Diplomacy & Crisis News

The head of United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) called today on the international community to continue supporting Syrian refugees displaced in neighboring countries, appealing to the world “not to forget” the crisis and to provide the agency the means to meet their needs.

It's time to end the Iraq surge revisionism.

Yes, some of the potential $150 billion windfall coming to Tehran will help support Assad. But it isn’t quite as dangerous as opponents of the deal are making it out to be.

Secretary of State John Kerry is frustrated and angry about the high-profile leaks coming out of Foggy Bottom, and is hammering his staff to stop. It’s not working out so well.

Photo Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Evil But Stupid
The Editors
n+1

A couple of months ago, the London Review of Books published a 10,000 word piece questioning the White House’s narrative regarding the death of Osama bin Laden. The story, written by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, resulted in a sea of backlash, much of which was aimed at Hersh on a personal level. The media has charged Hersh with being too paranoid. But, as n+1 asks, why isn’t the media more paranoid?

My Grandfather’s Imposter
By James McGirk
Roads and Kingdoms

To join the Explorer Club in New York, you have to do something extraordinary, to make your own adventures — by land, by sea or by air. Or, as was the case with James McGirk’s grandfather, you could loan your stories out to a friend. In this piece, McGirk delves into his grandfather’s history and grapples with the question — are our experiences, our stories really ours to give away?

The Nation-State: Not Dead Yet
By Alasdair Roberts
The Wilson Quarterly

Pundits and academics have claimed many things have supposedly come to an “end” in the past two decades or so. From history to capitalism, most have had experienced a revival shortly thereafter. In this piece, Roberts looks into what caused the obsession with the “death” of the nation-state, and why those predictions were premature.

ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape
By Rukmini Callimachi
The New York Times

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) introduction to systematic sexual slavery began in 2014. Ever since, the group has (ab)used the Quran to justify its horrific human rights abuses and enshrine a “theology of rape.” Callimachi investigates the group’s history with sexual slavery, its practices and the twisted logic behind it.

Hellbent, But Not Broken
By Eva Holland
SB Nation

Holland tells the story of her experience with the Yukon River Quest, which at 445 miles, is the world’s longest canoe and kayak race. It’s as much a battle against nature as it’s a battle of wills.

Blogs:

Kyrgyzstan’s Eastward Slide by Mark Varga
Somalia, No Political Legitimacy without Genuine Reconciliation by Abukar Arman
Kenya’s Catholic Leadership Takes on the WHO by Hannah Gais
A Challenging August for Dilma by Gary Sands
Obama’s Foreign Policy “Bully Pulpit” by Michael Crowley

Major equity markets are a sea of red in the wake of China's falling renminbi.

The acting head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq has strongly condemned today’s truck bomb attack on a market in east Baghdad, which initial reports say killed at least 45 people and for which the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has claimed responsibility.

The deadly Ebola outbreak which ravaged West Africa for more than a year has demonstrated the increasing importance of emergency preparedness both in Africa and across the world, said two senior United Nations health officials who noted that if the current intense focus on case detection and contact tracing is maintained, the virus could be “soundly defeated” by year’s end.

Swedish prosecutors dropped two charges because the statute of limitations ran out.

Responding to the recurring food shortages created by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has begun cash distributions to some 60,000 people – mostly internally displaced – in Government-controlled areas of the Lugansk and Donetsk region.

The United Nations relief arm has launched a call for millions of people around the world to drastically change their social media feeds and share captivating tale of humanitarian heroism ahead of this year&#39s World Humanitarian Day.

The latest round of the United Nations-facilitated Libyan political dialogue has concluded in Geneva, with the different parties emphasizing the need to set aside partisan agendas and uphold the country’s higher national interests.

A new study carried out by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has revealed that the infant mortality rate in the Gaza Strip has risen for the first time in 50 years, with the agency’s health director citing the ongoing blockade as possibly contributing to the trend.

As the old saying goes, the more things change, the more they remain the same. Somalia seems ahead of the curve as the debate over how to ensure a legitimate outcome in the upcoming August 2016 election is already underway. Still, the fact that the whole debate on political legitimacy within the country is limited to the upcoming election in and of itself indicates that little has changed.

The Somali state did not disintegrate because of elections or lack thereof. It disintegrated because of institutional injustice and the chronic meddling of foreign powers. That is why the state imploded and over million people died. It’s also how clan-based balkanization or “federalism” has come to destroy an already ailing state by keeping it in a state of perpetual dependency and subjugation.

Make no mistake, the most serious existential threat facing the Somali nation is the status quo.

Any time that the peripheries resort to entering into international relationships that  first and foremost serve the interests of the elite, haphazardly signing agreements with foreign countries, and building clan militaries, they make the recovery of the state an increasingly impossible task.

What’s on First?

In broken nations, all political issues of contention must be renegotiated and reconciled before the nation can be pieced back together and the healing process can be set in motion. Through such process, trust is cultivated and sustainable peace is achieved. However, the process must be both genuine and indigenous.

Failing to recognize these fundamentals or haphazardly rushing into a power-sharing arrangement only exacerbates the problem. Somalia has a quarter-century-long experiment to prove that. Placing the Somali political dilemma within the fallacious framework that election is a panacea undermines the direly needed debate on justice, reconciliation, and breaking the shackles of foreign dependency.

What Might be a Viable Alternative?

Under the current system, where foreign political actors, particularly from Ethiopia and Kenya, dominate the process, genuine reconciliation is a pipedream. Total transformation of the current system that perpetuates status quo is an imperative. After all, it is not only the Somali state that failed; the international community and those who have squandered Somalia’s resources have allowed the state to fail.

The system at hand has sustained itself by periodically reinventing itself. On the domestic end, by partnering with “leaders” who possess relentless appetites to hoard executive power, the state has locked an entire branch of the government in “on-the-job-training” by annually changing prime ministers and their cabinets.

Regionally, the system has sustained itself by partnering with states — such as Ethiopia and Kenya, who are legally in Somalia as part of AMISOM — bent on implementing their own thinly disguised zero-sum schemes to co-opt Somali political actors in order to expand their spheres of influence. Internationally, the system has allowed the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) to replace the stained United Nations Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS). This change did little to prevent Somalia from being trapped in a perpetual transition. Decisions are dictated; lucrative security projects are sustained; corruption and economic exploitation are facilitated; and shadowy characters are allowed to maintain backdoor entries to keep the cash flowing. The abuses and financial costs placed on the Somali state by the international community and its regional partners far outweigh their benefits.

As I have argued before, it is time to cut this umbilical cord of dependency. It is time to focus on bilateral strategic partnerships in which parties could hold each other accountable. The benefits are self-evident, as practically all foreign financed successful development projects in Somalia are the byproducts of nation-to-nation relationships.

Misplaced Focus, Erroneous Outcome

A few individuals have recently proposed a couple election-focused alternatives. The most prominent of said proposals argues, in essence, that political legitimacy requires sidelining the federal parliament, empowering regional actors and their clan exclusive parliaments, while arbitrarily keeping political parties with any Islamic identity at bay. This proposal, needless to say, considers reconciliation before power-sharing as irrelevant, the Somaliland issue as an independent problem, and constitutional reform as a priority over reconciliation.

While these may satisfy certain domestic and foreign actors and special interests groups who may see benefit in another four years of transition, they by no means ensure legitimacy.

By contrast, Gurmad Movement underscores the importance of reclaiming Somalia’s right to independently shape its political future and craft its own strategy to pull the nation out of its current subservient dilemma. Real legitimacy, according to Gurmad, could only be attained through a Somali-led process that is negotiated in the interest of the collective good, not by drive-thru legitimization process that may or may not be motivated to maintain the status quo.

All proposals agree that an election of some sort will be necessary in August 2016. According to Gurmad’s proposal at least, the current federal parliament should be given a conditional two-year extension, at which point the parliament would have to complete, among other things, the establishment of the Constitutional Court and National Reconciliation Commission, and elect an interim president for that duration.

The election process must be open to ensure fair participation of any and all candidates who possess fresh ideas to salvage this dying nation.

No More Scotch Tape Solutions

Despite the façade of sustainable recovery, beneath the veneer of Mogadishu’s rapid development is societal erosion rooted in an innate hopelessness perpetuated by lack of genuine reconciliation.

Against that backdrop, the need for indigenous discourse and a process to repair this broken nation and inspire its demoralized and beaten psyche is a dire priority. But you would not know that from the actions of the current political actors, domestic and foreign. That is why Somalia is caught in that stubborn Sisyphus effect, where we as a nation periodically roll the bolder of peace to the top of the hill, only to helplessly watch it roll back to the bottom.

One of the most prevalent fallacies that prolonged the status quo of distrust, division and sporadic hostilities in Somalia is the erroneous claim that the multifaceted Somali political conundrum could be solved by holding an election.

Herded Leadership

The many shepherds herding Somali leadership has been one of the corrosive phenomena that facilitated the systematic destruction of the Somali nation. The current government is just one example. There is the irrefutable failure of its political strategy, its failure to pay its soldiers for over six months, which has caused insecurity to exacerbate, and its reputation as the poster child of corruption. It certainly occupies a infamous and unique space in history.

Granted, the herded leadership — both in the center and the peripheries — as well as those within the civil society who are direct beneficiaries of the current arrangement, may attempt to torpedo any transformative effort that threatens the status quo. Neither of these entities have the necessary public support withstand any type of resistance.

At this do-or-die moment, Somalia needs more than random political belches from its so-called leaders. Granted, at all times, leaders ought to be judged, not by what they promise, but by what they deliver. It needs leaders who would govern ethically and justly, who would lead the nation in the best interest of Somalia and its people.

Difficult as it may seem, history attests to the fact that when the human will is driven by good intention and a willingness to compromise for peace, it can beat all odds and overcome all obstacles. Failure is not a permanent status unless those who experience it opt to make it so!

It goes without saying: The Somali people desperately need transformational leaders whose vision, strategy, courage and willingness to sacrifice for the common good will help prevent the nation from self-destructing.

A Necessary Foundation

Reconciliation is the foundation that is yet to be built for sustainable peace to materialize. Somalia is a broken nation that is handicapped by a generation long bloodshed and trauma.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom of Somalia’s political elite and power brokers, reconciliation is not made up of powwows, artificial communiques, and photo opportunities in banquet halls. Rather, it is a deliberate and a systematic process driven by a comprehensive strategic plan fully understood and implemented by the Somali people.

Reconciliation is necessary as it deflates the hateful narrative that sustains inter-clan distrust and enmity. It opens a new page for negotiating the terms of a social contract that will allow for co-existence. It enables the center and the peripheries to recognize their interdependence. It plays a significant role in teaching future generations that impunity and the habit of sweeping problems under rugs only makes matters worse. It sets in motion a genuine process of repairing our broken nation.

Finally, reconciliation is a critical post-conflict element necessary for healing and trust-building; it is a noble objective and a process that takes time. Neither its pace nor its broad impact could be rushed for political expedience.

The international community must step up its funding of relief efforts in Yemen and help in delivering critical aid to civilians amid the country&#39s protracted civil conflict, the top United Nations humanitarian official has declared.

The United Nations Security Council today called on all of Guinea-Bissau’s political leadership to resume dialogue in order to work together in the governance of the country as it emerges from previous periods of instability.

(Own report) - Germany is significantly responsible for helping create the conditions causing tens of thousands to flee from Kosovo. This has been confirmed by an analysis of the development that seceded territory has taken since NATO's 1999 aggression, in which Germany had played a leading role. Prominent German politicians have also played leading roles in establishing Kosovo's subsequent occupation, helping to put the commanders and combatants of the mafia-type Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) militia into power in Priština. They created social conditions that have drawn sharp internationally criticism. In 2012, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) reported that organized crime continues at "high levels" in Kosovo. The Council of Europe even discerns some of the highest-ranking politicians, including a long-standing prime minister, as being members of the Mafia. Poverty is rampant. After 16 years of NATO and EU occupation, around one-sixth of the children suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition. Germany has played an important role in organizing the occupation. If it were not for cash transfers refugees send home, many Kosovo families would not be able to survive. In the first semester of 2015 alone, more than 28,600 found themselves forced to apply for refugee status in Germany - with little chance of success. Berlin is now seeking more rapid ways for their deportation.

The military tide has turned against Huthi fighters in Yemen. Emboldened by recent gains, the Saudi-led coalition has started to push into the centre of the country from Aden, the southern port city taken in mid-July, and may even attempt to capture the capital, Sanaa, further north. To avoid a new and potentially more deadly phase of conflict, the Huthis should honour the concessions they made through UN mediation efforts in Muscat on 8-9 August, including among others a militia withdrawal from cities in accordance with Security Council Resolution 2216 (14 April). In turn, their opponents should accept a compromise that produces an immediate ceasefire, negotiations over the details of an orderly withdrawal of militias from cities and a return to a Yemeni political process to settle outstanding questions.

Disintegrating states and societies, decades of misrule, deepening sectarian polarization, dissolving borders, proliferating non-state actors, expanding civil wars, and a set of near-catastrophic humanitarian crises: The dynamics tearing up the Middle East and North Africa are terrifying enough.

Photo Credit: U.S. Army Africa

Skepticism over vaccines isn’t just an American problem anymore.

As Africa celebrates one year of being polio free, renewed controversy over the polio vaccination efforts in Kenya may threaten to push back that milestone.

Last week, the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops announced its intention to boycott the World Health Organization’s (WHO) polio vaccination campaign until authorities verify the vaccine will have no sterilization effects. Those skeptical of the vaccine’s effect on fertility claim it may be laced with sterilizing elements — namely beta human chorionic gonadotropin (beta-hCG), a chemical produced during pregnancy that is claimed to be used to sterilize women — and demanded the drug be tested independently.

The Catholic Church in Kenya’s skepticism of vaccines is nothing new. In 1995, the WHO proposed a similar campaign to vaccinate against tetanus. Kenya’s Catholic bishops protested, citing concerns over the presence of beta-hCG, and the WHO gave up on the campaign.

Nearly two decades later, the debate over the WHO and UNICEF’s joint vaccine program came to the fore yet again. The program sought to inoculate newborns against a severe form of tetanus by targeting women of reproductive age (15–49). In a statement released in November 2014, the Catholic Health Commission of Kenya and the Kenya Conference of Catholic bishops asserted they now have proof these vaccinations contained beta-hCG.

Public health officials have responded to these accusations by raising two points. Even if beta-hCG is there in trace amounts — which it shouldn’t be — the bishop’s own report has found it’s not at levels high enough to cause permanent damage a woman’s reproductive health. As James Elder, a spokesman for UNICEF, told the Washington Post in November 2014, its presence would be a result of “extremely rare contamination,” not some secret depopulation program.

Alternatively, these tests could have come up with a false positive. In a 1995 article detailing the tetanus vaccine controversy, the authors noted that the testing mechanisms being used by hospital laboratories were insufficient. Many used pregnancy tests, which do test for hCG in women but are inappropriate for testing a vaccine. The combination of certain chemicals in the tetanus vaccine make it highly likely these results were simply false positives.

The recent controversy over the polio vaccine, then, is just an extension of a much longer debate between large multi-national organizations and national authorities. The Kenyan bishops’ skepticism, at its core, isn’t an issue with Catholic writ large.

Today, what debate there is in the church at the institutional level is over whether it is or is not moral to vaccinate one’s self or one’s family with vaccines consisting of stem cells. Even here, church officials note, “the burden of this important battle cannot and must not fall on innocent children and on the health situation of the population — especially with regard to pregnant women.” In the case of Kenya, the burden the bishops are asking their parishioners to take falls squarely on that demographic.

Indeed, the Kenyan church’s position points more to concerns over the activities of these large, seemingly opaque multinational institutions, such as the WHO and UNICEF. The church’s boycott may be misguided and misinformed, but their actions seem to be rooted in a desire for more transparency and better protection of the country’s citizens. Given the country’s recent struggles with corruption and security, it’s easy to see where those broader concerns may be coming from. Still, whatever the deeper reasons for their objections, keeping a new generation of Kenyans polio-free is definitely in the church’s best interests.