Global News Journal

from Tales from the Trail:

Tweet like an Egyptian — Hillary Clinton tries it out

Young Egyptians, who famously used Internet services like Facebook and Twitter to launch their recent revolution, turned their focus to Hillary Clinton on Wednesday. They peppered the top U.S. diplomat with skeptical questions about longtime U.S. support for former  President Hosni Mubarak and what many felt was its slow embrace of the movement to topple him.

Clinton, taking a personal spin at what she has called "21st Century Statecraft", fielded a selection of some 6,500 questions that young Egyptians posed through Twitter,  Facebook and the Arabic-language website www.masrawy.com -- and many reflected deep suspicions about the U.S. role in Egypt.

"My question is: Does America really support democracy? If yes indeed, why the U.S. was late in its support of the Egyptian revolution?" one questioner asked Clinton.

"The attitude of the U.S. during the Egyptian revolution was to support the Egyptian regime first.  Then, when the revolution turned successful, the U.S. switched sides and supported the Egyptian youth and the youth revolution, and the U.S. said that we learn from Egyptian youth.  Why was such delay?" another wondered.

Clinton gamely took them on, stressing that the United States used its influence in Egypt to help press for a peaceful resolution to the crisis and the launch of a reform process that would lead to "an Egyptian model of democracy."

"So I think that we were walking a balance, because we wanted to be sure that our messages did not push anyone into doing something that we disagreed with, namely violence, which we tried to, in every way possible, prevent," Clinton said.

from Africa News blog:

Could revolt spread in Africa?

So far there hasn’t been much political fallout in the rest of Africa from the revolts in the northernmost states.

Of course there are lots of differences between sub-Saharan African countries themselves let alone when you compare them to those north of the desert.

But there are plenty of similarities too: the rest of Africa can point to those leaders entrenched for decades, to so-called democracies where ballots are no more than a waste of paper and to a lack of opportunities for youths even where official growth figures appear startlingly good.

Could the revolt against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi change that dynamic in some places?

After all, he is the man who was once crowned ‘King of Kings’ of Africa by a group of friendly traditional leaders.

Although he is holding out defiantly, a security apparatus more pervasive and better equipped than most on the continent was unable to prevent the uprising - even if ultimately it prevails.

If Gaddafi falls, would it send a message that anyone can be challenged by their people?

An eye-witness in Tripoli describes what it’s really like

The following is a guest contribution from Lisa Goldman, a Canadian-Israeli journalist in Tel Aviv, based on an interview she had on Monday evening with an eye-witness in Tripoli. This was originally published on +972 magazine. The opinions expressed are her own. Reuters is not responsible for the content.

Yesterday evening (21 February) I was able to speak via Skype for about 20 minutes with a friend who lives in Sarraj, a suburb of Tripoli that is located 10 kilometers west of the city’s center. He agreed to my publishing a summary of the main points of our conversation; and he also answered some follow-up questions via email. Ali, which is not his real name, speaks fluent American English; his background, which I will not specify, makes him qualified to give reliable information about certain military matters.

The atmosphere in Sarraj is fearful and tense, but otherwise calm. There is no violence on the streets, but everyone can hear loud caliber rounds fired every few seconds. “This proves that sniping is taking place,” writes Ali in his email. “It means, actually, that someone is aiming and shooting at something and apparently not wasting his ammo too much with careful firing. It is an eerie feeling to stand outside and hear this.”

He also saw three Chinook helicopters flying over his neighborhood, heading north toward the center of the city. More details about that below. Ali and his neighbors take turns patrolling the neighborhood around the clock, to protect it from roaming mercenary soldiers; but otherwise they stay at home. Since Qaddafi’s regime enforced a strict ban on civilians owning firearms, they are using makeshift weapons to protect themselves. Ali said he is armed with a crowbar. The mercenaries, Ali said, are everywhere. They come mostly from Chad and Darfur.

The government briefly blocked access to Aljazeera and other satellite television stations, but then stopped. Libyans are now able to watch satellite television, and they do have access to the internet, although the connection is unstable and capricious. There was quite a lot of interference during our conversation via Skype, with Ali’s voice breaking up several times. He said that he can access his Gmail account from his laptop computer, but not from his iPhone. In terms of infrastructure, water and electricity are fine. His family stocked up on food and supplies before the current troubles began, and are not worried about shortages.

Ali confirmed readily that he was afraid. He said that neither he nor his friends have any sense of how the situation in Libya would play out. “On the one hand I cannot believe that things can go back to the way they were before all this,” he said. “But on the other hand, Qaddafi obviously does not have any limits. We knew he was crazy, but it’s still a terrible shock to see him turning mercenaries on his own people and just mowing down unarmed demonstrators. So yeah, we knew he was crazy. But maybe we did not realize he was that crazy. It’s a scary and devastating feeling to be here now.” Ali said that he knew for a confirmed fact that civilian airplanes were being used to fly soldiers and weapons to Benghazi.

He also heard from several sources that officers in Benghazi, including air force officers, had been executed for refusing orders to kill the anti-government demonstrators. The same sources described a mass grave near Benghazi, containing the bodies of more than 100 executed officers.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

On U.S.-Taliban talks, look at 2014 and work back

According to Steve Coll in the New Yorker, the United States has begun its first direct talks with the Taliban to see whether it is possible to reach a political settlement to the Afghan war.  He writes that after the Sept. 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington the United States rejected direct talks with Taliban leaders, on the grounds that they were as much to blame for terrorism as Al Qaeda. However, last year, he says, a small number of officials in the Obama administration—among them the late Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan—argued that it was time to try talking to the Taliban again.

"Holbrooke’s final diplomatic achievement, it turns out, was to see this advice accepted. The Obama Administration has entered into direct, secret talks with senior Afghan Taliban leaders, several people briefed about the talks told me last week. The discussions are continuing; they are of an exploratory nature and do not yet amount to a peace negotiation."

I had heard the same thing some time ago -- from an official source who follows Afghanistan closely - that the Americans and the Taliban were holding face-to-face talks for the first time.  He said the talks were not yet "at a decision-making level" but involved Taliban representatives who would report back to the leadership.  There has been no official confirmation.

And given that the idea of holding talks with the Taliban has been on the diplomatic agenda for a year, you would probably expect to see the various parties involved in the conflict sounding each other out - though diplomats say that in the first half of last year it was hard to get negotiations moving without the direct involvement of the Americans.  By the second half of 2010 the Americans had given greater endorsement to talks, leading -- according to the source I spoke to -- to direct talks beginning towards the end of the year.  

In a speech to the Asia Society on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington was "launching a diplomatic surge to move this conflict toward a political outcome that shatters the alliance between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, ends the insurgency, and helps to produce not only a more stable Afghanistan but a more stable region."

"As military pressure escalates, more insurgents may begin looking for alternatives to violence. And not just low-level fighters. Both we and the Afghans believe that the security and governance gains produced by the military and civilian surges have created an opportunity to get serious about a responsible reconciliation process, led by Afghans and supported by intense regional diplomacy and strong U.S.-backing."

"Now, I know that reconciling with an adversary that can be as brutal as the Taliban sounds distasteful, even unimaginable. And diplomacy would be easy if we only had to talk to our friends. But that is not how one makes peace. President Reagan understood that when he sat down with the Soviets. And Richard Holbrooke made this his life’s work. He negotiated face-to-face with (former Serbian president) Milosevic and ended a war."

UNsensational? Five more years of Ban Ki-moon

It’s hard to find a delegate to the United Nations who despises U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. But it’s even harder to find someone who thinks he has the gravitas and charisma of his Nobel Peace Prize-winning predecessor Kofi Annan, who invoked the wrath of the previous U.S. administration when he called the 2003 invasion of Iraq “illegal.” As one senior Western official, who declined to be identified, said about Ban: “It’s not as if he’s lightning in a bottle, but we can live with him.”

The former South Korean foreign minister is in the final year of his first five-year term and is widely expected to run for another stint as the supreme U.N. official. The formal re-election process is likely to commence in the coming months. In the meantime, Ban is visiting the capitals of key U.N. member states to gauge his chances of keeping his job. Those chances, U.N. diplomats say, are excellent. So far, no country has nominated any candidate to oppose him. “I’d put my money on Ban Ki-moon getting a second term,” said a Security Council diplomat.

The 15-nation Security Council nominates the secretary-general, though the choice has to be confirmed by the 192-nation General Assembly. Despite the veneer of democracy, it is the five veto-wielding permanent council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — who choose the top U.N. bureaucrat in New York. And none of the five has any serious objections to a second and final term for Ban, diplomats say.

Some people say that running the United Nations is the toughest job on earth. With little real power, he spends his time mediating and negotiating behind closed doors, getting blamed for member states’ failures and receiving no credit for his off-camera successes. National lobbyists push and pull him in all directions. The five permanent Security Council members, known as the “P5″, regularly insist that he acquiesce to their demands, often pressuring him to reserve a healthy portion of top U.N. jobs for their nationals or preferential treatment for themselves or their allies. Journalists harangue the secretary-general to disclose the details of sensitive negotiations, which he usually tries to keep secret under the label of “quiet diplomacy.” Human rights groups routinely skewer him for not being tough enough on the rulers of despotic countries, which are, after all, member states like all the others and don’t take kindly to criticism.

Ban has been no exception. He has been publicly clobbered for not congratulating jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo for winning the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize or raising his detention with President Hu Jintao during a recent visit to China. He was hung out to dry for not being tough enough on Sri Lanka’s government and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide in Sudan’s western Darfur region. Arab and other delegations from the developing world accuse Ban of being a U.S. lackey, noting how often his statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other issues echo those of the U.S. State Department or White House.

As much as Ban has sought to please his P5 kingmakers, he has managed to run afoul of each of them in the past. In 2008 Russia accused him of siding with the United States, France and Britain in supporting the secession of Kosovo from Serbia, which Moscow fiercely opposed. U.N. officials said at the time that Russia even threatened to block his second term over Kosovo (Ban made it up to them later). Both China and Russia complained that Ban had voiced public support for Egyptian demonstrators calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, who resigned last week. The United States, Britain and France were annoyed with Ban in 2009 for departing from past practice and not referring to the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia as part of Georgia. The Georgian ambassador accused Ban of succumbing to pressure from Russia, which fought a brief war against the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008. Ban denied the charge.

Ban’s unwavering stance against Ivory Coast’s incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to recognize U.N. certified election results from November 2010 that say he lost to rival Alassane Ouattara, surprised many U.N. watchers who are more accustomed to seeing him sitting on the fence on tough issues. Philippe Bolopion of Human Rights Watch, who has been one of the secretary-general’s toughest critics, welcomed Ban’s “swift and unequivocal reaction” to Gbagbo, who ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the world’s top cocoa producer. So far the secretary-general has refused to withdraw his blue helmets and the deadlock continues.

Indian minister plays musical speeches at UN council

Those who spend much of their working week listening to speeches at the United Nations — U.N. correspondents, for example — might be forgiven for thinking there’s not much difference between most of them.

But it’s seldom you get as dramatic an illustration of this as happened on Feb. 11 when India’s Foreign Minister began inadvertently reading out to the Security Council a speech written for another country’s delegate without anyone, including himself, initially realizing anything was amiss.

The gaffe by minister S.M. Krishna occurred during a debate on the worthy but less than sensational topic of “the interdependence between security and development.” This month’s council president, Brazil, had organized the debate and invited as many foreign ministers as possible to take part.

The speech problem seems to have started when the speaker before Krishna, Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado, decided to make off-the-cuff remarks to the council instead of his prepared text, which was instead circulated in written form to other participants. It was this that Krishna picked up and started to read when his turn came, thinking it was his own.

So general was the opening section that it could as well have come from India as Portugal, although it did seem a little odd when Krishna welcomed the fact that there are currently two Portuguese-speaking nations — Portugal and Brazil — on the Security Council. But hey, the Indian state of Goa was for centuries a Portuguese colony and Portuguese is still spoken there by some people.

It was when Krishna began to hail cooperation between the United Nations and the European Union that it really did appear that there had been some mistake. India’s U.N. ambassador, Hardeep Singh Puri, suddenly appeared at Krishna’s elbow, handed him another speech and whispered in his ear.

“Start all over again?” muttered Krishna, in remarks picked up by U.N. microphones. “Start again, yes sir,” Puri replied. Without a word of explanation to the council, Krishna plowed on, this time reading from the right text: “Mr President, Mahatma Gandhi, the father of our nation, said …”

from Reuters Investigates:

ElBaradei: From nuclear diplomat to Cairo politics

Who is Mohamed ElBaradei, the professional Egyptian opposition figure who joined the ranks of disaffected Eypgtians to topple President Hosni Mubarak after thirty years in power?  Does the 68-year-old diplomat and lawyer have what it takes to become Egypt's next president if it holds free and fair elections? 

Louis Charbonneau's special report takes a close look at ElBaradei's performance while at the helm of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), where he stood toe-to-toe with the Bush administration over Iraq and Iran. It tells how he survived a plot by hawkish U.S. politician John Bolton to oust him and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 jointly with the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.  It looks into his questionable record as a manager while showing that he may have what it takes to lead Egypt -- if he wants the job. 

 To read this story in multimedia PDF format click here

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Afghanistan: Petraeus, personalities and policy

Buried in the Washington Post story on Marc Grossman taking over as the new U.S. envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan are some interesting references to the possible departure of U.S. commander General David Petraeus.

"... virtually the entire U.S. civilian and military leadership in Afghanistan is expected to leave in the coming months, including Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and the embassy's other four most senior officials, Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the U.S.-led international coalition, and Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, who runs day-to-day military operations there," it says.

"No final decisions have been made, but military officials said that Petraeus, who took command last July, will rotate out of Afghanistan before the end of the year," it adds.

Petraeus has been talked about for a while as a possible successor to Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff  (CJCS),  who is expected to retire in October.  Any move would be part of a broader shake-up in the administration, which will also see Defense Secretary Robert Gates retire this year.

The question is what this move, if confirmed, would mean for policy.  Petraeus, more than anyone else, has been identified with the intensified military campaign in Afghanistan which, according to critics of the policy,  has reduced prospects of a political settlement by alienating Taliban leaders who might otherwise be coaxed into peace talks. 

Petraeus has been a towering figure in Washington and difficult to challenge politically. He had what was seen in the United States as a good track record in Iraq. And he was backed by Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- making it very hard for those within the U.S. administration who disagreed with his assessment to win President Barack Obama over to their point of view. 

Moreover, Obama had already sacked two generals -- Generals David McKiernan and Stanley McChrystal -- and could hardly dismiss a third. (If I remember rightly -- and no doubt someone will correct me if I am wrong -- no president since Abraham Lincoln has changed his generals so frequently in wartime.) Promoting Petraeus would be far easier.

from Environment Forum:

Excess baggage in Bangkok: tortoises, lizards, spiders and snakes

What happens when the airport scanner  shows shapes that look like live spiders, snakes, lizards and tortoises inside three big suitcases? Last week in Bangkok, it meant the detention of an Indonesian man and the seizure of 259 live creatures that were slotted into compartments in the black traveling bags.

The suspected smuggler reportedly went on a wildlife shopping spree in Bangkok's Chatuchak Market, a hub for rare animal trade, according to conservation group TRAFFIC, which monitors illegal trafficking of species.

The suspect had stuffed 88 Indian Star Tortoises, 33 Elongated Tortoises, seven Radiated Tortoises, six Mata Mata Turtles, four Southeast Asian Narrow-headed Softshell Turtle, three Aldabra Tortoises, one Pig-nosed Turtle and even one Ploughshare Tortoise—the world's rarest tortoise, TRAFFIC said in a statement.

Alongside these, he packed 34 Ball Pythons, two Boa Constrictors, several Milk Snakes, Corn Snakes and King Snakes as well as a Hog-nosed Snake.

The suspect also had 19 Bearded Dragons, four Spiny-tailed Lizards, two Sunda Plated Lizards, six Argentine Horned Frogs.

He also managed to fit in 18 Baboon Spiders, each in its own plastic container, 22 Common Squirrels and one African Grey Parrot into his luggage.

The suspect, from Surabaya in Indonesia, told authorities he bought the animals at Chatuchak Market. He was set to board an Air Asia flight back to Indonesia when the animals were discovered, and he was taken into police custody.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Egypt and Pakistan; something borrowed, something new

The Egyptian uprising contains much that is familiar to Pakistan - the dark warnings of a coup, in Egypt's case delivered by Vice President Omar Suleiman, the role of political Islam, and a relationship with the United States distorted by U.S. aid and American strategic interests which do not match those of the people.

President Hosni Mubarak cited Pakistan as an example of what happened when a ruler like President Pervez Musharraf - like himself from the military - was forced to make way for democracy. "He fears that Pakistan is on the brink of falling into the hands of the Taliban, and he puts some of the blame on U.S. insistence on steps that ultimately weakened Musharraf," a 2009 U.S. embassy cable published by WikiLeaks said.

Comparisons with Pakistan tend to make you somewhat sceptical about the chances of Egypt's uprising turning out well.

Yet there is something quite new coming out of Egypt that has the potential to be transformative across the Muslim world. And that is the rejection of all forms of old authority, including, significantly, religious authority.

"The revolution was not just directed against the autocratic, repressive and corrupt Egyptian regime, which relied on an alliance of money, power and corruption. It was also directed against the official religious establishment and its discourse that supports this regime, either directly or indirectly." Hossam Tammam writes in Egyptian paper Al Masry Al Youm. (scroll down to see the story as the link opens a page with a lot of space at the top).

"The Egyptian revolution has completely reconfigured the religious scene and clarified the public’s position towards religious institutions and discourses in the country. The result has been surprising. No one expected that religious Egyptians are capable of overriding the powers of religious institutions and of challenging religious discourses that they suddenly perceived as part of a corrupt and repressive regime. The official religious establishments--both Islamic and Christian--have been the biggest losers in the revolution."

Such a trend, if it were allowed to flourish, would be tremendously important in the context of Pakistan, where political parties and the military alike have both used, and been held hostage by religious parties whose power by far exceeds their poor showing at the ballot box.  In a conservative society (as both Egypt and Pakistan are) few dare face down the accusation of "not being Muslim enough" by challenging the religious establishment. The last well-known figure to do so in Pakistan, Punjab governor Salman Taseer, was gunned down last month over his call for a reform to the country's blasphemy laws, and his death celebrated by the religious right.  Many of the voices speaking out against his killing came from young Pakistan bloggers.