The Weak Foundations of Arab Democracy

By Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke and the author of The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 29/05/11):

The protesters who have toppled or endangered Arab dictators are demanding more freedoms, fair elections and a crackdown on corruption. But they have not promoted a distinct ideology, let alone a coherent one. This is because private organizations have played only a peripheral role and the demonstrations have lacked leaders of stature.

Both limitations are due to the longstanding dearth, across the Arab world, of autonomous nongovernmental associations serving as intermediaries between the individual and the state. This chronic weakness of civil society suggests that viable Arab democracies — or leaders who could govern them — will not emerge anytime soon. The more likely immediate outcome of the current turmoil is a new set of dictators or single-party regimes.

Democracy requires checks and balances, and it is largely through civil society that citizens protect their rights as individuals, force policy makers to accommodate their interests, and limit abuses of state authority. Civil society also promotes a culture of bargaining and gives future leaders the skills to articulate ideas, form coalitions and govern.

The preconditions for democracy are lacking in the Arab world partly because Hosni Mubarak and other Arab dictators spent the past half-century emasculating the news media, suppressing intellectual inquiry, restricting artistic expression, banning political parties, and co-opting regional, ethnic and religious organizations to silence dissenting voices.

But the handicaps of Arab civil society also have historical causes that transcend the policies of modern rulers. Until the establishment of colonial regimes in the late 19th century, Arab societies were ruled under Shariah law, which essentially precludes autonomous and self-governing private organizations. Thus, while Western Europe was making its tortuous transition from arbitrary rule by monarchs to democratic rule of law, the Middle East retained authoritarian political structures. Such a political environment prevented democratic institutions from taking root and ultimately facilitated the rise of modern Arab dictatorships.

Strikingly, Shariah lacks the concept of the corporation, a perpetual and self-governing organization that can be used either for profit-making purposes or to provide social services. Islam’s alternative to the nonprofit corporation was the waqf, a trust established in accordance with Shariah to deliver specified services forever, through trustees bound by essentially fixed instructions. Until modern times, schools, charities and places of worship, all organized as corporations in Western Europe, were set up as waqfs in the Middle East.

A corporation can adjust to changing conditions and participate in politics. A waqf can do neither. Thus, in premodern Europe, politically vocal churches, universities, professional associations and municipalities provided counterweights to monarchs. In the Middle East, apolitical waqfs did not foster social movements or ideologies.

Starting in the mid-19th century, the Middle East imported the concept of the corporation from Europe. In stages, self-governing Arab municipalities, professional associations, cultural groups and charities assumed the social functions of waqfs. Still, Arab civil society remains shallow by world standards.

A telling indication is that in their interactions with private or public organizations, citizens of Arab states are more likely than those in advanced democracies to rely on personal relationships with employees or representatives. This pattern is reflected in corruption statistics of Transparency International, which show that in Arab countries relationships with government agencies are much more likely to be viewed as personal business deals. A historically rooted preference for personal interactions limits the significance of organizations, which helps to explain why nongovernmental organizations have played only muted roles in the Arab uprisings.

A less powerful business sector also hindered democracy. The Middle East reached the industrial era with an atomistic private sector unequipped to compete with giant enterprises that had come to dominate the global economy. Until then, Arab businesses consisted exclusively of small, short-lived enterprises established under Islamic partnership law. This was a byproduct of Islam’s egalitarian inheritance system, which aimed to spread wealth. Successful enterprises were typically dissolved when a partner died, and to avoid the consequent losses Arab businessmen kept their enterprises both small and transitory.

Arab businesses had less political clout than their counterparts in Western Europe, where huge, established companies contributed to civil society directly as a political force against arbitrary government. They also did so indirectly by supporting social causes. For example, during industrialization, major European businesses financed political campaigns, including the mass education and antislavery movements.

Since the late 19th century, commercial codes transplanted from abroad have enabled Arabs to form large, durable enterprises like major banks, telecommunications giants and retail chains. Still, Arab companies tend to be smaller relative to global norms, which limits their power vis-à-vis the state. Although large Western corporations have been known to suppress political competition and restrict individual rights, in Arab countries it is the paucity of large private companies that poses the greater obstacle to democracy.

Despite these handicaps, there is some cause for optimism when it comes to democratization in the Middle East. The Arab world does not have to start from scratch. A panoply of private organizations are already present, though mainly in embryonic form. And if the current turmoil produces regimes more tolerant of grassroots politics and diversity of opinion, more associations able to defend individual freedoms will surely arise.

Moreover, the cornerstones of a modern economy are in place and widely accepted. Economic features at odds with Shariah, like banks and corporations, were adopted sufficiently long ago to become part of local culture. Their usefulness makes them appealing even to Islamists who find fault with other features of modernity.

Over the last 150 years, the Arab world has achieved structural economic transformations that took Europe a millennium. Its economic progress, whatever the shortcomings, has been remarkable. If political progress has lagged, this is partly because forming strong nongovernmental organizations takes time. Within a generation or two, as the economic transformations of the past century-and-a-half continue to change the way citizens interact with organizations, insurmountable pressure for democracy may yet arise even in those corners of the Arab world where civil society is weakest.

A stronger civil society alone will not bring about democracy. After all, private organizations can promote illiberal and despotic agendas, as Islamist organizations that denounce political pluralism and personal freedoms demonstrate. But without a strong civil society, dictators will never yield power, except in the face of foreign intervention.

Independent and well-financed private organizations are thus essential to the success of democratic transitions. They are also critical to maintaining democracies, once they have emerged. Indeed, without strong private players willing and able to resist undemocratic forces, nascent Arab democracies could easily slip back into authoritarianism.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

Don’t let European politicians run the IMF

By Dalibor Rohac, a fellow at the Legatum Institute in London (THE WASHINGTON TIMES, 27/05/11):

After announcing her candidacy, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde immediately emerged as the front-runner in the race for the presidency of the International Monetary Fund. France, the United Kingdom and Germany all support her, while the emerging economies that oppose her candidacy – such as Brazil, India and Mexico – are unlikely to coalesce behind Agustin Carstens, governor of Mexico’s central bank.

While Ms. Lagarde’s victory might be applauded by European Union political elites, it is far from clear that having a French head of the IMF is desirable in the midst of the present crisis on the eurozone’s periphery. For one, a European politician is likely to have a deep vested interest in furthering the European integration project, possibly at the expense of the IMF’s shareholders – of which the U.S. government remains the biggest one – and at a great cost to Europe’s struggling economies.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn has played a disastrous role by extending a joint IMF-EU rescue package to Greece and subjecting that country to an austerity program that is not working, given the absence of devaluation or serious reforms aimed at restoring Greece’s competitiveness. After Greece ran a budget deficit of almost 11 percent of gross domestic product last year, the most optimistic of estimates predict that its economy will shrink by at least 3 percent this year, further increasing the size of its debt relative to the economy. At the same time, Greek tax revenues are in free fall and there are no signs that the country will be able to consolidate its public finance anytime soon.

The problem of the eurozone’s periphery is one of solvency, not liquidity. As such, it cannot be solved simply by piling up more debt on top of the existing loans and expecting Greek or Portuguese public spending to shrink by unreasonable amounts within a short time.

Those eurozone economies on unsustainable fiscal paths must be allowed to restructure their debts and restore their competitiveness, both via structural reforms and through currency depreciation. However, that would require recognizing that the euro was a flawed project from the start.

Clearly, European leaders, for whom more integration and an “ever-closer Europe” represent the answer to all of Europe’s ills, are not willing to make such a concession. Irish politicians, for instance, have been so unscrupulous as to impose a new levy on Irish citizens’ pension savings in order to boost public revenue rather than give in.

Since entering French politics in 2005, Ms. Lagarde has had an impressive career, holding the posts of minister of trade, minister of agriculture and currently minister of economic affairs, finance, industry and employment. Becoming the first appointed female head of the IMF in history would be a natural move in her career, boosting her chances of holding further high-level positions both within the EU’s governing structures and in France.

However, she will not want to become the IMF head who oversees the unraveling of the eurozone and the default of Greece, Portugal or Spain. She almost certainly will be a staunch advocate of further aid packages aimed at keeping the periphery afloat. This will not benefit Europeans as a whole – and certainly not the Greeks, the Portuguese and the Spaniards, who are needlessly enduring a painful fiscal contraction without being able to regain their competitiveness through an exchange-rate adjustment.

The IMF needs a president who will be able to distance the organization from the vanity of European leaders who have invested lots of political capital into the project of the EU’s common currency. Turning off the IMF’s tap to Europe’s periphery, instead of fueling what is an unsustainable fiscal and monetary arrangement, requires courage and a detachment from Brussels’ groupthink and from the world of EU summits. In this sense, it is obvious that Ms. Lagarde is not the right person for the job.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

Serbs do welcome Ratko Mladić arrest

By Jelena Obradovic-Wochink, a lecturer in politics and international relations at Aston University (THE GUARDIAN, 27/05/11):

According to the popular interpretation of recent events, most Serbs think of Ratko Mladić as a war hero, and do not believe that the Srebrenica massacre happened. Or do they?

For many years, the whole of Serbia has fallen into the trap of being defined by the deficiencies of its leaders. This has especially been the case with war crimes: analysts, academics and journalists have often assumed that Serbia as a whole is failing to confront its past and is in denial of the atrocities committed.

In fact, many Serbs have welcomed the arrest because they believe (and have done for a long time) that Mladić is responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre. Those who support Mladić enough to protest against his arrest are in a minority. For a lot of people, Mladić has come to be a burden and a symbol of a very dark past and the main obstacle to future progress.

At the same time, his arrest was received with a lot of cynicism – very few people in Serbia actually believe that this will bring about any real change in the country. For most of them, the Mladić arrest has been a media spectacle, but their own stance towards the arrest has been one of indifference because the majority of people in Serbia today are simply too preoccupied with the most basic existential concerns – poverty and unemployment are acute problems here.

This is not to say that they are indifferent towards the victims and atrocities: these matters are deeply disturbing to many people in Serbia. But dealing with the past is much more complicated than the arrest of one man.

What complicates matters is that, while large numbers of people do think of Mladić as a war criminal, they do not believe he should be tried at the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, and certainly that he should not be transferred for the sake of EU membership. In Serbia, this has for a long time been interpreted as a kind of blackmail and has often been met with resentment and perceived bias on the part of international justice: why, people ask, are we required to hand over our war crimes suspects, but “others” are not?

People will often point to former wartime leaders such as Bosnian Naser Orić or Kosovan Albanian Hasim Thaçi, whom they believe to have both escaped justice. Two processes are at play here: the perception that crimes committed against the Serbs have gone unrecognised and unpunished, while at the same time, people are still shocked and troubled that massacres such as Srebrenica have been committed.

Perhaps, yet again, this incident has illustrated that, while legislative processes requiring someone indicted for war crimes to appear in court may be relatively straightforward, the process which societies of the Balkans need to engage in to talk about the atrocities of the past is messy, emotionally difficult and tinged with unacknowledged resentments on all sides.

Thankfully, the civil society in the western Balkans understands this. In response to politicisation of the war crimes debate, some 1,500 regional non-governmental organisations have started an initiative for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission. Perhaps the responses to the Mladić arrest will remind us of the urgent need to bring people from the Balkans together in this way.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

Dancing with a dictator in Sudan

By George Clooney, an actor, and John Prendergast, a co-founder of the Enough Project, launched the Satellite Sentinel Project to deter atrocities in Sudan (THE WASHINGTON POST, 28/05/11):

As far as the eye could see, thousands of displaced people were scattered, accompanied by what little they had left in the world. This surreal vista, which we saw visiting Abyei in January, had no shelters but had big beds and suitcases and dresser drawers sitting in the open or under trees. After years of displacement, thanks to the north-south war that raged in Sudan from 1983 to 2005, thousands of Sudanese had begun the long journey home. They hoped to vote that month in the referendum on southern independence.

But they never voted, because the government in Khartoum wouldn’t allow the plebescite to take place in Abyei, and they never resettled, because they had no support to return after so long. So thousands hunkered down in this Connecticut-size region between North and South Sudan, two historically separate territories that were lumped together at independence in 1956 and whose racial and religious divides have chafed since. Last week the long history of tensions ignited when Khartoum sent its army and allied militias to forcibly occupy the area. The regime engaged in aerial bombing, tank and artillery attacks. Its militias looted and burned villages.

The refugees are scattered, their dreams of returning to their ancestral homelands potentially lost forever.

The balanced international response — pressing both sides for compromise — would be understandable if this were a first in Sudan. But the main town of Abyei was burned and looted by government troops and allied militias in 2008 as well.

Maybe the usual balanced response would be understandable if this happened only in Abyei. But the list of dishonored agreements and massive human rights crimes in Sudan is shocking in scope. In Darfur, the Khartoum regime has cleared millions from their lands, allowing ethnic groups allied with the government to move into the deserted areas. In the oilfield areas of southern Sudan in the 1990s, the regime strategically killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of indigenous residents to facilitate Chinese oil exploitation. In the Nuba mountains during the late 1980s and 1990s, the vast majority of locals were forcibly displaced by Sudanese government attacks, and hundreds of thousands died.

The international community threatened real consequences during and after these incidents and after other targeted crimes against civilian populations. But the consequences never came.

Millions of lives hang on the question of whether the international context has sufficiently changed to end this pattern of empty threats. Sudan’s dictatorial regime is right next to ground zero of the Arab Spring. Despots in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia have felt the sting of popular revolution. Watching this, Khartoum has aggressively infiltrated protest groups, with state security agents systematically raping women involved in protest efforts and violently attacking public demonstrations.

The world has recently shown some willingness to act in Africa. When hundreds of thousands of civilians were threatened this year in Libya and Ivory Coast, governments around the world invoked the “responsibility to protect” doctrine to prevent massive loss of life. The initial objective of saving lives through robust military action after other, non-military measures failed was successful.

Sudan’s north-south and Darfur conflicts have produced more dead, wounded and displaced persons than Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Ivory Coast combined. The focus in the United States and elsewhere has been on providing incentives for the Sudanese government to change its behavior and embrace peace in the South and Darfur. We supported President Obama and Sen. John Kerry in crafting these incentives. We hoped that the carrots of debt relief, removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and an end to sanctions would help change Khartoum’s calculations.

But what’s happening to the people of Abyei is the regime’s unacceptable answer.

How long is the international community willing to tolerate this deadly dictator? President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide, is escalating bombing and food aid obstruction in Darfur, and he now threatens the entire north-south peace process.

The responsibility-to-protect doctrine holds that when a sovereign government can’t or won’t protect its own people, or when it represents their biggest threat, the world must act. An escalating ladder of non-military consequences is supposed to be carried out before the last resort — military force — is considered.

We are not advocating military intervention. But the evidence shows that incentives alone are insufficient to change Khartoum’s calculations. International support should be sought immediately for denying debt relief, expanding the ICC indictments, diplomatically isolating the regime, suspending all non-humanitarian aid, obstructing state-controlled bank transactions and freezing accounts holding oil wealth diverted by senior regime officials.

We must proceed before Abyei ignites the next Darfur.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

El círculo se cierra

Por CECILIA BALLESTEROS (El Pais.com, 27/05/2011)

Todos los que conocen los Balcanes sostienen que allí la historia no es lineal, sino circular. Pero, por una vez, el círculo se ha cerrado y la historia, avanza. La detención de Ratko Mladic, 20 años después de la descomposición de Yugoslavia, pone un cierre simbólico a las guerras balcánicas que inundaron de sangre el corazón de Europa en los estertores de la Guerra Fría, aunque la cuestión de Kosovo y la viabilidad de Bosnia sigan abiertas. Supone también el final también del fantasma recurrente de la inacción europea ante la mayor carnicería cometida en el continente desde la II Guerra Mundial hasta la intervención de Estados Unidos, devuelve a la proscrita Serbia a la normalidad democrática y abre la vía a su ingreso en la UE, respalda el papel de la justicia internacional y repara, aunque sea 16 años más tarde, el dolor de las víctimas de episodios como Srebrenica, donde 8.000 bosniomusulmanes fueron asesinados a sangre fría ante la retirada de los cascos azules holandeses que, en teoría, debían protegerlos.

La caza y captura de uno de los hombres más buscados del planeta, el carnicero que ejecutó las órdenes de los cerebros y antecesores en el banquillo de La Haya, Slobodan Milosevic y Radovan Karadzic, se produce, para muchos, en un momento conveniente tras casi 16 años de jugar al gato y al ratón con sus perseguidores, de rumores sobre su protección por parte del Ejército y de la connivencia de las potencias occidentales que habrían hecho la vista gorda para no complicar la explosiva situación en Serbia. Belgrado siempre negó las acusaciones de que estaba escondido en su territorio, incluso cuando los papeles de Wikileaks sostuvieron que contaba con el respaldo de Rusia, aliado de Serbia. Ha tenido que llegar un político como el europeísta Boris Tadic para romper con el pasado y abrir la vía hacia un futuro en la UE, aunque sea ahora cuando el sueño europeo parece hecho añicos, so pena de que el país quedase aislado frente a sus vecinos. Da igual si la espoleta ha sido la próxima aparición de un informe desfavorable para Belgrado del fiscal de la ONU, Serge Brammertz, sobre la escasa colaboración de las autoridades serbias, si ha habido traición y coincidencia con la forma en que se capturó a Osama bin Laden o si es un gesto hacia Barack Obama, con quien Tadic debía reunirse por primera vez este fin de semana en una cumbre en Varsovia de la que Belgrado se retiró en protesta por la presencia de las autoridades kosovares. En este caso, lo importante no es la realpolitik ni siquiera el que un país cometa el error, tantas veces repetido en los Balcanes y en otros lugares, de unir su destino al de un hombre. Lo importante es que se ha hecho justicia. "Sobreviví porque Mladic se sentía como dios ese día", escribió Emir Suljagic, un joven bosniomusulmán, ahora periodista y autor de uno de los libros más memorables sobre la masacre, Postales desde la tumba, que sobrevivió al genocidio de Srebrenica porque el general le pidió el documento de identidad, le preguntó qué estaba haciendo y le dejó marchar. "Tenía un poder absoluto para decidir sobre la vida y la muerte. Durante meses soñé con él, reviviendo el encuentro... Tenía miedo de volverme loco, intentando explicarme por qué me perdonó (...) Nunca encontré la respuesta". Ahora, Suljagic y el resto de víctimas tienen la solución a tanto dolor. Han sobrevivido para verlo. Ójala con Gadafi y Bachar el Asad no haya que esperar tanto.

Tres olas, muchos desafíos

Por JOSÉ IGNACIO TORREBLANCA (El Pais.com, 27/05/2011)

Si la primavera árabe se ha caracterizado por el desbordamiento de las ilusiones, el verano árabe se definirá por las incertidumbres. Transcurridos cinco meses del estallido de las revueltas, la ola de cambio se ha partido en tres olas menores. Túnez y Egipto han roto radicalmente con el pasado, pero su futuro dista de estar asegurado: son la ola democrática. Argelia, Marruecos, Jordania y Arabia Saudí han optado por abrir la espita de las reformas para así quitarse la presión popular de encima: son la ola reformista. Libia, Siria, Yemen y Bahréin han optado por la fuerza: son la ola represora.

Gestionar un panorama como el que presentan estas tres olas es sumamente complicado: la comunidad internacional está concentrándose en los casos extremos (de democracia o de violencia) y dejando de lado los casos intermedios (los reformistas). Esto tiene sentido, pues lo prioritario en este momento es conseguir, a un extremo, asegurar que se celebren unas elecciones democráticas limpias y justas en Túnez y Egipto y, al otro, poner fin tanto al conflicto bélico en Libia como a las matanzas en Siria. Por un lado, nada nos interpela más que la extensión de la democracia a Túnez y Egipto: son dos faros que pueden iluminar todo el mundo árabe y poner fin a la anomalía democrática que allí ha venido rigiendo. Por otro, nada nos divide y pone más a prueba nuestra coherencia que la respuesta ante el uso de la violencia: en el recorrido que va del envío por Francia de material antidisturbios a Ben Ali al ofrecimiento de helicópteros de ataque a los rebeldes libios hay un trecho tan largo en lo conceptual como escaso en el tiempo. No obstante, como se desprende de la tibiedad con la que Europa y Estados Unidos tratan a los escasamente ejemplares países del golfo Pérsico, o como se adivina en las dudas sobre si exigir la salida del poder de Bachar el Asad en Siria, ni Washington ni Bruselas las tienen todavía todas consigo a la hora de dar una respuesta unificada y coherente a casos que en el fondo son bastante similares.

Cerrar la herida en la continuidad de las reformas democráticas que supone Libia y poner fin al oprobio que significa la salvaje represión siria es crucial, de ahí que la UE se haya por fin lanzado a abrir una representación en Bengasi y a incrementar la presión sobre El Asad. Pero no conviene olvidar a los regímenes reformistas: si algo hemos aprendido en los últimos meses es a sospechar de las manifestaciones de estabilidad que vienen de países no democráticos con importantes déficits sociales. Además, las dificultades que la comunidad internacional está teniendo a la hora de actuar sobre aquellos que, como Gadafi en Libia, El Asad en Siria o Saleh en Yemen, optan por la violencia contra sus ciudadanos proporcionan una razón adicional para asegurarse de que aquellos que, como Marruecos o Argelia, han optado por la vía reformista (en distintos grados) no lo hagan de forma puramente táctica, sino realmente comprometida y sin posibilidad de marcha atrás.

Con razón, Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea y los organismos internacionales se están volcando en asegurar el éxito de las reformas en Túnez y Egipto: en las últimas semanas hemos visto, sucesivamente, importantes anuncios de ayuda provenientes de Washington y Bruselas (condonación de deuda, créditos, asistencia técnica y acceso a mercados), a los que se ha sumado el Banco Mundial, el G-7/G-8 y pronto lo hará el Fondo Monetario Internacional. Aunque ambos países celebrarán pronto elecciones, no son las urnas las que darán de comer a tunecinos y egipcios: con un turismo hundido, los inversores internacionales en compás de espera y unas fronteras con Libia por donde se filtra la inestabilidad y los refugiados, las perspectivas de crecimiento económico en la región ya han sido revisadas a la baja, de un 5% estimado originalmente a un 3,5%. Aunque desde Europa parezcan cifras de crecimiento aceptables, no lo son para estos países, pues esos ritmos de crecimiento no permiten cubrir el inmenso déficit social, ni crear el suficiente número de empleos para el ingente número de jóvenes desempleados que hay en dichos países. La democracia es un proyecto frágil e incierto: de la última ola democratizadora, las revoluciones de las rosas en Georgia, naranja en Ucrania o de los tulipanes en Kirguizistán han acabado empantanadas en la mediocridad de unas élites corruptas y con resabios autoritarios y unas instituciones frágiles y de baja calidad democrática. Es precisamente lo que se trata de evitar ahora.

Iran’s victims

By Benjamin Weinthal, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Mark Dubowitz, executive director and head of the Iran Human Rights Project (LOS ANGELES TIMES, 28/05/11):

On May 28, 1961, British lawyer Peter Benenson penned a passionate article in the London Observer, drawing attention to the plight of two Portuguese students who had delivered a toast calling for democratic reform in their country and were promptly carted off to prison for defying dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar. Benenson wrote in that article: “Open your newspaper any day of the week, and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government…. The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if these feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done.” That summer, Benenson went on to co-found Amnesty International.

Today, across the Muslim world, the annual “prisoners of conscience” day — from a phrase in Benenson’s article — finds scores of political dissidents languishing in jail, their only crimes being peaceful expressions of opposition to the undemocratic regimes under which they live.

Their situation is particularly dire in Iran, where on May 17 in the city of Isfahan — home also to one of the country’s nuclear installations — jailers executed brothers Abdollah and Mohammad Fathi Shoorbariki, after subjecting Abdollah to beatings and threats of rape. Their parents were never shown the charges against their sons. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Bijan Fathi said, “I still don’t know whether my sons’ charge was moharebeh (enmity against God) or robbery. I don’t believe they were at war with the regime or with God.”

Last weekend Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency reported that Iran had arrested 30 people whom the country accuses of spying for the United States. It’s not yet clear whether the charges hold water, but even if they don’t, like so many other Iranians who stand accused of crimes against the regime, the detained face the death penalty.

In Iran, 29-year-old Iranian Kurdish university student Habibollah Latifi also faces extrajudicial execution on charges of “enmity against God” — a claim Tehran frequently invokes to silence political dissent. Latifi awaits his fate on Iran’s death row with at least 16 other known Iranian Kurds, as part of a massive wave of internal repression amid the demonstrations across the Middle East. The victims of Iran’s judicial system have no recognized rights to defend, and their trials, when they exist, are show trials at best.

According to an Amnesty International investigation last month, there has been “a sharp rise in the rate of executions in public in Iran — which have included the first executions of juvenile offenders in the world this year. Since the start of 2011, up to 13 men have been hanged in public, compared to 14 such executions recorded by Amnesty International from official Iranian sources in the whole of 2010.” Eight of those executions have taken place in the last month alone.

The plight of homosexuals, who face widespread state-sanctioned murder and violent repression, was the subject of last year’s Human Rights Watch report, “We Are a Buried Generation: Discrimination and Violence Against Sexual Minorities in Iran.” The investigatory report noted that trials based on moral charges in Iran are usually held in private. As a result, it is a herculean task to assess whether the defendants were killed for their sexual orientation.

As Iran continues its brutal crackdown on prisoners who seek the freedom to elect a government of their choosing, Western governments have swept its human rights violations under the rug, in hopes that dialogue and negotiations will somehow force its rulers to stop repressing their people.

President Obama, to his credit, has come to the realization that words alone will not change the Iranian leaders’ behavior, and he has enacted a range of sanctions against the regime as recently as this week. “Hundreds of prisoners of conscience are in jail” in Iran, Obama said in his annual address to the Iranian population on the country’s Nowruz holiday in March.

In a sharp break from his administration’s previous posture, Obama attached names to the nebulous statistics of brave Iranians promoting democracy at the risk of their livelihoods.

“We have seen Nasrin Sotoudeh jailed for defending human rights; Jafar Panahi imprisoned and unable to make his films; Abdolreza Tajik thrown in jail for being a journalist. The Bahai community and Sufi Muslims punished for their faith; Mohammad Valian, a young student, sentenced to death for throwing three stones,” Obama said.

Although the United States and the European Union have enacted human rights sanctions against Iran’s leaders, they have done little to prevent the ongoing persecution of Iran’s pro-democracy activists.

To inform the 50th anniversary of prisoners of conscience day with something more potent than symbolic speeches and commemoration events, the Obama administration must match words with actions. For starters, the president could help fast-track the one-two punch of human rights and economic sanctions legislation working its way through the House and Senate.

The new congressional measures contain a range of innovative penalties to crack down on Iranian officials responsible for human rights abuses, including targeting their assets and rejecting visas for their travel to the United States. The measures also punish foreign companies for their lucrative business deals with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, including the sale of products used to repress Iran’s people, and the purchase of crude oil from Revolutionary Guard-controlled companies, which are the dominant force in Iran’s petroleum trade.

In southern Europe, prisoners of conscience made enormous sacrifices to bring freedom and representative government to their countries. Portugal’s fascist regime, for example, finally met its demise in 1974, as democracy began to take root. The Iranian people, who have suffered under their nation’s theocratic dictatorship for far too long, deserve no less.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

Mladic in the Dock-At Last

By Kati Marton, the author, most recently, of Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 28/05/11):

Less than a month after the death of Osama bin Laden, Ratko Mladic, one of the most evil men of the 20th century, has been captured. The moment is sweet. For me, bittersweet. For 16 years, Mladic had been Richard Holbrooke’s nemesis, and my husband died without seeing him brought to justice. Mladic’s freedom all these years after the Dayton Accords put an end to the Bosnian war was a personal wound for Richard, the chief architect of that agreement. We cannot call Dayton a success while Mladic is free, my husband used to say.

The butcher of Srebrenica, the general whose forces laid siege to Sarajevo, was a rebuke to everything the Dayton Accords stood for: reconciliation among Serbs, Bosnians and Croats; the integration of the shattered pieces of the former Yugoslavia into the European family; a multicultural future for the blood-soaked Balkans. Mladic at large was a powerful weapon for the hate-mongers in the Balkans and a terrible blot on the face of Europe.

For my husband, it felt personal. Every time there was a Mladic sighting — in a tavern or at a football match in and around Belgrade — Richard felt it like a slap. How happy he would be to see his nemesis captured, and about to face justice for his unspeakable crimes.

I remember the summer Mladic entered our lives, as the Balkan war turned its most murderous. The frantic phone calls from Srebrenica began six weeks after our wedding. Richard’s son Anthony, who worked with refugees in nearby Tuzla, warned his father of what was coming as Europe’s biggest single mass murder unfolded.

The genocide of the area’s Muslim population was carefully choreographed. First, General Mladic’s gunners pulverized the town (allegedly in retaliation for Muslim forays into Serb territory). Then he and his troops took 30 U.N. peacekeepers hostage. Then the whole town became hostage. Mladic rounded up all the Muslims and forced them onto buses. Others were herded into a soccer field. It was a grotesque replay of a scene Europe had witnessed before, and no one stopped it.

Emboldened by the world’s passivity, Mladic then took the next step: He and his men killed thousands of Muslims, execution style, in cold blood. Srebrenica entered the lexicon of horror, along with Auschwitz and Babi Yar.

In Washington, Richard was frantically trying to rouse the Pentagon and the West Europeans to use air power to stop the massacre. Confusion and apathy paralyzed the “international system.” As usual, there were many reasons given for doing nothing.

Later that summer, when Richard was negotiating with the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, at his Belgrade villa, the Serbian leader sprung Mladic on Richard and his team. Richard refused to shake the murderer’s extended hand, but got a good description of him. “Hollywood could not have found a more convincing war villain,” he wrote. “He glowered — there was no better word for it — and engaged each of the Americans in what seemed to us, when we compared notes later, as staring contests. Nonetheless, he had a compelling presence; it was not hard to understand why his troops revered him; he was, I thought, one of those lethal combinations that history thrusts up occasionally — a charismatic murderer.”

Once the peace deal was done and the guns were silent, Richard did not feel his work was done. With Radovan Karadzic and Mladic — the evil twin masterminds of the siege of Sarajevo and the genocide of Srebrenica — at large, full implementation of the peace was impossible. He urged, pleaded really, with those in charge of implementing the Dayton Accords to arrest the two indicted war criminals — but to no avail. This was heartbreaking for my husband. Their freedom undermined everything Dayton stood for. At large, the murderers mocked the peacemakers and gave heart to the separatists and the ultranationalists. To a certain group of diehard racists, Mladic and Karadzic became folk heroes.

Now, with Mladic soon to join Karadzic in the dock, Dayton — and a multicultural Bosnia-Herzegovina — have a much brighter future. Like Eichmann in the glass box, Mladic in the dock will not cut nearly as large a figure as he did after his troops took Srebrenica and he swaggered before terrified Muslim women and children, ruffled a young Muslim boy’s hair, and told him and his people that they had nothing to fear.

When the time comes for the former general to face his victims and accusers without his armed men arrayed behind him, Mladic might learn something about fear himself.

It is a very good day for humanity. I wish Richard, who died in December, were alive to see it.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

Deauville’s Dance of Diplomacy

By Christine Ockrent, a journalist based in Paris (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 28/05/11):

Let’s face it: These summit meetings are a bore. Exhausted leaders have to travel halfway around the world at taxpayers’ expense just to pose for the statutory picture with strained smiles and too few women. They sign a declaration of good intentions, the wording of which has been disputed for days by their Sherpas before the actual gathering. They have an ambitious agenda that is immediately forgotten.

The same questions keep being asked: Is the meeting of the wealthiest an insult to the poor? Is Russia truly a Western democracy? Is the Group of 8 still relevant or should it be scratched to give way to the G-20 — a more appropriate representation of today’s world powers?

Yet there is always a good reason to stick to these rituals — at least in the eye of the host, eager to improve his stature and his popular support.

From time to time, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France gets lucky, a true political talent. Today, 11 months before the French election, his presidency of both the G-8 and the G-20 has been widely seen as an asset, strengthening his credentials as a world-class leader. And circumstances play in his favor. Who could deny that the Arab Spring, the Libyan quagmire, the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, the Japanese nuclear disaster, the financial crisis in Euroland and the political demise of Dominique Strauss-Kahn justify a good round of face-to-face discussions within the Western family?

Even Barack Obama — the first ever U.S. president not to display the slightest interest toward Europe when he was first elected — seems to have come to terms with the idea. Now it looks as if drinking Irish ale, speaking in Westminster Hall and strolling the wooden alleys of Deauville have reconciled him to historical roots he had heretofore ignored. Here he is, celebrating Western values and denying their decline at a time when they are both envied and challenged by demography and growth in other parts of the world. A pragmatist who no longer elaborates on American supremacy, Obama knows he needs to rely on old allies to balance the erratic swings of globalization.

But the American president also faces European partners who are more divided than ever on a variety of issues. Long gone is the pretense of a common European policy, or even a harmonized one, when Angela Merkel disagrees with David Cameron and Sarkozy over Libya, when Britain sneers at the euro zone’s difficulties, when Italy and France quarrel over the fate of Tunisian immigrants, when the debts of Greece, Portugal and Spain endanger economic recovery even in the United States.

Beyond belated encouragement to the democratic surge in parts of the Arab world, the G-8 member states — themselves cash-strapped — have pledged $20 billion in aid in to help create political and economic stability in Egypt and Tunisia. Yet Arab youth may not receive the concrete results they expect at Facebook or Twitter speed, which has become the measure of their impatience and despair.

A consensus was easily reached on one issue that the G-8 leaders will not boast about: Syria. Obama may have sounded somehow more reluctant than Cameron and Sarkozy to force Muammar el-Qaddafi out of Tripoli, but they all agree — particularly Dmitri Medvedev — on the need to stick to double-standards when it comes to Bashar al-Assad.

France has failed in its ill-conceived attempts to draw Damascus away from Tehran. Washington, glued to the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, has steadily been losing influence in the Middle East. Obama made a bold speech last week asking for Israel to return to 1967 boundaries — only to be snubbed by Benjamin Netanyahu, who got a standing ovation in Congress, and also by Mahmoud Abbas, disappointed that the U.S. president would not support his request for recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September. On this particular problem, Sarkozy and Cameron are likely to be more insistent than their American counterpart — a poisonous issue for Obama, already engaged into his next presidential campaign.

There is one entry that has not appeared on the G-8 agenda: Afghanistan. The war has been going on for the past 10 years. Nobody seems to know exactly what our young men and women are dying for. The debate remains muted, as if our democracies are not concerned about questioning their own goals. Now that Osama bin Laden is no longer an obstacle to negotiations with the Taliban, why not raise the issue by outlining a clear exit strategy?

For all the promises — “New World, New Ideas,” as the G-8 motto goes — let us not forget that to we French, Deauville forever means “chabadabada …” the tune of the legendary Claude Lelouch movie “A Man and a Woman.” As Michelle went home, there was no Obama romance on “les planches.” But two women have stolen the show: Christine Lagarde, whose candidacy to the I.M.F. top job deserves full G-8 support — and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, pregnant and silent, with a radiant smile.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

After 30 years of HIV/AIDS, real progress and much left to do

By Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health (THE WASHINGTON POST, 28/05/11):

Three decades ago, the June 5, 1981, issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) reported on five previously healthy young gay men in Los Angeles diagnosed with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), an infectious disease usually seen only in people with profoundly impaired immune function. As a specialist in infectious diseases and immunology, I had cared for several people with PCP whose immune systems had been weakened by cancer chemotherapy. I was puzzled about why otherwise healthy young men would acquire this infection. And why gay men? I was concerned, but mentally filed away the report as a curiosity.

One month later, the MMWR wrote about 26 cases in previously healthy gay men from Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, who had developed PCP as well as an unusual form of cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma. Their immune systems were severely compromised. This mysterious syndrome was acting like an infectious disease that probably was sexually transmitted. My colleagues and I never had seen anything like it. The idea that we could be dealing with a brand-new infectious microbe seemed like something for science fiction movies.

Little did we know what lay ahead.

Soon, cases appeared in many groups: injection-drug users, hemophiliacs and other recipients of blood and blood products, heterosexual men and women, and children born to infected mothers. The era of AIDS had begun.

I changed the direction of my career to study this disease — to the chagrin of my mentors and many colleagues — and began a 30-year journey through this extraordinary global health saga. The early years of AIDS were unquestionably the darkest of my career, characterized by frustration about how little I could do for my patients. At hospitals nationwide, patients were usually close to death when they were admitted. Their survival usually was measured in months; the care we provided was mostly palliative. Trained as a healer, I was healing no one.

In the first couple of years, few scientists were involved in AIDS research, and there was very little funding to study the disease. Initially, we did not know the infectious agent — if indeed there was one — so researchers had no precise direction in which to search.

The first major research breakthrough came in 1983 with the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, and then in 1984, with proof that it caused AIDS. Our knowledge of HIV/AIDS rapidly grew with the development of a diagnostic test in 1985 that revealed the frightening scope of the pandemic. Our desperately ill patients were just the tip of the iceberg.

The first drug that slowed the progression of HIV/AIDS — zidovudine, initially called AZT — was licensed by the Food and Drug Administration in 1987. For those in the field, this was a major high point. Finally, we could treat the disease instead of just its complications. Soon, however, we learned that the benefits of AZT as a stand-alone treatment waned within months as HIV developed resistance to the drug. The disease relentlessly progressed. The realization that we were in for the long haul began to set in.

In 1984, I became director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and soon established a distinct AIDS research program. This met considerable opposition from some senior figures in medicine, who believed that I was overreacting and that focusing on AIDS would divert resources from other important infectious diseases. Despite our intensive efforts to find solutions to this emerging global plague, federal scientists — including me — and my colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and the FDA were vilified by growing numbers of AIDS activists, who thought that the government was not moving fast enough to fight the epidemic and should modify its research agenda and drug approval procedures to meet the special circumstances of the pandemic. In many respects, the activists were correct. Looking back, one of the most productive decisions I made in the 1980s was to fully engage with the activists. Clinical trials were soon modified to be more flexible and user-friendly, and through activist engagement with the FDA, the drug approval process was markedly accelerated while retaining proper attention to safety.

There is a stunning contrast between how I felt as a physician-scientist in the 1980s and the optimism I feel today as more infections are prevented and lifesaving drugs increasingly become available throughout the world. Annual funding for HIV/AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health exceeds $3 billion, thanks to consistent support from Congress and each successive administration. Thousands of researchers globally are intensively studying HIV, developing therapies, and designing and implementing prevention modalities — including a thus-far-elusive vaccine. The surge in research efforts has enabled enormous medical advances, especially in therapeutics. More than 30 anti-HIV drugs have been developed and licensed; in combinations of three or more these medications have proved extremely effective since the mid-1990s in slowing and even halting HIV’s progression. In the 1980s, patients received a prognosis of months. Today, a 20-year-old who is newly diagnosed and receives combination anti-HIV drugs according to established guidelines can expect to live 50 more years. Furthermore, HIV treatment not only benefits the infected individual but can reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to others.

In 2002, President George W. Bush sent a team to southern Africa on an HIV/AIDS fact-finding mission. Upon our return, the president asked me to help design a plan for providing HIV-related services on a large scale in low-income countries. Eventually, this became the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Visiting African hospitals and seeing scores of HIV-infected people, I noted that the physicians were experiencing the frustration that I and so many of my colleagues in rich countries had felt 20 years earlier, as we saw people die because of our inability to treat the disease. In Africa in 2002, the effective treatments that had transformed HIV/AIDS care in wealthy countries were available only to the privileged. The developing world clearly needed PEPFAR, and President Bush made it happen.

The implementation of PEPFAR — as well as programs such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the Clinton Foundation; Doctors Without Borders; and others — has changed the landscape of global AIDS. PEPFAR alone has provided anti-HIV drugs to more than 3.2 million infected people in the developing world, predominantly in southern Africa and the Caribbean, and it has offered HIV care, counseling, testing, prevention services and support to millions more. In 2010, PEPFAR’s support of antiretroviral prophylaxis to prevent mother-to-child transmission allowed more than 114,000 infants to be born HIV-free.

With most diseases, these results would sound like an unqualified success story. The HIV story, however, is far from over. There have been more than 60 million HIV infections throughout the world, with at least 30 million deaths. In 2009, 2.6 million people became infected with HIV and 1.8 million died; more than 90 percent of cases occurred in the developing world, two-thirds in sub-Saharan Africa. For every infected person put on lifesaving therapy, two to three people are newly infected. To control and ultimately end the pandemic, we will need to treat many more HIV-infected people, for their health and to reduce the risk of their sexual partners becoming infected. We also must accelerate implementation of other prevention approaches, as well as research toward a cure.

We cannot lose sight of the fact that lifesaving HIV/AIDS programs at home and abroad must be strengthened despite global constraints on resources. Enormous challenges remain and must be met by the next generation of scientists, public health officials and politicians throughout the world. History will judge us as a global society by how well we address the challenges in the next few decades of HIV/AIDS.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

Vermont: tierra pionera

Por Amy Goodman (Democracy now! en español, 26 de mayo de 2011)

Escuche (en español)

Vermont es una tierra orgullosa de ser pionera en varias cosas. Este pequeño estado de Nueva Inglaterra fue el primero en unirse a las 13 Colonias. Su constitución fue la primera en prohibir la esclavitud y la primera en establecer el derecho a la educación gratuita para todos, la educación pública.

Esta semana, Vermont será pionero una vez más: se convertirá en el primer estado del país en ofrecer un sistema de salud de pagador único, lo cual deja fuera a las costosas empresas de seguros de salud, que muchos consideran la principal causa del aumento de los costos de salud en nuestro país. En un sistema de pagador único pueden operar tanto proveedores de salud públicos como privados, como siempre lo han hecho. Pero en lugar de que el paciente o la empresa de seguro de salud del paciente pague por el servicio, lo hará el Estado. Básicamente significa que habrá Medicare para todos: se extiende ese derecho a toda la población. El Estado, que compra estos servicios de salud para toda la población, puede negociar tarifas favorables y eliminar los grandes costos impuestos por las aseguradoras con fines de lucro.

Vermont contrató al economista de Harvard William Hsiao para plantear tres alternativas al actual sistema. El sistema de pagador único, escribió Hsiao, “generará un ahorro del 24,3 por ciento del gasto total en salud entre 2015 y 2024”. Una investigación realizada por Don McCanne de Médicos por un Programa Nacional de Salud señaló que “estos planes cubrirían a todos sin que aumente el gasto, ya que la eficiencia del sistema de pagador único alcanzaría para pagar por quienes actualmente carecen de seguro o cuyo seguro no cubre lo suficiente. Entonces es realmente una buena noticia”, dijo “El sistema de pagador único funciona”.

El gobernador de Vermont, Peter Shumlin, me explicó los motivos por los que promulgará la ley: “Este es nuestro actual desafío. Nuestras primas aumentan 10, 15, hasta 20 por ciento cada año. Esto también sucede en el resto del país. Están matando a las pequeñas empresas. Están matando a los estadounidenses de clase media, que fueron golpeados por la crisis en los últimos años. Nuestro plan creará un fondo único, que absorberá las ganancias de las aseguradoras, de las empresas farmacéuticas, y de todos los que se están aprovechando del sistema para obtener ganancias a costa de nuestras enfermedades, y asegurará que invirtamos esos dólares en la salud de los habitantes de Vermont. De manera que sería un fondo único que utilizará la tecnología para asegurar que hagamos a un lado lo que no sirve y dediquemos esos dólares a proteger la salud de los habitantes de Vermont”.

Hablando de ser pioneros en cuestiones de salud, Vermont podría convertirse en el primer estado en cerrar una planta nuclear. La legislatura de Vermont es la primera en adjudicarse el derecho de decidir sobre el futuro nuclear del estado, lo que significa poner la política ambiental en manos de la gente.

Vermont también fue pionero en aprobar una legislación sobre la unión civil entre personas del mismo sexo. Luego el estado fue más allá para convertirse en la primera legislatura del país en legalizar el matrimonio homosexual. Luego de que el proyecto de ley fuera aprobado en la Cámara de Representantes y el Senado de Vermont, el ex gobernador Jim Douglas lo vetó. Al día siguiente, en abril de 2009, ambas cámaras anularon el veto del gobernador y convirtieron a la Ley de Libertad de Matrimonio de Vermont en ley vigente.

Vermont se ha convertido en una incubadora de políticas públicas innovadoras. El sistema de salud de pagador único de Canadá comenzó como un experimento en la provincia de Saskatchewan. Fue promovida a principios de la década del 60 por el entonces Primer Ministro de dicha provincia, Tommy Douglas, considerado por muchos el “canadiense más grande” de todos los tiempos. El plan tuvo éxito y fue adoptado rápidamente en todo el país. (A propósito, Tommy Douglas es el abuelo del actor Kiefer Sutherland). Quizá la nueva ley de asistencia de salud de Vermont inicie una transformación similar en Estados Unidos.

La antropóloga Margaret Mead dijo en una frase que se volvió célebre: “No cabe duda de que un pequeño grupo de ciudadanos conscientes y comprometidos puede cambiar el mundo. De hecho, son los únicos que lo han logrado”. Simplemente sustituye la palabra “grupo” por “estado”, y el resultado es Vermont.

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Denis Moynihan colaboró en la producción periodística de esta columna.

© 2011 Amy Goodman

Texto en inglés traducido por Mercedes Camps y Democracy Now! en español, spanish@democracynow.org

Amy Goodman es la conductora de Democracy Now!, un noticiero internacional que se emite diariamente en más de 600 emisoras de radio y televisión en inglés y en más de 300 en español. Es co-autora del libro "Los que luchan contra el sistema: Héroes ordinarios en tiempos extraordinarios en Estados Unidos", editado por Le Monde Diplomatique Cono Sur.

At the G-8 Summit, Africa Will Be Heard

By Abdoulaye Wade, president of the Republic of Senegal (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 27/05/11):

As I head to the French resort town of Deauville this week to participate in this year’s G-8 meeting, I promise one thing new: The tone will change. This year Africa brings to the table its own good news. Senegal, for one, is preparing for a world where the assumptions of yesteryear no longer stand.

A few favorite African heads of state are always invited to G-8 summit meetings, and I’ve often been let into the club for a lively chat, a copious meal of promises and ambitious pledges, and a hearty round of preaching.

This state of affairs is no longer acceptable. Europe claims to support giving Africa, South America, Asia and the Middle East a stronger voice in the international clubs it helped to create. Perhaps it is time for Europe to show it really means what it says — and lighten its grip on the reins of planetary control.

Senegal, as you know, is not a member of the once elite G-8. We are not even a member of the G-20, which offers only one African seat despite the fact that it was supposed to reflect the new world order when it was created in 2008 as a response to the crisis that originated in the G-8 but rocked the rest of the world.

The crisis showed that the old world order is no longer credible. It’s not sustainable for the rich world to dole out advice and crumbs to the rest of us. The euro zone’s debt crisis is a case in point.

Europe claims this is a reason it should hold onto the leadership of the International Monetary Fund, but surely its increasingly poor image among international investors argues quite the reverse: The old Continent’s difficulty in managing its affairs suggests it might benefit from a bit of outside advice.

It gives me no pleasure to watch the discomfort of others, and for all the world’s sake I hope Europe finds a lasting solution for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and other countries struggling to deal with past profligacy. And, of course, Africa has had its own challenges in managing public finances.

But I cannot help but notice as I head to France that international investors appear to find Senegal more credible and a better bet than Europe’s laggards.

Investor decisions are often the most accurate bellwether of economic realities. The yields on 10-year bonds in Greece and Ireland are hovering around 10 percent as doubts linger about the governments’ ability to repay their debts. Compare that with a coupon of 8.75 percent on a recently issued Senegalese bond. Although the context is different, the point is valid: What’s attractive in the world of investments has shifted.

This year, I’ll be pulling up to the G-8 table with a fresh report that was just delivered to my desk in Dakar from African executives of Standard Bank, an African bank with strategic presence in emerging markets who have acted as the joint-bookrunners with Standard Chartered of our recent Eurobond offer. Investor confidence in Senegal is running so high that our $500 million, 10-year bond, in combination with a strategic exchange tender of our 2014 bond, was over-subscribed in just four days reaching an overwhelming $2.4 billion in sales from more than 125 institutional investors from North America, Europe and Asia.

Ours is among only a handful of sovereign bond issues to come to market from sub-Saharan Africa, but it is a clear indication that the days of reliance on donor pledges for financing are ending. Africa’s deeper economic story is tied to our ability to mobilize our own wealth. G-8 pledges to the developing world are still important but their relevance is clearly dwindling. A further upside for Africa is Senegal’s expected eligibility for the Emerging Market Bond Index Global. G-8 leaders will be reminded that the world is waking up to the intrinsic value of Africa’s economic promise and that serious investors are arriving.

Hidden beneath the shackles of outdated perceptions and obscured by the healthy unrest and much-need political reform in North Africa and around the continent lies an Africa that will insist on being heard in Deauville this week. News of the fresh confidence in Africa’s economic awakening will be shared.

Having now reached one billion inhabitants, Africa’s promise lies in its robust markets and hundreds of new companies, the measurably improved management and returns of its massive commodities, its growing service industries and educated consumer classes, and its rapidly improving infrastructure and sub-national governance.

But the words of hopeful politicians no longer need to be trusted; the order book of bullish investors has spoken.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

Obama, Poland and Russia

By Mark Brzezinski, the author of The Struggle for Constitutionalism in Poland (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 27/05/11):

Poland has been waiting for President Obama to visit ever since he was elected senator from Illinois, home to over one million Americans of Polish descent. The president’s timing — he’s scheduled to arrive on Friday — is ideal. This is a special month in Poland: On May 1 the Vatican beatified the “Polish pope,” John Paul II. On May 3 Poles marked the annual celebration of their Constitution, Europe’s first — codified in 1791 — and the second in the world after America’s.

The president’s visit provides an opportunity to reassure the Poles and all of Central Europe, a region that cares deeply about its relationship with America. The people there are like people everywhere who have suffered trauma and betrayal. The horrific experiences of living under Nazism and Communism conditions their perspective. Strong relations with America provide a residual sense of reassurance and confidence.

This remains the case even as Polish-German reconciliation deepens and the benefits of European citizenship become more important. Three issues should be highlighted during President Obama’s visit, as they are also of concern to the Poles.

• Democracy. The United States should identify with Polish efforts to promote democracy in Belarus and Ukraine. Warsaw is one of the most active supporters of the democratic opposition in Belarus. The Polish Foreign Ministry finances Belsat TV, which broadcasts news and cultural programming from Poland and is the only independent satellite TV channel for Belarus. This is critical as the Belarus government tightens the screws on dissent.
• NATO. It should be made clear that Polish membership in the Atlantic alliance is important to America, and that America appreciates Polish efforts in Afghanistan (and earlier in Iraq). Poland has 2,600 troops deployed in Afghanistan, making it among the top contributors to the International Security Assistance Force. Just last month a Polish soldier was killed in Ghazni Province, bringing to 25 the country’s death toll since it joined the NATO-led operation. The Poles want to hear how America values NATO, and “how NATO’s borders are America’s borders.”
• Energy. It should be more widely known how America is supporting Poland’s efforts to develop energy self-sufficiency, independence and diversification. The Poles feel vulnerable to Russia’s monopoly on gas supply. The United States has been working with the Poles on shale oil — not as a panacea, but as a part of an overall policy — providing expertise from West Virginia University. Washington is also working on regional coordination to maximize what Central Europe can get from the E.U. for infrastructure development.

Ideally, Obama’s visit will help bring closer collaboration between Poland, Central Europe, the European Union and the United States on all these issues and bolster Warsaw as Poland undertakes a profound policy shift: advancing eventual Polish-Russian rapprochement.

At a time when the Obama administration has reset relations with Moscow, Poland has engaged in its own fence-mending. The mistrust and hostility that has so colored the Russian-Polish relationship spans centuries. But a reconciliation is not without precedent. The post-World War II Franco-German rapprochement had to overcome the trauma of Nazism. Despite deep-rooted historical animosity, Poland and Germany have rebuilt relations over the past two decades.

The Poles and Russians recognize that the process will take time. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, initiated the process with the establishment of the “Joint Commission on Difficult Issues” in 2007. Russia’s acknowledgment of Soviet responsibility for the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn during World War II was a significant gesture. So was Vladimir Putin’s condemnation of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in an article in Gazeta Wyborcza. Russian sympathy following the tragic plane crash in April 2010 that killed the Polish president was also appreciated by many Poles.

The strategic value of all these steps is clear. Poland understands the drawbacks of being a border country, and Russia understands it would be better off if its neighbors feared Moscow less. While the difficult process of Polish-Russian rapprochement is not explicitly related to the U.S.-Russia reset, it would have a positive impact on Central Europe as well as the broader trans-Atlantic relationship. Reconciliation is a game-changing possibility that has a long way to go, which is why President Obama’s trip is so important.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

The U.S. and the International Criminal Court: An unfinished debate

By Butch Bracknell, a Marine Lieutenant Colonel and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council (LOS ANGELES TIMES, 26/05/11):

I recently returned from a week in Iraq, where I trained an elite security force unit on human rights and the law of combat operations. Discussions regarding the responsibility of commanders for the acts of their forces migrated to the issue of the United Nations’ International Criminal Court. One Iraqi officer asked me, “If the United States believes in accountability over impunity, why are you not a party to the International Criminal Court?” I did not have a satisfactory answer.

The answer for public consumption is that U.S. accession to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court, is not an imminent issue because U.S. processes for achieving accountability function well: The military and civilian courts are open, the government already is bringing cases to court where the evidence warrants, and convictions are occurring on a sufficiently regular basis. The subtext is that the Obama administration has to prioritize where to spend political capital and carefully select its fights. Nonetheless, as a nation, we need to revive the debate over joining the ICC.

The National Security Strategy and other key U.S. foreign affairs and security policy documents stress the merits of multilateralism, international partnership and working through institutions to achieve desirable foreign policy outcomes. American failure to join the ICC is a holdover from unilateralist ideologues in the George W. Bush administration. This failure is inconsistent with current U.S. national policy, which touts the ICC as a viable and appropriate forum for filing charges against Sudan’s Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and his Darfur co-conspirators; Kenyan Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta; Lord’s Resistance Army chairman Joseph Kony in Uganda; Libyan regime leaders, including Moammar Kadafi, his son Saif Islam and his intelligence chief; and other corrupt strongmen who misuse governmental power for personal and political advantage.

Signing and ratifying the statute before the 2012 election would permit the Obama administration to act on its stated intentions to use multilateralism and international institutions as proxies for costly and treacherous U.S. unilateralism. Acceding to the Rome Statute would demonstrate leadership to our allies and set a strategic tone of multilateralism at low political cost and risk.

Though the U.S. signed the treaty in 2000 to preserve the ability to shape the statute’s evolution, both the Clinton and Bush administrations publicly opposed ratifying the ICC on the grounds that the Rome Statute compromises national sovereignty. Its critics contend the court could subject U.S. troops and officials to the jurisdiction of a politically motivated prosecutor, who would use the court’s jurisdiction over an American service member or public official to make a political point against the United States.

The Bush administration and, later, Congress conditioned certain military cooperation and aid on the execution of agreements that bound the partner states not to surrender U.S. personnel to the jurisdiction of the ICC. Strong-arming allies desperate for U.S. cooperation placed narrow and shallow U.S. interests over real partnership, which is more valuable to long-term American interests. That stance against the court’s jurisdiction was really a proxy statement for U.S. unilateralism — strategic messaging that the U.S. would not yield even a small amount of U.S. sovereignty to multilateral institutions or processes, even where the tradeoff could be substantially positive.

The ICC poses extraordinarily low risk to U.S. sovereignty, service members and public officials abroad. Under the Rome Statute’s “complementarity” principle, before the court asserts jurisdiction over a citizen, the ICC prosecutor must determine and substantiate that the citizen’s country is operating with impunity or that its judicial processes are broken or powerless. To avoid ICC jurisdiction over American service members and public officials, the United States would not have to charge, indict and bring cases to court. All that is required is for the U.S. to undertake a good-faith investigative effort of offenses under the statute and domestic law, and meaningfully assert national jurisdiction over alleged offenses.

The Rome Statute merely confirms our national social and legal instincts: to address unlawful activity appropriately and within an evenhanded, legitimate legal framework. As long as U.S. processes continue to operate and set the world standard for impartial investigations and just exercise of prosecutorial discretion, the U.S. has little to fear from the ICC.

With or without the United States, the ICC will continue to hold accountable rogue world leaders and public officials whose conduct violates the legal standards established by the Rome Statute. For certain world leaders accustomed to acting with impunity, it is the court of last resort. Acceding to and ratifying the Rome Statute would enable the U.S. to participate in future deliberations on the evolution of the statute. It also would reinforce Obama administration statements about participating fully in multilateral institutions and lend credence to administration positions on the utility of the ICC in thwarting impunity by treacherous leaders, such as Kenyan ethnic warlords and the Libyan inner circle.

Absent accession to the Rome Statute, the message America sends to the world is unprincipled: The U.S. is committed to the concept of multilateralism — except when it is not.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

´China Is Key to America’s Afghan Endgame

By Anatol Lieven, a professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London and author of Pakistan: A Hard Country (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 26/05/11):

The affairs of Afghanistan and Pakistan are becoming the biggest test of whether the United States and China can cooperate to maintain global peace and stability in the 21st century.

They are an even bigger test of this than the Korean Peninsula, for the security equation there is largely frozen, whereas in Afghanistan and Pakistan it is very volatile indeed, as circumstances surrounding the death of Osama bin Laden have emphasized.

The future of Afghanistan is also a test of other great-power relationships that will largely define the 21st century in Asia: Of whether China and India are doomed to mutual hostility or can find areas of cooperation; and of whether the Chinese-Russian relationship will become a true partnership that will seek common solutions to key problems.

As the United States moves toward a withdrawal of its ground forces from Afghanistan, the role of the region is bound to become increasingly important. The question now is whether Washington is prepared to accommodate its wishes to those of other powers in the area, and help broker a regional settlement for Afghanistan in which the United States will be only one player among several.

China, along with Pakistan, India, Russia and Iran, has a critical role to play. It borders Afghanistan, albeit for only a few miles. China’s possession of a huge Muslim territory in Xinjiang makes it acutely conscious of the threat of Islamist extremism both to its own territory and to former Soviet Central Asia. China has committed itself to far the biggest commercial investment in Afghanistan — $3 billion in the Aynak copper mine.

Finally, China has a very great stake in Pakistan, which is indeed China’s only real ally in the world. The importance of this relationship has been emphasized by statements of support for Pakistan from Beijing in the wake of Bin Laden’s death, and the visit of Pakistan’s prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, to China. Reports from Kabul say that Pakistan has been encouraging the Karzai administration to look to Beijing, not Washington, as a future sponsor.

Many Pakistanis are now open in their desire that China replace the United States as Pakistan’s main international backer. China’s aid to Pakistan is still considerably exceeded by that of the United States, but China has become a key provider of military equipment to Pakistan, and has also invested heavily in Pakistani infrastructure.

China’s stake in Pakistan is threefold. There is the desire dating back to the 1960s to use Pakistan as balance against India, with which China has a major border dispute and that China regards as a potential rival. China has also used Pakistan as a link to Islamist groups in the region. Finally, China is building up energy routes from the Gulf via Pakistan to insure China against any future naval blockade by the United States or India.

At the same time, China is by no means unconditionally committed to Pakistan, and this should give Washington room for maneuver. Beijing has in fact played a rather cautious hand, keeping its aid limited. Both the corruption and incompetence of the Pakistani state and the spread of Islamist insurgency in Pakistan have made Beijing wary of a deeper commitment.

It is extremely unlikely, though, that China will join the U.S. in pressuring Pakistan to accede to the U.S. version of an Afghan peace settlement. Rather, if Washington swings round to the idea of negotiating a deal with the Taliban and using Pakistan as a mediator, China’s ability to influence Islamabad will be of great importance. For this to happen, however, Washington will have to persuade India to limit its own ambitions in Afghanistan; and China will also have to help bring Russia and Iran on board.

Up to now, China seems to have assumed that it could do separate deals with the Taliban and their allies to exclude Uighur militants, and that it may be able to do the same kind of deal to defend the Aynak mine. This is a mistake.

While American and Indian hopes that the Taliban can be defeated in the Pashtun areas are clearly impossible, so to are Taliban hopes of sweeping to power in the whole of Afghanistan. The U.S., India and Russia will make sure that, as before 9/11, non-Pashtun armies continue to defend their own areas against the Taliban. This is a recipe for unending civil war — which is no recipe for successful copper production and export.

Another reason why China should help seek an Afghan peace settlement is for the sake of Pakistan’s stability. Continued war in Afghanistan will mean continued radicalization in Pakistan. This in turn will increase the risk that Pakistan-based terrorists will strike at the U.S. or India. Especially following Bin Laden’s death, a terrorist attack with links to Pakistan would so infuriate Americans that retaliation against Pakistan would be a real possibility, and no concern either for the risks or for U.S. relations with China would prevent this.

If China truly cares about Pakistan’s survival, it should be doing everything possible to get the Pakistanis to prevent international terrorism based on their soil.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona

Demographic Tectonics

By Pierre Buhler, a former French diplomat and associate professor at Sciences Po, Paris (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 26/05/11):

Slow but steady contraction in the north, vigorous and sustained expansion in Africa; seven billion of us by October this year, eight billion sometime around 2025. The latest United Nations population figures provide a dramatic glimpse of how the demographic map of the planet is being reshaped.

For the latest revision of its biennial “World Population Prospects,” the U.N. Population Division has extended its forecasts by 50 years, to 2100. Long-term forecasts must be taken with a grain of salt — they “have no operational role,” as the French demographer Hervé Le Bras has written; they just help “staging and exaggerating today’s fears.”

Still, the margins of error allow for a fairly reliable picture of the world’s population in the decades to come. And what matters more is the breakdown of the aggregate figures, as their distribution holds far-reaching consequences.

For this, demography delivers a high level of certainty. The women liable to give birth within a generation are already born; life expectancy and mortality indexes evolve slowly. The most volatile factor is actually the fertility rate — the number of children per woman. Only if this rate is above the generation replacement level of 2.1 will there be a natural increase of a population. When it hovers between 5 and 7, as it does in some 20 countries, the “compounded interest” effect is extremely powerful.

Unsurprisingly, Asia remains the largest human reservoir, holding more than 60 percent of the world’s population — a proportion that should still be around 55 percent by 2050.

What is most striking, though, is the unabated demographic swelling of Africa. Africa’s population has almost doubled between 1975 and 2000, growing from 416 to 811 million; it will add another 75 percent to reach 1.4 billion people in 2025, and presumably another 55 percent to reach the staggering figure of 2.2 billion by mid-century.

The main reason is that the demographic transition — the decrease of birth rates following the drop of death rates when a country takes off — is slow to occur in the least developed countries. With the exception of Afghanistan, Timor and Yemen, all such countries, with current fertility rates above 4.5 children per woman, are located in sub-Saharan Africa — and there are some 25 of them.

The U.N. assumes this rate will decrease steadily from five to three children per woman, which is considered the medium. Still the population of Africa as a whole is expected to keep growing briskly, from only 9 percent of the world’s population in 1950 to 24 percent by 2050. The absolute figures will have increased tenfold within that century.

And while countries such as Nigeria (230 million in 2025, 390 million in 2050); Ethiopia (110 million and 145 million) and Congo (95 million and 148 million) have since long been identified as the demographic giants of sub-Saharan Africa, new applicants are following suit.

With a population of 45 million inhabitants today and a fertility rate of 5.5, Tanzania is on the path toward 71 million in 2025 and 138 million in 2050. Kenya is expected to jump from 41 million to 59 million and then to 97 million in that same time span, while Uganda might reach the 100 million mark after mid-century.

In the 1960s and 1970s the population growth rates — then of the same magnitude as those of sub-Saharan Africa today — fostered a number of controversies in the West about the capacity of the earth to feed a constantly growing mankind. They also prompted birth-control policies in a number of Third World countries.

The slowing of the exponential curve of demography after the 1970s muted the neo-Malthusian voices. But the toll that demographic growth in Africa will take on an already stressed ecosystem will no doubt reopen those debates.

Another consequence of the growth curve is the pressure to emigrate generated by the annual arrival on the African labor markets of some 20 million youths. That bulge is liable to increase year after year, reaching 40 million by 2050.

The migratory pressure will be directed in the first place toward Europe, whose population, in sharp contrast with Africa’s, is bound to age and stagnate.

Here the figures provided by the U.N. do not show any reverse trend. Even though they assume a surge in fertility rates close to the generation replacement levels, within a decade Europe — for the first time in peacetime — will have no natural increase of its population. Russia’s population has been declining for two decades; more recently so has Germany’s (and Japan’s). The issue is not only one of decline in absolute figures, but also one of a graying population and a shrinking workforce.

Not all European countries are equally affected. France, Ireland, Britain and some Nordic countries have fertility rates quite close to the generation replacement rate and are not threatened by demographic decline. But this does not change the trends for Europe as a whole, nor the fact that the Continent will remain a desired destination for immigrants from the South.

Another French demographer, Alfred Sauvy, once said that the 21st century would be “the century of demographic aging.” One should add that it might be the century of immigration.

The United States and some other countries have long turned immigration into a public policy that, despite some stumbling blocks, has helped preserve a balanced age pyramid. In Europe, recent developments have shown the extent to which immigration can corrode the European construction.

“Demography is destiny,” says the maxim attributed to Auguste Comte. It is about time for Europeans to take their destiny into their hands and to address it from both ends: the urgent need for massive development in Africa and sound management of the inescapable migratory flows from south to north.

Fuente: Bitácora Almendrón. Tribuna Libre © Miguel Moliné Escalona