Peace picks November 27 – December 1
- Private Sector Engagement in Afghanistan | Monday, November 27 | 1:00 – 3:00 pm | Center for Strategic and International Studies | Register Here | Private sector development in Afghanistan is a crucial topic for U.S engagement in the region. Between 2002 and 2010, about 57 billion US dollars of official development assistance (ODA) was disbursed to Afghanistan for purposes of reconstruction and development. More recently, the Trump administration committed to extending the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan into the foreseeable future. Military resources alone cannot achieve U.S. foreign policy goals in Afghanistan: it is important to look at the role that the private sector plays in consolidating Afghanistan’s future prosperity and growth. Afghanistan is doing well in fiscal policy, inflation, access to credit, and some aspects of human capital investment (i.e., health expenditures and primary education expenditures). However, to promote private sector growth, Afghanistan needs to tackle political rights, fight corruption, uphold the rule of law, build effective governance, and reform business regulations, to name a few. Fostering a solid private sector in Afghanistan is important for long-term sustainable growth and improving the quality of life for its citizens. Leveraging the private sector to build a robust economic foundation in Afghanistan is a necessary and timely discussion. Panelists will include Gregory Huger of USAID, Mozhgan Wafiq of the Afghanistan Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jeffrey Grieco of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, and Hussein Ali Mahrammi of Federation of Afghanistan’s Craftsmen and Traders. They will be joined by CSIS’s Romina Bandura, Earl Anthony Wayne, and Daniel F. Runde.
- What’s Next for Lebanon? | Wednesday, November 29 | 1:00 – 2:30 pm | Arab Center Washington DC (held at the National Press Club) | Register Here | Join us to discuss the implications of the resignation of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri and the increased belligerent rhetoric against Iran and Hezbollah by Saudi Arabia. This event will feature Joseph Bahout of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Joe Macaron of the Arab Center Washington DC, and Paul Salem of the Middle East Institute.
- Raqqa After the Islamic State: Governance Challenges in Post-ISIS Syria | Wednesday, November 29 | 10:00 – 11:30 am | United States Institute of Peace | Register Here | With the self-proclaimed Islamic State’s hold on Syrian territory vastly diminished, the campaign to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS) enters a new phase. The fall of Raqqa—the capital of ISIS’ self-proclaimed caliphate—marked a powerful strategic and symbolic loss for the extremist group. Yet the success of the counter-ISIS campaign will ultimately be determined not by battlefield wins, but instead by what follows. Please join the U.S. Institute of Peace to discuss the complex governance challenges in Raqqa and how the United States and the international community can constructively address them. In a recent USIP Special Report, Mona Yacoubian, senior advisor for Syria, the Middle East and North Africa at the Institute, examines the critical governance challenges in Raqqa after the Islamic State. Her report highlights the ethnic, tribal, and strategic complexities that will affect this new phase. To sustain security in the territories freed from ISIS, a broad approach to stabilization will be vital. That approach will have to ensure effective and inclusive governance that is responsive to the needs of the local population. This event’s speakers include Hassan Hassan of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, Nicholas A. Heras of the Center for a New American Security, Mona Yacoubian of the U.S. Institute of Peace, and moderator Sarhang Hamasaeed of the U.S. Institute of Peace.
- A Coming Storm? Shaping a Balkan Future in an Era of Uncertainty | Wednesday, November 29 | 9:00 am – 6:15 | Atlantic Council | Register Here | Although the Western Balkan region has made significant progress in its efforts to integrate into the wider transatlantic community, inspired and guided by its commitment to eventual membership in the European Union (EU), NATO, and other global institutions, that progress is now at risk. The conference will seek to generate new ideas and policy-relevant proposals to craft a way forward for the Balkan region, firmly embedded within the transatlantic community. This conference will engage the highest levels of transatlantic decision-makers, bringing together over 100 participants, ranging from regional leaders to decision-makers from both sides of the Atlantic and top experts in the field, to spotlight what is at stake and spur support for a reenergized Balkans policy in the United States in partnership with the European Union. The all-day event will include five panels and a keynote address.
- How to Help Vulnerable States Prevent Their Own Crises | Thursday, November 30 | 2:00 – 3:30 pm | United States Institute of Peace | Register Here | The European Union recently has added a new priority to its foreign and defense policies: Help countries vulnerable to crisis build their resilience against catastrophic events, notably violent conflict, which has uprooted 65 million people worldwide. The EU’s shift is part of a growing global focus on the importance of preventing civil war and its devastation. The United Nations, World Bank and U.S. government are among the organizations taking up this agenda. On November 30, USIP gathers U.S., European and World Bank officials to discuss how governments and international organizations can better coordinate the implementation of this broad new approach to halting violent conflicts. The European Union issued its new framework for policy this year as the World Bank and United Nations are completing a broad study on ways to catalyze the international community to better prevent violent conflicts. Concurrently, the State Department and other U.S. agencies are reviewing the United States’ efforts to help states struggling for stability in the face of warfare. As governments and international organizations improve these strategies, where are the obstacles to better coordination? Christian Leffler of the European Union will open this discussion by laying out the new EU policy framework. Other speakers will include Nancy Lindborg of the US Institute of Peace, Franck Bosquet of the World Bank, Raphael Carland of the State Department, and moderator Joe Hewitt of the US Institute of Peace.
- Public Opinion in a Conflicted Middle East | Thursday, November 30 | 12:00 – 1:30 | Middle East Institute | Register Here | The Middle East Institute (MEI) and the Arab American Institute (AAI) are pleased to host James Zogby (AAI and Zogby Research Services) for the presentation of fresh polling results from across Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, and Turkey. The report examines opinions from 7,800 respondents about the U.S. and other regional states’ roles in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. It also looks at Trump Administration policy, political Islam, prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Iran nuclear deal, and the region’s refugee crisis. Joining Dr. Zogby to discuss the poll findings will be Yousef Munayyer (MEI & U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights), Barbara Slavin (Atlantic Council; Al-Monitor), and Gönül Tol (MEI). MEI senior vice president Paul Salem will moderate the event. The poll and resulting report were commissioned by the Sir Bani Yas Forum, convened annually in the United Arab Emirates on the initiative of H.H. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the U.A.E. Foreign Minister. The findings are being made available for use by the public.
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Enjoy the family, bemoan the country
I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Family members are responsible for this extraordinary new museum, this incredible piece for The Atlantic, this wonderful dining hall, helping keeping poor kids in college, and serving he US Army in Korea. Not to mention two grandchildren getting ready to outperform and a host of brothers, in-laws, and nieces and nephews doing great things. What could be better?
Alas, my country could be in better shape. It is over-committed abroad and seems unable to figure out how to withdraw without creating vacuums that get filled with people who generate more commitments. At home it is polarized between protectionist nationalists led by white supremacists and a multi-ethnic coalition led by internationalist liberal democrats. Racism remains the country’s original sin, one it cannot acknowledge without contradicting its ideals.
Sexism is racism’s twin and perhaps even more original, as it came over before the first slaves. Its contemporary prevalence is becoming all too obvious. No one should assume that it is only the great and famous who abuse privilege to intimidate, harass, and abuse women. The headlines are the tip of the iceberg, one that extends deep into the working world in all its many sectors, professions, and occupations. Whoever finds herself below someone else in the pecking order runs risks.
Our current national leadership is both racist and sexist. It is also radical and stupid. The combination is causing serious damage internationally, which my colleague Mike Haltzel outlines skillfully at the HuffPost. I nevertheless found something comforting in Dana Milbank’s thanks to those who have blocked so much of the evil the Trump Administration has tried to do, especially on the domestic front. The so-called tax reform, which would dramatically increase the government deficit while transferring wealth from the less affluent to the very rich, is just the latest, sad example. The repeated and so far failed attacks on a conservative, market-oriented system for providing healthcare to most of the heretofore uninsured is another.
President Trump is using executive action in favor of deregulation in many sectors to make up for his total failure so far in the legislative arena. His efforts on environmental issues have been particularly successful and harmful. His minions will soon end the rules that require internet service providers to treat all content equally, allowing the bigger ones to rule the roost in a way that would have prevented the internet from becoming the indispensable tool for virtually everyone that it is today. No doubt there are other areas in which the Administration can give to private companies the public benefits that belong to the country’s citizens. Trump’s conservative judicial appointments will no doubt help that effort.
What everyone whom I know wants to know is when this will end, and how. The stock market, which is performing well (but no better than it did under President Obama), is betting on business as usual, including the proposed corporate tax cut. I’m not. The implications of the tax cut will, I hope, sink it into oblivion before the New Year. Some combination of Congressional and Special Counsel investigations, election losses, Republican retirements or defections, and journalistic revelations will pull down not just Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner but also the President himself. That will be a serious test of our institutions. If they survive, we’ll be saying an even bigger thanks for them the next time Thanksgiving rolls around.
In the meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy this Thanksgiving with my terrific family, even if the country is in big trouble.
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What I said to Voice of America
Here is an interview, in Serbian, that I did for Voice of America November 14. I gather it has been heavily covered in the region:
http://bigportal.ba/2017/11/18/tramp-treba-hitno-da-reaguje-na-balkanu/
http://www.smedia.rs/vesti/7778393/b92-tramp-treba-hitno-da-reaguje-na-balkanu.html
http://www.nezavisnasrpska.com/tramp-treba-da-reaguje-hitno-na-balkanu/
https://www.vesti.rs/Va%C5%A1ington/Tramp-treba-hitno-da-reaguje-na-Balkanu-2.html
https://kosovo24sata.com/2017/11/18/server-sad-hitdno-da-reaguju-da-bi-se-sacuvao-mir-na-balkanu/
The report in question is this one:
https://www.cfr.org/report/unraveling-balkans-peace-agreements
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The best available, unsatisfying outcome
Ratko Mladic was convicted today in The Hague. The sentence is life imprisonment for genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws and customs of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s. He will presumably appeal.
Re-reading the Mladic indictment is a terrifying reminder. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) originally accused him in 1995, but the trial that ended yesterday was based on an indictment in 2011 of participating in a joint criminal enterprise responsible for the removal of Bosnian Croats and Muslims, the years-long siege of Sarajevo, the mass murder of Bosnian Muslims after his military seizure of Srbrenica, and the taking of UN personnel as hostages. It has taken 22 years for this first conviction.
International justice today is agonizingly slow, meticulously detailed, procedurally complex, and ultimately decisive. I attended an afternoon of Mladic’s trial a few years ago. It was dull. The prosecutor would read volumes of detailed eye-witness testimony of atrocities to a Mladic underling who would deny that anything like that happened. Mladic sat silent. His defense lawyer would occasionally intervene, but to little avail. I could well imagine that this orderly process, involving years of hearings in which to air his denials, would not satisfy his victims.
In fact, the Tribunal is not looked on favorably in the region. Each ethnic group resents the indictments of its own military heroes. No group thinks its tormentors have been adequately punished. The procedural niceties are largely lost in a flood of self-justifying nationalistic fervor. There has been little reflection, at least in popular culture, on the villainy of one’s own, only of the others. Leading politicians exploit the popular sentiment. Few acknowledge their own group’s culpability or laud accountability.
I would nevertheless judge the Tribunal a success, less for its jurisprudence and more for its political impact. Even when it did not capture war criminals right away, indictments sooner or later forced wartime leaders out of the political arena. Had that not been the case, politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia would have been far more fraught. Mladic and his political counterpart Radovan Karadzic were forced into hiding. Slobodan Milosevic was defeated at the polls and extradited. Had they remained politically active, or even just present in their respective political environments, Sarajevo and Belgrade would have been far more fraught.
That is less true for the Croatian, Bosniak, and Kosovar indictees, not least because their top political leaderships were never indicted. Croatian President Tudjman and Bosnian President (Alija) Izetbegovic are dead. Kosovo Prime Minister Haradinaj was indicted but acquitted. He is again prime minister now. He, Kosovo President Thaci, or other KLA fighters could still be indicted, by a Kosovo “special court” staffed with internationals convened in The Hague to deal with post-war crimes.
Some will say the failure to hold more Croat, Bosniak and Kosovo political leaderships accountable, and the acquittal of some of their military leaders, proves that ICTY is biased against Serbs, or implemented only victor’s justice. I find some of the acquittals difficult to understand, but it is important to remember that a court like ICTY that follows best practices in contemporary criminal procedure is more likely to acquit the guilty than convict the innocent, which is as it should be.
There is however no question of innocence in Mladic’s case. The evidence presented at trial was overwhelming and compelling. Someone else unjustly getting off is no reason to doubt Mladic’s guilt. He will now have ample opportunity to appeal, but odds are he’ll spend the rest of his life incarcerated in a fairly comfortable place, telling himself he was right to protect Serbs by murdering and expelling Muslims and Croats, firing at civilians in Sarajevo, and taking UN peacekeepers hostage. It’s an unsatisfying outcome, but the best available.
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The Kingdom needs to cool it
Atheer Ahmed Kakan of the (Turkish) Anadolu Agency asked questions last week. I replied:
1. What do you think of Trump policy in the Middle East right now?
A: Trump policy in the Middle East seems calculated to push back hard on Iran, in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but it is having perverse effects. The war in Yemen is going badly, the blockade of Qatar has driven Doha closer to Tehran and Ankara, and the forced resignation of Saad Hariri has united Lebanon against the Kingdom. Ironically, Trump has done nothing to push back against Iran or its proxies in Syria.
2. What do you have to say about Saudis new developments? Adopting “moderate version of Islam”? Attacking Iran publicly? Aligning with Israel against Iran? Re-engaging with Iraq?
A: No one I know would object to the Kingdom advocating for more moderate Islam. Re-engaging with Iraq is also a good idea. Mouthing off against Iran is not. I’m not sure how far the alignment with Israel is really going to go.
3. What do you think the consequences of Trump letting Saudis hand in the MidEast? Are we witnessing Saudi-Iranian war? New civil war in Lebanon? New opened war in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon beside Yemen?
A: I trust cooler heads will prevent some of those things from happening, but there are a lot of risks. The Kingdom needs to assess its own capabilities and align its actions with those. Hotheadedness doesn’t win wars, or peace.
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Women are driving MENA social change
On November 15, the Middle East Institute hosted “Women’s Activism and Social Change,” the final panel of its annual conference. It brought together speakers Wafa Ben Hassine of AccessNow, Hind Aboud Kabawat of the Syrian High Negotiations Committee, Rania Al-Mashat of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Fawziah Bakr al-Bakr of Al Jazeera, and moderator Nafeesa Syeed of Bloomberg. Given recent developments in regard to the status and rights of women in various Arab countries, Syeed prompted the panelists to discuss the reception and impact of the changes, the concept of a “model” country, and how the role of women has changed since the Arab Uprisings.
Ben Hassine emphasized that changes in Tunisia have happened in response to internal developments over the last decade. She mentioned four changes for Tunisian women: the abrogation of Article 274, which had allowed for a rapist to marry his victim, the criminalization of violence against women, the passage of a law allowing Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men, and a change in Tunisia’s inheritance law proposed by President Essebsi that would allow women equal inheritance. These much-celebrated developments have primarily been driven by civil society organizations, but Ben Hassine asserted it is important to contextualize them. Reforms this summer occurred against the backdrop of discussions surrounding Tunisia’s controversial reconciliation law, heightened effects of economic downturn, and the postponement of municipal elections. The reforms, by extension, were an opportunity for the president to reconnect with his “betrayed base” and improve his standing.
Kabawat explained that though Syrian women had freedoms before 2011, these were largely surface-level and did not include political participation. Since 2011, women have had to bear the brunt of the Syrian conflict. Because many men have been imprisoned, killed, or driven out by other factors, women now constitute the majority in refugee camps and have also been drawn into economic participation. Kabawat also noted high enthusiasm among Syrian women to be included in political discussions. After Geneva talks, for example, Kabawat’s team deliver workshops to Syrian women, briefing them on developments. The talks themselves now impose a 30% quota on women’s participation, an achievement that was the result of a two-year struggle for inclusion. Besides being instrumental to meaningful reconciliation and justice, the involvement of women also decreased sectarian barriers. Describing Syria as a “mosaic society,” Kabawat explained that women’s organizations have always intentionally included members from across sects and religions.
Turning to Saudi Arabia, al-Bakr explained that when the Kingdom’s 2030 transformation plan was announced, it was considered unrealistic. With recent developments, however, many feel that they are “living the dream.” Besides the recent lifting of the ban on women drivers, other developments include the opening of the national stadium to women, the dismantling the guardianship law, which currently requires that Saudi women obtain permission from a male guardian to travel or access different services, and the discussion of a law in the Shura Council that would ban any discrimination on the basis of race, gender, or nationality. Unlike other countries where there is more enthusiasm on the social level for the changes proposed, Saudi Arabia is witnessing more government will to take the initiative. Social will, she explained, needs to increase, and value systems need to change. This includes engaging religious institutions as well as men, who presently hold all powerful positions in the country.
The issue of religion as an obstacle was one that all three panelists discussed. Ben Hassine and al-Bakr emphasized the undeniable importance of religion to their societies. Ben Hassine highlighted the importance of religious research and discouraged closing mosques, because it encourages people to turn to less legitimate sources of information. She also proposed that new developments not be presented as clashing with Islamic law. In the case of the inheritance reforms, for example, Ben Hassine suggested that equality in inheritance be considered the legal default, with the Islamic way of dividing inheritance an option for families who wish to follow it. Al-Bakr applauded the Saudi government’s recent efforts to limit the influence of conservative interpretations, saying that this creates safe spaces for women. She also mentioned other efforts to reconcile religion with reform, such as a center established by King Salman to re-study the Hadith, or teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Kabawat stressed that it is not religion that is limiting women, but rather the general refusal of men to include women. Men on both ends of the spectrum–those who are extremely conservative and those who are extremely “progressive”–are to blame.
Al-Mashat noted that women’s participation is an issue that the IMF has labeled “macro-critical,” referring to the immense boost that it would give to global GDP. If women were equal to men in labor force participation, the GDP of Egypt would grow by 34%, the UAE by 14%, and Japan by 7%. Efforts to achieve such gains have been made–take the UAE’s new 30% quota in government boards.The exclusion of women in rural areas is a universal issue, as is the effect of freedom of expression in advancing women’s issues. The challenges are great, but so too is today’s progress across the Middle East in increasing women’s participation and recognizing their importance in creating and advancing social change.
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