by Richard Gowan | Jul 25, 2008 | Africa, Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
Just when you thought it couldn’t look much bleaker for peacekeeping, a reminder that it can:
Sudan has again warned it cannot guarantee the safety of UN and African Union peacekeepers in Darfur if its president is indicted for war crimes. A presidential adviser said that if the International Criminal Court indicted Omar al-Bashir, Sudan could not be held responsible for the troops’ well-being.
Earlier this month, the ICC prosecutor asked judges in The Hague to issue an arrest warrant for President Bashir. The judges are expected to announce their decision in a few weeks’ time.
The adviser, Bona Malual, told the BBC the government was not expelling the joint UN/AU force, or even threatening the troops.
It was, he said, simply saying how Sudan would view the situation.
by Daniel Korski | Jul 25, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Economics and development, South Asia
Thomas Schweich, previously the Bush administration’s Afghan drugs “czar” has made a big splash in the New York Times by claiming that President Hamid Karzai supports the drugs trade and that aerial eradication of the crop is the only way ahead:
An odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban were preventing the implementation of an effective counterdrug program. And the rest of us could not turn them around.
Juicy stuff, no doubt. But Schweich has been challenged before, including by Barnett Rubin, a well-known Afghan expert.
Schweich’s argument seems to hinge on a central proposition: that insurgency, not poverty drives opium cultivation. But as a CN expert David Mansfield argues, this assertion is based on “the finding that households in these [poppy-growing] provinces reported higher average annual incomes ($3,316 for poppy-growing and $2,480 for others) to UNODC surveyors than those in the north ($2,690 for poppy-growing and $1,851 for others) or centre ($1,897 for poppy-growing and $1,487 for others).” He has further criticized the UN’s lack of reporting of sample size and statistical significance – both of which are necessary to determine the accuracy of the conclusion that poverty is not a factor.
In others word, the basis to argue that poverty does not drive opium-cultivation is weak. The link between opium and insurgency is also not as direct as Schweich imagines.
True, opium cultivation and insurgent violence are correlated geographically, and opium now provides the insurgents with a portion of their revenues. True, this portion may have increased as NATO pursues a decapitation strategy, trying to kill high-level insurgents. But the Taliban, al-Qaida and the other insurgent groups have many sources of revenue; and while a correlation exists between instability and opium cultivation, the causality derives from insecurity, not the other way around.
Why is is not possible to conduct aerial spraying then, as Schweich suggests? Simple. Afghan farmers do not use chemicals, so aerial eradication will likely be blamed as the cause of disease, premature deaths or crop destruction, which is a regular but unrelated occurrence in Afghanistan, as in any developing country. The Afghan government, already mistrusted, would suffer from any backlash.
For what to do, read this post.
by Charlie Edwards | Jul 25, 2008 | UK
I’ve just given a talk to 120 + senior officers at the Australian Command and Staff College on national security. My talk was deliberately aimed at the strategic level and focused on three interrelated areas: the new geography of risk, the connecting the dots concept, and the system vulnerabilities associated with strategic myopia.
The Australian and British defence establishments face many similar issues but one in particular shines out: the lack of a strategic capability in the system, in the sense that the connections between the tactical and operational levels are often separate to, and removed from, the strategic decision making cycle (hence the failings of the current defence planning assumptions). This, I realise, is hardly new and experts more qualified than I have talked at length about the sub-strategic behaviour that characterises much of UK Defence. But as I made clear in my talk this morning this is not a criticism of an individual. It is a recognition that the system is broke.
However a window of opportunity is about to present itself (possibly). Plans are afoot to recruit a new Director of Strategy at the MoD this autumn. There is a slim possibility that Des Browne may be moved in a summer reshuffle. Both these ‘opportunities’ must be set against the background of cuts in the defence budget – something like £5 Billion over the next three years. Taken together all three things offer the MoD a real opportunity to refocus, rearm (metaphorically) and redeploy.
But this will require a new Minister to have an ‘open mind’. The very worst thing that could happen is for Gordon Brown to chose a ‘safe pair of hands’. Given current circumstances this may sound counter-intuitive, but bear with me. There is probably 22 months or so before a General Election. Short-termism and political expediency dictates an experienced operator should ‘hold the fort’ for the remaining period but given the current political, operational and military climate that would be suicide – lots of things need to change now not post 2010.
The MoD has long been considered a political backwater for aspiring politicians, by Labour MPs especially. Education, health and latterly development have been the portfolios of choice. But the MoD is crying out for change – a (youngish) Minister with an open mind is the best bet for the future of UK Defence, not a tired ‘safe pair of hands’ riding out his last term in office.
