Olympic Security

With all eyes on Beijing's cleanup efforts in advance of the Summer Olympics, let's not forget the environmental obstacles to prepping Whistler, British Columbia for the 2010 games this winter. Above, a mudslide on the Sea to Sky Highway put a damper this week on efforts to turn a treacherous, winding two lane road (the only one linking Vancouver's International Airport and Whistler) into an infrastructure capable of handling Olympic-volume traffic.

Though, one might also say, this is just Mother Nature doing the contractors' work for them...

When is a War a War?

One of the first things you learn about the Geneva Conventions is that they only apply in situations of armed conflict. The problem is that "armed conflict" isn't really defined in treaty law, and this is one of the reasons that some have proposed updating or clarifying the rules of war to take account of new types of war.

On this point, it will be important to keep an eye on the Salim Hamdan trial in Guantanamo, Cuba and third parties' reactions to it. Hamdan's prosecution as a "war criminal" will depend on the prosecution arguing al-Qaeda and the US were engaged in an armed conflict during the period of his active involvement with bin Laden. Human Rights First reports on opposing views presented at Hamdan's trial:. The prosecution argues that the laws of war applied as soon as al-Qaeda declared war on the United States, as early as 1996, therefore Hamdan's work with al-Qaeda prior to 9/11 constitutes war crimes:

"On Monday, the prosecution debuted “The al Qaeda Plan” – a made-to-order compilation of al Qaeda propaganda videos found on the Internet and narrated by the government’s counterterrorism expert, Evan Kohlmann. The movie was made, among other reasons, in order to prove the government’s theory of when the armed conflict with al Qaeda began. The seven-part, ninety-minute video, which the government apparently plans to use in many Guantánamo prosecutions, narrates the story of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets (although it excludes any reference to U.S. support of the jihad against the Soviets), bin Laden’s activities in Afghanistan and Sudan, the USS Cole bombing, the Kenya Embassy bombings, and the September 11 attacks."

The defense argues that the start of an "armed conflict" depends on the response by a government - in short, that the Geneva Conventions would apply only after the US declared war on al-Qaeda in return, on September 12, 2001.

"Hostile acts, including terrorist attacks that take place in a non-international armed conflict (i.e., a conflict not involving two or more nations), do not automatically trigger application of the laws of war. Defense expert Geoffrey Corn, a retired Army judge advocate, former Pentagon law of war expert and now a law professor, testified that, under the laws of war, one of the critical factors that determine whether an armed conflict has begun is the response by a government to a particular attack... Corn testified that the United States’ reaction in September-October 2001 to the 9/11 attacks triggered the application of a law of war framework, and the United States thus was in armed conflict at that point with the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan."

Both these lines of argument are a distraction, I think, since they suggest that a) the "war on terror" is definitely an armed conflict, we just don't know when it started (but this is actually a topic of debate among international lawyers); and that b) if an armed conflict is occuring, Hamdan must be a war criminal. Not at all clear to me if this makes sense - Hitler's driver wasn't prosecuted at Nuremberg, he was called as a witness.

The real irony is that a government who has spent years trying to pretend the laws of war don't apply to this conflict is now trying to use them against its enemies. Perhaps the real goal is to confuse people entirely about what the laws of war are.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad

Slate Magazine reviews the work of researcher Mark Levine, whose new book Heavy Metal Islam follows the emergence of heavy metal music in the Muslim Middle East as a response to both Islamists and the existing governments they oppose. Opening paragraph from Reza Azlan's review:

"Pink Floyd's album The Wall takes on a whole new meaning when brought to life by an Arab metal band in Lebanon. Imagine 100,000 teens—Sunni, Shiite, Christian, Druze—headbanging in sync, pumping their fists in unison, screaming, "Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone!" even as another civil war, waged by their parents, threatens to tear their country apart yet again.

Welcome to the new Middle East, a region where, by some estimates, nearly half of the population is under the age of 25. This is a highly literate, politically sophisticated, technologically savvy, and globally plugged-in generation. It speaks English; it knows its way around the Internet; and, according to historian and part-time metal head Mark LeVine, it wants to rock."

Coming on the heels of one-country-case study documentaries like the one shown in the trailer above, Levine's comparative study sounds like an interesting read. One wonders, though, whether Levine himself is the best intellectual emissary for this emerging political force. Perhaps the heavy metal movement in the Middle East would be better served by more mainstream social scientists also taking it seriously. Then again, what does it say about the nature of political science in the West that it took a former heavy metal performer himself to write a scholarly treatise on the subject?

Hamdan Trial is Not Nuremberg

In disbelief, I heard Melissa Block call the Hamdan trial "the first war crimes trial since Nuremberg" on NPR last night. Set to correct her, I tried to Google the story, and found a rash of other, similar mischaracterizations by the media. Clearly, either US journalists are simply ignorant of the concept of war crimes, much less the history of war crimes trials, or they are engaging in some willful regurgitation of Bush Administration rhetoric. (Hmm, could it be both?)

Let's set the record straight: there have been literally thousands of war crimes trials since Nuremberg. This is because war crimes trials can take place in one of three ways.

First, a state can (nay, must) try its own soldiers for violating the Geneva Conventions. And countries, including the US, in fact do this all the time: the trial of Lieutenant William Calley for the My Lai massacre and of Army Spc. Charles Graner Jr., for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib are but two prominent examples.

Second, a state may try captured enemy prisoners of war for violating the laws of war during an armed conflict. (But, POWs cannot be tried simply for participating in an armed conflict.) The military commission trying Hamdan may come closest to this model, except of course that the USG has declared Hamdan is not an POW.

Third, alleged war criminals may be tried by international war crimes tribunals. The first one since Nuremberg, the ICTY was established in 1993 by the UN Security Council to try soldiers accused of atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. It has completed nearly 200 trials; Radovan Karadzic is the merely the latest. Then there's the ICTY's Rwandan counterpart, which has been working to try the masterminds of the Rwandan genocide since 1994. A range of other ad hoc tribunals have been established since then to deal with conflicts such as those in Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Kosovo. War crimes trials have taken place in all of them. Finally, there is the International Criminal Court, which began its first trial of alleged war criminal Thomas Lubanga last year.

Moreover, the Hamdan trial is not even the first trial of an "enemy combatant" in the war on terror, so to characterize it as some kind of a test case is to engage in egregious historical amnesia. For instance, the trial of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad in 2006 certainly fit this description, as the attacks of 9/11 have been treated by the Bush Administration as the opening salvo in this so-called "war." And another thing. The trial of Hamdan is not really a "war crimes" trial at all, because Hamdan is not a soldier who was bound by the Geneva Conventions (war crimes, after all, are violations of the Hague and Geneva conventions, which place limits on what soldiers can legitimately do). Instead, Hamdan stands accused of complicity in terrorist activity, for his associations with al-Qaeda. Were this a conventional war, his behavior (driving bin Laden about) would be analogous at best to "abetting the enemy" as a civilian; that's not a punishable war crime, although the laws of war allow a state to detain civilians it thinks are a security risk. If as a civilian he took direct part in hostilities, he could be tried for doing so (unless he was defending his home village) but that's not a war crime; that's just basically a crime.

So what is behind the set of brazen fabrications in the trope comparing Hamdan to Nuremberg? Perhaps the Bush Administration's need to ignore the true analogy to Nuremberg that the war on terror presents... the possibility that high-ranking US officials could one day be tried for crimes against the peace and for atrocities against detainees. In fact that is what is really historic about the Hamdan case: the Supreme Court's ruling in 2006 that the USG was in violation of the Geneva Conventions itself in relation to its handling of Hamdan.

Friday Star Trek Blogging.

The newly launched World Security Forum, with its focus on, among other things, "the growing evidence of the ramifications of epidemics," would be wise to take heed of Seven's advice.

ICTY's Most Wanted Now in Dock

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Serbia yesterday. Karadzic was the President of the Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb breakaway statelet, during the war in the former Yugoslavia; he stands accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, particularly for his connection to the massacre at Srebrenica. Since his indictment, Karadzic had foiled attempts by NATO and the Serbian government to capture him for thirteen years. His capture is significant not only for international justice, but also for Serbia's prospects of acceding to the European Union.

There is good coverage of his capture in the mainstream media and also at War Crimes Blog. However, one of the best sources is a blog entitled "Finding Karadzic" which has covered the manhunt for the past several years.

With Karadzic in the dock, only Ratko Mladic, the General who oversaw the massacre of approximately 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica, remains at large in Serbia. Will he be next?

Rethinking Force Protection

A pregnant female Army nurse, 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc, disappeared last week after her home was set ablaze, shortly after seeking protection against her Marine husband, who allegedly held a gun to her head and threatened suicide. Last weekend, police found her charred body hidden in a shallow grave. This incident follows on the heels of two similar disappearances/murders in the past year: Lance Corporal Maria Frances Lauterbach and Army Spc. Megan Touma.

Robert Paul Reyes at SOP asks:

"Who is responsible for the murder of female soldiers stationed in America? It`s not jihadists who are murdering our women soldiers in the homeland, but jealous lovers or perhaps a serial killer... These murders have some obvious similarities, a special task force should be created to investigate these three cases."

Good idea. Let's look at this in context, though, and not limit the activity of a task force to violence that fits the description of serial criminal activity. Women serving the US military have much to fear from their male compatriots in the field as well. Recall reports in 2006 that female soldiers in Iraq were dying of dehydration. The cause: they refused to drink adequate water in order to avoid using latrines, where they had learned to expect rape and assault by male soldiers. But worse, the US military may be covering up this pattern of abuse. CommonDreams reported in April that the military routinely characterizes female deaths after rape in the military as 'non-combat related injuries' or 'suicide.' In 2007, Helen Benedict published an op-ed in Salon entitled "The Private War on Women Soldiers," in which she quotes a 21-year-old female National Guardsman who had taken to carrying a knife at all times:

"'The knife wasn't for the Iraqis,' she told me. 'It was for the guys on my own side.'"

Half the problem, in other words, is an assumption that "our soldiers" treat women with respect, while it "they" are likely to victimize "our" women. Instead, the media should be reporting on these events in context. International institutions need a comprehensive understanding of gender, militarism, and violence that goes beyond the kind of simplistic assumptions in last month's Security Council resolution. And the US military needs to go beyond launching a serious investigation of these patterns, and also reconsider things like base architecture, waivers for recruits with criminal and violent records, definitions of and rules on reporting assault, and the way it disaggregates its casualty data, in order to realize its goal of a gender integrated military.

Omar Khadr: Warrior or Criminal?

NPR reported this week on Canada's response to the release on YouTube of this excerpt from an interrogation at Guantanamo Bay.



The prisoner is Omar Khadr, then a 16-year-old child soldier; the interrogators are Canadian intelligence officers. Whether this constitutes fair treatment of a child detainee or not, the bigger question in the Khadr case is put forth by Corey Flintoff during the NPR segment. This question has nothing to do with his treatment, nor with his age, but rather with his status:

"The story of Omar Khadr's capture is the story of a firefight in Afghanistan, an exchange of gun fire and after the exchange he allegedly throws a hand grenade... that sounds to me as close to the capture of a POW and as different from capturing somebody who's hatching a plot to bomb airplanes as I can imagine."

Indeed.

High Crimes

A great leap forward in international criminal law: Omar Bashir, President of Sudan, has become the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court.

At the Jurist, law professor Michael Kelly explains why this step constitutes one more helpful chink in the armor of sovereign immunity... but he also explains why Bashir is unlikely to be apprehended anytime soon.

In other words, a great leap forward for international law (as a set of rules) does not necessarily translate into a political or legal victory in practical terms. Quite the contrary, in some cases.

For this reason, the Wall Street Journal joins China in opposing the action - but for different reasons. China seeks to protect the sovereign right of governments to do as they damn well please. The WSJ bloggers recall how international judicial mechanisms served as a substitute, during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, for military action which could have stopped the bloodshed.

But a non-state actor (this time not a corporation but rather the human rights organization Avaaz) has an idea:

"Al Bashir knows that he will be caught only if other governments, especially Arab and African governments, agree to help the International Criminal Court. To make sure this happens, Avaaz is launching a large regional ad campaign, urging the leaders of these nations to save Darfur by helping the ICC."

Click here to donate.

Unsurprisingly, so far African nations are looking askance at the move. Will an ad campaign change their minds? Stay tuned.

Passing the Buck in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is better off without Mugabe at the helm. Might this call for a strategic excisation of the beleaguered leader by a covert team of black-masked assassins? Empedocles votes no. The CIA has a tentative mandate to carry out "clandestine operations" against unsavory individuals ("CIA Weighs 'Targeted Killing' Missions"), but such an operation would likely leave an open door for widespread ethnic violence in its wake. What is needed instead is a UN or SADC (South African Development Council) peacekeeping deployment to coordinate humanitarian aid and a slow political transition; unfortunately however, neither the the UN Security Council with its R2P mandate (Responsibility to Protect) nor the African Union (whose silence has been roundly condemned by governance and human rights groups around the world ) has risen to the challenge.

But today a private(non-state) actor has taken decisive action on the political crisis in Zimbabwe by withdrawing its support, threatening to staunch the flow of life-blood to the Mugabe regime: $$money$$.

The LA Times reported this morning that a German company, concerned by the violence and illegitimacy surrounding Mugabe's election, has stopped supplying bank note paper to Fidelity Printers & Refiners, the state owned company in Zimbabwe that literally prints new money daily to prop up Mugabe's government (a non-strategy that has caused the price of a beer to skyrocket to 500 billion Z dollars, the equivalent of 4 US dollars). The withdrawal of support by this German paper-maker has been more effective than economic sanctions against the regime. The paper will run out in two weeks, after which time the flow of money into Mugabe's coffers will cease.

Informal interventions of non-state actors, particularly those in the private (business) sector, are becoming more and more prevalent in international crises. Harnessing the diversity of peacebuilding actors is called "multi-track diplomacy" and includes governments, professional organizations, the business community, churches, media, private citizens, training and educational institutes, activists, and funding organizations in the early prevention and detection of conflict.

Yet the key to harnessing the interventions of non-state actors is to recognize the tipping points and entry points that they (sometimes) create for international intervention on a grander scale. The German company (unnamed in the LA Times piece) has tipped the economic crisis in Zimbabwe into overdrive, generating an impending "implosion" (unless Mugabe can find bank note replacements). If international players do nothing now, they expose Zimbabwe to an even greater humanitarian and political crisis. Indicators (not-so-early warning signs) of deteriorating of inter-group relationships in Zimbabwe include increases in violent crime, vandalism, threats and ethnically motivated attacks.

If international players act now, they can take advantage of this 'opening' to introduce African-led mediation to resolve this crisis. (This May 2008 report by International Crisis Group sheds light on a preventive strategy for Zimbabwe.) Theories of third-party intervention timing focus on identifying these`ripe moments' in the evolution of a conflict when it can be most successfully dealt with by mediation. Mugabe's incentive to enter into mediation may be greater now, faced with impending full-scale economic collapse. Furthermore South Africa's Mbeki, a neccesary main player in these talks (but a close friend of Mugabe), can frame his role as one of 'rescuing' or 'crisis prevention' (helping to offset an even greater humanitarian disaster) rather than coming down on one side or another.

Informal talks between Tsvangirai and Mugabe may already have laid the groundwork for another push at talks over powersharing, since pre-negotiation dialogue sometimes encourages parties to view mediation as a not-so-dangerous alternative.

However two notes of caution regarding powersharing between Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC. First of all, power-sharing arrangements do not neccesarily help to prevent future ethnic conflict; in fact, ethnic conflict is more likely to re-occur in democracies and transitional (semi) democracies than in authoritarian states (as James Melton summarizes). Secondly, mediation over powersharing is no panacea. The actual conditions under which we should expect a powersharing arrangement to successfully manage ethnic conflict in Zimbabwe (see Carnegie Commission on the Prevention of Deadly Conflict) include:

(1) Support for the arrangement by a core group of moderate political leaders
(2) Flexible practices and allowances for equitable distribution of resources
(3) Ownership over the agreement by the indiginous parties themselves, not as a result of excessive external pressures

In other words, the nature of the agreement (not merely coming to agreement) and the process of conducting talks (not merely the talks themselves) are both critically important. The ethical German paper-maker may have 'taken the bucks' from Mugabe and opened the door for broader third party intervention, but we do not yet know if the responsibility will be successfully passed to those who can act on this ripe moment.

Fresh Meat

I am delighted to introduce you to our newest co-blogger, a professor of conflict analysis who will be, for the indefinite future, writing under the pseudonym Empedocles.

Named after the Greek philosopher who synthesized the opposing views of Hermenides and Parmenides on whether change is possible, Empedocles specializes in non-state actors' roles in mediating or fomenting complex conflicts, partiularly those for which social identity (religious, ethnic, and so on) plays a major role.

No doubt Empedocles' musings on conflict prevention and track two diplomacy will be a welcome complement to Cleitus the Black's rants about counterinsurgency and statecraft, and Diodotus' ramblings on international law and global governance. We look forward to many interesting debates.

Please extend her/him a warm welcome!

Turning Against the Dark Side

Next week, Doubleday Press will publish Jane Mayer's The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals. Friday, the Washington Post reported that the book includes citations to a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross' stating that the CIA's treatment of al-Qaida detainees constituted war crimes.

The newsworthiness of this may not seem obvious to anyone who has followed the US' conduct in the "war on terror." But since the involvement of top government officials has long been cast in doubt by the administration, and since the ICRC is the closest thing outside of an international tribunal to an authoritative voice on international humanitarian law, a document with such far-reaching language is of political and legal significance - even if the document was addressed to the US Government, rather than intended for public consumption or legal precedent.

At Crooks and Liars, there is an extensive discussion of this story in the comments which warrants a close look in itself. In particular, several commenters debate the appropriate response of US citizens in such a context. One of my favorite comments:

"yes, i have hit the pavement in protest, and yes, i have written dozens of letters to government officials, but i have continued to pay my taxes and submit to the authority of a criminal government . . . there is no difference between me and the average german citizen during hitler’s rule...this situation calls for civil disobedience on a massive scale . . . anything less is acquiescence. We probably could just stop paying taxes on a massive scale, but like I said before, I doubt we’re coordinated enough. But I will tell you, as a former IRS employee, if even a few million of us stopped paying taxes, it would cause significant havoc and the IRS doesn’t have the resources to come after that many tax protesters. Truth be told, our taxes don’t really go to pay for government anyway, it goes to pay interest on the debt. Our government is bought on credit through the central banks. We stop paying taxes, then interests is no longer paid, then the central banks will refuse to lend more credit by not being able to sell enough treasury debt to foreign countries to make their reserves. Unfortunately, the value of the dollar would plummet to a little better than gravel, but maybe thats the sort of wake up call this country really needs?...On the other hand, like Hitler’s Germany, some dictator demagogue could come along and unify the huddled masses and make the situation even worse than it is now. But that’s the gamble you take when you’re making history…" -Jo

Read the entire forum here.

Supply Chain Mismanagement

The Armchair Generalist makes some interesting points about the predictably failed supply chain for the Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles that is resulting in 20% of these behemoths awaiting repair parts, and hence no longer available to the troops who theoretically need them.

This should come as little surprise, given that in the rush to meet the public demand for MRAPs (commanders in Iraq had demanded them much earlier) the military procurement system contracted with 4 separate vendors to create the machines - and predictably, each vendor used its own unique specifications, meaning that not all MRAPs - or their repair parts - are created equal. Many items will be specific, non-interchangeable; and this will result in a huge future cost to maintain and operate these vehicles.

With that said, 80% readiness is, in fact, about par for the course in the military - in fact, our Marine and Navy aircraft (some of our highest priority weapons systems) are never funded to be more than 80% operational. To put it in simple terms, supposing a squadron has 10 aircraft, and the military-industrial complex is capable of producing all the repair parts needed, the defense budget simply does not allow for the purchase of more than 80% of the requirements; hence, 2 planes are always down.

An anonymous wise man once wrote:

"Logisticians are a sad, embittered race of men, very much in demand in time of war, who sink resentfully into obscurity in peace. They deal only in facts but must work for men who merchant in theory.

Generals are a happily blessed race who radiate confidence and power. In peace they stride confidently and can invade a country simply by sweeping their hands grandly over a map...

In war, they must stride more slowly because each General has a Logistician riding on his back, and he knows that, at any moment, the Logistician may learn forward and whisper, 'No, you can't do that.'

Generals fear Logisticians in war; in peace, Generals try to forget Logisticians."

This is a case where a nation at peace, playing at war, has allowed its Generals to play at being Logisticians, and its Logisticians have failed to say "No." Will this cost billions of dollars in the long run as we attempt to maintain and operate a hodge-podge fleet of specialized vehicles that are ill-suited for conventional combat operations? Indubitably. Does anyone really care? Probably not.

Cosmetic Surgery for the War Powers Act?

The report of the National War Powers Commission, co-chaired by former Secretaries of State Baker and Christopher, has been released. The premise of the report is that America must "describe a constructive and practical way in which the judgment of both the President and Congress can be brought to bear when deciding whether the United States should engage in significant armed conflict."

The report further declares that "...the War Powers Resolution of 1973 does not provide a solution because it is at least in part unconstitutional and in any event has not worked as intended."

Baker and Christopher's solution is a "War Powers Consultation Act", requiring the President to consult with Congress before the country engages in "significant armed conflict", which is defined as combat operations lasting, or expected to last more than one week.

But how well would the proposed act limit the ability of a rogue Administration from waging war without Congressional oversight - from the well-known cases of Iraq and Afghanistan, to the arguably more successful (but nearly unheard of) Operation Enduring Freedom - Philippines that has resulted in 15 American deaths and is bound to elicit comparisons with the early days of U.S. "advisors" in Vietnam.

Certain activities, including the defense of U.S. embassies, are specifically excluded - however, the further exclusion of "covert operations" and "reprisals against terrorist groups" gives some fairly broad loopholes to those who might wish to engage in prolonged combat operations without Congressional scrutiny.

Worth reading in its entirety, and food for thought.

Friday Star Trek Blogging

Is this clip about:

a) torture
b) global inequality
c) the functioning core v. non-integrating gap
d) all of the above?

One of the Best Reasons to Elect Obama

Mark Levine has an op-ed at Al-Jazeera entitled "Obama's Other Muslim Problem" in which he argues:

"As soon as Barack Obama rose to the top of the field of Democratic presidential contenders, he developed a "Muslim problem" based on false accusations that he is, or once was, a Muslim. But... a far more serious Muslim problem awaits "President" Obama: A majority of the world's 1.4 billion Muslims have an utter lack of trust in the US.

Senator Obama's experience of living in a Muslim country (Indonesia, where he attended school during his childhood), along with his relative youthfulness and message of hope, have the potential to heal this rift, however.

He has the merits which can energise young Muslims in the same way he has inspired millions of young Americans."

Worth reading.

Made in China

NYT reports on evidence from the June 17th Senate Armed Services Committee hearings. To wit: training materials for interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo were lifted directly from a 1957 Air Force study of techniques used by China to extract confessions from US prisoners during the Korean War.

"The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities."

Now there's globalization for you.

Senator Carl Levin stated that "every American would be shocked" at the origin of these techniques, but look closely at his reasoning:

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

Apparently, it's not that we imported a morally suspect product from China, it's that the product is defective.