Remind me why Somaliland doesn't get formal recognition

I continue to be entirely baffled by the whole planet's complete refusal to recognize Somaliland as an independent state. As I recall, there were some rumblings that the Pentagon would like to go that way sometime last year, but nothing seems to have come of it. Anyway, today we have two news stories that nicely contrast Somaliland and the officially recognized Somalia.

Exhibit A: There is currently a food and monetary crisis in Somaliland, as in much of the world. The national government has convened a high-level task force to produce an action plan, and has conducted a study of the depth of the problem with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. What we have here is a functioning government, seeking to take care of its responsibilities while having virtually no resources.

Exhibit B: The fractious Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (in its latest iteration) has once again signed a peace agreement with a rebel faction (notice the word faction), which has led to the extension of the UN backed AMISOM peacekeeping force (one in a succession). By my count, this is peace agreement #1,907,685.3, or some such since my pre-pubescent years.

All I'm saying is that maybe, maybe, it might make sense to officially help out the folks who seem to have their shit together, instead of being hampered by some antiquated notion of a sovereign state that ceased to effectively function nearly two decades ago.

A discussion you should follow

FP's Passport and UN Dispatch (see sidebar) have teamed up to run a special blogging series, aka Peacekeeping Salon, featuring thoughts on the state of United Nations peacekeeping operations and imperatives for the next U.S. administration. The conversation is just starting, but it's worth a read. Click here to visit, and be sure to glance at the background paper here (pdf).

EDIT: If you need some convincing as to why the U.S. should be fully engaged in and supportive of UN peace operations, read this.

Attempting to make sense of U.S. policy on African peace and security

For the past week or so, I've been trying to wrap my brain around U.S. policy toward Africa, in light of a presidential visit, the FY09 budget request, and the development of events on the ground.

First, an incredibly brief synopsis of the current security situation in Africa. The Ethiopian/U.S. intervention in Somalia has basically failed to bring security to the country, and has possibly made it worse. The whole point of supporting intervention in the first place was to root out terrorist threats there, but that obviously can't be done in a context of more generalized fighting. Just up the road, Ethiopia and Eritrea are in a period of heightening tensions, with Eritrea basically thwarting the UN peacekeeping mission along the border. Looking a little further west, implementation of the CPA in Sudan is more precarious than ever, the Darfur peacekeeping operation is pretty much stalled, fighting continues in Chad and C.A.R., which has led to refugees now flowing into Cameroon, and the EU peacekeeping mission for Chad/C.A.R. is basically on hold. There's a bit of hope that we might soon see some positive progress in Northern Uganda, and if so, that process might require some greater international assistance. Things in the eastern Congo are still tenuous. Who knows what will happen in Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, the countries of the Mano River Basin in West Africa are on the long, slow road to recovery, and need support.

In this context (or, perhaps, in spite of it), the Bush Administration has proposed a dramatic cut to its financial support to UN peacekeeping, which of course is in addition to our existing arrears to the peacekeeping fund. Instead, they propose focusing more exclusively on various troop training/peacekeeping capacity building programs through bilateral agreements. These programs have existed for several years now, under a huge variety of names, but generally focus on generating more professional armed forces that are trained in the intricacies of peace and stability operations. Although some somewhat shady partners get help through these programs (like Ethiopia), in general I think they're a good thing.

So what's the problem then? It's pretty simple, actually. All the trained troops in the world won't make a peacekeeping operation effective. Those troops need equipment, transportation, weaponry of various types (beyond the assortment provided through the programs above), and most importantly, civilian leadership in each mission. What's the point of having a bunch of trained troops if there aren't any missions to send them to? A peace operation is usually a pretty complex undertaking, and well-trained, professional security forces are but one part of them. With the number of UN and African Union peace operations continuing to increase in Africa, it is essential that the Administration look at the whole picture when making policy and budgetary decisions of this sort.

If, then, the Bush Administration thinks they're somehow promoting peace and stability in Africa through their robbing Peter to pay Paul funding logic, they definitely have another thing coming. If their proposal makes it into the actual 2009 budget (and based on last year's stunning performance by Congressional Democrats, it likely will), this will become yet another foreign policy mess that the next administration will have to clean up.

A completely speculative list of global things that may or may not occur in 2008

Method? Who needs it! In spite of my absurdly sporadic posting of late, I'm still alive and even still reading the news. And since it's now a new year, I've decided to motivate myself by making off the wall predictions about what I think will or will not happen in 2008. Bear with me, especially since these are in no particular order.

• The topsy-turvy politico-military balance in Pakistan will likely get topsy-turvier before it gets better. Some people, however, have at least agreed that Benazir Bhutto's son is "cute."
  
• In spite of the establishment of UNAMID today, nothing much will change in Darfur, because the P5 are hypocrites.
• Olympics in Beijing! How many aspiring athletes will choke on smog? My guess is at least 10. Nonetheless, you will see a gold medal worthy PR operation all damn year.
  
• The United States may or may not recognize Somaliland. I hope they do. No point in continuing to punish those that can actually govern a piece of land because those that cannot would be cranky.
• Also in the United States, "U.S. Americans" will make excellent use of our maps and elect one of 16-odd people as president. This person, regardless of party, will most likely be an idiot, but slightly less so than the current incumbent.
  
• Hugo Chavez will engage in dirty tricks to hold onto power. This may or may not backfire.
• Things will get messy in Nigeria should a review panel determine that Yar'Adua's election to the presidency was illegitimate. Then again, the review panel may suddenly end up with fancy cars and houses just before they make their ruling, which might change their minds.
  
• Dirty politics is also likely in South Africa, as Zuma and Mbeki try to sway the ANC.
• Finally, will there ever be durable peace eastern Congo? Probably not this year.

I'm fairly certain I've missed a bunch of things here. Feel free to add to the list in the comments. I'll probably track these events as the year progresses, and if I'm lucky, will actually remember to write about them.

Paix.

Support UN peacekeeping

Excuse me for a moment while I blather on like an activist.

The time has come for Congress to debate the foreign affairs budget, which of course includes funding to the United Nations, including peace operations. The Better World Campaign and the United Nations Association of the United States of America have teamed up to create a website, the Price of Peace, where you can learn more about peacekeeping and sign a petition to your Congress member asking for continuing support of peace operations.

UN peacekeeping is vital in many countries emerging from conflict, as it provides security and stability and thus allows for the development of peaceful political discourse. Peacekeeping is not without its problems, though on the whole the operations have had significant successes. There are currently over 100,000 peacekeepers stationed worldwide, with many more coming if missions in Darfur and Lebanon reach their authorized strength, as well as talks now underway about a mission in Somalia. The United States doesn't have a particularly stellar record when it comes to meeting its obligation to the peacekeeping budget, even though such missions are vital to American interests abroad.

Take a minute to visit the website and sign the petition, which is now linked in the sidebar here. If you're skeptical or want to learn more about peace operations, I recommend reading an introductory article here, and visiting one of these sites:

Center on International Cooperation: Global Peace Operations
Henry L. Stimson Center: Future of Peace Operations Program
Challenges of Peace Operations Project
Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping

Help for the UN, version 1.0

It seems as though your world peace and security apparatus is dysfunctional.

What would you like to do?

1) Plead with the world's only remaining superpower to stop ignoring it whenever said superpower can't get its way.

2) Send yet another terse letter to that pesky African dictator who keeps thwarting its plans, reminding him that the decisions of the peace and security apparatus are legally binding.

3) Create another committee, to create subcommittees, to think about how one might make the peace and security apparatus less resemblant of the Stone Age.

4) Outsource to regional conglomerates, regardless of capabilities.

5) Have Lakhdar Brahimi make it work -- they don't call him Mr. Fix-it for nothing.

6) Replace all apparatus members with high school students and hope that they can do better.

Photo from here.

In which I'm mildly worried about humanity

It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that the world simply cannot handle any new humanitarian crises at the moment. We're stretched thin. Response capacity is just about all used up. There are some 18 UN peacekeeping missions at present, with more on the way. Trouble is, there aren't enough troops to staff them. One more disaster and we're stuck wringing our hands in grief.

In class the other day, we were discussing what could be done about Darfur. Obviously, the U.S. is "otherwise engaged" and so can't do much. Someone suggested sending in Europeans. They're skilled and have money and stuff, right? I pointed out that Europe has pretty small military resources compared to the United States, and those resources are basically already committed in Afghanistan and Lebanon. With East Timor getting shaky too, and who knows what might go down in other parts of Southeast Asia, Australia is pretty tied up. China and Russia have big militaries, but are so non-interventionist that they'll be incredibly unlikely to use them. As Victoria Holt points out, there is a serious need to sit down and figure out just how much response capacity the world currently has.

But it's not just military forces that are stretched. The high volume of ongoing crises/rebuilding from crises stretches civilian capacities within governments, international organizations, and NGOs as well. Do we even have the first idea of how these organizations are currently holding up under the strain?

This wouldn't be quite so scary if there weren't already big problems festering and receiving inadequate attention from the international community, even in some cases where there isn't a lack of will, per se (Darfur is probably a decent example here), but the funds and personnel just don't seem to be available to do what needs to be done. Admittedly, Western nations continue to be guilty of grossly underfunding their aid targets, but even if funds were forthcoming, would there be enough people to make use of them? Even if Ban Ki-moon restructures the UN Secretariat to make managing peace operations more efficient, will the organization even have the capacity to meet increasing demands?

All told, this seems like a bad time for human security. I hate to be so pessimistic, and I'm sure that present circumstances are temporary and likely to improve over the long term, but what do we do until then?

Mapping and Fighting Corruption in War Torn States

In an effort to demonstrate my academic mettle, I offer this bit of shameless self promotion. Click here to read to full report by the above title which I helped to write, or click here (and scroll to the bottom) for a synopsis of the project.

Briefly on Darfur

I'm concerned that things still appear to be getting worse in Darfur, and that the international community is still ham-strung over what to do. While New Mexico Governor (and now presidential candidate worth looking at) Bill Richardson managed to get the Khartoum government to accept a ceasefire (of uncertain date or timing) acting only as a representative of U.S. NGOs, official diplomacy seems to be going nowhere, while the military and humanitarian situation continues to decline, to put it mildly.

In his most recent post to his controversial blog, Jan Pronk, who served as UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sudan until the end of the year, provided rather disturbing information regarding the state of UN-Sudan relations, the recalcitrance of the UN Security Council and Secretariat, as well as an update on the lack of diplomatic initiatives by great power nations. It's worth a read, but it is far from uplifting.

It seems that now more than ever, there needs to be greater activism and advocacy for effective and determined engagement to end this now three year old crisis. Otherwise, the cries of "never again" that followed Nazi Germany, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda are proving themselves to be hollow promises. For information on what you can do, I recommend visiting the Save Darfur Coalition.

A word on Somalia

I've been following the recent unrest in Somalia for a bit, even though I've been relatively silent on it. Honestly, I don't know whether Somalia is on the verge of a new era of stability and the gradual repair of a very broken country, or if this is just the start of another round of violence. If the former is the case, then we need a whole lot of international engagement fast. If the latter ends up being true, then increased engagement wouldn't hurt, and should probably be aimed at keeping violence to a minimum. There's talk of a new peacekeeping force, led by a sub-regional group (IGAD) with no previous experience in such missions. Who knows how that will turn out. Organizations' first ventures into peacekeeping have historically been failures. I think at this point I shall remain cautiously optimistic.

U.S. media coverage of the conflict, while surprisingly voluminous, has unfortunately been quite skewed, as was pointed out by a friend recently. The Washington Post tends to be overly focused on the supposed victory of U.S. policy against Islamist forces, while the New York Times seems just excessively optimistic. The situation on the ground, from what I can tell, is tenuous at best. Anyway, you can find my collection of these articles here, though I recommend you pursue other sources. I do, however, recommend this op-ed by a professor from the Naval War College (and its less biased towards the U.S. than you might think).

Apologies for lack of further analysis.

UN Security Council and Western nations need a wake-up call

I meant to write this a week or so ago, but personal circumstances prevented me from getting it done. As you are all well aware, this has been a busy summer with regard to "the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression." Israel, the world leader in failing to grasp the concept of a proportional response, went and blew the hell out of Lebanon in a failed effort to rescue two of their captured soldiers. The peace agreement in Darfur has effectively collapsed and only succeeded in creating a shift of alliances on the ground. And yet at the same time, international responses to these and other crises have been half-hearted at best.

On the Lebanon front, the UN Security Council managed to approve a resolution that called for a cease-fire and a 15,000 strong peacekeeping force (sans Chapter VII mandate), but only after weeks of wrangling. Even then, the European countries that had been so adamant about the need for a strong peacekeeping force then initially refused to cough up any respectable number of troops for it. Indeed, getting troop committments from them required an extended period of "intense prodding and pleading" by the UN from Kofi Annan and others.

In Darfur, the situation on the ground continues to detiorate, in spite of the May peace agreement, and possibly because of it. Again, the UN Security Council has authorized a peacekeeping force, this time of 24,000 personnel, but on the contention that the Sudanese government must approve the mission's deployment. Sudan, of course, has said no. After all, they're pursuing a genocidal policy, so why should they agree to letting the world curtail such activities?

There are two main lessons here that the world, especially the wealthy and powerful nations, seem to be missing.

1) All peacekeeping missions have a certain element of risk. Contributing nations (usually developing nations with big militaries) should be aware that some of their soldiers and police may be injured or killed. These peacekeeping operations don't just go anywhere, they deploy in places where there is a genuine need to prevent further violence, and the role of such forces is to basically stand between combatants and then work to consolidate a more durable peace arrangement. For the French (or any) government to assert that the potential loss of even one of its troops is too high a cost for the protection of a substantial group of people is preposterous on any number of levels.

2) The UN General Assembly opening summit in 2005 agreed that all nations have a "responsibility to protect" (R2P) their own civilians from genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that the international community has an obligation to ensure that this responsibility is met both at home and abroad. Clearly, in Darfur, Lebanon and elsewhere, this principle has been violated. Honestly, R2P is a pretty basic concept that should have been adopted well before 2005, but that's beside the point. The fact remains that governments have agreed that this is a core concept of international relations, and thus it needs to be enforced.

To be perfectly honest, I'm tired of sitting around and waiting for the world to respond to the various crises that pop up each year. I'm tired of Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh being the biggest peacekeeping troop contributing countries. If the Western world has all these wonderful values about protecting civilians and ensuring international peace -- the U.S., after all, essentially wrote the UN Charter -- then they should step up and do something about these conflicts. To fail to act smacks of everything from irresponsibility to racism. Yet to claim these lofty values from some higher level of morality while refusing to stand up for them simply reaks of the most arrogant hypocrisy. We need to not only reform the United Nations. We must also reform the way our leaders here in the West act and think.