Fascinating BloggingHeads exchanging between middle east expert and former State Department official Aaron David Miller and Eli Lake of the Washington Times. Miller argues (pretty convincingly, I'd say) that the Obama administration should focus its diplomatic efforts on a detente between Israel and Syria. This will be hard, he says, but is achievable in the near term and can provide momentum for a lasting regional peace. Check it out.
UPDATE: The U.S. Institute of Peace must have been listening. They've just announced a panel discussion on the topic here in DC, scheduled for this Friday afternoon.
I'm camped out this morning at the Newseum for USIP's day-long "Media as Global Diplomat" event. There are some impressive panelists, starting with Kathy Calvin, COO of the UN Foundatoin, Edward Djerejian, Ted Koppel, James Glassman, and Andrew McLaughlin from Google. You can watch streaming and perhaps on your iPhone through Ustream. I'll update with any interesting tidbits
To recap what's going on in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo right now: a Rwandan military force has joined forces with the Congolese army to root out the Hutu militias (many former Interahamwe genocidaires in Rwanda, and now known as the FDLR) in Congo, and in the process arrested Laurent Nkunda, a rebel previously supported by Rwanda. The UN peacekeeping mission, MONUC, was caught unawares by both the incursion and the arrest, and, after first distancing itself from the proceedings, has scrambled to tie together its role as civilian protector and the UN's contribution to peacekeepingmaking efforts in Congo by stipulating that it will not be taking part in the offensive, but will be assisting in planning and providing technical assistance.
The problem is, the Rwandan-Congolese anti-FDLR operation is pretty much bound to affect civilians -- and not in the happy liberating kind of way. (It doesn't help, of course, that one faction participating in the hunt is led by the indicted war criminal known as "The Terminator," even though the UN has pledged not to work with him.) This frustrating dynamic has put MONUC in a tight spot. Still, it was a shock for me to read this candid statement from Alan Doss, the UN's head of mission in DR Congo:
"There will be collateral damage, to use that horrible phrase," Doss said. "But again, the international community has pressed for this for a long time now."
Doss is right on both counts. Eliminating FDLR rebels -- the ostensible purpose of the Rwandan-led venture -- is not only something "the international community has pressed for;" it is a necessary step toward securing peace in eastern Congo. But the truth of his first admission -- the reality of the "collateral damage" that is already harming ordinary civilians -- sharply enunciates the awkwardness of MONUC's position. By providing technical assistance to a mission that is necessary but bound to result in civilian death and displacement, yet remaining under its responsibility to protect civilians, MONUC is wavering on an impossible balancing act. There were really no other options available; MONUC could not have stopped Rwanda's advance, even if it had known about it, nor could it not take part in the mission. Unfortunately, no options have led to a not particularly good one.
(image of Alan Doss, the Secretary-General's Special Representative in DR Congo)
By most accounts, Iraq's provincial elections on Saturday went off smoothly, a lower-than-hoped-for turnout and scattered problems with voter lists more than counterbalanced by the conspicuous lack of violence. Predictably, some are taking this as a sign of vindication for U.S. policies like the "surge." Gateway Pundit conveys the scorn of italics, taking umbrage at the fact that, in praising the peaceful elections, President Obama neglected to mention the U.S. military specifically by name.
Security for the country's first ballot since 2005 was extremely tight, with Iraqi police and military deployed in force, and Mr Obama praised the technical assistance by the United Nations and other organisations to Iraq's electoral commission, which he said "performed professionally under difficult circumstances."
With all due respect to the U.S. military, Gateway Pundit's criticism misses the point. Others may debate the extent to which the "surge" provided Iraq's overall environment of improved security, but at their heart, these elections were a political triumph. And in alluding to the accomplishments of UN assistance -- the training, for example, of more than 60,000 electoral observers -- Obama is acknowledging what has often gone underappreciated: that the UN is filling a crucial role in providing much of the key political assistance that Iraq will need moving forward.
Conducting an election more or less peacefully, marred by only a few irregularities, may seem to set a low bar -- particularly with the extensive security preparation and the fact that elections in the country's most contentious city, Kirkuk, are (wisely) being indefinitely postponed -- but Saturday's experience must be contrasted with the elections of three years ago. Despite the higher turnout and the iconic image of the purple finger that emerged from those elections, they occurred in the midst of a bloodbath, with the Sunni insurgency roiling and the Sunni boycott called for by Moqtada al-Sadr skewing the balance of the Iraqi parliament and acceleratingthe ethnic factionalization of Iraqi politics. That said, we should be wary of turning the saga of Iraq's transformation into too neat a narrative. The story is not an arc, and these elections do not certify Iraq as a thriving democracy. The fact that so much assistance and security was needed in the first place should not be overlooked.
(image from flickr user thomas23 under a Creative Commons license)
The Enough Project team sees a Srebrenica-type situation threatening to unfold in Darfur.
One hundred and ninety six peacekeepers from UNAMID, the joint AU/UN peacekeeping force for Darfur, are stationed in Muhajiriya, a rebel-held town of 30,000 in South Darfur. The government of Sudan has requested that UNAMID withdraw these troops, as it masses its military forces outside the town and uses airpower to bombard nearby camps for displaced persons. Thousands of civilians have gathered outside the UNAMID base in Muhajiriya, just as thousands gathered around similar bases in Rwanda and Bosnia. Khartoum's intention is clear: a full-scale assault on Muhajiriya regardless of the cost to civilians. Given UNAMID's mandate to protect civilians, it would be nothing short of a shameful capitulation for the UN to abandon its post or to allow the Sudanese government to militarily extort the suspension of the International Criminal Court case against President Bashir through these actions.
The international community, and the Obama administration, now faces a crucial moment. It can abandon 30,000 civilians to state-sponsored violence, or it can embrace its responsibility to protect and make sure that Muhajiriya does not become the next Srebrenica. Rather than withdrawing, UNAMID must immediately reinforce its presence in Muhajiriya, and the United States must spell out specific consequences for the Sudan if it does not immediately cease aerial bombings and abandon its plans for this offensive. This is a clear attempt by Khartoum to test the resolve of the Obama Administration in its early days, and the response of President Obama and the UN will determine the fate of thousands of Darfuris.
I would not worry about "shameful capitulation" by UNAMID. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon sounded the alarm on the situation in Muhajiriya today, affirming that peacekeepers will not back down from their mandate to protect civilians there. Also, peacekeeping doctrine has undergone profound shifts in the wake of the 1995 Srebrenica tragedy to insure that those types of situations will not be repeated.
Enough is spot on, though, in calling for American leadership on Darfur. We are already two weeks into the new administration and we still do not have a sense of what their Darfur strategy will look like. As the unfolding situation in Muhajiriya show, time is not on their side.
Meanwhile, the tense stand-off at Muhajiriya is but one manifestation of the uptick in tensions that is linked to the forthcoming International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Sudan President Omar al Bashir, widely expected to be handed down in the next couple of weeks. As I wrote in a recent American Prospect piece, the correct response to these threats is for the Obama administration to fulsomely embrace the court and give the arrest warrant its full diplomatic backing.
Iceland just selected modern history's first openly gay head of state, Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir. But it gets better:
What is really historic about this new cabinet, says Skuli Helgeson, the general secretary of Ms Sigurardottir's Social Democratic Alliance, is not the fact that its leader is a lesbian, but that for the first time in Icelandic history it boasts an equal number of men and women.
"I don't think her sexual orientation matters. Our voters are pretty liberal, they don't care about any of that,"
BBC has more. Along these same lines it is also worth noting that the American President's security and foreign policy team, a traditionally male dominated cohort, is very well gender integrated. Offensive magazine covers notwithstanding.
In case you missed it while sprinting to the bathroom during last night's nail-biter, this is the GE ad touting the smart grid that aired during the Super Bowl last night. It's savvy marketing on their part, attaching their name in such a public venue to a technology that (hopefully) will get a lot of media play this year. UN Dispatch will be closely following the issue. Need to get caught up?
The head of the United Nations Refugee agency's Baluchistan office, John Solecki, an American, was kidnapped on his way to work. His Pakistani driver was killed.
There are some 400,000 Afghan refugees living in Baluchistan, which borders Afghanistan. UNHCR is about the only global institution on the ground delivering humanitarian aid and advocating on behalf of these refugees. Kidnapping Sokecki was a pretty detestable act. The AP has more:
It was not immediately clear what impact the abduction would have on U.N. work in Pakistan, if any. The bombing of Islamabad's Marriott hotel in September prompted new U.N. rules prohibiting expatriate staff in Pakistan from living with their children in parts of the country, including Quetta.
General crime has been on the rise in many parts of the country, including kidnappings for ransom. An Iranian diplomat was abducted in the northwestern city of Peshawar last year, and other foreigners and Afghans have also been taken.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has worked for years in Baluchistan helping Afghans who have fled violence in their homeland.
I have no reason to believe that this Heritage Foundation "Backgrounder" from last week, on reforming creating unnecessary new international institutions, has made any splash in the foreign policy world whatsoever, but at the least, it reveals the interesting founding myth that Heritage has concocted for the UN.
The United Nations was supposed to enable Western powers like the United States to lead the world in securing peace; yet after the addition of scores of new members to its political body, the General Assembly, it has seemed more intent on curbing rather than
accommodating U.S. leadership.
Get that? The point of the UN, from the get-go, according to author Kim Holmes, has been to "enable" and "accomodate" the United States. As equal members of an organization formed with the vision of harnessing global cooperation toward peace and prosperity, the other original 51 member states -- as well as the 141 since -- may reasonably object to Holmes' blithe characterization of the institution as an American puppet.
The United States is undeniably the world's largest power. As such, it carries the unavoidable responsibility -- and opportunity -- of global leadership. And in 1945, as in 2009, the UN looks to and relies on that U.S. leadership. But the UN is not merely a vehicle for U.S. superpowerdom. Just as there is much for which the UN looks to the United States, the U.S. clearly needs the United Nations for various important global projects, ones that, like, say, peacekeeping in Lebanon or eradicating world hunger, the United States should not or cannot accomplish on its own. While U.S. leadership can help on some of these issues, it is by no means a prerequisite for all, and, though Holmes might not like to admit it, other member states also often emerge as important leaders in UN initiatives.
One of the more widespread criticisms of U.S. policy toward the UN in the early Bush era, climaxing with John Bolton's tenure as ambassador, was that it too often treated the UN as, at best, a plaything to be used only when its legitimacy could be leveraged to support U.S. causes. Typically, defenders of this policy will demean the UN as ineffective, unnecessary, or ornery; rarely does one see a justification as blunt as Holmes': that the UN exists solely to support -- "accomodate," again, is his shocking word -- U.S. objectives. His attitude is one of paranoid indignity, at the rubber stamp that dared not defer to its supreme benefactor.
Not only is this cursory assessment an utter mischaracterization of the UN's work and purpose, but it creates an entirely unproductive dynamic in UN policymaking. Even a cynic would concur that not every decision at the UN boils down to a choice between "curbing" or "accomodating" U.S. leadership. Most decisions are in fact based on what each country, for whatever its reasons, views in its best interests. And sometimes -- particularly when the United States acts as a willing partner and an eager, but not presumptive, leader -- these countries can work around their differences and push policy in a direction that just might actually benefit those it is supposed to benefit.