Tag: United States
Rashomon beyond borders
I finished jury duty yesterday, acquitting a guy who was observed by an undercover policeman conducting a drug transaction. The twelve jurors reached agreement in less than an hour.
I went home the night before convinced after hearing the prosecution’s case that we would convict the guy. The policeman said he had seen the accused transfer $25 worth of cocaine and PCP to another person in broad daylight on a Washington, DC street corner.
Yesterday, the defense put the accused on the stand, where he said he was an addict trying to buy, not sell, when he realized the transaction was being observed. He therefore aborted the transaction, asked for and received his money back without receiving the drugs, which were found in a search of the other guy.
None of the jurors was sure this defense account of events was true, and for all I know it is a standard ploy to claim to have been buying when you are accused of “distribution,” which the judge explained requires transfer to another person (not necessarily for payment). But there was no compelling evidence the story was false. Had the policeman seen the tiny packets (“zips”) of drugs transferred? Not really, but he claimed that he saw the second man pick something unidentified out of the accused’s cupped hand.
So here you have two different versions of the same events, with the rules heavily weighted in favor of the defense: the government was obligated to prove the distribution of illegal drugs “beyond a reasonable doubt.” None of us on the jury thought that standard had been met.
It struck me as we proceeded through the careful choreography of a DC courtroom how really very difficult it is to administer justice this way. Jurors randomized, judge impeccable in explaining the law and protecting the integrity of the process but not commenting in any way on the truth or falsity of the allegation, machine to make consultations at the bench inaudible, jurors disciplined about not discussing the case outside the jury room, prosecutor and defense attorney clearly well-educated and experienced.
It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a privilege to have your crimes judged in this fashion, though the drug-addict accused is unlikely to have been grateful. His court-appointed attorney told me after the trial he did not think the guy would take advantage of the big break the jury had given him.
All this for a $25 offense? I still don’t know why the government bothered to prosecute this case, but I imagine they were convinced he was a much bigger fish than he appeared in court.
Which raises the much more important question of how and why Troy Davis was convicted in Georgia when there was no physical evidence and most of the witnesses changed their stories after the conviction, several claiming the police had pressured them to testify as they did. I can’t say Troy Davis was innocent, but was he guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”?
The world was watching the Troy Davis case. Were I still a U.S. diplomat, I would find it hard to explain the execution of someone about whom there was even a sliver of reasonable doubt. The issue for me is not so much the moral one, which should be more important to those who believe government is an inefficient and ineffective mechanism to do just about anything and therefore inherently untrustworthy. The issue for me is doing something irreversible (and, by the way, frighteningly expensive, as capital cases chew up a lot of resources) when there is no physical evidence. Eye witnesses are notoriously unreliable.
The United States makes a lot of effort these days to promote “rule of law” abroad–it has been a major part of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ours is such an expensive and difficult system to administer that it gives me pause to ask poorer and less well educated countries to imitate it. But the execution of Troy Davis gives me even greater pause, even if both Iraq and Afghanistan are devotees of capital punishment. Can they really be expected to do any better than we do in eliminating the possibility of executing someone who is innocent? What is the example we are setting?
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The long and the short of it
As I prepare to head home to DC from Cairo today, my two weeks in Egypt and Libya seem enormously interesting and informative, even as they reconfirm how little can be understood from such short stays in complicated environments. What do we really see of another society without speaking its language and living at length in its midst?
I am close to finishing Alaa al Aswany’s The Yacoubian Building. There is little in its penetrating accounts of abusive sexual relationships in Egypt that I would gather from staying at the Fairmont and running around Cairo to talk with various participants in its recent revolution, though I knew enough about harassment of women here to understand how fraught with sexual dysfunction the society is.
In Libya, the thing that struck me is how difficult it is to understand the role of religion. Pervasive, but not really political, at least not yet, Islam seems more a unifying factor (again, for the moment) than a divisive one, as it certainly is among some Egyptians. But that may be changing.
The east/west geographical divide in Libya appeared far less important to me (and to many journalists who have spent a lot of time in Libya) than some experts had predicted. At the same time, the demands of fighters from Misrata are roiling what had appeared to be relatively tranquil regional relationships. I understand they yesterday laid claim to the prime ministry in a reshuffled executive committee of the National Transitional Council, on grounds that they have fought more aggressively against Qaddafi’s forces, especially at Sirte, than anyone else. The Benghazis, who claim to have initiated the revolution, did not react well.
Egypt and Libya are certainly not the only countries with sexual dysfunction, regional differences and problems with the role of religion in public life. I didn’t live 10 years in Italy without hearing a great deal about all three. But even after 10 years I wasn’t sure that I understood things the way Italians understood them–in fact, I’m sure I didn’t. I was still an American with different cultural baggage and presumptions about gender, geography and religion.
Societies in the midst of revolution are particularly problematic. How much is changing and how much is staying the same? Most historians would hesitate to say until years later. Libya and Egypt have both decapitated their autocratic regimes, but they are still far from having established new ones.
For all the giddy enthusiasm of the revolutionary days and weeks, there is no guarantee that they will be democratic, or even much different from the old ones. Libyans often say they know what they don’t want, namely a leader who tells them what to think (and enforces the dictate with violence). But does that mean they won’t accept a softer autocracy? No one in Egypt seems sure any longer that the military will be prepared to leave power, even if the generals seem ready to set a date for the first round of elections on November 21.
Short visits may be unsatisfying and even misleading, but it doesn’t follow that longer visits will be much more enlightening. I wouldn’t want to wait until the history books are written to have a look for myself. The point I suppose is to take the opportunities we can to expose ourselves to other societies and learn whatever can be gathered in the time available, remembering always that there is a great deal more beneath the surface that we can’t possibly fathom.
I certainly don’t regret having passed up a summer holiday for this September interlude in two very exciting places!
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Rebuilding Libya
Ian Ramsey-North, a recent Haverford graduate in poli sci (old school tie binds!), reports on yesterday’s event at the National Press Club, “Rebuilding Libya: A Status Report on the Humanitarian Situation on the Ground.”
Co-sponsored by the Middle East Institute and International Relief and Development, the discussion concerned recent political, military, diplomatic and humanitarian developments in Libya and the process of stabilization and reconstruction moving forward. The event began with a keynote address by Gene Cretz, US Ambassador to Libya, and continued with a panel discussion between Mark Ward, Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance at USAID, and Travis Gartner, Director of Community Stabilization, IRD.
Gene Cretz began by recounting the series of summits, contact group meetings, and international ministerial conferences that facilitated the international community’s increasing confidence in the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC). These culminated in the most recent meeting last week in Paris, following the defeat of Qaddafi’s forces, which was marked by a sense of pride in the international community, TNC and the Libyan people. At the same time, participants were aware of the continuing threat posed by Qaddafi and the myriad challenges presented by Libya’s transition from autocratic rule to democratic governance.
The international community used the Paris meeting to call on:
- All nations to recognize the TNC.
- Meeting participants to unfreeze Libyan assets through the U.N.
- The TNC to honor its stated commitment to human rights, the proper treatment of prisoners and unification of Libya.
For their part, representatives of the TNC:
- Gave moving thanks to the international community.
- Restated their intention to respect human rights and the rights of prisoners.
- Stated that they do not need to be told what to do with respect to unifying their country.
- Claimed they have a clear sense of purpose and understand the problems they must confront.
- Emphasized that they will handle unfrozen funds and humanitarian assistance in a transparent and accountable manner, in accordance with international standards.
Cretz went on to stress that despite the success of the TNC, the NATO mission to protect civilians will continue. On the diplomatic front, efforts will continue to welcome Libya back into community of nations. The TNC will relocate to Tripoli and assume responsibility for national security and the humanitarian needs of the Libyan people “writ large.”
That said, the challenges facing Libya are considerable:
- The TNC must create a new country, not re-create pre-war Libya:
- Internal divisions are deep; Qaddafi took “divide and conquer” to unprecedented heights.
- New government and civil society institutions are needed.
- Previous contracts will be honored, but a process of review and rationalization will be necessary to assess which are really needed.
- The TNC is committed to a democracy:
- Libyans have a sense of what democracy is.
- Democratic practices and sentiments were evident from the early days of rebellion.
While all reconstruction efforts will be Libyan-led, the international community will remain engaged and support TNC efforts, as needed:
- Ian Martin is leading a UN assessment team on the ground right now.
- TNC and US State Department teams have already worked together on post-conflict planning efforts, filling in gaps in each other’s work.
- TNC is interested in training, expertise, and capacity-building, not massive funding handouts.
This process will be Libyan-led. The international community and America can be proud of the role it played in this and can look forward to a continuing role providing support, on Libyan terms.
Mark Ward emphasized that the situation in Libya has not been and is not today a humanitarian crisis. This is due to the exceptional coordination of humanitarian assistance by the Libyan people. The international community played a supporting role in this effort.
After assessing, USAID dispatched a DART to Benghazi. Medical needs were paramount so USAID’s primary focus was on stocking hospitals, medical clinics, and providing sanitation and hygiene kits to internally displaced persons. It also provided $15M in food assistance through the World Food Program and played a role in the evacuation and repatriation of migrants in Libya. NGO’s are now on the ground in Tripoli, monitoring the situation and preparing to meet any emerging humanitarian needs. In addition, the TNC has proved responsive to humanitarian needs, dispatching its own engineers to resolve a drinking water shortage in Tripoli.
The US role in Libya is now changing from one of humanitarian assistance to stabilization operations, including training for civil society, governance, and media. The TNC is particularly interested in capacity-building for transitional justice mechanisms and messaging/media relations.
Ward concluded by relating his own experience at the recent Paris meeting. It was partiucularly notable that in a donor meeting, a TNC official thanked the international community for freeing frozen assets and then clearly stated that Libya does not want the international community’s money, it only wants its expertise.
Travis Gartner related some of his own experiences working with IRD to provide humanitarian assistance early in the Libyan civil war. He reiterated Libyans’ incredible drive for self-sufficiency, noting that IRD was able to implement large projects in Libya with only one expatriate employee, 3-4 paid staff members, and a large number of community volunteers.
Future collaboration and assistance must incorporate community action, grass roots-level involvement, citizen involvement in decision-making, and capacity-building at the lowest possible level.
Looking forward, security is the most urgent priority:
- De-arming and de-militarizing militias
- Re-vamping military and police forces and getting them back on the streets as quickly as possible
- Addressing divisions
- East/West
- Civilian/Military
- Tribal
Other major concerns include:
- Perceptions of social exclusion
- Frustrated expectations for improvement
- Unemployment
Conclusion: All three participants emphasized a strong Libyan drive for self-sufficiency. Cretz focused on growing international confidence in the TNC during the last 6 months of international diplomatic activity. Ward and Gartner discussed Libyan management of humanitarian relief efforts during the conflict. All three emphasized that future international involvement will be determined by Libyans, with an emphasis on capacity-building and the provision of international expertise in order to fill gaps in Libyan capabilities.
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Where is the Security Council?
Thursday’s meeting in Paris of 63 countries to launch the reconstruction phase of the Libyan revolution went well. Money is starting to flow (including a big shipment of Libyan cash) and the Transitional National Council (TNC) continues to say all the right things: no revenge, contracts will be respected, democracy and rule of law should prevail. Elections within 18 months, which is more reasonable than the 12 months previously mooted.
The trick now is implementation. Even at yesterday’s meeting, there was friction over contracts. The French foreign minister made it clear he thought Paris deserved a lion’s share because of its role in the NATO military action. This friction and many others will grow. It is important that too much money not flow too fast into Libya: I’ve never seen a post-war reconstruction effort that would not have benefitted from less funding, which forces decisions on priorities and gives decent people incentives to block corrupt practices.
What the international community needs is a common script: a United Nations Security Council resolution that sets out strategic goals for Libya, as defined by the Libyans and agreed with the international community. The ideal vehicle for this is the new resolution needed to lift sanctions. This should state the main goals, which I might summarize something like this: Libya will be a single, united country with its capital in Tripoli governed by democratic processes under the rule of law. It will use its natural resources transparently and accountably to benefit all its citizens, live in peace with its neighbors and fulfill its obligations under international agreements it has signed as well as the UN charter.
This would not eliminate all frictions in the international community: a country as rich as Libya is bound to create rivalries among oil and gas consumers as well as suppliers of good and services. But it would help to frame the international effort and provide some touchstones to guide reconstruction efforts.
Libya is not the only country needing a Security Council resolution. None has yet passed denouncing the regime’s violence against its citizens in Syria, because Moscow is blocking it. The Secretary of State rightly spent some time yesterday cajoling the Europeans to block oil and oil product imports from Syria, which would deprive Damascus of something like one quarter or one third of its normal revenue. But we should not lose sight of the need for the UNSC to speak up against the blatant violations of human rights Bashar al Assad is indulging in.
US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice has done incredible things this year–Qaddafi would still be sitting pretty in Tripoli but for UN Security Council resolution 1973. She has also gotten the Human Rights Council, that much-criticized body, to play a positive role on Syria, denouncing the regime violence there. But there is no rest for the weary. A strong UNSC resolution is out of the question–there won’t be any authorization to use “all necessary means,” which is the kind of thing needed to implement military options. The Russians are nowhere near going along with it, because of their long friendship with Syria and their use of port facilities at Latakia.
But it is hard for me to believe that the UNSC can allow what Damascus is doing to pass in silence. The Russians should now be worried about their own long-term relationship with a regime that is looking shaky, even if no one expects it to fall soon. Bashar al Assad does not have a lot of friends left. Most of them are in Tehran, which has recently been urging Bashar to reform. Moscow also needs to make sure it is, as President Obama likes to put it, on the right side of history.
PS: The EU went ahead with the oil ban on Syria today. Bravo to both the Europeans and the Secretary of State, who pressed the case hard!
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Only time will tell
I’ve been busy lately reading articles about how dumb various (but mostly American) negotiators are. If only the diplomats would do some pretty simple things, serious conflicts would be readily resolved.
A former Iranian nuclear negotiator suggests the Americans and Iranians just have to put aside the threats and pressure, then talk nicer about issues of common interest and things will improve. Ahmed Rashid wants us to listen more carefully to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, who says he does not intend to monopolize power in Afghanistan. And we could achieve peace in Israel and Palestine if the Palestinians would just recognize Israel, and Israel would provide a few factories to the Palestinians.
This last one is the easiest to debunk. There hasn’t been a problem with Palestinian recognition of Israel since Arafat did it almost twenty years ago. The problem is that Israel is now demanding recognition as a Jewish state, something that the UN General Assembly already did in its partition resolution. And of course Israel has not recognized Palestine, or allowed it to establish clear borders. The notion that economic development will satisfy the Palestinians in the absence of a political solution is nonsense.
Listening carefully to Mullah Omar is a good idea, but I confess his Eid message did not fill me with hope. Here is what he actually says about negotiation:
The Islamic Emirate considers the presence of the foreign invading troops in the country; their blind-bombardment, night raids, their brutalities; tortures and tyranny as the main cause of the current imbroglio in the country. The issue would come to an end when the said brutalities are meted out. Similarly, IE [Islamic Emirate] considers [the] establishment of an independent Islamic regime as a conducive mechanism for sustainability of religious and worldly interests of the country and the countrymen. For this purpose, every legitimate option can be considered in order to reach this goal. The contacts which have been made with some parties for the release of prisoners can’t be called as a comprehensive negotiation for the solution of the current imbroglio of the country. However, the Islamic Emirate, as an efficient political and military entity, has a specific and independent agenda in this regard which has been elucidated time and again.
Yes, he leaves the door open to future talks, but he also goes on to make it clear that the Taliban will only stop fighting when the occupation has ended. We can be certain Mullah Omar’s message was carefully parsed inside the State Department and the U.S. intelligence community, where its ambiguous character will not have excited too much enthusiasm.
As for Iran, it makes sense to reduce the trash talking and to focus on issues where there may be some common interest, but the hard kernel of disagreement is over nuclear weapons. Making nice and solving some other issues isn’t going to make that one go away, and the time delay could even make it more difficult to solve.
So yes, we do need to make sure we understand our adversaries, deal in a pragmatic way with them and leave no stone unturned in the search for peaceful resolutions of these issues. But it is a whole lot easier to kibbitz from the sidelines than to play the game for real. When the guys calling for more stridency are also the people deciding your budget, there is an inclination to go strident. When the Taliban are as ambiguous as Mullah Omar in his Eid message, listening really does get hard. And when your critics are misunderstanding the problem, it is easy to write them off.
There is one sign of hope in all these cases: the Americans are maintaining radio silence. Iran guru Dennis Ross, Afghanistan lead Marc Grossman and whoever is acting in George Mitchell’s place (Hoff? Feltman?) on Israel/Palestine are suspiciously quiet. Maybe that’s because there is nothing to say. Or maybe it’s because negotiations are quietly producing fruit. Only time will tell.
PS: I’m not the only one less impressed with Mullah Omar’s message than Ahmed Rashid.
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So how is that revolution going?
Libya is more or less completing its first week since the Qaddafi boys and their father skedaddled to we not where, yet. How is the Transitional National Council (TNC) doing in stabilizing Tripoli and restoring basic services?
Only people “on the ground,” as we say in the conflict world, can answer this kind of question. NPR this morning reports that uniformed but unarmed police are back on the street in response to an appeal from the TNC, but water is still not flowing. The New York Times has a description of jockeying for position among rebel leaders, both in Tripoli and at the national level. Looting and other disorder has been reported, but it does not appear to have been widespread. It is hard to get too excited about the guys who stole Qaddafi’s golf cart, but attacks on government offices to destroy files would betray an organized resistance that poses more serious problems.
The main contestations among the rebels seems to be emerging along the Islamist/secularist and east/west fault lines, with Islamist forces from the west who played a major role in liberating Tripoli claiming they are entitled to a good share of the political spoils. War is about power, which abhors a vacuum even more than nature.
It is nice to have the traffic cops back on the street, so long as the local communities welcome them. But the NTC has a big challenge in consolidating the various militia that fought to liberate Libya into a single army answerable to civilian authority, while finding jobs in the police or elsewhere for enough of the excess personnel to prevent them from creating problems. Right now is when some of these militias will find themselves short of cash or food. They can become protection rackets and organized crime syndicates almost overnight.
The terms of art for dealing with this problem are DDR (demobilization, disarmament and reintegration) and SSR (security sector reform). More often than not, they have been treated as two separate processes, with DDR preceding SSR. That is a mistake. They are really two sides of the same coin, one that is supposed to buy the authorities a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, which is one textbook definition of sovereignty.
If the NTC manages to get control of the militias and restore order in Tripoli, its future prospects will improve dramatically. The unseen hand that can help them are those shadowy foreigners–said to be British and French special forces as well as Qataris, and likely also some Americans–who assisted in the Libyan war. They will have enormous influence with the militias they assisted, and deep knowledge of who really did fight effectively. We all would like to see this revolution proceed with Libyan leadership, but that leadership is going to need foreign assistance in many different ways. Helping to unify the freedom fighters and getting them to respect civilian authority is, I am afraid, one of them.
Getting the water flowing again is more a Libyan responsibility. Qaddafi’s Great Manmade River, which supplies much of the country, is said to have been shut off at Sabha, a town south of Tripoli that is still in the hands of Qaddafi loyalists. The perils of a full-fledged military assault on Sebha and Sirte, Qaddafi’s home town, are serious, which is why the rebels have given the loyalists there until Saturday to surrender. Let’s hope they do, and that no serious damage has been done to the water equipment or supplies.
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