of what was coming and likely didn’t know.
It’s a fraught time here. Tariffs Ramush levied on Serbian imports have stalled a European Union dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina that aimed to resolve the many issues remaining a generation after Slobodan Milosevic expelled half of Kosovo’s Albanian population but yielded after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign to UN administration of the Serbian-ruled province. Kosovo is now a parliamentary democracy–not yet recognized as sovereign by some–that requires elections within 45 days of resignation of the prime minister. The opposition, which had aimed for elections in October, is unlikely to be ready for them by the beginning of September.
Some will wonder whether the United States is behind the judicial maneuver that caused Ramush to resign. The Special Court is constituted under Kosovo law, but manned by mostly Europeans with an American chief prosecutor, one appointed by the Trump Administration. You don’t even have to be a practiced conspiracy theorist to imagine that the Americans, who were upset with Ramush’s tariffs and opposition to an ethnically based land swap deal with Belgrade, decided to get rid of him.
If so, they’ve made a big mistake. Ramush’s previous two court battles in The Hague did nothing but increase his popularity here. The tariffs and opposition to the land swap deal are popular here. Ramush’s summons to The Hague is far more likely to strengthen his political support than diminish it.
But it may well be that the court, acting on its own volition, thinks it has reason to question Ramush or even indict him. We just don’t know. Certainly Serbs and Albanians were murdered after the war; most people here think the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) of which Ramush was then a regional commander was in part responsible. I would favor holding the guilty accountable for those crimes. But it would be entirely premature to judge who.
So far, the popular reaction to Ramush’s resignation is calm. We attended the ongoing Pristina Film Festival last night, across from the Prime Minister’s office. A street basketball tournament occupied the space between the two. Families strolled happily in Mother Teresa Boulevard. Of course all that could change, but for the moment people seem more interested in enjoying the relatively cool, clear weather than worrying about what has happened to their prime minister.
Kosovo President Thaci, also a former KLA cadre, will need now to oversee the formation of some sort of caretaker government. That itself will be difficult as Ramush had a narrow margin in parliament. The election outcome is unpredictable. That’s the good news: despite political party abuses both in the campaigns and at the polling places, the press here is free by Balkan standards and elections are serious political contests. Coalition formation before and after leaves a lot uncertain about their outcome.
Elections are inherently divisive. Before it goes back to talks with Belgrade, Pristina will need more unity than it has had during Ramush’s tenure. My advice to whoever the powers will be: the only way to get a good deal is to be willing to walk away from a bad one. And the only way to make a good deal stick is to ensure that most of the citizens are convinced it is good.
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Only time will tell
Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won Mexico’s July 1 presidential election with 5
Keen on understanding Mexico’s current political situation, the Woodrow Wilson Center hosted an event on AMLO and the Fourth Transformation: One Year After Historic Election Victory on July 8. The panel was composed of Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas Professors Blanca Heredia and Mariá Amparo Casar, Global Fellow and Director of Buendia & Laredo Jorge Buendia, as well as Albright Stonebridge Group Senior Vice President Antonio Ortiz-Mena. The panel was moderated by Deputy Director of the Mexico Institute, Christopher Wilson.
Wilson underlined that AMLO promised to fight corruption, portraying himself as someone who could be trusted also to maintain fiscal responsibility. The question is whether his wave of support will continue or crash? AMLO had one-third of voter support in 2006 and 2012, but he currently has an approval rating between 60 to 70 percent—impressive when compared with former President Peña Nieto. Expectations are high.
For example, 41
Blanca indicated that language is key for AMLO. He treats corruption as a moral rather than a legal problem. In addition, he focuses on transformation but not goals: destruction of the old system rather than construction of a new one. The new leadership has been described as a populist regime in the making—one that is unique because it is situated on the left side of the political spectrum. It is all about breaking apart a system that excludes parts of society. Blanca concluded that there is an opportunity to move away from the deformed development that has hindered Mexico in the past.
Though AMLO has indicated that he has already met 78 out of the 100 promises he made, Amparo Casar suggests AMLO administration policies aimed at security, inequality, and corruption are not as effective as they could be. AMLO’s insistence that “nothing and no one is above the law” and “if you have to choose between justice and the law, do not hesitate, choose justice” can be problematic and dangerous in a country like Mexico.
Ortiz-Mena concluded with an economic perspective—looking at the possibility of increased stability and growth in Mexico. While the growth rate has remained around that seen under Peña Nieto—2.3 percent—Ortiz-Mena believes that Mexico can reach a growth rate of 4
The panel showed wide variance on Mexico’s prospects. It is still not clear whether there will be major changes, or whether the country will regress to familiar patterns. A serious transformation is still uncertain. Only time will tell.
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Basra protests and the future of Iraq
June 6 the Middle East Institute hosted Akeet Abbas, professor at the American University of Iraq, Basma Alloush, advocacy and communications officer at the Norwegian Refugee Council USA, James “Mac” Skelton, director at the Institute of Regional and International Studies, and Bilal Wahab, fellow at The Washington Institute on Near East Policy for a panel on rising tension and unrest in Iraq in the wake of the 2018 Basra protests. Randa Slim, senior fellow and director of the Program on Conflict Resolution and Track II dialogues at the Middle East Institute moderated the discussion.
Skelton explained that the rhetoric of the Basra protestors was aimed at overturning the entire governance system. Protestors targeted not only government office buildings, but also political party offices. People felt that the traditional patronage system that operates through the party system has failed them because of rampant co-option of abundant resources (i.e. oil) in Basra. This vying for control is cyclical in nature between political parties. For example, currently the Hikma party “owns” the oil fields as well the Basra Oil Company (BOC), but before them it was the Dawa party.
According to Skelton, the resultant dynamic is “government dysfunction at every level.” So many actors capture the state that no project can be completed. Lack of electricity and clean water were among the rallying calls of protesters. Skelton also pointed to a closed network of jobs and opportunities as catalysts for the Basra protests.
Abbas explained that while protests were not a novel occurrence in Iraq, the 2018 protest in Basra was the first time that popular dissent gained traction within the Shia majority. Before Basra, the Shia elite did not take protests seriously, as it was easy to demonize Sunni fringe groups to retain legitimacy. The protests also called into question the effectiveness of the Prime Minister Abdul-Mahdi, who was elected because of his promise to root out corruption in Iraq. Abdul-Mahdi’s perceived inability to deliver on his promises sparked a movement in Basra headed by the Sadrists, which other groups soon joined. Abbas predicted that political reform is not possible if the task is left to the current political elite in Iraq. Rather, reform can only come from either or external or internal pressure. Abbas believes that internal pressure in the form of protests is the catalyst for change, given that the United States has all but washed its hands of governance in Iraq.
Alloush focused on the water network in Basra, and the ways that resource shortage contributes to unrest. Water shortage in Iraq is a regional issue—dams built upstream by Syria, Turkey, and Iran limit water flowing into Iraq by 50%. Climate change, drought, and contamination of the Tigris and Euphrates further exacerbate the waster issue. Furthermore, poor water management practices in cities like Basra ensure that contamination increases, and that clean water is not distributed. Alloush also noted that loss of rural livelihoods contributed to a rise in migration of rural youth to urban areas, but they lack the skills to be competitive in an already saturated urban job market, adding to discontent.
Wahab echoed Skeleton’s statements regarding the ineffectiveness of sectarian patronage networks. They are able to provide money, employment, and legitimacy to their supporters, but they were not able to provide governance. Political parties cannot provide resources like water, electricity, and production. Rather, only cohesive government can provide these things. This lack of governance is why protests in Basra targeted all political parties. Abbas complimented this point, mentioning that even the Popular Mobilization Units, credited with the defeat of ISIS, was not spared from citizen dissatisfaction.
Skelton offered some insights about the future. First, he noted that the issues that sparked protests in Basra in 2018 have not been resolved. Second, he notes that the Sadrists who incited the 2018 Basra protests did not expect to garner so much popular support. The unexpected popularity of the protests illustrate how unpredictable social movements in Iraq are. While Skelton is certain future protests will occur, the extent to which they will spread remains to be seen.
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