The Monday Map
The Siege of Chicago (2009 edition)
Ah, here is a familiar scene. Deserted streets, police barricades, stranded buses… the flotsam and jetsam of some mass upheaval, surely? Nope. It’s just the security precautions for one of President Obama’s trips to see friends in Chicago…
Global Dashboard drinks
Next Thursday (July 30th), we’re holding Global Dashboard’s first ever summer drinks – 5.30 onwards in Central London.
If you’re interested in coming, email jane [at] riverpath.com with your name, job title and organisation (or something else that describes who you are/what you do). We’ll get back to you with further info.
The cheque’s just come through from World Politics Review for our feature on resilience (or download the pdf). We’re putting it behind the bar – so those who turn up early will get drinks on us…
What Mark Malloch-Brown actually said: we need more foot patrols
In an obviously-rather-useful contribution to the ongoing controversy over what Lord Malloch-Brown told the Daily Telegraph about UK helicopters (or the lack of them) in Afghanistan, the Telegraph has published part of the original interview transcript:
Mary Riddell: “Are our troops under-resourced?”
Lord Malloch-Brown: “We definitely don’t have enough helicopters. To be honest, wherever you have these wars, whether in Afghanistan or Darfur, the world is operating without enough helicopters. With modern operations and insurgent strikes, what you need above all else is mobility.”
Mary Riddell: “And is it true that more soldiers have died, or will die, because of our lack of helicopters?”
Lord Malloch-Brown: “Yes and no. You have to see where the debate goes. Are there people who are dying who in other circumstances would be in helicopters? You cannot win these wars from the air. You have to get down among the people and have foot patrols.
“If there was one mistake from the early war in Iraq it was that you could win from the air and keep your soldiers completely safe.”
So, the choppers matter. But foot patrols matter more. That’s right, but maybe the opposition aren’t ready to run with a Petraeus-style “we need higher tolerance of casualties” line…
Peacekeepers declare war on climate change, boy scouts in reserve
Oh Good Lord, what fresh lunacy is this?
22 July 2009 – United Nations peacekeepers are no strangers to working in some of the world’s most hazardous regions, and they are now helping out on a new battlefront: combating climate change.
“The care and protection of our environment is everybody’s concern,” said Lieutenant Colonel Um Bello, who heads the Alpha Company of the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia (UNMIL).
He is leading his troops in a new exercise: planting 1,000 trees in the country’s west this year, as part of the tree-planting campaign of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), which seeks to plant 7 billion trees – or one for every person in the world – by the end of 2009.
“As a contingent, we have resolved to join efforts with the international community” and others to ensure that the war against climate change “is fought, won and our planet Earth is saved,” he said.
Well, it’s pretty quiet in Liberia these days, I suppose. Anywhere else the UN has troops twiddling their thumbs? Why, yes:
Blue helmets have already planted nearly 30,000 saplings in 11 peacekeeping missions worldwide, in countries including Timor-Leste, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Georgia and Lebanon.
That’d be the Congo that’s teetering on the edge of chaos while the UN mission is still 3,000 troops short? The Georgia from which the UN was just expelled? And the Lebanon where 14 peacekeepers were wounded this month in rioting after two Hezbollah arms dumps blew up? Any other trouble-spots requiring landscaping?
For its part, the joint African Union-UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur, known as UNAMID, has embarked on a scheme to plant 1,000 seedlings at all of its compounds in the war-ravaged Sudanese region by December.
What are we planning here, to fight the janjaweed off with sticks? Sod the war on climate change and go on patrol, I say. Someone else can handle the tree stuff…
Groups such as the World Organization of the Scouts Movement, with 28 million members in 160 countries, committed to plant 65,000 trees as well.