Politics. Foreign Policy. History. Interviews.

Thursday, April 01, 2004

Afghanistan:

Yesterday, the second Berlin donor conference for Afghanistan began with a bit of a whimper. The last donor conference was all the way back in Japan in January of 2002. At that time, Afghanistan requested $10 b. and received $4.5 b. Afghanistan came to Berlin seeking $27.5 b (around $4 b/year over a seven-year plan), and received approximately $8 b. To date, the U.S. has bledged $1.2 b. in 2004.

Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that the first of 2000 Marines had arrived in Afghanistan in an effort to uproot regained Taliban footholds in the South. Last year, the annual UN opium survey in Afghanistan again produced three-quarters of the world's opium, (link) with farmers taking in about $2.3 b, equivalent to about half of the legitimate GDP of the country. The UN reports "Out of this drug chest, some provincial administrators and military commanders take a considerable share: the more they get used to this, the less likely it becomes that they will respect the law, be loyal to Kabul and support the legal economy. Terrorists take a cut as well: the longer this happens, the greater the threat to the security within the country and on its borders."

It's a pity this isn't finding any time on the airwaves, or even mainstream papers. There are a lot of people, including the Afghan president himself, trying to warn us that without the proper attention and dedication to reconstruction in Afghanistan, the country might be back right where it was four years ago.

From the UN:

SCENARIO 1 shows predicted growth based on:
Security and law and order improving
The opium economy being eliminated over the next 12 years
No serious drought, on the scale of 1999-2001
Under this scenario, GDP per capita reaches nearly $500 by 2015

SCENARIO 2 shows predicted growth based on:
Security and law and order not improving
The opium economy continuing at current levels
Investment in infrastructure slowing down, private investment remaining weak due to instability
Under this scenario, GDP per capita remains below $325 in 2015. This is likely to fuel instability, and perpetuate poverty and under-investment

Source: UN/World Bank

Further assessment of Afghanistan since the war can be found in the lucid CSIS study here.
Posted by: Kirk / 9:20 AM / 

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Rice 9/11 Testimony May Be Released
Posted by: Kirk / 1:23 AM / 
Richard Lugar, Greater Middle East Peace Initiatives, Brookings folks, etc.

An assessment forthcoming of a lecture I attended Monday by Richard Lugar (R-Ind), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who unveiled a different approach to democratizing the greater Middle East at the Brookings Institution. (link) An interesting contrast to what I heard down the street at Georgetown last Friday at the Council on Egyptian-American Relations. Lugar is the consummate diplomat, and I will put his proposal forth here as soon as possible.
Posted by: Kirk / 12:00 AM / 

Sunday, March 28, 2004

Surveying my stats after being on the road for a few days, I’ve come up with three possibilities to explain a 100+ plummet in daily hits over a 48-hour period. It could be because of the weekend, and you’ve got better things to do than read blogs. Or, it could be that you’re all very unfaithful and leave the moment momentum shifts. Or, it means that I’m simply not refreshing my page as much as I usually do.

At any rate, I’m here in the ole capitol, attending various mid-east related conferences. On Friday, I attended the Council on Egyptian-American Affairs (link) which endeavors to outline the economic, military, and political relations between the two nations and the importance of each. With a familiar cast of Georgetowners like Robert Galluci and Michael Hudson, as well as notables like Robert Pelletreau (former ambassador to Egypt, lifelong service in DoS), the event could have chewed through much more than it did. While there were nuggets of important statistics, by my count the word “Islamist” was mentioned less than ten times. Only Pelletreau used the word “regime”, and hardly anybody addressed the incessant continuation of the emergency laws, restriction on political assembly and freedom of speech. Then again, all of this is difficult when the ambassador from Egypt is sitting in the audience, and when the post-council dinner is thrown at the ambassador’s invite. One would almost get the feeling that U.S.-Egyptian relations were about as peachy and reverberation-free as between the U.S. and Iceland.


Roundheads and Cavaliers:

Joel Kotkin has a piece in WaPo’s Sunday Outlook (link) that is worth your time. He draws a comparison between the increasingly divided America of the 21st century and that of mid-17th century England on the brink of civil war, split between the Cavaliers (read: Democrats) who supported Charles I knocked heads for seven years with the Roundheads (Repubs) led by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. Recognizing that pre-19th and 20th century British history is one of my many black holes of familiarity, I can’t venture much on the validity of this comparison (I’d be pleased of any of our readers who’ve ventured over from the History News Network could offer some thoughts), although Kotkin doesn’t elaborate the comparison in much depth. Instead he writes about the increasing polarization of Americans: that Republicans and Democrats are increasingly less like to read the same news, live next door to each other, or attend the same houses of worship. Kotkin, whose new book is a history of cities, assesses where the party-chips seem to be falling city-by-city.


Another Round of Aborted Arab Summits:

Neil MacFarquhar, who once was kind enough to let me traipse around the Times’ Mideast bureau while I lived in the region last year, writes about the collapse of the Arab Summit meeting yesterday. (link) Hosted by Tunisia, the summit was supposed to address issues of reform, modernization, human rights, and the situation in Iraq, but spun into disarray before it even began. Crown Prince Abdullah and Hosni Mubarak didn’t deign to attend, a clear blow to the credibility of the summit. I am reminded of the Arab summit on the eve of the war in Iraq last year in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, which ended in Nile-TV blackout as Qaddafi called Abdullah a “monkey” as the gathering devolved into a shouting match.

In terms of those who might actually ignite it, reform doesn’t seem to be on many horizons these days…
Posted by: Kirk / 11:46 PM / 
I have found internet. Looking at my stats, you have all punished me for lack of posting. Much to review, more coming tonight.
Posted by: Kirk / 1:33 PM / 

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Open thread. I'm off to D.C. for a few days here, posting will be sporadic. Until then, the floor is yours...Clarke, Campaign 2004, Sudan, Taiwan, etc.
Posted by: Kirk / 3:09 AM / 
One quick question - did anyone see President Bush at the TV & Radio correspondents dinner tonight? I can't locate any video. I know it's supposed to be a night to take it easy, but there is something unsettling about his wisecracking about finding wmd's. Couldn't they roll out the standard lames for humor? Maybe I'm out of line here....
Posted by: Kirk / 1:01 AM / 

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Nicholas Kristoff writes from the (link) Chad-Sudan border about the ethnic cleansing under way in Sudan, carried out by that country's Arab rulers against the black African Sudanese. This campaign, which has made refugees of 700,000 Africans, has received scant attention by the international media.

A U.N. official last week said that the militia attacks on Darfur villagers were "remniscent of the Rwandan genocide in 1994." (link) The United States is apparently partaking in cease-fire talks this week, though the Sudanese government has said that the region isn't safe for relief workers.

Surprisingly (or maybe not), this is barely present in our coverage. Kristoff's is the only piece I could locate online at the NYT. The last article in WaPo ran on the 11th of March. Nothing at the L.A. Times and a 20-word Reuters brief at the Guardian.

More at Reuters Alertnet: (link).
Posted by: Kirk / 4:41 PM / 
I had a teacher in high school who believed that history is obsessed with the number 40...the Old and New Testaments are loaded with examples: it rained for forty days and nights, Jesus Christ fasted for forty days and nights, the Jews wandered the desert for forty years, to name a few. Via Oxblog (link) I came across a recent assessment (link) of the progress of democratization promotion in the Middle East. The committee reveals some modern-day 40-based stats; that while the U.S. spends $400 billion dollars on defense, it allocates a paltry $40 million the National Endowment for Democracy. (link) To be fair, the NED is officially a private NGO which, apart from its Journal of Democracy gets most of its funding from the government. The NED writes grants to pro-democracy groups throughout the world.

Bush, in his State of the Union, pledged to double allocation to NED to $80 million, which is approximately twelve hours of operating expenses in Iraq. Remember, the $80 million dollar allocation is not just for the Middle East, but for pro-democracy efforts throughout the world.

If the United States is genuinely interested in promoting democracy in the Middle East, it had better start shelling out some substantive cash. If it doesn’t support any democratizing forces, then "historic" speeches like these (link) should not be taken seriously.

Of course, the NED is not the summum bonum of democracy promotion. A few of the report’s proposals:

• manifold increases by both the United States and Europe in funding for democracy promotion. A new “trans-Atlantic Forum for Democracy Promotion could be created” so that funding is not as swayed by diplomatic pressures.

• “As well as working at a grass-roots level, the West should use policies on trade and aid to encourage governments to reform and to enlarge the space for legitimate political action. We need to reward countries that make progress on democracy and governance, and be ready to withdraw privileges from those that do not.”

• The authors also stress working towards a secure environment in which democratic change can more easily occur, by renewing diplomatic efforts in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, supporting the entrance of Turkey into the EU as it continues its democratization, pressuring Iran for arms control, and avoiding a premature disengagement with the democratic transition under way in Iraq.

And if those goals weren’t lofty enough, we’ve got some work to do here at home (sigh), if a democratic Middle East is our goal. “Missions such as building democracy, promoting a political transformation agenda and winning the hearts and minds of millions of ordinary people are buried deep in American and European bureaucracies. As a result, these tasks will never receive the necessary leadership, attention and resources. Our governmental capacity to help build new democratic states must be as great as our capacity to destroy autocratic regimes.” A Department of Democracy Promotion should be established headed by a cabinet-level official, who would work to make sure that Europeans and Americans pool their resources (not compete with) to implement their programs.

Oxblog rightly points out that any serious efforts have to be as bipartisan as possible in order to weather the storms of who takes the credit. We need to stop thinking about this in year-to-year or electoral-cycle terms. The legacy of securing peace in the Middle East must involve collaboration between both the Republicans and Democrats and the United States and Europe. There’s far too much to be done before the fight for whose idea it was can even begin.

If this remains a non-interest for us, then a democratized and free Middle East can’t be remembered as a $40 million endeavor.



What else does $40 million buy?
One Starr investigation

A space marriage on the International Space Station by a Russian firm

Pudge Rodriguez
Posted by: Kirk / 12:15 AM / 

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Our friends over at the History News Network (link) are discussing Zinn's "A People's History" and its fortes & flaws. (link)
Posted by: Kirk / 6:56 PM / 

Monday, March 22, 2004

Op-ed written this morning. Please dissect and destroy.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow once warned if your only tool is a hammer, make sure all of your problems are nails. This morning the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, was killed. Within hours of the assassination, Palestinians thronged the streets vowing avengement, most likely through more suicide bombings of innocent women and children. One would have to ignore the events of the last three years to believe that Yasin’s death will not escalate the violence. Israel echoes the United States’ painful continuation of a failing policy to confront terrorism.

We here in America willfully engage the same fantasy that combing through the crags of Waziristan in hot pursuit of Zawahiri is winning the war on terrorism, while ignoring the stark reality that Islamist recruitment is on the rise along with anti-Americanism across the globe.

In the most recent Pew Research Center’s survey of global opinion a year after the war on Iraq, Osama Bin Laden is favorably viewed by 65% of Pakistanis, 55% of Jordanians, and 45% of Moroccans; that is, approximately 115 million people in those three countries alone. The same survey reports that one in three Turks believes suicide attacks against Americans in Iraq justifiable. To boot, European favorability of the U.S. has been on the decline while its mistrust climbs.

In Egypt, where I lived during the war last year, moderate liberal and Muslim voices were stifled; incapable of refuting the oft-touted Islamist claim that the United States determined to dominate Middle East as their televisions fed them nightly clips of the U.S. Navy passing through the Suez Canal en route to Baghdad. In the months leading up to and following the war on Iraq, Arabic dailies reported massive recruitments into militant Islamist groups due to the soaring anti-war sentiment in the region.

Unfortunately, our problems aren’t one-dimensional. Our foray into Iraq has soured the trans-Atlantic alliance, pushed more Muslim youth into radicalism, while de-clawing arguments of moderate voices in the Middle East and ignoring concerns of our allies. Our permission to hunt for Bin Laden in Pakistan was traded for the hefty sum of U.S. silence over news of the greatest proliferation of nuclear technology and material in history by a man lauded as a “hero” by Pervez Musharraf. Our assembly of tanks in the deserts of Egypt and access to the Suez Canal allows a reprehensible authoritarian to remain in power, crushing free speech and assembly with each extension of the constitution-nullifying Emergency law.

The Egyptian playwright Ali Salem once told me that the war on terrorism will cause both the United States and the Middle East to exchange certain attributes. In the two and a half years since 9/11, we have adopted the same black-and-white paradigm for defining the battleground of the war on terrorism as Al-Qaeda: you’re either with us or against us. This pitted democracies against each other, citizens against their leaders, all to the glee of Bin Laden and his adherents. As the Arabic proverb goes…the one-eyed person is a beauty in the country of the blind.
Posted by: Kirk / 10:20 PM / 
Just received a couple requests that I re-open a thread for continuing debate on the uniform, kerry's medals, suitable protest. It slipped into the archives yesterday.
Posted by: Kirk / 2:59 PM / 

Sheikh Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, killed. Stay tuned for a depressing spate of escalating violence from a conflict screaming for attention.

Ha'aretz op-ed (link) from Monday (pre-attack) suggesting that Israeli military/political policy against Arafat & the PA have weakened it to a degree that Hamas represents the strongest ideological rivalry.

I've stayed away from any Israeli-Palestinian debate on this site, much like those who have intimately followed the conflict. I was last in Israel in 2001 in what was then a particularly rough spike in violence during the intifada. I lived next door for a year last year and couldn't bring myself to go. It is with great weariness that I write this...these will surely be bloody days for both parties of a wretched conflict.
Posted by: Kirk / 4:51 AM /