Global News Journal

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

In Afghanistan: fighting over the terms of a settlement

At last week's London conference, two of the great truisms of warfare punched their way to the surface. The first is that wars are fought as much on the home front as on the battlefield. With public support for the war in Afghanistan ebbing away, the United States and its allies in NATO have shifted from seeking outright victory to looking for an exit strategy that will allow them to start bringing home their troops next year.  Rather as the British did after their two failed invasions of Afghanistan in the 19th century, they are sending in reinforcements in a display of military might which they hope will secure better terms in an eventual settlement.

The other truism is that if you can't win outright victory on the battlefield, then you have to negotiate with your enemies. President Hamid Karzai set the ball rolling by announcing he would hold a peace council to which, according to an Afghan government spokesman, the Taliban leadership would be invited.  Karzai has made such suggestions before, and it is by no means clear the Taliban leadership will send representatives. What was different this time, however, was the context.  Karzai's suggestion no longer met with the same resistance from war-weary governments, who stressed that it was up to the Afghans themselves to lead the process of reconciliation.  He also coupled his call for a peace council with an appeal to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to bring peace to Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia is a trusted interlocutor between the Afghan government and the Taliban leadership; Pakistan is the only country which still has some measure of leverage over them. Thus Karzai's call for a loya jirga, though not dramatic in itself, became emblematic of a broader shift towards seeking a political settlement to end the war.

What happens now is so complicated and so delicate, that no one can predict the outcome. Just as western governments have little clear idea about who might buy into a political settlement and on what terms, nor do the insurgents themselves. Contacts with various insurgent groups are expected to follow many  different tracks,  so that everyone -- on all sides -- is going to be watching what everyone else does to try to maximise their advantage.

The warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose men play a powerful role in the insurgency in eastern Afghanistan, has shown some signs of flexibility, according to the Wall Street Journal. In a video leaked to the WSJ, he said that "we have no agreement with the Taliban - not for fighting the war, and not for the peace."

"The only thing that unites the Taliban and [us] is the war against the foreigners," the paper quoted him as saying. "Unlike in previous videos, where Mr. Hekmatyar used a Kalashnikov rifle as a prop and expressed support for al Qaeda, in the latest tape, recorded in late December and provided to The Wall Street Journal by his aides in Pakistan, he assumed a professorial tone, wearing glasses and a black turban as he spoke in a quiet, soft voice."

A spokesman for Hekmatyar suggested last week that President Barack Obama's commitment to start drawing down troops in 2011 could be a possible step towards talks. "We do not see a hindrance to the negotiations provided a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign forces is set," said spokesman Wali Ullah.  "With Mr Karzai and (other) Afghans we have no problems."

The Afghan Taliban in the "Quetta shura" -- named after the Pakistani city where Washington says it is based -- will keep a close eye on any signs that Hekmatyar could switch sides. At the moment they are in a strong position, but this -- argues Ahmed Rashid in The New York Review of Books -- could give them an incentive to negotiate to try to extract concessions before the influx of U.S. troops and any breaking of ranks in the insurgency weakens their hand.

Renewing trans-Atlantic ties Finnish-style

It’s not often that Finland takes the lead in calling for better trans-Atlantic ties, but as the Nordic country’s energetic foreign minister might say: there’s a first time for everything.

In a speech in London this week, delivered on the eve of the Afghan conference, which might perhaps have led it to garner less attention than it otherwise would, Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb laid out a bold five-point plan for closer EU-US relations.

As a committed Atlanticist and a pan-European — Stubb spent five years in the United States on a golf scholarship, has studied in Paris, London and Bruges and is married to a Brit — his proposals at least come with the underpinnings of experience.

And as one of Europe’s youngest foreign ministers — Stubb is 41 — he also tends to reflect the views of Europe’s thrusting new guard against the Traditional Way of Doing Things.

In short, Stubb argues that common history and experience are not enough to keep the United States and Europe tightly allied in a world where geo-political interests are  shifting rapidly. If the European Union wants to avoid being left out in the cold after the emergence of a G2 — the United States and China –  it needs to strike a new partnership with Washington and start acting like the global player it can be.

The EU last month signed into law the Lisbon Treaty, a document that is supposed to streamline how decisions are made in the 27-nation bloc and give it more clout in international affairs — the diplomatic muscle and influence to match its trade and financial strength.

Lisbon has been in force for barely two months, but so far there’s been little sign of the EU bestriding the world like a new diplomatic colossus.

Top budget retirement destinations abroad

Looking for a fabulous place to retire on a budget? GlobalPost picked 10 intriguing overseas locales where you can stretch every dollar.

Are you one of the Americans struggling to save for retirement who President Barack Obama mentioned in his State of the Union address? GlobalPost has put together a slideshow of some of the best places to settle down when you need to make your dollar last. We favored countries that not only have low costs of living but also offer beautiful, relaxing settings; access to good medical care; and a range of activities to keep you busy.

Notes on methodology:

The Cost of Living Index, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, compares the cost of maintaining a typical international lifestyle in a foreign country with that of  New York City. New York prices are the base at 100. The figures come from the Economist’s Pocket World in Figures 2009 Edition.

The United Nations Human Development Index measures a country’s adult literacy, life expectancy and income levels. The figures here, which come from the U.N. Human Development Report 2009, are scaled from 0 to 100. Countries scoring over 80 are considered to have high human development and those scoring under 50 have low human development. The United States has a human development index of 95.6.

Costa Rica

EU, NATO officials call for gender equality

By Sangeeta Shastry     

European Union and NATO officials have joined forces in calling for new efforts to ensure women are more involved in peacekeeping and conflict resolution. But differences remain on how to do so, and on whether gender quotas are the solution.

Officials told a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday that women were not represented sufficiently in policymaking and that impunity for crimes against women remained a problem, despite United Nations resolutions that are supposed to address such issues.

One of these, 10-year-old Resolution 1325, is intended to protect women and enhance their participation in peacekeeping. The other, Resolution 1888, was passed last year and addresses sexual violence during periods of conflict.    

Panellists said women were disproportionately victimised in conflicts and marginalised in peace efforts, and that this had a serious impact on global security and stability.

“This is not a women’s issue, but it’s a human rights issue,” said Margot Wallstrom, vice president of the European Union executive, the European Commission. “And I’ve come to realise that the security of a nation is best measured by the security of its women.”

Spain has made tackling violence against women a priority for its six-month EU presidency, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called repeatedly for women to be strongly represented when member states were choosing their candidates to be part of his new executive.

Obama, Susan Rice and the U.N. — The right approach or too cuddly?

When U.S. President Barack Obama came to power, he announced a “new era of engagement” at the United Nations. He appointed his longtime friend and foreign policy adviser Susan Rice to be his ambassador to the world body. He also raised her post to cabinet level, as some previous Democratic presidents have done, and made her a member of the powerful National Security Council. 

In an August 2009 speech at New York University, Rice outlined the Obama’s administration’s new approach to the United Nations, an organization that was often criticized and occasionally ridiculed by members of the administration of former President George W. Bush. She said that from now on Washington would do away with the “condescension and contempt” that she said had crept into U.S. government attitudes toward the international community. 

“We have seen the costs of disengagement,” Rice told an audience of students, academics, diplomats and policy makers. “We have paid the price of stiff-arming the U.N. and spurning our international partners. The United States will lead in the 21st century — not with hubris, not by hectoring, but through patient diplomacy.”

Relations between the United States and the United Nations have never been easy. For decades there have been the occasional calls from the political right to pull out of the organization or banish its headquarters from U.S. territory. Relations reached a low point in 2003, the year of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan branded the war an illegal act by the Bush administration.

The Obama administration kept its word. It quickly handed over more than $2 billion in new and old contributions owed to the U.N. peacekeeping department. It ended Washington’s confrontational approach to the world body, virtually ceasing all public attacks on it. In an interview with Vogue magazine, for which she was photographed by Annie Leibovitz, Rice said she believed she had met all of the other 191 U.N. ambassadors in the space of a single month. Envoys from around the world praised Rice, saying her willingness to listen and not dictate to her colleagues is refreshing. One senior Western diplomat referred to her as “Human Rice.” But some in the United States dislike this approach. Security Council diplomats have told Reuters privately that Rice’s frequent absences from council meetings — including votes on resolutions — have not gone unnoticed. U.N. blogger Matthew Lee of Inner City Press has repeatedly suggested that Rice has dropped the U.S. push to root out U.N. corruption and improve its bureaucracy, an issue that was top priority for former U.S. ambassador and outspoken U.N. critic John Bolton. (U.S. officials reject the suggestion that Washington has dropped its anti-corruption drive.) Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican from Florida, criticized the Obama administration for taking a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council, a body Washington had previously shunned for being anti-Israeli. Rice and others defended the decision, saying it was time to change the Human Rights Council from within rather than throwing stones at it from without.

The most severe attack on the new administration’s approach to the U.N. or Rice to date came from Richard Grenell, whom Bush appointed in 2001 as the spokesman to the U.S. mission to the United Nations. In a blog for the Huffington Post, Grenell accused Rice of “hanging out at the White House and not engaging seriously in New York” on important issues like Iran’s nuclear program. He took her to task for spending too much time in Washington (her children go to school there). He called her a “weak negotiator” and declared that “the U.N. and the American people deserve better.”    Rice told reporters she did not read the article by Grenell, who was well known in the U.N. press corps for his unflagging support of the Bush administration, criticism of the European penchant for dialogue and negotiations, and his forthright way of expressing displeasure at articles he disapproved of. But Rice defended her first year as Obama’s U.N. envoy, saying 2009 was “very productive.” Washington and its partners racked up “substantive accomplishments” in 2009, she said, such as the toughening of sanctions against North Korea and adoption of a Security Council resolution on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament at a council meeting that Obama himself chaired.

Grenell cited a recent analysis by Security Council Report, a think-tank affiliated with Columbia University, saying it showed how little the council accomplished last year. That analysis said 2009 saw a “dramatic drop” in the number of Security Council decisions, the lowest since 1991, without a corresponding decline in the number of serious conflicts. However, it pointed out that there were no clear reasons for the decline and noted that “more is not necessarily better.”

Haiti: The journalists behind the story

The story:  When a massive earthquake hit Haiti on January 12, Reuters journalists raced to the devastated capital of Port-au-Prince. While Reuters has no bureau in Haiti, we have established long-time freelancers to help on our coverage and we go on assignment there regularly for major stories. Logistics post-earthquake became a challenge as commercial flights into the city were canceled and some of our journalists made their way into the Dominican Republic’s Santo Domingo airport and then journeyed several hours by car to cross the border into Haiti.

The journalists:  As you’d expect, our journalists reported on the devastation and witnessed the thousands of dead bodies and the suffering of many more. Behind the scenes, reporting conditions were rough as one of our reporter’s flak jacket and helmet for safety were taken by border guards. Communications was spotty even with satellite phones. Our team was split for the first week between the airport and the Hotel Villa Creole. While the hotel was mostly habitable, for aftershock fears that were later realized, most visitors and journalists chose the safer quarters of sleeping in the open near the hotel’s swimming pool.

Some of the in-person accounts from our team who first hit the ground can be found here, here and here.

Covering a major disaster is a great team effort and the team who first rotated in included: Carlos Barria, Catherine Bremer, Tom Brown, Manuel Carrillo, Andy Cawthorne, Oliver Ellrodt, Adam Entous, Alberto Fajardo, Debbie Gembara, Ben Gruber, Laurent Hamida, Gershon Peaks, Wolfgang Rattay, Carlos Rawlins, Jorge Silva, Carlos Valdez, Jean Valmy, Herbert Villarraga and Omar Younis.

News editors on the story included  Pascal Fletcher, Marie Frail, Gary Hershorn, Frances Kerry, Kieran Murray and David Storey.

Freelancers on the ground include:  Ricardo Dias, Jesus Frias, Joseph Guyler Delva, Evan Lambert, Eduardo Munoz, Herlen Santana, Ricardo Silva-Santi-Esteban, and Kena Betancur,

While there were plenty of bylines and other credits to our text stories, pictures, live TV shots and video, there was plenty of maneuvering behind the scenes as well. Saul Hudson and Alistair Bell hosted twice daily operational and logistics calls, Larry Rubenstein hired security to help protect our team and made sure people had food, Mike Berrigan made sure people had working equipment and Molly Skipper helped track our journalist movements. Thanks to Pascal, Mike and others who literally helped pay for our coverage by loaning thousands of dollars and euros to journalists headed into Haiti. Amid a disaster, credit cards are useless and ATMs won’t work.

Does Siemens’ move send a message on Iran sanctions?

When it comes to further sanctions on Iran, the clock is ticking relentlessly, even if those leading the drive – the United States, Britain, Germany and France — are giving little away in terms of timing or what might be targeted under any new, U.N.-agreed package.

Still, companies that do business with Iran appear to be getting the message that time is running out.

On Tuesday, German engineering group Siemens announced it would reject any further orders from Tehran, although it will meet exisiting ones. Siemens, which with French scientists began building Iran’s first civilian nuclear reactors at Bushehr in 1974, had sales of around 500 million euros in Iran last year, so its decision, while a tiny proportion of its global revenues, is not immaterial.

Siemens made its announcement less than 10 days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel made it clear she would back further, tough sanctions on Tehran, and two weeks after Swiss oil trading giant Glencore halted fuel sales to Iran as momentum towards tighter restrictions, made a priority by U.S. President Barack Obama early this year, gathered pace.

European Union foreign ministers met on Monday to discuss the issue, saying afterwards that an offer for Iran to export low-enriched uranium and have it converted into fuel abroad remained on the table, but that in the meantime Iran remained in violation of U.N. resolutions and that ”time was running out”. Talks are to begin soon in New York on drawing up the specifics of any sanctions package.

So what exactly could the P5+1 (the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — plus Germany) do to try to bring its influence to bear on Tehran?

EU diplomats have hinted that any new package could include further restrictions on Iranian trade-finance banks, such as Bank Melli, possible moves against the central bank, the targeting of “companies and individuals” suspected of involvement in proliferation, and a ban on the export to Iran of technical equipment used in its oil export industry. Iran’s imports of petrol would not be targeted.

Fishing for chili and hamburgers

PORT-AU-PRINCE -  Two Haitian men and a boy rowing in a small boat in the Port-au-Prince bay had a lucky catch on Tuesday.   A U.S. Coast Guard boat ferrying passengers out to the USNS Comfort hospital ship stopped briefly to toss them Meals Ready-to-Eat, a bottle of sunblock and assorted energy bars.   “I think you got the cheeseburger and chili mac and cheese. Let me know how you like it,” shouted the boat’s commander. The Haitians seemed to speak no English but smiled broadly and waved in return as they rowed around to fish out the food floating on the water.   The high calorie meals are designed for to provide nutrition for military men and women who burn a lot of calories. The meals should last them at least two days, the commander said.   Their small boat was dwarfed by everything else in the water, especially the 890-foot-long, 60,000-ton Comfort.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Eliana Aponte (Boaters near the USNS Comfort off the coast of Haiti)

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

On Taliban/AQ ties and the Afghanistan exit strategy

Vahid Brown at the CTC Sentinel has a new article (pdf document) out arguing that the relationship between Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden before 9/11 was considerably more fractious than it was made out to be.  The main source of argument was between the Taliban's Afghan nationalist agenda and bin Laden's view of global jihad, and in particular his determination to attack the United States, he says.

Based on an account by an insider, he challenges the assumption that bin Laden personally swore an oath of allegiance to Mullah Omar. The account by Egyptian jihadist Mustafa Hamid, better known as Abul-Walid al-Masri, was first published in jihadist forums in 2007 but gained little attention outside specialist websites.

Given the groundswell of talk this week about the possibility of an eventual peace deal with the Taliban it is worth reading closely in the light of the debate about whether they can be prised away from al Qaeda (bin Laden's son says in this interview with Reuters that there is little love lost between the Taliban and OBL).

Brown notes that Abul-Walid is a Taliban loyalist and his claims should be treated with caution. However the apparent endorsement of his views by the Taliban would suggest that whether or not his account of a Taliban/al Qaeda rift is accurate, they cast light on how the Taliban chooses to project itself today.

"He (Abul Walid) writes that relations between the Taliban and the Arab jihadists in Afghanistan had become more contentious during that year (1998), primarily on account of the escalation of al-Qaeda's media and operational campaign against the United States. From the outset, the Taliban’s provision of hospitality for the al-Qaeda leadership was limited by two conditions:  bin Laden was not to communicate with the media without the consent of the Taliban regime, nor was he to directly antagonize the United States," says Brown.

"A number of the Arab jihadist leaders rose in opposition to bin Laden at this time,” he quotes Abul-Walid as saying, “all of them affirming the primacy of the domestic fronts against the Arab regimes, convinced that a shift to a ‘global confrontation’ against the United States was ill conceived.”

 With the relationship between Mullah Omar and bin Laden "worsening by the day", the al Qaeda leader was supposed to take an oath of allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leader to end the rift. Bin Laden however at first procrastinated, and then sent Abul-Walid to make a vow of allegiance on his behalf - an ambiguous act of proxy that would later allow him to either deny or aver having made the oath depending on which suited him best. 

Europe draws inspiration from U.S. Peace Corps

Much criticism has been heaped on the European Union — the vast majority of it by its own member states — for not being seen to do enough to help Haiti after the Caribbean state’s earthquake. 

Never mind the fact EU states and the European Commission have promised a combined 400 million euros  ($575 million) in aid and long-term reconstruction. In public relations terms, the sums have all but been eclipsed by images, beamed around the world, of  volunteer U.S. firemen pulling victims from the rubble, and emergency aid workers from the likes of Israel and Brazil running much-needed field hospitals.

But an interesting new proposal from Greece promises to change the way the European Union operates and is perceived in the world’s most-needy countries, especially at times of crisis.

Drawing a leaf from the U.S. Peace Corps programme, the overseas volunteer organisation established by President Kennedy in 1961, Greece wants to create a European Volunteer Corps that would send thousands of young Europeans abroad to do humanitarian work for a couple of years.

“We need to provide European citizens, and particularly our younger generation, with a framework to actively participate in projects related to  humanitarian and development aid, civil protection and emergency relief assistance,” Greece said in a document circulated in Brussels this week to promote the idea.

Such a corps would channel young people’s energy “into activities that serve the common interest and reinforce their sense of belonging to a common European family of values, but of action as well”.

For countries such as Greece, with high and rising joblessness and an often restive youth, it might also provide an opportunity to keep young and active minds busy in the frequently restless years between formal education and long-term employment.