Kurt Bassuener June 23rd, 2008

The BBC reports that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has called for Zimbabwe’s presidential runoff election on June 27 to be postponed due to the “fear, hostility and blatant attacks” against opposition supporters, which are “against the spirit of democracy.”  He voiced understanding for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s decision to withdraw yesterday, agreeing that “Conditions do not exist for free and fair elections right now in Zimbabwe… There has been too much violence, too much intimidation. A vote held in these conditions would lack all legitimacy.”

After consultation with unnamed African leaders, Ban contacted the Zimbabwean leadership and urged them to cancel the poll until there were conditions for free and fair elections.  It remains unclear how he sees this coming about, but his statement that the Zimbabwe crisis had cross-border implications and is the “single greatest challenge to regional stability” is a clear allusion to the ability of UN members to invoke Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which addresses threats to international peace and security, and is the basis for legal international intervention.

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Kurt Bassuener June 23rd, 2008

Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is holed-up in the Embassy of the Netherlands in Harare, where he is seeking protection after the Movement for Democratic Change had its offices raided today, with 60 arrested.  According to the MDC, these were “mostly women and children, victims of political violence.”  Tsvangirai announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy in the Friday, June 27 runoff with incumbent President Robert Mugabe.  In an interview with CNN International’s Jonathan Mann, Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen has said that Tsvangiarai will receive all he requires.

Tsvangirai made the announcement yesterday afternoon that he would not participate in the “war” that President Mugabe declared in a recent speech.  Tsvangirai did so after a planned MDC election rally was violently dispersed by supporters of Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party.  He asserted that the police were “bystanders” while crimes such as “rape, torture, murder, arson, abductions and other atrocities” were conducted by ZANU-PF supporters, working in coordination with the police. Last week, the wife of Harare’s opposition mayor was found murdered.   In another recent speech, Mugabe openly threatened violence. “We fought for this country and a lot of blood was shed.  We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X (on a ballot). How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun.”  His armed forces, police, “green bomber” youth militia, “war veterans” and other supporters have waged an accelerating campaign of terror against the opposition and its supporters. Tsvangirai claims 80 have been killed and 200,000 displaced by the terror unleashed since the first round of voting on March 29, which Tsvangirai won, and claims to have won outright based on posted polling station protocols. Last week, a “map of terror” plotting the location and type of political violence in Zimbabwe appeared on The Independent’s website. Despite the overwhelming evidence, the Zimbabwean government continues to lay blame for violence at the MDC’s doorstep, and plans to go through with Friday’s poll.In his interview with Al Jazeera English’s Haru Mutasa yesterday (link as yet unavailable), Tsvangirai said that withdrawing was not “handing Mugabe victory;” Mugabe had already made clear he would not cede power.  Tsvangirai now aims to focus on the international factor, calling for international action by the African Union, SADC, and the United Nations to prevent a “genocide.”  He also noted that Zimbabwe was on the brink of a civil war.     In the past week, the level of international condemnation has increased markedly as the violence has mounted.  A UN special envoy from Eritrea, Haile Menkerios, was dispatched last week by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and his report is eagerly awaited.  Ban called the circumstances that led to Tsvangirai’s decision to withdraw from the runoff “deeply distressing.”  But the most important criticism has come from Zimbabwe’s neighbors in SADC and in the AU. Tsvangirai today told National Public Radio in the United States that “if there is a collective position by all SADC leaders, that would be sufficient pressure – that voice is essential.”That seems to be coalescing.  Last week in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, a group of nearly 40 African luminaries, including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, and former Mozambican President Joachim Chissano signed a joint letter calling for “free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.”  The letter also called for “an end to the violence and intimidation, and the restoration of full access for humanitarian aid agencies.”  Joining the already critical Botswanan and Zambian governments, foreign ministers from Tanzania, Swaziland and – most shockingly – Angola all condemned the violence in Zimbabwe.  SADC election observers witnessed violent assaults on MDC supporters, even killings.  Tanzanian Foreign Minister Bernard Membe noted that after the observers witnessed the murders “it scared most of these observers to the extent that they had to pose the question of why are we here then, and what are we doing?”  IRIN very usefully compared current practice in Zimbabwe to SADC’s own 10-point “Protocol on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation.”  The external expert from the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, Khabele Matlosa, gutted the Zimbabwean authorities on every point.  Botswana’s Foreign Minister Pando Skelemani said “If in fact the atmosphere for an election is not free and fair you then can’t have someone having won. It would be the same as if you had been through the election and they are declared not free and fair, then you are back at square one.“ Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga last week called Zimbabwe “an eyesore on the African continent – an example of how not to do it.”  Apparently many of his countrymen agree, as in a Kenya-Zimbabwe football match in Nairobi, Kenyan fans chanted “Mugabe must go” as the Zimbabwean team stepped onto the pitch.  Rwanda’s Paul Kagame also criticized the violence, saying “what is happening is not in conformity with the rule of law.  I do not subscribe to this.  The whole thing is a joke.”As with the first round of elections last spring, South African President Thabo Mbeki has remained shamefully inert, even as he met with Mugabe last week.  As recently as yesterday, Mbeki still called for “the political leadership of Zimbabwe to get together and find a solution.” However, his likely successor, African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma, was not so deferential.  New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark was typically blunt in her assessment of Mbeki’s leadership: “South Africa has in effect sheltered Mr. Mugabe and his regime for a long time…I think if South Africa were to withdraw support that would have a pretty dramatic impact on what happens in Zimbabwe.”

It is worthy of note that there has been unilateral African intervention against a despot whose downward spiral of repression spilled over in the neighborhood:  Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere’s 1979 overthrow of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, who unfortunately died free in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, never having had to face justice for his reign of terror.  Given the already massive population flows and disruption to neighboring states, Chapter 7 of the UN Charter to protect “international peace and security” could certainly be invoked – that is, if it could make it through the Security Council, which is unlikely with Mugabe’s backers in Beijing. Then again, Nyerere didn’t seek the UN’s or the Organization of African Unity’s approval before he acted, and it’s well nigh impossible to find anyone now who would say his action was wrong.

As with Burma’s cyclone experience last month, this case is likely to test whether “R2P,” the “responsibility to protect” has any real meaning, and can ever be invoked when governments savage their peoples.  The situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate by the hour, and it is quite possible that MDC supporters will lose their patience and seek ways to fight back against the ZANU-PF/state authorities. 

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Eric Witte June 18th, 2008

Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliamentary observer mission in Zimbabwe has told the BBC that his team will not approve of Zimbabwe’s second-round presidential vote next week if the government does not rein-in rampant election-related violence.

“Mr Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliamentary observers, said it was the government’s responsibility to stop the violence which erupted after the first round.

‘It’s very difficult to me to judge the degree of the violence in terms of whether it’s decreased or it has escalated,’ Mr Khumalo told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

‘But what is disturbing is that in a situation such as an election atmosphere… violence is one thing that you don’t want to see happening, because it has the capacity of spoiling an election.’”

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says that 66 of its supporters have been killed and around 25,000 displaced. MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti was arrested last week. Robert Mugabe’s government has indicated that it will bring treason charges against Biti, with the possibility of the death penalty.

Amid the bleak news from Zimbabwe, at least election observers are paying more attention (how could they not) to the conditions in which the elections are being held. Too many observer missions in the past have ended up blessing elections held in an environment of intimidation when voting and counting on election day has turned out to be relatively fair. The Liberian presidential elections of 1997 offered a clear example of this. Charles Taylor overtly threatened to plunge the country back into war unless he won. His election slogan was “He killed my ma, he killed my pa. I’ll vote for him.” International observers, eager to declare Liberia a success, called the elections free and fair. The situation in Zimbabwe is at a nadir. Some election observers, at least, recognize this.

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Kurt Bassuener June 16th, 2008

DPC Senior Associate Balázs Jarábik, also an associate fellow at FRIDE’s Democratization Program, wrote “Playing into Lukashenka’s hands,” published in the latest European Voice (subcription only).  In it, he calls for a more coordinated, strategic, and tough-minded European Union approach toward Belarus.

The Americans call it “Europe’s last dictatorship”. Skilfully playing on his country’s strategic location between resurgent Russia and a divided West, Belarus’s Alyaksandr Lukashenka is now Europe’s longest-serving political leader.  

Controlling the transport corridor for Russian gas, Lukashenka will maintain a blackmailing leverage over Moscow until the Nord Stream pipeline comes on track. At the same time, to feed the consumer society he has created, which is maintained by constantly ratcheting up wages, Lukashenka needs a friendly Europe.

He notes that Lukashenka has very cannily charged the West and Russia what the geopolitical market will bear, and counted on the mercantilist predisposition of some EU members.

He seeks enough Western investment and rapprochement to make Moscow sufficiently nervous to pay Belarus’s bills, but not more than he considers healthy for his own grip on power. The point of his economic policies is to stay in office.

Although growing private investment carries the long-term risk of compromising Lukashenka’s absolute power, for the moment his survival tactic still works: make concessions to either the West or to Moscow, then rescind them as soon as the other side offers a better deal.

As Ceausescu used to trade in Carpathian Germans, Lukashenka uses political prisoners as a currency in his dealings with the West. And his regime is now cracking down even harder on independent media, given its increasing effectiveness.

Jarabik states that the US human rights policy “has been more been more consistent than that of the EU.” Following the expulsion of six diplomats from US Embassy in Minsk, diplomats of EU member states and the new European Commission office in Minsk will be the main democratic diplomatic actors in Belarus. Current practice could improve: for example, NGOs receiving EU funds have to be officially registered. Given Lukashenka’s legal persecution of NGOs engaged in human rights, democracy, or independent work, this is a massive bottleneck. “This incoherence plays perfectly into Lukashenka’s hands.”

Jarabik calls for the EU to improve internal coherence in its approach, coordination with the US, and generally adopt a “more realistic understanding of Belarus, and policies to match.”

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Eric Witte May 29th, 2008

Kurt has an op-ed in this week’s European Voice, “Yielding to Serb Demands Won’t Make the EU Credible” [subscription req’d].  He argues that the EU goodies (in the form of a Stabilization and Association Agreement) showered on Belgrade ahead of parliamentary elections on May 11 may have been successful in securing a plurality of the vote for the nominally pro-European party of President Boris Tadic, but conveyed the message that Serbia need not make difficult sacrifices in order to join the EU.

The problem is that Tadic and his party clearly want EU membership on Serbia’s terms, not the EU’s. Tadic’s explicit position - inconvenient and not addressed in Brussels at all - is that Serbia wants to get into the EU to ensure that an independent Kosovo can never join, and once Serbia is in, it can reclaim Kosovo.

Had Tadic levelled with the Serbian people and told them EU membership meant facing the reality of Kosovo’s independence and the transfer of ‘heroes’ such as Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb general, to the Inter-national Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the ‘referendum on Europe’ would have been real.

EU credibility is falling across the region as a result of its coddling of recalcitrant policies from Belgrade:

The EU’s unseemly fixation on getting Tadic re-elected also deepened the perception across the region that Serbia always comes first, whether it fulfils explicit conditions or not. Others, like fragile but neglected Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Macedonia, are treated as afterthoughts.

The mood music in European foreign ministries is weariness with the whole tiresome imbroglio. Brussels favours a tacit acceptance that Serbia has to be rewarded for choosing the “European path”, ie, its performance should be graded positively, whatever the reality. Tadic will lobby hard for this.

If the EU gives in, the outcome risks bearing little resemblance to a ‘European Serbia’. Rather, the Union will be further debased as a credible policy actor, so desperate for ‘progress’ that it willingly accepts a Potemkin version as the real thing.

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Iryna Chupryna May 29th, 2008

Yesterday, on May 28, Azerbaijan celebrated the 90th anniversary of the establishment of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR). This day is celebrated in Azerbaijan every year since the restoration of independence in 1991. On May 28, 1918, Azerbaijan was proclaimed an independent state – the first democratic republic in the Muslim world. During its short existence, from May 1918 to April 1920, the first democratically elected Azerbaijani government worked on building independent and democratic state in Azerbaijan. It is noteworthy that ADR granted voting rights to women, earlier than many Western states, and it also functioned as a real multiparty democracy.

Nowadays, Azerbaijan is far from being even a fragile democracy – it is an authoritarian state under the strong presidential rule of Ilham Aliyev (who succeeded his father Geydar Aliyev in the rigged elections of 2003), where freedom of press and speech is seriously violated. In 2007, President Aliyev was identified as one of the “predators of press freedom” by Reporters without Borders. Presidential elections in this oil-rich state are scheduled for October 2008. And it already appears that oil is a trump of the incumbent president Ilham Aliyev in his bid for re-election. Ongoing severe repressions against opposition media and the scope of election fraud that can be expected during the ballot (judging from the previous elections in the country in 2003 and 2005) are likely to be forgiven for the strategic oil resources that Azerbaijan has, and for its foreign policy that is relatively independent from Russia and hence is very appreciated both by the USA and the EU.

The energy summit that was held in Kyiv on May 23 and attended by the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Georgia and Poland, EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, top officials from Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania and from 30 other countries, the UN, OSCE, World Bank, and EBRD,  is a good illustration of how Azerbaijan’s President secures his legitimacy in “advance”. Aliyev was courted at the summit as a head of the state which, in contrast to other summit participants,  has rich energy resources, and therefore plays a leading role in the Krakow initiative on ensuring energy security launched by some of the participating states at the summit in Krakow on 11-12 May 2007. At this particular summit, Azerbaijan’s role was pivotal in planning an ambitious project to extend the existing Odessa-Brody pipeline through Poland to Gdansk on the Baltic, and to pump Azerbaijani and Kazakh oil from the Black Sea port of Odessa. According to Ukrainian president Yuschenko, “It is the most economical way to deliver Caspian oil to EU countries.”

The goal of the summit was to lessen the dependence of the EU on Russian energy resources. Taking into account that Kazakhstan (also a dictatorship and the future OSCE chair) is still indecisive and has intense cooperation with Russia, Azerbaijan is the crucial participant of the Krakow initiative. During Aliyev’s official visit to Ukraine on the eve of the summit, he was even awarded a state award of Ukraine “for his role in strengthening bilateral relations”. He is indeed considered a legitimate partner among this “energy club” of democratic states (most of them are also EU members), despite his brutal suppression of dissent at home. And, the most peculiar thing is that the next energy summit is scheduled for November this year in Baku – just next month after the presidential vote. It is very likely that, whatever happens, Aliyev’s victory would be recognized by his democratic allies in fighting for energy independence, including Ukraine and Georgia.

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Kurt Bassuener May 28th, 2008

US President George Bush’s widely covered trip to the Middle East two weeks ago was underwhelming, especially given his administration’s declared desire for a Palestinian-Israeli peace deal before the end of his term in January. Such a deal, never a likely prospect given the administration’s policy of essentially giving Israel a free hand and its own rock-bottom credibility in the region, seems no more likely after the trip.

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Knesset extolled the depth and warmth of the US relationship with Israel, and was replete with the Biblical imagery he clearly revels in employing. But he also conflated this with his “freedom agenda,” lauding Israel’s democratic governance, making the Zionist struggle to build the state of Israel after the Holocaust sound as if it were a people power uprising against oppressive rule. But the struggle of 1948 was not against oppression, but a very European nationalist effort to create a Jewish nation-state in a territory in which Jews still comprised a minority. Israel’s successful foundation was the Palestinian naqba – “the catastrophe” – dispossessing hundreds of thousands. It is much easier to base an alliance on “shared convictions rooted in moral clarity and unswayed by popularity polls or the shifting opinions of international elites” when the messier aspects of the foundation myth are not explored critically. These are far more openly discussed within Israel itself than in the US.

While Bush said that “free people should strive and sacrifice for peace,” he merely commended choices by previous Israeli leaders – without naming what those actually were, though the evacuation from Gaza was probably the implication. He certainly neglected to name the central “sacrifice” that Israel will surely need to make to ensure peace with the Palestinians: evacuation of settlements established in the West Bank since 1967, and some compromise on East Jerusalem. Only an American president can say such things with any credibility to Israel, precisely because the US is an unambiguous friend of Israel, as the wise American analyst Henry Siegman has repeatedly said. In his speech, Bush essentially gave Israel a blank check of American support, regardless of whether Israel’s policies are in American interests.

But not only did Bush avoid this underlying basic reality. He set up a straw man by stating there were people advocating breaking relations with Israel – a rather thin group given the undeniable pro-Israel consensus in the US. He then took the opportunity to accuse those who might consider talking to Hamas – a group which engages in terrorism through suicide bombing and rocket attacks, but which also enjoys broad enough legitimacy to have been elected in 2006 (in elections the US insisted upon) and which is now utterly dominant in Gaza – to be practicing “appeasement.” Many interpreted this to be a shot at Democratic candidate Barack Obama, despite the fact Obama never said he would talk with Hamas (but did say he would talk with Iranian President Ahmedinejad).

Needless to say, Bush’s speech in the Knesset didn’t get rave reviews in the Arab world, seizing on the fact he hardly mentioned the Palestinians, along with the fact that he lumped Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas, and al Qaeda into an amorphous bloc. In the Arab world, depending on where one is, their activities vary in perceived legitimacy. Hezbollah, while admired for its survival of the 2006 war against Israel that was designed to crush it, is also viewed with trepidation in much of the Sunni Arab world. Perhaps the most universally accepted is Hamas, given the prevalence afforded to “resistance” to Israeli occupation.

In a speech to an international audience at the World Economic Forum Middle East in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt three days later, Bush made a clear call for democratic governance in the Middle East. It was hard to disagree with much of the speech. Calling on Middle Eastern governments to invest in developing human capital through education, redressing the gross imbalances noted in the Arab Development Report (link) was a good example, and Bush’s offer to assist in improving educational standards should be applauded, as should his highlighting of the role of women in society. He also highlighted the universal appeal of freedom of speech in Lebanon, Iran and Egypt. He called for “vigorous political parties allowed to engage in free and lively debate…(and) the establishment of civic institutions that ensure an election’s legitimacy and hold leaders accountable. And true democracy requires competitive elections in which opposition candidates are allowed to campaign without fear and intimidation.” This last point was a clear swipe at Egypt in particular, which practices a transparently false charade of democracy. In the best single quote from the speech, Bush told those assembled that “Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail.” He then called on the governments of the Middle East to release their prisoners of conscience and allow open political debate in their societies, including liberalization to allow free media and civil society to function. These are messages that Middle Eastern autocracies need to hear.

Unfortunately, Bush seems to have a tin ear for the perception of the US in the Middle East, or he places so much faith in his own sense of “moral clarity” that he thinks other views are irrelevant. He harked back to the Cold War in saying that “terrorist organizations and their state sponsors” are “on the wrong side in a great ideological struggle – and every nation committed to freedom and progress in the Middle East must stand together to defeat them.” This approach, as with the whole “global war on terror” relies on a simplistic analysis, and forces perverse contortions to stick to the ideological script. For example, as Bush was in the Middle East, the Israelis confirmed they were engaging in talks with Syria, brokered by Turkey, regarding the Golan Heights. An unnamed Bush administration official called the talks a “slap in the face” by Israel. Never mind Israel’s interest in coming to terms with a neighbor that could still inflict heavy damage in open conflict. In Bush’s mind, it is more important that Israel stand firm against the Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah-Hamas Axis of Evil II.

Also at the same time, Lebanon was teetering on the brink of a renewed civil war between the coalition government of Fouad Siniora and opposition militias, most importantly Hezbollah. The US-backed Israeli war in summer 2006 against Hezbollah not only devastated Lebanon, but it also discredited Siniora’s government, strengthened Hezbollah, and put another nail in the coffin of American credibility as a purveyor of democracy in the Middle East, as Eric and I wrote at the time.  Arab League/Qatari negotiations led to a settlement in Lebanon last week, changing the political landscape considerably, to the detriment of the March 14 movement which fomented the “Cedar Revolution” in 2005 after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Incompetent, blindly ideological (“moral clarity”) statecraft by the US has paradoxically strengthened both Hezbollah and Hamas, and lost opportunities to show it means what it says on freedoms – for example closing Guantanamo and accepting election results in the few cases of real elections.

While Iran and Syria each support Hezbollah and Hamas, both movements have massive domestic constituencies that have to be part of any equation to achieve Bush’s goals of freedom and peace. In the US presidential election campaign, this fact has been sidestepped by all the remaining candidates. Not long ago, Republican candidate John McCain was very sensible: “They’re the government; sooner or later we’re going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things they not only espouse but practice, so…but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.” He might have added that the Fatah of Yassir Arafat and his successors was legendary for its corruption, and this was a major motive for its electoral defeat. Yet in promotional literature, the McCain campaign asserted that Hamas was rooting for a victory by Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama. Obama, to allay fears that he might be “soft on Israel,” made a speech in Boca Raton, Florida to a predominantly Jewish and pro-Israel audience to burnish his pro-Israel bona fides, repudiating the idea of talking to Hamas, which he had never previously espoused. The dynamics of national electoral politics typically leads to greater hawkishness regarding Israel. Bush’s Knesset speech is the pacesetter of this particular bipartisan brand of unconditional devotion to Israel.

In a very worthwhile article published last week, Atlantic correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg made the point that this uncritical and

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unconditional backing is bad for Israel itself.  A vocal constituency in the US, not only Jewish groups but also Christian fundamentalists, press Israeli governments to be more inflexible than their own constituents want them to be – a typical diaspora syndrome seen also in the Balkans and Northern Ireland. In the article, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert noted that this inflexibility on issues like East Jerusalem and settlements (many populated by Americans) made it ever more difficult to achieve a Palestinian state, which he and many other Israeli leaders believe essential to preserve a Jewish majority Israel. “Once, men like (former Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon and Olmert saw the settlers as the vanguards of Zionism; today, the settlements are seen as the forerunner of a binational state. In other words, as the end of Israel as a Jewish majority democracy.” Olmert’s greatest fear is of apartheid-era international isolation of Israel, which he thinks is possible if the Palestinians shift from an “Algeria-style campaign” to a “South Africa-style campaign.” Goldberg notes that the expression of Barack Obama on the issue of settlements – “not helpful” – was tame in comparison to this critique by the Israeli prime minister.

Reasonable people can differ on whether Olmert’s nightmare scenario would really be a nightmare. But no other country could claim it imperative to maintain a demographic majority without verbal brickbats coming its way. One could imagine the response to an American or French presidential candidate who argued that it was essential to maintain a white majority. That’s the preserve of the Pat Buchanans, David Dukes, and Jean-Marie Le Pens. A Jewish homeland need not necessitate a Jewish state.

The separation wall has gutted the Palestinian economy; it is hard to see how it could function without open trade and travel with Israel, with which it was tightly integrated. Israel will ultimately face a growing internal demographic imbalance, with a winnowing of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union and a growing Arab Israeli population. My personal view is that a common state for Palestinians and Israelis is the logical end goal and most likely to deliver security for all involved. But given the dire conditions of today, it is hard to see how to get there from here. What is a safe bet is that there will probably not be any forward movement toward any mutually acceptable solution so long as Bush remains president.

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Eric Witte May 22nd, 2008

Guinea may have moved closer to civil conflict on Tuesday, when President Lansana Conté dismissed Prime Minister Lansana Kouyaté, replacing him with one of his loyalists, Ahmed Tidiane Souaré. Kouyaté was a consensus pick for the post following large-scale demonstrations against Conté’s regime in early 2007. As Kurt and I wrote at the time in the International Herald Tribune, the labor unions who led the protests in the face of violent repression received scant support from the international community. The crackdown by Conté’s forces killed around 130. The deal that ended the challenge to his rule left Conté in charge of the army and police. Worse, Kouyaté quickly alienated the very civil society that was responsible for bringing him to power, and little changed for average Guineans who still struggle in poverty - made all the worse by rising global fuel and food prices.

Meanwhile, even after last year’s stark danger sign, it is far from apparent that the international community has given much thought at all to Conté’s succession. Reports persist that the octogenarian Conté, now in his 24th year as Guinea’s dictator, is frail. Representatives of various power centers continue to circle, vying to succeed him. (Kouyaté was one official widely viewed as angling to take over the presidency.)

Within the Mano River Union (MRU), there has been real democratic progress in Liberia since the 2006 inauguration of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Sierra Leone, too, seems finally to be making halting progress in overcoming the burdens of corruption and mal-governance. Even the newest member of the MRU, Côte d’Ivoire, is stabilizing. Guinea was deeply involved in the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars and an outbreak of violence now could cause significant disruption across this part of West Africa, where the United Nations, Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Britain, France and United States have made such heavy investments in peacekeeping and nation-building.

Even if another short-term solution is found to ease the tension again bubbling up in Guinea, the international community should fully engage civil society and the various ethnic and elite factions with regard to Conté’s eventual succession. Bringing that discussion into an open, transparent process in which all Guineans have a voice - perhaps through agreement on a constitutional assembly - is the best hope for Guinea’s democratic development. Such assemblies are not unknown in West Africa, having proved successful in Mali and Benin. Assisting Guineans on the difficult path to democratic governance now offers the best hope of turning the country’s significant natural resource wealth into desperately needed development, and is vital to the consolidation of peace across the MRU.

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Eric Witte May 19th, 2008

The Dalai Lama ended a lonely five-day visit to Berlin today, with Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul the only German government minister agreeing to meet with him.  She reportedly did so against the wishes of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.  In explaining his snub of the Tibetan spiritual leader, Steinmeier offered up this gem of an explanation: “It takes a lot of courage not to meet with the Dalai Lama these days.”   

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Eric Witte May 19th, 2008

The Burmese government’s failure to assist the victims of Cyclone Nargis, and worse - its outright obstruction of international relief efforts - are leading to mass death in the country. The specter of hundreds of thousands of victims slowly succumbing to starvation and preventable communicable disease has sparked debate over whether the international community should trigger the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) principle created at the UN World Summit in 2005 but to date never exercised. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has been the most vocal advocate. Ivo Daalder and Paul Stares recently put forth thoughtful arguments in support of the idea.  Gareth Evans, the President of the International Crisis Group and a co-chair of the commission that crafted the principle,

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raises good questions about whether R2P even applies in the case of Burma.

In the United States, the prospect of intervention in Burma has triggered a backlash among opponents of the Iraq war wholly unrelated to the applicability of the R2P. They argue, among other things, that an invasion could cause the government to fall, resulting in a free-for-all among Burma’s many minority groups and factions. The United States and its allies, already tied down amid sectarian and ethnic strife in Iraq and Afghanistan, could find themselves bogged down in a third occupation - further stretching already overburdened militaries, and in the end - by unleashing unstoppable ethnic strife - perhaps doing more harm than good.

These are serious objections, and for proponents of intervention, certainly issues that would be horribly irresponsible to ignore, especially in light of the Iraq debacle. But some of the opponents of intervention in Burma only seem to be seeing the situation through the lens of Iraq, and to a lesser extent, Afghanistan. Their dismissal of the idea appears rooted in quite a large assumption: that any breach of Burma’s sovereignty means a full military invasion.

This is the latest in a string of debates over military intervention since the end of the Cold War that are distorted towards the lessons of the most recent experience. The Clinton administration did not intervene in Rwanda and was very late to intervene in Bosnia in large measure because of the perceived lessons of Somalia in 1993 (”post-Mogadishu syndrome”). Successful intervention and peacekeeping in Bosnia starting in 1995 certainly undercut domestic opposition to military intervention in Kosovo in 1999. In turn, that intervention’s success, despite deep flaws in the post-intervention phase, may have made it easier for the Bush administration to find support among Democrats for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. For some observers, the Iraq quagmire has now made any thought of intervention in Burma a non-starter.

Surely we can do better than this. Burma is neither Bosnia nor Somalia, nor Kosovo, nor Iraq. Burma is Burma, with unique factors of history, military, geography, and culture, and subject to a unique mix of factors in international diplomacy. The burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan do place constraints on what kind of action is conceivable, but should not stop the debate cold. With the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the balance, it is astoundingly flippant to merely suggest, as the usually thoughtful Josh Marshall has: “Why don’t we not invade any more countries for a while?”

For starters, it is far from clear that actions breaching Burmese sovereignty need amount to a full invasion. In Rwanda, jamming hate radio would have been one useful intervention absent the will to mount the full military campaign that should have been conducted. In Bosnia in 1995, belated air strikes against Bosnian Serb artillery around Sarajevo were sufficient to end shelling of the capital. In Burma, for example, if air drops or beach landings of humanitarian supplies made sense (a big if) without the junta’s assent, it’s hard to see how this could lead to an Iraq-like scenario, or demand so many resources as to make implementation of the plan impossible in light of force commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those who argue for intervention in Burma have a grave duty to think through its effects, intended and unintended. I am neither an expert on Burma nor humanitarian relief, and do not feel qualified to advocate a specific course of action. My point is that those who unequivocally oppose any breach of the junta’s sovereignty also have a grave duty to think through the ramifications of inaction and should consider middle roads. Hundreds of thousands of people needlessly died in Rwanda and Bosnia because of political opposition to timely international military intervention. Much of that opposition was grounded in ignorance of those conflicts. In the present situation in Burma, the sovereignty of an illegitimate government should hardly be the highest priority. And with so many lives on the line, glib dismissal of any kind of intervention is unforgivable.

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