The NYT is reporting that Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has announced a major shift in US counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan. The shift, which will align US policy more closely with the approach favored by the UN and European countries, will phase out eradication in favor of support for legitimate agriculture, interdiction, and rule of law.
This announcement represents a major change in US drug policy. It recognizes the fact that eradication efforts have largely failed in the face of resistance from the Afghan government, elements of which are widely acknowledged to be in on the drug trade, and lack of support from UN and NATO allies. It also recognizes a central paradox of supply reduction efforts: where eradication has been successful, it has driven up the price of opium, leading to the cultivation of new areas (see the balloon effect). Indeed, the international approach to drugs in Afghanistan has been such a disaster that some observers, notably the Senlis Council, have suggested legalizing production and selling the opium to the global pharmaceutical industry (this approach is not without its critcs). For more on all things drug-related, see my friend Nina's blog.
Although the shift away from eradication probably makes sense, the systems which the US will rely upon to fill the gap (legitimate agriculture, interdiction, the justice system, and the borders) are not exactly "ready for prime time." Legitimate agriculture has been destroyed by years of war and neglect, law enforcement is incompetent and corrupt, and both the formal justice system and the borders (both of which I worked on to some extent) are pretty nascent. Another piece of this puzzle is cooperation with Afghanistan's neighbors, especially Pakistan and Iran; Iran had originally been invited to the G8 meeting but, what with ruthlessly crushing dissent and everything, wasn't able to make it.
Afghanistan now produces 93% of the world's opium. If you ask me, the issue will only be addressed when the country is administered by a national government that legitimately wants to address it, and is willing to remove corrupt officials and confront local warlords in order to do so. That government is not the Karzai government, and Karzai looks set, despite massive unpopularity, to win another term in August.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
New trial in Politkovskaya murder
The NYT is reporting that Russia's supreme court has ordered a new trial for four people who had been accused, and found not guilty, of complicity in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist and human rights advocate who had been a vocal critic of the Kremlin's wars in Chechnya:
"In ordering the retrial, the court sided with the prosecution, which argued that there had been procedural violations by the judges and the defense during the original trial, a court spokesman, Pavel Odintsov, said. Other critics, however, including President Dmitri A. Medvedev, cited the prosecution’s errors and unfamiliarity with the jury system, which is relatively new in Russia, in the acquittal."
I wrote an article in Gelf Magazine in 2006, in response to the killing, which argued that journalists should respond to the strategic murder of a journalist anywhere by descending en masse and conducting a thorough, long-term investigation:
"Each future killing of a journalist, when there is any suspicion that it may have been a deliberate attempt to thwart an investigation or silence a critic, should be met with a coordinated, world-wide, well-resourced, intensely publicized investigation that does not conclude, nor leave the front pages, until something like the truth has come out. Like most other decisions, the decision to kill a journalist must involve a calculation of risk and reward. I believe that a more deliberate response from the press, in the form of a predictably well-funded and determined investigation, could alter this calculation."
It's not clear why the Russian government has chosen to reopen the Politkovskaya case; if previous experience is any guide, it's as likely to be for political reasons as it is to be motivated by a desire for justice. In terms of my suggestion for a more coordinated response to the targeted killing of journalists, the progressive magazine In These Times, which still gets delivered to my ex-roommate Reihan, ran an interesting article on the decline of substantive news reporting in the United States:
"It is hardly surprising to learn that the U.S. news media ranked last in its coverage of international hard news, with only 15 percent of stories devoted to international affairs (nearly half of which were about Iraq). Finland’s international coverage is double. Thus, you’ll be even less surprised that the study found Americans are “especially uninformed about international public affairs,” while the Scandinavians emerged as the best informed. What do we excel at? Knowledge of soft news and its stars, like Britney Spears and Mel Gibson. Of those surveyed, 90 percent could identify them, whereas 62 percent didn’t know what the Kyoto Accords are. Americans know less about the world than the Finns, Danes or British because we “consume relatively little news in comparison to populations elsewhere.”"
If major news outlets are finding it difficult to devote space to, say, climate change, I guess sustained reporting on the murder of obscure journalists in dangerous places is going to be a hard sell. Maybe if each major celebrity in the US started dating a reporter from a repressive country?
As the Iran protests have shown, it's often not necessary to kill journalists in order to keep them from reporting on the news; threats and expulsion will usually do quite nicely. But then, with much of the news from Iran now being provided by ordinary people, the definition of "journalist" may be getting more difficult. In These Times had something to say about that too, arguing in the same issue that "citizen reporting" is no substitute for investigations by trained, experienced, full-time journalists. Ironically, the article is not yet available online.
Man, this is a long post! I can't wait until Boris reads it!
"In ordering the retrial, the court sided with the prosecution, which argued that there had been procedural violations by the judges and the defense during the original trial, a court spokesman, Pavel Odintsov, said. Other critics, however, including President Dmitri A. Medvedev, cited the prosecution’s errors and unfamiliarity with the jury system, which is relatively new in Russia, in the acquittal."
I wrote an article in Gelf Magazine in 2006, in response to the killing, which argued that journalists should respond to the strategic murder of a journalist anywhere by descending en masse and conducting a thorough, long-term investigation:
"Each future killing of a journalist, when there is any suspicion that it may have been a deliberate attempt to thwart an investigation or silence a critic, should be met with a coordinated, world-wide, well-resourced, intensely publicized investigation that does not conclude, nor leave the front pages, until something like the truth has come out. Like most other decisions, the decision to kill a journalist must involve a calculation of risk and reward. I believe that a more deliberate response from the press, in the form of a predictably well-funded and determined investigation, could alter this calculation."
It's not clear why the Russian government has chosen to reopen the Politkovskaya case; if previous experience is any guide, it's as likely to be for political reasons as it is to be motivated by a desire for justice. In terms of my suggestion for a more coordinated response to the targeted killing of journalists, the progressive magazine In These Times, which still gets delivered to my ex-roommate Reihan, ran an interesting article on the decline of substantive news reporting in the United States:
"It is hardly surprising to learn that the U.S. news media ranked last in its coverage of international hard news, with only 15 percent of stories devoted to international affairs (nearly half of which were about Iraq). Finland’s international coverage is double. Thus, you’ll be even less surprised that the study found Americans are “especially uninformed about international public affairs,” while the Scandinavians emerged as the best informed. What do we excel at? Knowledge of soft news and its stars, like Britney Spears and Mel Gibson. Of those surveyed, 90 percent could identify them, whereas 62 percent didn’t know what the Kyoto Accords are. Americans know less about the world than the Finns, Danes or British because we “consume relatively little news in comparison to populations elsewhere.”"
If major news outlets are finding it difficult to devote space to, say, climate change, I guess sustained reporting on the murder of obscure journalists in dangerous places is going to be a hard sell. Maybe if each major celebrity in the US started dating a reporter from a repressive country?
As the Iran protests have shown, it's often not necessary to kill journalists in order to keep them from reporting on the news; threats and expulsion will usually do quite nicely. But then, with much of the news from Iran now being provided by ordinary people, the definition of "journalist" may be getting more difficult. In These Times had something to say about that too, arguing in the same issue that "citizen reporting" is no substitute for investigations by trained, experienced, full-time journalists. Ironically, the article is not yet available online.
Man, this is a long post! I can't wait until Boris reads it!
Monday, June 22, 2009
Tweeting the revolution
The NYT has an interesting article on the use of Twitter in the ongoing protests in Tehran over the Iranian presidential election. While acknowledging that other forms of communication, including websites and regular text messages, have played an arguably more important role than Twitter, the article points out several aspects of the new technology which have made it particularly useful. Most important is the fact that, as a tool rather than a website, Twitter has been essentially impossible to shut down:
"You do not have to visit the home site to send a message, or tweet. Tweets can originate from text-messaging on a cellphone or even blogging software. Likewise, tweets can be read remotely, whether as text messages or, say, “status updates” on a friend’s Facebook page. Unlike Facebook, which operates solely as a Web site that can be, in a sense, impounded, shutting down Twitter.com does little to stop the offending Twittering. You’d have to shut down the entire service, which is done occasionally for maintenance."
The article also quotes HLS cyberspace guru Jonathan Zittrain; I saw him give an awesome, hilarious presentation on internet law a few months ago. In addition to connecting the Tehran protesters with each other, social media technologies like Facebook and Twitter have been critical in getting information to international news outlets, which have been essentially blocked from sending reporters to the protests. For example, the mobile phone video of protester Neda Soltan bleeding to death after allegedly being shot by the Basij has been picked up by international news sources including CNN, provoking outrage both domestically and around the world.
Not coincidentally, the NYT is also reporting that Jared Cohen, a 27-year-old member of the State Department's policy planning staff, contacted Twitter last week to request a delay of scheduled maintenance which would have interrupted service during the protests. It seems that the State Department's use of communications technology, which previously focused on distributing books about Abraham Lincoln, may be catching up with the times.
"You do not have to visit the home site to send a message, or tweet. Tweets can originate from text-messaging on a cellphone or even blogging software. Likewise, tweets can be read remotely, whether as text messages or, say, “status updates” on a friend’s Facebook page. Unlike Facebook, which operates solely as a Web site that can be, in a sense, impounded, shutting down Twitter.com does little to stop the offending Twittering. You’d have to shut down the entire service, which is done occasionally for maintenance."
The article also quotes HLS cyberspace guru Jonathan Zittrain; I saw him give an awesome, hilarious presentation on internet law a few months ago. In addition to connecting the Tehran protesters with each other, social media technologies like Facebook and Twitter have been critical in getting information to international news outlets, which have been essentially blocked from sending reporters to the protests. For example, the mobile phone video of protester Neda Soltan bleeding to death after allegedly being shot by the Basij has been picked up by international news sources including CNN, provoking outrage both domestically and around the world.
Not coincidentally, the NYT is also reporting that Jared Cohen, a 27-year-old member of the State Department's policy planning staff, contacted Twitter last week to request a delay of scheduled maintenance which would have interrupted service during the protests. It seems that the State Department's use of communications technology, which previously focused on distributing books about Abraham Lincoln, may be catching up with the times.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Palau to accept Guantánamo Uighurs
News on Guantánamo is coming fast and furious; today the island nation of Palau announced that it would accept up to 17 Uighurs who are being held at Guantánamo. The case of the Uighurs (Chinese Muslims) has represented a particularly egregious stain on US detainee policy; the Bush Administration declined to classify them as enemy combatants, essentially admitting that it had no case against them, and a US federal district court ordered last fall that they should be released into the United States. As the NYT points out, the administration hopes to begin cutting down the numbers at Guantánamo by releasing prisoners which it doesn't believe to be a threat to the United States, and by trying in civilian courts the prisoners it thinks it can convict there:
"The Obama administration has been negotiating actively with European and other governments to resettle 50 detainees, who it says are cleared for transfer. Since Mr. Obama took office, the United States has transferred one detainee to France and one to Britain. On Tuesday, it sent the first detainee to the United States to face charges in federal court."
In a sense, these two categories of detainees are the "easy part;" the third group of prisoners, those whom the administration believes are a threat to the United States but, for various reasons, it cannot convict in civilian courts, will represent the most thorny challenge in the effort to close Guantánamo.
"The Obama administration has been negotiating actively with European and other governments to resettle 50 detainees, who it says are cleared for transfer. Since Mr. Obama took office, the United States has transferred one detainee to France and one to Britain. On Tuesday, it sent the first detainee to the United States to face charges in federal court."
In a sense, these two categories of detainees are the "easy part;" the third group of prisoners, those whom the administration believes are a threat to the United States but, for various reasons, it cannot convict in civilian courts, will represent the most thorny challenge in the effort to close Guantánamo.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Guantánamo detainee on trial in New York
More news on Guantánamo: a former detainee has been arraigned in US civilian court in Manhattan. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, pleaded not guilty to charges that he abetted the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam. His appearance in civilian court seems to provide further evidence of the Obama Administration's willingness to seek the most expedient solution to the Guantánamo detainees on a case-by-case basis, and specifically to use civilian courts to try everyone it deems convictable there; we previously reported that the Justice Department was working up analysis on this. The NYT reports:
"Mr. Ghailani’s appearance in the packed courtroom on Tuesday came after President Obama’s announcement last month that he would be transferred to civilian court as part of the effort to close Guantánamo. The president said the plan was to try terrorism suspects in federal courts “whenever feasible.”"
Closing Guantánamo was a central promise of Candidate Obama's national security platform, but it has so far proved easier said than done, partly because of significant push-back from Congress on the idea of transferring detainees to the United States. Nevertheless, the fact that some movement is happening represents a profound change from the approach of the previous administration, which seemed content to leave hundreds of prisoners, some of whom it had essentially admitted to be innocent of any crime, in a perpetual legal black hole.
"Mr. Ghailani’s appearance in the packed courtroom on Tuesday came after President Obama’s announcement last month that he would be transferred to civilian court as part of the effort to close Guantánamo. The president said the plan was to try terrorism suspects in federal courts “whenever feasible.”"
Closing Guantánamo was a central promise of Candidate Obama's national security platform, but it has so far proved easier said than done, partly because of significant push-back from Congress on the idea of transferring detainees to the United States. Nevertheless, the fact that some movement is happening represents a profound change from the approach of the previous administration, which seemed content to leave hundreds of prisoners, some of whom it had essentially admitted to be innocent of any crime, in a perpetual legal black hole.
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