by Richard Gowan | Jul 18, 2008 | Africa, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Influence and networks
I’ve spent much of the last month poking fun (with serious intent) at Irish EU peacekeepers in Chad praised by rebels for staying neutral during a shoot-out at a refugee camp. Yesterday, I spoke to some researchers just back from Chad who reported that the Irish had done the best job they could under the circumstances. Their failure was on the PR front, not the battlefield.
After all, operating alongside rebels is tricky. My colleague Ben Tortolani, an indefatigable hunter after peacekeeping trivia, draws my attention to this story from the Congo – if true, it’s definitely one for the “oops” file:
The scandal-hit U.N. mission in Democratic Republic of Congo is investigating an Indian peacekeeping officer accused of showing support for eastern Tutsi rebels, a U.N. spokesman said on Thursday. The allegations stem from recordings of a bush ceremony in which an Indian U.N. commander hailed the rebels as “brothers” and presented their leader General Laurent Nkunda with his regimental crest.
Nkunda’s rebels have continued to clash with Congo’s weak government despite a peace deal this year that followed 2006 elections intended to pacify the vast mineral-rich former Belgian colony.
The world’s largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo often finds itself stuck in the middle — fighting rebels and militias but also at times accused by the government of not doing enough.
“We have launched an investigation,” mission spokesman Kemal Saiki told Reuters in response to the allegations against the Indian officer. Saiki refused to name the officer but the transcript seen by Reuters identified him as Colonel Chand Saroha, the former commander at Sake, a strategic town in the eastern province of North Kivu.
“We are like brothers,” Saroha told Nkunda and his fighters at the ceremony in April marking his departure from the zone. “Officially we are not allowed to meet you. But your good conduct, your good discipline … made us feel we were associated with proud people,” he added. Amid chants from his soldiers, according to the transcript, Nkunda thanked Saroha, saying: “You have helped us a great deal.”
What I find most remarkable about this story is that someone was recording all this. I suggest that Indian officer training courses should make biographies of Richard Nixon required reading if this sort of leak is to be avoided in future…
by Richard Gowan | Jul 18, 2008 | Global system, Influence and networks, North America
People who like Global Dashboard also tend to like proposals to streamline foreign ministries and sort out national security systems. Most probably rather like Barack Obama too. But is Barack a streamlining sort of guy? Maybe not, judging by a piece on his 300-strong corps of foreign policy advisers in today’s New York Times:
“It is unwieldy, no question,” said Denis McDonough, 38, Mr. Obama’s top foreign policy aide, speaking of an infrastructure that has been divided into 20 teams based on regions and issues, and that has recently absorbed, with some tensions, the top foreign policy advisers from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. “But an administration is unwieldy, too. We also know that it’s messier when you don’t get as much information as you can.”
That sounds like commendable fatalism to me: administrations are tangled and clunky machines, and Obama’s probably won’t be any different. Sorry.
It’s worth remembering that the candidate is a product of perhaps the single greatest hub of machine politics ever: the city of Chicago. That’s the theme of the main article in the edition of the New Yorker that has got into so much trouble with its satirical “Terrorist Obama” cover. The cover is a frippery and, I suspect, a non-event. “Making It” by Ryan Lizza, which charts Obama’s rise through Chicago politics is by contrast a magnificent piece of political writing – a reminder that, as Gideon Rachman recently pointed out in the FT, top-flight American journalism is still as good as it gets anywhere. Lizza’s piece is too involved for me to excerpt it here. You have to read the whole thing. Do so this weekend.
by Daniel Korski | Jul 18, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, UK
A new draft study is about to be presented to the British Prime Minister, which will suggest ways to improve what’s now being called “civilian effects” i.e. what can be achieved in places like Iraq in support of the armed forces, but with non-military means.
Complaints from the military about the role of DfiD, especially in southern Afghanistan, have grown louder over the last few months. The Times’s Anthony Lloyd claimed soldiers in Musa Quala said of the Provincial Reconstruction Team:
They wouldn’t know how to pour p*** from a boot if the instructions were on the heel,” one soldier remarked. “That’s the PRT.”
The study will seek to deal with this kind of criticism. But it will be the umpteenth such study about how the UK “does conflict” if you include the capability reviews, the CRI study, DfiD’s work on conflict, various internal reviews etc. And while the PM has defied many in taking up the “stabilisation issue”, where he could have focused on more traditional development matters exclusively, change is not happening quickly enough.
The question being debated in No. 10 now, as part of the study, is whether to create a civilian reserve corps like the U.S ; or to use the chance to steel David Cameron’s idea of a JFK-style Peace Corps for kids. Part of the problem is that since the PM announced the establishment of a force of 1,000 civilians including police, members of the emergency services and judges – ready to be deployed to conflict zones around the world – as part of his National Security Strategy, nothing much has happened.
Both the Reserve and the Youth Corps are needed, but mixing the two concepts is a seriously bad, bad idea. Instead, the PM should be bold and go for three things:
- The Youth Corps
- A U.S-style Civilian Reserve
- Back a European Civilian Reserve into which the UK could plug
The latter would encourage other European allies to build their capabilities. If there is over-lap between the three, great. But if not, don’t force it. It would take away from each one.
