by Richard Gowan | Dec 27, 2011 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa
Observers from the Arab League are now in Syria to check whether the Assad regime fulfills its promise to pull the army out of urban areas. Fifty observers have arrived, and there may eventually be up to 200. This is not the first time the League has deployed a peace operation (it sent troops into Lebanon in the 1970s, as I noted in a piece for the National earlier this year) but it’s still a pretty unusual initiative. The exact make-up of the observer mission is a bit of a mystery: it’s being led by a Sudanese general, but it’s been reported that it will include human rights experts and members of NGOs as well as security personnel. The Syrians will take care of the observers’ security, or so they say.
Can this type of mission, which is only able to observe and report rather than directly protect civilians, make a difference? Just before Christmas, the U.S. Institute of Peace published a paper by me entitled Political Missions and Preventive Diplomacy, which looks at what international missions can do to avert potential conflicts in periods of latent and escalating tension. In Syria, the situation has shifted from “escalation” to the verge of civil war. What can observers achieve at a moment like this? In the paper, I highlight one precedent: the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), deployed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1998. The mission observed but could not stop the violence that led to NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign:
In October 1998, the OSCE was mandated to deploy the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) to oversee a cease-fire and supervise elections in the then Yugoslav province after a year of mounting violence. The request followed negotiations between Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic and U.S. negotiator Richard Holbrooke, but American-led talks were still ongoing. Both the Yugoslav security forces and Kosovo Albanian guerrillas continued to operate, and Yugoslav atrocities eventually made it impossible to continue talks. In these unpromising circumstances, the KVM was expected to deploy “2,000 unarmed verifiers.”
The operation stumbled along unhappily…
The KVM initially had a high level of access to Yugoslav military facilities, but its presence proved insufficient to halt continuing violence. The head of mission, U.S. diplomat William Walker, tried to involve the mission in human rights and political affairs. But its personnel tended to focus more narrowly on military matters, and less than a tenth of the verifiers were assigned to human rights duties. This is unsurprising given the instability of the situation. Concerns for the mission’s safety also resulted in the deployment of a NATO extraction force in neighboring FYROM. The mission’s detachment from the faltering diplomatic process meant that it never developed a clear sense of purpose [and it was] withdrawn from Kosovo in January 1999 prior to NATO’s air campaign against Yugoslavia. The KVM did, however, continue to assist refugees from Kosovo in FYROM for some months, both advising humanitarian agencies and compiling a record of human rights abuses that had taken place during the crisis. The KVM experience suggests that once a crisis has reached its peak, the presence of external monitors alone is unlikely to affect decision makers’ choices.
This precedent doesn’t exactly suggest that the Arab League observers can make a great impact on Syria – not least because they will have far fewer personnel to cover a significantly greater area, and there is no extraction force to help in a crisis. Looking at the lessons from the KVM and other missions in my USIP report, I’d have three bits of advice to the League:
(1) Ensure that observers’ reports are full, clear and detailed – and get to the top levels of the League fast. It’s all too easy to let reporting standards drop under pressure or for officials in the field to succumb to “happy reporting” (emphasizing positive aspects of cooperating with the authorities in an effort to sustain access).
(2) Maintain political pressure while the observers are at work. It’s important that the Syrian authorities don’t exploit the presence of observers on their territory to slow down negotiations towards a lasting political settlement. It would be very easy for Damascus to drag out negotiations by arguing over details of the observers’ mandate (by repeatedly blocking access to sensitive sites for example). Arab diplomats must keep up political pressure for a lasting deal between the government and opposition, rather than hoping that the presence of the observers will restore calm.
(3) Have a credible exit strategy. League officials must make it clear to Damascus that they will withdraw the observers if their freedom of movement is curtailed or their ability to report objectively is compromised. The Syrian leaders should be aware that there will be strong penalties for failing to meet their commitments, and that the observers are only a temporary mechanism for confirming that they do so. Having the observers in Syria is not an end in itself, and should never become one.
by Seth Kaplan | Dec 25, 2011 | Africa, Conflict and security, Economics and development
The radical Islamist group Boko Haram obviously does not like Christmas:
Five bombs exploded on Christmas Day at churches in Nigeria, one killing at least 27 people, raising fears that Islamist militant group Boko Haram – which claimed responsibility – is trying to ignite sectarian civil war.
Gun battles between security forces and the sect also killed at least 68 people in the last few days in northern Nigeria. Earlier this year, the Islamists struck the capital, Abuja, twice, including a suicide car bomb attack against the United Nations headquarters that killed 26 people.
Nigeria has stark ethnic and religious divisions and a history of Muslim-Christian violence. Such attacks are unlikely to improve matters.
Unfortunately, the country’s weak institutions make it ill-prepared to deal with threats like this. It is unlikely to have the capacity to meet the challenge. Expect more attacks in the coming months.
by Richard Gowan | Dec 24, 2011 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, Middle East and North Africa
And it’s tidings of comfort and joy… but not for the Security Council. On Thursday, Russia proposed an investigation into the casualties of NATO’s Libyan campaign:
Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said a council-mandated investigation was essential “given the fact that initially we were led to believe by Nato leaders there are zero civilian casualties of their bombing campaign”.
US ambassador Susan Rice, who stepped to the microphone after Mr Churkin, responded: “Oh, the bombast and bogus claims. Is everyone sufficiently distracted from Syria now and the killing that is happening before our very eyes? I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that this is something of a cheap stunt to divert attention from other issues and to obscure the success of Nato and its partners – and indeed the security council – in protecting the people of Libya.”
And just in case anyone had missed that episode, Russia enlivened matters on Friday by tabling the latest draft of a cunning resolution on Syria that expresses concern about the situation without imposing any penalties on Damascus.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow had limits on how much it would accommodate the demands of the European and U.S. delegations, which would like the 15-nation council to threaten sanctions on Damascus over its nine-month-old crackdown on protesters.
“If the requirement is that we drop all reference to violence coming from extreme opposition, that’s not going to happen,” Churkin told reporters. “If they expect us to have arms embargo, that’s not going to happen. We know what arms embargo means these days. It means that – we saw it in Libya – that you cannot supply weapons to the government but everybody else can supply weapons to various opposition groups.”
This is like a family Christmas from hell. If you want to understand why it’s so nasty, turn to a short paper I published with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung this week entitled The Security Council’s Credibility Problem. It explains how the Libyan and Syrian crises left the Council divided, with everyone having something to be cross about:
(1) Western officials believe that China and Russia’s refusal to countenance serious Council action against Syria has made the Council look impotent. They also complain that Brazil, South Africa and India have avoided tough decisions at the UN, abstaining in important votes on Libya and Syria. They conclude that these five BRICS countries are more concerned with constraining the West than resolving crises through the Council, and that giving them more power in the UN would be risky.
(2) Non-Western officials counter that the U.S. and its NATO allies did greater damage this year by converting the Council’s mandate for a humanitarian intervention in Libya as a pretext for regime change. They claim that their refusal to support even mild UN sanctions against Syria stems from the Libyan experience, and that the West cannot be trusted to implement UN mandates faithfully.
(3) For those who value the Council as a mechanism for ensuring international peace and security, the last year has been depressing for more fundamental reasons. Its limitations as a crisis management tool have been obvious. In recent years, there has been much talk in Council debates of shifting from “reaction” to “prevention”. Yet in the Libya case, its efforts to prevent the conflict escalating failed miserably and the Council’s only option was to mandate an ad hoc military campaign. It is unclear that the Council would have performed any better over Syria, even if there had been a consensus on how to act. The crises of 2011 have revealed major gaps in the Council’s capabilities.
This soap opera will, I suspect, continue to throw up surprises in 2012.
by David Steven | Dec 21, 2011 | Cooperation and coherence, UK
William Hague’s (alleged) advice to David Cameron ahead of the euro summit:
If it’s a choice between keeping the euro together or keeping the Conservative Party together. It’s in the national interest to keep the Conservative Party together.
by Alex Evans | Dec 20, 2011 | Influence and networks
Key point:
Over the last few decades the religious Right has dominated the mainstream discussion around “morals and values” in the United States. Claiming to be the moral compass for the country, they have defined a radically conservative platform for issues including abortion, welfare, LGBTQ rights and more. The Left, for the most part, has let this happen. Rather than leading with our values and vision, progressives have focused on making rational arguments for what is “right.” No matter how skilled our analysis, we have been unable to speak to the complex and holistic experiences of everyday people, to resonate with their need to be a part of something deep in their hearts and spirits. While the Right has organized people around fear, they have been even more powerful when they tapped into and met people’s desire for belonging. The Left has largely ignored these needs, contributing to our ineffectiveness in broad social change.
From Out of the Spiritual Closet: organizers transforming the practice of social justice.
