by Jules Evans | Mar 20, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia, Global system
I was astounded to read today of the FSB’s arrest of Ilya Zaslavsky, who’s a manager at TNK-BP in Moscow, and also the organizer of the Russian branch of the Oxford Alumni, on charges of industrial espionage.
The Russian-Oxford alumni association held monthly drinks in Moscow, which I went along to a few times. Can’t say it was a hotbed of Decembrist activity…more like a lot of Russian MBAs back-slapping each other and reminiscing about that time they drove through Oxford back in the 90s. Ilya seemed like a decent-enough guy though.
The FSB (the heir to the KGB) apparently invaded the offices of TNK-BP and found all sorts of ‘incriminating evidence’ against him, such as the business cards of ‘foreign military agencies and the CIA’ according to an FSB spokesperson. This is sufficient, apparently, to prove that both Ilya and his brother Alexander, who the BBC says works for the British Council, are illegally getting industrial secrets for foreign companies (presumably BP).
But if they really were spies, would they leave the business cards of CIA agents lying around on their desk at work? And isn’t gathering information on market participants like Gazprom not ‘industrial espionage’ but simply doing their job?
This could be a way of turning the screws on BP, as Gazprom prepares to buy many of its Russian assets. But it’s also a sign of the continued unchecked power of the secret services to harass private citizens on the flimsiest of charges. And it’s further evidence of the FSB’s growing harassment of foreign individuals in Moscow, or Russians working for foreign companies.
Another friend of mine, an American journalist, had to leave Moscow abruptly last year, when he was advised by the US government that he was in the process of being set up by the FSB. He had been handed over some military secrets by a taxi-driver who claimed to be ex-FSB (I know, weird circumstances). But he was then told, while abroad, that if he went back to Russia, he could be in hot water. So he never went back.
Well, I hope Ilya and his brother – who both have dual Russian and US citizenship – are let out soon. Using the freedom of your own citizens as bargaining chips in mergers and acquisitions seems like a pretty shoddy way of behaving.
by Charlie Edwards | Mar 20, 2008 | UK
Having read this morning’s press and their pretty feeble attempts to explain what the national security strategy is, I plan to wait until the dust settles (tomorrow pm) before I post on the subject. However I couldn’t help notice (aside from the amusing photos of Dad’s Army, a useful if not a tad sarcastic commentary from Bronwen Maddox, and an awfully smug piece of analysis from Crispin Black) the description of the UK NSS from one person who has, I gather, been working on the strategy with No.10. I can’t stop smiling… what’s that phrase that comes to mind… never bite the hand that feeds you.
by Richard Gowan | Mar 20, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security
For over a year, one of the biggest questions among officials in UN-land has been: will the Security Council make us go to Somalia? Back in November, I debuted on this blog by noting that Ban Ki-moon had announced that a mission was not “a realistic and viable option.” Well, the Council didn’t like that one bit, and told the Secretariat to get planning for that option right away. Sometimes an international organization can’t say no: this week, the Council gets to discuss a new report from the SG, which envisages an operation involving 27,000 troops plus police. That’d be a few thousand more than the UN is pushing (slowly) into Darfur.
Now, this isn’t a complete volte face: the report makes it clear that there’ll need to be a progress on a peace deal before any such force is possible. It also moots a smaller mission of 8,000. But now the numbers are out there, the media are naturally jumping on the 27,000 figure, and I fear the Council will follow…
All of which moves me to pick up something I really should have written about last week, had I not been sunning myself in Chile. That is, of course, the publication of the new Annual Review of Global Peace Operations by my colleagues at the Center on International Cooperation. The FT picked up the story under the reasonably accurate title “UN Attacked For Overloading Peacekeepers.” Here’s the gist:
The United Nations Security Council is criticised on Wednesday for authorising big peacekeeping missions around the world in spite of warnings that demands on troop contributors are overtaking their ability to deliver. “Repeated warnings of overstretch did not forestall the authorisation of ambitious new mandates by the Security Council and regional organisations,” says the New York-based Center on International Co-operation in its annual report on global peace operations.
The criticism was made as the Security Council met to consider the latest report from Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, on Darfur, where deployment of a combined UN and African Union peace force, Unamid, is badly behind schedule as the result of lack of vital resources and delaying tactics by the Sudanese government. “The mission was a compromise from the start,” Sarjoh Bah, editor of the CIC report, told the Financial Times, “because Sudan resisted a UN-only force”.
The CIC report said some of the problems of international peacekeeping by both the UN and regional organisations stemmed from decisions to deploy forces in spite of the absence of peace agreements on the ground. “By year-end, peacekeeping was becoming a victim of its own success,” the report said. “The complexity of operations began to outstrip the ability of international organisations to keep peace.”
But I’m sure Somalia will be fine, just fine.
