Somalia and an international community in disarray (again)

So here we are, sixteen years on, and we once again have a major crisis of governance, civil chaos, and human suffering in Somalia; an international “community” that’s completely incapable of responding effectively; and a presidential transition here in Washington DC that complicates matters even further.
Maybe Somalia and its woes should stand– alongside Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and various other deeply troubled US projects– as a tragic monument to the mistakes Washington made during the years it wielded unrivaled power in the international system.
Somalia can also stand alongside those other projects as testimony to the failure of the US’s reliance on military means to address what are all, at heart, deeply political problems.
So here we are, sixteen years on.
Time for some lesson-learning, perhaps?
… This time around, we have the rapid unraveling of the US-backed political system in Somalia that was put in place by the bayonets of the Ethiopian army units that invaded the country almost exactly two years ago, at the behest of (and with much support from) Washington.
I’d love to know more about the decisionmaking of the Ethiopian regime, which recently announced it would be ending its (US-backed) occupation of Somalia. That occupation did win some backing from the African Union, which also deployed some token forces alongside the Ethiopians. It’s not certain if, as the Ethiopians withdraw, the AU forces will remain there. That seems doubtful… Meanwhile, the Islamic Courts Union, which had extended some valuable forms of unified control over much of the country prior to the Ethiopian invasion but were dispersed and brutally repressed by the Ethiopians, have been largely replaced by a younger generation of Islamist “shabab” (young men) who seem to be more hardline than the ICU.
The chief Ethiopian/US proxy in Somalia has been “President” Abullahi Yusuf, installed after the Ethiopian invasion. He and his backers have always been adamant, until now, that they would not negotiate in any way at all with the Somali Islamists. But the Prime Minister, Nur Hassan Hussein, has been more inclined to negotiate with the Islamists and other opposition forces. He and parliament opened impeachment proceedings against Yusuf yesterday.
Yusuf’s base of support has also been considerably weakened by two other developments: Big neighbor Kenya yesterday withdrew its support, calling him an “obstacle to peace.” And big demonstrations were reported in favor of PM Nur in Mogadishu and neighboring areas.
So it definitely looks as if Yusuf’s days are numbered. I hope Nur Hassan Hussein has the political smarts that will be needed to negotiate an internal political settlement in the country, because it seems there is absolutely no outside force capable of doing so.
On Tuesday, Condi Rice asked UN Sec-Gen Ban Ki-Moon to send UN peacekeepers to Somalia. Ban responded (not unreasonably) that (1) there was no peace to keep, and (2) none of the 50 countries he had asked, had agreed to commit any troops to this. So he looks incapable of pulling Pres. Bush’s chestnuts out of the Somali fire on this occasion.
Meanwhile, the main way the chaos in Somalia has been impinging on the international community in recent weeks has been through the spreading of the lawlessness on the country’s land into– and sometimes far beyond– its coastal waters.
International cruise ships filled with fun-loving Australians have been threatened! Supertankers carrying Saudi crude to the gas-guzzlers of North America have been threatened!
Notice that those incidents of piracy– few of which have been fatal to the people on the targeted ships– have received a whole lot more attention in the western media than the continuing, mega-lethal agonies of the people of Somalia.
The Somali “pirates” say they started their actions against international shipping after they became fed up with international vessels using their country’s waters to engage in illegal fishing and illegal trash-dumping. Quite possibly so… since of course, Somalia has no governmental coastal protection force capable of policing its long and fish-rich coastline.
On Tuesday, the UN Security Council did finally get around to doing something regarding Somalia. It passed Resolution 1851, which authorizes nations to use force to engage in,

    (Article 2)… seizure and disposition of boats, vessels, arms and other related equipment used in the commission of piracy and armed robbery at sea off the coast of Somalia, or for which there are reasonable grounds for suspecting such use…

Once these “suspicious” boats and vessels have been seized, the resolution apparently allows the seizers, or other countries with which they have agreements, to hold and try the accused pirates, “provided that the advance consent of the [Somali Transitional federal Government] is obtained for the exercise of third state jurisdiction by shipriders in Somali territorial waters… ”
It all sounds like an organizational and jurisdictional nightmare. Not helped when the US State Department declared yesterday, that it considers that resolution 1851

    “authorizes states cooperating with the Somali Transitional Federal Government to extend counter-piracy efforts to include potential operations in Somali territorial land and air space, to suppress acts of piracy and armed robbery at sea.”

So can we now expect to see US airpower being deployed against Islamists or others in Somalia, under the (in practice, hard-to-investigate) pretext that these targets are somehow connected with “piracy”?
The next few weeks will be important ones for the people of Somalia. And for the international “system” as a whole. The power projection capabilities of the US military are still hopelessly over-stretched, so it seems unlikely that the Pentagon’s planners will have the stomach for any particularly sustained campaign of attack against Somalia, under any pretext. Ships from numerous national navies are meanwhile steaming toward the Gulf of Aden and the Somali coast, to contribute to the anti-piracy efforts. The contributing navies include various European navies, the Indian navy, the Russian navy and probably also– playing for the first time ever a potentially combat-ready role in these waters– China’s navy.
Xinahua reported yesterday that,

    Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei confirmed that the government is “seriously considering sending naval ships” to the waters in the near future when speaking at a ministerial meeting of the UN Security Council on Somali piracy in New York on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, btw, a Chinese shipping boat that came under threat from the Somali pirates was rescued by members of other unidentified navies in the Gulf of Aden. That was, I think the fifth or sixth Chinese boat to have been targeted there.
A Chinese anti-pirate naval deployment to the East African coast will be the first deployment of a combat-ready force to the continent since the truly massive armadas the Chinese Muslim admiral Zheng He took to Africa in the 1420s. As I said, interesting times we’re living in.

A Report from A Dangerous Place

You would think that sitting here under a palapa (palm-frond roof) deep down in Mexico a hundred yards from the beach, with some American surfer-dudes around and with the frigatebirds soaring languidly overhead, one would experience true peace and tranquility.
And in fact I did enjoy it until I happened upon a CBS News article that said “In the past few years, Mexico has become one of the most dangerous places on earth.” I didn’t know that.
I thought the most dangerous part of my day was suffering hypothermia from the cold showers in this particular campground (It’s a good thing that the air temperature is about 80.).

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Afghanistan: Some dots to connect

The Afghanistan Conflict Monitor does a great job of pulling together reports on breaking developments in that war-wracked country.
Here are three consecutive posts from today’s front page:

You can find many more details about the tragedy Afghanistan is living through, more than seven years into the country’s occupation by the US-led coalition, here.
Seven years into the US-led occupations of Japan and Germany, the situation in each of those countries was exponentially better than the situation in Afghanistan today.
The present model of overwhelmingly military, overwhelmingly western responsibility for Afghanistan’s in/security environment is clearly not working for the Afghan people. They– and the world– need a different model.

NATO trucking woes in Pakistan continue

The Daily Telegraph’s Isambard Wilkinson reports that the main trade association for Pakistani trucking companies that haul NATO goods into Afghanistan from Karachi has now decided to halt all NATO trucking until the security of the trucks and their drivers can be assured.
(HT: Afghanistan Conflict Monitor, again. Great resource!)
Wilkinson quotes Khyber Transport Association head M.S. Afridi as saying, ” “We have stopped supplies to foreign forces in Afghanistan from today. We have around 3,500 trucks, tankers and other vehicles, we are the major suppliers to Afghanistan, transporting about 60-70 per cent of goods.”
He writes,

    the main weak point, according to the Tariq Hayat Khan, the political agent for the Khyber tribal area, is on the outskirts of Peshawar city, which falls outside his jurisdiction and where the truck depots stand.
    The hauliers are asking the government to shift the depots away from Peshawar’s ring-road, to a less vulnerable place.

3,500 trucks is, I believe around five days’ worth of supplies for the NATO force in Afghanistan? Anyway, it looks like a stoppage that will have a significant impact for many ISAF troops in Afghanistan.
Afridi’s statement comes a week after a big attack in the Peshawar area left 160 Afghanistan-bound trucks as charred remains. But evidently there have been other attacks, too, since Wilkinson writes that “Hundreds of Nato and US-led coalition vehicles have been destroyed in the last two weeks after depots were targeted by hundreds of militants in northwest Pakistan.”
He adds this:

    Qudratullah Khan, a transporter from Khyber Agency who runs Al Qadri Cargo Company, said: “Transportation of goods to Afghanistan has become a risky job and even our lives at stake while taking the goods.
    “The vehicles carrying containers for Afghanistan are being looted in a broad day light, the drivers are killed and kidnapped, but we do not see any security or protection to us.”
    He added that there suspicions that drivers were involved in looting vehicles and convoys in collusion with the militants.
    …Mr Khan said the Taliban is taking 30 per cent of the goods as for the Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud’s “Islamic treasury”, and 30 per cent are shared by the drivers and transporters when these vehicles are looted or kidnapped.

So there’s a major problem of trusting the drivers. (And maybe, also, of trusting some of the army and security force units sent in to help guard the convoys?)
This certainly does not look like a problem that will be solved satisfactorily any time soon.
All of which increases the urgency with which NATO needs to conclude the negotiations it’s now holding with Russia about opening a major trans-shipment route into Afghanistan via the Russian railroads. Even more so, since NATO is planning to beef up its presence in Afghanistan, which means it will require an even thicker pipeline of shipments into the country.
Over the past few months Russia has lost a considerable amount of that portion of “leverage” it had with western nations by virtue of its status as oil exporter (though the leverage it derives from its gas exports has not declined as much.) But now, thanks to the deterioration of the security situation in Pakistan, Russia is acquiring considerable new leverage with the west by virtue of its rail network.
Stay tuned for developments in all aspects of this story. The situation in Pakistan does not look stable.

Israel’s revolving door for Palestinian prisoners

The respected Palestinian politician and humanitarian activist Mustapha Barghouthi notes that since Annapolis (remember Annapolis, folks?), Israel has released 990 Palestinian political prisoners– but it has arrested and detained (usually without trial) a further 4,950 Palestinians.
Israel, he said, now holds around 11,000 Palestinians, including 47 elected members of parliament.
A Palestinian non-state group holds one Israeli who at the time of capture was a combatant in the IDF.
So much for all the rosy promises and scenarios described at Annapolis, eh?
The promises regarding cutbacks in Israeli settlement building have proven equally content-free.
“Accountability”, anyone?

Bush’s militarism gets the shoe

Pres. Bush’s present tour to Iraq and Afghanistan was probably designed to be a “legacy-establishing” trip, or perhaps even– in the imagination of some of his advisers?– a victory lap. But yesterday’s incident, in which an Iraqi journo threw his shoes at Bush while yelling strong criticisms of him, seems an appropriate “footnote” to the arrogant militarism that dominated most of Bush’s time in office.
Because let’s be quite clear: That reliance on militarism has not worked. Early on, it registered some, very partial, “achievements”– the overthrow of the Taliban, the scattering of the bases Al-Qarda once had in Afghanistan, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But the reliance on militarism failed to bring about the stabilization of the two countries invaded and their consolidation as strong and reliable US allies, a la post-1945 Germany or Japan. Instead, in both cases the overthrow of the old order through the use of force led to the unleashing of powerful new (or in Afghanistan, revived) anti-American movements, as well as a de-facto “legitimatization” of the use of force by those movements given that the US occupation forces were still dealing overwhelmingly with both countries through the use of brute military force rather than negotiation.
Meanwhile, Bush’s reliance on militarism in those countries– and elsewhere– has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans between service-members and private “contractors”; the maiming of tens of thousands more Americans; the sowing of chaos and civil war in both countries that has claimed many scores of thousands of their citizens’ lives, and the serious blighting of the lives of millions more; the imposition of budgetary burdens on the US economy that will take a generation or more to pay off; the torpedoing of the US “brand” and US credibility around the world; and a considerable increase in the power and influence of Iran in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Some months ago President Bush– ably advised, I believe, by Secdef Bob Gates– came to the realization that the goal of maintaining a dominant US military presence in the country in perpetuity was no longer realizeable. Hence, the administration’s final acceptance last month that it would have to sign a agreement with Iraq whose terms explicitly mandate a complete US withdrawal from the country by the end of 2011. (The US commander in Iraq, the ever-bellgerent Ray Odierno, recently claimed the US could change the terms of the agreement unilaterally and keep forces in Iraqi cities after the June deadline from their removal. But certainly the text of the treaty makes no provision for that.)
Maybe Bush hoped that when he went to Iraq yesterday, he would receive at least some recognition for the “graciousness” of the concession he’d made to the Iraqi negotiators? A different form of “Mission Accomplished”, perhaps?
Well, it’s possible he did receive some kind words from Nuri al-Maliki, the man who was installed as PM there primarily by the US occupation authorities but who then turned round and negotiated very toughly with the Americans this year. But few people will ever remember what Maliki said to Bush on this occasion. All that most people inside and outside Iraq will remember is the pair of shoes thrown at him– on video– at the press conference.
The guy who did that got wrestled to the ground by Maliki’s security men and was taken away to an uncertain fate. Maliki had lost considerable face by demonstrating that he couldn’t even control the cadre of heavily screened journos who are allowed into his press conferences. But McClatchy correspondent Laith makes clear that the anti-Bush sentiments run very extensively throughout the Iraqi press corps. Though Laith said he disagreed with the particular means of “self-expression” the shoe-thrower had used, he also said,

    I can’t blame the journalist for hating the U.S. president because I agree with all the Iraqis (not [the] politicians of course) that Bush’s policy destroyed our country.

But despite the bows they have made to raw, pragmatic realism in Iraq, Bush, Gates, and the president-elect all seem sold– for now– on the idea that reliance on near-unilateral US militarism still seems the best policy in Afghanistan.
How long will it take– and the lives of how many more people?– before the different branches of government in Washington really understand that War truly is not the answer, in Afghanistan any more than in Iraq?
The US citizenry needs to step up our activism on this issue. We need to all work together to give militarism the shoe.
(Update 3:25 p.m.: The LA Times blog has a good roundup of media attention in the Arab world, here. Note that even the usually pro-US Al-Arabiyeh network carried a commentary strongly supportive of the shoe-tosser.)

Obama and Arab-Israeli diplomacy

There has been a lot of speculation in Washington these past weeks about the content of the Arab-Israeli stance we might expect to see from the Obama administration. I have followed this speculation as closely as just about everyone, and have the following observations to make:
1. It is still far too early to make any concrete predictions at all. All we know so far is the content of the top-level appointments he announced on December 1, to his foreign affairs and national security team, and the prominent mention he made in that announcement of the need to find “a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.”
2. What we still do not, very significantly, know is how exactly the responsibilities will be divided between Hillary Clinton at State, and Gen. Jim Jones as NSC adviser. All we know is that Hillary asked for, and got, an assurance that she would have direct access to the Prez whenever she needs it. Which is not at all the same as saying that she will over-rule Jones, who will have direct access to the Prez as a matter of course and who is expected to play a strong role as NSC adviser.
3. One of my working assumptions is that Hillary might be expected to be more accommodationist than Jones to whatever government is in power in Israel, and more reserved than him about articulating the United States’ own strong interest in the conclusion of a final, conflict-ending, and claims-ending peace in the region. I might be wrong. But she has been a close and good friend of AIPAC for a long time now. Jones, meanwhile, gained important, firsthand experience into the (previously often dysfunctional) dynamics of the US-Israel-Palestine triangle during his work on revamping the PA’s security apparatus in Jenin. He is a high-level military man with considerable leadership experience, not someone whom Hillary can easily roll right over. (Also, his military experience and stature will be an important asset to Obama as Obama tries to figure out how to deal with the Israelis.)
4. Dennis Ross has worked hard to get himself “mentioned” as possible Arab-Israeli diplomacy czar in many publications in the US, Israel, and elsewhere (including, today, here.) Dennis has been a staunch Clinton-ite ever since he opportunistically jumped ship straight from George Bush I’s failed re-election campaign in ’92 to the Clinton camp. He did a workman-like job on Israeli-Arab diplomacy so long as he was closely supervised by Sec. of State Jim Baker, but once he rose higher on the feeding chain his own preferences were always for (a) lengthy delay in the conclusion of a final peace agreement– argued for in the name of “ripeness theory” and the need for very lengthy “confidence building” before the final negotiations even start; and (b) trying to split the Arab parties off from each other and play each off against the others in a classic “divide and rule” way.
5. However, despite all this “mentioning” and other forms of speculation, we still really do not know anything about how Obama intends to pursue his stated goal of a speedy move toward a final Israel-Palestine peace. And I suspect much of that “mentioning” might backfire.
6. We will not know the content of the policy until we hear additional substantive statements from the President-elect and/or see the next echelon down of Middle-East-relevant appointments being announced, with the lines of their responsibility also clearly established.
7. Given the urgency with which Obama spoke about the need for a final Israel-Palestine peace he may well have hoped to have more pieces of that policy (as in #6 above) in place by now. But the economic crisis has been overwhelming everything else on his agenda in the past couple of weeks. We still have 37 days to go before the inauguration. I am sure we will learn more before then.

Moreno-Ocampo and the future of the ICC

The International Criminal Court started its work in 2002 with great fanfare and expectations. The hopes of its many supporters around the world (but concentrated particularly in rich western countries) was that this new court could bring a new day of “accountability” to the perpetrators of some of the most heinous mass crimes of our day.
Sadly, those hopes have not been realized. And not just because of the complete inability of the ICC to even start grappling with Pres. Bush’s perpetration of a monstrous Crime Against the Peace in 2003, and his administration’s perpetration of numerous serious war crimes subsequent to that big original crime.
But beyond that big lacuna, the way the ICC itself has gone about its business since 2002 has also been deeply, perhaps fatally, flawed… And one person who has certainly contributed to these mistakes has been the Chief Prosecutor, Argentina’s Luis Moreno-Ocampo.
Tragically, one of the main problems for this court that was meant to usher in this new era of “accountability” has been that the degree to which the court’s own major organs are– or even, can be– held accountable to the public they purport to serve is extremely limited; or, almost non-existent.

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