Avuncular American

Paying Them To Be Pals

Do you remember the scene in David Lean's epic film, Lawrence of Arabia, where Colonel TE Lawrence, to shouts of "Aurens! Aurens!" rides back to his Bedouin allies in the company of... mercenaries?  "Killers, cutthroats," say the disgusted princes and tribal leaders.  Lawrence has bought himself some protection, but at the cost of the respect of those who are fighting with him for a cause.

A century later, we have lots of modern-day Lawrences in Army and Marine camouflage BDUs, mingling in the Middle East and hiking the Hindu Kush, alternately fighting and tea-drinking with the various bands that make up Iraq and Afghanistan's warring factions.  In Lean's film, it was Ottoman gold that inspired some of Lawrence's Arab allies.  Nowadays, it's more likely to be the shrinking US dollar, shrink-wrapped in bricks of $100 bills.

When I read that the Pentagon's budget is now to include CERP ("Commander's Emergency Response Program") money to woo the Taliban over to "our side," that image of Lawrence's mercenaries looms up.  The $1.3 billion allotted to CERP in Afghanistan may be a drop in the bucket, but as with all such things, has there been much thought given to what happens when the former baddies stop getting money?

Read Shane Bauer's great expose in the September Mother Jones, "The Sheikh Down," for a look at what your money buys in Iraq, where CERP payments created the "Awakening Councils" out of former enemies among the Sunni population.  It's an entertaining read, except the part about the shaking down of the American taxpayer, who gets to pay for "reconstruction" projects at many times their justified price, all in the name of keeping the peace.  Getting a piece, for the sheikhs profiled, is more like it.

But what happens when the money stops?  Surely even Pentagon planners can harbor hopes of a rosy future of declining budget lines when the CERP program "sunsets," to use a term from accounting-speak?  But will the Sunni fighters in Iraq and the ex-Taliban pocketing the payments understand it when the CERP paymasters say "Thanks guys, but our funding has zeroed-out."  Their guns and bombs, bought and paid for by American largess - who will they point them at now?

How about allegations that Italian payments to the Taliban for peace in their sector, when stopped and not communicated to French forces that inherited their zone, subsequently brought the Taliban's wrath on the unsuspecting French?  According to the Times of London, even the US Embassy in Rome protested to the Italian government about such practices.  But now the same thing is in the Pentagon budget?

Tom Engelhardt's "Tomgram" put it squarely: "Will Today's US-Armed Ally Be Tomorrow's Enemy?"  We've been there before, in the self-same Afghanistan:

Let me suggest just one lesson that seems to be on no one else's mind at a moment when a key "option" being offered in Washington -- especially by Democrats not eager to see tens of thousands more U.S. troops heading Afghanistan-wards -- is to arm and "train" ever more thousands of Afghans into a vast army and police security force for a government that hardly exists. Based on the last three decades in the region, don't you think that we should pause and consider who exactly we may be arming and who exactly we may be supporting, and whether, given those 30 years of history, we have the slightest idea what we're doing?

Americans with amnesia should go out and rent Charlie Wilson's War, a slick rendition of how we "bought" the Mujahideen those thirty years ago, who then became the Taliban, who then started getting CERP payments...

AF-PAK-IRAN - Eddies of Instability, or Negotiation Opportunity?

Whatever happened to strategic options?

Discussions of Western policy towards Iran have a numbing inevitability to them.  You're going to hear about the sanctions option, which is always there as a way of warding off the Israeli bombing option.  Two flavors - is that all we have to choose from?

The weekend's deadly attack in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan region should be of concern in capitals other than just Tehran.  And not only because of intemperate Iranian accusations of US or British involvement, which are probably ludicrous.  [UPDATE: Or perhaps not so ludicrous: see Washington Note post by Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett].  It would appear that the Anglo-Americans have quite enough on their hands without poking the eyes of the Iranians, especially in an area where they have little or no leverage.  After all, it was only last week that Baluchis on the Pakistani side expressed fears of US drone strikes in their region, which were apparently nixed by Islamabad.

Thankfully we are no longer in the era of George W. "Axis of Evil" Bush, whose neat phrase lumped together two deadly enemies - Iraq and Iran - by simple conflation.  They were both Muslim-majority countries opposed to the United States - what more do you need?  Bush's crusade against Saddam eliminated the one enemy who had bloodied Iran, and so delivered Iraq into the Shia camp.  Blowback of which I am sure we will hear more as the US wearies of the occupation.

So why, when contemplating Iran policy, are we limited to options that are more worthy of Bush than Obama?

President Obama, after all, is He of the open hand reaching out to the clenched fist.  It's depressing that we are still arguing about Bomb Iran versus Sanction Iran, without considering Co-opt Iran.  Yes, use shared concern over ever-widening arcs of instability, eddying out from their epicenter in Afghanistan.  Pakistan is belatedly trying to deal with multiple insurgencies on its periphery, which, according to Mark Sappenfield of the Christian Science Monitor, won't necessarily help across the border: "All the major terrorist networks attacking US forces in Afghanistan operate from other areas of Pakistan."

Let's use some of the momentum from today's Vienna 4-way nuclear talks to encourage Tehran to expand the diplomatic option.  How about it, Iran: tired of importing natural gas when you're sitting on some of the world's largest reserves?  Find importing gasoline a tad expensive when you actually export the raw material?

In a neighborhood like Af/Pak, wouldn't you want to ensure a bit of stability in the surrounding countries?  India, large, dynamic, democratic to the east.  Central Asia to the north, with its economies trying to transition from Soviet command to capitalism.  And Iran to the west, looking to the west and its markets rather than obsessing about the Great Satan.

Alistair Crooke, writing in Conflicts Forum, questions whether the West (and the Arab Middle East) is again ready to consider Iran as a regional power, as it was under different management.  Whatever the answer, the recent trouble on Iran's Pakistan border may cause some policy makers - Iranian, American, and others - to consider shared interest in stability, in a region where that is in very short supply.

Image: Af/Pak coffee mug, available through Diplopundit.

Setting the Stage for Uzbek Elections

Uzbekistan, as far as I know, has no official national motto, but the phrase you hear most often when officials describe the country's relationship to democracy is "step by step."  In the almost 18 years since the country became independent with the breakup of the Soviet Union, "step by step" has sometimes been translated as "one step forward, two steps back."

Over the past years, elections have been held, parties have emerged, and foreign observers have taken note.  But some of the country's potentially most popular "public movements" which arose in the late '80s and early '90s never received official status, so their vote-getting ability as political parties was never tested.  At the same time, concerns about the rise of political Islam made Uzbek authorities wary of instability and worse spreading across borders with neighbors like Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

Is Uzbekistan further along the road to democracy than it was in late 1991, when the hammer and sickle came down and the crescent and stars went up?  Probably, but largely in an institutional sense rather than a mass democratic one.

I'm not a frequent flier to Uzbekistan, but I have been to Tashkent twice now in as many months.  In July, it was a conference on responses to the international financial crisis.  Last week it was to compare experiences on political parties and parliamentary elections.  Uzbekistan has scheduled elections to its Oliy Majlis or Parliament for December 27.

With the cooperation of the OSCE's Democratization and Rule of Law program, Regional Dialogue (Slovenia), and the US National Democratic Institute (NDI), the Academy of State and Social Construction (ASSC) convened a two-day program on September 29-30.  Election experts and Central Asia analysts from a number of OSCE member states, plus Asian neighbors from as far away as Japan and India shared their observations on organizing elections.

Uzbek officials from the Central Election Commission and from a variety of government think tanks outlined Uzbekistan's preparations for the elections, which included a rather impressive study of international best practice in a number of areas.  Uzbekistan, noting that other countries have set quotas for the representation of women in national parliaments, has maintained its 30 percent figure, but has put the onus on the political parties to implement the recruitment of female candidates.

A more unusual quota has emerged: 15 seats in the new parliament will be reserved for the Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan, not a political party as such.  Though this development should give an impetus to the country's efforts to confront grave environmental problems such as the drying up of the Aral Sea, the move was not without its critics among the international observers.  Why limit Uzbek greens to 15 seats?  Other than their ostensibly "green" approach to environmental issues, where do they stand on, say, human rights, or Uzbek foreign policy?  Questions that remain unanswered, but worth tracking once the new Majlis starts legislating in the new year.

Worthwhile as it usually is to expose Uzbek officials to (mildly) critical observation by international
experts, the amount of "apparatchik speak" in evidence was still quite high.  Sometimes a Western skeptic might ask a party official for his campaign slogan or theme to rally popular support, only to be answered with a timid observation on the need to increase tourism into this distant Central Asian state.  Not the stuff of rousing stump speeches, but a safe bet in a country where being outspoken is still a risky proposition.

By the looks of things, the elected officials around the conference table seemed more at ease in expressing opinions than their party chiefs.  I have a feeling that they have gotten beyond the stage where - according to Dilip Hiro in his new book Inside Central Asia - Uzbek parliamentarians in the early Nineties "had taken to reciting poems honoring [the president] in the chamber."

"Democracy is not a state, it is a process," said one of the Uzbek participants, and I couldn't agree more.  Democracy can be won - hard won - and then lost, if its beneficiaries cease to defend it.  This holds for countries with long democratic traditions, and highlights how difficult the democracy-building process is for countries with no such tradition.  At least by creating the institutions associated with democracy - representative assemblies, political parties, elections - Uzbekistan is further along than certain countries (among them some of the West's "best friends") which have yet to even acknowledge the need for such institutions.

"Step by step" - neither giant steps nor great leaps forward - is at least movement in the right direction.  While the conference was still in session, Uzbekistan submitted its formal invitation to the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe the December elections.

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(Photos: top left - former madrassa now an artisans' colony; bottom right - Amir Timur (Tamerlane) Museum)

Global Economic Crisis: Uzbekistan Engages Constructively

A prosperous and democratic Uzbekistan could be an extremely important bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds.

AbduMannob Polat, former chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, writing for the Jamestown Foundation

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Last week I participated in a conference in Tashkent, the capital of post-Soviet Central Asia's most populous country, Uzbekistan.  Hosts were the Uzbekistan Institute for the Study of Civil Society (ISCS), who provided the photos in this post.  Full disclosure: the Brussels-based European Institute of International Relations (IERI, for which I do pro-bono work) was a co-sponsor, as were the OSCE and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), organizations with strong democracy-building and rule of law credentials.

The round table was primarily focused on how Uzbekistan has coped with the international financial crisis.  Rather well, it would appear: the IMF (whose Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn visited Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states last month) forecast 7% GDP growth for the country in 2009, down only slightly from 2008's 9% figure.

Some of Uzbekistan's success in weathering the financial storm is down to its isolation; "double land-locked" among other land-locked Central Asian neighbors, it had already survived the wrenching transition from Soviet central planning after the breakup of the USSR in the '90s.  As one Uzbek banker said, the country's mere 6% of mortgage exposure meant there was "no bubble to burst."  It has also helped that the country's President, Islam Karimov, is an economist by training, and has recently penned a book on the crisis.

Though economic in thrust, the conference's sub theme of political reforms was ever-present.  That picture of me on the right is of a very jet lagged neophyte's first hours in Tashkent, trying to answer the local press' insistent questioning about my opinion on Uzbekistan's upcoming (December) parliamentary and local elections.  "Langue de bois" or diplospeak comes in handy at times, but I was honestly able to plead ignorance based on my almost total lack of information on the question.

Other participants were more forthright, with probably the best line from the NDI director: "democracy is the best defense against extremism."  The extremism is Islamic, and was a reference to Uzbekistan's darkest hour in 2005, when long-simmering tensions came to a head in the city of Andijan.  A bloody confrontation between government forces and opposition elements - over which the jury is still out, though a 2007 Jamestown Foundation report provides dispassionate analysis - resulted in Uzbekistan's sidelining by Western governments and NGOs, which is only now starting to be relaxed.

Part of the thaw is plain power politics: Uzbekistan lies astride a critical supply route leading to Afghanistan, and can be a much-appreciated island of stability in a turbulent region.  As AbduMannob Polat, former chairman of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (and author of the Jamestown study), writes: "A prosperous and democratic Uzbekistan could be an extremely important bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds."  A truism, to be sure.  The conditional tense is crucial: we aren't there yet.  But Uzbek bodies like the Civil Society Institute, with crucial assistance from institutions like the OSCE and NDI (also from the European Union and the Council of Europe), are engaging with the outside world.

As longtime campaigners for the rule of law in Uzbekistan know, the transition from centuries of Czarist then Communist rule does not come overnight.  There are ups, and there are downs.  Dialogue helps, and "constructive engagement" - though dismissed by purists as providing cover and abetting repression - can also be a way of maintaining a positive influence, and has born fruit.  Uzbekistan has an active ombudsman in the person of a respected parliamentary deputy, and the country banned capital punishment in 2008.

I have no illusions that the ways of Uzbek politics are every bit as labyrinthine as those of the Middle East, of which I know enough to know what I don't know, to paraphrase an ex-US Secretary of Defense.  But there is a window opening up, as much for Uzbekistan as for the West.  And it's not just the West: Uzbekistan still must deal gingerly with overtures from its former overlords in Moscow, and President Karimov currently chairs the SCO, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

"Great Game" aficionados will put this down to East-West jockeying for influence in a resource-rich, strategically located country, and that cannot be denied.  But that will happen anyway.  Uzbekistan, despite what a NY Times correspondent intimated recently, is not Chechnya.  The question is: are ordinary Uzbek citizens better off with - or without - the presence of Western institutions pressing for rule of law and human rights?  How "righteous" is it to leave them on their own?  Engagement, however problematic and trying on the nerves, can bring results.

Secret Défense: Who Killed French Monks In Algeria?

Yesterday's Le Monde article on revelations of testimony by a former French military attaché in Algiers has caused somewhat of a stir on both sides of the Mediterranean.  The former attaché, General François Buchwalter, testified that the seven monks beheaded in 1996 during the worst years of Algeria's civil war, had in fact been killed by the Algerian Army.

Algerian media reaction (a selection here via Algeria Watch) has been quick, seeing a nefarious post-colonial, anti-Algerian motivation: "The Delirium Of A General," or "The Return of 'Who Killed Who'?"  The latter, "Qui tue qui?", is shorthand for calling into question responsibility for thousands of deaths during the dirty war.  According to several former Algerian military, not all "terrorist" killings were carried out by Islamic militants.

Today, French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to declassify documents relating to the investigation.  As L'Express points out, Sarkozy was not in the Chirac government during the period in question.

In their 2007 book Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed, Martin Evans and John Phillips wrote extensively about the monks and the events leading up to their deaths, saying "the monks' deaths could be seen as the consequence of a counter-insurgency game that went disastrously wrong."  Evans and Phillips draw on previous revelations, notably by a former Algerian government infiltrator in the armed groups.

The British authors know of what they speak: Phillips was the Times (London) correspondent in Algeria during the worst years of the war, including during the monks' killing at Tibéhirine. "Reporting from Algeria," they write, "with a regime one of whose characteristics was disinformation on a grand scale, was notoriously hazardous."  One of the main areas of focus in the current French investigation is whether the French authorities were complicit in covering up the disinformation.

Algeria's 2005 National Reconciliation Charter was supposed to have unleashed a kind of "live and let live" spirit, but as Liam Stack wrote recently in the Christian Science Monitor, it has instead "focused on forgetting the past," at least for those in the government.  French justice, not bound by the Algerian charter, is free to look where the truth may take it.

Obama and the Power of Peace

Close to fifty percent of my posts have the category tag "diplomacy," this one included.  Having spent most of my adult life practicing that art, my blogging is a natural outgrowth of my previous calling.  Note my words: "art," "calling."  I might just have easily used "vocation," but my diplomacy was largely secular.  I'll leave the messianic part where it belongs, in the rubbish heap of the Bush era, where War was his middle name (or was it Waterboard?).

Note the symbolism in the Great Seal of the United States: "the olive branch and the arrows 'denote the power of peace & war',” according to the State Department (the keeper of the official US symbol; 18th century image at left from the Library of Congress).

The power of peace...

Today's Roger Cohen piece in the New York Times, "The Mellow Doctrine," nicely sums up where President Obama, in his 100+ day march through foreign capitals, has brought the United States in its relations with the rest of the world:

Call it the mellow doctrine. Neither idealistic nor classic realpolitik, it involves finding strength through unconventional means: acknowledgment of the limits of American power; frankness about U.S. failings; careful listening; fear reduction; adroit deployment of the wide appeal of brand Barack Hussein Obama; and jujitsu engagement.

There he is again, our Pragmatic President, confusing the opposition by using the non-kinetic weapons of candor and "careful listening."  This is exactly what we need, as both were lacking in a foreign policy that cost the United States much more - in moral terms - than simply the trillions devoted to the Iraq war-of-choice.  It's nice that students - from 4th graders in Washington to Stanford University - remember that, and are putting the torture-enablers on the spot.

Obama can continue to gain much by appearing to "give" in on previously cherished positions (and possessions).  As Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations suggested in yesterday's Washington Post, "Don't Just Close Gitmo. Give It Back."  She reminds us that the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay started out over a century ago as a coaling station, that 19th century military "must" that was a corollary of gunboat diplomacy.

We've given up the battleships, but kept the coaling station.  Just like the Maginot Line and the Siegfried Line are now just tourist attractions across the internal EU non-border, sometimes ratcheting down the military must-haves is a positive move for national security.

In what may become the toughest foreign policy challenge of his presidency - safely normalizing relations with Iran, a country whose Islamist government has been on a 30 year collision course with the United States - Barack Obama could do worse than some "careful listening" to Alistair Crooke of Conflicts Forum, profiled over the weekend by Robert F. Worth of the New York Times.  Crooke, a former British intelligence officer, is spending his post-spying career building bridges with political Islam (another one of my subject tags).  Crooke knows how difficult this is:

“George Mitchell once said to me, ‘you don’t even have a political process until you accept that the other side has a legitimate point of view,’ ” Mr. Crooke said, referring to Mr. Mitchell’s landmark 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and relating it to the many obstacles between the United States and Iran.

“Does America have the will and the patience for that?” he said. “I’m not sure we’re there yet.”

Diplomacy is all about will and patience.  We are certainly not "there yet," but notice where Obama Middle East envoy George Mitchell has been sent?  The man whose "Mitchell Method" brand of quiet diplomacy brought peace to a centuries-old conflict is now applying his skills to a confrontation that is "merely" decades-old.  Maybe the Obama Method will become known, in Roger Cohen's phrase, as "no-drama diplomacy."

Iran, Israel, and Intolerance: Ahmadinejad & Avigdor

The fact that a racist like [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is the main speaker proves the true aim and nature of the conference.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking on the eve of the UN conference on racism in Geneva, from the Israel Beytenu website

Following World War Two, they [note: WW II victors] resorted to making an entire nation homeless on the pretext of Jewish suffering. They sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine. In compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive, racist regime in Palestine.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Geneva; excerpted remarks on the BBC website

The old saw about the pot calling the kettle black comes to mind.  Personally, I don't think either Mahmoud Amadinejad or Avigdor Lieberman represent all their citizens or the ethos of their respective countries.  Both, however, are the product of elections, and therfore do represent currents that are alive in broad segments of their societies.  That said, I would like both of them to go to hell.

Since they are respectively President and Foreign Minister of Iran and Israel, my wish to send them to Hades is irrelevant.  Maybe as irrelevant as the UN Conference - official site here - itself.

A UN conference to condemn racism?  I am not going to fall into the facile complaint about wasting money on sending hundreds of people to talking shops; international conferences can often lead to useful conclusions.  Even the original Durban Declaration is credited with fostering minority rights in places like Latin America and India.

But yesterday's set-piece speech + walkout/boycott was guaranteed from the start to steal whatever credibility the organizers had provided the conference.  They would have done better to invite Avigdor Lieberman, so that he could expound on his plan - remember, he is now Israel's Foreign Minister - to eject Arab citizens of Israel and "trade" their land for the burgeoning Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  "The more homogeneous a country is, the better it develops," he told Der Spiegel in 2007.  According to Ben Lynfield, Jerusalem-based freelance writer for The Nation, Lieberman illustrates "the ascendance of fascist ideas in Israel."

Whatever pious imprecations are mouthed in Geneva over the next few days, racism and intolerance will continue to abound.  A few leagues south of Geneva, in Italy, football crowds continue in their racist ways.  In Iran, Ahmedinejad has returned to a rapturous welcome after sticking it to the West.  Maybe he can apply himself to the question of press freedom and Roxana Saberi.  And, out of sight of the world's media, Israel under Netanyahu/Lieberman continues to make life miserable for Arabs.

Here's my question: will any of the countries whose delegations walked out on or boycotted Ahmadinejad similarly spurn Avigdor Lieberman?  A man whose current "diplomatic" duties cannot cover a lifetime of racism?

Algerian Elections: A Very Easy Call

Dilem, Liberte-Algerie.com

Algeria has gone full circle: 19 years ago, I arrived in Algiers in advance of the June 1990 regional and municipal elections, which saw the emergence of the Islamist FIS Party as a force to be reckoned with (the reckoning came when the Algerian Army quashed the second FIS victory in as many years, the December 1991 parliamentary elections whose cancellation signaled the beginning of Algeria's bloody years of political violence).

In 1990, while monitoring the elections in a one-man mission for the US Embassy, I took a lunch break for a plate of couscous.  The government clerk sitting at the table next to me wasn't a "man on the street," but he would do.  "Voted yet?" I asked.  "Not going to," the functionary answered.  "The FLN will win again, as it always does," a reference to the previous one-party rule of the National Liberation Front.

My lunch partner was, of course, wrong: the FIS won, and won big, because they got out the vote.  Fast forward to 2009, and today's presidential elections.   Don't know if my clerk is still around, but if he sat out the election this time, his cynicism would be well-placed.  As the excellent Maghreb-watching blog "The Moor Next Door" puts it, this is a "cakewalk" for the re-election of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

Though Algerian politics has been far from fair, at least it had avoided the "President For Life" malady that afflicts it North African neighbors.  As Ahmed Aghrout and Yahia H. Zoubir write in Middle East Report Online MERIP

Until recently,  Algeria was the North African exception -- Article 74 of its  1996 constitution set two five-year terms as the limit on the  mandate of a given president. On November 12, 2008, however, the parliament voted overwhelmingly to approve several constitutional  amendments, the most important of which removed the stipulations  of Article 74. This far-reaching amendment opened the way for President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to run for a third successive  term, as he will do on April 9, despite his poor health and controversial performance. Algerians are convinced that, as in Tunisia or Egypt, the result of this election is a foregone conclusion.

If you count out the FIS, which was disbanded after the Army coup in 1992, most of the remaining credible politicians and parties are boycotting the election (see this useful BBC Q & A).  There are international observers in Algeria for the event: the African Union has agreed to deploy 100 monitors.  But three prominent French weeklies, including L'Express, have been banned for apparently getting too close to the inconvenient truth.

As a service to readers who want to browse previous coverage of Algerian topics, here's a link to my "Algeria" tag category.

FYI, for myopic readers who haven't clicked on Dilem's "Presidential Elections" cartoon above, that ballot box is a shredder.

 

Turkey and Europe: Yes, No, or Impossible?

Years ago in a community development project in Ramallah, when it was still just a sleepy, recently-occupied West Bank town, one of my fellow volunteers, a devilish Turk named Ali, gave me language lessons. In Turkish body language, said Ali, you have the nodding of the head up and down for “yes,” the shaking side to side for “no,” and then something else. Tilting your head back to where your chin pointed to the onlooker (I’ve seen this elsewhere accompanied by a dismissive “tsk” sound) means “impossible.”

So which one is it to be for Turkey’s European Union hopes: yes, no, or - as in "you silly Turks, whatever made you think we’re genuine about those accession talks" - impossible?

Map of Turkey and its neighborhood, from the European Commission Enlargement website, “Turkey - Candidate Country Profile.” As in Perpetual Candidate?

To the annoyance of Nicolas Sarkozy (and I dare say a few others), US President Barack Obama, speaking at the Turkish Parliament yesterday, repeated that

The United States strongly supports Turkey’s bid to become a member of the European Union. (Applause.) We speak not as members of the EU, but as close friends of both Turkey and Europe. Turkey has been a resolute ally and a responsible partner in transatlantic and European institutions. Turkey is bound to Europe by more than the bridges over the Bosphorous. Centuries of shared history, culture, and commerce bring you together. Europe gains by the diversity of ethnicity, tradition and faith — it is not diminished by it. And Turkish membership would broaden and strengthen Europe’s foundation once more.

Obama and Sarkozy can agree on one thing: the US is not a member of the EU. The preceding is therefore called, in good American parlance, jawboning - “to influence by persuasion” (usually in domains where direct power is limited or, as in this case, nonexistent). But Turkey-in-Europe is both a geographic and demographic fact, and goes back centuries to the time when the Ottoman Empire - and latterly, the Young Turks - ruled large European territories.

This American stance on Turkey’s EU credentials is not new, but when Obama speaks of Europe “gaining in diversity,” he brings a certain credibility to the argument that Bush and others never had. As far as the US image is concerned, Obama had to surface from not only the generally abyssal depths into which Bush had sunk US-Muslim relations, but also had to repair damaged US-Turkish relations.

Who, other than Turkish democrats and US Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, remember then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz calling for the Turkish Army to exert its “traditional leadership role” (code for carrying out a coup d’état) in the face of the elected Turkish government’s opposition to allowing US military use of Turkish territory to invade Iraq in 2003? Frank called for Wolfowitz to resign. He eventually did, but for other reasons, and from a different job…

So Obama’s reference to “Turkey’s strong, vibrant, secular democracy” helps make amends for Bush and Wolfowitz dissing elected Turkish democrats, just because they were of the (moderate) Islamist persuasion and saw - like Obama did as a Senatorial hopeful back in 2003 - that invading Iraq was a sure-fire way to stir up a regional hornet’s nest.

That region - Turkey borders on 7 countries and is across the sea from another five - is why Turkey is important to NATO and potentially to the EU. We’ve long known Turkey for its troop-contributing potential as NATO’s second largest army, but, as Dr. Bahadir Kaleagasi, TUSIAD (Turkey’s Industrial Association) representative in Brussels said recently, “Turkey is either - or both - the northernmost country of the South or the southernmost country of the North.” Kaleagasi didn’t need to refer to Turkey’s ongoing mediation efforts between Israel and Syria (nor its attempts to get Hamas legitimated), but he did talk about Turkey’s position vis a vis Iran: “the Turkish-Iranian border is unchanged since medieval times, one of the world’s most ancient.” Interesting prospect, as the West enlists Turkey’s help in its efforts in the multiple regional challenges - Palestine/Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, and “Af/Pak.”

On the matter of Turkish membership in the European Union, I straddle a diplomatic “Errant European” and “Avuncular American” line. Expressing myself as an American, Europeans don’t want to hear another call from a Yank who should mind his business about the strategic interest and basic fairness of dealing honestly with a Candidate Country. As a dual American/Irish-European, I have nothing against Turkey’s Islamic identity, and agree with Obama when he sees the positives for diversity.

But I do honestly question whether the EU should expand indefinitely. And that doesn’t mean just the matter of Turkish accession. Can the EU limit enlargement to the countries on this map (essentially Turkey plus Croatia, Macedonia, and “potential candidate countries” in the rest of the Balkan peninsula)? Or will the process carry on as long as this applies: “Any country that satisfies the conditions for enlargement can submit an application.” The OSCE, by the way, has 56 member states, and the Council of Europe 47.  So there's a long way to go until "Europe" reaches its outer limits.

This post first appeared in "Errant European" (Euractiv/Blogactiv)

Brussels Forum 2009: Afghanistan & Pakistan

Live blogging before lunch from Day Two of the Brussels Forum, which includes the roundtable on "Afghanistan and Pakistan: What Will It Take To Get It Right?" going on right now, with US "Af-Pak" envoy Richard Holbrooke in the center of things.  According to Holbrooke, the key to success in Afghanistan is Pakistan, and the key to Pakistan is resolving the situation in Afghanistan.  The Obama Administration, says Holbrooke, looks at the two countries as a pair.

"The heart of the problem is western Pakistan - the tribal areas," said Holbrooke.  The Obama Administration approach is regional, he said, and puts emphasis not only on Af-Pak, but also "India, China, and all of Afghanistan's neighbors," stress on all the neighbors.  Holbrooke on Pakistani sensitivities to drone attacks on their soil - "what drones?" he joked.  But he forsees no on-the-ground presence by western forces there.

Despite Holbrooke's emphasis, relatively little attention was paid by the rest of the panel to analyzing the internal situation in Pakistan, though Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid pointed out such stultifyingly frustrating statistics as the Pakistani literacy rate today, "equal to that in 1947" when the Islamic state was founded.

On the panel, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski spoke of avoiding "messianic" goals for Afghanistan.  He knows of what he speaks:

As a journalist, Minister Sikorski worked as a war correspondent in Angola and Afghanistan, and won the 1988 World Press Photo prize for one of his photographs taken in Afghanistan.

From Sikorski's comments, it was clear that he was "imbedded" with the Mujahidin during their war against the Soviet Union.  His perspective, therefore, is probably unique among EU-NATO ministers, and he is sometimes mentioned as a potential replacement for outgoing NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Holbrooke took issue with a term in one of the questions: "'minimalist goals' - what does that mean?"  Holbrooke is very aware of the historic resistance of Afghans to foreign invaders, occupiers, or even well-intentioned outsiders like NATO.  If the goal is to "hand Afghanistan back" to its government and people, Holbrooke admits that "we don't yet control" the security situation.

Military-only solutions are out of favor among American, European, and Afghan representatives alike.  Afghan National Security Advisor Zalmai Rasoul corrected the notion of an Obama "military" surge - "it's a comprehensive surge."  FM Sikorski agreed, noting that until Obama came on the scene, military expenditure way outpaced that of development and civil institution-building.

Holbrooke spoke of a "vast program" involving other elements of national power beyond just the military, whose challenges are unprecedented - Holbrooke spoke of the "incredibly difficult logistical trail" that involves trouble spots as varied as Pakistan and Russia and the Central Asian states.  He reminded journalists afterwards of the importance of Turkey's readiness to help in the Afghan civilian sector.  The special envoy stressed NATO's and Europe's importance in solving the Af-Pak problem, and rejected the "coaliton of the willing" approach as an outdated notion.

Holbrooke underlined the power of the new approach, calling to mind the image of his President addressing the Iranian people directly in his Nowruz message.  Straight-talking Holbrooke admits that drug-interdiction efforts in Afghanistan are a "total waste of money, the worst I've seen in decades of government service."  He sees solutions in "draining the swamp" through expanded agicultural sector job creation programs - he's even picked the brain of the US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, who will get involved in upcoming Washington consultations with regional leaders.

How to deal with the Taliban?  One questioner, a Danish parliamentarian, said that during a recent trip to the region, her interlocutors said that the West "should not talk to the Taliban."  Afghan NSA Rasoul made a distinction between Taliban and other resistance fighters: "we need to leave the door open" to what is not a monolithic movement.  But some will have to be fought and subdued.  Sikorski deferred to "those who know best the situation, the Afghan authorities," for how best to identify and deal with the disparate Taliban elements.

The Taliban gain adherence, according to Holbrooke, not from their obscurantist program, but from their resistance to foreign forces and "sense of grievance."  Taliban PR efforts continue unabated, with nightly broadcasts boasting of beheadings.  Holbrooke says that ISAF is not countering Taliban propaganda.  "Failures on the civilian side of the international effort - drugs, policing, information - are so enormous," said Holbrooke, that it will require a massive effort to implement the "comprehensive solution."