Eric Witte October 29th, 2008

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is denying indications from BBC reporting in South Ossetia that Georgian forces committed war crimes during their short-lived August offensive to establish control over the break-away region.  The BBC found that Georgian forces used indiscriminate force, and may have deliberately targeted civilians.

In cases such as this, where war crimes accusations are leveled against the side that was eventually most wronged in the conflict (in this case by Russia’s savaging of Georgia), it can be tempting for international diplomats to attempt a whitewash.  It is refreshing then to see UK Foreign Minister David Miliband’s reaction to the BBC allegations:

Mr Miliband - normally a strong supporter of Georgia - told the BBC: “I think the Georgian action was reckless, I think the Russian response was disproportionate and wrong.

“And that is the series of events that have landed us where we are.

“On my visit to Tbilisi of course I raised at the highest level in Georgia, the questions that have been asked and raised about war crimes and other military actions by the Georgian authorities.

“We have acted in this without fear, without favour.”

Blind support for Saakashvili in Washington may have encouraged him to blunder into a war he could not win.  It will be interesting to see whether the British reaction to indications of Georgian war crimes has any echo in Washington.

BBC reporting from South Ossetia also strongly indicated that ethnic Georgian villages were targeted by Ossetian and Russian forces.  President Saakashvili says he is open to any kind of investigation.  With all of Russia’s bluster about “genocide” in South Ossetia (which seems an immense stretch, even if war crimes were committed), the International Criminal Court should be encouraged to launch a full investigation.  Who would dare oppose it?  Georgia is a signatory to the Rome Statute, the ICC prosecutor has said that the situation is “under analysis”, and both the Georgian and Russian governments have sent information to The Hague.  But why not raise the stakes and have the Security Council formally refer the Georgia conflict to the ICC?  It may not be legally necessary, but it would be useful to put Russia on the spot to formally sign on to an independent investigation through the Security Council.  Such an investigation may well find that Georgia did commit war crimes, but is likely to find at least as much evidence of Russian culpability. 

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Iryna Chupryna October 28th, 2008

Ukraine has become another country in Europe seriously hit by economic crisis.  The stock market has plunged by nearly 80% this year. Last week the hryvnia, the national currency, hit a seven-year low against the dollar. This is very threatening for the economy, since many credits were taken in hard currency (dollars) and, therefore, it will be increasingly hard to pay them off both for businesses and individuals.

The sixth-largest bank, Prominvestbank, was nationalized to be saved from bankruptcy. The bank system has also come under threat, after in October the panicking population took deposits worth 20 billion hryvnas (around 3.5 billion dollars) out of banks.

Furthermore, the demand on steel making up a lion’s share of Ukraine’s export has recently drastically fallen worldwide. Therefore, steel and metal industries face large job cuts which might seriously aggravate the economic situation in the industrial backbone of Ukraine – the East. An expert of the International Center of Strategic Studies based in Ukraine Ildar Gazizulin claims that due to the financial crisis, unemployment in Ukraine may raise up to 8%. Employees in metallurgy, construction and banks will be most affected.

The IMF is ready to provide a huge loan package of USD 16.5 billion to ease the effects of the global financial crisis. However, the condition is that Ukraine’s parliament approves a package of  measures aimed at tackling the crisis. Yet the politicians don’t show a willingness to compromise – representatives of the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko are blockading parliamentary proceedings again, protesting against the bill to finance early parliamentary elections. Competing packages of financial measures have been drawn up and it is not clear which of them is to be passed.

Meanwhile trust in all current leaders of Ukraine has drastically fallen. According to the latest sociological polling, the rating of the President Viktor Yuschenko has plunged down to a stunningly small figure – 4.1 %! But the ratings of his main potential rivals at the presidential elections next year have also slumped – Viktor Yanukovych is supported by 18.8 %, Yulia Tymoshenko – by 16.7 %. It is important that almost one third of voters is disappointed in all current leaders  - 20.9% admitted they would not go to presidential poll if it took place now, and 16.2% are undefined. It is clear that the demand for a new political elite is higher than ever. It might happen that the economic recession and quickly deteriorating living standards of Ukrainians will sweep off all major politicians of today – both the leaders of the Orange Revolution and their rivals. And who’s to come next?

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Iryna Chupryna October 13th, 2008

Regrettably, local elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina that were held on 5 October confirmed deep ethnic divisions within the Balkan country. Serb, Muslim and Croat nationalists obtained high scores in the race for mayorships in the country’s 149 municipalities following a campaign marked by nationalist rhetoric and lack of interest in the real problems faced by citizens. 

The biggest winner in the Serbian part of the country (Republika Srpska) was the Independent Union of Social Democrats (SNSD) of Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik, which reportedly elected mayors in at least 32 municipalities. The nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS), founded by indicted genocide suspect Radovan Karadzic, was the second strongest party in the Serb republic.

In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, comprising Muslim Bosniaks and Catholic Croats, the Muslim nationalist Party of Democratic Action (SDA) obtained the highest score, winning in at least 28 municipalities. The nationalist Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) obtained high scores in mainly Croat municipalities, winning 15 mayoral posts. The multi-ethnic Social Democratic Party (SDP) won 9 mayoral posts in several cities, including two Sarajevo municipalities.

Overall, turnout was estimated at 55%. However, voters in bigger cities reportedly shunned the poll as citizens rejected predominantly nationalist rhetoric. They would have liked to see the political rhetoric addressing other issues beyond nationalist, but vainly. Namely, the turnout in Sarajevo was less than 40 percent, with a similar trend in the towns of Tuzla, Zenica and Banja Luka.  But in rural areas, voters turned out in big numbers and helped the nationalists to gain ground.

Generally, more than 29,000 candidates from 72 political parties and dozens of coalitions and independent lists competed for 140 mayors in 78 municipalities in the Muslim-Croat federation and 62 in the Serb Republic.

 The results of local elections look disappointing for all who would like to see Bosnia’s ethnic groups cooperating with each other on many social issues. Yet, in the political environment where nationalist rhetoric secures electoral gains politicians do not bother to address issues of unemployment and rampant corruption – why should they care? The third sector, although active, primarily engages with small issues and does not yet provide a united platform to demand the accountability of politicians and, as an option, to press for a new unifying political project to emerge. Those challenges remain and should be addressed before the general elections in 2010.

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Iryna Chupryna October 9th, 2008

Yesterday President Viktor Yuschenko of Ukraine has announced the dissolution of the parliament and third general election in less than three years in a pre-recorded speech on TV. The polls are going to be held on 7 December.

Accusing Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yuschenko said that “I am convinced, deeply convinced that the democratic coalition was ruined by one thing alone - human ambition. The ambition of one person. Thirst for power, different values, personal interests taking precedence over national interests.”  He also talked of “external threats”. The Tymoshenko Bloc, President Yuschenko said, had become “the hostage of its own leaders who would sacrifice everything - language, security, European prospects”.

On one hand, Yuschenko’s move should be hailed since the parliament showed itself as extremely ineffective institution, remembered by constant political rows, blocking, and delays in adopting crucially important laws. But, on the other hand, the clear winner of the forthcoming elections will be the opposition Party of Regions, since the forces close to Yuschenko and Tymoshenko pledged to create an effective democratic coalition, but failed. By watching their constant internal strife the Party of Regions only gained political dividends, while the “orange” parties’ ratings plummeted. Soaring inflation and unclear stand on Russian-Georgian war will probably lead to the serious political losses of the Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT) in the Western Ukraine. The pro-presidential Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense bloc also dissapointed voters with internal splittures - some of its deputies started to shift towards the BYuT, others joined a new Yediniy Tsentr party loyal to the Party of Regions.

The snap election is also likely to bring forward new political projects. One of them probably would come from the former speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk, another is likely to emerge around the former Defense Minister, and now ardent critic of both Yuschenko and Tymoshenko, Anatoliy Gritsenko. Radical nationalist party Svoboda led by Oleh Tiagnibok, which constantly failed in recent elections, also has a chance to overcome a 3% barrier. But there is no doubt that the ruling role in the new parliament will be played by the Party of Regions, which will probably make a configuration either with communist or/and other smaller political projects.

Alas, it was much easier to achieve a democratic breakthrough than to consolidate democracy in this large, sharply divided along social, cultural, language lines eastern European country. First, most of the so-called new political leaders have a clearly old pattern of thinking - i.e. how to win next election rather than have a long-term development program for a state, reforms in economics, public policy system, anticorruption struggle, to mention only a few. It’s not surprising because most of the present political leaders made their careers during the Kuchma’s regime, including Tymoshenko, Yuschenko and Litvin. It is extremely hard for new politicians to enter the political scene, since election lists are formed by party leadership, and it is rumored that places in the upper part of lists cost several million dollars. The situation is aggravated through the fact Ukrainian authorities failed to conduct at least a moral, much less a judicial reckoning for the crimes of Kuchma’s regime, and many people meddled in election fraud in 2004, such as Viktor Yanukovych, Sergiy Kivalov, Andriy Kluyev, are among the Party of Regions leaders. Second, populism and void promises were typical for recent electoral campaigns and they will remain unpunished, since accountability mechanisms in the system of closed party lists are absent.

Last but not least, new elections will negatively affect Ukraine’s prospects of getting MAP at the next NATO summit, and also complicate the country’s European perspective. It’s not a good timing for instability in the conditions of the world economic crisis either.

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Iryna Chupryna October 5th, 2008

The EU-Ukraine summit in September became another defeat of Ukraine’s democracy, after the April NATO Summit in Bucharest. This summit failed to give Ukraine any clear perspective, even in the remote future. While Ukraine expected to conclude an association agreement already this year, this issue was postponed for a year. It has been rumoured that recent political turmoil in Ukraine, namely the collapse of the ruling coalition and the threat of another snap parliamentary election, contributed to the EU’s reluctance to open a door for Ukraine. But the EU fails to realize that it has enough leverage to help Ukraine on its hard way on the consolidation of democracy. Namely, in contrast to NATO integration of Ukraine, which is supported less by the half of Ukrainians, the idea of European integration is supported by a majority. So the European Union has a strong potential of unifying Ukraine, providing the unity of purpose for policy. The passive attitude of the EU to Ukraine might backfire with the setback of democracy and the growth of  Russian influence in that Eastern European state.

After the collapse of the ruling coalition in early September the situation in Ukraine remains unsettled. Even if it manages to return to the previous coalition format and to avoid new elections, the coalition between the Our Ukraine and BYuT would be very fragile, with a very slight majority over the opposition. The fact is that Ukraine is a divided country in linguistic, cultural, and socio-political aspects. It looks like the way out of the impasse for Ukraine would be a pan-Ukrainian coalition uniting pragmatic politicians of both pro-Russian and pro-Western political forces who would put aside divisive issues and focus on the economy, public administration, the fight against corruption and similar issues. A number of politicians such as Yatseniuk, Yekhanurov, Grytsenko hopefully will be able to push through a political project of that type. Arseniy Yatseniuk, parliament’s speaker, has already announced his plans to launch a new political project.

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Kurt Bassuener October 4th, 2008

Two weeks ago, I wondered at the implications of South African President Thabo Mbeki’s resignation on the continuing difficulties with the Zimbabwe power sharing deal announced last month.

Today, the BBC reports that Mbeki will retain his role as the SADC mediator:

Former South African President Thabo Mbeki has confirmed he will continue his mediation efforts in Zimbabwe.

“He will resume his work as soon as it is practically possible,” his spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said.

…

South Africa’s newly elected President Kgalema Motlanthe has given his backing to Mr Mbeki’s continuing mediation role in Zimbabwe’s power-sharing talks.

That deal remains unimplemented over disputes between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and the Tsvangirai’s MDC over the distribution of powerful ministerial portfolios, which MDC accused the ZANU-PF of aiming to dominate. 

two senior Western diplomats in South Africa told the French news agency, AFP, that at least one Mbeki aide would travel to the Zimbabwean capital this weekend to try to push forward the talks.

“Former President Thabo Mbeki’s legal adviser Mojanku Gumbi will be in Harare this weekend… to talk to the political actors,” one diplomat said, on condition of anonymity.

It remains to be seen whether Mugabe will be moved, or will effectively welch on the deal.  African pressure will be crucial to getting the deal on track. 

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Kurt Bassuener October 4th, 2008

According to the Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs, Gov. Sarah Palin’s claim to have backed divestment from Sudan was inaccurate:

 “When I and others in the legislature found out we had some millions of dollars in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars to make sure we weren’t doing anything that would be seen as condoning the activities there in Darfur.
–Sarah Palin, Vice Presidential Debate, October 3, 2008.

“But the record shows that her administration was against the divestment movement before it was for it.” 

Read on.

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Kurt Bassuener October 4th, 2008

As Eric and I have written repeatedly individually and separately for over four years (see the publications on the topic under the DPC banner in the European Voice, Wall Street Journal Europe and the International Herald Tribune), a no-fly zone operated by NATO from bases in Chad could change the dynamic on the ground in Darfur, where Sudanese forces and their auxiliary Janjaweed militia act with impunity, backed by Sudanese airpower.  Last summer the idea had considerable momentum, being supported by both Republicans and Democrats in the race for the White House. 

Then something happened - activists who had written a book on Darfur, “A Short History of a Long War,” Alex de Waal and Julie Flint, came out hard against the idea, stating that it would lead to a cut-off in humanitarian aid and undercut attempts to reach peace, and even subvert the north-south peace deal.  These arguments were reminiscent of those made against forceful intervention in Bosnia circa 1993 and 1994.  And they worked for some years, unfortunately.  In Darfur’s case, the wind went out of the sails of the idea, and it vanished below the radar for the past year. 

The ENOUGH coalition which has worked assiduously to end the genocide didn’t propose a real alternative when it came out against no-fly, giving equal weight to the opinion of a former US Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Merrill “Tony” McPeak, who explained how it could be done, and the EU’s chief of military staff, Gen. Henri Bantegeat, a ground commander, who said it was impossible.   Instead they supported monitoring Sudanese flights and attempting to shame them.

In the intervening year, the situation in Darfur continued to deteriorate.

Last night, thanks to a question by moderator Gwen Ifill in the vice presidential debate between Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joe Biden, we now know that the no-fly zone proposal appears to have support on both tickets.  The relevant segment of the debate’s transcript can be accessed here, but below is an excerpt:

Ifill: Senator, you have quite a record, this is the next question here, of being an interventionist. You argued for intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, initially in Iraq and Pakistan and now in Darfur, putting U.S. troops on the ground. Boots on the ground. Is this something the American public has the stomach for?

Biden: Yes…I don’t have the stomach for genocide when it comes to Darfur. We can now impose a no-fly zone. It’s within our capacity. We can lead NATO if we’re willing to take a hard stand. We can; I’ve been in those camps in Chad. I’ve seen the suffering, thousands and tens of thousands have died and are dying. We should rally the world to act and demonstrate it by our own movement to provide the helicopters to get the 21,000 forces of the African Union in there now to stop this genocide.

 

Palin:  But as for as Darfur, we can agree on that also, the support of the no-fly zone, making sure that all options are on the table there also…America is in a position to help.

Biden has long been a proponent of a Darfur no-fly zone, and was passionate in last year’s Democratic debates on the issue.  He receives an A+ rating from darfurscores.org.   

Palin added that as Alaska Governor, she pressed for legislation to ensure the public sector of the state was divested of all business links to Sudan, which is laudable.

There is perhaps no more opportune time than now to press forward on the Darfur no-fly proposal, given that the UN/AU Mission in Darfur’s (UNAMID’s) aircraft have come under fire by rebels who believe they are Sudanese aircraft, which are also painted white to mimic the UN and humanitarian aircraft.  Not only has this increased the danger for UN/AU forces, but it has restricted aid distribution:

Aid groups said any further attacks on aircraft in Darfur could have a devastating impact on their work.

“No one wants to use the roads because they keep being shot at,” said Alun McDonald, spokesman for Oxfam in Sudan. “If they are starting to shoot at helicopters now, that doesn’t leave us with many options.”

And what was a major reason Ms. Flint, Mr. de Waal, and many humanitarian aid organizations resisted the no-fly zone?  Humanitarian access… The other main reason - space for peace talks - has also proven empty.  Nothing of consequence has been agreed, and no such agreement is on the horizon, as Bashir sees no reason to relent.  He has bent the international community to his will in a way that would make Milosevic jealous.

I hope that Senators Obama and McCain will follow the lead of their running mates and return to advocating the Darfur no-fly zone.  For if they both do so, then the necessary European - particularly French, as they have the bases needed to mount an air operation with fighter aircraft - cooperation needed can finally start to be mobilized.

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Kurt Bassuener October 3rd, 2008

Soon after Eric posted the link below to the excellent Joshua Kurlantzick article, “Monster’s Ball,” the two of us discussed some of the themes therein.  The reliance on particular leaders seems a constant and repeated error throughout American statecraft, nearly always ending in tears.

One factor seems very clear to me - that the Bush administration was far more concerned with having talking points to buttress the assertion that “freedom (was) on the march,” even before his second inaugural address, than it was with the adherence to democratic principles. Furthermore, it conflates “democratic” with “pro-Western,” or “pro-American,” and these don’t always go hand in hand.  And when a regime is undemocratic and aligned with the US, it’s a safe bet the population will rightly see the US as complicit in their oppression.  The primary concern, despite all discussion of the paradigm shift away from backing “our SOBs” that came with Bush’s 2003 NED address, has been to have governments aligned with the US.

Post-Rose Revolutionary Georgia in particular came at an opportune time for the Bush administration, which was scrambling to find another rationale for the invasion of Iraq.  So the Saakashvili administration and the Bush administration were in a symbiosis, with Washington not wanting to point to Georgia’s increasing bellicosity or democratic transgressions, both of which might have been reined-in with a bit of friendly pressure early on.  The fact that they were not helped lead to the debacle of August’s “five day war” with Russia, which saw the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia leave Georgia’s orbit - even before the war legally Georgian territory but not under physical control - probably for good.  But Bush was happy to adopt and keep Georgia as a poster child - never mind the more complicated reality.  Georgia of course deserved support, but not uncritical support.

Yet the sorts of blatant hypocritical mistakes that gutted the credibility of the “freedom agenda” from the start were, as Kurlantzick notes, the relationships with such “friendly dictators” as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, recipient of $2 billion a year in guaranteed aid.  That massive potential US leverage has never been employed to press Mubarak’s brutal and sclerotic regime to open up, and is the subject of a fascinating new book, Inside Egypt - The Land of the Pharoahs on the Brink of a Revolution, by John R. Bradley (recently banned in Egypt, natch).

Near the close of his angry book, Bradley cites the bizarre position of Egypt’s beleagured liberal democrats with a recounting of the experience of Hisham Kassem, winner of the National Endowment for Democracy’s Democracy Award a year ago:

These conflicting goals (democracy and transparency along with stability) were captured in the rather bizarre experience of one Hisham Kassem, an Egyptian human rights activist who, in October 2007, was one of four international activists given the prestigious Democracy Award of the National Endowment for Democracy.  Kassem found the experience woefully depressing. “To see the president of the United States in person and his more or less lack of interest in what is happening politically in Egypt left me without any doubt that this whole [democracy] program was over,” he told Reuters after collecting his award.  Kassem said that although the president asked about reformers in the ruling NDP (to which he replied “Sorry, there are no reformers in the NDP”), Bush was mainly interested in the position of Islamists in Egypt.  Kassem made clear that the government had made it impossible for secular movements to operate, leaving the field open to the Islamists: “There is no alternative now for the people, given that that Islamists operate out of mosques while secular parties are not allowed to operate at all.” With the difficult economic situation, he added, “I am worried Egypt will become a theocracy by 2010.” Apparently that comment finally got Bush’s full attention, and he seemed rather perplexed that American policy was not working, noting: “We give your country $2 billion a year in order to keep it stable and prevent it from turning into a theocracy.”  He looked, Kassem said, quite dismayed.

Some would argue Kassem did himself no favors in meeting with Bush and his top advisors.  For the unfortunate reality is that the American push for democracy is now perceived as having been insincere at best, hypocritical at worst.  Which is hardly surprising, when for the president the purpose of the payoff to Mubarak’s regime is stability rather than reform.

Bradley further quotes another Egyptian human rights activist, Ahmed Said al-Islam, as saying:

The war on terror is undermining democracy advocates and strengthening Arab dictatorships…The latter are using it to put off reforms and arguing that being pro-reform means siding with the enemies of the state.

American credibility in democracy promotion is so denuded after the Bush years that respected Carnegie Endowment scholar Tom Carothers says it needs to be ”decontaminated” to regain credibility in a new administration.  Harsh words, but apropos, I believe. 

The US, having beat the democracy drum so loudly, is front and center in being cited for hypocrisy, but sadly not alone. In the case of Egypt, French President Sarkozy asked Mubarak to co-chair the Mediterranean Union summit last summer - though it’s fair to note that none of the potential members from the southern littoral of the Mediterranean really fits the bill as a democracy.  The larger point to be made is that the democratic world has no clear strategy to employ the leverage it has to promote its values.  The US and EU remain divided on democracy support largely because the Bush administration has shot its credibility on the subject.

No matter what the result of the US presidential election, the bottom line is that the EU and the US have to collaborate in that endeavor if it is to bear fruit and help reverse authoriarian capitalism’s increasing appeal.

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Eric Witte October 2nd, 2008

Writing for The New Republic, Joshua Kurlantzick has a thoughtful article on a series of setbacks for democratization over the past few years, as has been documented by Freedom House.  In part Kurlantzick attributes backsliding and lack of progress in Central Asia, Africa, Latin America and East Asia to the Bush administration’s selling of the Iraq war under the banner of “democratization” (which gained prominence once weapons of mass destruction failed to materialize) and to the administration’s naked hypocrisy in dealing with countries from Azerbaijan to Equatorial Guinea:

As members of the Bush administration eye their legacies, they can be sure that their embrace of democratization has tarnished the very idea. In a 2006 report on the backlash against democracy, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy, which funds democracy promotion around the world, admitted that some of its grantees overseas did not want to meet with NED program officers for fear of being tainted by association. The Iraq war, which was rationalized as an exercise in democratization, has also inspired new faith in authoritarian rule by linking the idea of democracy with the chaos in Baghdad. “What happened in Iraq makes the entire region afraid,” Haitham Maleh, a former president of the Committee for Human Rights in Syria, told Salon.com. “People don’t want to risk foreign occupation, chaos, and sectarian bloodshed.”

Worse, the administration has not even stuck by its guns. After having earlier emboldened some Middle Eastern democrats with promises of a “freedom agenda,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on her most recent trip to the region, barely mentioned the word “democracy.” At times, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to assist autocrats, aiding the Ethiopian regime over the past three years in exchange for promises to help fight terrorism in Somalia and welcoming the leader of Azerbaijan at the White House after he rigged a national poll. The administration has even embraced leaders like Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has been accused of abhorrent crimes, overseeing a regime under which political opponents are tortured, starved, and raped (Obiang himself has even been accused of eating the body parts of rivals). Still, in April 2006, Rice met Obiang at Foggy Bottom and–no doubt aware that Equatorial Guinea is becoming one of the largest oil exporters in West Africa–told him, “You are a good friend, and we welcome you.”

Beyond American policy failures, Kurlantzick also attributes democratic backsliding to the weakness of new democratic governments and the increasing savvy of authoritarian leaders.  China and Russia, alarmed by the color revolutions, are now offering training to authoritarians around the world in how to resist and co-opt democratic opposition.  The whole sobering article is must reading.

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