Michael Chertoff, former US Secretary of Homeland Security, recently emphasized that establishing rules of engagement regarding cyberwar should be a top priority. Dealing with the issue of active defenses is an important component of this initiative.

“Preemption” is a loaded word. The right of a nation to act in self-defense against imminent threats is protected by Article 51 of the UN Charter, but cyberspace adds a different dimension to the issue. If the government discovered potentially malicious code on a computer, code that could disable a US power grid, or shut down military command and control centers, preemptive action to destroy the virus would necessitate a delicate hand.

The code could be on another country’s computers, on a civilian’s computer, or within the government network. Eliminating the code could have unintended effects on target computer or computer system, and accessing it might violate the owner’s civil liberties. In order to respond in "real time" to cyber threats, should the United States develop more automated response systems? If this was the case, cyber threats could be countered without a single human involved. Efficient, but scary.

Sanctioning unchecked cyber preemption is a problem. From a government standpoint it means revealing defense capabilities, as well as the priorities about what assets are important to us. At worst, it means taking a first, possibly aggressive action, that could have inadvertent negative effects on targeted systems, or even provoke an enemy to retaliate. On the other hand, if no preemptive action is taken, one could end up with an "embarrassed executive problem." Somewhere in the aftermath of a cyber attack, an official will have to sit in front of Congress and say the equivalent of "Yes, we knew the oil rig had safety issues, but we didn't fix them." And that, as we all know, is frustrating.

Louisa Seferis 
Demagogues and Dictators Central African Analyst      
 
On the 28th of May, the UN Security Council reached an acceptable compromise with the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo for the future of its UN mission in the DRC. Kabila’s government, which had requested a complete withdrawal of UN troops for the 50th anniversary of DRC independence on June 30th, signed off on the following changes:

The resolution authorized the withdrawal of up to 2,000 UN military personnel by 30 June this year from areas where security has improved enough to allow their removal.

 [This, Alan Doss reported in May 2010, will mainly be from Western provinces to avoid troop withdrawal in the “volatile East.”]

The Council decided that MONUSCO shall comprise, in addition to the appropriate civilian, judiciary and correction components, a maximum of 19,815 military personnel, 760 military observers, 391 police personnel and 1,050 personnel of formed police units.(Source: UN Security Council)

MONUSCO, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly MONUC), now has a mandate until June 30, 2011. The new mandate prioritizes stability, as the name suggests, through the promotion of military and non-military solutions as well as the protection of civilians. Kabila would have liked to see MONUC depart this 30th of June, however, in time for his impressive display of development during the 50 years of Congolese independence. The main boulevard became a six lane highway, street lights were switched on with ceremonial fanfare, and the King of Belgium only waited for three hours for the parade to begin. But as one of my Congolese colleagues said to me, “We wait to see if the progress continues to be a reality. This is already better than Mobutu, but you can’t feed yourself on empty promises.”

The big problem with celebrating 50 years of independence and demonstrating development is the presence of severe pockets of violence throughout the DRC.

       
Emily Keane
Kampala, Uganda

In response to Dave Reidy’s post on Nicholas Kristof’s article on conflict minerals in the DRC, I strongly believe that Reidy’s attack is deeply flawed. As I see it, Reidy’s main point is to lambaste Kristof for his uninformed, simple description and solution of a conflict that United States consumers cannot solve.

But I believe Kristof's whole point IS to be sensationalist. Let's remember that he is a columnist in the New York Times, and not Foreign Affairs or any other academic publication. He is not an expert, nor does he pretend to be. What his column does best is bring these important, yet neglected issues to light. And while Reidy is right that Kristof paints a watered down account of the conflict, Kristof has the power and audience to push these grim realities into people's faces. Who else continually writes about the conflict in Congo, sex slavery in Southeast Asia, and the genocide in Sudan on such a regular basis to such a large audience?

Why must we claim that a commitment group of people cannot influence change?! Sure, American consumers are idealistic and have the attention span of a fly, but their power CAN be harnessed! Worldwide pressure against South Africa's policy of apartheid played a role in its banishment. There's are more than enough examples to use here, but just look at Kristof’s first sentence: ''“Blood diamonds” have faded away, but we may now be carrying “blood phones.” Perhaps a bit kitschy, but no one would argue that only years ago the idea of combating conflict diamonds was considered impossible. And look how far we've come on that issue! Do they still exist? Yes. But now a majority of people have the facts and have the ability to make a more ethical decision when buying diamonds. Why is it any different with the natural resources in Congo?

I completely agree with Reidy that the conflict in the Congo and its associated economy is complex. But to scoff at Kristof’s suggestion that a more well-informed public will not change anything is too pessimistic for me. Kristof’s solution will perhaps, at best, only put a small dent in the conflict, but is that not something?

Of course, this will not solve the conflict and only locally stakeholders committed to peace can achieve that. Kristof’s article offers food for thought on what we can do for those affected by this conflict: to be more aware and thoughtful in our choices as consumers.


Emily Keane is a joint-degree student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology focusing on humanitarian logistics

       

Beka Feathers
Demagogues and Dictators Afghanistan Parliamentary Analyst

As the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated over the past two years, the public narrative has increasingly resembled a litany of failure: the central government is full of corrupt warlords who are tied to the drug trade, violate human rights with impunity, and are interested in the idea of governance only insofar as they can profit from it. The Afghan National Police are brutal, biased and uninterested in upholding the rule of law. Corrupt officials are becoming more prevalent than opium poppies. As a result, establishing legitimate government has become critical to success in all other areas of the mission in Afghanistan.

In all the fuss about the failures of the central government, however, a surprising success story is being overlooked. The Afghan National Assembly, the country’s highest representative institution, has begun, quietly, to govern. This is a surprise not only because the parliament has long been the forgotten stepchild of the Bonn Process, but also because Karzai and his international allies have done everything possible to prevent the parliament from becoming a strong check to the presidency.

Afghanistan is one of the most centralized countries in the world, and almost everything leads back to Karzai sooner or later. Consider: In Afghanistan, the President has the power to make the budget, pass decrees, hire governors and police chiefs, even to appoint teachers to local schools. Electoral law makes it almost impossible for political parties to operate by forbidding them to organize along any of the nationally recognized identity lines. The international community has largely supported Karzai’s attempts to further consolidate power in his person. The parliament, meanwhile, has lagged behind other government institutions in funding, resources, and capacity.

But starting this year, the parliament seems to have found its feet. Since January, it has challenged Karzai to appoint qualified ministers instead of warlords and cronies, rejected his attempted takeover of the independent Electoral Complaints Commission (the same body that found a third of his votes fraudulent in the election last fall), and refused to serve as a rubber stamp for decrees. In fact, it's been doing what so many outside observers have said is necessary to keep the government from collapsing entirely: serving as a legitimate, Afghan-led check on Karzai's administration.

Thoughts on the LRA from Louisa Seferis,  
Demagogues and Dictators Sudan Region Analyst

I'd like to point out 2 things:

By: Anonymous

For over eight years, the U.S. has been embattled in a war on terror. Since then, almost 800 detainees have passed through the gates at Guantánamo Bay. On his third day in office, President Obama signed an Executive Order that established a responsible date for closing the detention facilities at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. Three months ago that date passed; but the urgency of closing the facility remains.

Closing Guantánamo would immediately increase the United States’ long-term prospects for safety and security. Our enemies could no longer exploit the camp as a recruiting tool to inspire hatred and violence against our troops and citizens. Some doubt the link between the symbolism of U.S. prisons like Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and terrorism, however, reports from troops in the field suggest otherwise. Major Matthew Alexander, whose team of interrogators obtained the information necessary to locate and capture the head of al Qaeda-in-Iraq, believes that “the reason why foreign fighters joined al-Qa’ida in Iraq was overwhelmingly because of abuses at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, and not Islamic ideology.”

Furthermore, closing Guantánamo will enhance our credibility with our allies throughout the developed world.

Louisa Seferis
Demagogues and Dictators Sudan Analyst

Beginning Sunday April 11, Sudan will hold historic national elections – the first in 24 years. As expected, the buildup to the elections has been fraught with inconsistency, opacity and contention. President Omar al-Bashir’s main political opponents – except for one party – have withdrawn at all levels because of fraud. Only minor opposition parties remain in the presidential, parliamentary, and state polls in the northern areas. (South Sudan will have its own regional voting structure, making these polls extremely complicated.) What’s worse, EU election monitors in Darfur left due to insecurity, proclaiming they had never been treated so badly. Indeed, Bashir doesn’t seem to want to make friends: the BBC quoted him as saying that if the observers intervened in Sudan's affairs, "we will cut off their fingers and crush them under our shoes."

While discouraging, it’s not clear if the EU monitors’ departure from Darfur will have an impact. Most of Darfur’s nearly 2.7 million internally displaced people were not registered due to insecurity or remoteness; even if they were, it is unclear if they would vote at all. The SPLM candidate, Yassir Arman, announced on Wednesday that he was pulling out of the election. He cited a “lack of preparedness” in Darfur as one of the reasons for his withdrawal, explaining in an interview with the BBC "the people of Darfur in the internally displaced people's camps asked the SPLM not to be involved in the election.” Darfur’s IDPs know their votes will not be counted properly, regardless of an international monitoring presence.

This is actually old news. As Reuters reported Friday, “Sudanese activists say the irregularities began with a flawed 2008 census, demarcating electoral constituencies and fraudulent voter registration.” A lovely example of this is when more than 1,900 security force members were registered to vote at a tiny police post in Khartoum where only five policemen were officially stationed. Sudanese civil society organizations continue to report outrageous situations like this one, but they fall on national and international deaf ears.

Simply put, Bashir refuses to delay the elections so he can check them off his list and use the event as political leverage later. It is difficult to accuse a sitting head of state of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court if he wins “democratic” elections, no matter how fraudulent.

And these elections will go through. The polls are already underway, and although the U.S. and others (EU, UN) have expressed dismay at Bashir’s unwillingness to postpone the elections, the stakes are not high enough for them to interfere – if Afghanistan’s elections took place, so will these. The world is more interested in the referendum for South Sudan’s independence than anything else, and Bashir is dangling this in front of the international community. The BBC reports...

    
By: Elise Crane

This week’s subway bombings in Moscow sharply displayed the consequences of ignoring the complexities of conflict. Last April, the Kremlin declared the war in Chechnya officially over and formally ended its counterterrorism campaign in the republic. However, death squads continue to flourish, Ramzan Kadyrov is hardly a competent—nor uncorrupt—leader and, as Monday’s tragedy so glaringly demonstrated, the conflict is far from over.

Moscow’s continued refusal to address the root causes of the Chechen separatist drive virtually ensures that the violence will continue. Although the Chechen movement took an admittedly virulent turn with the injection of radical Islam in the mid-1990s, at its heart, it is fueled by historical grievance and unaddressed trauma.

Due largely to Vladimir Putin’s stranglehold on Russian media, emblematized by Anna Politkovskaya’s untimely death (which was, ironically, blamed on Chechen terrorists, but the likely culprit presents a much more chilling picture), the Russo-Chechen conflict has been broadly portrayed as a classic “good versus evil” story. This is a dangerous simplification and neglects crucial historical facts that must be acknowledged if we hope to end the devastating conflict.

Twenty years ago, in the post-communist ideological vacuum, Chechens saw an opportunity to attain independence after a legacy of brutal Russian domination. What began as a separatist movement became, with the import of radical Islam as a mobilizing factor, part of the global “war on terror.” This allows Russia to present its atrocities in Chechnya as a legitimate response to the plague of Islamic fundamentalism.

For Chechens, Islam injects a degree of global community and financial support in their quest for independence. Radical Islam places the separatist cause under the aegis of virulent Arab jihadists alien to the Chechen historical experience.

By: Maren Christensen

The central concern for the future of Afghanistan, and thereby the future of our operations there, is whether the Afghan government can emerge as legitimate. Such legitimacy is critically important because the insurgents cannot be defeated by firepower alone; removing popular support is the only definitive way to ensure the death of the movement. The Obama administration pays much lip service to the administration of justice and promotion of rule of law as essential elements of legitimacy, but in Afghanistan, the bark doesn’t seem to have any bite.

First, the bad news. Afghanistan has never had successful centralized state authority, meaning that there is very little if any history of rule of law at the national level. In fact, attempts to centralize state authority in law and the administration of justice have historically been met with firm resistance and rebellion by traditional leaders, who represent a blend of tribal and Islamic viewpoints. These leaders are the custodians of popular legitimacy for their communities. Perhaps international actors thought their views were backward and therefore irrelevant, or maybe they thought them to have somehow been a part of the problems with Islam behind 9/11 (God forbid such a series of dark assumptions), but we didn’t solicit their voices when we put together a new legal system for the country. As a result, popular perceptions of the state justice system deem it to be corrupt, ineffective, and foreign. This does more than just make it hard to establish a standard national legal system. I would go so far as to say that we’re contributing to the insurgency’s popular support base by treating rule of law as something that is imposed, not as something that begins at a very local level.

Now the good news: there’s room to bridge this gap, as long as internationals encourage and facilitate genuine cooperation, as opposed to papering over decades of resentment and distrust with mere coordinating mechanisms. Just as the broader COIN strategy focuses on direct engagement with and protection of civilians, one locality at a time, building rule of law from the bottom-up means direct engagement that is community-specific: bringing together traditional leaders, local state justice officials, and progressive stakeholders such as women’s rights advocates to come to a better understanding of each other’s intentions, priorities, practices and values. This kind of dialogue would build consensus on an arrangement that covers all bases in the administration of justice between the courts and informal jirgas or shuras. There are cutting edge examples of such efforts being piloted with a significant level of success, particularly through the U.S. Institute of Peace.

   
By: David Schoeller-Diaz

Over 10,000 phone messages reportedly arrived at the Colombian Presidential Palace within 24 hours of the long awaited Constitutional Court ruling, which barred President Uribe from seeking a second reelection by a 7-2 vote. Coming from the Press Chief we can accept the figure as embellished, but nonetheless points to the strong emotions involved.

As the ‘Uribe Era’ comes to a close, less than 150 days of uncertainty remain before the new path of the country is forged. One thing, however, is clear. Colombian democracy is stronger today, illuminating institutional autonomy in a region long dominated by populist “caudillos” and military dictators. A third presidential term would have most certainly led to further concentration of power in the executive branch, and more precisely, in the hands of a single dominant figure, threatening the long-term institutional capacity to tackle the evolving threats facing the nation.

For long, Colombia has had a paradoxical democracy, simultaneously one of the most resilient in Latin America with a rare history of virtually uninterrupted elections, and fraught with chronic political violence for over 50 years. While a democratic tradition solidified early on, the state never acquired the heavy-handed measures of most countries in the region to enforce their authority and provide necessary social services throughout the territory. In other words, while Colombia has been truly privileged to circumvent the grueling struggle towards democracy, effective nation building never reached far beyond the major cities allowing illicit activity to flourish. The tough terrain and decentralized character of Colombia make it extremely difficult for a non-state army to existentially threaten the government, and for the government to patrol its frontier lands against insurgents, paramilitaries, or drug trafficking.

Álvaro Uribe, the Harvard and Oxford-educated Governor of Antioquia, was elected at a time when most Colombians were saying “No Más”, following two highly ineffective Presidents.

By Anonymous

"This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are."
–President Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 27, 2010.

The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal.” That Jefferson and the rest of the 2nd Continental Congress found this truth to be “self-evident” implies that certain truths supersede our societal constructions. The laws of the United States slowly creep closer toward an accurate portrayal this notion of equality. Despite the 14th, 19th, and 24th Amendments to the Constitution, more additional reform is required.

Repealing DADT won’t correct the entirety of wrongs that the U.S. Government actively engages in against homosexuals, but this particular measure is achievable, despite the intractability of the Senate. Representatives of both the military and civilian wings of the Department of Defense support the repeal. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen testified to this effect before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. Subsequently, the political calculus in the Senate indicates a successful repeal is possible within the year. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), though hypocritical of late, previously indicated that he would support a DADT policy endorsed by military leadership. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) indicated that he supports the underlying moral issue of the repeal last week, and newly-elected Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) stated during his campaign that he would consider a repeal endorsed by soldiers “in the field.”

In our never-ending quest to bring you the very best content, we have decided to publish an occasional guest post from an esteemed colleague.  Some of our colleagues will remain anonymous, due to their job or other concerns, while others will identify themselves.  Regardless, we hope you will enjoy our expanded coverage.