Obama’s Plan and the Future of Afghanistan

Post by Amanda Young, American University ‘13

Last Tuesday, President Obama unveiled his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan at West Point Military Academy. During his speech he announced plans to deploy 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. These troops will have the task of securing major cities and populations so the United States can then begin turning over responsibility to the Afghan forces in 18 months. Finally, there is a light at the end of an eight year long tunnel that cost millions of dollars and hundreds of American and Afghan lives.

As we draw closer to the end of American military presence in Afghanistan, I have to wonder, was it a success? Only time will tell, but if nothing is done to build and strengthen Afghanistan’s infrastructure you can bet these eight years will have been in vain. History has seen it before with World War I. Germany had a huge debt, lacked infrastructure, and had few to no jobs. In such a climate people turned toward extremism and twenty years after the Treaty of Versailles the world would once again find its self amidst a World War. The United States and her allies may have won World War I, but we did not keep the peace. The same idea lies behind Afghanistan. After decades of war and a poor standard of living the people have looked to the only paying jobs; the drug trade and al Qaeda. We were able to stop this vicious cycle in Europe after World War II by rebuilding Europe, creating infrastructures and jobs with the Marshall Plan. Logic tells us that the same thing needs to be done to ensure successful peace in Afghanistan.

On the White House website there are a few lines on“…implementing a civilian-military agriculture redevelopment strategy to restore Afghanistan’s once vibrant agriculture sector”. The White House must implement plans like this immediately after securing the area, so as to give hope and a future to the Afghan people. It is extremely important that the American public and international community stay active and aware even after all the troops are gone. Only then will Afghanistan continue to grow; ensuring lasting peace and we do not find ourselves fighting the same war again in twenty years.

You can find an in-depth break down of his strategy at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/way-forward-afghanistan and the full transcript of the West Point speech at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan

Obama’s Latin American Policy: Failure at the First Attempt

The election of Porfirio Lobo on November 29 represents a giant leap backwards for Honduras and Latin America as a whole. After months of protracted negotiations, the U.S. government suddenly threw its weight behind the illegitimate coup government of Roberto Micheletti and supported elections under its authority. The shameful episode damages Obama’s credibility in Latin America and sets a dangerous precedent in a region with a chequered past.

Last June, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power at gunpoint by armed soldiers, and the speaker of Congress Roberto Micheletti was installed as interim leader. Zelaya’s “crime” was to plan a public consultation on moves to change the constitution. The coup was roundly condemned by world leaders, with President Obama calling the coup “illegal”. Yet five months later, the U.S. government has changed tack, backing coup-sponsored elections and grossly damaging the democratic process in Latin America.

The role of the U.S. in the Honduras crisis has been pivotal since day one. Obama’s initial condemnation of the coup was welcomed by many pundits, especially since the U.S. has a history of backing right-wing coups in Latin America. The Obama administration’s early strategy focused on returning President Zelaya to power and restoring democracy, while the coup government’s strategy was to hold onto power until it held elections for a new president. The U.S. responded by cutting aid to Honduras and threatened the military-backed regime with continued international isolation until it negotiated a plan that would enable Zelaya to return to the presidency.

Lockerbie Lingers

Months after the initial furor, the outrage over the early release of the man convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 emerged again this week. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was allowed home to Libya during the summer by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds because the cancer-stricken convict had only three months to live. On November 20, that three-month period passed with Megrahi still alive, leading many of the 270 victims’ relatives, mostly Americans, to question the authenticity of the medical advice the Scots used when releasing the prisoner. Closer inspection of the decision would appear to legitimize the families’ anger.

The medical advice that the Scottish government consulted in order to make their controversial decision was provided by three doctors: two British and one Libyan. All three men were paid by the Libyan government and one of the British doctors has since commented that the three-month period was actually suggested by the Libyan government. Independent doctors had earlier calculated that Megrahi had more than a year to live, leaving him ineligible for release on compassionate grounds. To put their decision into perspective,  prisoner release on compassionate grounds has been used only seven times by the Scottish National Party since taking office in May 2007, with Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill responsible for all the decisions. Megrahi has already survived longer since his release than any of the other criminals, only one of whom was a convicted murderer.

Releasing Megrahi provoked anger on both sides of the Atlantic, with President Obama calling the move a “mistake”. While many Scots echoed the president’s sentiments, some saw irony in the U.S.’s pontification over prisoner treatment. MacAskill has long claimed that he was motivated purely by medical advice, yet commentators speculate that the move formed part of a trade deal between Libya and the UK. The reality is probably less complex and conspiratorial.

Iraq: Can There Be Peace Without Jobs?

Post by Haley Dillan, originally posted on GlobalEnvision.org

Security in Iraq is undoubtedly improving, but rising unemployment threatens to increase instability and worsen corruption, according to Iraq expert Frank Gunter.

Gunter, who’s done two tours in Iraq as an economics adviser, points out in a recent op-ed in the New York Times that 51 percent of the population — and an even greater percentage of young people — is either unemployed or underemployed.

Almost half of the country’s labor force is paid by the government from its revenues from petroleum exports. With the exception of agriculture, legitimate private-sector employment is small — by my calculations, about 6 percent of the labor force. Most of the remainder of the Iraqi labor force is either unemployed or working in the underground economy.

Gunter further laments that any business faces either the inefficiencies of the underground economy or the corrupt ministries that regulate them. (Iraq was just listed among the top five most corrupt countries in the world.) The process to register a new business is expensive and complicated — a license costs $2,800 and requires approval from 12 different ministries.

“The potential for private sector job growth is great,” Gunter writes. So what needs to be done? The number-one thing, Gunter says, is to make it easier and less expensive to register a new business. He also recommends that provinces, rather than Baghdad, set rules for regulating businesses.

But whatever is decided, the government of Iraq is running out of time. It must either end its hostility toward private businesses — or accept that a sharply growing mass of unemployed will nullify the progress of the last three years.

Senate Drags its Feet on Climate, Lobbyists to Blame? Time for the Citizen Lobby to Step it Up

Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google, summed the effort to pass a US climate change bill as an “epic, epic struggle”.

This summer the House of Representatives passed a climate change bill that aims to reduce carbon emissions and make investments in renewable energy. Recently the Senate has taken up the task of stitching together a bill and well, but real action has been postponed to the spring.

The positive and the frustrating aspects of the American political process are on full display. Climate change legislation languishes and wallows in several Senate committees, and is held captive by the vested interest of the few.

This would all be inconsequential if it wasn’t absolutely urgent for the US to get its act together before UN climate talks in December.

In December, 192 nations will meet in Copenhagen to forge one of the most difficult international agreements ever – a comprehensive climate change treaty that replaces the Kyoto Protocol. The Copenhagen conference is seen by many as one of the last opportunities for the world to lock in a process that reduces greenhouse gases in time to stave off disaster.

Copenhagen will not only be a historic gathering of world leaders, scientists, and thought leaders – it’ll be a critical one as well. The time that remains, the window that we have for a climate change deal for the world’s 6 billion people is closing.

Lupe Fiasco Gets Political

The hip-hop heavyweight is on a college tour, though audiences should expect to hear more weighty rhetoric than witty rhymes.

Cross-post by Delaney Rohan, Campus Progress

Laying his rap talents aside for an evening, critically-acclaimed hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco gave George Washington University students a lesson in history this week. But unlike what’s taught in closed-door college classrooms, this lesson belonged to anyone who would listen.

Facing a darkened auditorium of over 100 students, Fiasco, drenched in a spotlight, began the evening by reading a now exalted speech Muhammad Ali once made in protest of the Vietnam War.

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over.

Nearly 40 years later—with America still mired in Iraq, the Obama Administration contemplating sending 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, and nearly 50 million people lacking access to health care –Ali’s message remained emotionally relevant.

Settling the Settlement Issue

When Barack Obama delivered his policy-defining speech in Cairo last summer, the biggest cheer from the partisan crowd came when the American President stated that “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” Five months on and the cheers have turned to chagrin as the U.S. administration capitulates to Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to freeze settlement building whilst rubbing salt into Palestinian wounds through Hilary Clinton’s comments last week where she praised Netanyahu’s obduracy, sycophantically stating that “What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements . . . is unprecedented.”

If by acquiescing to the Israeli government’s position Obama felt he could kick-start the peace process, then he is demonstrating the type of naivety that his critics so often accuse him of. The Obama administration had previously stated that peace talks would not take place until Israel froze the construction of settlements beyond the 1967 border. Yet Netanyahu and his colleagues have behaved contemptuously since taking office: Israel plans to double settler numbers in the West Bank, its ever-fulminating foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has repudiated the 2007 Annapolis agreement that promoted a two-state solution, and Netanyahu has refused to include the creation of a Palestinian state in guidelines for peace talks.

While the Israeli government road-blocks the road map to peace and the U.S. watches on, Palestinians feel a mixture of anger and apathy. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s announcement this week that he would stand down in January was another indicator that many Palestinians have already lost faith in the Obama administration’s peace credentials. Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas, summed up the feelings of many by saying, “The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s back-pedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon.”

The new administration must show the world that Obama is not merely a talented orator with empty rhetoric. Israel’s refusal to freeze settlement construction is not simply a slap in the face for Palestinians; it is also a brazen attempt to undermine the U.S.’s role as peacemaker in the region. In 1991, George H.W. Bush withheld US$10bn in loan guarantees to Israel until it froze settlement construction. President Obama may not want to replicate many moves from the Bush playbook, but this should be the exception to that rule. Doing something of this nature will pour cold water on the incendiary “too late for two states” discourse which has begun to permeate Israeli politics and signal that he is ready to act on his Middle Eastern promise. It is time for the winner of the Nobel peace prize to live up to his title.

Michael Collins, November 2009

michael.mc.collins@gmail.com

No Justice for Russian Journalists

It was a quintessentially cold night in Moscow when Anna Politkovskaya arrived back at her flat with her shopping on October 7, 2006. As she took the elevator down for the last bag of groceries, she was confronted by a gunman who shot her twice in the chest and once in the head. She died instantly. Ms. Politkovskaya’s murder sparked worldwide outrage because she was a prominent journalist and an outspoken critic of Vladmir Putin, the Russian government and its polices in Chechynya. Her death has come to personify the long, lamentable list of journalists killed in Russia, whose murders remain unsolved.

It is estimated that over 300 journalists have died or disappeared in Russia since 1993 as a result of their work.  This figure is all the more shocking when we consider that the impune murder of journalists is acknowledged as a sign that a country does not observe the fundamental right to freedom of speech and is the reason that Russia is ranked by the CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists) as the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists. Despite the fact that current Russian President Dimitri Medvedev came to power last year promising to end the legal nihilism that peremeates the country’s judicial system, the Russian government’s unwillingness to prosecute many of the cases has persisted. While justice lags, the murders continue unabated, as demonstrated by the murder this year of Stanislav Markelov, and Natalia Estemriova.

The international community has reacted in typically futile fashion. The EU keeps its mouth closed for fear that Russian criticism will adversely affect its gas supply, something Ukraine experienced last winter. Meanwhile, the Obama adminstration is eager to reset relations with Russia and is therefore reluctant to make demands, given that it needs Russia’s cooperation on Iran and nuclear proliferation. On a trip to Russia last month, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was pushed by Russian journalists to make a statement on the Russian Government’s refusal to comprehensively investigate the murders of their colleagues. Clinton responded by commenting that the situation “is a matter of grave concern”.

Yet it is clear that merely paying lip service to human rights groups will not be enough to end this wanton wave of violence. It is high time that the U.S. and the E.U. pressurized Russia into taking action on this matter. Medvedev, Putin and co. must realize that while they may not be pulling the trigger, they are ultimately responsible for the failures of the justice system. Although the days of Gulags and communist repression are long gone in Russia, blood remains on the hands of those in the Kremlin.

Michael Collins, November 2009

michael.mc.collins@gmail.com

---

The Good War?

While on the campaign trail for the 2008 election Barack Obama often extolled the virtues of the Afghanistan War, contrasting it sharply with the disastrous Iraq War which he had vociferously protested.  A year after winning that election, he faces arguably his toughest political decision to date: should he send more troops to Afghanistan? The debate within the White House appears to be focused on how Obama should continue this war (more troops or more sophisticated technology such as unmanned drones) as opposed to why he should. In reality, sending in more troops is delaying the inevitable and Obama must put an end to this war as soon as possible.

The first reason to end this war is the lack of clarity over the war’s objective. In March, the President stated that his goal in Afghanistan was to “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda”. Yet most experts will tell you that al-Qaeda is a diminished force which has largely fled Afghanistan. It would be more prudent for the U.S. to concentrate on defeating al-Qaeda in countries such as Yemen and Somalia, which have recently become a hotbed for Islamic extremists, while paying more attention to the tinderbox that is Pakistan. Unfortunately, the U.S. is bogged down in a perpetual battle with the Taliban at huge human cost for all concerned. The War in Afghanistan has evolved into another nation-building exercise, despite the fact that Obama stated that “We are not going to be able to rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy“.

The military is ostensibly in Afghanistan to protect the U.S. from future al-Qaeda attacks, yet how many of al-Qaeda’s most devastating attacks have been organized from Afghanistan? 9/11? Yes. The attacks provided the casus belli for the war. The 2002 Bali Bombings? No. They were planned in Thailand. The 2004 Madrid Bombings? No. They were planned in Spain and North Africa. The 2005 London Bombings? No. They were planned in England. The idea that the War in Afghanistan will protect the U.S. from future attacks is naïve and myopic.

The New Age of Non-Profits: a Conversation with Ken Banks on Development, Knowledge Sharing and FrontlineSMS

It had started off simple enough.

Two weeks ago, still relatively new in my position as a Northeast Regional Coordinator with AIDemocracy, I spent a few hours trawling through Social Edge and twitter. With an eye on global development and security, my goal was to discover what was being done already in the non-profit world, who was doing it best and who among these folk were the most open to collaboration.

I made a number of new friends: the people at Acumen Fund, Water Charity (not to be confused with charity:water), Be Unreasonable, Sangam India, CORD and Open Society Institute were fantastic right off the bat– They were engaging, interested and human. It was like a Utopian first day at school.

In the context of my new job and projects I had in mind, I needed to know what was being done in terms of technology support for non-profit outreach and education services. One name that came up regularly was Ken Banks, founder of Kiwanja.net

I had heard of Kiwanja in passing before, but didn’t know much about it’s main project FrontlineSMS, otherwise known as \o/ (Which, btw, is a design based on this fantastic visual here).

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Before this Saturday, I had no idea who Ken Banks is as a person, and was as wary as a product of post-post-colonialism can be of anybody who does “non-profit work” in “Africa”. I was afraid I might run into yet another individual who’s working to “save Africa” just because that’s what Bono, the UN and everyone else is talking about right now.

[And if this is something that bothers you, Aid Watch has a great post on the issue here.]

I sent an email to Ken, one of those self-introduction/basic outline of project/can we chat sometime emails. You must remember that I moonlight as a writer: after all my experiences writing lit mag queries, I was prepared to face rejection or silence.