Countdown to the Afghan elections

Presidential elections in Afghanistan are now only a few weeks away, scheduled to take place on August 20. Within the past few weeks, a challenger to the deeply unpopular president, Hamid Karzai, has emerged in Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, an optometrist and former foreign minister. As the NYT is reporting, Abdullah has been drawing crowds across the country by giving voice to widespread discontent over corruption and incompetence within the Karzai administration. Most interesting to me are Abdullah's policy positions on parliamentary and local governance, which match my observations and also parallel some of Thomas Barfield's recommendations:

"Today, Dr. Abdullah, with a diplomat and a surgeon as his running mates, is seen as part of a younger generation of Afghans keen to move away from the nation’s reliance on warlords and older mujahedeen leaders and to clean up and recast the practice of governing. To do that, he advocates the devolution of power from the strong presidency built up under Mr. Karzai to a parliamentary system that he says will be more representative. He is also calling for a system of electing officials for Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and nearly 400 districts as a way to build support for the government."

The significant power built up by Karzai, reflected in the constitution and implemented in cooperation with then-ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, has come at the price of both the Afghan parliament and local governance. The parliament, to which my friend Michael Metrinko served as a liaison, has been largely marginalized, including in the lawmaking process, while Afghanistan's 34 provincial governors, appointed directly by the president with no direct accountability to their constituents, represent a constant source of corruption and mismanagement.

Although Karzai's popularity has been hovering around a dismal 30%, he is still seen as the most likely winner of the upcoming election. This is partly because of the widespread fraud which is expected to accompany the process; in combination with security concerns, this will likely serve to keep people away from the polls. Karzai also benefits from his ability, as the recipient of international aid money, to strike alliances with influential power-brokers, to campaign on the international dime, and to control state-run media. Interestingly, he ducked out of a recent debate with Dr. Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani on Tolo TV, an independent station, leaving an empty lectern as a telling symbol of his administration.

Although Karzai looks likely to win, some factors may play to his disadvantage. The most important of these is the deep-seated dissatisfaction of ordinary Afghans, who have seen growth stagnate and security deteriorate in spite of the billions of dollars that have poured into the country. Karzai may also be hurt by the security situation in the heavily-Pashtun south, which may disproportionately affect members of his ethnic group. The Obama administration, while ramping up military assistance to Afghanistan (as it should), has taken steps to distance itself from the Karzai administration. Under the circumstances, the best outcome may be a runoff, which will result if no candidate captures a majority of the vote.

Conflicts in cyberspace

At the risk of becoming a blog that does nothing but comment on New York Times stories, the NYT is reporting that the US and Russia are expected to continue discussions, during President Obama's visit to Russia this week, on Russia's proposal for an international treaty to limit offensive cyberwarfare capabilities. The US, which has so far opposed calls for such a treaty, instead favors a defensive approach which focuses on better security and increased cooperation between law enforcement agencies, which it hopes will reduce network vulnerability to attacks from both rogue operators and governments.

This discussion comes in the wake of an upsurge of interest in cybersecurity and online warfare; the Obama administration recently undertook a review of USG cybersecurity coordination, resulting in the creation of a White House coordinator for cybersecurity, while the US Military is in the process of creating Cybercom, a new command for offensive and defensive cyberwarfare. The UK and Russia, among other countries, have also stepped up their efforts. This is from President Obama's remarks on the review, in which he revealed, among other things, that his presidential campaign had been hacked:

"This new approach starts at the top, with this commitment from me: From now on, our digital infrastructure -- the networks and computers we depend on every day -- will be treated as they should be: as a strategic national asset. Protecting this infrastructure will be a national security priority. We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy and resilient. We will deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage."

The administration's interest in cybersecurity, while forward-thinking and reflective of Candidate Obama's commitment to addressing unconventional threats, also responds to a number of recent incidents. In 2007, in what has been described as the first war in cyberspace, hackers (believed to be Russians or Russian Estonians) shut down much of Estonia's online infrastructure for several days in response to the Estonian government's removal of a monument to Russian soldiers. This sophisticated attack (the article is well worth reading) used a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mechanism, launched from both dedicated and rented botnets, to cyber-pwn the offices of the president and prime minister, parliament, and Estonia's largest bank. In 2008, as Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, hackers took down Georgian government and military networks (see here for a list of suggested targets). In 2001, after a US Navy surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter, hackers launched coordinated attacks on USG networks; malware has reportedly been found on computers at the Pentagon and NASA. Israeli networks regularly block attacks believed to come from Palestinian groups, and Danish servers were targeted after the 2005 publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Like conventional terrorism, cyberwarfare presents an opportunity for states, and their sympathizers (known in this case as "hacktivists"), to advance their interests while maintaining plausible deniability; although the Estonian government claims that Russian government IP addresses were involved in the 2007 incident, and both Russia and China are believed to have developed offensive capabilities, the use of botnets makes it difficult to trace responsibility (at least without active cooperation from the countries in which the attacks originated), and perpetrators of online attacks are rarely caught. Or, to quote the New Yorker cartoon where two dogs are sitting at a computer, "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." This is from Global Dashboard's Peter Hodge:

"The Russians and the Chinese appear to run a decentralized model, outsourcing cyber-war to shadowy civilian groups. The advantages of this approach include deniability, flexibility, access to the latest tactics and weapons, and being able to draw on the best talent available (hackers, IT workers, online gamers)."

For example, security pundit John Robb blames the Russian Business Network (RBN), an online crime syndicate, for the attack on Estonia and foresees a growing strategic advantage for countries that are willing to operate cyberwarfare through third parties. Evgeny Morozov, writing in Slate, describes how easy it is to become one of those third parties, using readily downloadable applications to flood servers with information (click here for cool movies of malicious activity). Hodge's conclusion is that the best response to outsourced attacks may be an outsourced defense:

"So, rather than set-up a hierarchical government unit, a better strategy for countering cyber-attack could be to form a flat network of experts, set a general operational framework, give people the resources they need, then let them to go for it. And keep the managers and the HR people well away."

The implications of all this span defense, international relations, and trade. Interestingly, they also raise complex legal issues ranging from privacy to intellectual property to NATO's commitment to collective defense. The Berkman Center at HLS is doing interesting work in this area, especially (in the form of the OpenNet Initiative) in tracing government filtering of internet content. On that topic, Slate ran a piece on the Iranian government's success in controlling information, which has launched the logical equivalent of a DDoS attack on my previous post about how Twitter has facilitated the Tehran protests. Perhaps most interesting are the article's assertions that the Iranian government is using crowdsourcing to identify protesters and that Nokia and Siemens built the system the government is using to stifle dissent.

On the topic of corporate complicity with filtering, and last but not least in this international technology roundup, China has delayed the enforcement of its new rule, set to enter into effect today, that all computers sold in the country be equipped with "Green Dam" software, which allows the government to block "objectionable content," supposedly restricted to pornography but, according to leaked documents, also including numerous political buzzwords. According to the WSJ, China and Iran use different approaches to filter information:

"China's vaunted "Great Firewall," which is widely considered the most advanced and extensive Internet censoring in the world, is believed also to involve deep packet inspection. But China appears to be developing this capability in a more decentralized manner, at the level of its Internet service providers rather than through a single hub, according to experts. That suggests its implementation might not be as uniform as that in Iran, they said, as the arrangement depends on the cooperation of all the service providers."

The delay, which seems motivated partly the logistical impossibility of implementing the rule on the government's timeline, also reflects US objections regarding possible violation of free trade agreements and concern from computer manufacturers that the software may compromise the security of computers on which it's installed, which sort of brings us back to the beginning of this post. If you are keeping score, which someone should be, Sony, Lenovo, and Acer are reported to be making attempts to comply with the order; HP and Dell have been quiet about their plans.

US to halt Afghan poppy eradication

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.