Change.org's War and Peace Blog

Domestic Violence Among Vets with PTSD May Sometimes be Inadvertent, Argues WoundedTimes

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-24T08:09:00-08:00

Exploring issues of war trauma and post-traumatic stress, I came across an interesting blogger who makes an important clarification on domestic violence among returned veterans.

Kathie Costos, writing for her site WoundTimes, explained that sometimes veterans--and this likely includes many others who have war or domestic abuse trauma--have particular kinds of sleeping trouble. Often exhausted from not being able to relax at night, they may become locked into dreams so vivid that when their spouse tries to wake them the veteran strikes out and fights believing the spouse to be the opponent feared in the dream.

She also makes the important distinction that issues like domestic violence, being a veteran, having experienced trauma, and having clinically-diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be associated but are not always tied to each other. If this issue is important to you, explore her blog here. Also, check out the US Veterans Administration for their take here.

[Photo: Santa Rosa, CA, residents post purple flags representing each domestic violence call to the local police station, Sonomabuzz]

Details Few on US Assistance to Afghan Militias

Una Vera — 2009-11-24T07:05:00-08:00

Last week, I wrote that the United States is arming and paying Afghan militias to fight the Taliban under something called the Community Defense Initiative (CDI). According to the Guardian, I was wrong about the arms part. The US military is not arming the militias, it is only rewarding them with development projects in their communities.

Or not.

Dexter Filkins in the New York Times paints a slightly different picture. According to Filkins, the US military is quietly dropping US Special Forces soldiers into communities where these militias have sprung up independently, and supplying food and ammunition to anti-Taliban fighters. In the future, Special Forces will be giving them training and communications equipment as well. So, bullets and food, but no guns --because the militiamen already have those.

The problem is, no one in the media seems entirely sure of what the CDI is, or what the US military foresees it becoming. The scheme is reportedly controlled by a new Special Forces group that reports directly to Gen. McChrystal, the top US military official in Afghanistan, but falls outside the authority of the NATO mission. The CDI has already begun in 14 areas in the south, east and west, and is expected to expand rapidly to other areas over the next year.

Beyond that, who knows? Available details about the plan are frustratingly few.

[Photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/foreignoffice/ / CC BY-ND 2.0 ]

Blackwater Assassins Posing as Aidworkers?

Una Vera — 2009-11-24T06:22:00-08:00

The Nation writer Jeremy Scahill dropped a journalistic bombshell on the aid community yesterday in a story about private security contractor Blackwater's covert work in South Asia: Blackwater assassins have been working undercover as aidworkers in Pakistan and elsewhere in the region.

The English language doesn't contain profanity strong enough to express the outrage that revelation deserves. "Nobody even gives them a second thought," Scahill's unnamed source close to the notorious company said of the mercenaries posing as aidworkers.

I so sincerely hope Scahill's source --his one source for the entire story-- wasn't lying, or carelessly mischaracterizing, because make no mistake about it, that information, now out for the world to read, is going to get real aidworkers killed and jeopardize real relief operations.

This is going to be ruinous. I'm so angry I'm literally at a loss for words now.

[Photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/osbornb/ / CC BY 2.0]

Somalia: Call on UN & Governments to Prevent Sea Theft as Pre-Requisite for Ending Piracy

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-24T05:09:00-08:00

After the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami recovery and again in 2007, a number of fishermen and women living on the northeast coast of Somalia described to me what had become one of their greatest worries, one that has been obscured by the more sexy press about piracy: sea theft.

Foreign trawlers have been forging into Somalia's unprotected coastal waters, literally stealing fishing nets, lobster pots, and dynamiting reefs to clean up crab and lobster stock since the early 1990's. Sea theft has contributed to poverty and hunger along Somalia's coastline.

After harsher than normal droughts kill off livestock many herders flood to the fisheries for work knowing that farming is virtually impossible in the soils of this region. On the coast they find that equipment has been plundered and fish stocks are low...

Stopping foreign trawlers from plundering Somali resources was not only a large motivation for the first generation of pirates, but is also a large reason many Somalis consent to having these armed gangs patrol the sea. Sadly, the criminal elements have stolen the headlines and compelled Western countries to devote time and money to stopping piracy in real time when they could help to rebuild the mandate for rule of law on the sea by also preventing sea theft committed by foreign opportunists. Ironically, the pirates have done more to protect the artisanal fisheries then either the Somali government or the international maritime law enforcement.

"We don't have farms," a woman named Ibado said. She ran the Tanat grocery in the coastal village of Bender Beyla. "We don't sell any fruits and vegetables. We get our vegetables from the sea."

“In Bender Beyla we depend on fishing and livestock,” said Maxamud, one of the village elders. “The majority of our income comes from this, but both have been affected by the drought and the tsunami. All other things, the shops, tea, tailoring, are all things that depend on the fishing and pastoralism. Who’s going to go to these shops if there’s no money? Now the problem is that we have no fishing gear and the fishing season is coming, And our local fishermen have been endangered by the foreign fishermen who come in with large boats and destroy our nets and equipment.”

“This year the lobster population is falling,” Khalif, one of the heads of the fishing network in the ocean-side village of Kulule, illustrated, “so we’re catching less and less each year. We can’t tell you how much is at sea since we can’t see it. But we know foreigners are taking a lot of it. It’s not only Somalis catching here but also foreigners with sophisticated fishing gear.” When asked what the community will do if the lobster stock is depleted, Khalif and others darken. “Only God knows what we’ll do then.”

I've researched these issues again this month in light of the continued piracy and found that the issues of piracy, maritime law enforcement, and local hunger remain inextricably connected. To sustainably prevent piracy, the UN and governments must also prevent foreign companies from stealing from fisheries along Somalia's coast.

[Photo: A trawler on the high seas, 4blueeyes]

Argentinian Grandmothers Win Orphan DNA, Potentially Grandkids

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-24T03:09:00-08:00

Could it be worth violating one group's human rights to address another group's violation? Perhaps if it means solving thirty year mysteries and reuniting families it is. How would you vote this one?

During Argentina's "Dirty War" from 1976 to 1983, the dictatorship abducted and disappeared thousands of people, including many women currently believed to have been pregnant at the time. The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo created a project to find orphans born during this time, draw their blood, test their DNA, and try to match them with pregnant women who disappeared around the time of their birth. President Cristina Fernandez shepherded the project to a vote. And it won 58 to 1. There are some happy grandmas. And some angry foster parents and orphans.

[Photo: Three of the missing women, potential mothers, Matt and Sally]

IRA Splinter Faction Nostalgic for the Old Belfast

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-23T07:37:00-08:00

Just when you thought Northern Ireland was a success for peace negotiation, part of the Irish resistance has gone back in business. More than anything, the turn around reminds us of the incredible importance of the "follow through" required in building sustainable peace.

George Mitchell, the US Special Envoy to the Middle East formerly known as the US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his and others' efforts to end decades of violence between largely Catholic Irish who wanted to reunite with Ireland and largely Protestant Irish who didn't mind remaining part of the United Kingdom. Or at least that's the simplified version of this long, tragic conflict...

The efforts led by Mitchell did manage to forge a new collaborative government including the Irish Republican Army's political party, Sinn Fein, which had consented to the bombing of civilian targets in the past.

Now that the unity government has moved forward relatively well, a splinter group from the IRA has gone back to shooting at cops and bombing police stations. Fortunately, they are being more strategic, if still unnecessarily violent. So they have been targeting government security, not so much civilians. Let's hope that these guys come to their senses and realize that change is about building, not destroying.

[Photo: Ireland, back in the day, Liam]

Rocking Afghanistan

Una Vera — 2009-11-22T12:00:00-08:00

No country should be reduced to its problems, even if those are the things that define everyday life. In that spirit, I want to draw your attention to something hopeful and awesome: Afghanistan's first all-Afghan indie rock band, Kabul Dreams.

Kabul-based journalist, intimidating blogger, and self-described "video camera wielding geek" Ruth Owen drew my attention to Kabul Dreams on Twitter first. Owen's expat band, White City, gigs with them. "We're healing the world through the the power of massive distortion," she writes.

Formed in February 2009, Kabul Dreams comprises lead singer and guitarist Sulayman Qardash --who has the indie frontman haircut down -- drummer Mujtaba Habibi, and bassist Siddique Ahmed. On their official facebook page, the rockers explain, "We live in Kabul – the capital of great Afghanistan and therefore we are named 'Kabul Dreams.' Our main goal is to express the voice and dreams of Afghan youth through our songs." They list among their influences Greenday, Oasis, and the Subways.

On 20 Nov. Kabul Dreams and White City played L'Atmosphere, a popular expat hangout in downtown Kabul. The next morning, one of my field colleagues posted in his facebook status, "Kabul Dreams - A-Stan's first indy rock band! Great live! (No BS, I was shocked.) Check out their peace and love song on Myspace." I immediately did as my colleague suggested and listened to Sound of Peace and Love, and, sure enough, I was humming it happily on my walk to work today.

Good job, guys. This blogger hopes to hear you in person one day!

'No Way Through': Turning London into the West Bank

Una Vera — 2009-11-22T11:00:00-08:00

Here on War and Peace, we've been discussing social advertising and video advocacy around war and peace issues, and the strategies used by different organizations to raise funds, generate awareness, and move their constituencies to action. The approach an organization uses says a lot about its perception of what affects people.

If you believe people are easily capable of putting themselves in the place of others, you'll probably opt for the "how it is for people in X" approach in your campaigns. But if you're skeptical about the average peacetime rich-worlder's capacity to empathize with people in far-off conflict zones, you might go for the reverse, and place the subjects' circumstances in the target audience's familiar world.

That's what British filmmakers Alexandra Monro and Sheila Menon did in their short film 'No Way Way Through,' which highlights the effect of mobility restrictions on Palestinians' access to emergency medical care. 'No Way Through' was chosen as a winner in the Ctrl. Alt. Shift social justice film competition.

Video below the jump. (As usual, trigger warning. Some blood, tension.)

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Film Competition Winner: No Way Through from Ctrl.Alt.Shift on Vimeo.

Sri Lanka: Doc Editor Chooses Cinematic Open, Misrepresenting Story

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-22T04:59:00-08:00

Vanguard has a documentary segment out about Sri Lanka with correspondent Mariana van Zeller. Wow, it packs a punch, but at the same time the documentary reminded me of how influential, and potentially story-changing, film editing can be.

In this case, the documentary as a whole provides important insight and context. There is some incredibly frightening footage and some very important reporting. However, at the same time the editor chose to frontload the documentary with the counter-terror government point of view, saving the critical and Tamil minority points of view until the end.

The result is that it clobbers you over the head, as the government representatives do in the first interviews, with reasons why the Tamil political force may be a set of bloodthirsty terrorists. If one stops there, one would feel that the Tamil resistance is no different than Al Qaeda. Indeed, there is a scene right off where a woman, presumably a Tamil Tiger rebel, walks into a civilian office and then blows up, but...

Then through the second half of the segment the reporting presents the Tamil point of view, that millions of people have few options for addressing government discrimination. The point is, too often when we bloggers and journalists present a conflict we present it as two-sided, say the Sinhalese-led Sri Lankan government versus the Tamil-minority Tiger rebel force. My suspicion is that van Zeller reported the story well, but she and the editor, JD Buffalo, then knitted the footage together for the most explosive cinematic effect, incongruously presenting Tamil suicide bombers as representatives, which they are not, of the Tamil opposition as a whole.

We need to be careful how we edit films and stories to be sure that if we address something like the horrors of a Tamil Tiger suicide bombing that we do not present it in such away that the story gives a bad impression to newcomers on valid, peaceful Tamils as well as the legitimate Tamil political opposition. Some argue that the Sri Lankan government was able not only to defeat thet Tamil Tiger rebels this past year, but to do so without having to concede to many of the valid demands for improved human rights protection since they were waged by ethnic Tamils.

Don't get me wrong. I think that it is important to show that suicide bombers were a threat to civilians around the country. But I believe with that there should be balance in showing also the threat of artillery to civilians in the fighting regions and showing that many who are political opponents do not necessarily believe in these extreme violent tactics.

Check out this documentary segment and see what you think. Then read stories by Nimmi Gowrinathan and S L Neelavan on the perspective of the pragmatic members of the Tamil opposition.

[Photo: Patients waiting for treatment during nearby fighting, in Jaffna, Church Mission Society]

Hey, Russian Media, there is No "Number War" in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Una Vera — 2009-11-22T03:59:00-08:00

The producers of Russian state television's English language channel belong to that especially loathsome group of people who exploit inaccurate and exaggerated war dead numbers. Some backstory. I was in DC for a few days last week, and accompanied my war correspondent friend David, recently returned from Afghanistan, to an afternoon of interviews at the Russia Today (RT) Washington studio. While David prepared for his live interview, I sat in the waiting room, watching RT on a large plasma screen television. A talkshow host named Al Gurnov was gleefully grilling a Dutch diplomat for answers to ridiculous hypotheticals, like what effect a single European army would have on the transatlantic relationship. I chuckled, but lost interest after a few minutes. Until I heard "Bosnia and Herzegovina." That caught my attention, as did the ominous headline: The Number War.

"It has been nearly fourteen years since the end of the Bosnian War," explained the somber voiceover. "However, both sides are still fighting, but this time over numbers – the numbers of those who died during the conflict." It got worse from there, as RT interviewed nationalist activists masquerading as legitimate researchers.

"Radovan Pejic and his team have put together 3299 files of Serbs who were killed in Sarajevo," RT continued. "He says there are still many mass graves with Serb victims inside that have not yet been found. Pejic is convinced the final count will show that more Serbs died in Sarajevo than Muslims in Srebrenica."

The story ended with, "Regardless, the battle for numbers, like the battle for truth, does little to bring peace to this part of the world, where the scars of war have not yet had time to heal."

Here's the problem: the numbers are not debatable. Bosnia, more so than any other contemporary postwar country, has been the subject of a huge, long-running forensic effort supported by the international community. We do know how many people died in the war, who they were, and even how most of them died.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Sarajevo-based independent Research and Documentation Centre (RDC) have devoted more than a decade to putting together an accurate and detailed count of those killed, and have come up with almost identical numbers through two separate investigations, neither of which was mentioned in the RT story.

According to the ICTY and RDC investigations, about 100 thousand people were killed. Reflecting the common proportions of combatants and civilians killed in contemporary wars, approximately 60 percent of the those killed were soldiers, and 40 percent were civilians. Sixty-five per cent of all victims were Bosniaks, 25 percent Serbs, 8 percent Croats, and 2 percent others (with the last category comprising mostly Roma and people of mixed or unspecified backgrounds). Most victims were young people, between the ages 25 and 35, and more than three thousand children were killed during the war.

The war dead breakdown in Bosnia and Herzegovina isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of facts --facts that are now only disputed by the opportunist politicians who benefit from Bosnia's continuing political dysfunction, and their complicit media allies.

As David and I left the studio building, I mentioned my anger at the Bosnia story. David said something about RT being the English mouthpiece of Russian state media, and that I shouldn't be surprised.

I wasn't. My reaction was one of visceral revulsion. I doubt I'll ever stop being appalled by people who enjoy tearing the scabs off a fragile country's wounds. As I rested my head against the window of the Dulles Airport bus on my way home, I thought of the chirpy Russians and Americans I shook hands with back at the RT studio, and grimaced.

Uganda Pursues Rebels Across Africa, Racks up Frequent Flier Miles

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-22T00:59:00-08:00

Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army rebel group has been clocking in the miles. In fact, it has not only drawn fire for seeking refuge from Uganda in neighboring Southern Sudan, Congo DR, and the Central African Republic. It has also encouraged the Ugandan government special forces to pursue and fight them in those neighboring regions. What could be next?

The LRA led by Joseph Kony is an incredibly complex insurgency, so it's not always helpful to simply lay them at the doorstep of the International Criminal Court nor to encourage Uganda's special forces to track them down all over the world. Feeding on very real and popular criticisms of the Ugandan government of President Yoweri Museveni, perverting those accusations, and them in a number of cases kidnapping kids and adults to force them into the fight, the extremist LRA leadership has persisted longer and in more theatres of war than most other rebel groups. This is not your average mom and pop insurgency outfit. The leaders are criminally insane, while the ranks are filled with people who have very few choices.

Uganda's Museveni government consolidated power amid an improving economy for the south in the 1990s. However, people in the north and west felt that they were being discriminated against. As the Museveni government indirectly supported Ugandan and Rwandan Tutsis in re-taking Rwanda from the Hutu Interhamwe after the genocide there, Acholis and others in the north felt they were neglected or left unprotected amid a growing rebellion. When the Museveni government decided to conquer the LRA once and for all, the LRA moved into Southern Sudan and Congo DR. When the Southern Sudanese pushed the LRA out, the group then moved into the eastern part of the Central African Republic. With enough troubles of their own, the CAR and Congo DR governments consented for Uganda to pursue and fight the rebels on their territory. Adding to the confusion, many debate whether it is best for Uganda to "defeat" the rebels, for the ICC to arrest and prosecute the leaders abroad, or for some hybrid solution...

An interesting offshoot of this story is that of the rise in Uganda's global security footprint. Not only are the Ugandan security forces logging in millions of miles with their own operations, but they are also participating in security contracting. Triple Canopy and other groups have actually sought out Ugandan veterans to hire for work in Baghdad and elsewhere. Here's a story on it.

For more on the debate about the ICC, Museveni, and justice in Uganda, take a look at the writings of a colleague I met recently, Professor Adam Branch of San Diego State University. While acknowledging the horrendous crimes by the LRA leadership, he asks readers not to jump too quickly to easy conclusions.

[Photo: LRA Displaces Civilians in Southern Sudan, UN Photo]

'Girl': Is the New MSF Video Good Social Advertising?

Una Vera — 2009-11-20T12:03:00-08:00

Back in August, the humanitarian and international development blogosphere slogged it out over a controversial video from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) UK. The video, titled 'Boy,' featured a stark image of a small, clay house in an unnamed warzone, with audio of a child's pained screams. It never aired. MSF deliberately released the video online to provoke responses. And provoke it did, from overwhelmed sadness, to outrage, to furious accusations of sensationalism and exploitation, to passionate defenses of MSF's endorsement of the video --and, in the case of one blogger roundtable discussion, all of those reactions.

MSF UK's communications team handled the deluge with the skill of a true social media professionals, engaging their critics, and even linking to them.

For my part in the melee, I argued that MSF does emergency medical relief, so it is entirely appropriate for its ads to highlight that. MSF is not CARE, or even the International Rescue Committee. Even outside active conflict zones, MSF employees work with blood and guts and human goo all day, treating badly injured, ill, and malnourished people during what are surely among the most desperate moments of those patients’ lives. On the operating table, no one is empowered. And we're all made of the same breakable stuff. A campaign featuring nothing but resilient, empowered beneficiaries (such as CARE's widely-praised “I Am Powerful”) does not make sense in this context, while a disturbing one that shocks the viewer’s conscience does.

Many disagreed. Bill Easterly and Laura Freschi thought the ad played to stereotypes of Africa as a wasteland of civil wars and rape –-even though the setting was never named, and no actors were ever shown. On Aid Watch, Freschi wrote, "After watching this ad several times (I don’t recommend you try this), I feel 1) deranged and 2) hopeless, as though nothing I could ever do, much less donate a few dollars to MSF, could possibly have any effect on the vast, incomprehensible suffering in the world."

The MSF video debate dominated conversation in the humanitarian corner of blogosphere for a solid week, including here, raising questions about what makes a good (or bad) advocacy or fundraising piece. Can an advocacy video compel people to take action for a cause they weren't previously involved in, or think about an issue differently? Does suffering open more wallets than hope? Can visual media meaningfully convey realities people in peaceful parts of the world have never experienced? Is it even possible, psychologically, for a London tube commuter to empathize with an IDP in Sri Lanka, or a Manhattan office worker with a Darfuri refugee in Chad?

No consensus was reached on answers. That's a good thing, in my opinion. The value is in the debate itself, which just reignited with the release of MSF's follow-up to 'Boy' -- 'Girl.'

(Trigger warning, obviously.)

On its post about the new ad, social advertising blog Osocio has already received reactions as disparate as:

"This video is revolting, yet I realize that was the point of the creators. But its so jarring, I wanted it stop, immediately. I couldn’t muster the will to get thru the whole video -it was too painful and gross. And since it remains anonymous, there’s no individual for me to self-identify with or feel a sense of commitment for. I recognize the injustice is real, but you lost me - I don’t have the strength to witness that story. My guess is most people aren’t either."

And:

"Yes this is intense, but totally relevant… so many of us, myself included, live in a sanitised media cloud, that never alerts us to the fact these issues are going on every second of every day somewhere in the world. Well done, hope it get plenty of air-time."

What do you think?

11/22/2009: Correction: In my second paragraph I originally wrote that Avril Benoit was head of communications for MSF. She holds that position at MSF Canada, which was not involved in producing the videos, or officially responding to criticisms of them.

Take Action: Call on UN to Prevent Civilian Killings in Eastern Congo

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-20T08:00:00-08:00

Our esteemed Humanitarian Relief (now War and Peace) blogger, Michael Kleinman, who's on break, introduced us to Oisteen Thorsen, a humanitarian campaigner with Oxfam. Led by Oxfam, one of the most respected and trusted names in the aid biz, partners are working to advise positive change to policy on Congo at the UN. Ten years of UN peacekeeping so far. Please see the video and sign the petition this week. Here's Oisteen's intro:

"...Oxfam with partners are currently running a petition calling on the UN Security Council to stop the killings of civilians in Eastern Congo by the UN-supported Congolese army operation Kimia II. We will be handing over the petition to the Security Council next week (Nov 24th) so this is the last push to get more people to sign on... http://apps.facebook.com/causes/petitions/306 or http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/congo/stop-killing-in-congo. please also see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3cJbJcd104."

[Photo: UN Peacekeepers on patrol in Congo DR, UN Photo.]

Alex de Waal is Wrong on Afghanistan

Una Vera — 2009-11-19T10:27:00-08:00

In an essay for Prospect magazine (UK), Africa expert Alex de Waal offers his solution to Afghanistan's governance and security problems: more corruption.

"NATO has crippled Karzai’s ability to bargain properly," writes the contrarian researcher best known for his work on Sudan. "Foreign firepower and funds give him the strongest hand in the souk, but western demands to stamp out corruption and defeat the Taliban stop him playing his best cards."

It reads like sarcasm, but that is de Waal's actual thesis --the state-building project has failed because it has not involved enough payoffs to the country's various powerbrokers, and the remedy now is to help Hamid Karzai bribe his rivals, from opposition politicians to the Taliban, into passivity. De Waal argues that only money talks in failed states, and "a well-managed, inclusive patronage system is often the only way of running such countries." So, naturally, "it would be more cost-effective to ditch the extra troops and revert to funding patronage."

De Waal could not be more wrong.

De Waal: "Underneath the old model remains: a political souk where buyers and sellers haggle over the going rate for renting allegiances."

It is descriptively true that corruption is entrenched, but where does that leave us? Afghans passionately hate corruption. Poll after poll tells us this, and ordinary Afghans lament the level of corruption in their country to foreign journalists every chance they get. Corruption is not in Afghan DNA, and it is antithetical to Afghan social norms. The pervasiveness of corruption today is largely a product of a get-rich-and-get-out mentality fed by the displacement of three-quarters of the population during thirty years of war.

De Waal: "Karzai’s best asset is that he knows how his country works, with loyalties transacted on the basis of kinship, faith and cash. The Taliban showed that a government can be run cheaply on the first two alone."

The Taliban did not run a tidy Islamic state by appealing to kinship and faith, they ruled most of a territory through violence and fear. What the Taliban established could hardly be called a state at all, even by a minimalist definition. Their idea of service delivery was Radio Shariat and ethnic cleansing. The Afghan Taliban are not, and were never, comparable to Islamist-nationalist welfare-providing organizations like Hamas or Hezbollah, or even Somalia's deposed Islamic Courts Union. Let's not use the Taliban regime as a model for governance --even an "alternative model"-- ever, anywhere. It is a recipe for a humanitarian catastrophe.

De Waal: "In the months after 9/11, the Americans dollarised Afghanistan’s patronage system, flying in planeloads of shrink-wrapped $100 bills to pay off warlords, while putting on a fireworks display for the media to pretend that military might, not bribery, defeated the Taliban. It worked."

No, it did not work. What de Waal doesn't get --because he knows almost nothing about Afghanistan-- is that the CIA-cashwads-for-commanders scheme is a large part of why the Taliban are now winning strategically, while NATO, with its overwhelming tactical advantage, is losing. The US hobbled the Afghan state from the beginning by sidelining reformists for fear of rankling re-empowered old powerbrokers believed (incorrectly) necessary for averting a Taliban military comeback.

De Waal: "[...] this hardheaded approach was then abandoned in favour of the illusion that, freed from the aberrant Taliban, Afghanistan would begin a path towards western-style democracy."

"Western-style democracy" is hardly what has been promoted in Afghanistan. Governance projects have varied wildly in quality and many have been neglected. That said, Afghanistan now has a parliament that is more popular than the US Congress, and support for democratic values is strong. Afghans are deeply disenchanted with the outcome of the presidential election, but only because their expectations for the process --and for the international community's hand in it-- were so high at the outset.

Bottom line: Alex de Waal's suggested means of establishing peace in Afghanistan is ill-informed, dangerous, and already a spectacular failure. I have come to expect such nonsense from the likes of Fareed Zakaria and Fred Kaplan, but de Waal is a serious scholar and should know better.

[Photo: Alex de Waal. Social Science Research Council.]

Somalia's Judiciary Attacked but Not Defeated

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-18T12:48:00-08:00

Gunmen killed Judge Sheikh Mohamad Abdi Aware outside of his mosque last week in Bossaso, a scorching Aden Gulf port on the northeastern coast of Somalia. Judge Aware, despite whatever debate he may have stoked in Somalia, devoted his life not only to the rule of law but to the pursuit of justice according to the sometimes conflicting state, Islamic, and Somali customary law systems in an incredibly volatile political environment.

Back in 2007, a group of local rights workers and I carried out the UN Rule of Law and Security Programme's first child justice survey across the entire north half of Somalia. What tears me up personally about Judge Aware's death is that I believe I met him and yet I cannot remember his face. There were so many times when the imagination became so obsessed with who the bad guys were that it was hard to really focus on the good guys. The painful truth here, which I believe illuminates why foreign interventions often stumble, is that once murdered the dead's lifetime of positive accomplishments, like those of Somalis as a whole, were forever obscured beneath the headline, "Shot dead." Aware accomplished and represented much more than an early death. Although this is a blog format, I believe this topic is so important and so often misunderstood that I'm compelled to write a personal editorial essay.

The rights team and I met with kids detained in the ridiculously hot and uncomfortable prison in Bossaso where the accused from the court where Aware served were remanded and punished. All prisoners, thieves, murderers, rapists, hijackers, those awaiting trial, and children either accused of crimes or simply homeless and troublesome slept on the same floor together. Rumors abounded of men abusing the teenagers. Three girls accused of chronic pickpocketing and a pregnant woman resided in the largely empty women's wing. It was deeply disturbing to listen to some of the detained plea for a new trial, or even a first trial. But looking closely, we found that the trouble was not always coming from poor leadership or ill-will; it was usually the incredible lack of qualified legal officials and funds...

The UN's Rule of Law and Security Programme, with all its kinks and challenges, was working with the Ministry of Justice to dramatically improve these conditions. European donors had helped to expand and improve the prison, so things were getting a little better here and there. We also got a chance to meet with police officials in the new academy in nearby Aarmo. Again the UN with European donors had rightly chosen Somalia's northeast, the state of Puntland, to pave a foundation in rule of law with improved policing, courts, and legal aid. It was, I believe, the most critical factor in rebuilding Somalia. To construct this vital force of society upon which everything in Somalia relied, the global community should have rallied around the Puntland Ministries of Justice and Interior. But there were two factors persistently sabotaging the rule of law effort before the criminal groups including the Islamic youth militia, "Shabab," and those referred to as "pirates" had begun their criminal sprees.

The international community did not have faith in the Somali leadership, partly because they only took the time to get know government officials and gang leaders, rather than traditional elders and non-traditional progressives, and partly because they simply could not get through the debates on how to get Islamic and Somali traditional leaders to work together with the state. As a result of this fog, many donors looking in from the outside were timid, afraid they were throwing their money in pits to support leaders who would either go corrupt or be killed. Some believe that this is exactly what happened.

But having met many of the state justice officials, Islamic leaders, and Somali traditional elders and discussed with them everything from child rape to forced marriage to the death penalty, I believe that despite their chauvinism, pig-headedness, and antiquated methods they were the best thing to happen to modern Somalia. The fact that they were under-supported, obscured beneath the body count headlines was exactly the reason criminal gangs rose in power. It was not simply the Justice ministry lacking funds; it was the Somali society losing faith in a Justice ministy which could not keep up with demand that undermined it.

By the time the team and I arrived to the top court in Bossaso where Judge Aware worked, the team and I were covered in sweat, with Bossaso's white dust speckling our hair and clothes. I arrived fuming about seeing the pregnant woman and under-aged girls rotting in the prison. As our armed guards waited outside, all eyes fell on me, expectantly. The clerk of the court decided against my wishes to interrupt an actual trial just to introduce me to the judge sitting on the bench. People watched patiently, but I expected them to explode. We finally got the chief judge, and two appeals judges, to join us in a back room to discuss the kids in prison. One of them was also an Islamic sheikh of the moderate Shafii school. Immediately, I launched into a harangue on the rights of the kids and the pregnant woman. I expected a fight. Instead, the chief said, "We agree with you."

Every move they made, they explained, was critical to the stability of the city. Every day dozens of people were flooding into the city's slums, escaping either the harsher than normal droughts or fighting in the south. And with every influx of new, impoverished inhabitants, there were more fights, more thieves. Many believed that hijacking foreign ships was the only industry that had any future in it since only the UN agencies were willing to donate and invest in livestock and only the Gulf states bought Puntland fish and lobster.

The ministry's pool of trained officials got stretched every month or two when one of their league just blew up, quit, and decided to leave for Dubai or Sweden. To make matters even more difficult, the judges had to satisfy the state in order to secure their accounts, satisfy the Islamic leaders to be sure of divine protection, as well as to reduce the chances of being targeted by radicals, and satisfy the Somali traditional elders who were those with the greatest power in the region.

In the case of the "pirates", sentencing one of their kind for crime was to take on the broader population which was starving for economic circulation at a time when some foreign ships were stealing from the fisheries with impunity. To sentence Islamic radicals for crimes committed in line with their political goals was to take on those who had lost complete faith in a state stretched beyond its means and reliant on Western donors for every rifle. And so, here's what surprised me, finding non-judicial resolutions for the imprisoned girls and re-locating the pregnant woman was to take on the only thing society had left intact, Somali traditional law.

The appeals judge explained it this way. Several times he had seen these cases and asked the girls' parents to take them out of the prison and return them home, but the parents refused, claiming the girls had shamed them. Others told the judge that to send the girls to the street was to make them homeless and vulnerable to prostitution or trafficking. We followed the judge in asking the local women's organizations to take the girls under their wing, but even there the care-providers frowned. They could hardly keep up with the huge load they had, they couldn't take on new protection cases.

That's when I believe I met Aware, we got up to go and shook hands with dozens of people, following up with a workshop later. Now, looking at these men in the eye, knowing that I disagreed with them on so many things from marriage law to the death penalty, I was suddenly struck with that feeling which plagued them and united them as a vital, but shrinking cadre. I was never able to help resolve the case of those kids and the pregnant woman in the prison; and it weighed on me, just a tiny fraction of what likely weighed on them.

I advocated with everyone I could in the ministry and the UN so that I could alleviate that weight, but eventually my colleagues and I could not find any mutually beneficial issue. To take a stand, to insist that an aid agency or orphanage take the kids would without a doubt bring on the wrath of the parents and their clan leadership for undoing their wishes and exposing the girls to Western influences without their permission. And so Judge Aware, like the others, mucked around in these kinds of cases for a long time. Eventually, he took a stand for state and Islamic law over that of the clan. He decided at last, and based on hard evidence, to take down several pirate thugs despite threats. And then their advocates shot him to death.

Judge Aware's surviving colleagues have near their reach the reigns of law for northeastern Somalia. With success there, chances are better to bring greater rule of law to the south. But their number, those who can equally satisfy not only the state but also the Islamic and traditional leadership, which requires gravitas, are dwindling. If the international community at last recognizes the critical importance of the Puntland Ministries of Justice and Interior and their backers for stability for the country, perhaps greater effort will be taken not only to enhance the police academies, prisons, and law school, but also to protect the judiciary leaders and encourage candidates residing overseas to return home. With this critical effort judges like Aware will not be so easily gunned down on the street simply for being tough on crime and society may eventually re-gain confidence in its leaders.

There are some trouble-makers, sure, just like in every country, but there are also a great number of scarred and imperfect heroes who, if they are highlighted amid the whirlwind of obituaries for the country, may just have the power to resurrect Somalia.

[Photo: Bossaso court house, Daniel J Gerstle]

Addressing Local Land and Herding Disputes is Pre-Requisite for Peace in Africa

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-18T10:49:00-08:00

Twelve killed in violence in Lakes State, Southern Sudan. Eleven killed in a cattle raid in Kenya. Somalia, Ethiopia, Congo DR. There is something beneath the political battles we read about in the news. Feuds between ethnic rivals over land and rural groups over herding routes have rocked Africa's Sahel and Horn for a long time but some believe it has gotten worse recently.

As states crumble or leaders manipulate tribal animosity, the coping mechanisms which have held many groups together begin to fray. In fact, a great deal of traditional and Islamic law practiced outside the state focuses on land and herding dispute resolution. Given the combined benefits of having a traditional dispute resolution system when it is functional as well as the reality that many of these systems have been corrupted or broken by the broader political disputes, many international agencies, including traditionally health oriented agencies, are seeking to innovate further new hybrid peacebuilding methods to address local-level conflict.

Here's a great peacebuilding starter kit for donors and agencies considering broadening this front for peace. Perhaps this is one path toward addressing cattle raiding, and through it one of the associated factors in broader conflict. The efforts have been growing for a while, but funding has been lax until recently.

[Photo: Kenya cattle drive, Greg Westfall]

Is the Afghan Government Serious about Fighting Corruption? Are We?

Una Vera — 2009-11-17T13:43:00-08:00

Spencer Ackerman asks if I think the Afghan government's imminent crackdown on corruption, announced with much fanfare yesterday, will be serious. I added a question mark to the title of my previous post -The Great Afghan Corruption Crackdown?- precisely because I'm skeptical.

I believe Ershad Ahmadi and Eshaq Alek o are sincere when they say they want to stamp out the kind of official corruption that has undercut every effort to advance peace and development in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, but they are in for quite a fight if they are. The history of post-2001 Afghanistan is filled with stories of civil servants who tried to do the right thing, and were crushed into the dust by corrupt and vastly more powerful forces within the state, and abandoned by an unreliable and divided international community when they could have steered their country away from today's treacherous waters with a little political support. Just look at the disarmament program. Or the elections. Or the transitional justice plan.

The past eight years are a wasteland of under-resourced and half-hearted reform attempts. As much blame as the Afghan government deserves for not keeping its promises, the international community has broken most of its own. Time and again, we bought, lied and stalled our way out of doing the hard work of actual state-building. Now, we see how dearly that has cost us and the Afghan people. One unnamed US official quoted in the Guardian put it bluntly, "Afghans see us [the International Security Assistance Force] as being the enforcement mechanism for the mafia."

What gives me a little hope for this new anti-corruption push is the strong-worded support the US and NATO are voicing for the plan from the outset. Hillary Clinton has called for a "major crimes tribunal" to prosecute high-level officials for corruption. There's nothing weasel-worded about that statement, which is why my stomach flopped when I read it. I want this to be the real deal. I want this to work.

According to reports in the media today, NATO will be setting up its own anti-corruption task force to work with the new Afghan Interior Ministry anti-corruption unit. NATO anti-corruption officers will conduct independent investigations, and pass intelligence to their Afghan counterparts in the High Office of Oversight & Anti-Corruption in Afghanistan. The FBI and Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency will also train Afghan anti-corruption agents.

Afghan reformers exist, and they're brave and dedicated, but they are also up against the worst odds. At every turn so far, we have let them down, even as they warned us what lay ahead. That can't happen this time. The hour is far too late and the costs of failure are the highest they've ever been.

[Photo: UN Office on Drugs and Crime. (UNODC)]

Debate: Should US Civilian Aid and Military Operations be Conducted Together or Separately?

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-17T09:47:00-08:00

The US military is perhaps the greatest logistical operation in history and the best suited for transport and supply drops in out of the way places. And in countries where the US is not involved in political security or violence, it may be well suited also to provide medical and civil assistance as well. But during war time, should the US military provide aid alongside international and local civilian nonprofits at the same time and among the same communities in which it is conducting combat operations?

The question is important now because the US Agency for International Development, one of the largest planners of civil-military operations, may have new leadership in the nominee for Administrator, Dr. Rajiv Shah. Many supporters of the Obama and Clinton candidacies for President believed that the Bush Administration had not only gone to war for the wrong reasons but then conducted those wars poorly. Many remain hopeful that some of the more contraversial changes in how aid was delivered might be revised.

Questions about civil-military action during wartime heated up in 2002 when the US began these efforts in Afghanistan, relying largely on Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) which were military units working alongside state department employees to meet with nonprofits on the ground and distribute a variety of projects meant to help local communities recover while making the US military look more friendly. For example, I got a chance to see a tremendously successful PRT project restoring rice paddies in Kunduz...

However, the debate really took shape when humanitarian aid workers, particularly locals, were afraid that greater cooperation with the US military while it was conducting combat operations nearby was endangering aid staff and programs. Taliban fighters began seeing the civilians as spies working with their enemy, so instead of attacking soldiers in armored vehicles the fighters began more often simply attacking the unarmored civilians and their programs. The same month of my visit to that project in Kunduz, the Taliban took credit for murdering twenty-two foreign civilians and at least four local aid workers (Source: ReliefWeb). Many also believe that the civil-military enterprise is the most contraversial aspect of the NATO presence in Afghanistan given that Afghans can no longer discern an impartial doctor or businessman from one who then turns over private information about patients and beneficiaries to the US authorities. Here's an important study on the PRTs by the Wilson School.

Proponents of the civil-military effort soon countered this resistance when the war came to Iraq by arguing that by simultaneously conducting raids against insurgents while offering peaceful community members job opportunities and social service projects in Anbar and Diyala, Iraq, that they were wooing the less-radical insurgents away from box one and into box two. The "Sunni Awakening," when many insurgents changed sides is heralded as the great success of the civil-military strategy and it was developed further in Afghanistan. But many people on the ground believe that it's a dangerous mixed bag. While the civil-military effort tends to woo economic fighters who see that they can live under a US/NATO occupation as long as they have income, it further infuriates the radicals who see the effort as a colonial hypocrisy. The result, as in Anbar and Diyala, is fewer insurgents and less frontline combat but an incredible increase in large, unpredictable terror attacks.

Many of the aid workers I've known and worked with who got their start in pre-Taliban Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, Somalia, Sudan, El Salvador, or Biafra, as well as most of the New York and Paris aid agencies tend to believe in aid worker "impartiality". True, no one can ever be completely impartial in conflict, but - and Gaza may be the best example of this - local populations have long been sophisticated enough to separate the aid workers on US contracts from the Pentagon given that there was a physical separation. For this reason and for the greater security impartiality may offer civilian aid workers, many of this group wish to reform, if not undo, the civil-military enterprise.

As for me, I got my start in the military, but then I joined the International Rescue Committee as a civilian aid worker and quickly came to understand why one wouldn't want to be wearing a USAID patch when a US bomber blows the Hell out of a nearby village. I later got a chance to see the civil-military efforts work on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq. After all this, I've come to the conclusion that for the greater success of aid programs and to prevent the further radicalization of extremists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and even Somalia, USAID and the Pentagon need to get a divorce. (Keep in mind this is a separate debate from that on aid worker security and military contractors.)

The Pentagon would do well to help deliver people and products in arenas of peace, but at the height of war I don't want my local staff shot to death, aid projects frozen, simply because the insurgents spotted them hitching a ride with the US Army. When the new head of USAID takes office, I believe those of us who feel this way should make a concerted effort to petition for this reform, or at least to open the debate back up again. And I think Change, along with agency heads, might be a better vehicle for this than Interaction. Agree? Disagree? Let the debate begin.

[Photo: US military preparing to deliver humanitarian aid in Basra, Iraq, US Army / Maurice A Galloway]

Save the Children Warns of New Displacement Along Israel's Divider Wall

Daniel J Gerstle — 2009-11-17T04:47:00-08:00

There is a growing channel of research exploring whether there's a relationship between border security and hunger. Nowhere is this question so critical as in Gaza and the West Bank where Israel constructed a security wall to separate Israeli Jewish communities from Palestinian Arab Muslim and Christian communities. Save the Children, a humanitarian aid agency with a strong record of political impartiality, has just released a new report showing how the divider wall, which was constructed not only along the dividing line, but in a winding meandering pattern often cutting off some Palestinian villages from markets, is directly related to food insecurity and unemployment for Palestinians living along its length. And this has forced some to leave their homes.

If you have not already, please open this Israeli divider wall map from the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Zoom in on the northwest part of the West Bank around Qalkiliya. You'll see the bluish areas are settled by Jewish families and the brownish areas are Palestinian. The bold green line is where the UN-brokered agreement stated that the dividing line should be. The bold red line is where Israel built the wall. Having traveled there or at least considered the economic, if not political, impact of this wall according to the map, the findings of the Save the Children report will make a lot of sense.

On the humanitarian level, the report shows evidence that the wall's construction has led to increased hunger and economic malaise among Palestinians, and in some cases increased outward migration. On the political level, it's hard not to come to the conclusion that these displacements were not intentional. Some would call it a kind of slow ethnic cleansing.

For those who disagree, consider why during the previous Intifada the Israeli government didn't instead decide to put up temporary blast wall barriers like it has around some settlements, which could be removed when tensions fell. Instead, they constructed a wall that has no other comparison except to that of the Berlin Wall, perhaps to portray a sense of permanence in the division. Also, the wall was built well inside the West Bank, rather than along the dividing line agreed upon by the UN-brokered agreement. How will it be undone?

[Photo, Bethlehem, Susan Mizrahi]

The Great Afghan Corruption Crackdown?

Una Vera — 2009-11-17T01:47:00-08:00

In recent months, the Afghan government has faced steadily intensifying pressure from its own public and from NATO governments to take meaningful action to curb official corruption. With the announcement on Monday of a new anti-corruption unit under the Interior Ministry, it may finally be about to do just that.

According to Afghan Attorney General Eshaq Aleko, a major investigation is already underway into corruption at the highest levels of the Afghan government. The individuals under investigation reportedly may include some members of president Hamid Karzai's cabinet.

"Big mistakes have been made in signing contracts, procurements, and providing logistics and other supplies for the government," Aleko told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. "According to the law, I can not name them, because they are still considered to be suspects and we've not received the ruling of the court yet."

Ershad Ahmadi, the deputy head of the newly established High Office of Oversight & Anti-Corruption in Afghanistan, said his agency is ready to get tough on corrupt officials.

Ahmadi's recommended zero-tolerance policies, if put in place, would be nothing short of revolutionary in a country where impunity has long been the rule.

"The Afghan Government must commit itself to ensuring that public office is not held by individuals perceived by the public to be corrupt," said Ahmadi. "Specifically, it must identify the top 100 most corrupt individuals and dismiss them."

At the same time, Ahmadi wants the corruption crackdown to target corrupt contracting practices by foreign organizations and militaries as well. "The international community must address genuine concerns about faulty and corrupt contracting practices," he said. "A good start would be a review of contracts awarded for work at Bagram airbase and with provincial reconstruction teams. Afghans want to know who is benefiting from these contracts — and how."

Corruption has been allowed to bloom unchecked for the past eight years, and is now ranked second only to insecurity as the most serious complaint Afghans have with their government, according to a recent survey by the Asia Foundation. Here's hoping Aleko and Ahmadi are sincere about fighting it --and if they are, that both men have top notch security details.

[Photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennymiller/ / CC BY-SA 2.0]